Solo A Study of Senses

[Keene Ward]

The twenty-fifth day of spring, 515 AV

Slowly, Keene drew breath in through his nose to slip out through his lips, the steady rise and fall of his chest matching the hiss of the candle's wick as the pale blue flames crept their way along the brittle path. His eyes were shut, but the path along which his djed was carefully shepherded was one that had grown familiar over the many mornings spent first finding then honing its trajectory. He had been testing the limits of his sight, certainly, but there was more the magic than he had at first thought, and in the darkness of his self-inflicted blindness, Keene gingerly ran a finger over the course object in his hand. He had first noticed it with taste, that when his gaze grew intense enough, the flavor of the aura presented him would occasionally leak onto his palate. A shiver ran across his skin, rippling over him like a phantom breeze as he pressed with a bit more force into the object he held aloft.

It was flexible. He could feel it in his skin, the way his muscles moved to press and shift beneath the thin layer they kept them bound to him. There was more than simple plasticity. It was worn, weary, a sort of ache in his bones that came with time and age. The sensation was strange, alien but familiar none the less, and the longer he held the object, the deeper he felt it. Strength was buried throughout the item's aura, a language his own body had slowly come to know over the seasons spent under Atziri's tutelage, thus something that his senses were keen to pick up on. There was more, certainly, but Keene pushed the magic aside, returning the flow his djed back to its natural pathways, steady breathes easing him away from the sensation of the leather, returning him to the feeling of his own skin, his own body.

Setting the glove down in front of him, Keene leaned back, eyes still shrouded by the cloth he had wrapped around his head to ensure the experiment's integrity remain in tact. The loss of sight was something he'd never before thought to explore, as he found the intentional removal of available resources to be foolish under normal circumstances. With auristics, however, the removal of one sense allowed for others to be employed, something that was well worth the inconvenience of temporary disability. It was, however, slow going, and while his patience was well tempered, it didn't make progress any quicker. His most difficult sense, that of touch, was most effective with things he was already familiar with. As with the leather, an aura he'd been experimenting with for the past few days when he was able, touching it usually only induced the memories of the aura's appearance, taste, or sound. It was certainly a step in the right direction to feel it as he did, but his tests had begun to suggest that the sensation of touch was simply going to be one of the weaker ones for him, something that was disappointing but not all together unanticipated.

Fumbling in the darkness for a few ticks, Keene's fingers curled around his water flask before lifting it to his lips to take a refreshing swig of the lukewarm liquid within. For the time being, he resolved to instead focus upon the senses that he found to be better suited to him. While it was certainly a truth that one was only ever as strong as one's greatest weakness, he was still too inexperienced with the magic of auristics to devote too much time towards improving that which was the most difficult for him. As Mella had taught him, a small, firm foundation was far more valuable than a larger, flimsy one. Recapping the flask, Keene settled back into a comfortable position before gathering both breath and thought once more.

[Keene Ward]

As the magic filled him once more, this time Keene focused on what he could hear. The gentle whisper of the flame grew some in intensity. There was no language, no hidden meaning within the rising crackle of the flame that rose to meet his mind's eye, but there was hunger. It was gentle, suppressed as if the sound was traveling through a wall wherein the room from whence it came caged a beast most voracious. The hunger itself, however, was not that of sentience. It was a basic need, a requirement, that with each fizzle that filled his ears, the crackle of the flame grew louder if for only a tick. And it was certainly fire, the gentle pulse of heat on the tops of his hands, the slight, acrid bite on the tip of his tongue, even the gentle amber glow that drifted through the darkness of his vision all combined to create an aura that was familiar even without seeing what cast it.

Again, he eased himself away from the tempting draw of the flame's whispers. It was addictive, something he'd come to terms with the first time he'd experimented with auristics, but it was not beyond his ability to control. Just as he had done with reimancy, his forays in the magic's capabilities were kept short and succinct. He trained not only his abilities to use the magic, but his abilities to stop his use as well; for there were few things more dangerous than to lose one's self to magic. It was inevitable, of course, but if he could, at the very least, harden himself against loss of control, it was a far better to have preventative measures than none at all.

