The Weaponsmaster

Chapter 5

Drea kept her eyes open as he was carrying her, but she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. He was jumping from building to building like a ninja, moving at a speed so fast that the naked eye couldn’t possibly catch him. The land under their feet and the world around them was blurring at the speed he was moving, and yet his eyes could somehow make out the landscape ahead of them. His eyes might’ve just gotten used to the speed, but hers hadn’t. Everything still looked blurry and undefined.

Within only a couple of minutes, they had arrived at their destination. It was a small alcove a bit out of town in a rural area. A waterfall of about ten or twelve feet high flowed down over the smooth gray rocks, crashing down softly into a shallow pond. The gray rocks continued down the sides of the waterfall and around the pond. They formed flat ground with a few large boulders spread around. A forest surrounded the waterfall with natural paths leading to and from the rocky underfoot. The waterfall was an interruption in the forest, splitting up the trees and grass with its smooth gray rocks.

Drea had been there many times with Kevin and their father when she was little, but hadn’t come often in the years since Kevin died. It was never the same. As she set her eyes upon it again, she was happy to see that it had lost none of its beauty in the years since she’d been there. The water still sparkled like stars as the crisp water twinkled down into the shiny, unbroken pond water. The koi fish moved silently in it, the oranges and reds swirling around in the pool of blue. The smooth gray rocks formed the cliff behind the waterfall, jumping to the ground like cooled lava.

The boy landed on the flat rocks covering the ground. With a look around, he set Drea down, propping her up against one of the large boulders. He was extremely careful of her arm as he did so. When he gestured for it again, she held it out tentatively. He looked at it under his critical eye before holding his hand out over her wrist.

She watched suspiciously, unsure of what he was planning on doing. He’d said something about healing her. What is that supposed to mean?

His hand began to glow green and, like magic, Drea felt the pain and pressure release from her wrist. The bruises were lifting off of her skin as he poured his energy into her wound. The blood stopped dripping as her skin reformed itself slowly around the healing muscles and bone. It was strange to see the inside of her wrist healing like that as the skin slithered back over her arm. Her arm was already feeling better with the energy of his hands resembling the cool feel of smooth water.  

“How are you doing that?” she asked in bewilderment. Her voice sounded gravelly after not talking for some time. He looked up to meet her eyes without taking his focus off of her arm. How he could maintain that amount of focus was beyond her.

“I’m using my aura to heal you,” he said, “It’s one of our healing techniques. I’m able to speed up time within the space of my aura. I use my mind and aura though to fix anything that time wouldn’t mend correctly.”

“How?” asked Drea

“I can use my aura to feel the damage inside the body where the eyes can’t see. I use my mind to direct the aura through my hand to fix that internal damage by reforming bones or nerves. I can use the aura to fix broken bones, fill in cracked bones, heal nerve damage and the nerves or muscles themselves, and of course heal outside wounds like cuts and bleeding wounds.”

Looking at the thoughtful look on her face, he added, “Only certain people can direct their aura so precisely though, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up. It’s usually something that comes with birth.”

“And how do you know that I can’t heal people like you?” she responded, beginning to return back to herself.

“Andrea, you don’t have the feel in your aura,” he said with a chuckle and a smile. It was the first time he seemed to let go of some of that seriousness. “A healer’s aura has a certain quality to it. It’s more… precise and exact.”