Chapter 30: A True Showing Of Aura

  Erik woke feeling well rested several hours before the sun rose. He decided to spend a few hours training in meditation until the others rose. Leviathan either slept or rested, and didn’t want to train with him, and Cross remained as antisocial as before.

  Luckily, Sovereign was more than willing, especially seeing Erik’s mess of a job at controlling his aura when training with Levvie. The two sat down in front of each other the exact same place Lev and Erik trained.

  Recently, the island had started sprouting grass and weeds. It was some kind of huge rocky manifestation of Leviathan Caress, and despite it being made of pure stone, somehow still floated on the ocean.

  Now, green dots and patches had grown on it, most of it where the stone met the sea, but also at Erik’s current location, which was close to the lake in the centre of the island. He looked around in wonder at his ever-changing magical landscape.

  “I will start by telling you three things, each one as important as the last. I hope you will take these words to heart, Master Titan… Erik,” Sovereign said, his orange and pink colours undulating at every word.

  Erik nodded in agreement.

  “First, you need to stop trying to contain your aura. Even when fighting, you try so hard to keep it locked inside you.”

  “About that,” Erik interjected. “I’m scared it will hurt those around me, even my friends. I’ve seen the effect the aura has on three separate occasions, and two of them were on innocent people. It almost gave Jessie a stroke, and that Brad character had it coming, sure, but I shouldn’t have scared him shitless. It’s my responsibility to keep it in check.”

  “What you need is to control it, not lock it up. Its flow should be constant. That brings me to the second; your aura is most affected by your emotions. If your emotions are in turmoil, so too will your aura be. As such, what I would like to tell you to imprison, rather than your aura, is your emotions,” Sovereign said.

  “I can’t do that. At best, that’d just make me evil.”

  “Quite right. So I won’t tell you that. I’ll instead tell you to learn to keep your emotions in check. Deflect. Ignore. I’m not telling you not to feel, but not to lose yourself in what you’re feeling. Do you understand?”

  “I think so. I’ll try. The way I see it, that’s the best thing to do, anyway.”

  “Quite.”

  “And the third thing?” Erik asked.

  “Practice. Never neglect it. While your aura might be weak now, it might be one of your most effective weapons down the line.”

  “It’s weak?” Erik asked, having the opposite opinion.

  “All of your abilities are quite weak, yes. You already know this by training with Leviathan Caress, do you not?”

  “I guess. But he’s crazy strong. Can you show me what a strong aura feels like?”

  “That might not be the best idea,” Sovereign said with worry in his voice.

  “Please?” Erik begged the spirit.

  Moments later, the air grew heavy. Erik struggled to get it all the way into his lungs as Sovereign seemed to grow infinitely bigger right in front of him. All around Sovereign’s growing form was a pink and orange radiant wave, expanding along with him.

  It showered Erik in a golden light and wrapped around him. It squeezed him, almost crushing him. Erik felt his feet rising from the ground as he looked up at Sovereign in horror. He gasped for air, his body on the verge of collapsing in on itself.

  Sovereign then moved for the first time in what felt like a long while. He lowered his head closer to Erik, and the giant head loomed over him. Erik felt his bones break. Between Erik’s pained and horrified face and Sovereign’s head, a golden pink and orange shape grew into existence, though its eventual form was impossible to see with his blurred vision and its glowing edges.

  The object moved towards Erik and stabbed right through him like a massive blade of energy made manifest. In fact, that was exactly what it was. Erik’s entire body felt like it was bloodlessly split apart from the middle. It was excruciating, and Erik couldn’t do a thing about it.

  The object penetrating his body vanished moments later along with the crushing pressure, and Erik was released from the tight grip. Sovereign had returned to his usual size and the radiating energy around him had settled and was near-impossible to see anymore, though Erik could still feel it.

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  Though he didn’t feel it, when he looked down heaving for air, he was already standing on the ground. He spent several minutes to calm himself after that ordeal, while Sovereign observed him.

  “That… was insane,” Erik said with deep gasps, having already inspected his body for wounds. The wound from the energy blade that had stabbed him was gone, and his bones were fine, even though he had felt them being crushed just minutes earlier.

  “Any more and your soul might take unrecoverable damage,” Sovereign said.

  “You weren’t messing around when you called it a weapon. How did you shape your aura into a blade and stab me with it?” Erik asked.