Though still blindfolded, Keene had little issue rising from his place in the pit of sand, careful to move mostly vertical, keeping his limbs from knocking over and extinguishing the candle who's light he had only just been listening to ticks before. Pulling first one arm then the other up and over his head, he let the muscles stretch in his back and front, finding that he'd grown a bit stiff sitting for such an extended time. However useful the magic of auristics was, he found the current restraints imposed upon himself by his own inexperiences to be highly inconvenient. Thomas Cosa had been able to use the magic in a far more efficient manner, something that Keene had no doubt came with time and practice. The potential for augmented sight was great, but until he could manage it, he was bound to the relative safety of the cavern. It required far too much focus for him to move much, and when he did, it often became difficult to manage the flow of the djed, often forcing himself to overgive far faster than was necessary.

Running a hand through his hair, Keene took a few more ticks to simply stand on his own two feet. Without the magic assisting him, the cavern was as quiet as stone, the candle too distant to make much more than an occasional whisper. He found it odd how intricate the unseen world was, and yet how completely unexpressed it was to the naked eye. There were things he had learned about the common mundane that he had never stopped to even consider. While a gift, it had proven to be quite the morning distraction for him. Fortunately for the young initiate, time was one of his more affordable commodities.

[Keene Ward]

Silence, all consuming to the point where not even his own heart beat could be heard. It was a strange sensation, his focus set solely on the stone in his hands, yet his heartbeat was still somewhere beneath the heavy, solemn silence of aura that had never known anything beyond what it was and would be. He found stone relaxing, a solid steady aura that varied only slightly between types. It was peaceful in it's own way, though there was no inherent peace about it. Auras were curious in that way. He was able to experience them, certainly, but to truly understand them required more than focus alone. Stone was not human; it was not sentient in any way that he could understand, which meant that while he could hear the silence, feel the solidarity, even taste the slight chalk of earth, it required him to pair those things with his own subjective understanding of stone. Whether what he experienced was stone itself or merely his own idea of it, he'd found that few auras could be discerned by auristics alone. It was a supportive magic, one that was able to gather information but not necessarily make sense of it.

Bringing the stone closer to his lips, Keene drew a steady, careful breath, letting the aura slip over his tongue. There, within the layers of stone, was a sliver of ice. It wasn't true ice. That was an aura far different from what cooled his tongue and sent a plink of sound through the other wise silence soundscape, like a drop of water into a still pool. Magic, his magic. It was the one thing that was immediately familiar, something that he would have recognized no matter where it came from. The stone in his hand, then, was the marble he'd created to match the other's he'd collected and laid out before him. Setting the stone down, Keene let the magic fade, guiding the djed with a firm hand until the taste of stone dissipated and the heavy silence lifted. As he blindly searched for another rock to test himself against, he took the respite to consider several things.

The first was the inherent presence of his own essence within the auras of things he created through his other veins of magic. His shields were rife with his magical signature, even more so than the reimantic elements he transmuted from his res. It stood to reason that other magic users left similar signatures, though he had yet to come across any artifacts to support his theories. It was possible he only sensed his own aura intertwined with others due to his natural predisposition. Without anything to test against, nor any other auras to investigate, the line of thought was to remain thought alone until the necessary supplies were to be gathered.

The second was of his own aura. He'd investigated it several times, but each time, no mater how familiar, there was only so much he could see before the strain of his scrutiny forced him to rest. It was always the same: cold, steady, muted, and powerful. There was little else, save for a few aberrations depending on what part of his aura he investigated, but he imagined there was more. Thomas Cosa had seemed to be able to see his emotions, something that Keene had difficulty finding within the layers of pale light that blanketed him. If there was more to see, he supposed it was either something that required more time - thus a greater tolerance for the magic's drain - or he was looking in the wrong places. In any event, it was something for him to consider later, as stone and leather had few emotions to display if any.

[Keene Ward]

Time passed, and over the course bells, Keene made his way through the various stone, his auristics rising and falling in much the same way as one might expect from the waves of the ocean or the spring showers back in Zeltiva. He let the magic run along the familiar pathway, its flow the steady, calculated volume he had found to be the most efficient use of his djed. Taking the time to concentrate not on the sound of the aura, but it's taste, Keene took several chimes of quiet contemplation, letting the flavors run over his tongue. There was a soft chill, not of ice, but of dank earth; a hint of brittle spice; a soft, pungent sweetness, like charcoal... Pumice. He set the porous rock down, taking a few chimes to ease his djed back into its proper place. He'd worn his gloves after the second stone, finding that his sense of touch, even unaugmented, made the exercise a bit too easy.

