"Detention." Mr Ignis grumbled almost painstakingly, his breath like rising steam.
His rock skin, although unmoving, seemed to tighten with agitation.
Across from him, Julius sat with an unmoving expression, his eyes like two black boats sailing idly through calm waves of root beer.
He had expected this outcome; it was naturally an inconvenience to him, though he wasn't particularly attached to the outcome.
He let the moment continue, expression like waves of moving wind, whilst Adrian flicked his chin aside to set it down upon his fist against the sides of the armchair.
Adrian had gotten angry earlier, losing his cool and becoming obsessively focused on crushing Julius to the point he hadn't even considered the consequences.
Interestingly, those consequences would've been far harsher than detention if Jakub hadn't saved Julius from Adrian's increasingly dangerous grip.
However, what the two couldn't have possibly calculated was how their actions had troubled Mr Ignis past the surface of his rock skin.
Mr Ignis began, "You two will both stay behind after school hours."
Adrian's brows flared inward, his jaw one more inch of pressure away from clipping teeth loose.
Julius sat with an expression like a broad wall, painted with one plain colour.
Mr Ignis continued, "To attend to the hydra stable."
Adrian's brows inverted, the tension in his face dissipating, flaring outwards with mild panic.
Hydra's like the taste of lightning...
Conversely, the dark-haired boy beside him sat as relaxed as fresh dough.
In fact, one leg crossed over the other, where it was left to hang on top of his thigh, as he sat seemingly in complete relaxation.
Externally, his eyes were attuned to the words Mr Ignis spoke.
Internally, his mind was already conjuring a grand plan, involving an alchemy room and an old, trusted recipe.
He sat with his thumb under the tip of his chin and his index finger curling over his philtrum.
So as he looked toward Mr Ignis, seemingly digesting horrific news in silence, he really distantly imagined what to do next after taming a hydra.
Most would've dreaded the Hydra's, like Adrian was now, with a murky expression.
Though to Julius it was just another obstacle, applying pure efficiency with thought, without ever letting emotions label a situation for him.
Mr Ignis felt an obvious reaction from Adrian, glad that his punishment would affect the boy, in hopes of disciplining him.
Through the fiery parts of his eyes, where the whites of human eyes sat, his infernal pupils scanned Julius.
His rock face scrunched an inch, trying to figure out if the boy was affected by what he said, wondering if Julius ever even heard him.
He sat leaning forward slightly, a small silence brewing in the room, Mr Ignis redirecting above Julius at Miss Hestia.
She was a bright girl, with pink lips that complemented her usual polite smile, her appearance mother-like, even with the faint scales.
Though at the moment, that didn't seem to be the case.
She stood silently, her lips pinching slightly together as if holding words back, her cheeks ever so slightly twisted, her eyes flaring with desperate impatience, and yet she held her tongue.
"Argh, this guy's such a drag, I'm not going anywhere with him." Adrian's hardened angst, like smoke from the exhaust of a motorcycle, suddenly caught the heat from Mr Ignis's sight.
Mr Ignis's body shook with an audible sound, like rocks crumbling off a cliff edge.
His cooled magma body, like obsidian, began to lighten a shade with heat.
These two were the worst students he had ever seen in his life!
Yet they were both probably the most precious in the academy.
One was enrolled directly because of a god's influence, leaving Mr Ignis no choice but to accept, forced to disregard Julius's technical status as a mortal.
In this world of demi-gods, most were just illegitimate children born from bad mistakes.
The academy was a place for all those children to turn to; sometimes, a god was in good favour with a student, but it was rare.
Meanwhile, the other was the son of Zeus himself! How could he turn that down?
Yet taking on these children meant taking on the hassle of problems that came with them!
Fighting between the two most precious students, before they had even completed a full week of studies!
Mr Ignis pinched his nose bridge all over again, trying not to, but breathing another ashy sigh again.
"How did Mr Elowen do it?" He wondered to himself, his mind as ashy as the exhausted breath he exhaled.
sschschh
The sound of fabric against leather within the silence alerted everyone to how Julius dropped his hand, suddenly unfolding his legs, before he silently rose to leave.
Like a cat catching movement, Adrian's eyes narrowed, his jaw clenching with contained frustration as he watched Julius out of the corner of his vision.
"Why's he allowed to leave?" Adrian growled, his tone like smouldering oak, his blue gaze tightening over Mr Ignis as he attempted to get Julius punished.
