Elio Freyr: Burn Thy Wounds

Chapter 1: The Infirmary

“Get up!” Ayden’s frustrated despair echoes around the enclosed black room. His anger is so evident in his eyes as he stares at the man lying on the floor. One side of the man’s lips is already bleeding. His body is full of bruises, yet he stays still, lying on the cold cemented floor. 

“I said get up, Elio, what the hell? Fight, you asshole.” 

There was no response from him despite everything that he had said. He was still lying there, not doing anything. His eyes were closed, and his breathing pattern was out of normal, but he still looked so fine even with his bleeding lips, and wounded face. 

“It’s been two years, man. You need to move forward. We all lost someone important that day, but look at us, we’re coping up. We’re trying.”

Elio Freyr let out a little laugh that caused him to cough blood from his mouth. He turned to his left side and pulled himself up with all the strength left within him. 

“Now you’re laughing. How could you?” He watched him with furrows in between his brows, eyes narrowed. 

“Because you’re funny.” He stood up on his feet, and turned to face him with a teasing smile pasted on his face. 

“First and foremost, Ayden.” His smile slowly faded in the dark lit room, and his eyes along with his emotions on his face became too serious.

“This is my life. And if you will just invalidate what I feel, don’t ever drag me here or anywhere again.” 

His emotions were too loud not to be heard, but too cold to be felt, and only those who cared can hear them all…

 

“What happened to you for the past two years Elio? You’ve changed. A lot.” 

… And surely, he’s not one of them.

“Change is inevitable and it’s normal. We all just need to cope with it.” 

Elio's cold eyes traveled through Ayden's whole being from his head to toe, and ended up meeting the pair of eyes that were full of concern and frustrations at the same time. 

“I see that you’re fine. If you’ll excuse me. I still have a class to attend to.” Elio turned and marched towards the wall in front of him, stepping out of the room through it. 

His old friend was left alone in the room, running his hand through his hair. 

—---

The hallway of the Academy was almost empty, except that a woman was standing in the middle, waiting patiently for her expected patient for the day.

Elio Freyr saw her as soon as he turned left from the hallway he had been in. The expression on his face went flat as he became uninterested in seeing the Academy's official Healer in front of him. 

"As I was expecting." A woman who was wearing a white lab gown paired with a pair of white running shoes, was standing straight in front of the door to the Infirmary. Both of her hands crossed over her chest as she locked her gaze towards her patient. 

"Follow me Mr. Freyr." A beaming white light flashed from her palm upon placing it on the door of the Infirmary in front of her. The light occupied and covered the whole door fast, providing them a mysterious hole to get through the other side. 

"I'm not here for me." With his flat gaze and voice, Elio Freyr made himself clear as he stopped on her left side, watching her do her thing.

"I know. But your friend can heal himself, unlike you. Let's go." Madam Loury stepped inside the light of the door, and because Elio Freyr was already there, he just followed and didn't argue more. 

For all the things that Elio Freyr had learned from his life, not making an argument or participating in one was probably the most interesting part of them all for him. Seeing people being frustrated with him makes him the happiest, but most of the time, he doesn't care at all. 

"This is not the infirmary." Elio Freyr ran his eyes all around the room checking every detail of it that he never saw inside the infirmary before. 

"It is. The infirmary changes to what the patients' needs at the moment." 

The room was filled with green plants of different species hanging everywhere. Others were in the water, and others were just on the ground, crawling to different directions. 

There was also a tree in the middle of the spacious and almost unending place they were in, and underneath it, is a white patient's bed with a clean sheet and a soft pillow. 

"You mean, I need this now." 

"Probably, because this is where your thoughts had led us."

"I didn't think about any of these." 

Elio was just following her towards the bed in the middle, but his eyes couldn't stay in one place. 

"But your subconscious mind did. You were busy thinking about what you should say that you forgot about what you feel and what you really want at the moment."

Madam Loury stopped beside the bed and looked back at Elio Freyr who had a crumpled face as he reached her. 

"As you see Mr. Freyr. Infirmary is where people heal, not just physically, but with every aspect of  their lives. This is what I swear for when I accepted this position as your Academy's official healer."

"In other words, this is how you make use of your magic. Manipulating people with your Light by going through their subconscious mind and using their weakness just to show off your power."

The place caught up in a perfect silence as both of them stared at each other's eyes, and as Madam Loury tried to stop the sharp edges of the words he had said to avoid being pierced by them.