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Logan.
Logan.
Logan, hey, Logan.
Logan! Logan Logan Logan Logan Logan.
Logan ignored the nagging voice and pulled one of the books in front of him closer, squinting at the out-of-focus words on the front. (He had misplaced his glasses some hours ago, but the headache throbbing at his temples was not about to cost him the last few hours of revision before his final exam).
‘Advanced Flight Techniques’ - not what he was looking for. Why was this one still on his desk? The practical flight exam had been nearly two months ago (Logan was not going to pretend that he hadn’t been disappointed with his Upper Merit grade, particularly when Roman, of all people, had obtained an Upper Distinction. It was as though their instructors valued flash and flutter above safe navigation between air flows!) and the theoretical one two days before (he was confident that he had aced that one, at least, having spent the entire free weekend he had before it studying).
Logan! Logan Logan Logan, hey, hey, hey hey hey hey hey Logan hey-
The flight book joined the pile of reference materials for exams past - a pile that had grown larger each day for the last four weeks as their cohort studied for and sat the tests that would mark the end of their school career. Patton had commented that it was astonishing how many books they had gone through over the last seven years, and that he didn’t even remember ever owning most of them, let alone reading them.
The next book that met his hands was ‘Halo Care and Management; Book 4’. Even Logan agreed that six whole books on looking after their Halos had felt a little excessive - but who could have guessed that there was so much to it? Some Halos were much more fragile than others, and treating them in the wrong way could result in cracking or worse; some Halos could be directly affected by their owner’s moods, while others were more likely to tarnish or glow brighter based on the owner’s thoughts or actions. With practice, one could identify a Halo - and its owner’s disposition - from just a few signs.
Logan could well remember the afternoon in their fourth year when Patton’s Halo had started wobbling, and wouldn’t still until he had wrapped his roommate in more blankets than he had thought he owned (it turned out that Patton bought a new one every time he went into town and stored them all under his bed with some sort of compaction miracle), and sent a message to Roman and Virgil to bring as many cookies as they could steal from the kitchen. Patton’s Halo had wobbled harder than ever when Logan had mentioned the stealing to him, and whilst Logan’s had been rock steady, he had followed up with a message that asking politely would probably be a better idea.
(Virgil, he knew, would have no problem with stealing: he was of slightly more Demonic descent than the rest of them, or maybe he was just as much Angel as the rest of them but didn’t hold himself to the nearly the same archaic Angelic standards as Patton and Roman did.) (Logan didn’t hold himself to any standards. He did what seemed to be the right thing to do, and he didn’t have time for regrets or indecision.) (Academic standards didn’t count here, not when the discussion was morals).
The four of them had settled into the pillow fort to groom Patton’s wings until his Halo stilled, and they had spent the rest of the afternoon that Logan had originally scheduled for cloudball practice in the academy’s orchard getting Logan to put to use what they had learned in their module that term and point out the identifying features in one their Halos.
Most people couldn’t see the true colours and patterns in Halos - only a lucky few Divine could.
When they had arrived at their academy in their first year, a small team of head Scholars had inspected everyone’s Halos in turn, taking note of archetypes and subtypes and informing them each of their classes.
Roman had been identified almost immediately as a Warrior, with a strong aptitude for both Avenger and Shield (one of the most highly respected Warrior subtypes, those whose greatest strength lay in and was drawn from the protection of others). It was a source of constant pride and embarrassment for him, and by the time Logan had finished pointing out the warm, reddish hue of the glowing ring floating above his scarlet hair, the heat that always seemed to emanate from it, and the way it seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat when he was passionate or angry, he was blushing crimson. Logan had wanted to talk about the way its edges occasionally seemed to flatten out and become almost shiny, but Roman had already turned so red at the description he had given that Virgil had commented that he would probably burst a blood vessel if they made him blush any harder.
Patton had been next. It was no surprise to anybody that met him that Patton’s talents lay most strongly along the path of a Guardian - a Guide, to be more precise. Logan had leaned in to study his pale blue Halo, peered carefully at a few of its green freckles (it was very, very rude to touch another Divine’s Halo without explicit consent, and even then it was a very intimate thing), and described the way the inside of the glowing ring seemed almost fluffy. A Guide, he had agreed, and with the clear potential to be a very, very good one.
Of course, they hadn’t needed Patton’s Halo to tell them that.
