The girls and the boys were separated, each put in separate quarters. Inside the quarters, there were individual rooms which allowed them some privacy. All in all, both sleeping quarters looked somewhat like a big appartment.
Ezera had his own quarters, not far from his students. He wouldn't have accepted otherwise. The rooms were spacious, cosy, the bed was expensive and quite soft, the couches were comfy as well and the air was warmed by some sort of magical system he didn't want to know about. It was quite perfect.
Yet, Ezera couldn't sleep.
It felt careless, falling asleep when he couldn't see his charges.
He couldn't imagine the turmoil they must all be in by now. It was never easy to be tossed around from one position to another, especially when one had lived peacefully for most of their life. He hoped they would be fine soon, however. He knew children always adapted better than grown adults. He smiled fondly at the thought, before falling back into his mulling state.
That fine morning had been cold. A bit too cold, to dry for a spring day. Ezera had always preferred those days. He liked the cold more than he did the hot warmth of summer. The sun has been clear, and the air had been crisp. It had had Ezera smiling and humming as he had made his way to school.
Then, so soon after the start of this cold day at the beginning of spring, he had felt the scorching heat of the sun all against his skin, underneath it. It had been an awful sensation, and he could still feel it, as an afterimage, everytime he thought about it.
He flinched at the phantom feeling. His own hand ghosted over the clothing on his forearm, caressing the skin underneath.
He had briefly scanned over his students the moment he had found his bearings. They had looked shocked, disoriented, but none of them had seemed through they had experienced such violent, albeit brief torture.
From this much, Ezera could extract some information. Such as: he was, as the Queen had mentioned, a collateral victim. The Suns' reaction to his passage told him as much: he wasn't welcomed in this world. It had never been wanted.
This meant a few things. The fact that he hadn't been wanted, also meant that as the authority figure of those children, he was a hindrance. It meant he had a weak influence, and that they would try to undermine that which he possessed. It meant he, as someone who allegedly hadn't been blessed by the three suns, would be easy to remove if needed.
Of course, all of these were but suppositions. But really, it was the same story everywhere. Hindrances were disposed of, no matter the place and the people. It didn't sit right with him that his lovely students were expected to fight through whatever it was they called an apocalypse, but it would be worse if Ezera himself was forced away from their side. They needed an adult, and he knew himself to be the only adult they could absolutely trust in this situation.
Was he overthinking?
No, he had the right to panic a little. They probably were panicking too, in their own quarters...
Or so he thought.
Quiet knocks sounded against the stone of his door. He opened his eyes, surprised.
Who could be visiting him in the middle of the night?
With silent steps, he stood up from the couch, nearly floating over the carpet, carefully reaching for the door. No one was guarding his door. Once again, he found his mind whirling to sinister possibilities. He swipped out of his pocket the quill he had taken for himself from where it had been sitting on the study in his newly attributed bedchamber.
It now sat in his hand threateningly, as his other hand approached the handle...
In one swing, he opened the door halfway, stopping halfway through brandishing his weapon of fortune when he realized who was there.
"Oh... It's you? What are you doing here so late?"
His twenty students shuffled through the entrance of his quarters, with whispered greetings and thanks.
They didn't even ask for his permission before getting in. Brats, he thought fondly as he closed the door silently.
"Thanks for letting us in, Professor Gemstone," Lucas turned to him with a polite smile.
"Oh, so you are aware of the time," Ezera raised an eyebrow.
He would never tire of teasing them, he thought to himself as quite a few of them fidgeted guiltily.
In any case. How they even reached his door was a mystery. There might not be guards posted outside of his quarters, but there were definitely some waiting outside his students' doors.
"Don't you have a curfew?" he asked, walking closer.
Alexandra, newly appointed 'lancer', grinned at him, from where she was already seated on the... On the floor.
"..." Ezera raised an eyebrow.
"We do! But it's not like they noticed we were gone anyway. It's all thanks to Shuna and Izak! I think they're a bit stupid."
Izak gave the tall short-haired girl a side glare.
"Hey."
"Oh, shush! You know I don't mean you!"
"Actually, I don't!"
Ezera watched them fool around for a moment, before Shuna finally decided to explain to him what had actually happened.
Since Shuna was a potioneer, she explained she had a few basic magician 'skills', one of which was called sleep, and she used it on the guards. As those were rather 'high-level', the spell only greatly lowered their attentiveness. And the girl were able to leave with no one finding out. On the other side of the corridor, the boys had had Izak, freshly named 'thief', and he had that basic 'buff' called stealth which he applied to all the boys, and that combined with the girls' previous spell, gave them a leeway to also leave unnoticed.
This sounded hilarious, to be honest. Ezera would ask for details some time later. First...
"Okay, why are you all trying to sit on the ground?"
"The carpet is comfy, professor!"
"The couches are comfier."
Helene replied:
"But this is the perfect setting for a secret meeting! It doesn't feel right if we're not all tightly squeezed together in round to whisper our secrets!"
There came the fantasizing bookworm.
"Helene, be a civilized person and sit on the couch. Alexandra, Yuga, that goes for you too."
