Devion sat down on the edge of the bed and without even needing to get up, the door opened with a bang. Sol stood shyly, smiled at him and approached. Then began to sob nervously.
"I didn't think you could be so sentimental. We haven't even known each other for more than a month and you already can't live without me!" Devion laughed as he looked at his agitated friend. He put his hand on his shoulder. "I'm fine, don't worry."
"There's someone else who wants to see you." Cristael continued looking towards the poor entrance to the room.
A young girl with beautiful long light purple hair entered the room, her hands behind her straight back. She suddenly raised her head, proud but with a pinch of shyness. Carla turned her head away, surprisingly her feet interested her curiously much more.
"Hm. Don't think I've come for you. I'm worried about the future of my kingdom."
"If you say so. But I'm glad you came." Devion offered her a big smile, which made the princess blush to her ears.
Galahad entered next. His long hair fluttered behind him. Devion quickly straightened up, having been completely slumped over the previous second.
"There's no need to stand in any particular way in my presence." Galahad's eyes were so clear that Devion felt he was trying to see through his soul. "I hope you're well."
"Ah very well, Sir? Uh, Your Majesty? Galahad?" The dark-haired man scratched his head and rolled his eyes. "Cristael, I'm sorry it's beyond me, I don't mind being polite but-"
"It's really not necessary to do so much. We're the same age after all." Galahad tilted his head slightly and offered Devion another smile. "To be honest, I'd even prefer it if we dispensed with the formulas of politeness, royal family or not."
"Ah great then!" The dark-haired man patted Galahad on the back, which made him stand up straight, and Devion thought for a moment that, perhaps, he was overdoing it. "Sorry."
The prince smiled, then waved to his comrades, gesturing that he had to go and and left the room. Devion watched him walk away. He'd made friends with a prince, the prince of his own kingdom no less. Every day was full of surprises.
Sol soon followed Galahad out of the room, Cristael following in his footsteps. Before leaving the room completely, she turned slightly to the teenager.
"When you have time, join me in my office, there are some people I'd like you to meet." Dev nodded and she left the room.
In a heavy silence, Carla and Devion stared into each other's eyes. Neither dared speak, and the whole thing was infinitely awkward. The girl was the first to break the silence.
"Why did your scar grow like that?"
"What do you mean?"
"When you were like... possessed? The scar under your eye was getting bigger and it was taking on a much larger shape." Carla sat down next to Devion, displaying a seriousness he didn't know her for at all. "It looked like a splash of ink or the scratch of a large animal"
The dark-haired man ran his hand over the underside of his left eye. He, too, had felt something strange. So he hadn't imagined anything, and this burning sensation as if a force were taking possession of his body was therefore not imaginary. His green eyes twinkled slightly with his scar as he summoned light particles of magic.
"I don't know."
Frostfire was a fabulous power, Carla thought. As if hypnotized by the magician sitting beside her, she understood in greater detail why this dual-element power was Thepra's most acclaimed. Ice came to tickle fire, and in its dance, Devion's powers merged into a smoke that vanished to the ground.
Carla thought of herself, of her own power, blizzard. Blizzard was also a dual element power and thus also a real gift, given its rarity and power. Nevertheless, Carla had never really been proud of it. Where Elena possessed only one, where Carla had inherited her parents', she had none of her sister's sublime mastery.
So it was on this simple afternoon, sitting next to a boy she'd only known for almost a month, that the princess of the kingdom of Parvana also accepted that she was perhaps not as good as her sister. But unlike Galahad, Carla knew full well that one day she would surpass her sister.
Thirty minutes. Devion had been waiting for Cristael in her office for a good thirty minutes, but no one was around. The boy, starting to get impatient, decided to go around the room and defy the rules: rummage through Cristael's things, something she obviously hated more than anything.
Among the dusty books and ugly knick-knacks that populated the shelves, Devion found a medallion just as dusty as the other objects. It was made of a material that appeared to be bronze, and numerous marks decorated the obviously very old object. The dark-haired man rubbed the object a little more, trying to make out the word engraved on it. The dust made him cough and he dropped the object, which fell violently to the ground.
"Oh." the young boy murmured.
Picking up the object, some of the dust had disappeared and a word was clearly legible.
'Umbrae' was inscribed on it.
"This was the medallion of one of my faithful companions during the war. "Cristael entered the room, her long robe flying as she passed. "It has brought us much luck."
"But why 'Umbrae'?"
"Do you know what the memorial valleys of the last battlefield during the war between Kaelor and Parvana are called?"
"Vallis Umbrae."
"Adrian Robertson was a valiant and talented magician. This pendant belonged to him."
Robertson, that's it he remembered where he'd heard the name!
"Like Professor Sian Robertson?"
"Like her husband, Adrian." Cristael finished her sentence with a hint of sadness, the tremolos in her voice testifying it. "You'll probably have to meet her son too: Caspian."
"Why did he wear that inscription on his necklace?"
"Nobody really knows." The headmistress sat facing Devion in the chair at her desk. "Neither Sian nor I, let alone his son, no one really knows why there was that inscription on his necklace. I assume it was a magical pendant of protection and that he wore out of superstition."
"I see." The pendant glowed before Devion's eyes. He didn't really know why, but the object fascinated him.
"You can keep it." Devion looked with surprise at his adoptive mother, bewildered by what she'd just told him. "Sian said it had brought him bad luck and Caspian doesn't want to hear about it. Anyway, it's been years and no magic has ever awakened from it."
