Manifesting | kotlc

- epilogue -

:'(

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A little bit less than five years later ~

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"I don't want to hear it!" 

"It's your fault!" I shouted back, loud enough so that he could hear from upstairs. "We were supposed to meet everybody fifteen minutes ago! You're always slowing us down!" 

Eventually I heard his loud footsteps as he made his way down the stairs. "Sorry, I was giving myself a pep talk. This just feels super surreal." 

I laughed slightly. "I could've given you the pep talk. Do you feel better?" 

"Yeah," he responded as he reached where I was and made sure to lean over so he could kiss me. Then he grabbed my hands and looked at me expectantly. "So... how'd it go? Did you like it?"

I nodded, releasing one of his hands so that I could reach for my pathfinder. "Yeah, it looked nice. I could see myself living there. I don't know, though. I haven't told my parents yet." I sighed. "That's besides the point. Are you ready to go?" 

"Yeah, let's get going," he replied, and we made the leap to Eternalia. The rest of our team members were standing around waiting, and if it wasn't for the fact that Eamon was in charge I'm sure they'd make some sort of snarky comment. 

"There's the lovebirds," Marcel said when he took notice of our arrival. "I'm already nervous as is. What kept you?" 

Eamon shrugged. "I stopped by my house. I'm probably going to have to start packing my room soon." 

"I still can't believe we're done," Ashla said. "These past five years really flew by. What are you going to do now that you're no longer our boss?" She turned to Eamon with a raised eyebrow. 

He shrugged. "Well, you guys know we're all supposed to be advisors for the newbies. I called everyone last night and gave you your new assignments. But, from now on assignments should be coming straight from the councillors. I imagine we're going to become emissaries soon. Ivan's team all became ones in less than a year, Leulla's in less than six months." I thought of my mentor, Haelyn. While I needed her attention less and less as the years went by, we had become pretty good friends. I knew that while she loved being my mentor, she was happy to be released from her Team Valiant duties permanently. While it was presented as a five year commitment, in reality it was a true commitment of ten years. Now that we were taking their place, they would be allowed to embrace being emissaries in a larger role. 

"I'm excited for this new opportunity, but I'm going to miss working with you guys," Juno said. "We should still meet up." 

"Of course," I responded. 

"You guys literally have a double date tomorrow," Marcel said. "It's not like we're all of a sudden going to stop see each other." He then looked to Briar. "Right?" 

She rolled her eyes. "Of course not," she assured him. 

"Are we ready to go in?" We all nodded at Eamon's words and silently made our way in. I thought it was kind of cool how we mirrored the old members before us as we came in later and everyone was simply waiting on us to get going. The same way Ivan and Celeste had led their group, Eamon and I walked ahead of everyone else but still side by side. I recognized my new mentee based off a description from Eamon, a young female named Malyn. Apparently she had manifested as a phaser whilst a level one, and was now in level six about to move into the elite levels. 

We made our introductions and eventually we were making the same trip all of us had only done a few short years ago. It was an out of body experience to see these teenagers, only a few years younger than me, in the same position before. When it came time for the leaping I made my way to Malyn, taking the time to introduce myself. I smiled at the fact Councillor Oralie was also paired to her, the same way Oralie had been paired to me. I looked behind her and locked eyes with Eamon for a single moment, as he had just finished greeted his own mentee--the new team leader, a telepath named Isla.