Chapter 23 #2
There’s a hitch in the air right as the moon fully centers in the middle plane of glass.
The lights from the scones around the walls douse and the only illumination is from the aura the spirits cast around.
The blue light seeming to glow brighter and the deep purple rune in the middle of the tree begins to glow.
A soft hum echoes around the space with individual voices humming along with it. The voices of the spirits – even though they can’t sing they can still expel music. And then a beat of divine aura pulses from the tree. Raw power and peace filling every corner of the area and even past it.
There had been one year when I was younger I had even felt the power all the way back at my parents’ estate.
The hum rises and different strings of song weave through the melodies. I glance down at Mavyn to gage her reaction and I’m struck as I look at her. As I feel her aura.
A transparent light of blood red evenly flows around her.
It stays close to the outline of her body, but I can see it.
I can see her aura. Which should be impossible.
People can’t see auras. They can feel them, sense them, know how powerful they are from them and get an idea about their soul through them.
I hadn’t been able to see her soul before.
The eyes are the one way to see into someone else and view their soul.
It doesn’t happen often for people looking into other people’s eyes, but for fated it’s instinctual.
To see that part of ourselves connected to our fated is primal. It’s a need greater than much else.
She had seen my soul. I know she had seen it. But when I looked at her eyes, when I tried looking into them – past them – there was nothing. I couldn’t see past pale pink.
And vampires as a whole don’t have a lot of magic and in turn aura.
Most of their aura they get from whoever’s blood they drank, but Mavyn had no aura that any of us could read.
She wasn’t mortal anymore because she was turned so she has a level of power, but to have so little aura that a devil can’t feel it means they have no magic.
I had thought maybe that was why I wasn’t able to see her soul. Aura’s reflect the soul of a person as well as their magic. But now. . .
The melody shifts and her aura grows as tendrils of darker red and sapphire blue weave through her overall energy. It feels like an old type of power. It feels like there shouldn’t be a way for her hide it. With how much it is it should be impossible to contain.
Just this bit that I can feel – can see – and with what I had felt before when we were in the gym a few weeks ago. . .
Music rises and ribbons of aura-filled light weave through the overall blue. Much like Mavyn’s tendrils of red and blue do through her overall aura.
Something zips past the corner of my eyesight and I look up to the spirits of the willow flaring out around their tree. The ones closest to me I can see lift their hands before them and make their Willow of Lore symbol.
Beside me I feel Mavyn shift. She takes a step to the side, out of my hold, and lifts her face to the moon above. Eyes that had been a pale pink are now blood red. A color no vampire should have unless the vampyr who turned them had eyes the color black.
But it doesn’t matter because her face looks so serene. So relaxed in peace and another energy starts lightly weaving around her as she lifts her hands before her. My mind – my soul and blood studder as her fingers bend and straighten.
I would stop her but that other energy lightens to blue as her hands form the Willow of Lore symbol. An etherealness wraps her as her eyes close and her lips part.
The melody of the spirits drops into a lower beat with power pulsing from the tree. The end of the song coming and the ceremony coming to a close, but instead of all eyes on the rune in the bark they’re all watching her.
The notes rise from that lower beat as Mavyn takes in a breath and then her voice joins the hum of the spirits.
Words I’ve never heard before pour from her lips in a lyrical tone perfectly harmonizing with the spirits. And that blue aura that isn’t hers darkens as spirits watch her with a recognition. Their small blue glowing forms drifting towards Mavyn and drawing blue aura around her as they dance.
She adds more strength to her song with a smile and the spirits welcome it. Pulling ribbons of blue around her and her aura that I can still see flares brighter. That sweeter berry scent from the tree strengthening with a floral undertone as Mavyn sings.
Red lines begin glowing beneath the skin of her hands and neck as the song starts to come to a close.
They look similar to the gold ones on Castiel, but hers flow to her face as well.
The lines of red forming different symbols and markings.
One of them glows in the center of her forehead and I realize it’s the same symbol – the same rune – as the one on the Willow of Lore.
I realize it just as there’s a curl waving through the space of power more harmonious than before and the aura of the spirits begins shifting to a warmer tone. Blue lights dip to the opposite scale and auras of translucent red replace the blue.
Impossible.
The Willow of Lore spirits – which have done this ceremony for over a thousand years, who have not allowed anyone to make their symbol without consequences since the first years of Syngenia, who have not had their lyrical song sung in over a thousand years – change their aura.
Beings that are as mysterious as the gods, with power exceeding most celestials, who never let anyone interrupt their ceremony, and who are known for their signature aura color. . . they change it. They change it to match Mavyn’s.
A type of blessing that. . . well I don’t even know what that means.
Her voice rises with the ending of the song. Cutting off her breath to finish the last words.
Red light – aura – floods the grounds with spirits glowing the same as they end their melodies. A last pulse of magic from the tree ending the ceremony and with that final beat the light from the rune on the tree dies. The spirits begin to wink out one by one after.
Opening her eyes, the last of the spirits float before her. Their tiny hands forming their symbol and they do something reserved only for their goddesses.
They bow.
And then we’re plunged into darkness. Left with only a faint scent of berries and floral and power older than the first celestials and witches.