Chapter 14 — Aura
Tears poured down the boy’s cheeks as blood poured down his arm.
“Oh dear, what have you done now,” Brady admonished, “Alright then, let me have a look.”
The old village healer put his spectacles on as the group of boys that had come in with his newest patient began clamoring to tell their version of the story.
“We was just—”
“The snow was all poofy and—”
“—he tripped—”
“—but it was all frozen—”
“—because he—”
“It was a—”
“Quiet!” barked Brady, “Alright, out with the lot of you. If you want to be useful, go tell his mother what happened.”
“It wasn’t—” one of the boys tried.
“Out!” Brady snapped.
Cowed, the gaggle of children ran out the front door of the healer’s house, which was the closest thing the village had to a hospital. Meanwhile, the injured boy continued his wordless whimper as blood dripped onto the floor of the healer’s living room. Brady led the boy into a side room—the closest thing the village had to an emergency room—and pulled up the bloody sleeve of the child’s coat, revealing a gash on his forearm covered in dirt and bits of plant matter.
He began applying pressure as he made a tsk that seemed to echo. Over his shoulder, he saw the traveler girl giving the boy’s wound the same discerning look and tsk he had.
“Ah, Riley, I’m afraid whatever you came over for will have to wait. Perhaps you could come back tomorrow.” Brady said, turning back to the boy.
“It’s Rína, actually, and I’ve treated plenty of gashes like that before. Here, where do you keep your wash bowls? And we’ll probably need tweezers, too, by the look of it.”
“That’s not…” Brady began as Rína had already started opening cupboards. He sighed, “The wash bowl is in the cabinet, second shelf, and the tweezers are in the leftmost drawer.”
The girl returned momentarily and without asking began to clean the wound alongside Brady. Brady, for his part, could feel his annoyance grow, but he did have to admit that the girl did seem to know how to clean a wound and wasn’t actually getting in his way too much.
“So what’s your name kid?” Rína asked.
“... Aidan.” the boy practically whispered.
“Well, Aidan, you’re being very brave right now, but you don’t have to worry. Me and Mr. O’Neill will have you back in one piece in just a minute.”
Brady shook his head as the two continued their work. Soon the bleeding stopped and the wound was sufficiently cleaned.
“I’m thinking four stitches,” the girl said, eyeing the gash.
“Mhm,” Brady murmured agreement, fishing out a needle and spool of suture from a cluttered drawer.
“I mean, we’ll have to sanitize the gash first; same goes for the needle and suture.”
“What do you mean? They’re perfectly clean.” Brady said.
“Yeah, they don’t have dirt on them, but I’m more worried about the bact—” the girl cut herself off, “I just think we should give everything a rinse of sanitizer first.”
Brady disregarded her as he began threading the needle, “You mean like with healer’s spirits? I’m afraid I’m all out, and even if I used regular alcohol, it would only help if a wound had already gone foul.”
Aidan’s eyes darted between the two of them, the confusion on the boy’s face soon replaced with fear as he seemed to realize what the needle was for.
“As a matter of fact,” Rína emphasized, “sanitizers help wounds from going foul in the first place. Also, you aren’t out of them anymore—yesterday your wife mentioned your supplies were low, which is actually why I came over today.” The girl walked over to the small crate she had originally carried in before the two of them had been interrupted by the bleeding child. Opening it, she began taking out jars and bottles of various medical supplies, all clearly labeled.
“Where did you get all that…” Brady stared as he idly put down the needle.
“I made them myself. I’m originally an apothecary, it’s just that the town I grew up in didn’t have a real healer so my master and I sort of had to be both.”
“A girl as an apothecary?” Brady tittered, “Really, where did you get them?”
“I made them.” the girl snapped at him, “What part of that didn’t you hear?”
“Now listen, girl, I won’t be talked to that way. Now where did you—” A furious knocking from Brady’s front door interrupted him.
He huffed, “Just a moment…”
He left the room and answered his front door, revealing Aidan’s distraught mother, “Come on in, Aidan’s—”
The woman stormed past the healer and into the side room, locking eyes with her son, “Aidan, what did you do to yourself?”
The boy avoided his mother’s gaze as he seemed to sink into himself.
“It was just some bad luck, by the sounds of it,” the girl said.
The boy’s mother flared her nostrils, “We’ll see about that. So how bad is it?”
“My arm feels fuzzy,” the boy quietly offered.
“That doesn’t sound good…” Brady said as he gave the boy and his injury closer look.
Rína waved him off, “It’s just a fast acting anesthetic,” she motioned to one of the bottles, “Nothing to worry about. But you, Mr. O’Neil, are damn lucky I’m donating all this to you. For the record, if there were another healer in town, I’d be giving this stuff to them instead.”
Aidan’s mother scrunched her brow, her eyes leaving her son to fall on the girl, “Sorry, who are you?”
