Chapter Thirteen: Fundamentals

My sleep came to an abrupt end when a searing light burst through the darkness of the room. I throw my arm over my eyes and push off with the other into the air and land in a crouch. Letting my arm fall away from my eyes, I slowly open them and let allow them to adjust to the light in the room.

Everything’s blurry, but not as bright as I thought it was. I see an inconsistent figure next to a pillar of light in the middle of the room. I tense up at the figure and am ready to fight. I hear the dry cackling from the figure like leaves burning, and my wariness increases.

The figure speaks, and I calm “Gave you a bit of a surprise? Did I?” Rashid says with barely contained mirth.

I give a bit of a laugh, and then say with a slight sigh “Just a bit.”

He then looks at me seriously, or what looks like him being serious I’m still slightly blind, and but says with excitement “Alright let's get started!” And claps his hands together.

I stumble my way over to him while my eyes are recovering, and he points at the ground in front of him. I take a seat and he does too.

He looks me in the eyes and says curiously, but firm “Alright, boy I want you to tell me absolutely everything about what you know about Aura.”

I nod my head, “Sure, but why do you want to help me? I mean it wasn’t so long ago that you were beating me senseless-” “Not that you had any in the first place.” Rashid says smugly.

“Shut up,” I say with annoyance. “Anyway, why help me?”

Rashid cups his chin, and closes his eyes, he answers a moment later “Well, I’m a bit of a gardener so I like to see things grow.” He says pointing a long, thin finger at me. “And you boy is a prize crop if I ever saw one, I could count on my hand the number of novices that have come here this year with your level of talent. So I figure what’s the harm in giving you a little fertilizer.” He stops and sighs. “I mean I’ve already helped one of the others with your level of talent, but I can only help so far in the arcane arts before making him wilt rather than grow… But you boy, I can make grow and grow very strong at that.” He gazes into my eyes with his dark eyes that twinkle with anticipation “If that answers your question, I’d appreciate it if you could tell me what you know about Aura.”

I gulp and look away. I don’t really enjoy having attention on me or talking about myself, never know what they might do with the information they’re given. But I want to learn more about aura, so might as well tell him what I know.

I breathe out deeply and then breath back in before saying. “Not very much, don’t know where it comes from or where it goes, only that it seems to surround strong people…. Oh! And that it seems to scare people shitless. But that if you have it or been around one long enough you can ignore it.”

Rashid lets out a hearty, dry cackle at my statement that goes on for a while before he wipes some tears off his face. He looks at me but then starts cracking up again, come on it wasn’t even that funny. After some time he finally manages to calm down.

“Alright Aura, Aura, where to begin? You weren’t lying when you said that you don’t know very much, but you weren’t wrong about what you did know, just a bit misunderstood. You see Aura no one really can explain it properly, everybody has ideas about it kinda like how everyone has an idea of what magic is. But you were right about that you need to be strong to have it, but the thing about strength is that it’s a vague term that can describe anything really. But the real strength that generates Aura is a strength of will, the determination to get better at something.” He gestures over at me again. “You couldn’t develop your Aura if you weren’t determined to do something, like get as strong as physically possible or good as magic as you can. Aura simply doesn’t come without a will.”

He takes a breath. “Anyway, Aura doesn’t only show how much will you have, but also it carries intent like so.” He waves his hand at me and suddenly it feels like the room temperature drops dozens of degrees and a weight of what feels like several tons settles on me. I barely manage to keep from collapsing and keep looking Rashid in his eyes, but he seems to grow farther and farther away, and a deathly cold shiver runs across my spine.

Then quick as it came it’s gone, and Rashid continues “That was my killing intent, there are many forms of intent, and a major way of how we communicate. Now, this is where we will begin I want you to bring out your Aura, and show me your intent.”

My Aura sprang out of my body instantly in response to the challenge, washes over to Rashid before being stopped by a greyish shimmer in the air. He smirks, “Well this isn’t too bad, carries a strong battle intently, but-” He lits his hand up and waves it around, and my aura is sent reeling away from him. “Easily dealt with, now this isn’t bad, it’s actually pretty good in fact. But my skill and strength in Aura are simply better, now that your Aura is out I’m going to want you to defend from mine. Begin!”

Suddenly a wave of intense and sweltering heat assaults me from all sides, and images of gore, broken bodies, weapons clanging, lone warriors on mountains of death assault my mind like a painful white noise. My Aura, seemingly automatically, retracts and covers my body like a cocoon, and also immediately the force of Rashid’s attack lessens and soon, I can understand the meaning behind the images and heat, this must be a battle intent.

