I woke up back in the medic room, and the first thing I saw was Dr Jacq’s face in a chair near the bed I was in.

“Finally!” He exclaimed when he noticed I was awake, obviously bored with waiting, “Please try to refrain from over taxing your aura again; you’re way too heavy. Now, get out of bed. You’ve missed two days of school, and you are now prohibited from eating or drinking any food or drink with caffeine in it for obvious reasons. Luckily, it was only the weekend you were unconscious for, but you still missed some time where you could have been studying or even sorting out your bad aura arrangement, which I can help you with.”

With that, he got up and signalled for me to follow.

“Huh, wha?” I answered as I had not fully comprehended what was said as I just opened my eyes a few moments before.

“He’s saying that he will help you make your body more aura efficient.” Edward translated for me, having learned what Dr Jacq’s ramblings meant from when he was taught here. “You probably should follow.”

I grabbed my prosthetic and tried to catch up with him. We arrived at a large room (with some directional help from Edward) with a machine which had a large screen and an arm hole.

“As you were asleep when the rest of your classmates took their aura test, due to you passing out multiple times in your first week here, which I would say is impressive if it wasn’t common in those who awake their aura later than typical as they usually don’t have the pathways formed or their bodies used to that much aura.” Jacq explained, “Anyway, just stick your hand in and feel your aura flow, though I have to warn you, you’ll feel incredibly drained, but trust me, the way they measured it before was way worse.”

The process of showing the amount of aura someone had was relatively simple: sticking your arm into the machine, which unravels any aura that naturally lingered at certain parts of the body, depending on how a person used their aura subconsciously. Mechanism built it because he absolutely hated the previous method, so he built this machine, which has since been adapted into each of the schools. Apparently, he despised the other so much that the replacement was the first thing he built as he unlocked his power at that moment.

As I placed my arm in, I felt something flow through my body, from my centre through what seemed to be a circuit which passed my eyes, heart, lungs, legs and finally my arms. When the flow reached the arm in the machine, the flow was interrupted, like a wall being placed in a river, as I could feel a flow of energy leave my body as it fought to finish the circuit but failing, first only a trickle of my aura left at first, the machine gaining a hold on it as it passed my arm turning the trickle into a stream. It felt like I had a vein cut and was losing a large amount of blood.

My aura flowed through the machine through wires, which glowed electric blue to the centre as it filled up with aura, and then the flow slowed down as I was being drained. Then, a second feel of energy started to flow through my circuit. I heard a grunt of pain in my mind as Edward’s aura began to supplement my own, my centre hanging on to keep me alive, letting the new power flow past, which felt simultaneously hot and cold like ice fire as it flowed past my centre into the circuit. The new aura reached the arm in the machine; the colour of the aura changed first to a purple colour as the two mixed slightly, then to fire red as it made its way to the centre of the system.

The struggle of the aura stopped as the pull ceased, and the aura was allowed to complete the circuit. The strain of the process dissipated instantaneously, and I let go of a breath I was unaware I was holding.

“Fuck.” I breathed out as I took my arm out, I felt heavier than I had ever felt due to the large amount of aura not in my body anymore making it unable to augment my muscles as it passively does.

“I forgot how bad that was.” Edward thought, his ‘voice’ sounding more strained than typical.

“Huh, so this is why Nobody recommended keeping an eye on you; you’re the first person I’ve seen with dual aura types and trust me, I've seen a lot of people. So how did you end up with Reacher’s aura?”

“Honestly, I have no clue.”

“Really? Uhhhh! I thought I at least had a loose grasp of souls and then a curve ball like this appears out of nowhere, souls are meant to be picky and not like sharing, though the defence created with this would likely be incredible. There must be a reason why your two are getting along so well. Maybe it has something to do with…” Jacq started rambling to himself as he looked over the data. Three other Jacqs, two which were male and one female, appeared next to the original to check the data faster.

***

After the fatigue of the aura drain had mostly worn off, Edward recommended leaving. Jacq had seemingly forgotten that I was still there, lost in studying the aura mixture. Or at least I thought he was distracted until one of him appeared just as I left the room.

“Just before you leave, go bother Keter about your aura weave. I doubt he’s doing anything important,” Jacq said before disappearing again and giving a thumbs-up.

“His office is near the library,” Edward told me, as he knew I had never been to his office before.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Great,” I thought back, “Just one problem, where’s the library?”

“You know what; hand me the controls.”

My view shifted as Edward took control. He walked quickly to wherever Keter’s office was. Though using our Legacies would have been quicker, we still hadn’t fully recovered from the aura drain. Despite that, we were still at their office within a couple of minutes. The perspective shifted, and I was back in control, which gave me slight motion sickness in my soul.

The door we’d arrived at had an engraved name plaque with the name Dr Jacob Keter and a symbol of a crown engraved on it. After a couple of seconds to adjust to regaining control back, I knocked on the door.

