"The rune we will use to move the fireball," the professor said, turning to the board, "is the Journey rune."
He wrote it in one clean stroke. It was a flowing thing compared to the angular fire rune — something in its shape suggested motion even before he explained it.
"It is also associated with movement, travel, direction and rhythm. You will pair it with the fire rune and use your intent to direct the fireball. Carve both runes into your tablets. Now."
The scratch of metal on clay filled the room.
Hermes picked up his stylus and set to work. It was not a graceful process. The clay was more resistant than it looked and his lines came out slightly uneven, nothing like the clean precise strokes in the dictionary. He worked slowly and carefully, acutely aware that everyone around him had already finished by the time he completed his second rune.
Three minutes, he noted grimly. Two runes. Three minutes.
If this were a life and death situation I would already be dead. Several times over.
He set the stylus down and stared at his tablet. Two runes. Three minutes. And these were among the simplest runes he knew. He had one day left and absolutely no idea how he was going to make any of this useful in time.
He filed the problem away for later. There was nothing productive he could do about it right now.
"It seems everyone is finished," the professor said, surveying the room. "Stack your desks to the sides and make space."
Chairs scraped. Desks ground across the stone floor. The students arranged themselves along the walls leaving a clear open space in the centre of the room.
"Pay attention."
The professor raised one finger.
His fingertip began to glow — a cold steady blue that cast faint light across his knuckles. Hermes stared at it.
Soul essence.
He moved slowly and deliberately, each stroke visible, giving the class every opportunity to follow what he was doing.
Two runes took shape in the air between them, hanging there luminous and weightless, their lines crisp in a way that carved clay could never quite match.
Hermes forgot to breathe.
He's writing runes. In the air. With his bare hands.
The room was absolutely silent.
"I will now insert my intent," the professor said calmly, and brought both palms toward the glowing runes.
The moment his hands made contact a fireball bloomed into existence — small, controlled, no larger than a fist — and shot across the length of the room before dissolving quietly in the middle of the open space.
Nobody moved.
Hermes had started to raise his hands to clap before he registered that nobody else was doing so and thought better of it. He lowered them carefully.
"Questions?" the professor asked.
Should I?
Ah. Screw it.
"Sir — how did you write the runes in the air like that?"
"Mr. Gaemond. Hand first, then question." The professor's expression didn't change.
"And had you been paying attention in the previous lesson you would already know the answer. That technique is covered in year seven. Anything else?"
Hermes hesitated for only a moment.
"Yes sir. Why did you insert the intent after writing the runes? You were already channelling soul essence while you wrote them. Couldn't you add the intent during the writing itself and shorten the process?"
The professor looked at him for a long moment with the expression of someone deciding whether a question was stupid or simply premature.
Then, without a word, he raised his hand again.
This time it was different. His fingers moved at roughly the same speed but the moment the second rune closed the fireball was already there — no pause, no separate step, conjured and launched in a single fluid motion that made the first demonstration look almost ceremonial by comparison.
It dissipated in the same spot as the last one.
Oh, Hermes thought, feeling his ears go warm. He did that slowly on purpose. So we could follow the steps. Obviously.
"I see," he said quietly.
The professor studied him for a moment longer than was entirely comfortable.
"Mr. Gaemond. You are clearly a perceptive student." His tone was measured, neither warm nor unkind — the tone of someone delivering an assessment rather than a compliment. "I don't know what has gotten into you but I suspect it has something to do with Professor Abano. Whatever she has led you to believe, I would encourage you to think carefully. She is not a seer. And based on what I can observe, neither are you." He paused. "You have a genuine aptitude for runecraft. I would hate to see it wasted chasing someone else's delusions."
He turned back to the class before Hermes could respond.
"Anyone else?"
Silence.
"Very well. Miss Vanessa, may I borrow your tablet?"
A girl near the front passed it over without hesitation.
"Watch carefully," the professor said, setting the tablet on the floor and kneeling beside it. He placed one palm flat against the fire rune.
"First rune. Intent to materialise."
A fireball appeared above his hand, hovering steadily.
"Second rune." He moved his hand to the journey rune. "When you channel into this one your intent must be specific. Not just movement — direction. Visualise exactly where you want it to go."
The fireball began to move. It traced the same path as the others, steady and unhurried, and dissolved at the midpoint of the room.
He returned the tablet to Vanessa and stood.
"You have two hours. I will come around to assist. If you cannot manage it by the end of class—" he let the pause sit for exactly the right length of time "—then you simply lack the talent."
The students retrieved their tablets and knelt on the stone floor. Hermes did the same, setting his tablet down and studying the two uneven runes he had carved.
He closed his eyes.
He placed his palm against the fire rune and breathed out slowly, letting his intent settle and clarify the way the book had described. He didn't think about the fireball as a concept. He thought about fire specifically — heat, light, the particular quality of something burning — and poured soul essence into the carved lines steadily, the way you fill a mould.
He didn't need to open his eyes to know it had worked. The heat reached his face before he finished the thought, radiating upward from just above his hand in a small concentrated wave.
He opened his eyes anyway.
A fireball hovered above his palm, no larger than his fist, burning with a steady orange light.
Hermes stared at it.
Something happened in his chest that he hadn't felt in a very long time.
He was eleven years old again, sitting in a dark living room with his knees pulled to his chest, watching a boy with round glasses and a lightning bolt scar step onto a moving staircase in a castle that felt like home. He remembered the feeling that had bloomed in him then — that wide open breathless certainty that magic was real, that it was out there somewhere, that the world was so much larger and stranger and more wonderful than anyone had bothered to tell him yet.
He had spent a long time since then learning that it wasn't.
But there was a fireball floating above his hand.
A small one. Barely the size of his fist.
Trembling slightly in the air like a candle flame caught in a breeze.
It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
You're a wizard, Hermes.
He smiled — not the dry practiced smile he used when he was being clever, but something genuine that he hadn't had much cause to produce in recent years.
He stared at it.
He stared at it some more.
Then, inevitably, his concentration slipped.
"Oh—" The word escaped him quietly as the fireball guttered and fizzled out, taking its warmth with it.
He sat with the absence of it for a moment.
Then he did it again. Soul essence into the rune, intent clear and steady, and a new fireball bloomed above his palm exactly as before.
Alright, he thought, still smiling. Now the hard part.
He kept the image of the path fixed in his mind — across the room, straight, dissolving at the midpoint — and moved his hand to the journey rune. Soul essence, intent, direction.
All at once.
The fireball moved.
It followed the path exactly, steady and unhurried, and dissolved at the midpoint of the room in a small quiet shower of dissipating heat.
The scratching and murmuring around him stopped.
Every student in the room had turned to look at him. Some with their mouths open. Others wearing the particular expression of people who had just witnessed a miracle.
Even the professor had gone still.
The silence stretched.
Then the professor's expression returned to its usual careful neutrality and he began walking toward Hermes with hurried steps.