by Harlon Banks
"Not sure if you were aware of it as I said earlier; judging from your expression though I'll safely assume you weren't. In which case this counts as two days worth of good deeds off my list." Lee said lazily as he rolled his shoulders and closed his eyes. "Everyone has a certain feel to their energies when they emit them in large enough volumes. Not everyone can decipher these feelings though unless they are rather overly sensitive to the changes of aether naturally, or they train themselves to notice. At face value every Nightborn can either sense or see aura, however only certain ones can actually see deeper within their natures." He trailed off, looking calmly to the side and correcting himself as he gazed down the hall.
"Unless your aether is elemental aspected like that annoying Delaren, or Wrain. Their natures are so prominent it can be sensed even by regular people but anyway." He turned his fuchsia gaze back to Jonath. "If I had to guess I'd say Melissa probably noted it too, given her mystic eye seem rather well developed; those with visual abilities like hers usually are better at sensing the deeper unknowns than those of my ilk. Just thought you should know that." Lee then turned to take his leave, hands still nestled in pockets and his walk cool and nonchalant. Jonath stared into space, his eyes dazed and confused as he tried to comprehend this information. His aura felt foreboding, and empty like death? That didn't sound all too comforting... His explanation also would explain why Casey or Kayda never said anything about it to him either.
Lee's footsteps soon ceased, followed shortly by a closing door as the young man returned to his own room. Jonath standing in the doorway, trying to make sense of it all but surprisingly feeling a bit thankful to Lee. If anything, Lee unlocked a secret of his own being for him, and it helped him get one step closer to understanding who he was. Regardless, Jonath thought it best to keep this information to himself, at least till he knew more on it or somebody else pointed out they knew about it too. He doubted Lee or Orath would say anything to anybody, given their personalities...
Melissa however, might be a problem. Here's to hoping the next time they met she didn't call him 'Death Aura' or something else unwarranted that would give the false impression he was some edgy, depressed mass murder or something. He doubted she'd do that, she seemed to be fond of him (unlike her attitude to Delaren) but still.
Shutting the door, Jonath walked back to his bed to collapse over it. Landing on his new phone Jeremy had slipped into his bag before he got on the bus; this one a slightly upgraded version of his last. Rolling on his back and picking it up, he turned it on while suddenly remembering he had to get that travel card that the old man said he'd buy. Damn he almost forgot! Groaning as he sat up yet again, at this point thoroughly believing he'd get no rest, Jonath stood and began to walk to the door again.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
"What is it now?" He sighed defeated and looked down at the silver-black phone in his left. His eyes glancing at the foreign number. Only person he knew who had this number was Jeremy, yet pretty sure he'd have programmed his caller ID into the phone though? Jonath should probably just ignore it...
He swiped the red icon and hung up; before he took two steps however the phone rang again. That same number dancing across the upper portion of the screen in bold white font.
"Okay, this must be somebody I know." The amnesic sighed swiping right and pressing the device to his left ear and lowering his head. Bangs of platinum silver sweeping over his brow and eyes as he spoke into the phone with a less than enthusiastic tone.
"What do you want?"
"That's a rude way of answering the phone don't you think, pretty boy?"
Jonath froze up, was that Melissa' voice!? How the hell did she get his number!? He pulled the phone away from his ears, looking at the number in disbelief trying to process when the hell she'd been able to get his number because he sure as hell never told her it! Putting the phone back to his ear moments later, Jonath kept his calm tone and brushed off his surprise as nothing.
"How did you get my number, Melissa?" He asked monotone casual. A light chuckle over the phone as he heard her rustle about before her voice graced his eardrums again.
"I'll tell you that in a bit a, right now though I need you to meet me behind the barracks in about ten minutes. Something I want to show you." Her voice sounded a bit more excited than usual. "Hurry up hurry up hurry up! Don't keep a beautiful goddess like me waiting on you now. It'll be worth your time, trust me."
