Elysian (After Stellarlune)

16. Sophie's POV

After Keefe gave Sophie a quick kiss goodbye and walked to his next session, the Telepath started to freak out. How would it go with Fitz? Would he absolutely hate her? He and Sophie hadn't really had much of a chance to talk since the third step of the Cognate Inquisition. She didn't know how he felt, and him leaving during lunch made it so much worse.

Suddenly, she was at the door to her Telepathy session. Sophie debated going to Elwin and pretending to be hurt, but decided against it because she didn't want her friends worrying about her.

Bracing herself for the awkward conversation ahead, Sophie opened the door and found Tiergan, her Telepathy mentor, sitting with Fitz, who had evidently gotten there early.

Fitz kept his gaze lowered at the floor, refusing to look at Sophie.

Before tensions could continue to rise, Tiergan said, "I can see that there's something that you're both uncomfortable about. I can practically taste the tension in the air. But before we start anything, I want you two to test your mental strength. Since your retrieval of information from Wylie's mind was so successful, I know that you finished your Cognate Inquisition and scored highly. I just want to make sure whatever new thing that happened didn't hurt your Cognate relationship."
Both Sophie and Fitz cringed at Tiergan's use of the word 'relationship,' but Tiergan either didn't notice or chose to ignore their reactions.

Tiergan pulled out the silver fluffy device used to test their mental strength, and asked Sophie and Fitz to rally their concentration.

"One, two, three!"

At three, both Sophie and Fitz slammed their consciousness' into the small gadget, and after a second, it read...

1,011

"Wow," Tiergan breathed. "When you two told me you were ready to search Wylie's mind, I thought you had improved your score just enough to get by. But this... this is astonishing."

"This is 5 points below our score from before." Fitz said haughtily.

"That is not concerning at all," Tiergan stopped Fitz before he could make another snide comment. "I'm assuming neither of you got much sleep last night, especially considering the events that took place. When we are low energy, or tired out, or worried," Tiergan said the last word with a pointed look at Sophie. "Our mental concentration tends to decrease. If anyone else had gone through what the two of you went through last night, I'd have expected their scores to go down by at least 50, but you two always end up surprising me."

"Since we've discovered your full potential, I'd like the two of you to try an extremely rare and hard to complete task."

Tiergan glanced at both Sophie and Fitz before saying, "I'd like you two to complete an Enhancement."

"What's an Enhancement?" Fitz asked. Sophie was relieved he didn't know what it was either; it made her seem less clueless.

"It's a way to give someone else's mind a sort of mental clarity. And no, it has nothing to do with your Enhancing ability, Sophie, though the names are extremely similar." Tiergan answered Sophie's question before she could begin to form the words.

"Let me explain further," he continued. "An Enhancement is extremely rare, and evidently, hard to produce. In fact, if memory serves, there's only ever been two successful Enhancements but sadly, I cannot tell you who or what they were, as that is confidential."

"You do know that we can just have Dex break into the Council's system and find out for ourselves, right? He's done it numerous times before." Sophie smiled a bit as she remembered watching Dex break into the Registry or some other system time and again.

"Actually," Tiergan said, giving them a you-shouldn't-say-that-but-

I'll-pretend-that-you-didn't look. "I would tell you if I could, but I was implying that I don't even know much about the other Enhancements that have taken place. I actually learned about them fairly recently, as when I told the Council I was having you two do a Cognate Inquisition, they informed me as much as they could about Enhancements and said to have me try and teach you two how to do them when you were ready. And yes, Sophie, I told the Council about the Cognate Inquisition. They ask me for monthly updates about your progress here, though I only tell them what they want to hear." Tiergan winked, and Sophie was amazed how yet again, Tiergan had answered her question before she even went to speak it.

Which made her wonder...

"Ah, Sophie, you've finally caught on. I was wondering when you'd finally notice me."

"Tiergan!" Sophie exclaimed, horrified that he had gone into her mind without permission. How long had he been there? What had he seen?

"Not much. I stayed on the tip of your consciousness so as not to intrude on your privacy too much."

"Get out!" Sophie said, shaking her head, though she knew it was pointless.

"What's happening?" Fitz asked, at the same time Tiergan said, "I'm out, Sophie."

"Tiergan entered my mind without permission!" Sophie exclaimed to Fitz, who reeled on their Mentor.

"Why would you do that?!" he shouted at Tiergan.

"I'm deeply sorry, Sophie. I know that you have trust issues, but the Council asked me to see if I could sneak into your mind. I didn't expect to be able to, but evidently, your mind trusts me enough to let me in. I'm truly sorry, Sophie, and I hope that this hasn't broken that trust."

"I-I don't think it has," Sophie replied, calming down after hearing Tiergan's explanation. "I can't know for sure, since it's my subconscious, but I guess you can check now if you want."
"Alright," Tiergan said, closing his eyes to concentrate better. Before Sophie could stop herself, she broke into Tiergan's mind so she could hear what he said to her to get into her subconscious, and maybe to extract a little bit of revenge. She only caught the last part, hearing "-not your fault. It was mine." Sophie was fairly sure what Tiergan was talking about, but decided against searching his memories, even though curiosity burned her inside and out.

"I'm in," Tiergan said, breaking Sophie's concentration and pulling her back to reality.

"Now that we've sorted that out, it's time for the ultimate test of your power.

"It's time for an Enhancement."

I am like, giddy right now. I just reread the whole story (it took me 15-20 min, if ur wondering, tho u probably arent) cause I wanted to make sure there weren't any details that I left out. I actually found some and will be incorporating them into the next few parts. Anyways, rereading the story gave me immense pride in my writing skills. This is the first fanfiction ive ever written, and ive never really been that good at writing my own stories (tho ive tried multiple times). I think 1, writing about a series i love is much easier than writing about a series that i make up, as i'm not an especially creative person. 2, already having the characters and places and knowing how they act makes writing so much easier. Im never that good about the character side of my stories, and you see the problem with that. 3, I love getting to write whatever i want into the series. U want SoKeefe, it's canon! U want Linhella, it's canon! (not promising anything, just giving examples) U want a heartfelt cringy Grady Dad Talk, its canon! (when i say its canon, i just mean that its canon in my fanfic, not the real series, obviously)

BTW, i know that these A/Ns can feel kinda like rants or something and can be super long, but i find them to be a good way to get out what i want to say about the story in a really informal way (you'll notice that i dont bother too much with spelling and grammar on these, whereas in the actual story, it is extremely important to me) plus, u guys put up with me for the sake of the story (right?)

Got another question for u: how big of a reader would you rate urself?

0-never reads

1-reads very little

2- sometimes reads

3- reads a lot

4- constantly reading

5- OBSESSIVE READER THAT NEVER STOPS AND IF ANYONE DISSES READING I WILL FIND U

(kinda random question but again, im a curious person. Also, im totally a 5; maybe even a nonexistent 6)