Polarized

Auralilies and Hazelnuts

Skye looked around. Next to the sword with the Excalibur tag were four more weapons: a stake, a metal ax, a machete, and another sword, all of them dug into the soil blades-down. (Minus the stake, which was still buried in the soil but didn't have a blade) Skye picked up the tags from each weapon and read them off, one by one:

Nightslasher, read the label on the other sword.

Woodchopper, read the tag on the ax.

Jungle Blade, read the tag on the machete.

Long pointy thing, read the label on the stake. Skye chuckled at the last one. Lucian may have run out of ideas when naming the stake, but he's not wrong...

After taking a look around the Sword Hoard, which was surrounded by a swath of weeds, Skye left Noi and Lucian's front yard behind. Then, after opening up directions on her phone, she began her commute to school.

***

"Luka?"

The hooded boy stopped in his tracks. "You're Ivan's sister, right?"

Skye nodded. "Yup, that's me."

Skye had just finished her first four periods, and was now taking lunch break in Silver Run's courtyard. It was at that moment when she ran into Luka Archer, the elusive plant mage and Ivan's friend since junior year.

"Why have you called me?" Luka asked.

"So..." Skye began, "do you know of anything that could boost my brother's magic skills? Make his aura "less shitty," as he describes it?"

"Less shitty in what way?"

Skye paused. True, Ivan could suppress his aura quite effectively, but as a consequence of that, he never got to develop his powers beyond using them to pull off the occasional prank on Skye. Ivan may be an illusion-caster, but his illusions were rather spotty, and frankly, quite easy to detect. Just because he was an aura-haver who volunteered at Avriya and had friends who were mages didn't mean he could become one himself without struggle— due to a lifetime of passing himself off as a non-aura-haver, he was left at a disadvantage among his magic-practicing peers. "My brother's an illusioner with an abnormally weak aura, so I'm assuming he's looking for a way to strengthen it," Skye replied. "You happen to know at least one way, right?"

"Sure I do," Luka responded. "I'm a plant expert after all." For a moment, Skye thought Luka's eyes darkened, but then his expression returned to normal. "So have you heard about auralilies?"

"Auralilies?" Skye asked. "What are those?"

Luka tugged on Skye's sleeve. "I'm growing a few in the garden," he told her. "Let me show you them."

***

After passing through the gates of Silver Run's garden yet again, Skye was greeted by a barrage of greenery. She took in the scene with her eyes, gaping at the tendrils and the vines and the vast multitude of plants crawling in one area. Luka, meanwhile, kept on walking, leading her to a corner of the garden with a small pond, where colorful flowers blossomed from lily pads floating in the water. "Auralilies," he said profoundly. "Here they are."

"That's neat," Skye commented. "So, which ones are for illusioners?"

Careful not to fall into the pond, Luka picked a tricolor flower off a lilypad. He held the flower in front of Skye, and Skye took a closer look at it. The auralily had an orange center, which faded into yellow in a ring outside its center, and trailed off to teal at the tips of its petals. Then Luka put the flower inside a container with a pressing and filtering mechanism, pushing the plunger so that it squeezed the flower's juices through the filter. The remaining nectar pooled at the bottom of the container, orange and sticky. "Auralily nectar. Good for increasing the intensity of one's aura. A single flower's worth can boost a mage's abilities for up to fifty minutes," he explained. "After that its effects wear off. But even if auralily nectar only works temporarily, it's insanely strong. Some of the most famous mages in Cloudgate drank it to enhance their performance on missions. Kai Dalton was rumored to have drunk twelve gallons in his lifetime..."