Chapter 37 - Experimentation

Jude walked down the street. He had been walking all night, and still the auroras did not lead him to Tyra or his friends. It was now daytime. The day was warm and sunny, with a light breeze rustling through the trees. His focus was not on walking, and in fact he still could not see perfectly after his confrontation with Leader. Instead, his focus was on his mind.

His mind felt like it had expanded tenfold during the night. He did not feel smarter, but rather he felt as though his brainwave energy had increased dramatically, and was magnified infinitesimally. And he felt as though he could tap into his mind better than before.

Jude had known his gift for some time, but rarely used it except when hunting. It had never been a major part of his life. Now, though, he felt one with his powers. He felt as though he was his powers, and his powers were him.

He walked down the street, and suddenly saw a piece of scrap wood sitting by the side of the road. He decided to try out his powers on it.

He closed his eyes and relaxed his mind. Strands of energy flowed through the crevices in his brain, and he felt as though an aurora was forming on the surface of his mind. He opened his eyes again.

The wood was floating in mid-air. Jude gasped, for he did not expect something like this to happen. There was no way that he could have performed such a feat before his encounter with Leader.

He decided to try something harder. His mind erupted in a volcano of energy and power, and the log combusted while still floating in the air.

Jude decided to try another thing to the burning log. It would take much strength, but Jude didn’t have much time until the fire consumed the log.

His eyes closed on their own will. They flickered underneath his eyelids, and Jude’s mind spun through space and time. It slowed down, and Jude opened his eyes.

He was lying on the ground. He must have passed out from the sheer difficulty of what he had been attempting to do with the log. Sitting up and rubbing his eyes, they were even fuzzier and harder to see out of than before.

But looking over to where the log would have landed, there was not a pile of ashes like he had expected. The log was sitting there, intact, just as it had been. It had not been burned.

Of course, there were two possibilities. The first was what Jude was hoping was true. That would mean that the log had caught fire and had burned, however he had been able to reverse the process and reconstruct the log from the ashes.

The second possibility, however, made Jude afraid that his powers were not what he thought they were. Perhaps the log had caught fire but not burned. Perhaps it was not fire but a trick of the light, or a trick of his eyes.

Jude did not know, but regardless, the log was whole. He walked over at it and looked at it more closely.

Burn marks were evident along one side of it, though they were not the random burn marks one would have expected from the burning of a log. They instead followed a pattern.

The pattern was an aurora, and the text was obviously written in the kryon tongue. Jude focused his mind and the words laid themselves out in a straight line as they had done before. They formed only a short message, which Jude read quickly. After reading it, he gathered his things, and followed the aurora to find his friends. There was no time to lose.

The message said, quite simply, “Your friends are in mortal danger, save them.”