Click! The conversation ended with the swipe of a finger from her end. The young man left a bit dazed by the timing of it all...
Jonath lowered the device in confusion, brow furrowed and eyes narrowed warily at the smartphone in his gloved hand. That was rather sudden... What the hell did Melissa want that would drive her so far as to acquire his number without his permission?
"If I had to guess I'd say Melissa probably noted it too, given her mystic eye seem rather well developed..."
Of course, it all made sense now... Only explanation possible at this point. Jonath closed is eyes and took a deep breath, phone moving to be stashed away in his back pocket. It was just as he thought, there wasn't going to be any time for a nap today at this rate. A heavy groan of defeat, coupled with an irritated huff afterwards and Jonath headed for the door and out of the barracks. As he closed his room door and turned to move down the hall he'd see Delaren walking his direction. The pyromaniac having arms behind his head like some sort of pillow and amber eyes looking oddly calmer than normal. He seemed pretty mellow for once, a stark contrast to all the earlier bravado he showed during the sparring matches.
Putting his own hands into the confines of his black pants Jonath just kept it moving. The two young men making brief eye contact with one another, Jonath doing so more out of decency while Delaren just happened to glance at him off instinct. Amber hues locked on to ghostly pale, Delaren surprising Jonath with a nonchalant head nod of acknowledgement and greeting before looking straight ahead again. Jonath returning the gesture with a mimicry, pleasantly surprised at how chill the fire manipulator could be when he wanted to.
About ten minutes later...
There was nobody around when Jonath arrived behind the living barracks of the grounds. The security of this place not anywhere as serious as he'd thought it would be despite swearing he saw soldiers earlier upon arriving. It really did feel more like a college campus than a prison, that fact was only partially relaxing all the same. Now surrounded by low buildings on one side and a wide open space on the other leading to the perimeter fence way down away, Jonath took another breath and looked up to the moon. His gaze locked onto its luminescence as he seemed to feel more and more soothed the longer he stared.
"Ya made it!" Melissa poked the back of his head before grabbing a clump of his hair with an alluring tone. Jonath tensing up as soon as his body felt her fingers and spinning off his foot to face her! How did she sneak up on him so easily without so much as a sound!? His eyes darted to where she should have been, shocked when she was gone and no trace of her anywhere to be discovered. His body instinctively, for some reason, entering fight or flight mode. Something about this girl didn't sit right with him... All he could get was a sense of danger from her. A deadly predator in the form of a beautiful young woman with a cocky attitude. Why was his senses so wary of her?
"Behind you!" Those words came with a soft sneer.
Jonath pivoted around to see Melissa once again right in his personal space, the next thing he knew his feet were swept from beneath him, he felt her hand pushing on his chest, and he was then on his back. Melissa pinning him down as her now glowing cerulean blue hue peered into his own pale while she held him down with her weight. What was she doing!?
"I have a question I want you to answer very carefully... Lying to me might be nightmarish in consequences." She smiled seductively at him in a whisper with a change in her eyes. Her pupil reminiscent of a gaseous circular void in the cerulean hued ocean that was the pigment of her Melissa. The coloration looking as if it were an endless, bright glowing expan
se being sucked into a swirling black hole. Jonath couldn't move, though he was easily stronger than her physically ever since she made eye contact with him his body felt as if it were pinned down by invisible bindings across the limbs and chest. What kind of visual ability was this!? He could only stare at her as her smile faded and turned into a more maliciously cold glare as her question came.
"Who are you really, Jonath?"
A Ylrah's Dark Curiousity
The Challenger Chapter Thirty-Seven: A Ylrah's Dark Curiousity...
"Who are you really, Jonath?"