Logan! Logan! Hey, Logan!
Virgil was also best suited to become a Guardian - the head Scholars had announced him likely to become a Protector or a Ferryman. His Halo was a pale blue-ish purple colour, trembled faintly when he was stressed or afraid, and curled ever so slightly at the edges. Just from those, he could have been a Sage, but Logan had seen the way his Halo grew brighter when they were in danger (or just in the dark), and the way he always seemed to know when there was something to worry about, even if he couldn’t say what it was. It was a difficult call to make, and Logan understood why Virgil had spent longer with the Scholars on his first day than anybody else. It was difficult to decide whether Virgil felt more like a Sage or a Guardian even having known him for years, and Logan had no idea how their instructors had made the choice in only half an hour.
Logan was a Sage. On his first day, the Scholars had told him that he had the potential to become the next Archdivine if he applied himself. He had never told the others this - he had told them he had the strongest aptitude toward the Scholar’s path - and it wasn’t as though they could look at his Halo to correct him. Logan was the only one out of the four of them able to see more than just a glowing, off-white ring without a scryer.
In fact, he was the only one in their year group, and they were fairly certain that there was only one other person in the school that could do the same thing.
He couldn’t see his own Halo in reflections, only what was supposedly the regular white-gold loop.
Logan!
Logan, dear, I think Roman is trying to get your attention.
That was Patton, and Logan pressed his face into his hands and groaned. As though he wasn’t aware of that, with the way Roman had been badgering him for the past hour!
I’m revising, Patton. You all know this.
Ah - there was the book he had been looking for. ‘The Writing of the Luciferous Accords’ - one of their final year textbooks for history, covering the series of diplomatic meetings and treaties written to finally end the centuries-long Divine War and bring peace between Angels and Demons. Lucifer, of course, had been long dead by the time they had been produced - which was probably the only reason they had been able to agree to reach a peaceful agreement.
In the six hundred odd years since then, the line between Angel and Demon had blurred, and although some people could still point out clear lineage (there was a student in the year below them with very small horns protruding from just behind his ears, and another in the year below that with lamb’s hooves) most of them were just Divine.
The two sides of the war had, after all, both been arguing the same point: that they had to protect and guide the humans scattered over the planet below them. They had just been coming at the matter from very different viewpoints. It didn’t make sense to fight when they all wanted the same thing, especially when they had a true enemy in the Empty Horde.
Now, young Divines studied for several long years in the Academy before graduation, whereupon they took up apprenticeship with an older Divine of their chosen path. They didn’t have to take the job their archetype suggested: if he wanted, Roman could choose to become a Sage Healer, for example.
He wouldn’t. Very few Divine strayed from what was universally seen as their Star-given calling. It was frowned upon, too: a purpose gifted to them by the ancestors, and some wished to squander it?
And Logan had his final exam tomorrow morning, one that would determine his final ranking, one that would determine whether he would be able to apprentice to the current Archdivine, who never took apprentices but the head Scholar in the academy promised would be interested if Logan proved himself worthy; or whether he would apprentice to one of the upper Scholars, Mages, or Healers. Or, if he did badly - his stomach jolted at the thought - whether he would get a good apprenticeship at all.
You can’t just pass messages through Patton, Specs! Pay attention to ME!
Logan’s headache throbbed dully as he flipped to the orange flashcard about a third of the way through his textbook. Red meant that he hadn’t looked at a topic at all since they had studied it in class - none of the three textbooks left on his desk held any red. Orange meant that he wasn’t sure on the topic and needed to go through it a few times. There was a small scattering of orange flashcards in this book and both of the others. Yellow meant that it might have slipped his mind and he’d need to work on something again; green was for subjects he felt properly confident on. The vast majority of the cards sticking out from between the pages of his books were yellow. There were only a few greens.
Well, the more time he spent focusing on everything that he needed to do, the less time he spent actually doing it. Logan couldn’t afford to waste time like this.
Logan! Specs! Logan Specs Specs Specs Logan!
Letting out a huff of irritation, Logan massaged his temples, forcing down the urge to throw his Halo at the wall. It wouldn’t stop Roman’s constant messaging, and it probably wouldn’t make him feel better - it would just leave a hole in the wall that he would have to fix later.
It was seven at night. He had been sitting here since three, gradually filling out revision tables and making notes of important names and dates, with a ten minute break around five to grab a cereal bar.
