Solo The Price of Magic II

[Alice Weaver]

62th of Spring, 522

When Chiona reentered the room she did not return empty-handed. She carried with her a screen of paper, what seemed to be a sandwich that was cut into two triangles and a candle with a few matches on it. She made her way back up to the front of the classroom and carefully set the objects down on the scarred wooden desks at the front of the room.

“Now,” She spoke with a grin crossing her face. “We learn magic. And it is one of my specialties, Autistics. The ability to see the aura of a person, object, or thing. The ability to taste things from a distance, see emotions, look through solid objects, and plenty of other things that you can experiment with.”

“The way to practice Auristic can be deceptively simple. It is not a hard magical phenomenon to manifest, no. The difficulty lies within interpreting and understanding what the aura is trying to tell you. The better your gut instinct and the better you are at using context clues of the surroundings to supplement your readings, the better your results will be with this discipline.”

“Here’s how you do it. Pull djed into your eyes, or any sensory body part, and let it synchronize with your mind. That’s it. That's the secret to, in my humble opinion, one of the strongest magics there is.”

“But before we do that we may as well discuss what an aura is. An aura is a manifestation of a person’s or object’s djed. It will tell you anything you could possibly want to know about that object if it's hot or cold, what it tastes like, what a person is feeling, seeing magic in action, or even advanced uses like predicting someone's moves before they even make them.”

“Even a fledgling Aurist can do all of these things, they are just limited by scope, range, and time. As well as some accuracy issues. It's easy to get physical properties and emotions right off the bat from a glance at the aura but Intent or Residual Activity, like seeing if someone has recently killed someone, takes a novice an insane amount of time and strain and might not even be right.”

“You’ll notice I’ve only explained what an aura is and not what it looks like. That is simply because I cannot tell you what an aura looks like. The way your mind and djed interpret what an aura is is entirely up to you.”

“So. Shall we begin?” She said with a laugh as the class bent forward across their desks, ready to take in every little thing that they could do.

Chiona placed a finger at her sternum and pulled the finger up to her eyes. “This is the path I take to move djed from my soul to my eyes, ears, mouth, and other senses. Everyone’s path will be different and everyone’s djed will feel just a little different from everyone else’s. That is up for you to discover and experiment with.”

[Alice Weaver]

“I would like everyone to close their eyes and look into themselves, take deep breaths, hum if you have to, and imagine a branch, a vine, or a river flowing up from the center of your being and resting behind your eyes as it spreads out like dye in water. Those who already know some magic will find this step easy, for most of you it's your first time reaching for your djed so you might not get it now, or tomorrow, or even by the end of the week but with practice, it will be like second nature. Your djed wants to be used by you. It's your’s to command, you just have to find it.”

Alice took Chiona’s words to heart as they closed their eyes and turned their senses inward. It was easier than their awakening with hypnotism. The pool of power that sat nestled within their chest was more prevalent now that they touched it more and more every day. They dipped their metaphorical fingers into a pool that, while limited by size, seemed to have unlimited potential for creation, pleasure, destruction, or pain.

They let the djed curl up their fictional fingers as it playfully licked at their knuckles, tickling their hands. It was then they noticed something strange, there were two feelings wrapped up in their djed, two distinct flavors one might say. The most prominent flavor was one of running, hunting, and fast movement that ‘smelled’ distinctly swampy. Alice almost immediately recognized it as Cavan’s and found it briefly ironic that the swamp that nearly killed them both was ingrained in their shared soul.

The secondary djed by process of elimination of therefore hers. It laced through Cavan’s djed-like streams of bright scarlet diluted by the more prevalent djed. Her djed expanded like the roots of a flower, twisting and turning along the major flow of Cavan’s djed. When they turned to listen to the whispers of the two djeds their newly acquired blood chilled when they heard what their soul was whispering to them.

It spoke of control, fear, the ultimate greed. A want, a need, a burning rage to claim what was unjustly taken from them and it’d use whatever it was given to do that. It’d tear down those who opposed it, build up those it needed, and, most importantly, stay hidden. To be found out having this anger at the world was to invite death on itself.