The way those words came out of Melissa mouth showed that she wasn't playing around about getting the truth. Her alluring smile, honeyed voice and sultry half-masked gaze all a façade as she sat on the amnesic's waistline. Her left hand pressed firmly on his solar plexus while her glowing cerulean eye enchanted him into some unseen paralysis just by being under its glare. Jonath couldn't move at all, arms splayed out at his sides and body feeling as if it were under the pressure of the most intense gravity ever. He tried to move, even if it meant just a wiggle of his fingers. Melissa laughing softly when she sensed tension in him, her face leaning closer till their noses touched and her eye stared into his.
Despite trying to speak, Jonath couldn't. His mouth wouldn't move despite his mind screaming for him to say something, anything to try to reason with her and tell her he had no idea who he even was either. Whatever supernatural powers her left eye possessed, they were potent.
"You're such an oddity to me, you know that? You can go from an intimidating warrior with a powerful energy about him to a frightened rabbit pinned under the talons of a hawk now. I can't control the intensity of my powers yet, as a warning." She chuckled trailing off and raising up away from his face with an ominous smirk. Her left hand curling inwards to the palm grabbing a handful of his black shirt in its grip as her tone grew more lackadaisical.
"So unfortunately for you, the more you try to break free of my paralysis the tighter it's going to ensnare you. Think of it as a snake tightening up every time you exhale. Pretty soon you won't even be able to breathe because it'll lock up your respiratory system." She shrugged glancing off to the side momentarily before setting her gaze back upon him. It would seem she could keep the spell active even without continuously looking at him.
"It only ever works as an ambush technique though; I can never seem to get it to trigger on anything aware of my intent to harm them. Big reason why I never used it on Wrain in our scrap. Anyway..." She reached down to her right black laced boot and withdrew the combat knife strapped to the outer side. Raising it to her face as she ran her left index finger across the shining metal blade idly. Jonath's eyes widening, this was bad. This was really bad... Melissa the entire time looked as casual as ever over the fact she had just ambushed and restrained a man in an obscure blind spot of the facility grounds. She wasn't seriously contemplating killing him, was she!?
"I guess I should probably be a good girl and tell you why exactly I'm so on edge about figuring out who you are, right? How can I not when I have a pretty pair of eyes staring at me so intensely?" The young woman glanced back down to him with a nonchalant stare that soon arced into a smile. Jonath could only meet her eyes with his own, they were the only things he could consciously move anyway. Despite knowing just how much danger he was in however, Jonath's gaze portrayed nothing but a sense of calmness and anticipation for what would happen next. Melissa wouldn't outright say it, but she found the expressiveness of even his staring rather intoxicating. She always had a thing for eyes, after all.
"Well, to put it simply," as she began to talk she would casually toss her dagger with a spiraling ascent and descent, catching it by the hilt effortlessly every time even without looking.
"Your aura when I saw it gave me some really bad déjà vu; it wasn't the typical kind either, but the kind that basically screamed out something bad was going to happen if I ignored it. I couldn't quite pinpoint how but I'm selfish and will worry about all that when the feeling goes away. All I know is I've met an energy very close to yours a long time ago, and it didn't turn out well.. otherwise my body wouldn't be getting chills just thinking about your aether." She paused catching the knife and raising her arms into a confused shrug.
Jonath could barely keep up with what the hell she was saying! She went this far just to quench a bad feeling in her gut? Was she crazy!?
"It's really weird to me. I like you, Jonath; you seem like a really cool guy and I wouldn't mind being friends with you. However I can't just ignore this inherent screaming of my body to kill you. You give me bad vibes, vibes that make me uncomfortable and that's saying a lot considering the type of person I am." She sighed closing her eye and shaking her head now apparently upset she even had to do this to him.
Lee said the same thing, about Jonath's aura being very uncomfortable to witness at a deeper level... Was he a bad omen? Deja Vu?
Wait...
She felt aura like his before!? Where from!? Dammit he wished he could gain just an inch of leverage against this paralysis so he could speak! His thoughts distracted by the spiraling ascent of the dagger casting a shadow over his face as it obscured portions of the full moon above.
