The class shifts their eyes to one another, laughing, weirded out, and finally eased of the serious air. The class stammers around, unsure of what to do first, or next. Sam checks in with Mason, apologizing in the mix of all the students who seemed to take the break as a moment to talk with their friends.
"Sam, put your damn eyes away!"
Mason hits his friend, sure that he's manifesting his eyes for some pervy reason. Still holding anger towards him for the marker prank.
"Wha-!? I'm not!"
Sam looks into the window, seeing his deep red eyes staring back at him. He opens an eyelid a bit wider to see into it. Just then, yells of worry and surprise crowd the room. Looking around the room, every single student has manifested their Cursed traits.
"Ahh! No, my horns!"
A girl screams, falling to her knees and cupping the two slightly swirled horns donning her forehead. Another girl holds her at her sides, trying to shush her- she wears a matching set of horns.
Another student, a boy this time, looks at his reflection in a shiny foil binder sitting on a nearby desk.
"What the-"
He feels his face, tracking along with his fingers at the reddening skin covering his neck and face.
Mr. Gentus watches on, studying each of them, staying quiet and twirling his pom-pom pen.
"What's happening!?"
A girl screams, frightening her peers into a tumultuous roar, the crowd wavers to and fro with confusion.
Mason in the midst of this takes his seat again, not one for clamoring to the crowd.
Fwik
The room falls silent. Mr. Gentus' pen is held high into the air, lightly gripped. He watches everyone and slowly lowers the pen to his side, successfully gathering their attention and calm.
"Now, I want you all to know that this... is completely natural."
His words work to slowly soothe, but incompletely. The crowd is nonplussed, sharing looks of confusion and budding irritation.
"This is the result of witnessing a higher-tier level Blessed technique."
He washes the room over with his pen, pointing out everyone's manifested Demonic traits. Demonstrating the spread of his magic and their apparent manifestations.
"Being this close in proximity to such a power, your innate Cursed nature is fighting back against my own Blessed nature. "
Mr. Gentus posits, teaching the fearful youth. They watch on. The slightly less afraid students lower their shoulders and unclench their jaws. A collective breath is had. After a moment, Mr. Gentus continues.
"I did plan on using this method, only much later."
He assures them with a nod and a slight smile.
"But, given this...incident, I suppose this saves us some time."
Mr. Gentus looks around at everyone, keeping an eye on their specific traits, watching them dissipate. The young ladies' horns slowly recede back under the skin, the few students' red skins start to steam and burn away, returning to their natural brown, white, and black, respectively.
Finally, Mason looks at Sam's red eyes across the room, changing from their infernal blood color to his normal tree-green. Mason huffs, indifferent.
"Thank you, and,"
Mr. Gentus bows, hands at his sides and head deeply lowered.
"- My sincerest apologies."
His words are heartfelt, feeling and sounding as such. Pulling himself back up, Mr. Gentus soft smiles warm the last holdouts among the students.
"Cheh."
Mason grits his teeth, still reeling from his loss at Mr. Gentus' hands. Also, not particularly fond of his apparent underhandedness with the students- Mason isn't quick to care about his fellow peers, but his curse had a chance of activating as well, which worries him.
"Eh."
He leans his head back in both relief and disgust, seeing his sword still stuck into the ceiling. Mason doesn't want to rush to grab it just yet, letting his defeat really stew.
At the front of the room, Mr. Gentus leans back, nodding his head a little towards everyone, a quiet instruction for everyone to set the room back to how it was. The class is joined in being upset about this, seeing as it wasn't their mess that was made. But they do it nonetheless. Mason, quickly in the fray of everyone moving to their desks and chairs, stands up and bends his knees, quickly leaping up to the ceiling and pries his sword free, sheathing it and finding his seat. Fluid.
The class and its students are back in top form, papers are picked up and organized, and the desks have found their ways placed back into neat columns. Mr. Gentus sits at the top of the class, waiting for the spirit of things to return. He begins to slowly turn his head about the class, a sentry searching for a target.
"What can-"
Mr. Gentus elongates his words, slowly finding the right mind, and points to Sam.
"you tell me about the manifestations of the Cursed and Blessed of the world."
"M-Me?"
Sam stutters in shock, both happy and immediately struck nervous.
Mr. Gentus only holds his gaze and pen-pointing. The pom-poms on its end dangle freely.
"U-Uh, okay, uhm."
Sam nervously twiddles his fingers and pushes his chair out, standing above his classmates.
"The reason that humans began manifesting these traits, the h-horns, and-"
Sam gulps deeply, a student on the far edge of the class could hear it.
"-the eyes, is because when the Demon's rose and the Angels fell-"
Sam holds one hand out, for the Demons, and the other for the Angels.
"- with them, came their energies, their raw forms of power."
Sam finds his rhythm and works his words out, finishing his sentence without any breaks.
His own eyes flare up, like a call of confidence knocking his head so that he can speak. The class pays him attention, folding their hands, closing their notebooks, leaning forward on their desks to lend their ears a few inches closer.
"The ways and manners of how humans started to get affected aside, humans were only capable of so much on their own- and so either by borrowing or being forced to take it on, the powers that be started to either kill the humans, "
Sam stops himself, taking a breath and paying respectful thoughts.
"-or turning them into what we now know as the Cursed and Blessed, for their taking on power from Hell and Heaven, respectively."
Sam finishes and rests his hands on his desktop.
Waiting for his student to finish, Mr. Gentus leans in on his chair and nods his head.
"Thank you."
Impressed, Mr. Gentus shoots up, rolling his chair backward and rising above the class.
"Yes, they don't talk about the many deaths that occurred when the Blessed and Cursed energy ran rampant off into the world."
His hand wafts over the room and further out towards the outside through their giant windows.
"The reported numbers are staggering, true, but the truth in how many lives were… lost."
Mr. Gentus posits, pivoting over towards the first column of desks ahead of his own. Reaching his hands down, spreading his fingers across the two desks sitting below him, Mr. Gentus sighs.
"Haaaaagh. The lines in the dirt, the borders of the battle, and even the point counters for who was winning were all done... with human corpses."
His lips tighten into a flat line on his face. His words drop like stones. Then,
"Surging power!"
He suddenly shoots his fists up, trembling in the air as he tightens them further in expression. He rolls his hands towards his chest and crumples his shoulders in a touch.
"Incredible strength! Foresight! Telepathy! Magics thought impossible to our human ways!"
Gentus unfurls his hands, wafting hypothetical magic over the students.
"Feh, idiot."
Mason mocks the man under his breath, laughing at his dramatically reeling to his class.
Shooting Mason with a speedy glance, Mr. Gentus steps over to his side of the classroom now.
Continued in PART NINETEEN…