The Nature of auras

Tashia was steadily growing more tired. Her schooling had started before dawn and had continued throughout the entire day. Breaks had been few and far between and had only been for refreshments and to relieve oneself of said refreshments. It was getting harder to keep her long blonde hair out of her face as her head slowly dropped to her desk and her thoughts slowly formed into daydreams. A sudden thud at the corner of her desk brought her head back up straight as an arrow and her mind a little hazy.

“Tashia, would you care to explain to your peers what we were just discussing?”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention,” Tashia said to her mentor as she dropped her head in embarrassment.

“That became apparent when you started snoring. If I find you not paying attention again, it will cost you an extra shift in the prayer garden. Are we clear?”

“Yes head mage,” Tashia responded. It wasn’t the fact that she was slacking off on purpose, today's lesson was just something she knew like the back of her hand. They were discussing the different auras that people in their kingdom were known to possess. A lot of people were born with one type of aura, the most common ones being elemental auras, or lower tier auras. There are other less common auras and a few people were even capable of harnessing a second aura. For centuries the church’s involvement in anything to do with auras was minimal at best, but within the last decade, the church has become invested to the point that it teaches aura typing and sensing while also recruiting aura users into the church’s guard and holy knights.

Tashia had been chosen to train and become a member of the church because she had the power of the nature aura. She had trained very little with it, but had discovered at an early age that she had the ability to draw healing power from nature to help injured and sick people, something the church was very interested in. They told her parents that it was the church’s duty to not only be a place of spiritual healing but physical healing as well and that my gift would be of benefit to the church’s holy cause. However upon her induction into the church, they discovered that she could also sense auras, and from that point one her training had been majorly about auras types and little with mastering her own nature aura.

To say that she was unimpressed with her situation would be an understatement. She has always been the caring type and wanted only to help people. Religion wasn’t too important to her, but if it meant she could help people on a larger scale, then she was up for it. It didn’t take her long to actually find joy in learning about the religion and found herself more often than not diving into the teachings of the holy book and soaking in all its knowledge. It didn’t take her long after that to notice a little bit of hypocrisy within the church and when she brought this up to the head sage, she was quickly shut down and chastised for daring to question the head priest's leadership and devotion. Tashia gained a bit of a rebellious streak after this incident and began to sneak out and discover things of her own. At one point just recently, Tashia had learned about some prophecy the church leadership was investigating and that they were tracking down and bringing in people with uncommon auras as a connection to this prophecy. She could never figure out what exactly the prophecy was or why the church was so enthralled by it, but she had made it a goal to figure it out.

The rest of their lesson went quickly enough and soon they were out for the day with only supper and their evening chores left to finish out the day. Tashia finished her supper and chores without incident or complaint and went straight to her chambers. Her room was nothing lavish, but decent for her needs. A comfortable bed in one corner and a desk with a large candle lit lantern above. The stone walls of the interior left little room for decoration, but a large rug kept the cold of one's feet in the colder months. Tashia lit her candle to give the illusion that she was up studying, but she quickly snuck out of her room in search of answers. Tashia needed no light to guide her; she knew the passageways like the back of her hand, which helped her avoid the better lit hallways as well as the night watch that wandered the hallways. Little did she know that tonight would leave her with more questions than answers.

Her usual destination proved fruitless once again as no one of the clergy, including the sages, had met in a less known room where she had overheard talk of the prophecy to begin with. She was about to give up for the night when she collided with a stranger in one of the darkened hallways. She couldn’t clearly make out who it was, but judging from the fact that they were wandering down darkened hallways with nothing to light the way, she assumed it was another rebellious kid.

“Are you ok?” a young man's voice came from the shadowy figure above her.

“I’ll be alright,” she said as she took hold of the hand he offered to help her up. Quickly she was back on her feet, her hand still embraced with his when her aura sense kicked in. What she sensed caused her to quickly pull her hand away. This wasn’t possible; he had the power of harnessing two different auras, but it was a combination that had never been seen before. The stranger must have assumed she could sense his aura as he quickly moved past her and into the shadows. A quick apology was all she heard from the stranger as he disappeared and left her wondering who he was.