Melissa caught the knife again and lightly ran the tip of the edge across Jonath's neck, carefully avoiding cutting him as she continued to fixate her gaze on those soft glowing eyes of his. Then she raised the knife up in a reversed grip as if preparing to stab him in the throat and murder him in cold blood right in this obscure place. He had to do something, he had to break free of this paralysis or she really was going to kill him.
"This is No Man's Land territory after all, I doubt me killing you would get me in too much trouble but oh well." She sighed a bit regretful of the fact she was about to do this, she had actually kinda liked Jonath all things considered. Instinct was telling her to eliminate him after that show of strength however, and she'd be a fool if she didn't abode by it and later come to regret it all. Her free hand moved to gently brush down Jonath's eyelids over his eyes to blot out his gaze. It was the least she could do to try to lessen his stress. Meanwhile the inside of Jonath's mind was rampant with fight or flight signals, he had to fucking do something or he would die!
"I'll make it one quick and painless slash to the jugular while numbing your mind so you won't feel anything as you bleed out. It'll be like drifting off into a permanent, soothing sleep. Sorry it had to come to this, love." Melissa' words sounded genuine, yet cold. Her dagger spun back into a standard grip and raised for a quick slashing motion across his throat.
"God dammit body fucking move!" Jonath pleaded in his mind with raw emotion, he couldn't die like this. He couldn't, not after all he'd fucking been through up until this point. It was no use though, his body was unresponsive to any pleas from his mind. Her powers were too strong, she was a premiere ambush hunter in a sense. Everything about her powers perfectly formulated to take down her opponents when they were off guard with extreme potency. This was it, this was the end... Jonath was about to die.
Melissa brought her dagger down to deal the final blow, Jonath's right index finger twitched suddenly accompanied by a sudden, primordial intensity in his eyes. A sharp surge of aura spiking in him that made Melissa hesitate for just a split second in shock. A second that would save Jonath's life...
"Blade Dance."
Melissa hitched a breath in her throat as her gaze turned to see a phantom sword spear through the air to skewer her. The Ylrah vanishing in a flicker of black and red aether that swirled around in the air momentarily before dissipating. The sword stabbing itself into the ground and vanishing as well seconds later as Melissa appeared on her feet several feet away from Jonath with a confused expression, blinking several times and looking over where the sword landed. She almost got seriously injured just now...
"I figured something was up, looks like you were right."
Delaren sucked his teeth with a low growl and a vague scowl in his amber eyes; Lee standing
nonchalantly beside him as his own fuchsia gaze locked onto Melissa with slight disappointment. Jonath lurching upright with a frantic gasp of air, he could move again! Turning to look over his shoulder at his two saviors, he couldn't believe the timing.
"How did you guys..." Jonath trailed off still shell-shocked, Delaren raising a brow at him with a slightly taken aback expression as if the amnesic had just asked a dumb question.
"Huh? Are you an idiot?" The red-haired punk said with irritation. Jonath blinking as Lee sighed shaking his head and took the initiative to explain to Jonath in a calmer tone.
"I'm extremely sensitive to aura signatures remember? Stress levels sometimes influence them. Your stress levels shot up tremendously not long after our talk, so I figured Melissa must have got her hands on you. I met Delaren back in the hallway on my way to help you out and told him about it. He seemed more eager to fight than I did." He glanced back over to the girl in question quietly and then back to the pyromancer. Delaren popping his neck before slamming his hands together and a plume of fire erupted upwards briefly, a sadistic smile etching across his features as he took a step closer to Melissa.
"You want to kill somebody so badly why don't you try coming at me huh?" He taunted. Melissa resting her left hand on the curve of her hip and closing her eyes with a heavy sigh shaking her head. Seems this took an unexpected turn she rather wished was avoided. She never did like people getting in her way, however thinking back on what happened the moment before Lee intervened...