Chapter 23 The Hands Of Faith
Chapter 23 The Hands Of Faith
Jorren walked down the evening street, hands shoved into his pocket, an oversized hooded cloak covering his head, arms, and the most part of his body. It was snowing lightly, but Jorren didn’t care about the frigid air. Something else bothered the young man, who is currently on his way to becoming the most dangerous person who ever lived.
He took a turn down the lower tier two street, walking with his head bowed. His eyes and ears ignored the chaos of distracting noises around him; a woman shouting for her child to come back to her, two couples laughing together at an unknown joke, a man dumping bags of grains before another man.
Behind him, a cart rolled forward and past him, running into a fruit stall. Balls of different kinds of fruits were sent flying to different corners of the street, the woman shouting, lifting her hands as streaks of yellow light lashed out from her arms to stop the fruits from falling.
Jorren passed, unbothered. These were the possibilities that intact souls had. They lived another reality of life that Negative Resonance individuals cannot understand. There was a time when that reality amazed him. When he wished his parents had the opportunity to experience that reality.
But after meeting the keeper, encountering the power of the codex, and the new trainings he had encountered, that was no longer his interest. What fuelled him now was the desire to understand what powered who he is. He wanted to know everything about the life fate granted him, and he will jump on any opportunity to gather information, as far as that helped him understand who he was.
Right now, he was heading towards the lower streets of tier two to find Solaria, the lady she had seen with the negative resonance during the arm wrestling match. The same woman had found him new clothes on the night of his second Ascension, after the activity of the Ascension burnt his clothes to nothingness.
The lower tier two streets were busy like any other streets in the city of Vashen. People hurried in different directions, eyes intent on their business. This wasn’t like the street of the Keeper, where you’d find a group of men in a corner drinking and laughing and chatting. It was as if everyone in this parts lived like they had one day to live.
Jorren walked on, then took a left turn into another street, his tactical intelligence kicking in. He didn’t exactly figure out how he was going to find the woman he was looking for, but he knew clearly that Solaria wasn’t the kind he would find in a location.
He moved, believing that he would run into the young lady without looking for her for long.
“Looking for someone,” a familiar voice sounded beside him.
It took everything in Jorren not to flinch. Solaria was beside him in an instant, struggling to maintain a straight face with him and matching his strides with comfortable grace.
Jorren glanced at her. He was sure now. Solaria was negative resonance. He was searching for her presence like he would search for people who had intact architecture, giving Solaria the opportunity to sneak up on him. He didn’t admit that to her though. He didn’t have to.
“How did you I was looking for someone?” Jorren asked, his voice unusually flat.
“Your eyes,” Solaria replied almost immediately. “You have a difficulty of concealing the curiosity in them. When you are looking for something, your eyes scan your environment like a predator. It was like that on the first day, when we had that fight. It was like that too, on the other night.”
Jorren didn’t reply. It wasn’t his fault. His life was too serious. Too urgent. A life of failure morphing into seriousness and urgency wasn’t exactly what any seventeen year old would wish for, yet he was here, living the life.
“So, you here for another mission like you did the last time?” She asked again, leading him to make a turn to the right, as they entered another street.
“I am,” he said simply. “I do have questions.”
“I’ll be happy to answer all of your questions,” she said. “Provided you are willing to answer mine too.”
Jorren thought hard. He wasn’t ready to share the details of his life with Solaria. His tactical intelligence told him that her questions might brush on a part of his life. He resolved to lie, if that was the opportunity he had to keep his head low and his life hidden.
“Here,” Solaria gestured to a tavern and Jorren stopped, his eyes wary.
“C’mon,” she urged him. “This is the best place for us to have our conversation. It’s noisy, and here people spill secrets. You might be able to pick up on some secrets too.”
“It’s exactly why I do not want to go in there,” Jorren’s eye flicked from the tavern’s entrance to Solaria.
“You think people are tight here?” Solaria raised a brow. “People here don’t care. What happens in the tavern stays in the tavern. Now come.”
She pulled him along and Jorren let her, stumbling after her an through the doors of the tavern.
“This place is run by my Aunt Viel, a tier one practitioner,” Solaria continued. “She didn’t want any trouble with her life, and she didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes, hence she did this.”
Jorren glanced around the space. It was a fairly large cabin with round benches scattered around. Men of different sizes and essence sat together, occasionally knocking their head back with cups full of ale.
They got to a side of the side of the tavern concealed partially by darkness. Jorren sat down, his jaw set, his eyes reading every move.
“Give me a moment,” Solaria said. Before Jorren could stop her, she disappeared.
When she returned, she had two cups of ale spilling over on both arms and clutched a book in between her arm.
“Here,” she pushed a cup towards him as she sat down, downing hers in half before setting it on the round bench between them. “Here, I brought the book I was talking about.”
She offered the book to Jorren and he took it, turning it this way and that, expecting something to happen.