Half satisfied with his notes for this page, Logan flipped through the book until he came across the next orange marker, and started writing again.
His exam was in fourteen hours. Logan would need to arrive an hour before that, so that he could register on time and make sure he was in place before it began. He was functioning on about three hours of sleep a night at the moment, aided by copious amounts of caffeine - and he’d need to stop to grab something to eat both as breakfast and dinner. Adding on toilet breaks… That gave him about eight hours and forty-five minutes more revision to do.
Hey hey hey! Logan! Logan! Specs! Hey!
Logan, dude, Princey’s trying to-
I know he’s trying to get my attention, Virgil. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot to get done this evening.
Sorry, man. Was just…
He could feel the hurt in Virgil’s message, but pushed it aside. He didn’t have time to feel guilty just then, not with the clock ticking down as quickly as it was. Virgil knew how much these exams mattered to him, knew how stressed he was about the question he had been unable to answer in their Human Care Paper 3 the previous day (“For 2 marks, name and describe strongest and weakest muscles in the human body.”) and how the essay they had had to write for their second Miracle Use paper had been no good at all, how none of his spells had seemed as powerful in the practical exam as they had in the practice rooms, how-
Logan took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. He was catastrophizing, the pressure he was under distorting his mindset and allowing him work himself into a panic, and that wasn’t going to help at all.
When he glanced down at the flashcard in front of him, he saw with frustration that he had managed to smudge it; dark ink stained his fingers, and his cramped notes were illegible. Tearing the card in half, he dropped it into the near overflowing bin to his left and pulled another from the pile. Eight hours and thirty-seven minutes. Maybe he could cut back on sleep tonight, stretch his revision up to nine hours and seven, maybe even nine and a half…
The window blew open, bringing with it the giggles and shouts of the third year students in the courtyard outside.
Becoming a final year student had brought with it the perks of having his own room and access to the seventh year common room, which was complete with multiple vending machines and a coffee maker that Logan used to the point of excess - but it also meant that his room overlooked one of the courtyards on the way out of the Academy, giving him a first row view to the students flowing in and out of the town.
He waited for a few minutes, but the laughing students seemed to have no intention of moving on. Actually, they seemed to get even louder - were they having a party out there? Sure, the lower year groups may have finished their exams already, but-
THUNK.
It took Logan a few seconds to realise that the sound had been a ball the size of a large watermelon bouncing off of the wall just outside. Cursing under his breath, he made his way over to his open window to see six younger Divines hovering roughly on a level with his room, spaced out above the courtyard, wings fluttering as they threw the blue ball to one another. A shout of laughter left the one nearest him as they almost dropped it; the next corner of the hexagon said something that Logan couldn’t quite catch, and then they were all howling with laughter as the ball was thrown again, and again, and then-
Logan had acted on instinct as the ball rocketed toward his face, jerking a hand upward to protect himself from an impact that never came. Instead, he heard yells of protest. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the blurry shape of the ball had frozen half a metre away.
Oh - and it had burst into flames. Within seconds, the bright orange fire had burned itself away, and the ashes of what had moments before been the main focus of the six younger students now staring at him in horror.
“Well?” He snapped, knowing full well that it wasn’t entirely fair to take out all of his frustration on the kids and not quite having the brainpower left to stop himself. “Get out of here. Some of us are trying to work!”
The courtyard was clear within seconds.
Slamming the window closed (and noting the way a large crack appeared in one of the glass panes), Logan returned to his desk, massaging his temples. He should feel guilty about the way he had treated those students - Patton would probably have had a heart attack - but he didn’t have the time. The hours were ticking down toward his final exam, and as he leaned down to squint at the thick print in his textbook and uncapped the lid on his pen, it suddenly occurred to Logan that his last few weeks of exams hadn’t gone nearly as well as he had hoped. Of course he had thought they had gone well at the time: he had had Patton’s relentless optimism right by his side as he left each one, Roman’s general good humour, even Virgil’s relief that it was over - and he had had Patton’s usual difficulty with getting the letters to sit still on a page, Roman’s inability to sit still for long periods of time without getting distracted, and Virgil’s constant worrying that he had failed to make him feel better about his own papers. It was uncharitable, he knew - it was downright cruel, to make himself happier about the exams with the knowledge that none of his friends would have done nearly as well as he did.