“Oh, hi, I’m Rína,” she gave a slight bow, “My mentor and I are traveling healers; just passing through.” The girl then took the needle and suture from a saucer of what Brady assumed was healer’s spirits. Then she brought the threaded needle near to the boy’s gash and said, “Aidan, you might want to look away for this next bit.”
----------------------------------------
“Again, try to mirror the feeling and state of mind of pushing back. Know that your aether is more a part of you than your own flesh and move it.” Yvette lectured, her index finger hovering just above Rína’s palm.
“Right, right…” Rína took a deep breath then nodded that she was ready.
Rína felt the all too familiar sensation of Yvette poking at her soul, now with the older woman’s finger also pressing into her palm. Days ago Yvette deemed Rína’s soul sight far enough along and moved them on to aether control exercises, but Rína felt like she wasn’t making any progress with the exercises. No, she knew she wasn’t making any progress. It was endlessly frustrating. Yvette was in essence telling her to move a muscle she didn’t even know she had until recently. And how was Rína to do this? By simply doing it by doing it by doing it of course.
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For the dozenth time that day, Rína focused on her palm and the surface of her soul and tried to push back against their respective pokes in tandem. Nothing.
Rína scowled, “I swear, is all magic just a bunch of people poking each other?”
And on the exercises went. A day later, the women were warm inside the wagon as the oxen puppets—now covered in thick fur—pulled the vehicle through a snowstorm.
“AAArhrhrghnnghh!” Rína yelled into the pillow her head was buried in.
“It’s just a matter of time before you pass the mental block,” Yvette consoled as she rubbed Rína’s back, “Here, let’s take a break from aether control and switch to academics—I believe neurological infections were our next topic.”
“Oh no. It isn’t getting away that easy, not after it made things personal,” Rína practically growled, slamming her fist into the massive cushion she and Yvette were sitting on.
Yvette quirked an eyebrow, “Personal?”
“Yes, personal, and I don’t care how long I need to bash my head against it. Now come on,” Rína demanded, holding out her palm.
Yvette shook her head, “Very well, but…” an impish smile slowly spread across Yvette’s face. “No.”
“No?”
“You aren’t in the correct frame of mind for the exercise, but perhaps punching a pillow will make you feel better.”
“Yeah, I seriously doubt that would help.”
“Did you not just strike the cushion? Or would you prefer to thrash around like a toddler throwing a tantrum.”
“Screw you too,” Rína narrowed her eyes at Yvette.
Yvette stood, grabbed the throw pillow Rína had been screaming into, and held it up like a target, “Strike it.”
“I’m not going to hit it.”
Yvette raised her voice, “As your teacher, I order you to strike it.”
Rína huffed, stood, then punched the pillow halfheartedly, “See? No change, now I’m also annoyed.”
“Again.” Yvette barked.
Rína punched it again, harder.
“Again.”
A snarl was growing on Rína’s face as she threw another punch.
“Again.”
And again Rína struck, but not just at the pillow in Yvette’s hand. She also struck the pillow shaped poke in her soul sight as a small sting of pain radiated from the point of contact.
Rína’s eyes widened as she took a moment to register what she did.
A beaming smile alighted on Yvette’s face as she pulled Rína into a hug, “I told you punching the pillow would make you feel better.”
Rína couldn’t help but chuckle as she tried to hold on to the feeling of what she’d done. For a brief moment, it felt as if part of her soul—that wasn’t exactly her soul—had welled up to the surface and pushed back against Yvette’s pillow shaped poke. It felt like her soul’s metaphorical blood had seeped out through her skin, but with the blood still retaining a kind of sense of touch, and notably pain as it sizzled against the ‘pillow’.
“I believe congratulations are in order,” Yvette said, “For your first time projecting an aura.”
“Thanks,” Rína said, her eyes unfocused as she was still organizing her thoughts, “Sorry, what’s an aura?”
“It’s just the colloquial term for self-aspected aether that is moved outside the soul. When you pushed back with aether just now, a good portion of it left the bounds of your soul.”
“Isn’t that just like casting a spell? Shit, did I just cast my first spell?”
“I suppose that’s a matter of semantics, but most wouldn’t categorize aura projection as spell casting.”
“Shame…”
“All in due time. The major difference is that in spell casting, the self-aspected aether inside the soul has its intent modified before it’s projected. In the pressure cooker analogy, this is like not pressurizing it at all, opening the lid, and pouring out some water. And since it doesn’t require spell structures, every single mage and even most creatures in aether rich areas can project an aura. Furthermore, because no intent is being forcibly modified, Flesh Weavers can project rather intensive auras without needing to worry about damaging our threads.”
“But what do auras actually do?”
Yvette gave a wry smile, “Nothing at all.”
“What? So they’re useless? Are auras just used for dick measuring contests between mages, or something?”
“Gods no, that would be useless. No, an aura is mostly used to prevent aspected, foreign aether—like another mage’s spell—from existing in the same space. Aura is just liquid aether that carries the same intent as the crystalized aether that is your soul. It carries all the intent that makes you, you. And two properties universal to every human soul, and practically all other souls, are identity and self preservation. The former distinguishes self from nonself, and the latter attempts to prevent nonself things from intruding.
