Aura

Sasha craned her neck to see what mission they were taking up. She followed them outside the guild and caught up to them.

"Hey, wait! Let me come with you two."

Jasmine's head turned around so swiftly that it seemed like it was about to break off from her shoulders.

"And why would you want to come with us?"

Jasmine asked, flaring her nose in anger. She thought she could be alone with her master, roaming around the outside of the capital city, just the two of them. But this bitch just had to butt in, ruining her date with her master.

Raymond too raised his eyebrows in Sasha's direction.

"Well, since I recommended you, I need to see how you do your missions, it's part of the procedure, nothing personal."

Sasha lied through her teeth.

"Look, I will just watch from the side, okay? I won't interfere with your mission."

She quickly explained when she felt Jasmine's eyes on her.

"Hmmm, I guess you can watch as we do our mission."

Raymond said while placing a hand on Jasmine to calm her down.

The trio walked toward the outer wall of the city, Jasmine latched onto Raymond's arm and placed herself between him and Sasha. She was half expecting Sasha to attack Raymond at any time now, so she had her guard up as they walked.

Luckily, Sasha seems to be behaving as she didn't attack Raymond and they soon reached the outer wall.

The outer wall that surrounded the capital city had two entrances which were heavily guarded by the Imperial Guards who kept an eye on any suspicious individuals making their way inside the city.

There were many stalls lined along the two sides of the road leading up to the gate. Raymond in particular found a shoddy-looking stall that looked ready to blow away if the wind blew a bit more fiercely.

It had a worn-out banner at the top which read 'Divine your fortune'. Raymond felt his curiosity growing as he looked at the stall with apparently no customer.

An old man was sitting inside the stall, humming a tune and taking a whiff of tobacco from his smoking pipe from time to time.

Since he was starting his career as a mercenary today, Raymond thought it would be good to know about his fortune. So he led Jasmine toward the stall with Sasha following them curiously.

"Hello! Mister, are you up to fortune-telling now?"

Raymond asked, seeing as the old man had a lost look in his eyes as he sucked on his smoking pipe and let out thick wisps of smoke into the air.

"Huh?"

The old man was startled by the sudden arrival of customers. It had been a week since someone visited his stall, so he was surprised for a moment. But he quickly regained his bearings as intelligence returned to his eyes.

"Cough, come, come. You came to the right place if you want to know your fortune."

The old man coughed and took out a sphere made of glass which had white smoke swirling inside it.

"Here! Just put a drop of blood on this mystical sphere and see what the future has in store for you!"

The old man exclaimed confidently.

Sasha frowned upon hearing about the blood, only dark magic required blood sacrifice, so she looked at the old man sceptically.

She saw Raymond picking up the knife given to him by the old man and quickly grabbed his hand to stop him.

"Don't do it! The sphere might be cursed!"

She grabbed the old man by the collar and pulled him closer. Jasmine gasped and quickly pulled Raymomd back.

"Who gave you permission to open this stall here, eh? Do the guards know what you are doing here?"

Sasha pushed him back and glared at him.

"Wait here, I will inform the guards, keep an eye on him, don't let him escape."

Sasha said as she turned towards the gate where many guards were on duty. But just as she was about to take a step further she heard the old man laughing.

"Hahahaha, go ahead, bring the guards, they will see that I am doing nothing wrong here."

The old man held up the sphere and handed it to Raymond who for some reason didn't feel anything wrong with it as he casually grabbed it.

Jasmine and Sasha both examined the sphere and found nothing related to dark magic. They both nodded at Raymond still in half doubt.

But Raymond felt no threat from the sphere, so he placed the sphere back on the table and took the knife to make a shallow cut on his finger. But the knife broke in half as he applied pressure to make a cut.

Raymond coughed awkwardly.

"Cough, do you have a sword?"

The old man gave him a weird look and Raymond averted his eyes. He bit on his finger drawing a drop of blood. He found his finger healing within the blink of an eye– something he needed to investigate later.

Acting quickly he smeared his blood on the sphere. The sphere glowed brightly for a second and absorbed his blood. The white smoke inside the sphere swirled around frantically as if trying to escape from the confines of the glassy sphere but to no avail.

The smoke crazily swirled and the sphere started to shake because of it. Soon the shaking stopped as the smoke slowly settled down as it turned darker and darker in colour by the second.

Soon the smoke inside the sphere turned pitch black which elicited a stained gasp from the old man.

"Death!!"

He thumped his chest to calm down his raging heartbeat and looked at Raymond with pity.

"Young man! Death hovers around you, wherever you go, it will follow you…until it finally claims you as its own."

He spoke with a strangely hoarse voice which sounded quite eerie to both Jasmine and Sasha as they had a sombre look on their faces.

"Pfftt"

Raymond snickered.

"Don't try to scam me, Mister! Isn't that how it is for everyone? People can die at any time. You could just be going to sleep thinking about tomorrow and never wake up again or you could just be joking and laughing with your friends when your heart might suddenly stop working.

"Death is unpredictable! No one can guess when it comes for you! I am ready for it! Ready to fight it until one of us wins. But one thing is for sure, I will not stick out my neck and surrender myself."

Raymond roared with intense fire in his eyes. Unknown to himself he emitted an invisible aura around him that filled the entire capital city.

On this day, only three people knew who that aura belonged to which made all the animals in the city prostrate in reverence.

All the well known and hidden experts in the city snapped their eyes wide open and looked around frantically. They felt suffocated by this aura, something that invoked long forgotten emotion in them– Fear.

The sphere vibrated madly and shattered as it was the direct target of Raymond's ire. The black smoke escaped from the sphere and formed a silhouette of a human. It slightly bowed in Raymond's direction and disappeared into thin air.

Even though it felt like minutes, only two seconds had passed in reality. So except for the old man, Sasha, and Jasmine, nobody knew where that aura came from. Even Raymond himself had no idea he was doing it as he was looking curiously at the place where the black smoke disappeared. But soon he snapped out of his curious stare and looked at the old man.

"Look here, mister, I don't have money on me right now, can I pay for your service later?"

Raymond asked, scratching his head in embarrassment. He didn't want to pay this old man who didn't predict anything useful about his future, he only said what was obvious. So Raymond felt like he would be a fool to pay this scammer.

But Raymond wouldn't hold it against the man as everyone had their own way of making money. As long as he wasn't duped by this guy, it was fine.

"Uh? O-okay."

The old man stuttered as he slumped back on his chair.

Raymond nodded and turned around to see Jasmine and Sasha looking at him with their eyes wide open and jaws agape.

"What happened?"

Jasmine quickly recovered from her stupor and hugged him tightly.

"Mas-Ray, are you alright?"

"Silly girl, what's wrong with you? Don't worry I am not going to die any time soon."

Raymond chuckled as he rubbed her back in a soothing manner.

Sasha felt her eyelids twitching when he heard him.

'She is not worried about your life. You looked like you were about to massacre the entire capital city just now.'

She thought but couldn't find the voice to say it out loud. She was still terrified of what just happened. She felt her fighting spirit stirring at the thought of what would happen if she was faced with it.

But this guy seemed so oblivious to what happened. He really was a simple minded brute. Sasha thought as she patted him on the shoulder and asked him to follow her to the city gates.