But now that he thought about it… Patton probably worked harder than most anybody else - he would have done well. Roman may not be able to focus on one task for long, but he had gotten used to switching between questions every couple of minutes and then coming back to them, the same way he revised - he probably did very well. Just like in his flight exam. And Virgil - Virgil’s constant anxiety over failing a class probably meant that he studied effectively and never slipped on his timings or terminology.
Logan obviously wasn’t doing enough. He was going to fall behind, he was going to fail, and not only would he let down himself and his friends and professors and everybody that had ever relied on him, he would let down the Stars themselves. They were the ones that had given him his Halo, after all; they were the ones that had given him his future, had given him the potential to become the Archdivine, had given him everything that he would throw away when he failed.
Logan, stop ignoring me! I need to -
A little busy, Roman.
Logan! Specs, I-
Logan ignored him, flicking rapidly through his textbook once more before leaning down to start filling out another flashcard.
This was okay. He could do this. He just had to get into the rhythm of studying again. Flipping over the flashcard, he adjusted his grip on his pen and started working.
Logan! Specs!
Vaguely, Logan wondered what was so important that Roman had to bug him about it for the last two hours, even after he had been informed that Logan had plenty to do and then been ignored.
Whatever it was, it could wait until after their exam tomorrow.
Another page, another flashcard. Then another. Then moving onto the next textbook, finding the pages marked orange. Flashcard. Pen to paper. Flip the card. Pen to paper.
Flashcard.
Flashcard.
Flashcard.
Flash-
Navy blue ink splattered across the messy array of notes in front of him, drenching page 628 of “Pre-Divide Battles Against The Nothings: 1000 PD - 500 PD - A Summary” and coating his hands and the front of his pale green robes.
“Gabriel’s toenails!” Logan stared at the mess for a long second, then started swearing again. “Moloch’s armpits - Raphael’s saggy left testicle, fuck!” There was ink dripping from the pages of his history textbook as though the book were bleeding, its essence staining notes and desk and Logan’s hands as he scrambled to rescue as much as he could, profanities still slipping from his lips.
That had been weeks worth of revision materials that he had just destroyed. His other two textbooks were both open, and whilst neither of them had been directly in the explosion zone, spatters of blue still stained their pages. When he looked down at his pen - he had thrown it down when it had burst, and it was sitting in the middle of the pool of blue liquid - Logan saw that it had been bent almost into a right angle before snapping.
He must have been holding it too tightly.
With a frustrated growl, the Divine swept the mess of soggy, ruined notes, flashcards, revision posters, and pen into the wastepaper bin, and then turned to the door. He needed to wash his hands.
Specs, Specs, Specs, do you know how long-
Logan’s headache pulsed, and he lifted a hand to rub at his temples, smearing blue across his cheek.
As he slammed the door to his room, the wastepaper bin burst into orange flames.
There was a ringing in his ears.
Logan hadn’t noticed it until he turned off the tap, having washed as much ink as he could from his hands. Although the water had been running clear for the last five minutes, he had kept scrubbing them, because the ink was refusing to leave his skin, but he had eventually given up. It was more important that he got back to his desk to make the most of the last however many hours it was before his exam.
Without the sound of water gushing from the faucet, the bathrooms were completely silent - other than an unnatural, high-pitched ringing that seemed to be coming from all around, broken occasionally by Roman still trying to get his attention in his head. The sound didn’t diminish as he walked the length of the tiled room, or stuck his head out of the door, and it took Logan only a few minutes to conclude that the noise was only in his head.
Concerning. But he could deal with that later.
Where was everybody? What time was it? Logan looked down to find that his eyes were too blurry to read the time on his watch from this distance; bringing his wrist right up to his face, he discovered that it was nine at night. The library wouldn’t close for another half an hour. It would make sense if most people on this corridor were there, or else holed up in their rooms as he had been. With a sigh, he jerked a hand through his hair and stared at his fuzzy reflection in the mirror for a few seconds. He looked… Fine, probably. Maybe a little tired. He couldn’t be sure.
Well, that was acceptable, manageable. He’d get plenty of sleep after his exam tomorrow. There would be more than enough time to get back into a healthier routine later.
Logan gave himself a few more seconds to stare blankly at his reflection, then turned to leave the bathroom.