Suddenly Ezera was glad he had never had any teenager at home before now. It sounded like hell.
Now he had twenty.
When they finally all fit in the couches, with only two very stubborn delinquents sitting cross legged on the carpet by the couches' feet, Ezera finally sighed.
They looked at him, some with expectation in their gaze, some with hesitancy.
Uh. Were adults an absolute no in secret nightly teenager meetings ?
"I'll be sitting over there, if you need me," he ended up telling them, pointing at the fancy dressing table a few feet away, against the wall. Far enough that he could pretend he couldn't hear them.
Why did you even come here if you didn't want me to participate?
Teenagers were weird, he thought as he saw their eyes light up.
He went to sit in front of the dressing table's mirror, still somewhat turned toward the filled up livingroom. He freed his long, silky dark hair from his tie and took up the brush, carefully undoing the knots.
The students looked at him for a few seconds, before they started to speak.
"Okay," Alan began, "this very secret reunion has now begun! Who wanna start?"
"Why not our new 'Hero', uh?"
Leo facepalmed.
"Please stop teasing me..."
"Surely you have something to say about all of that."
"Everyone has something to say about all of that, why don't you just start with the class representatives?"
Lucas hummed, thoughtful. Ashera, the second representative, looked a bit grim. He was the first to speak.
"It's good that we're all together. But what about our families?"
His inquiry loomed over the two dozens of teenagers, depressively.
Ezera looked at him through the mirror. He could only see Ashera's back, and his tame brown hair tucked into two braids. He didn't need to see his features to know the boy's silver eyes must have been dulled with concealed worry.
Ashera was a tough boy, one of the oldest. Sometimes, his worries far exceeded what an adult would expect from a child his age, but he didn't really confide to anyone apart from necessities. Ezera could guess where his concerns came from. Ashera was the sole caretaker of his two younger sisters, ignoring his drunk father who didn't ever have a job, it wasn't exagerated to fuss over what would happen to them now that he was gone.
Ezera swore internally. The best option for this was that time had stopped for their own planet, but damn if he wouldn't cut his own hand if the whole magic of this new world could also affect such an untouchable concept like time itself.
Something to keep in mind, in any case.
"That's a valid concern," Lucas nodded. "We have basically been teleported to another world, which obviously means our existence in our birth world has been cut short."
Saemi frowned. She spoke with a meek voice, a tentative consolation:
"Perhaps, thanks to the magic... the 'grace' of this world, all our relatives have forgotten about us?"
"..."
It was admittedly not very reassuring. Ezera winced, feeling for them.
"Holy shit, that's depressive."
"Language."
"If it did, did it entirely rewrite the timeline so that we never existed?"
"Helene, where do you get these crazy ideas?"
Izak let out a deep sigh, and suddenly everything was silent once more. The silent boy eventually spoke.
"It's just... It feels surrealist, speaking of things like world-hopping, or timeline... What are we even doing here?"
There was a lull. Of course, they technically knew why they had been summoned, at least briefly. But it didn't mean they had managed to swallow down their own situation.
Hell, Ezera had only adapted so well because he was used to such sudden changes.
Shuna clapped once.
"Alright everyone," she said, cutting through the depressive curtain of heavy silences with a stern expression. "Time to get productive."
Right, they hadn't actually done any thinking yet. Lucas nodded, speaking up as class representative.
"The big question is: can we trust them?"
"Right," Yuga finally found himself agreeable to partake in the conversation. "They said they were going to train us, right? How are we supposed to be sure they're not going to trick us into anything?"
Ezera felt his lips quirk up for a second. Once again there was this aversion to any authority figure they could find. Especially this one, Yuga. That boy... A moody one.
Emo teenager.
"Not only that," Suzuka added. "There's also this matter about the graces, the training, the whole 'saving the world' thing... Will they ask us to kill people?"
She made relevant points, as always. Ezera could imagine how good a sniper she could become.
He shook the idea out of his head.
"I'd rather we didn't do that," Ming stuttered.
"What?" Yuga crossed his arms behind his neck. "Scared of a bit of blood?"
Ezera thinned his lips.
Perhaps it was time he actually tried to talk to Yuga. About more than his failing grades.
Unfortunately, the boy was one of the few that Ezera hadn't quite managed to win over. Their conversations were often stilted, or worse, ended on screaming notes and 'you're not my dad!' conclusions.
Ugh. However necessary it was now that their very environment had changed, Ezera wasn't looking forward to it.
"Yuga!" Ilun hissed. "Have some tact. We're not talking about video games."
Yuga huffed and looked away, leaning against the couch. Just above him, Alan attempted to be the peacemaker.
"Now, now. Let's not get excited. How about we ask professor Gemstone his opinion?"
Ezera smiled, not trying to hide it. Sure, he hadn't been going to step in on his own, but it was satisfying, and also amusing, to see his students willingly taking a step toward him to ask for help.
Amusing, because everyone knew Ezera hadn't been far enough not to hear them hush.
Still, the teacher waited, combing through his very unknotted hair, for them to call him directly.
"Hey, professor! We have a question!"
Time for class, it seemed.