In the Palace of the Serene Grandmaster, there was little serenity to be found. Indeed, without the powerful formations his secondary masters had applied during its construction, it was entirely possible the earth would have sundered in a rising volcano, and a hurricane would be racing the shattering wall of rising vines as it ate the buildings of the sect, such was the power of chi that was barely contained inside. Not one, but three peerless geniuses was on the verge of breakthrough, leaving the Foundation stage of cultivation for the true power of a Yang stage cultivator.
Grand Master Bo looked with amusement as the Chi in the meditation chamber flared into a storm. It’s power would have made it a threat to all Foundation level cultivators present, such as his four disciples, if any of the other disciples had done it. Serena Bales was a starving dragon, her will to power would rip the chi it needed from any not strong enough to shield their mana gats, unless they had advanced into the Yang stage core formation. Brock Kowalski was a charging tiger, once the throat of the prey was within reach of his fangs, the rest of the world, the fate of the world, all ceased to exist. He was the perfect weapon; but would always and ever be a two edged sword, a danger to those around him. William Fitzgerald had the eyes of an alchemist, and in the ecstasy of transformation and the glory of enlightenment lesser concerns, like the lives of others meant nothing compared to a step forward upon the path to divining and controlling the very laws of heaven.
Three matchless geniuses driven by compulsions of their own far greater than the mere danger to the realm and fate of mankind, yet the breakthrough had come from Andrea Proske, of all things, a rower in her past life, like the peasants who plied the canals for coppers to move those without their own transportation treasures or tamed beasts. Hers was a different form of madness, a calculated and precise relentlessness, the patient and implacable grinding of surf upon stone that would wear down the mightiest cliffs. She broke through the last vestiges of Foundation not with an explosion but with the slow and irresistible rise of the tide. Her chi washed out like a wave, and the world responded with the ocean’s tide of power.
The path of cultivation was divided into three realms. Foundation, which began with Chi Condensation, where you opened the nine mana gates and formed the mana veins. Then Bone Transformation where the mortal bones are replaced by mana crystallization which purges the marrow from your bones as thick oily sludge, and prepared your body to exceed mortal power levels. Finally Palace Transformation, which purged your other tissues of impurities, allowing your body to replace your human essence with the elemental power of your affinities that will manifest in the next level.
Andrea had broken through into the Yang stage. The energy that now roared into her dantain, her mana core was swirling and compressing. She was drawing ten times the chi that she had been capable of even moments ago, and under that power the chi was condensing from mist to liquid in her mana veins and her mana heart would soon be condensed into a solid mass, a crystal mana heart. At this stage, the mana heart would be able to draw upon the elemental affinities that had not been purged from the flesh, those most dominant elemental essences would allow a greater control over chi effects inside the body and eventually outside it. In the beginning, cultivators had to use the power of their mana to impose their will over the chi they gathered, and the chi in the world around them. Soon their chi and elemental affinities would be able to call upon the elements in the world around them to draw upon their power for greater effects at lesser costs. Everyone had different affinities, most had only one. The strong two, the great at most three. Without cleansing, the elemental essences you could not control would interfere with your command of the others, so they were purged before the formation of the mana heart.
Now it was time to bring the others along to this stage. They had been training in the martial arts as they had moved from only able to meditate sitting, to meditating moving through poses, through meditating moving through martial forms, now it was time to teach them the martial techniques that would write themselves into the mana core and allow them to move as no mortal warrior could dream. Now it was time to show them the power of a sword cultivator!
With a scream, Serena tore through her limits, the dragon in her rising against the pull of Andrea’s core for chi its hunger demanded. Her power lashed out like the claws of a heaven shattering beast and tore from the others as it tore from the world it its mad need for dominance and power. William and Brock cried out as their power was torn from them, but Andrea smiled as the dragon’s claws failed to cut the ocean’s tide. Grand Master Bo extended his power to protect the two youngest from the feeding frenzy of the dragon until Serena’s dantain flooded with enough power that her focus turned inward on circulation and compression to form the crystal mana core where her mana heart had been before her flesh could not contain the power her dragon’s hunger demanded. She drew too much, she would succeed, or die. Dragons flew highest or fell, there was no other road.