“Oh, hey. How’s it going, Lo?” It was Virgil. Even without his glasses, the dark hoodie and glow of lilac above his head were distinctive. “Did you know you’ve got ink on your face?”
“Of course I do,” Logan snapped, then regretted it when the other male shrank back. With a sigh, he smoothed the irritation from his face, and then tried again. “I apologise, Virgil. I am merely… Somewhat stressed about our final examination in eleven and a half hours.”
There was a couple of seconds of silence, during which Logan tried very hard to avoid the piercing look his friend was giving him. Finally, he could bear it no longer and cleared his throat, stepping to the side to go around him. “Well. I have lots of work to be getting on with. Good evening, V-”
“Dude.” Virgil’s hand was on his shoulder, and Logan fought the sudden urge to throw it off. “You look exhausted, and you’re talking on double-speed. Maybe you should take a b-”
“Don’t tell me to take a break, Virgil.” It took a lot of work to keep his voice calm, especially when the shorter Divine took a step closer to him, concern settling into his features.
“I’m serious. You’ve been practically avoiding all of us for almost a week now. Roman says you’ve been ignoring him and he’s been trying to talk to you for hours. Patton said you were too busy to make cookies with him on the weekend. Have you eaten anything more substantial than a cereal bar in the last three-”
“Stop it.” Oh - oh, he hadn’t meant to shout that. His head throbbed angrily at the sudden noise, and Logan went to push his glasses up his nose only to find that they weren’t there. Virgil was suddenly two metres away from him, staring at him as though expecting to be struck, and weak, watery guilt rose in Logan’s throat again. The hand that had been hovering around his face passed quickly through his hair, jerking a few of the dark strands out in his irritation, and Virgil’s dark form flickered back another few metres. He’d been practicing, Logan noted vaguely. When they’d first met, Virgil’s fight-or-flight instincts would frequently result in him accidentally jumping several buildings away.
Taking a deep breath, he lowered his hand, closed his eyes, and tried to fix it. “Virgil, I - I apologise. I allowed my nerves to get the better of me, and I should not have done so when you were only attempting to check on my wellbeing.”
Virgil shook his head jerkily, orange light casting his face into dancing shadow. “‘S fine. I gotta-” He gestured vaguely over his shoulder, then vanished as the ringing in Logan’s ears grew louder.
Left staring at the space his friend had just been occupying, Logan swore quietly to himself again. He shouldn’t have done that. He should be more in control than that. What had come over him, to make him -
Logan, sweetie, I know you’re stressed at the moment, but you need to get a grip on the fir-
LOGAN, what in the name of Beezlebub’s fly-filled nostril did you-
Clapping his hands over his ears did nothing to silence Patton’s concerned words or Roman’s sudden tirade, but Logan pretended it helped as he made his way back to his room. When he glanced back down the corridor before opening his door, it was to see that the bathroom door had been replaced with a small pile of ashes, still glowing an unnatural orange.
Fuck.
No matter. He could miracle up a replacement door as soon as he got back after tomorrow’s assessment - Logan knew he was leading his class in miracles, and it wouldn’t take long to come up with the right sigils to twist the passage of time back on itself, or conjure a new door from nothing, or… Or maybe somebody else would fix it before he got the opportunity. The chances were that someone would complain about a lack of a door and maintenance would be along to clean up soon. He could wait until after History tomorrow, and if the door was still missing, he could fix it before anybody else noticed.
It was three hours before Logan managed to replace the majority of his ink-soiled notes, and another two before he finally felt that he was getting back into the rhythm of revising. His replacement notes were messy; by half four that morning, his handwriting had become uneven, barely legible chickenscratches rather than his regular uniform script, his eyelids were almost too heavy to keep open, and he wasn’t sure whether the buzzing that had joined the clear ringing in his ears was Roman and Patton trying to get his attention or just a symptom of his exhaustion. His desk lamp had been hurting his tired eyes, so he had turned it off some hours ago and continued to work by the dim light the waning moon cast through the cracked panes of his dorm window.
A yawn stretched his jaw as Logan flipped a few pages of his textbook - “An Account Of The Role Of The Empty Horde In The Divide” - before reaching for a fresh pack of flashcards. Pain sparked through his fingers as he stretched them, the joints unused to moving from their cramped grip on his pen. The Divine let out a low groan.