Before Mr Ignis could reprimand Adrian's audacious tone or ask Julius, the dark-haired boy stopped behind the armchair.
He stood with his back to the rest of the room, an odd confidence invisibly simmering around him as if he were untouchable.
Only Miss Hestia's vision grazed an inch of his side profile, her angle only revealing the tip of his left brow and the start of his jaw.
"I'm going to my detention." He answered without turning.
"Or are we not dismissed?" He questioned with a devilish cadence subtly woven within the innocent question, his voice like honey smoothed out on wood, already knowing the answer, purposefully prodding Mr Ignis with the assumption.
Behaving like a good, obedient student, Mr Ignis's heated vision wobbled a fraction.
Mr Ignis cleared his throat once, his rock eyelids shutting to grasp a single moment of contemplation.
Then, in something that sounded suspiciously like defeat to Julius.
"You're dismissed..." Mr Ignis sighed with one last ashy breath.
CRRK
BADUM
The room fell silent after Julius left, Mr Ignis leaning into his elbows on his desk, resting his closed mouth silently behind intertwined fingers.
His gaze pointed at the desk, waiting.
Adrian watched the closed door, Julius's absence leaving a bitter taste in his mouth as he got up to leave, grumbling something about 'Douchebag' on the way out.
CRRK
BADUM
Then there was silence once again.
Mr Ignis's eyes finally flicked up from the desk, his head turning back to catch Miss Hestia now.
She remained in the office, her lips anxiously pinching together as she hung her gaze the moment it caught the heat from Mr Ignis's eyes.
She shuffled forward slowly, across the multicoloured fur rug underneath her heels, her hands rising to gently settle over the back of the chair Julius sat in.
Mr Ignis knew she had something to say.
Thus, he waited.
"I can't be the only one...Right?" She questioned carefully in a small breath.
It was a soft sound; her voice was weak, like there was something painful caught inside her that she couldn't let go of.
Mr Ignis remained still.
He remained silent.
It was as if he were trying to avoid this conversation entirely.
His eyes closed, breathing a deep breath as he endured what was to come next.
"Julius...I thought it was a coincidence, it was nice actually...Seeing how he was." Miss Hestia began, speaking in a tone as gentle as a feather, whilst implying something that only a select few in the world would understand from those words alone.
"But this-" She stopped, her grip on the edge of the chair tightening until Mr Ignis could hear the stretch of leather.
When her breath came next, it was softer and quieter.
"It's like being back there all over again... but now we're seeing it from our teacher's eyes, and it makes me think-"
Another pause, a silence broken by a sniffle as Miss Hestia's face strained not to let any tears well up.
"What if it happens all over again...What if he's exactly like him?"
Then she blurted out, eyes widening like shutters opening.
"He has no aperture! That means he has no affinity, just like him. This fight today...It's exactly like-"
"Stop." Mr Ignis interrupted through a breath like weak smoke clinging to clothes.
His breath came out slow and controlled as he held his hands together in front of his face, his head tilting down until he faced his desk, so his forehead rested against his intertwined fingers.
"What would Mr Elowen do..." He thought to himself again, like a speck of light in the dark.
What assurance could he offer her?
How could he admit that he had the same thoughts?
"It won't." Mr Ignis finally breathed, his voice suspiciously strained like rocks grinding together as his whole body shifted.
When he pulled his head back up, Miss Hestia melted.
Underneath Mr Ignis's eyes, a trail of molten spilt free down his cheeks in one oozing trail.
"I'll make sure this time." He promised in a deep but trembling voice, like waves of lava, his nose shifting with a crack as he sniffled.
Then just like that, Miss Hestia broke.
She rounded the chair and desk, and fast, throwing her arms over the rock man with desperate haste.
SSSSS
The burning assaulted her quickly, even as she tried to avoid Mr Ignis's burning hair; she endured the heat just so he wouldn't feel alone.
Her own hair, a collection of golden snakes, immediately bit on her own neck, supplying midnight blue mist into her body to ward off the searing effect on her flesh.
Mr Ignis's eyes widened, immediately trying to pull away once he heard the sound of sizzling and muffled cries.
Though Miss Hestia held on tight, using her own magic to heal her burns as they came, because she realised something then and there.
This entire time, Mr Ignis had placed blame on himself for what happened all those years ago.
So, Miss Hestia had already decided.
She would never let him feel guilty again.
end of chapter 24