With a roar, Brock shook off the wound of Serena’s attack and the tiger’s claws came out. He lashed out with his own will at the raging storm of the chi around him and dragged it into himself. He drew unevenly at first, and his mana veins took damage, he slowed, and drew more sustainably. The tiger learned, it circled, it struck, relentless and inescapable, it’s nature was cunning as it was fierce. He took power faster as he learned how much pain was not damaging, and rode the bleeding edge of that limit as the pressure in him grew and the liquid mana in his dantain was pressed against its natural repulsion hard enough to overcome it and the first crystals of his core began to form. Sweat, and black impurities, mixed with blood sweated from his skin and wept from his eyes as he purged himself of anything that got in the way of his power. His breakthrough was ugly, but undeniable.
William had felt what the others had done, his power had quailed from the violence of Serena and Brock, but it had learned. Andrea’s harmony made no sense to him, it should not work, but Brock and Serena’s showed a path. A path of alchemy. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. This was the alchemist path. The measured clash of opposing elements, carefully balanced so each’s traits were used to destroy the unwanted elements of the other, while synergistically enhancing the desired traits, binding all to a common purpose with the energy released by the annihilation of opposites. He was not using fire, herbs and chi inside a cauldron to refine a pill, his body was the caldron, his flesh the herbs, pain was the fire and all that was left was his chi. No. Inside his body it was no longer chi, it was mana. Mana was infused with his own soul. Mana was not under his control, mana was his control. Mana was his self.
He opened his mana gates wide and drank chi like he was filling his cauldron. He could not draw more than his channels would hold naturally, so he drove his mana into the incoming chi, and circulated it into a vortex that spun fast enough to draw in a dozen times what he could hold. That vortex tore at his flesh, at his soul, and he poured his pain into it like fire, then poured his mana into that to direct the transformation. His body burned. The impurities from his body were forced out by the power he drew in, then the flesh itself, if it could not be a part of the power he worked, he would purge it. He remade his body like he was cleaning his cauldron. All that was not part of the product was purged. Purity. Purity and power. He put his will not upon the world but upon himself. He could feel the natural laws that constrained, guided, and shaped power and where his body moved with those laws he reenforced and crystallized, where it opposed, he tore and rent, bled and scarred. Any part of him that was not devoted to the power was not welcome by his will.
While Brock and Serena snarled and roared, still forcing their bodies to accept the demands of their will, William opened eyes that wept blacker corruption than the night itself opened to look into the calm eyes of Andrea to nod in respect. They closed their eyes, and drew calmly on the chi to heal the damage of their transformation and to learn the new and higher realm of the Yang Cultivator.
Grand Master Bo spoke quietly, reenforcing his words with his own dominating chi. “Tomorrow, I will take you to the Techniques Library, and we will let you pick your martial techniques. Tomorrow, you will learn how to become Sword Cultivators, tomorrow, you will become as a god to mere mortals.”
They would need to be gods, for the demons were rising. Already sects with few sword cultivators began to fall, small towns lost, trade caravans disappeared, bandits growing stronger through resources plundered, beasts grown strong through demon essences and deliberately enhanced with more stolen sect resources. If his charges did not become champions soon, the war would be lost before it began.
On the Mountain of Maidens I opened my one eye as I was poked firmly with a long and hard talon.
“I said, what is snu snu?” Astrealla, seven feet of scarlet clawed and horned redheaded and wondrously endowed Ogress poked my surprisingly painless body awake.
She was not alone. There was a blue haired version (that I would learn was Sister Annis) a green haired version (to my regret I would learn was Sister Kivy) and a larger iron haired version (at least nine feet of Mother Pon). That was a lot of ogress, if you are wondering if the proximity of enough killing power to wipe out a small army caused me to develop into some form of rational creature, you were about to be as deeply disappointed as my parents, officers, and three ex wives.
