Chapter 17: Those of Higher Rank
The next order of business was aura training. The day had been packed with activity, and the sun had receded under the veridian horizon. The night was peaceful, the hum of animals and insects echoing beyond the perimeter of the compound. Within the walls of the compound buildings, the drone of nature was completely blocked out with soundproofing magic.
Nara sat by the lake, catching a glimpse of her appearance in the still water. Dancing bugs disturbed the calm, sending ripples across the glassy surface, the reflection of the night sky temporarily distorted with rippling concentric rings.
“There are three basic techniques of aura control,” Laius said, in an explanation that was already the longest sentence she had heard the mysterious panther-man utter. “Projection, retraction, and suppression. Projection is simple. We all project. To push it further is the challenge. Retraction is the opposite.”
“Why retract your aura?”
“To retract is to hide,” Laius said. “What you do not display, others cannot sense.”
“Projection is to see, and retraction is to hide?”
“Good enough,” he said. “But that is limited. Suppression is to dominate,” he said. “To push others down.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Nara said. She wasn’t entirely nonconfrontational, especially with family who she regularly talked back to, but she usually avoided trouble, deciding that it wasn’t worth the effort. “Why would you do that?”
“To suppress is to assert. Those that don’t know better now do.”
“A nonviolent way of scaring others off?”
“Not just that,” Laius clarified. “In combat, suppression disrupts. A suppressed aura does not affect others.”
Nara had not even considered working with others. It seemed a distant goal, one she did not know she would even pursue. A great benefit of working in a team was not only that weaknesses were covered, but also overlapping auras that provided area benefits.
Laius tilted his head in examination. She couldn’t even detect it with her aura, but somehow knew, on instinct or something else, that he had examined her aura in great detail.
“You will struggle with suppression,” Laius said. “But excel at projection and retraction.”
“How do you know that?”
“Your aura is like a mist, difficult to detect. It’s not typical.”
“Not typical? Is it because I’m an outworlder?”
He shook his head, “It’s because your aura is…different. Changed.”
“Oh,” Nara said awkwardly. “I did do that. I did it in order to disappear and escape that…Thing.” It was a strange sensation, recalling the experience of her soul torture. Simultaneously distant and stark, like a blinding light at the end of the tunnel. She could not see the landscape beyond, but the light seared past her eyelids into her vision nonetheless.
“You are still not settled,” he said. “Your memories, nor your peace of mind. It’ll come, in time.”
It was odd to constantly feel like an open book in front of these four, but she accepted his reassurance, and he began to teach her in earnest.
Projection involved expanding her aura, pushing it out to its farthest capabilities. There wasn’t much use for an expanded aura at the compound, but it would have its uses beyond the compound’s safety. She could feel her aura pass over the insects and the small critters in the compound. They seemed undisturbed by her aura. Either, they did not fear it, or they did not sense it.
Nara could not sense auras before she absorbed four essences to rank up to iron, so ordinary bugs and animals would not either.
The next was retraction. She recollected her aura, drawing it back to herself. It was an oddly unnerving feeling after her projection. It was if she her field of view narrowed, the camera moved forward onto her character in a video game.
“The next is suppression. It will feel uncomfortable. You will feel vulnerable. Are you prepared?”
“Would you stop if I said no?”
“No,” Laius said.
She took a deep breath she did not need, then fixed her gaze on Laius, steadying herself.
She felt it, an overwhelming pressure on her aura. Thankfully, it was just her aura, and not her soul. The two were related, but still separate. It felt as if she were within the palm of a giant, and it was slowly squeezing. Simultaneously, she felt like a bug underneath a microscope, looking up at a pair of inquisitive eyes that dissected her aura for clues.
She realized that Laius had searched her aura previously, but had done so with such finesse that she felt nothing, except for the barest reaction from her sensitive soul. Now she felt everything, her aura was an open book she could not close. Her secrets and shame bared out for him to read.
The pressure increased gradually, the pressing weight of a night without light. When she thought she could bare it no longer, the pressure disappeared instantly, fading like the darkness at sunrise.
She had broken out in a cold sweat, soaking her simple clothes. She belatedly realized she hadn’t sweat before, neither during her parkour training nor sparring with Vallis. This was one of those physiological aspects Redell said bodies would replicate. She unclenched her hands to realize her fingernails had broken into the skin of her palm, drawing blood. As she stared in stunned silence, her aura went to work, slowly repairing her palm, although the blood caked beneath her fingernails.
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Her gaze slowly raised upwards to meet Laius’ eyes, unreadable.
“That is aura suppression,” he said. “Beware those of higher rank.”
*****
Nara sprawled out on the grass beside the lake, taking in the darkness above her. It was late February, or in this world, the second month. The days were still short, and the sun had already set hours ago. The jungle was speckled with dots of otherworldly bioluminescence. Fireflies of yellow, pink, blue, and red pulsated in a language her translation ability couldn’t translate. Glowing moss and vines hung from the towering trees, draped like raunchy rave dresses made for giants.
The stars were oddly visible. Nara realized, there was no light pollution where she lay. The soft glow of lights from within the main residence was the only beacon within the expansive darkness. The stars were innumerable, speckled across the night sky like sparkling paint on a dark canvas. She looked up, a spotted the glowing streak of the Milky Way galaxy and two moons.
“Wait. What?”
She must have been mistaken. There was no way the night sky could be the same night sky as Earth’s, ignoring the two moons. Nara didn’t know the constellations enough to recognize them either. She could try to look them up in her Guide, but it didn’t show any images, just words.