“A spell can only affect a point in the physical once the liquid aether makes contact with it, until then the spell is just some liquid aether in the Astral.”
“Ok… So then when a pyromancer tries to throw a fireball, but someone’s aura is covering the spot in the physical they want to hit, ‘Nothing at all’ is what happens.”
“Exactly, at least from an outside perspective. In truth, the aura will mix with the fireball and detect the spell’s foreign intent of self. And just as a spell will expend its energy when it comes into contact with the physical, when an aura contacts foreign intent of self, it will expend energy in an attack against the foreign intent—similar to your body’s immune system attacking pathogens. The spell’s intent of self will be destroyed, with the rest of the spell falling into the Deep Astral, but not before the spell’s lesser intent of self retaliates against your own aura. The retaliation will cause a small amount of your own aura to fall into the Astral, thus causing a small amount of pain.”
“Hmm,” Rína mulled, “So kind of like an acid and base neutralizing each other?”
“Exactly.”
“But what about a spell’s self intent makes it lesser?”
“An intent of self creates a kind of cohesion among all the neighboring aether that shares it, similar to the surface tension on a drop of water. So long as an anchored aether crystal is in contact with the liquid aether, then the liquid aether won’t fall into the Deep Astral.
“Spells have less intent of self, or rather, they have just enough intent of self to maintain cohesion and perhaps a bit more to at least somewhat contest another’s aura. If a spell had just as much intent of self as an aura, it would have so much Astral weight that it would be difficult to cast it beyond a short range—as is the case for auras. So one of the functions of every spell structure is to trim down the intent of self in the aura passing through it so that the spell can be cast at medium or even long range.
“For instance, most mage sight spells have an absolute bare minimum amount of intent so that they can be cast over a long range. There are varying designs of course, but for the vast majority of them the intent is so thin that the casting mage won’t be able to feel it when some of their mage sight encounters an aura, and thus won’t be able to differentiate a space with another’s aura from a space that simply doesn’t have anything for their mage sight to detect.”
“Huh…” Rína furrowed her brow, “So if a person was standing on the ground, projecting an aura, a stone—or geo, or whatever—mage using their mage sight would just see a crater where that person was standing?”
“Exactly.” Yvette nodded.
“But why would fizzled aether fall into the Astral?”
“Well, spells are necessarily a continuous stream of liquid aether going from a mage’s soul—or aura—to their target. When the spell loses its intent of self, it loses its cohesive surface tension, and thus becomes unmoored while also breaking apart into gaseous aether. However it will still retain whatever intent that was the spell’s effect, giving it Astral weight, and thus causing it to fall into the Deep Astral.”
“So, what? Is the Deep Astral just one giant trash dump of fizzled spells?” Rína grimaced, “Well, besides all the dead folks.”
Yvette shrugged, “Again, no one knows as no one has ever died and made the return trip, at least outside of mythology. However gaseous aether is notoriously poor at maintaining intent, so most likely, the destroyed spells don’t get too deep into the Astral before they decompose into neutral aether and are pulled back to the physical by mundane gravity. As for liquid aether that is simply separated from a soul, and even souls themselves, so long as nothing in the Deep Astral… intervenes then they too should eventually return to the physical as gaseous aether.
“Aether only holds energy and intent, with the former being expended to carry out the latter. In the case of intent of self, the cohesion does not happen on its own. All liquid and crystal aether is constantly expending a small amount of energy to maintain its cohesion—to keep itself whole—hence why all souls need at least a small influx of fresh gaseous aether to survive. So in the Deep Astral, assuming it isn’t somehow full of energy, all of the aether there, soul or otherwise, will gradually starve, lose its cohesion, and break down into gaseous aether. And as mentioned, the gaseous aether will be unable to hold onto its intent, and thus Astral weight, and be finally pulled back to the physical.”
“I kind of wish I didn’t ask…” Rína paled as she sought a change in subject, “So, uh… Wait, why doesn’t my soul fizzle when you poke it? You’re doing that with your aura, aren’t you?”
“I suppose knowledge like this is a downside to magecraft not commonly discussed, “Yvette grimaced sympathetically, “And yes, I do use my aura for the pokes. Souls being made of crystalized aether are much more stable than the liquid aether of an aura or spell, and as a solid, there will be far less contact area compared to two liquid auras being mixed. Were I to keep my aura in contact with your soul for longer or simply press harder in the first place, then the two would react and you would suffer a minute amount of soul damage.”
“I’m guessing that would be really unpleasant.”
“Just so.” Yvette nodded.
“For a second there it sounded like auras were just a defensive thing.”
“And they still predominantly are, even when factoring in their use in neutralizing others’ defensive spells,” Yvette said, “But for now, I believe we should return to you punching pillows.”