Soul Streets

Fatale Thunder

The moment I entered the room, the smell of heavy incense hit me like a large slap in the face.

The room was a large concrete room with various pillers and a small shrine off to the side. The shrine held freshly burned incense, an offering to whatever spirits these people prayed to.

"Hello? Is anybody here?"

I walked, deeper into the room. But before I could get too far, the door closed behind me. The room was plunged into darkness. All except for the light of the incense.

"What's going on? Sherry told me to come in here and get a full run through."

An old craggedy laugh rang through the air. The voice sounded slightly female, and whoever it was had probably had a beautiful voice when they were young,  but now it was scratchy and shriveled.

"Trent's Bishop did? What nonsense is that little girl thinking? Are you even Neotha?"

I nodded, although it was probably pointless in the darkness.

"I am Neotha."I said. "They called me a unique type but they said they didn't quite know what species I was. Does that mean the Neotha are some kind of mutation or something? Like Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection?"

"Haha, no child. The Neotha have existed since the dawn of time. While new species some times are made, the original Neotha were seperated from humans since the beginning. The Neotha have an essential building block of their being that is different from that of humans, do you know what that is?"

I felt a hum go through the air. It wasn't a sound, but I could feel it. It was like instinct was driving fear into my body,  my hair stood on end.

Then it hit me.

Literally, a blast of wind knocked me off my feet. I found myself flying through the air in the dark, lost without knowing where the ground was, till I hit the ground on my side. I had thought the door was closer than where I had landed. Either I hadn't been in the air as long as I thought or the door was suddenly farther away.

"It's energy!"

"More specifically!"

Another blast of wind sent me sprawling, this time it had come from behind me.

"Aura! Neotha can manipulate aura!" I said as I remembered Sherry moving the aura away from my eyes earlier.

"Good."

"But everyone says they can't see my aura, so what am I supposed to do?"

Another cackle from the woman.

"Just because no one can see it doesn't mean it isn't there. You said you were a unique type? Then this will be the perfect first excercise for you. Use your eyes to find me."

My eyes? It was pitch black in the room, I couldn't see anything.

"Come now child. My aura is flared out a little bit and everything, I'm sure even you can feel the pressure."

She was right. This feeling...the tingling that went through my body, this was her aura. I could feel her aura from where I stood.

"Now. Find that feeling. Find the power within yourself, harness it, move it to your eyes once more so that you can see my aura."

I felt the aura move. It started at first, swirling at my center just above my diaphragm, then I moved it up; shifting the feeling through my chest and up to my head. I closed my eyes and moved the aura into them. When I opened them again, it was like a giant living body made of black energy that had little bits of green interlaced in its form, stood in front of me.

"There is no way you are that big!" I exclaimed. The shape was at least ten feet tall and five feet wide that moved shapelessly.

"Oh, that's not me little one. That is my aura. It radiates around my body. Aura is the life energy of the soul, controlled by the mind, and projected by the body."

I watched the aura move. I walked towards it, and into the mass.

I stood there, blinded by the color that swirled around my body. The purple aura was a cloud like haze that moved around me as I moved, never releasing me from its grasp.

It was like my own breath was bring taken away from me.

But then I breathed, and the aura was gone. I had stood in the same spot as I had been when I entered the aura, but the aura had moved.

It shifted through the space, moving relentlessly and never staying in a single place. Wherever this lady was; she, or rather her aura, was moving.

"How am I supposed to find you with my sight if you are moving?"

"I never said your sight was the only sense you would need to find me with. Neotha have six senses, the basic five that humans have, as well as the auric sense. You already have learned how to control your aura and your sight, but you still have four others."

Hearing, tasting, touch, and smell; those were the senses I needed to find this lady.

I watched the aura is it shifted around something, as if going around a vertical rectangle. The pillars I thought.

I walked up to the pillar that her aura had gone around and leaned my back up against it.

"Who are you exactly?" I asked the open air.

Then from my left I heard the old woman respond, "I was apart of Trent's grandfather's royal guard. I trained Charley and Trent's father. I was one of the knights, they called me the family's strongest female knight in history. I earned the name "The Fatale Thunder", after all, I was quite the looker in my day."

She was to my left, as long as I kept the pillar in perspective I could ignore any of her aura that went to my right.

Taste was useless in this situation, and the only smell was that of burning incense. Touch? But how would that...

Then I remembered learning about vibrations in school. I placed myself firmly on the ground and moved my aura down to my feet, moving it first to my center and then using my hand to move it down to my shoes.

There, even through the plastic of my shoes, I could feel it. My aura was uneffected in the area around me, except off to my left where there was a slight disturbance. She was radiating aura from her whole body, moving it above ground. What the old woman had forgot was the aura in her feet.

"Why did they call you the thunder part?"

The old woman cackled, still off to my left. "In the world of the Neotha there are only 10 elements. I am a Soulist, as such I have control over two elements. These two elements are space and wind, which if combined in the right proportions..."

Then I saw it, a little spark of electricity off to my left.

I dove for her, only a few feet away from where the spark had been, when the lights came on and I landed flat on my face.

"Nice job, maybe we will make a strong Neotha out of you yet!"

Above me stood an old woman about five feet tall with scraggly gray hair that hung around her shoulders. This was the gorilla that trained the Neotha of the Casadin family.