Chapter Text
It was twenty to three in the morning and Apollo of Ixia was setting the science department on fire again.
Acrid black smoke billowed out of the combustion oven on the workbench in front of him as he desperately flipped through his notebook, only a dim red light emanating from his tail (a trick passed down through generations of Ixian royalty) to read with.
He had made a misstep SOMEWHERE, that much was obvious from the, well, everything. What was less clear was the exact moment his work had gone from the desired lurid pink fog to a complete and utter disaster. Apollo grabbed a pen from behind his ear and underlined an equation, a minor step in the process that controlled the level of fermentation that pure baselite could undergo before degradation. Perhaps he had let it sit in the solution for too long? Even a second either way would be, or rather potentially HAD been disastrous.
Apollo was used to working fast and making quick decisions but this was a different level of stress to fencing. Whilst Blackmore students, prodigies and geniuses the lot of them, were technically allowed to use school resources at technically any time (including 2:43 am) and they technically didn’t need explicit permission, he imagined even the most jovial and forgiving of the faculty would see him strung up by his tail and used as a piñata for burning down the school. Or maybe they would just quietly slip into his room at night and just kill him on the spot.
Refusing to let the mere concept of failure cross his mind, Apollo grabbed a vial of what to an outside observer was Mystery Green and poured in a small vial of shimmering silver powder. The resulting mixture fizzed dramatically, threatening to escape the container before Apollo cut off the advancing liquid with a small cork. Shaking violently, Apollo glanced at the door to see if his chemistry teacher Mr. De Vries was standing there, ready to make a dramatic entrance and both rectify the catastrophe and presumably create a new one over the matter of Apollo’s expulsion and subsequent humiliation . No such dubious luck. The corridor outside was as dark as it was when he had let himself in. Apollo turned his attention back to his mixture, which had turned a light purple. Apollo removed the cork and listened for the telltale whispering, which came almost immediately. If he was wrong about this, this concoction, when introduced to the vat of smoke in front of him, would detonate almost instantly, killing him and anyone else in a 1200 meter radius.
But Apollo is so often right. So here goes nothing.
Apollo tipped the entire vial into the oven without so much as a wince of fear crossing his face. The smoke started bubbling furiously, then collapsed in on itself, completely subsumed into a thick, lavender putty like substance that vibrated furiously for a few seconds before letting out a quiet whistling sound as it expanded.
Complete success (apart from the earlier failure that frankly he had already forgotten about). Apollo snapped on a pair of plastic gloves and gingerly picked up the putty. It jiggled slightly in his hands as he carefully deposited it in a small hole on the side of the bench. With the press of a nearby button and a sudden flash of white, the substance was disposed of.
Apollo pulled off the gloves and deposited them in the same opening. As he pressed the button again, a yawn escaped him. He really hated staying up late, but this project had demanded his immediate attention and tomorrow… tomorrow was a special day. He already had absolutely no time for anything tomorrow and now he would have to make time in order to return to this in the morning. It was going to be a long day.
Eyes half lidded as he thought about the trek back to his dorm that stood between him and the comfort of his bed, Apollo retrieved his notebook and spun towards the door.
The problem was there was someone already standing there.
Apollo’s heart jumped in his chest at the sudden interruption but his body stayed still as he squinted in the dark. As he grew older, he would learn to channel his body’s internal fire to his eye sockets, allowing him amazing night vision. But Apollo was 18 and that was a long way in his future so for now he just desperately searched for distinguishing features. Having cleaned up his mess, there was very little for Mr. De Vries to be angry with him for, if that was indeed who it was.
No, this figure was way too short. And there was no candle in their hand, they lit the way with… was that a mason jar? And the light inside was moving?
Ah. Apollo only knew of one person who carried around glowing green skulls regularly. Honestly, one was more than enough.
‘Graves? What are you doing here?’
Graves huffed, stepping into the room fully and into the glow projected from Apollo’s tail. Her hair was so white it acted almost as a tertiary light source, collecting the green rays from her jar and bouncing them back like the moon does the sun.
‘Work.’
She stared at him like she had just challenged him to a duel, which wasn’t an inaccurate way of describing any conversation with her. Apollo, for his sins, loved a challenge.
‘Well, clearly.You don’t enjoy being in school during the daytime so I find it hard to believe you’d be here for pleasure. What work?’
