Elvirund | ✔️

Chapter Thirty Eight

"Euphelion and I met in my earliest days of the Academy. I had just started Decade Two, and he was in his first days of Decade Six. His first assignment was to find and guide a Decade Two student through one year, to get them started. When his class filed in, we were all standing lined up against the wall, uniforms perfectly pressed and hair combed three times too many.

"He caught my eye immediately. He stood up straighter than the rest, he held himself with the posture of a proud student, he looked interested. Of course, I don't mean to say nobody else was, but he looked as if he'd thrown all of himself into it. You know? Each of the Decade Six students was called up to choose a Decade Two student. It was considered an extreme honor for us, as you probably know, to be chosen. When Euphelion's name was called, he scanned the crowd and seemed to look right past me. Then his eyes focused on me, and he called me by name. Of course, hardly any of them knew any of us, so I was more than surprised, and I tripped over my own feet as I made my way down to him.

"The very next day, he pulled me aside after the day's classes were over. He told me he'd seen my eyes and he knew I was special. I remember saying there was nothing special about me, and that there were rumors I had bribed him to choose me. I remember saying I heard the professors whispering that he was going to fail and it would be my fault. But he brushed it all off, telling me he knew by the gold flecks in my eyes. Euphelion was so serious that I immediately idolized and believed him. I didn't think to figure out how he had discovered the gold flecks were part of it.

"Around a week after we started working together Euphelion asked me to meet him in the training yard at dawn the next morning. His voice was urgent, more than I'd ever heard it. Being the naive angel I was I listened and showed up without a question. He was standing there, staring off into the distance. When I asked him why we were there so early, he turned and bluntly told me he knew I was having visions of the future. I tried to lie my way out of it but he cut me off. His smile confused me, until he brightly told me it would be a secret between the two of us.

"For the next seven months everything was perfect. At dawn I would head down and he would teach me how to detect when the visions were going to come and put them off. When I mastered that he started teaching me how to use my flaws as strengths. He made me into a warrior, a fighter. He made me useful. Even my professors began to wonder what he had done with me to make me so successful. He taught me hand to hand combat, sword fighting, archery. He taught me basically all of what I know now.

"Then one day he didn't show up. By this point he and I were closer than friends. At the time I had been too oblivious to see it but even my few acquaintances picked up on it. Now, it's obvious that we had been something different, special even. I had taken to sleeping in the empty closet across from his room so he could wake me if I overslept. So when I suddenly awoke to sunlight streaming in through the small window I knew something was wrong. My fears were further confirmed when our professors informed us that there was a mandatory meeting for all Decade Two and Decade Six students. As we made our way to the assembly hall I had to fight back screams.

"The headmaster was so pale that day. He told us Euphelion was dead, as a result of a tragic accident. Later, I was called down his office and told the truth."

My voice shook and I blinked tears away.

"It hadn't been an accident. The First Elder had somehow found out about his ability to see the future, and had taken him for 'scientific' tests. Overnight Euphelion had realized what he was becoming and killed himself. The headmaster asked me if I wanted the only remaining pictures of Euph and of course I said yes, again being naive and stupid. I was given a holorom and told that anything left was on there."

Holoroms were like human cameras, but instead of photographs on a screen built into the device they produced holograms.

"They watched me as I flicked through the pictures on the spot, and as I went through the album I was more and more horrified. Tubes running in and out of my best friend, bruises marking his tanned skin, blood running from the lacerations all over him. I was so upset I hurled the holorom against the wall and stormed out. That was the first time I saw the First Elder's operating table."