He could feel the magic taking its toll, and that was the cue he needed to remove the strip of cloth obscuring his vision. The heat of the cavern had given him reason enough to perspire, the added effort of his concentration dampening both the cloth and his own skin, and as he folded it neatly and set it aside, Keene let his eyes slowly adjusted the advent of the candle's light, blinking away the slight fog of their disuse. His flask was mostly empty, and as he rose, candle in one hand and leather water pouch in the other, he made his way back towards his room, gait stiff for the first few steps before his muscles began to relax back into a more manageable position conducive for walking. Bare feet padding against the warm stone, Keene ran through what duties he had next on his agenda. It was a list that had grown with time and been augmented with his own experience, and while there was still much to do, his training in aursitics had given him improvement enough in the short amount of time he'd been practicing with it.

Flask refilled and shirt and boots donned, Keene gathered up the mess of rope that had become an invaluable asset in gathering firewood before heading out into the morning air, candle extinguished and set just inside of the layers upon layers of shields that guarded the cavern's entrance. He'd checked them the day prior, and as the heat of the day had already begun to settle in, Keene decided to perform maintenance in the evening. Instead, he gripped the edge of the ledge that led up to the plateau, hoisting himself up and over before starting up the familiar path. His routine, once such a flurry of what needed to be done, had become almost comfortable. It was concerning, but not necessarily unwelcome. He continued to make progress daily, and he was far from living in garish conditions. Strife bred success, certainly, but, just with the magic of auristics, Keene wondered if there was not a specific amount of strife that was optimal.

[Keene Ward]

Having arrived at the plateau within about a half-bell's time, Keene knelt down beside it, res drifting from his lips to wrap around in a ring above him, gathering the water into the air and pulling into the moist dirt below. As he did so, the spell taking little focus or attention due to his near endless repetitions of it, he checked the shields he'd layered over the plant, making sure they were all intact and functioning properly. When that was done, and the last of the res was transmuted into water, Keene drew a steady, deep breath, his djed taking a few chimes to unwind itself, to shift back into the amorphous grey clouds before he was able to guide it towards his senses.

He focused on the tree itself, the auras of the shields fading into little more than gentle glows in the background as the healthy, greenish aurora came into view. Plants, unlike stones or other inanimate objects, possessed auras that were far more intricate than he had anticipated. They were far from that of a human or even an animal, but there was a life to them, a flow of existence that could be seen in the gentle shift of shades from green to yellow to green again, a cyclical existence. It was as it should be, a healthy aura of a healthy tree. He'd compared it to those of other plants, some of trees far more established and some of plants withering beneath the heavy, humid heat of the island's relentless nature, and while there were variants in color, size and individual aberration, the constancy of his own sapling's aura in comparison to its counterparts gave him reason to believe that what he saw was preferable.

Pushing the magic away from him, Keene rose to his feet, gingerly rubbing his eyes to ease some of the pressure that had built up behind them with the last bout of augmented vision. It had been a long while since he had last felt as though he was in top physical shape health wise, but he had grown used to the headaches and occasional interruptions in what was otherwise relatively stable sight. Thomas Cosa had been correct in his rather aloof statement that the side effects of their mutual magic weren't nearly as disastrous as that of reimancy. Still, the loss of sight was something that Keene preferred to keep at bay, with the exception of it becoming absolutely necessary. He would master the magic, just as he planned to do with all the others he had discovered and subsequently pursued. Auristics, especially, had proven to possess the greatest potential return with its favorable ratio of risk and return. Glyphing and shielding were both time consuming, given that he wanted to perform them correctly, and while his capabilities in auristics were limited, he was well aware that soon it would not be quite so difficult for him to employ the magic in a far more casual manner, something that would certainly aid him in investigations of any sort.

[Dravite]

G R A D E S
Your awards, Dear.

Keene Ward

Experience

• Auristics: 5
• Meditation: 2
• Philosophy: 3
• Logic: 1
• Endurance: 1
• Climbing: 1
• Investigation: 1
• Reimancy: 1
• Deduction: 1

Lore

• Auristics: Knowing without seeing
• Observation: Exploring loss of sight
• Auristics: A sensory magic
• Logic: Self restraint
• Auristics: Used for information gathering
• Philosophy: People have magic signatures that are readable
• Auristics: Exploring touch and taste
• Comparing auras

Notes

Some of your sentences are so beautiful, you have a lot of talent (when are you going to write a book?). If you think I missed anything let me know. Enjoy the rewards.