I try to condense my Aura as much as possible, and soon the images and heat all but disappear, leaving only lingering shadow on the edge of my consciousness. I notice Rashid is smiling, then he crushes his fingers into his hand and his Aura breaks through my defense almost immediately.

I gasp in pain as his Aura assaults me. The pain is burning, searing, and deep, but I’ve handled worse, and I bring up my arms in a feeble attempt to block his power, but it’s futile. Then an idea strikes me and I try to grasp at the shredded remains of my Aura, bringing up the honey color of my Aura through Rashid's grey. His Aura keeps slamming mine down, but I don’t let go or let the pain distract me, I keep gathering them into a ball.

After what feels like hours of sitting under a crushing waterfall in a hammering hurricane, I manage to gather all of my Aura, and I shape it through my will. I force the image of two giant arms to form to block the torrent of power before me. The arms form a circle around me and cover me from the aura in their hands. They shake, and almost crumble before the Rashids power. But stand resolute, refusing to fall just yet. Giving me hopefully some time to make a plan.

I audibly hear a sharp crack, and see my Aura arms are starting to break. But I have a plan. I let my arms grow closer together, and start to fuse, the honey-colored arms begin to turn into dark gold colors, and grow into an arm larger than I am tall. I smirk at Rashid, who looks on curious.

I raise my arm and the Aura arm raises with it, letting the torrent of Rashid's Aura wash of me but I endure. I bring my arm back and then throw it forward I like I would with a punch and my other arm fly forward at Rashid with my battle intent condensed into the shape of a fist.

My fist doesn’t even make it halfway before it’s peppered with silver stakes. As soon as it disappears the last of my ability to handle the pain and Rashid’s Aura goes with it, then darkness claims me.

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I wake up with a pounding head and a worried looking Rashid. He stand’s over me, and I notice that I’m laying in something. I get up and out of it, see that I was laying in what looks like a hammock made of chains, and my pallet on top of it.

Rashid looks at me sheepishly “I may have pushed you a bit too far in that little exercise, I mean usually the goal is only to make you black out. Not go comatose for half a day.” He says slightly embarrassed

I look at him owlishly and ask “So how did I do?”

He smiles and says proudly “Pretty blazing good for the first time. I didn’t actually expect you to start forming an image!”

“Image?”

“Oh, didn’t explain that did I?” He takes a seat on the ground and I follow suit. “An image is what you base your Aura around, can be anything really. And what you did earlier with the arms was beginning to form an image. You see Aura needs something to form around to gain more power, the more stable your image the more powerful your Aura, and the more control, eventually allowing you to summon it and use it.” He brings up his hand and a chain and stake appear in it, but small enough just to fill up his hand. “Or do just a partial manifestation of it. Where you only summon part of your Aura Image.”

I swallow hard and say “Sounds handy.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. Anyway onto the next lesson on Aura, let’s talk about Zones. First off I want you to stretch your Aura as far away from yourself as possible.”

I did as told and unleashed my Aura, pushing it out of my body. A calm sensation ran over my skin as it escapes in all directions leaking out, I could feel everything around me as my Aura transmits all the sensory information into my mind. But it’s not overwhelming, It feels very natural. I know what’s behind and in front of me, it feels very comforting, but then I feel a wall. No not that wall, no more of a sensation of my Aura hitting something and being unable to go any further.

Rashid seems to notice the confusion on my face and says “That’s your Zone boy, maybe fifteen feet in radius and thirty and diameter. I’ve got a feeling I don’t need to explain what it is. But I will tell you this, a Zone is an area your Aura can remain active and effect if you have an image without losing any of it, any damage to your Aura in your Zone can be recovered unless it’s absolutely destroyed.”

I retract most of my Aura in but leave some of my Zone active though. And look at Rashid and motion with my hand to go on.

He chuckles and nods his head. “Your Zone and Aura will naturally increase as you grow stronger, having more Aura to use and control and a bigger Zone to control it in. But remember this.” He summons another stake and floats it up the stairs. “The farther away from your zone, the faster your Aura degrades and more concentration it takes to use.”

The stake reappears from the outside and disappears. “Now this is nothing to me, but you won’t be able to do this for quite some time probably. And now let's move forward,” He pauses and his face goes blank. “Huh, I think I ran out of stuff to teach you about Aura.”

I look at him mystified “Really?”

He scratches the back of his head “Well, the rest you just gotta learn on your own, or it’ll mess up your image. So go do some meditation I guess.”

“Wait but what,-”

“I don’t hear you mediating.” He says dangerously, and I sit down and start to focus on my image.