Logan covered his face with his hands, pressing gently against his closed eyes with the heels of his palms. His eyes hurt. His head hurt. His hands hurt. How long had it been since he had gotten a full night of sleep? More than a fortnight, certainly. He had forgone his usual two-hourly coffee runs to make the most of what little time he had left to study, and was feeling the lack of caffeine keenly. Taking a deep breath, Logan went through his schedule in his head one more time.
Nine o’clock: exam.
Half past eight: arrive for exam.
That was in four hours’ time.
Three hours and forty-five minutes, actually.
Twenty past eight: leave for exam.
Eight: brush teeth, change into a less rumpled shirt, make sure he had a spare pen - no, two, just in case.
If he went to sleep now, he could manage just over three hours. That might be nice.
Logan shook his head sharply, winced as the ringing intensified briefly, and then reached forward for “An Account Of The Role Of The Empty Horde In The Formation Of The Luciferous Accords” and flipped it open, mentally cursing the E. Bouchard responsible for the two large books currently occupying a significant portion of his deskspace. He knew it wasn’t really the Divine’s fault - he had just been a Scholar doing his job, after all, and if he weren’t about to be assessed on the Empty Horde then Logan would have been thrilled to flick through his accounts - but his was the first name upon which Logan’s irritation alighted.
“Focus,” he scolded himself, and pushed a fresh ink cartridge into his pen. Blue smeared over the next flashcard he reached for.
“In the year 1206 PD, the first of what became later known as the Four Empty Raids was launched against the then Angelic stronghold of Naplauma…”
Logan blinked hard. It was taking longer and longer for the blurry shapes on the thick pages to form words.
“...far from the first raid launched against the Divines by the Empty Horde, it was the first to see such great loss of…”
Every new word seemed to make his head throb, seemed to heighten the pitch of the ringing.
“...show that the first Nothing scouts appeared on the fourth day of March in that year, although it was not until…”
His nose was practically touching the page. When he pushed himself upright, he left a blue handprint on his desk.
“...against the Divines by the Empty Horde, it was the first to see such great loss of resources, territory, and life. Early records show that…”
He’d read this before. Logan squinted at the page, watching the fuzzy black shapes wobble in the dim light. Where was he? He turned the page.
“...assumed to be yet another minor assault. This assumption was proven false when first messenger doves and then Angel messengers were shot from the skies, isolating… ...With no help forthcoming… ...cover of darkness… ...suppressing miraculous communications… ...level of cunning…”
Logan’s eyes slid closed, and his head sank toward the table.
“...not like him...”
A murmur. Logan groaned quietly and squeezed his eyes more tightly shut against the light.
“...alright?”
“Patton, he’s not answering, just let me-”
“We can’t just barge in there! If Lo doesn’t want to see us-”
“He’s hurt, or something, Pat! I told you something felt off last night, and now he’s hurt and we should have done something sooner!”
“We should at least go to Protector Asche and ask for the key! We shouldn’t just-”
“Roman! You can feel it too, right? Open the-”
They weren’t going away. Did they have to be so loud? Even Virgil’s usually subdued voice was cutting through ringing, and Roman’s brash tone was making his head throb again.
“Virgil, I know you’re worried, but charging in there isn’t going to help anything. Take a deep breath, okay, and-”
“He warded his room against me, Pat! Roman, please!”
Slowly, Logan pushed himself upright, wincing at the ache in his wings and back from having slept slumped over his desk. Where were his glasses? Everything was fuzzy.
“Virgil’s right, Pat. Nerdy Gabriel needs a knight in shining armour, not a washed out Protector. Stand back.”
There was something stuck to his cheek. Logan pawed at it, discovered that it was a flashcard, blue and black ink bleeding over anything it might have previously said.
A flashcard…
“You’re not seriously about to-”
Logan was out of his seat in a heartbeat, and across the room in another, paper and pens scattering behind him. The crash of his desk being knocked over was drowned out by the sound of his door slamming against the wall as he threw it open.
“What time is it?!”
“Logan!”
“You’re not dead!”
“Is that ink?”
“The time!”
Three faces were turned toward him. Virgil was paler than Logan had ever seen him; Patton’s round, dark features were wide with concern; Roman looked closer to panic than the easygoing Warrior had any right to be. He was standing against the opposite wall in a sprinter’s crouch, looking for all the world as though he were about to try to break the door down with his body.