“Blood of the gods but I could get used to waking up to you. I have never seen anything as sexy as you spraying that little pricks guts all over his brother before you stabbed him.” I said, grabbing Astrella’s poking hand and kissing it.
The blue haired Sister Kivy turned to her mother and demanded. “Can we kill him now?”
The green haired Sister Annis objected “He’s kind of cute, can I have him?”
“HE IS MINE” Roared Astrella, causing her mother to chuckle, and Astrella to blush like only a redhead can.
Mother Pon gave a slap to the back of the head to her two daughters with a hand that hit like a Warhammer.
“No Kivy, you can’t kill him. He didn’t bring the spear to you.” She said administering a blow that moved so fast that I couldn’t track it, and rang on her daughters head like a falling anvil.
“No Annis, you can’t keep him. He didn’t bring the spear to you.” She said administering a blow that Annis attempted to block which had her nursing two sore forearms and a ringing head, this time I saw it as her hand hit the block. Mental note, do not try to block mama, it will only cost you bones.
Finally reaching out to ruffle Astrella’s hair. “Ah Astrella, he’s a little small, and hairy like some sort of ape, but he isn’t totally without potential. You still sleep with the stuffed bear I made for you, and this one looks almost as furry and twice as warm. He did bring the spear to you. If he doesn’t die, he could at least be decent practice for catching a real Oger later.” She teased her daughter.
All three sisters shouted in outrage “MOTHER PON!”
I kissed the back of Astrella’s hand and chuckled at the scandalized expression of the rooms young ogresses. I decided to begin my courtship.
“What is Snu Snu? Let me tell you, in my lands there is a legend of Futurama, a group of noble adventurers seeking to explore the world. They encountered a land of Amazons, warrior women like yourselves, a land without men. They were sentenced to death by Snu Snu, and they went happily to their fate, for no better end save death in battle is possible. In the end, the cyclops maiden Leela determined that the men were still needed for her quest, so took them away before Snu Snu could completely kill them.”
Astrella growled and took back her hand. “That doesn’t answer the question, what is Snu Snu?”
I looked at her and extended my hand to all of them and explained. “Death by Snu Snu is dying by having sex with medium sized amazons, followed by large sized amazons followed by medium sized amazons in turn until the poor male eventually has his bones crushed to powder and his vital essences totally drained.”
All three maidens looked shocked. Mother Pon nodded. “Yes, we used to do that, back before the courting spear. Catch the males wild. We gave it up as it really hard to get motivated for the males without the balls to actually try to catch you. Still, we bring it back whenever the fields start replenishing slowly. Nothing like those good old fashioned fertility rites.”
Now Mother Pon and I were the only ones nodding as if this seemed reasonable. Astrella was looking at me like I was crazy. Kivy like I was something that should be killed before being allowed to think again, and Annis like I was some new and fascinating bug she just had to bottle and bring home to keep.
“You came here because you want to die by sleeping with all of us?” Astrella asked trying to get through my bullshit to my actual motivations. Honestly, I got lost in my bullshit, and the fact that my morning wood wakes up before my recovering from lightning torn internal remodelling brain did. Waking with a hard on surrounded by thirty feet of hot buxom womanhood does not contribute to rational thought. Still, I was here for an actual reason.
“Astrella, Maiden of the Mountain, I Bolverk the outlander have come to this mountain to court thee. I come bearing a courting spear I took in battle from one who was not worthy. I have slain man and oger, cultivator and Oger Mage to win my place before you. I come to you with a warrior’s heart, and no skill worthy of the name. I come to learn the spear from you, mightiest of maidens. Your skill and strength stole my breath and heart, and I would woo thee. I would test myself against you, learn from you, fight beside you until the day that my spear was as mighty as your own, and you would be proud to bear my sons and daughters.”
Kivy made gagging sounds and mimed throwing up. She made hand gestures suggesting cutting my throat. Annis clutched her hands to her, rather wonderful, chest and you could almost see the hearts in her eyes at seeing a bad romance novel play out in front of her. Mother Pon nodded, as if this was the most reasonable thing to discuss from someone she just put back together with a potion, a half dozen poltices and a rather forceful reduction of a dislocated shoulder. Astrella sighed and shrugged.
