"Third time is blessed," Craun used to say.
Tsaba has had Auristics thrust upon her twice before; first, in her foster father's cramped front room, as he guided her in sensing the exact spot of injury on hurt minors and feverish children; second, in the laboratories and libraries of Sahova, as she kept abreast of what was strictly necessary without any real interest. But this time, she was learning not through necessity, but choice. This time, she would make much greater progress; more than that, she would provide new information. This was the first step on her attempt to gain fresh data for Sahova's archives. A test run. And it would work.
She carefully pulled on a pair of fine wool gloves to protect the book from her pickled skin, then sat down at her tiny desk. Taking great care not to crack the spine, she lifted the cover of First Glances into New Sights and Sounds and let the book fall open to the first page.
Auristics is, at its heart, a refinement of the interaction of one's personal field of djed, or 'aura', with that of other fields. To be an Aurist is to be conscious of these interactions, and how to interpret them. Too often, it is assumed that Auristics is a passive process, merely that of an observer; there are wards full of overgiven wizards to demonstrate otherwise. While it is true that Auristics does not influence that which it reads to any great degree -- this is indeed its strength, for otherwise it would be useless as an observational tool -- it is interaction-based, consciously directed and, therefore, active. Indeed, one might think of Auristics as the non-interfering cousin to Shielding, the use of a djed field to specifically block other djed, or perhaps the personal cousin to the rumoured Webbing said to be practised by the Drykas.
Tsaba carefully put the book to one side before pulling off her right glove, inking her quill and carefully noting 'Webbing -- Drykas magic (?)' on a piece of parchment. Underneath it she wrote 'Auristics vs. Shielding -- investigate', in case the author wasn't merely waxing poetic, and copied out the book's opening line as a working definition.
It is a mistake to treat Auristics as separate from either one's life force or one's other senses. It is a worldly interaction no more and no less than one's sense of sight, a reading of light interacting with objects. Every Aurist who intends to use their art with any refinement should become intimately familiar with their own aura, or they cannot expect to study anything else's. They should have a sense not only of what the flow of djed in their bodies 'looks' like, but what it 'feels' like.
"Feel the patient's body," Craun always used to say. "Get a sense for the flow of energy. Like rocks in a river, you will find the flaws where you find interruptions in flow." But he'd never told her to feel her own energy. Tsaba put the book aside once more and stared at her ungloved right hand. She pulled djed into her vision, and focused.
The shifting fields had no obvious pattern, beyond the disjointed nature of a 'living' field advertising what she'd always been trained to recognise as 'dead' tissue, and were hard to focus on for more than a few seconds at a time. Her paralysed little finger was as devoid of her personal aura as she'd expected. It seemed to be brighter around the heel of the hand, where the rune had been etched for her body transfer ritual. Interesting. A glance told her that the same was true of her other wrist.
Engrossed as she was in trying to decypher a pattern in the aura (beyond the strange brightness around her rune sites), it wasn't until her vision lurched sickeningly that she realised just how much the process was draining her. Quickly, she shut off the vision, closing her eyes against the suddenly very bright-seeming mundane light. She slumped back in her chair. Tired. It had been a very long time since she'd felt tired. What she felt wasn't the bone-deep weariness of the transfer ritual, which felt pretty much like dying all over again, but it was... definitely tiring. Eyes pressed shut, Tsaba laid her forehead on the desk in front of her and folded her hands behind her head.
It would be okay. In a few chimes, she was sure, she'd be okay.