“Logan, bud, maybe you should-”
“Time!” Logan snapped again, and heard a crackling from somewhere behind him.
Virgil swallowed hard. “One twenty-seven. Afternoon.”
Logan blinked.
“We would have come woken you sooner, Lo, we really-” Virgil was cut off by Patton’s hand on his shoulder, and he swallowed hard as the shorter Divine stepped forward.
“Logan, sweetie? Can you-”
There was a dull roar, and Patton fell silent. Logan didn’t need to glance behind him: he could see the flames crackling merrily around his desk reflected in Patton’s large, round glasses.
Roman’s startled swearing and Virgil’s yelp faded into the background.
He had… He had fallen asleep.
He had fallen asleep and missed his exam.
He had fallen asleep and slept through the exam that was going to decide his final grade, and missing the exam was going to go on his record - it was going to drag his marks down far enough that he would never be able to apprentice to a competent Scholar or Mage, let alone the Archdivine - in one moment of weakness, he had managed to ruin the future the Stars had left open for him, he had managed to let down -
He couldn’t just let this happen.
Surely, if he went to the Academy Mistress, she’d understand. He hadn’t meant to miss the assessment. He just had to explain himself, maybe they would let him retake it. He had spent the last seven years working as hard as he could, and-
There was a hand on his arm. Logan hadn’t realised that he’d started walking, and now one of Roman’s hands was squeezing his arm, stopping from getting any further down the corridor. “Let me go.”
“Logan, stop. Just for a moment! You can- Gabriel’s tits!” The smell of burning hair filled the corridor, and Roman’s hand left his arm in favour of beating out the orange flames that had burst into life in his long, red hair.
“Logan!” The curtain of water that washed over the four of them was forceful enough that Logan had to struggle to keep his footing. He looked up to see that Patton looked torn between concern and anger, a glowing glyph fading out of existence before him. “Logan, please! You’re exhausted, you just need to sit down and think things through, alright? We can discuss this together. We’re here for you…”
Virgil must have been worried about him: despite the unsettled expression on his face, he appeared right in Logan’s path when he tried to walk away again. “Lo, bud. Please. We’ll apply to the Mistress, she’ll-”
But would she? Would she really? Punctuality and timekeeping were essential in miracle-working, as were integrity and honor - sleeping through an exam and then trying to excuse that away would count against him almost worse than had he set the exam hall on fire.
“Look at me!” Roman was in front of him again, hands on his shoulders, his dripping, scarlet wings puffed out behind him. “Look at me and tell me how this is helping! Everything’s going to be just-”
“This is your fault.”
Roman looked as though Logan had just slapped him. “W-what?”
“This is your fault!” Logan repeated, voice rising into a shout. “You couldn’t leave me alone, could you?! You just had to bug me -” He tilted his head, and this time when he spoke it was Roman’s voice that left his lips, words falling like curses in the orange-lit hallway. “ Logan, Logan, Logan, Specs, Specs, ooh, look at me, I’m far more important than anything you could possibly be doing, don’t worry about anything important, come and slack off with me and- ”
“Stop it!” Virgil’s voice was shrill, the lilac of his Halo burning into Logan’s eyes as he dispelled the mimicry. “Stop! This isn’t Roman’s-”
“Oh, is it yours, then? With your-” This time it was Virgil’s voice that left his lips, low, rich - and yet somehow mocking and cold. Logan wasn’t sure how he was doing it: he hadn’t sketched a glyph, hadn’t cast a miracle. “Take a break, bud, calm down and eat something, we miss you, you shouldn’t-”
A second wave rushed over them, and Logan stumbled backward as steam hissed into the air around him. Then Patton was advancing as though he were a startled hound, the fingers of his outstretched hand trembling. “I know you’re stressed, Lo, but that’s no reason to take it out on-”
“You DON’T!” The words were a howl, ripped from his chest as he clapped his hands over his ears. “You don’t know - you don’t know anything! You have no idea how much pressure I’m -”
“Logan-”
“Logan, your Halo-”
“SHUT UP! Just shut up, all of-”
There was the clear, brittle sound of a window breaking, and a jolt of pure, white-hot pain arced through his body.
Logan’s legs collapsed underneath him as his Halo shattered into a hundred shimmering pieces, and silence fell.