Three educational towers loomed over the campus like a silent guardian on an eternal watch. The towers were smooth, organic structures marking the center of the campus. The landmark was easily seen from anywhere on the grounds, serving as much more than a visual reference point, but as a guide, a symbol, and reminder of why the students were attending the Council’s Academy in the first place: the hope of becoming a monumental figure in the nation’s history and society; larger than life, imposing, immovable, and recognized by all by becoming the thing that maintained the status quo.
The grounds were designed in a series of concentric rings, the first of a series of unusual design features. If the circular designs in the front gardens were created after the fall of the Regime, then it stood to reason that the original architect of the main grounds may have had a background in magic, or at the very least carried a deep belief that flowed intuitively with magical practices. People had a sense for these things, but rarely would intuition alone carry them the whole way through the network of complex wards that made up the Academy’s main campus.
Damien hopped into a side-by-side and tapped the seat next to him, inviting Astral to join him up front while the sergeant settled into the back with the equipment needed for repairs.
Similar to the drone following them high-above, the vehicle itself was wired for surveillance, recording every conversation and storing it for future use within the campus’ vast digital storage banks.
Once they were seated, Astral cast her silencing bubble, positioning the magical-sphere higher up so to avoid contact with the machine that carried them. The inner workings of the electrical components might be enough to disrupt her spell. Given their relatively stationary position within the vehicle, she narrowed the radius of the sphere.
They drove along a narrow service road, hidden behind dense woods. White arrows along the asphalt lane indicated that they were travelling on a one-way road.
Astral was due to begin her official apprenticeship with Omega corp. when she turned sixteen. However, like other inheriting corporcrats, her exposure to the family business started young. Her presence at the shields tonight, while not necessary for her training, future proofed her reasons for being outside of campus bounds. Her uncle had already prepared an on-going work log for her perimeter patrols. All fake orders, just like tonight’s inspection was fake.
Damien ground his teeth and stared ahead as he shuffled his thoughts into something coherent. Suddenly, his aura flashed in brilliant colors, lighting up his being. He offered Astral a broad charismatic smile.
“Oh, you’ll like this!” Damien said gesturing to the trees. “Hazel and elder trees along either side of the road. It’s your usual birch and pine trees for the rest. There’s no signs of grooming outside of the hazels and elders though.” The administration was actively caring for the trees along the service road, a road that was only seen by workers. Fascinating. “Thanks for asking for the horticultural survey. It would never have occurred to us to look,” he said, his smile fading and his brows furrowing.
Not checking the area’s ecological systems was an oversight to be sure, but it was a common one, even outside of demonic prevention systems.
The trees along the route pulsed in a slow rhythmic glow, like the slow steady breathing of a deep sleeper, which was unusual for this time of the year. The trees should appear as a burning mass, rich with intense energy, feeding and revitalizing the area like benevolent mini-gods. The active fairy lights of insects were absent. Same with the occasional burst of light from nocturnal creatures.
Damien smiled. “I knew that would get you going.”
“What’s so important about that?” Noland asked.
“Elder trees are natural demon repellants,” Astral replied, smirking when Noland’s brows shot up in surprise. She continued. “Hazel trees have deep roots. According to legend, they drink from pools of magic.” The sergeant frowned. He didn’t believe in magic. Few people did and that was for the best. “The point is, someone planted these trees intentionally. The hazel trees may have been intended to draw up sources of magic to maintain the elder trees.”
“We might be dealing with a cult,” Sergeant Noland concluded.
“It’s a serious possibility,” Damien replied. “But it hints that there might be something here, on these grounds, that someone really wanted to keep sealed up nice and tight.”
Astral shrugged. “It depends on the purpose of the wards, assuming they are wards. It could just as well be an augmentation field.” Among other possibilities… They’d have to figure what identifiers were present before deciding on what the odd designs meant.
“A what?” Noland asked.
Astral frowned. “How do you feel about a demon bursting through the shields tonight during maintenance?” Not that would happen, even if one of the shielding rods broke. Damien wasn’t fool enough to not plan redundancies into his system.
Noland’s aura didn’t so much as flicker, his face stoic.
“How about a whole pack? You think you can handle it?”
He frowned but nodded. “That’s the job.”
“Right.” Astral smiled. “That’s part of my personal augmentation field. In a nutshell, I make truly horrific entities feel… surmountable.” Noland arched a brow and his confusion deepened. “Some people project auras. Think of someone who is charismatic; that’s an aura. An aura is a projection and affects the self, which should not to be confused with an augmentation field.”
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“However, if that charisma aura also makes the people around him or her braver, stronger, smarter, valiant, anything really, that’s called an augmentation field. Augments can be powerful or subtle in their applications, but they are varied and exceptionally difficult to pin down. As an example, justice and vengeance look very similar but stem from completely different values and desires. It is possible that an augmentation field can cause both urges of vengeance and justice, depending on the aura’s initial attribution.” She waved her hand, dismissing Noland confusion.