Put on a strong face. A kind face. It madly cackled and Alice briefly saw her body in Infitiy’s Mirrors doubled over, clutching its sides in massive sobs of laughter, its tear-streaked face turning up as a massive grin spread across its face. It was so wide and so manic Alice thought its flesh would split in the reflection.

It urged her to learn. To grow. To be the girl that defied death and won. Her soul would accept nothing less.

[Alice Weaver]

There wasn’t anything wrong with that right? Was it so wrong to not care about those that had no use to you? What did it matter if a man was stabbed to death two alleys over? They didn’t know that man and he would have never offered anything of value to them. They regularly abused and battered people's very souls just to use their unwilling physical bodies for moments of the day. As long as they didn’t possess the wrong person or attract the ire of a Spiritist they were functionally immortal. And if worst came to worst they would simply have to wait a hundred odd years for everyone to forget them and start again. Inconvenient but not unmanageable to the ghost.

Their parasitic djed quivered with excitement at their realization as their mind finally caught up with what their soul has been saying. They were really doing this. They really were going to beat death if it was the last thing they did.

Her dead djed grabbed Cavan’s limp djed by the throat and shoved it up through their spine as it spiraled to sit behind their eyes as the world exploded into color.

The first person they looked at, Chiona, was surrounded by a scintillating hue of threads, each one originating from what seemed to be the small of her back into an ethereal fabric that wrapped around her form. Her very presence caused the fabric to dent and warp as if she was producing her own gravity that caught only her aura. It was almost like Chiona sensed her focus as her aura gave a rippled of soft blue that seemed to speak of curiosity and attentiveness as she turned towards Alice and raised an eyebrow.

The unspoken question of ‘can you see it?’ passed between them as Alice gave a slight incline of their head and Chiona’s Aura flashed a bright color of joy before it calmed to cooler tones. Her hand raised in a shushing motion while gesturing to the other students in the room. An ask to keep quiet and let the other explore more as it was their first time touching djed.

Alice likewise turned their attention toward their fellow students and focused in on the baker woman, with a squint of their eyes and a flex of their djed Chiona’s aura faded from the corner of their vision and the baker’s aura began to unfold and weave itself before them. From the pulsing and warping fabric, they got a sense of intense focus and a deep desire to succeed. When they peered closer into the aura the fabric unraveled and began to whisper more to their eyes.

It was like a heat haze that started in their chest as it flowed through unseen channels in the woman’s body. Alice didn’t know why but they got the sense that it tasted like warmed bread fresh out of the oven, the baker’s djed was full of compassion and gentle touches. It was in stark contrast to their mixed djed of nature and hidden desires. As the djed haze twirled up to the baker’s eyes their aura sharpened and took on a sense of alertness that Alice had only seen in Chiona’s as the woman let out a gasp as her eyes fluttered open and the Ghost and Woman made eye contact as the baker’s eyes flashed with deep confusion.

[Alice Weaver]

Is…something wrong? The spirit thought to themselves as they shifted their focus to their own hands and had to stop the gasp that came from their mouth. Cavan’s aura was dead and somber, slate gray and motionless as he had no complete soul himself, there were flashes and splashes of color at the edges indicating that he wasn’t entirely gone. But they were the barest threads of him left. What was the most startling discovery was the thin veins of crimson that ran through the cold aura that forcibly cause the slate grey weave to flex and bend, the small bits of active red pulsing with the colors of Alice’s emotions. Suprise faded into concern which likewise faded into understanding.

Their aura was a mix of two weaves, like a brilliant, if greyscale, tapestry. Her aura mixed and commanded Cavan’s as she commanded his body. It was odd but made a certain sense. And here they were, foolishly thinking that the only way to detect a ghost possessing someone was to either notice their fake act or be a Spiritist. It simply went to show how little they truly understood of the world and how fast and hard they would have to work to correct that else they make a fatal error.