  “Control. While I can’t harm your body in this place, your aura can be used to do physical damage once you train enough. It is most often used to keep your enemies wondering what you are about to do next. Sometimes an aura can have an innate trait, like Authority. This can make control more complicated, as its effects can be stronger or weaker than intended at first. It is only a matter of how well you can control it. Now, are you ready to start?”

  “I am,” Erik said, nodding to Sovereign.

  “Excellent. Unlike Leviathan’s training, this will be mentally exhausting. That means you’ll also be tired when you leave this place. Keep that in mind when you have plans in the future,” Sovereign warned.

  Erik released his aura that he had kept pent up for quite some time. He wasn’t sure whether his actual body would release it at the same time, or if he could only release it from his manifested body in his mental landscape, but he’d find out soon enough.

  As the aura stretched out into the surrounding air, he let out a breath of relief. It felt amazing. He hadn’t realised how much energy he had spent keeping it bottled up.

  “Keep it in check. Try to make it swirl around your body in gentle and precise motions.”

  Erik tried to do so, but couldn’t rein the liberated aura in. It evaded Erik, extending until it dissolved roughly seven meters from him.

  “What is it doing?” Erik asked, straining to control the aura.

  “It is doing nothing. Your aura is in a weak enough state to follow the flow of the air. It will grow denser over time, but that also means it will be harder to control.”

  “So it’s like a muscle?”

  “In a way. Though there is no need to try so hard. It is a mental muscle. You need to find your link to the aura.”

  Erik tried to relax himself. He took deep, lung-filling breaths, held it inside for a short while before expelling it and repeating the process, all the while trying to find some mental connection between him and his aura. While there was no need for air, nor any actual air, this was just reflex for Erik, he found that it worked to calm him,

  If he understood what Sovereign was saying, it was something like a new limb he had to learn to control. When born, humans had no idea how to use their muscles, at least not with any precision. This was something one learned in time, gripping things at first, then shaking it. If it was food, one would also practise hand-eye coordination and sense of space. The first ten or so years was all about increasing the control of all motor functions.

  Now, Erik had a brand new limb. While it should be easier to learn to control one single limb instead of an entire body’s worth, his experience might be what made this difficult. He had already mastered his motor functions a long time ago, and some say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. That is wrong, of course, but it was a challenge.

  Erik thought of other limbs one might’ve grown in sci-fi or fantasy settings. There were some stories with more arms and some with wings, but he hadn’t seen or read much else. He tried imagining how he would try controlling wings. It would be with his back muscles, right? How would a limb much more ethereal be connected? It wasn’t like a tail or an arm, which were connected at a specific point.

  His aura was all over his body, much like his skin. Was that it? Could he mentally treat his skin as the muscles controlling his new auric limb? After a few seconds attempting this, he wondered how he would even do that. His skin was an organ, not a limb or a muscle. He couldn’t consciously control it. Still, Erik felt this was along the correct line of thought, and he stayed with it for the next while.

  Erik felt something click in his head, as if suddenly remembering that song or that actor’s name, just as a section of the aura surrounding him moved out of sync with the rest of it.

  Sadly, as Erik felt this sensation, he completely lost the connection to his aura, and wasn’t able to move it anymore. What was it he had been thinking about? What was the right association? He’d been thinking of sweat, of all things. Perspiration. Or had he moved on to… he moved part of his aura again. Steam.

  He visualised his skin as something releasing steam. That triggered something within his aura and allowed him slight control by visualising small vents rotating and changing direction and angle. It wasn’t a perfect system, but at least he got a small sense of control. Now all he had to do was the mental exercise of visualising this all over his body and controlling all his aura, not just part of it.

  The next few hours went by fast, and Erik had managed slight control of his entire aura. He had got to a point that he could slowly, and with a bit too much effort, swirl it around him. He had got used to reactivating the connection in a haste, though, and whenever he lost his focus, he could go back to controlling his aura in just a few moments.

  It should be time for everyone to wake up by now, and so Erik took his leave, saying his goodbyes to Sovereign before opening his eyes in his hotel room.

  He hadn’t noticed how messy his room was, and by no fault of his own. Erik was alone, a rare occurrence the past several days, which could only mean the rest hadn’t risen from bed yet or had found him meditating and gone ahead to the breakfast hall.

  Famished, he considered that he had been without food since breakfast the day before. His wounds were healing rapidly, which likely consumed a great deal of energy as well. He was also surprised by the lack of pain he felt, considering his injury was still fresh.

  He was far from his best condition, but he was feeling rather okay, all things considered. Erik dressed himself, tossing on a shirt over his bandaged torso, and went down for breakfast.