“I know it’s clear as mud. The point is, it’s complicated, and when you have a soup full of complicated people, figuring out base motives vs augments is a nightmare. It’s a thing, but it’s too varied to point to anything specific. To complicate matters, you could just as well say that a nation’s culture projects its own augmentation field, heightening some values over others. Like I said: complicated. What I described are naturally occurring augmentation fields. It is possible to craft one,” then added with a sour note, “usually with the best of intentions.”
“Then how would you go about finding out if there’s an augmentation field here?” Noland asked, accepting that there maybe a tool available, but wasn’t sure how it would affect the mission.
Astral considered the question. It was a good question. “In a closed community, we could assess a timeline of events. If we see a spike of a certain type of event during a set time period, we might say it’s a personal aura, with augment capabilities, especially if we can tie the events to a person, specifically a leader-type personality.” Astral noted the vacant expression on Noland’s face. Her uncle arched a brow, smirked, and cast her a glance that suggested an example might serve better than the theory. “Think of it this way, there was that Enhanced terrorist group that made headlines back when father was alive. You remember them?”
Noland nodded.
“Right, for a while they had some serious teeth while they were run by… you’ll forgive me but I don’t recall his name. But he was the burly fellow, extremely proud with tattoos over his Enhanced scarring. You know the guy I’m talking about.”
Again, Noland nodded.
“After his last attack, they had to change leadership to carry-on. No doubt they had plenty of Enhanced people who were out for blood, but the organizations activities petered out, as did membership. Going back to look at events, we can link all the truly horrific acts to the influence of one man. The fact that members started questioning what they were doing, or how they were going about it, only happened in larger number after their leader passed on is indicative of an personal aura. That’s not to say that it wasn’t happening before, but now that the man is gone, his influence no longer holds dominance in the organization. That’s an example of how a personal augmentation field might cause a temporary blip over a short period of time.”
Astral continued, growing the example out to demonstrate the affects of a crafted augmentation field. “However, if this attribute or event increases over time in one place, as oppose to being able to tie the events to a person, then we have the markings of a crafted augmentation field. That place can be as small as a child’s room, or as big as a nation. In our case, we know that there’s something odd with the layout, so we’ll limit our search to the Academy.”
Astral shrugged and threw in an alternative that might appeal to the practical sergeant. “Could be that in the early days, these grounds were meant to be part of a mega-structure, and we’re reading too much into this.”
She liked to consider being wrong, though she rarely voiced the alternatives. Being wrong meant she wasn’t dealing with some devious multi-generational plan. It simplified her mission by reducing the number of external influences that might have cause to disrupt her progress, but she wasn’t fool enough to discount the other possibilities because it made her life easier.
“We might be able to see a change in a person over time, right?” Damien asked, chewing on an action plan. Astral adored her uncle’s ability to tie in abstract talents together, but worried that he had begun tunnelling his attention.
Astral shrugged and shook her head. “There are too many external factors to consider.”
He arched a brow and cast her a meaningful stare. He wasn’t talking about normal people. He was talking about her ability to see souls.
“That said,” she corrected, slowing her speech as she tried to find the words to convey what she’d require of Damien. “We would need a timeline; I’d say as far back we can go. We’d need more than names to work with.” She couldn’t work with names alone, the unbiased systems that were logging data left no residual spiritual markers for Astral to tap into. The human had no impact on the system, and the system had no awareness of what they were recording. “Photos, videos, personal journals… all the types of things that have tend to have a personal connection, or at least connected to someone who was alive at the time.”
Damien nodded. “Not an easy proposition, but I might be able to image capture those details. Would that work? Or does something get lost in translation? I mean, my software is just as impartial as the student registrar.”
“True, while names do have power, it’s only surface details. Names only have meaning if you can tie them to something, same with visual data. At least with visuals, while the computer might not know that it’s looking at a forest, you do. With a list of names, I can’t tell Mary from Molly, I have no mental reference to who these people are. Over a period of time, how many Mary’s and Molly’s will we find?”
Astral continued, “A photo of a person might not tell us who they are or where they are specifically, but there are contextual clues that we can work with. That doesn’t change based on the impartial nature of the system, but I can ask someone about these places, these people, or see if I can reference details from other sources, like a personal journal that might mention names, places, and events.”
She was careful to point out practical elements she’d need to be able to tap into a rudimentary level of spiritual information. To Noland, these details must have been an obvious part of the research, but time intensive. He wouldn’t be wrong.
However, if by chance the photos were taken by someone who had a connection to the people in the photo, she’d see more, she’d see deeper, the photo could almost come alive. If the machine used was hand crafted instead of being an industry mass-produced template, she’d be able to tap into that moment as though she was there.
For a baseline, the visuals would be enough, even if the spiritual markers were faded.
If she had a timeline to work with, it was possible that she’d see the changes in the person’s spiritual self. If she had a collection of people to view, she’d see the spiritual value of the campus as a living organism. She’d read the campus’ spiritual value like a weather map. The long-term change in spiritual value in a region was one of the important details when deciding on the nature of an augmentation field or if there was a demon.
She couldn’t elaborate the depth of her sight in front of the sergeant. Too many EMI soldiers saw her as little more than the entitled arrogant heiress of the vast Omega fortunes.
Few were aware of her history.
Fewer were aware of her talents as a Hunter.