“Come in,” A tired but cheerful voice spoke from inside. I walked into the room, and the hit of coffee and energy drinks was so strong that what had regenerated from my aura was making everything slightly sluggish and made me leave a small trail of sparks. “Jacq did warn me that they were sending someone for aura training, or more accurately, they told me to go to bed and that ‘quality not quantity’ doesn’t apply to sleep then warning me.”

The office was a mess with mugs, cans, books, and paper all over, which may have had an order, but only Dr Keter would know. Diagrams of different Shades of all levels were haphazardly placed on the walls with different arrows crossed out in a different coloured ink alongside older prototypes of Mythic weaponry and attack plans. Dr Keter himself was a man who appeared to be in his thirties although based on what I’d heard of how Mythics age he was likely much older, he had large bags under his cobalt purple eyes.

“Anyway, to begin, sit on the floor and tell me what you know about aura patterns.”

“Well… they exist for one, and they have something to do with aura.”

Dr Keter looked at me for a moment before concluding, “You didn’t go to a training school, did you?” He paused for a couple of seconds too long before releasing he might come off as rude. “Which is fine. We’re just going to have to start further back than I initially thought.” He got up from behind his desk up to a seemingly random paper pile and moved a few bits around to reveal a book named “Aura 101” by Alex Lottle, “I should probably explain where aura comes from first as they typically don’t think that knowledge is useful outside of training schools…”

***

He explained that aura and, by extension, Legacies are the by-product of the soul’s connection or anchor point to the body, which in most people is mostly closed off and is typically opened by an outside force. The soul works as a filter from a dimension of effectively pure concept and energy through the crown or Keter down through the tree of life down to the kingdom or Malkuth, where the concept is translated to reality through the soul’s anchor point. This is also where Shades derive their name from one of the leading theories into their existence is that their anchor point is through the shadow of the Tree of Life, disconnected enough that they are seemingly immune from basic universal laws, such as the square-cube law and some aspects of gravity. This allows them to grow to otherwise impossible sizes and may explain their strange attraction to negative emotion, as the node’s shadows are still technically a part of the tree, just twisted in some regard.

Each soul has different concentrations of each node on the tree, which is thought to be the cause of differences in people, most prominently their personality and why everyone’s eyes are unique in colour; aura and Legacies are expressions of a person to the extent that even reincarnations of a person show similar, yet different, Legacies, as they experience things differently than in their previous life. That is where aura patterns come in.

Aura patterns allow a Mythic to control their aura more efficiently by controlling how it flows throughout the body effectively by overlaying its identity more strongly over organs and the Mythic’s cells, basically increasing their potential; muscles become stronger, eyes see clearer, thoughts are quicker, and the body heals faster, though each aura affects a person differently depending on who they are and their Legacy. However, how much aura ‘upgrades’ someone is severely limited by how much aura they can produce if a Mythic’s pattern is too thin, the neglected parts undergo aura starvation, the effects of which are typically told to be hope you don’t find out.

After going over the basics of what he knew about aura and Legacies, we ran out of time before getting started on the practical application, but before I set out, Dr Keter went over a simple loop pattern to help contain my aura. I had so much leaking that it was mildly overloading some of their aura tech; it typically isn’t subjected to so much energy as most learn at least some semblance of aura control at training school and didn’t typically have as much Aura I had to begin with.

The technique involved concentrating on your centre, which is where most of the aura was, and taking a strand of the aura and looping it back round to the centre after passing through some of the main organs and muscles. The technique simply spreads out the energy around the body which allows the body to absorb it more easily, in turn reducing how much is let out into the surroundings.

Edward helped with the pattern as he could see the aura flow, probably due to being astrally detached, which made it easier. The aura sight was also helpful in correcting the pattern already created when my aura was tested, which was relatively crude as I didn’t have much control when I made it.

I went back to my room as it was late. I only got lost a couple of times, but I managed to find my room, only to realise that I still didn’t have a room key. I knocked on the door; Matt opened the door.

“Oh! Our glorious leader has decided to grace us with his presence,” Matt told me. I don’t think Alex should sort out our drinks after what happened. Isn’t that right, Alex?”

“I'm sorry. You guys were just so tired,” Alex replied from inside the room, sounding not sorry at all.

“So, how long have I been gone?”

“Only really a day; you didn’t miss much,” Matt said. “Although Jacq did say that you would need to read this book to help catch you up.”

Matt materialised a textbook called ‘Shades for Dummies” by Dr Stephen Christopher Patrick Jacq which made a thud when it hit my bed due to how thick it was.

“It’s their personal version; they signed it, especially for you. They also warned that there will be a test on it, but only for you specifically. They didn’t mention when.”

I turned the front cover of the book, and on the first page was written, “Don’t miss my lessons :)”