Graves peered over his shoulder. ‘Same as you. Baselite gas extraction. Only I plan not to destroy the school. Not this time at least.’
Apollo crossed his arms. ‘And why, pray tell, would you want to complete this work at-’ he angled his tail upwards to check the clock on the wall ‘-2:49am?’
‘I could ask you the same thing.’ Graves crossed the room to him and, without making eye contact, put the jar on the workbench along with her own notebook (with sloppier handwriting than him, Apollo couldn’t help but notice) and started to reset the combustion oven.
‘Fair point. I’ll tell you if you tell me.’
‘I don’t care why you’re here, Apollo. We’re not friends.’ Graves glanced at him for the first time since entering the lab.
Apollo ignored the sting of annoyance in his heart. ‘We’re lab partners, and this is our assignment, an assignment meant for us to complete together. You are well within your rights to question my actions.’
‘How generous of you, Your Highness’. Graves' voice dripped in so much sarcasm that Apollo wondered if she could taste it. ‘But I think I’ll live without another chapter from your autobiography. Baselite.’
She stuck out her hand expectantly. Apollo, for whom it had been impressed upon that manners superseded all, opened the cupboard next to him and passed her a fresh crystal, although he made sure to sigh dramatically whilst doing so. ‘Graves, we really should work together on this, you know. I attempted myself and failed. It’s a two person job.’
‘I’ll be fine, Golden Boy.’ Graves was too busy mixing a carefully curated soup of acids and powders to make too much fun of him, eyes were glued to her notes. Apollo leaned over curiously.
‘Really? Because it seems to me that by the time you’ve started mixing your solution before taking your purity reading. I fear you might turn that baselite into a lump of coal.’
Graves paused in irritation. ‘Fucking… that’s not in my notes.’
‘It was covered in the lesson you missed. Sorry, let me correct myself. It was covered in ONE of the lessons you missed.’
‘You are such a fucking prick Apollo.’ Graves chewed on her fingernail, already resigned to her inevitable fate.
‘Perhaps. But you still need my help.’
It was Graves’ turn to sigh dramatically. ‘Whatever. Pull up a chair.’
Apollo’s tail curled around a stool and brought it underneath him, before coming to rest on his shoulder. The light emanating from it seemed to glow a little brighter as the pair got to work.
At the end of the day, Apollo and Graves were a good team. At least, Apollo thought so, and he was hard to impress. Over the past few months they had been lab partners, a mutual understanding had been formed. Apollo wanted to be the best, Graves didn’t want the complications that came with failure. Both understood that working together was far simpler and achieved way more for them than bringing the bickering into their assignments did. Besides, Apollo thought to himself as Graves remixed the solution, this time perfectly calibrated for the shard of baselite they were using, she really was quite smart when she put her mind to it. It was almost a shame she very rarely wanted to.
‘You’re staring.’ Graves’ habit of talking without looking at him was really uncanny.
‘Am I?’ Apollo was caught off guard somewhat.
‘Yes. Knock it off. Not like there’s anything interesting going on over here anyway.’
One of Graves’ skulls bumped against the jar and moved it ever so slightly across the bench. Apollo glanced over at the sudden noise, then back at Graves. He was a little confused to see that she had started looking back at him during that time.
‘You wanna say something?’ Graves was challenging him again, God knows why. This time, Apollo decided not to meet her. The work was more important.
‘No?’
Graves grunted and returned her attention to the bowl in front of her. Apollo sat there, tail flicking from side to side, until a thought crossed his mind.
‘Why aren’t we friends?’
‘Huh?’ Graves’ wasn’t even paying attention to him.
‘You said we aren’t friends. Earlier. Why was that?’
‘I don’t know. Will you concentrate on the work?’
‘I can multitask.’
‘Men always say that.’
‘Human men always say that. With Ixians, it’s the truth.’
‘Yeah. Sure.’
She was dodging the question. Apollo was wise to her tricks. Relentless aggression always wore her down in the end. ‘What do you mean you don’t know why we’re not friends?’
‘Does it matter to you? Do you need any more friends?’ she snapped back.
‘I was just curious. Call it a cultural thing, but in Ixia when people form an alliance as we have, they refer to themselves as friends.’