“Cavan and Vanessa, come to the front would you?” Chiona’s soft voice called out to them as she beckoned the two forwards. The only two in the group that were able to call their djet within such a short time. Both obliged, Cavan and the baker, Vanessa, moved to the front. Their wooden chairs scrapped across the smooth stone floors as they stood up quickly to stand side-by-side on the opposite side of Chiona’s desk.

“I just want to give the others a few more chimes to try and figure it out. But I also want to give you two tips on the more interesting aspects of auristics, senses, and seeing through objects. For senses, you can read an object's aura and taste what it would taste like, feel if it was hot or cold, and even its texture. Hence the sandwich that is going to be my lunch sitting right there.” She gestured to the simple sandwich of meat and cheese with what looked to be a type of brown mustard on it.

Alice’s and Vanessa’s eyes snapped to the meal and to both their surprise the sandwich’s aura snapped into place easily within their new sight. The sandwich had fewer threads, stretched its fabric less, and was simple compared to a person’s aura. As they focused on the simple aura flavors began to trickle into their tongues. The yeast of the rye, the tang and roughness of strong mustard, and the savory-sweet of some sort of candied ham.

Alice pulled a face. It wasn’t the most natural feeling to taste with your eyes but it felt as if they had just taken a bite out of the Chiona’s lunch with their physical mouth. Alice felt excitement bubble up in their chest at the revelation that one could taste and feel with magic. What's to say this didn’t work while possessing someone! The main downside of possession was the lack of physical senses it gave someone. They could hear and see while in someone’s body but touch, taste, and smell were blocked for them…but not if they had auristics apparently.

[Alice Weaver]

It was already such a grand step in their goal, they just acquired a way to always have their senses no matter what form they took. The value of that was not lost on the normally sense-deprived ghost. Any feeling, any taste, any smell, was like a cup of water to a man lost in a desert. It was irreplaceable valuable.

Chiona’s voice snapped the two out of their exploration. “Now, does anyone care to tell me how many fingers I am holding up?” Her voice playful as she placed the ricepaper barrier in front of her hand and left only a blobby shadow shining through from the other side

“I’ll race you,” Vanessa suggests with such casualness and a flick of her hair over her shoulders that Alice could only grin back at her.

“Fine, but don’t be a sore loser when I win.” Alice shot back as a grin spread across Cavan’s features.

The aura of the rice paper was easy to latch on to but hard to get to fade away. An item's aura was coated the object like a second skin and infused the whole thing, to push away the aura was to push away the object and make it fade from sight. A simple idea but hard to execute.

Alice first tried to brute force it by roughly pushing on the aura to get it to pierce in the middle to provide them a hole to look through but was granted only the beginnings of a headache as Cavan’s body struggled to process the data their djed was taking in. Only a few heartbeats later did they realize that the aura wasn’t going to budge at this rate and moved to more underhand tactics. Well, as underhand as one could be to an inanimate object.

They tried slipping their djed into the mental image of the paper’s aura in their mind and worked it like they would when possessing someone, working from a point of impact and slowly twining through it to gain complete and total control over it. It was slow work as their djed kept trying to bring the fading object back into focus because it was right there in front of them but they had to convince themselves that it wasn’t. Good thing Alice had a ton of practice lying to herself over the years…

Ever so slowly the rice paper lost its opacity and became more and more translucent. Chiona’s fingers became ever more distinct behind the barrier and just as they at the point of becoming visible Vanessa blinked.

“Three. You have three fingers up.”

Alice a few seconds later blinked likewise and swore, “Petch. She’s right. Three fingers.”

Vanessa pulled a very unladylike maneuver and stuck her tongue out at Cavan as Alice sighed and rolled their eyes. Chiona let out a snort of laughter.

“While I do love some competitive students we are starting to run out of time. Return to your seats and we’ll start a crash course of Spiritist in a moment.”

As the two made their way back to their seats Vanessa slugged Alice across the back of their arm, sending a ripple of pain up the ghost's spine. “You talk a mean game but ya gotta be able to back it up, Cavan.”

“Yeah yeah, next time I’ll beat you faster than you can blink.” Alice teased back as they took their seat and rubbed the back of their arm, wondering how such a small woman had so much force behind her blows.