From across the lake, Redell approached Nara.
“You’ve had quite the scare,” Redell said as he sat down in the lakeside grass beside her.
“Yeah, it freaked me out. I really have no idea what I’m getting in to. What all this…aura and rank stuff is. Magic and training and…”
She still recalled the sensation of a bug beneath a microscope. The bare vulnerability that made her feel delicate and weak. She partially wanted to call it all off, resign herself to just living an ordinary life, but didn’t know what else she would do with herself. Despite that unnerving sensation, somewhere, in the back of her mind, she had thought it could have been far, far worse.
She knew that it was intended as a teaching moment for her. She didn’t begrudge Laius for it, but she still had to settle her emotions, her back against nature and her eyes to the sky. After her long involuntary stay in the astral, she enjoyed the sensations of physical reality. She didn’t mind the dirt under her fingernails, the bugs crawling onto her skin, nor the dampness of grass soaking into her clothes. She was just a few minutes’ walk away from a warm shower and comfortable bed when she needed it.
“I was concerned, but you’re handling it well.”
“I’ve always been stable. Mentally resilient,” Nara said, as a tangled memory thread unraveled itself. “My parents divorced when I was young, and I went to a school counselor for a few weeks in elementary school. The result—the divorce was not emotionally damaging to me. Do you have divorce in this world? The institution of marriage?”
“Divorce and marriage exist,” Redell said, letting the conversation flow away from her feelings, “It’s more common among non-essence users than essence users.”
“Why’s that?”
“Essence users live longer, and many do not marry nor start families for a long time. Some start families without marrying.”
“You’re not married?” Nara asked.
“I’m not,” Redell confirmed. “Amara and Chelsea are not institutionally married, but regard each other as life partners.”
Redell looked at Nara sprawled out in the grass, and rested his own large body in the grass for a moment, enjoying the calm of the night with her.
“Advancement for essence users has three components. Do you know what they are?” He said from his position laying beside her. He was comforting and calming; he matched her pace instead dragging her into his own, like Amara and Laius.
Nara shook her head.
“Training, combat, and meditation. Training hones your abilities, and adjusts your mind and body to your new limits. Combat pushes against those limits. And meditation consolidates those experiences to advance your abilities.”
“So learn the limits, push the limits, and breakthrough the limits?”
“You can think of it like that. But as Chelsea always says—”
“There’s nuance.”
“This cycle of training, combat, and meditation is the basis for every essence user that does not use monster cores. Amara has cautioned you against monster cores, do you know why?”
“I don’t.”
“Monster cores will advance your abilities. However, the moment you use a monster core, the cycle of training, combat, and meditation loses effectiveness, and further decreases in effectiveness with increasing core use. The monster core artificially grants mastery and raises the limits. If you did not achieve that limit in the first place, any further training is ineffective.”
It sounded like taking an exp pot or eating a rare candy.
“And that’s bad?”
“There’s nuance.”
“At this point I’ll assume ‘there’s nuance’ as a default, and you let me know when that’s not the case.”
Redell’s laugh was a low, almost musical rumble.
“Non-combatants typically use cores, since there is no way to advance abilities without pushing those limits through risk, and even the most pacifistic essence set has a combat ability. As you rank up, cores will also increase in price. Advancing from silver rank to gold rank is the bottleneck for cores; Gold rank cores are invaluable and highly contested. Unless it’s after a monster wave, you can go months without seeing a single one available on the market at all.”
Redell continued his explanation after making sure Nara understood the first portion, “Core users can still become effective combatants, if they train. The danger of core use is using only some of your abilities, instead of mastering all twenty. You fall into a dangerous pattern of using only the most effective skills, neglecting the others that excel in unusual circumstances or require finesse.”
He shrugged.
“But if you are just core-ing up your family so they live longer, then they don’t need to be skilled essence users. When you go back to Earth, you could do the same for your family.”
“That’s what essences users do?”
“That is what essence users do,” he confirmed. “Essence and core up the family—and any close friends—and let them enjoy their new magic powers. No training required.”
After finishing his crash course on core use, Redell began his instructions on how to meditate. It wasn’t quite like Earth meditation, as far as she knew. It involved an expansion of her senses and aura, while simultaneously looking within in introspection.
Without the ability to manipulate aura, this meditation would not have been possible.
As her senses skimmed over the grass and the glassy black lake, she entered a state of simultaneous focus and inattention. Her mind was neither here nor there, a state where she was both sensitive and passive.
“Just like that,” Redell said approvingly the moment she pulled herself from her meditation back into normal cognition. “After you fight anything, you should meditate when you are safe. We’ll keep practicing more to solidify the basic technique.”
“I’m definitely not ready for fighting monsters yet.”
“You aren’t, but it may be sooner than you expect,” Redell said. “Skill books reduce the time to mastery greatly. Even just a basic slice—” he demonstrated, swinging his arms down, “—is enough to take care of most iron rank monsters.”
He offered his hand, and Nara took it, hefting herself up to her feet. She could feel the strength behind his arms as much as she saw it in his muscles. All of them were muscular and fit, although their builds varied. Chelsea was the leanest of the group, but she too had Olympian-tier musculature.
“It’s time to head inside to eat. Let’s get you filled up and well rested. I’m sure Laius will make you something special. He may not express it with words, but I think he feels guilty for scaring you. He’s an older brother you know, of seven.”
“Of seven!?”