I already told you, there’s no reason to learn the blade right now. You can use aura with a club or a cane or whatever other weapon you choose and they’re easier to use than any bladed weapon, Jormun said. It’s way better if you instead just take the time to get in shape for now and learn to use a weapon later.
“That’s stupid,” Ezra scoffed. “I need to know how to use a weapon, or else the aura won’t do jack shit for me.”
No, you’re stupid, Jormun replied. You can learn some of how to use a weapon just by practicing, sure, but the only real way to get better at fighting is to fight. I can train you on strikes to make and guards to take, on your stance and breathing, but it isn’t worth much until you can practice against someone with a body. Preferably, you’ll meet with at least a Pseudo-Knight who can really train you before you get into any fights with demons.
“There aren’t any demons that’re around. I’ve never even heard about them, so give it a rest! Plus, there’s no fuckin way there’s gonna be Pseudo-Knights who’re going to be walking around the slums of Villy, how many times do I have to tell you?” Ezra shot back. “You’re not listening. I live in the slums of a city that isn’t even all that big. I can barely get into the upper city for a day, and it costs me more than a full week’s wages to get there. You think I’m going to come across some random master that just decides to take me under their wing?”
Not anytime soon, no, Jormun agreed. So it’s better to get in good shape now and truly become an Initiate first, only worry about forms later when someone can better teach you something more than the specific way that you need to strike downward with a sword you can’t afford to buy. I’ll explain it to you again and again, but just swinging a sword in an empty courtyard won’t do much for you. It’s better to just make progress towards Sainthood and then begin training in earnest when you reach Adept with a trained, experienced teacher. At that point, you’ll be able to use basic aural attacks, so the training will matter more. Actually…
Jormun trailed off at that, and Ezra sat on his bed, looking at the old ghost as he scratched at his untamed beard. The piercing eyes stared at him, and Ezra found himself working his jaw while waiting for his mentor to continue. After nearly a minute, Jormun seemed to come to a conclusion and nodded to himself.
I’ll look into most of this after you go to sleep. For now, you ready to begin filling your inner world?
“I guess I don’t have a whole lot of other options, do I?” Ezra shrugged. “Teach me.”
There isn’t a whole lot to teach.
“You bastard,” Ezra said, blinking up at the ghost who laughed heartily.
I can’t help it, kid. You’re just funny as shit. But really, it’s something you need to learn by feel, not by instruction. Feeling and recognizing aura’s the hardest part, and you did that on your first try. Once you’re feeling the aura, you pull it into your inner world. It’s not complex to do so, the difficult part is learning how to move aura from the real world to the internal one, and that’s entirely up to you how it works. It’s a muscle you never knew you had, and no matter how I explain it, it isn’t going to make sense to you.
With nothing else to do but to try it, Ezra settled onto his bed, the straw crackling as he crossed his legs. After he sat, he closed his eyes and tried to reach out and feel the same essence, or affinity, he guessed it was called, as before.
You’re not going to feel fire here, kid. Try cold, wind, ice, or wood.
“How do you know that’s what I was trying to do?”
Good at guessing what amateurs are trying. Now, cold, wind, ice, and wood.
Biting down his response that he had no idea what all those would feel like, Ezra tried to stretch his awareness like he’d been told. He’d felt the fire by how it moved, how it grew and died, and he had no clue what made wood grow. Water, right? In the dirt?
Yeah, no.
Wind was out just about as quick. Something about the attribute seemed to be more complicated than he thought. After all, everyone could say what wind felt like, but why did winds blow? No way he knew.
So, that left cold and ice. They were pretty much the same, right?
He was familiar with the cold and snowy nights. That was a constant companion as a homeless kid in Villy, even in the summers where frost could settle on small sprouts of grass and exposed limbs. Even now, in his rooms and sitting on his bed, he felt the cold in his toes and tips of his ears. Most of the time, he ignored it, it was a part of life, but now, he thought about how cold was an opposite of fire. Fire killed the cold, but… cold didn’t kill fires, so far as he knew. So were they really opposites?
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Yeah, cold was the opposite of warmth, not fire. Was ice the opposite of fire, though? He didn’t think so.
“Dammit,” he muttered to himself, and Jormun said nothing. Ezra was grateful for that, instead focusing on what he was wrong about. Fire consumed, and ice could too, though not the same way. Ice froze water, but it could unfreeze but you couldn’t unburn something. Frozen food, though, sometimes was preserved and sometimes went bad. Some pieces of rotten wood would get weaker after freezing. So what was different about ice compared to fire?
Cold, yes, but what was cold?
Ezra laughed and pushed that thought out of his head. He wasn’t some idiot in a high collared shirt talking about what cold was. He saw the aura of fire as a man, so what kind of person was ice?