‘Oh, we have an alliance, do we?’ Graves snorted. Once again, a little pang of annoyance in Apollo’s heart. ‘We’re lab partners, dude. I don’t know how they do things in Ixia but on Earth that won’t quite cut it.’
Apollo nodded. ‘Understood.’
A few minutes of silence as they continued to work, instruments and materials passing between hands with the ease of butterflies flapping through the air. Finally, the fermented baselite sat in the combustion oven, slowly dissipating into the light, pink fog that Apollo had been craving to see this entire time.
‘Why are you here this late?’ Graves broke the silence this time.
‘I thought you weren’t interested.’
‘I’ve become interested.’
Apollo shrugged. ‘I’m busy tomorrow, so I would have been unable to make our scheduled study period. I was hoping to complete the work tonight alone.’
‘And when was Your Majesty planning to inform me of this change of arrangements?’ There was a little bite in Graves’ voice that sort of confused Apollo.
‘I had plans to leave a note with Mrs. Norris. She would have told you.’
‘Just leave it to the servants then?’ Graves was definitely annoyed, more annoyed than Apollo had expected.
‘I thought you’d appreciate it. I didn’t want to leave you with all the work.’
Graves was silent this time, but her entire body was tensed slightly. Apollo had thought he was getting a handle on her and her emotions, but clearly he was wrong. Eventually she spat out. ‘Well I’m busy tomorrow as well. But I suppose you didn’t consider that. Didn’t consider that I’d have my own thing going on.’
‘I suppose I hadn’t.’
The pink fog continued to swirl around the oven. They only needed a minute or so more until it fully stabilized and then they could go their separate ways, escape what had turned into a rather uncomfortable conversation. Apollo was weighing his pride against his need for a lab partner that didn’t actively despise him when Graves spoke up again. ‘When I got here, you were leaving. Had you given up? Gonna let me handle the rest?’
Apollo found himself getting a little peeved. ‘For tonight, yes I was finished. I was going to do it tomorrow morning.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘Or, I guess that’s today now.’
‘I thought you were busy.’
‘I would have gotten up earlier.’
‘Oh.’ The ice in her voice was melting, if only slightly. ‘Okay then.’
‘And you were planning to do the same as me? As in, complete it tonight by yourself?’ Apollo’s tail started swaying again, as it often did when he asked a difficult question.
‘Well… I suppose. I mean, this is due on Wednesday. I don’t want to fail.’
‘Ah. The grade, yes.’
Apollo’s time to sound a little cool, although he hadn’t really planned to. It had just come out like that. Graves shot him a dangerous look.
‘Yes, Apollo, the grade. The grade that decides whether my parents let me out of the house for the next six months. Some of us don’t have Daddy Warlord paying off the state to let us do whatever we want.’
Now that was crossing a line and she knew it. ‘My father-’ he started.
‘My father is the specialist daddy in the whole wide world and I shall be ever so angry if you speak ill of him oh yes I will!’ Graves imitated.
‘Well I’m sorry that some of us have good home lives, I understand that’s an area you lack in.’ Apollo snarled at her in response.
‘Oh yeah, sounds REAL good, Golden Boy. You got suuuuuuuch a winner for a pops, huh?’
‘We’re done here.’ Apollo stood up, almost knocking the stool over. ‘I’m going back to my dorm and getting some well deserved rest. You can bottle the gas and leave it on Mr. De Vries desk.’
‘Like hell you are. You started it, High Prince, you’re staying here until it’s finished.’
This standoff could hypothetically last until the heat death of the universe should the two of them be so inclined, so Apollo decided to take the personal victory that came with being the reasonable one. ‘Fine. You get the siphon.’
With the work completed and two bottles of extracted baselite gas sitting in their teachers desk, the energy was sucked out of the room. Graves yawned loudly and scratched her chin as Apollo tucked the stools away, tail drooping with exhaustion.
‘Well… I’m off to bed.’ Graves muttered. She grabbed her jar and stretched some tiredness out of her arms.
Apollo stared at her, expecting the sentence to continue. Clearly, Graves considered that the end of the matter as she spun on her heel and disappeared into the darkness.
‘Good night to you too.’ Apollo huffed. It wasn’t that he necessarily needed an essentially meaningless platitude from Graves, but some recognition of SOME kind would have been nice. Double checking the combustion oven was properly depowered, Apollo let out a yawn of his own.
‘Hey.’
