These words from the Commander were shocking, and the impact was worse for Elias, who had to listen to the most beautiful being he had seen in his life speak in such a mournful tone.
At this point, Elias would be a fool if he did not notice that there was something seriously wrong with the desires he was feeling for the Commander, and what made it worse or perhaps better for him was that he knew that she was not deliberately performing any act of seduction.
How could he tell? Well, he was a perfect example. Elias did not like to brag, but he was strikingly handsome, and it would not be wrong to describe him as beautiful. He had seen the effect he had on women and men when he was not even trying to be attractive. A careless smile from him, in the rare moments he ventured into the city streets, once caused a crowd of women to scream. If his life were not so enclosed, his attractiveness would most likely have drawn him into the clutches of a powerful Siphon.
Now, Elias could not believe that he was falling for the same thing, that at the end of the day, he was still just as normal as everyone else.
The Commander's moment of fragility vanished, and she glanced at the shrinking orb of darkness, "Is this the path you are willing to take?"
Elias sighed, shoulders slumped as the weight of the decision he was about to make seemed to settle on his shoulders like an anvil tied around his neck. He sucked in a deep breath and straightened, and he nodded firmly, his gleaming green eyes fixing directly on Commander Yseult's silver eyes.
"Now, kneel, Elias, and accept a fragment of my Lumina. It will give you a single chance to erase a danger in front of you. A single opportunity to change your fate is all I can give you... use it well."
Elias did not need to be told twice; he knelt in front of the commander and looked up at her. Kneeling before her, it was as if he were at the foot of a mountain that pierced the heavens, and he was the mortal at the foot of it, peering up at divinity.
"Open your mouth," she said, and a bit confused, Elias obliged, and out of nowhere, a small silver shiv appeared on her hand, and she lightly pressed the tip against her left thumb, causing a bead of blood to well up. Rotating her hand, the bead of blood rolled down her thumb and fell into Elias's open mouth.
It did not touch his tongue and simply rolled down his throat, and Elias clutched his chest as he could no longer breathe. It was as if he were a python that had just swallowed a prey that overwhelmingly exceeded his size and was about to be torn apart.
"Your innate nature as a member of that race has given me a chance to give you a fragment of my power. Use it wisely, but be quick about it. I have restricted the power of my blood to its lowest state, but every hour you hold it, the restriction would slowly decay, and the burden you carry would multiply. Yet there is opportunity here; the longer you hold it, the greater its power."
'This... this is the lowest state!' Elias screamed inside, but his mind had grasped onto another set of words she had said, 'your innate nature as a member of that race. What did she mean by this? Was his gift of healing not due to the Passenger? Or was she talking about something else?'
How many of his secrets did the Order know about? They had clearly proven to be hiding important information about his past from him. He could not remember his childhood as his memory began when he was seven years old, and from that moment, everything that he knew about his past had been told to him by the Order.
The time of his birth told to him was wrong and was a few hours earlier, and now it was being hinted that this might just be the least of the truths that had been told to him. A wave of fury was beginning to simmer in his guts, but he killed that emotion before it could rise. Anger would be unproductive here; what he needed was answers, and being angered at an Angel that could disintegrate his entire being with a blink of an eye was not the way to get answers.
The Commander must have seen the question in his eyes as she nodded towards the shrinking orb of darkness, "You will have all the answers you need if you survive this tribulation. Telling you now would lay an unnecessary distraction on your shoulders; on the other hand, you now know enough to light the spark of curiosity in your heart, even if this spark is small, if it could help you even for a bit, then it would have achieved its purpose."
A slight frown cut across Elias's face, "So, you are telling me this secret at this moment to encourage me. How do you know it won't place more burden on my heart and lead to a distraction?"
"I know the questions in your heart... and I know you. We trained you to be stronger than this." The Commander said with a calm look in her bright eyes, "You had no right to know the answers as a mortal, so you should strive to survive, Elias, because I can promise you that the secrets of your past would be of great interest to you, and it would be a shame for you to die without knowing them. You should know that if you choose not to be an Angel, I will never tell you this secret, because you would be useless to our cause. Look out of the window, and you will see a million Siphons; an Angel is something different, and the secrets they are privy to are also different."
Seeing the calm look in Elias's eyes after he heard her words and fully accepted them, she smiled, and she noticed once more the subtle changes in Elias's breathing, 'how amusing, he finds me attractive,' she thought, 'Knowing his history, it is easy to forget that he is just a child.'
Elias closed his eyes for a moment, and then he opened them, and his gaze was clear, "I will become an Angel."