“Fine. Get your spear and go outside.” She said, and stalked outside.
I had mana gates open in my eye, throat, the dantain or belly, the heart, and both hands. Only my feet remained unopened. I drew the chi around me and was connected to the world in ways that worked below the level of thought, deep where the predator’s instincts lived. I had the strength of demons in my flesh, the knowledge of dozens of years of martial arts training back on earth and the knowledge gained on dozens of battlefields where the slow to learn or simply unlucky died, and I didn’t. I devoted everything in me to watching, listening, and learning from what Astrella showed me, and I missed 90% of it.
We started with the spear forms. We did this for hours on end, and while I moved as she did, my martial arts training was less help than I thought because it wasn’t just her body that moved. Chi moved inside her as she worked the spear forms, and the chi of the world moved with her. Yet, I was expecting that part, what I was not expecting is that I performed like a clumsy recruit. We did not do our forms on anything sane like a training floor or prepared plain. We performed them in the forest, on the stone covered hill, in the swamp, I fell a lot. She did not.
I looked at her. Astrella did not move like an animal, she did not move like a person. She didn’t seem to place her feet with any particular care, yet her footing was always firm. She did not seem to move from stance to stance, yet whenever she paused she was always perfectly in balance and able to direct her spear in any direction with maximum force. Okay, that part I expected. What I couldn’t seem to get was how she didn’t seem to be any less centered in the transitions. She had NO OPEN GATES, she should not be able affect the chi around her, yet the world responded to her, and she moved as if she knew it would be so.
At the end of the day, we sparred. It wasn’t pretty.
She had greater mass, greater strength, and greater reach. This coupled with the larger spear made her a threat at range and in transition that I had trouble dealing with. On the other hand, if I closed, my shorter spear and shorter limbs made me faster to turn and shift aspect. If I closed to mid distance, the advantage should be mine.
I drove in, using a series of rapid thrusts to draw her to engage my point. When she did I strove to use my wider grip upon the spear to beat her point high and wide as my step moved me in and to her flank where she would have to spin to face me. That was the plan, it was a good plan, right up until it wasn’t. My wider grip on the spear did beat her point up and wide, but she forced her spear forward and arced around my own to drive her thrust down at my stepping in body forcing me to choose between taking my lead hand off the spear and stepping straight wide rather than wide or in, or let her point impale my shoulder. I stepped wide and she shifted her back arm on the spear, shifting her hips towards me and her spear away. My own spear was now pointing to the sky away from her, completely outside any ability to block, and before I could process my error her lead hand circled up and out, her point pivoted around her unmoving lead to point back to my chest, and lunge.
Trying to avoid her earlier thrust and retain my spear against her force had left me back on my heels and wide open. Her spear descended like death, and before its gleaming length a wave of chi flowed like a thunderclap and exploded against my chest. Rather than running me through and killing me, the blast wave from the front of her spear simply crushed my chest, snapping my newly healed ribs and blasting me to lie upon the ground coughing blood.
I pulled myself into a kneeling position. I spat the blood from my mouth. “I thank you for your instruction. I was unable to win this time. I shall return.”
She snorted, and stalked away. I admired her ass and bled internally. I began to cultivate and think.
She had no open mana gates, she should not be able to affect the world. Why did she? She radiated no elemental essence, she either had no elemental affinities……..or she was balanced and still able to affect the world. I drew in chi and circulated it, letting it heal my body. I drew upon the chi and infused my soul into it. I knew the manual of cultivation I stole from the bandit told me that I should crystalize my bones, making them an artificial construct of mana conductivity, I should purify it as a step to moving beyond mortality. Astrella was not pure. She was the opposite. I began as pure. When I came to this world I had a pure spiritual body, being a dead man filled with demons, I had to build one from scratch. They cultivators were wrong, or at least, they didn’t walk the only path. Astrella was not pure, she was elementally balanced, yet the world responded to her without thought, even as I, with seven open mana gates would have to tear my concentration from fighting for my life long enough to build a mana form to bind the chi and elemental essences of the world into a form I shaped actively.