The yawn caught in his throat as Graves remerged from the inky blackness of the hall.
‘Good work today.’
‘Oh. I appreciate it.’
‘... And thanks.’
‘What was that?’
Graves huffed and glanced behind her. ‘I said thanks.’
‘Oh! You’re welcome. Not particularly difficult work for me but… yes. Good for it to be done, no?’
‘Agreed….’
A slightly awkward silence.
‘Goodnight, Golden Boy. Dream of Daddy’s love.’
Graves was gone before he could respond. Apollo stood there for a moment, tail wagging in the air.
That might have been the nicest thing she had ever said to him.
A few minutes later, Apollo was sneaking up the stairs to his room in the boys dormitories. When his father had told him he would be living in Blackmore student lodgings, his initial reaction was one of absolute despair. Surely, Apollo had begged his father, surely he would not be made to share a living space with six other boys, right? The answer, as it turned out, was no. Apollo, like all other students at Blackmore, had been given the equivalent of a small apartment space to live in completely by himself. The downsides of this living situation, being that he was expected to feed himself entirely and keep his living space appropriately clean for the biweekly inspections, were far outweighed by the sheer joy he felt having a toilet, shower and bed unsullied by the stink of any of his compatriots. After his stretching and hygiene routine was completed, Apollo essentially dove under his covers, expecting sleep to overtake him completely. He would need to be fully rested for tomorrow, after all. Tomorrow was a big day.
Tomorrow was the day he joined the Ritual.
His father had no idea, of course. He would have sent the Ixian Army to New York for a full extraction mission had he have known, but he was none the wiser. Well, at least for now. But when Apollo gained the powers of a Patron and brought eternal prosperity to Ixia… then he would know. They would all know.
So Apollo tucked himself into bed and closed his eyes, ready for the day ahead. After all, the Ritual was the most important thing in his life right now, undoubtedly. It was what he had been training his whole life for. It was Everything.
So it was admittedly a little confusing that the last thing that crossed his mind before sleep finally overtook him was why he didn’t get to be friends with Darcy Graves.
Darcy Graves, the woman in question, was in her own Blackmore apartment, but she wasn’t sleeping a wink. It’s hard to get your eight hours in when you have a severed hand in your backpack that can communicate with you telepathically.
‘You will not fail me, will you Darcy?’, a sentence the Lich had said no less than seven times since Graves had got back home.
‘No, of course I won’t. I got this.’ she replied, again.
‘Are you sure? Do the dead speak to you as strong as ever?’ the Lich pressed.
‘How would I be talking to you if they weren’t?’
This seemed to shut her up, at least a little. A low level hum of anticipation stilled rung through Graves’ head and prevented her from falling asleep no matter how tired she was. Her body simultaneously ached with stress and buzzed with excitement.
Tomorrow was the day she joined the ritual.
‘You cannot fail me, Darcy!’ the Lich roared from beside her.
‘I won’t! But I need to sleep!’ Graves finally snapped. ‘I will fail you if I don’t go to sleep before 4am, okay? I need sleep!’
‘...I understand. Rest well, Darcy Graves. Tomorrow we shall ascend.’
Graves turned over in bed and closed her eyes, mind already completely shutting down. It was going to be dangerous tomorrow, the most dangerous thing she had ever done. Would it be worth it? Was she going to fit in, hold her own, maybe even thrive? Dominate? If she didn’t she would never see the Lich again, none of her favourite ghosts, Apollo of course, her parents…
Graves’ eyes snapped open? Apollo, of course? What a ridiculous thing to think. Why would she give a shit if she never saw Apollo again, huh? He was just her lab partner, and an asshole at that.
Darcy closed her eyes and snuggled down into the mattress. Her brain was playing tricks on her, making her think about Apollo before she had the most important sleep of her life. Well, jokes on her brain because she wasn’t even thinking about Apollo any more. It had been ridiculous to even say his name in the first place, especially alongside her parents but now she wasn’t even thinking about him so it was okay. I mean, he was a pretty good lab partner and all but to say she would be sad if she never saw him again was a stretch. She had just told the guy they weren’t even friends, which was probably true considering that she CLEARLY never thought about him and currently wasn’t.
And so Darcy Graves went to sleep, and all she thought about before the biggest day of the rest of her life was how little she was thinking about Apollo.