Fire was proud but not cruel. He’d been demanding, and would leave at the drop of a hat once he’d eaten what he wanted. Handsome, and while he was there, he provided for those around him. Coming too close would burn you, and he wouldn’t feel any remorse for it, but…
“Fucking hell,” Ezra mumbled to himself. What was this poetic bullshit? No way was it going to help him with being a Knight. But it was all he had to work with, so he mushed past that thinking and tried to think of ice as a person.
Ice wasn’t kind. It didn’t care for others, only to weaken, to kill. He tried to think of it as some villain, the thing that’d killed countless, children and elderly especially. A freezing beast that wanted to destroy life. Though he tried to force it, this vision of ice he tried to lean into just felt wrong. Maybe he was going about it all wrong?
With a grumble, Ezra stood and walked to the shutters on the back wall of his room, He’d seen the windows of the upper city, of the “real” residents of Villy, today, and they had glass panes, so pretty, but remained so fragile. The thought of breaking someone’s window and having to pay for it made something deep inside of his chest shake in fear. That’d end with him in chains or even the gallows, if he was unlucky enough.
Shaking that thought from his head, he opened the shutters to the winter air, and immediately regretted it. The cold was already there in the corners, on the floor, but now, it filled the room, biting at his nose and ears as he squinted against the wind. Even so, he’d decided to try to sense the aura of ice, and he kept his head out the window to be closer to the ice outside. An icicle dangled overhead, and he reached out, broke it, and brought it down to his face. Then, unwilling to brave the icy cold any longer, he retreated back to his room and drew the shutters closed.
His fingers were already going numb, but he’d come this far. Might as well actually do what he was trying to.
“Still the first day,” he grumbled to himself. “I’m not gonna be giving up this easily.”
Without thinking further about it, he broke the icicle into smaller pieces and put them in his mouth as he closed his eyes and sat back down on his bed. The ice started to melt in his mouth as his tongue protested. It wasn’t a new sensation, to suck on ice as a distraction or as something to fill his belly, but it wasn’t pleasant. The taste of the wooden shingles overhead filled his mouth, but he didn’t focus on that. Instead, he focused on what made ice.
As the chill settled through him, he saw a flash of a purer ice, the person who represented it somehow not looking like a man or woman. They were sharp, difficult to pin down, and unforgiving. Their jawline firm, white hair and…
You don’t need to get intimate with the aura, just move it! Jormun’s words yanked Ezra from thinking further about it, and he groaned as he forced himself to try to pull the ice into himself. He subconsciously swallowed, but that did nothing but take away the thing that he was actively trying to use. Even so, he had a faint grasp on the aura, and tried to pull it towards himself.
Though he grabbed at the feeling, it did nothing but make him feel stupid, and a few seconds later, the feeling was gone, and he couldn’t touch on the ice’s aura again.
It happens to everyone, Jormun laughed as Ezra groaned. See if you can touch it again while you’re not closing your eyes, that’ll be the next step. It’ll be easier as you expand your internal world.
Ezra was about to reply when Adam shouted up the stairs, just loud enough for him to hear through his closed door, “It’s work time!”
“I guess that’s a calling to try to sense aura while I’m working,” he grumbled to himself as he grabbed his cane and began walking down the stairs. Since he’d done it once successfully, he’d set up in front of the fire. There, he figured his existing experience with that kind of aura, he’d have better luck with doing what Jormun had said. After all, though he wasn’t getting any stronger yet, the old ghost had to know something was up. That had to be how he’d already started to feel and see things he’d never even heard of before then.
***
Jormun
The kid basically jumped down the stairs, not noticing the faintest dusting of frost that’d appeared over his shoulders as he touched on and internalized a tiny hint of ice aura.
“Kid’s a fucking genius,” Jormun laughed to himself. “Not the best I’ve ever taught, but…”
He shook his head and walked out through the closed door. He could float and so on, and did it around the kid, but he liked to feel his boots on the ground. It was all the better that the kid was a natural, because convincing someone to keep on trying when he could only barely give them a dream would be miserable at best.
Looking into the inn’s main room, Jormun watched as Ezra hunched over his cane in front of the fire. The kid’s eyes seemed to be paying attention to the room at first, but his vision kept clouding over as he tried to sense aura and bring it into his inner world. It wasn’t quite as obedient as he hoped, but Jormun could see the faintest ripples of heat emanating out from Ezra as his consciousness filled outward.
He continued laughing to himself about the quality of this latest, and probably last, apprentice he’d have as he wandered off towards the upper city. After all, that would have plenty more information for him to eavedrop on and learn where he needed to push the kid to go, because with skills like his? Jormun wouldn’t let Ezra hang around in the middle of nowhere.