I looked at the world around me. The trees did not turn their limbs to crystal to resist the wind, they flowed with wood chi. They drew upon water chi, rooted in earth chi, drew life from the sun’s fire chi and air chi. Why was I trying to step away from that? I drew upon the chi, and opened myself to the essences around me. I did not reach out to them, I reached inward to me. I reached into my shattered ribs and called upon wood, and I felt them begin to knit. I drew water and earth, lacing the bones with minerals to strengthen them, water and earth made the marrow reform and begin to rebuild my blood. I called fire and air to add to the energies of my body, that I not consume myself in rebuilding. I felt the internal imbalances in my body, and I sought to bring them closer to balance.
Seven mana gates open, my flow was out of balance. I drew heavily upon my power, even as my healing progressed, I tore my mana veins with more power than I could hold. I drew more and more, then put all of my will into actively holding closed my open gates. I cycled my chi into a storm, focused it into a battering ram, and sent it at the gate in my right foot. Again and again I hurled it, my mana veins straining and pain making me pant. I tried hammering it like wind, but my veins were small, and there was not enough force. I tried shattering it like stone, but no matter how I hardened it, my chi delivered force to the gate that it could just absorb; vibrating not shattering. I thought about wood. Wood is not an element in the western tradition. Yet I wondered if that was our mistake. The four elements were constrained by the gods when they formed the world, but in that middle place was not a new thing created, a thing called life. Ask and Embla the two figures of wood that Odin breathed life into were the first man and woman in our tradition. We were born from wood, wood infused with spirit. Perhaps the east was wiser than us to realize that life created the last element.
Wood was like water in that it could wear down stone, yet it was like earth in its shattering force. I turned to my chi and stopped it battering at the seal, and I set it forcing its way into the imperfections. I would do both feet together. I could not focus all my force in one place anyway, so I would try not only to finish in balance, but to keep my balance in the opening. The seal of the mana gate was a scar, was formed naturally, it was itself an imperfection, a left over of our creation and growth not a thing formed of intent. It would always have imperfections. Patiently, I sought them, and the tiniest slivers of mana flowed into them. As they found their way inside, I used the force of the mana veins and the wood essence to turn those fine hairs into roots, and forced those roots to grow. The seals shattered as I forced the thin mana threads to grow to thicker roots, and power blasted from the two open gates.
My mana flowed out into the world, and the chi of the world responded. It roared into me like a storm, and with it came the essences of the elements. My cultivation manual told me to strive for purity, to take anything that is not my primary affinity and purge it from my body, to transcend humanity, to purge mortality and reject flesh. Yet, spirit was born of flesh, it is only through the flesh we are human, only through the flesh we feel pleasure, and pain, hunger and satisfaction. It is flesh, our animal nature that gives us our gentler nature, our nurturing soul, as well as our predator. It is the animal who tells us to lay down our life for a child, to reach out to the hungry and feed them, the animal knows the pack, and craves it. I will not give that up for power. I will not turn inward to seek perfection, I will not turn away from my humanity for power. I will turn my gaze outward, and reshape myself to learn from the world how to become a better human.
I did not purge myself of impurities, as the manual had said I must, yet I felt the core of power inside me. I felt the world resonate with me, without requiring my power. I felt it, and began to understand how Astrella moved. She felt it. She felt the world as I did, and it felt her. Male Oger, the Oni, they had their mana gates open, and wielded chi like human cultivators, yet their bodies were far less than my own. Sure bigger and stronger than base humans, but any of Astrella’s sisters could break them physically like twigs. Astrella and her sisters were natural body cultivators, their bodies channeling their chi internally like human body cultivators, but unlike human body cultivators, they had ELEMENTAL essences inside them. That should only be possible for spiritual cultivators.