Devion thanked Cristael, put on the necklace and slipped it under his uniform. Clearly, he wasn't doing him any favors either, so he might as well accept this little gift. The cold metal against his upper torso surprised him, but the next second he felt strangely soothed. Did this object really have no magic?
"That's not what I wanted to talk to you about, dear. I'd like to introduce you to some new people. Jaz, you can come in."
The vice-director of the academy entered the room. Devion had always found him to have a dark aura, a crazy feeling that he was too mysterious to be just someone discreet. Jaz Blaese was, however, without a doubt, a man of definite charisma.
"Hello Devion."
"Hello Sir Blaese." The teenager had replied in a rather embarrassed voice.
Devion had known Jaz for many years, though they had never formed a close bond. Cristael, on the other hand, had always shared a certain closeness with him. When she took over the leadership of Orpheion, she quickly recognized the budding talent in Jaz and took him under her wing. In time, she did the same with Devion, both young prodigies thriving under her guidance.
"Devion, I invite you to follow me."
Without another word, he followed him out of Cristael's office and down the corridors and aisles of the academy. The journey seemed awfully long, with the absolute silence and the students staring at them as they passed. Devion already had a certain reputation among the first years, and seeing him constantly glued to members of the teaching corps was not going to dampen his reputation.
At last, they reached their goal. The teenager looked up to observe the room he was in. The room was at the front of the castle, overlooking the entrance and contrasting with the huge reception hall in which the event had taken place. It was precisely at the eastern front of Orpheion Castle on one of the highest towers.
"I'll leave you to it now." Jaz turned immediately, leaving an unsettled Devion alone.
On his guard, the dark-haired man turned around. Opposite him stood a thick, long table surrounded by numerous chairs. Around it sat six students, each seated in a different way.
At the far end of the table, arms and legs crossed, her blond hair cascaded around her shoulders, and her piercing blue eyes remained gentle. Lyra Locke, president of the Scholar Assembly and sister of Carla's friend, Mira Locke was seated. Lyra tilted her head, a long blonde lock falling with it, and offered Devion a big smile.
"Welcome to Orpheion."
She then rose and guided the boy to sit with them around the table.
"For these kinds of privileges, usually the teachers join us, but on this occasion they couldn't. You'll have to excuse them." She pushed back the chair where she'd been sitting before and sat down in it again. "Ms. Boëlthorn asked me to give you a bit of a VIP introduction to our group." She let out a small laugh then straightened, resting her arms on the table to advance towards the teenager. "I'll let everyone introduce themselves, but you're looking at the members of the Scholar Assembly. I'm Maya Locke, I'm in my third year."
With a nod, she encouraged the others to introduce themselves in turn. She may have been breathtakingly beautiful, but Lyra was a firm, powerful president and a genius magician.
The floor was left to her neighbor, a rather short boy with a blood-curdling gloom on his face. The boy stood up, an ugly grin drawn across his face. He had very dark hair and equally dark eyes, and two strange creatures surrounded him. They looked like two ghosts in the form of childish dolls.
"Vladymir Sorris, but we already know each other since we're in the same class." Vladymir greeted Devion, who nodded in response. He definitely made his blood run cold.
A new student spoke up. He was a young man with a more than neutral expression; he was completely blank, so to speak, and Devion wondered if an evil magician hadn't managed to suck out his soul.
"Hello, I'm Lucan Clavum, second year." The young man greeted Devion in turn.
"Hello." The dark-haired man froze for a moment on Lucan's completely shaven head with a huge scar running through it, causing a girl beside him to giggle.
The girl was rocking back and forth on her chair right next to him, and when Devion looked away from her, she jumped on him.
"What the hell are you doing!" Devion tried to push her away, but the girl was surprisingly quite resilient despite her small stature.
"That's enough, Nell." Lyra pushed back with a fire spell the young girl who had tried to almost rip Dev's face off. "Excuse her, Devion, Nell is rather curious."
With a sulky expression, Nell crossed her arms but her strange smile returned to decorate her face.
"We'll get to know each other better in the end anyway." She giggled mournfully. Decidedly between a crazy girl and a ghost fan, he was in big trouble. "My name's Nell Corvenne, I'm in my second year. And don't worry everyone loves Lucan's shaved head!"
"Childish." Lucan replied from a few feet away.
Next was another girl. Her long black hair and violet irises made her all the colder than she already seemed. Elena Artheimer towered over Devion with her gaze, a fact that pleased the young man only slightly. He knew very little about the elder of the two princesses, but what he did know was that she and Elena had a bad relationship. Although he couldn't yet say whether he and Carla were really friends, instinctively he felt more like coming to the younger sister defense.
"Elena Artheimer, second year. You already know my sister, it seems, I hope she introduced me properly."
"I don't think that's really necessary."
The eye contact between the two students quickly hardened. Surprisingly, Devion didn't make a bad impression on Elena. On the contrary, the young magician knew how to judge a talented element when she saw one.
One student had not yet introduced himself to Devion.
A young man was standing at the edge of a window, clearly not at all interested in the introductions that were currently being made, he was staring off into the distance. He had dark green hair, a scar crossed his left cheek.
"Caspian?"
The young man turned, his two different-colored eyes contrasting with his hair. His ocean-blue left eye complemented with his even deeper yellow right eye. He looked at Devion, his aura stronger than any of the students he'd met so far. He was strong, immensely strong.
"Caspian Robertson, third year."