What if Ogers had potential for both? Humans only followed body cultivation in this world when they failed as spiritual cultivators, or when they came up as pure fighters and only discovered chi as an outgrowth of their martial arts. No one ever cultivated both paths on purpose. Female ogers were natural body cultivators, but with the elemental essences inside them, they should be capable of spiritual cultivation too. The male ogers shared the same blood, and they cultivated spirt just like humans did. They held arts other than magic in contempt, so they didn’t cultivate their bodies. Who said they couldn’t? Maybe the potential for both paths was in all ogers, but each gender was born already capable of the one path, needing to advance to maturity to open the second.
The challenge of the spear. A mating challenge left for male and female ogers. Why? Biologically it is stupid, but biology often is. What if there was an actual method to the madness.
I remembered Mother Pon talking about he fertility rituals. I remembered the fertility rituals of my own world. Sex and magic were often intertwined. Heathenry is based on reciprocity, a gift for a gift. Sex is not just a mingling of passion and body parts, it is a clash of souls and flesh, a worship, a war, a dance of creation and destruction. Magic is about intent, and fertility rituals were not done using sex just for the people having sex, fertility rituals worked because the union of two souls in passionate and magically focused embrace was a sacrifice that moved the very elements of the world to reshape themselves, that brought life to the soil, called rain from the sky and turned the storm from the field.
Getting my ass kicked made me hungry. I bet Astrella was hungry. She was seven feet of apex predator, built like an armoured vehicle with boobs, there is no way she didn’t eat like a forest fire. The way to a woman’s heart was through her stomach. There were bees in this damned forest, time to get stung a bit.
I had to think, I had to hunt, and I had to do some crafting.
The boars were easy. I mean they weighed in about four fifty for the little one, and six twenty for the four eyed one that spit flames, but they were doable. I hung them and slit their throats, gutted them and buried the guts. Then I went hunting for the bees. That was the tough part. I sat and meditated for about an hour before the hive. Finally having communed with the bees enough to make peace, I cut the hive open with a knife of fire and drained out the honey into my jar. I poured my chi into the hive, returning strength and purging the parasites from them, that they grow stronger even after I take what the queen offered as my gift. Honestly, piss of wild boar all you want, but bees need to be nurtured. Honey in the wild is hard to come by.
I skinned the boar, took their tusks and teeth. There was a powerful spirit core in the flaming demon boar, it was red as blood and burned with internal fire. Awesome, that would work. I spent the next hours with the jade and gold jewelry from the bandits horde. I carved and hammered gold into the tusks, carving her name in them. Between the tusks were fat beads of jade, then amber. Two tusks on each side, framing the huge demon stone of scarlet, like a cabochon ruby that flashed with literal fire inside, itself set in gold bound between two jade disks carved with the interlocking yin/yang Dao symbol. Then I hunted mushrooms. All mushrooms are edible, some are only edible once. I had a great deal of knowledge of survival from decades in the infantry in various places, and that meant that the mushrooms I could not positively identify I left alone. Neurotoxins can be fun if they are psychotropic, not so much if they induce heart attack or paralysis. I will leave experimentation to the alchemists.
Root vegetables were easier to find. Honestly the boar were digging them out when I found them. Pigs are great that way, close enough to us that if they were after it, you can probably eat it. I bound the little one to drag behind me on my cloak, forever a cargo tarp now I fear, along with my vegetables and mushrooms. I slung big boy over my shoulders and went back to the village on the Mountain of Maidens. I had some courting to do.
Astrella looked at me in confusion as I dragged two boars, about sixty pounds of vegetation, and my ass up the mountain to her village.
“I defeated you. You have failed. Why are you back?”
I raised my head to the heavens and called out with all the power in my lungs “SNU SNU!”
Her mother and sisters who had been hanging back now gathered behind Astrella in a group. Dozens of cousins, aunts and whatnot trailed after to see the entertainment.
Astrella’s eyes went wide “You must be joking!?”
The blue haired Sister Kivy turned to her mother and demanded. “Can we kill him now?”
The green haired Sister Annis objected “He’s kind of cute, can I have him?”
Mother Pon and Astrella both shouted “NO!”
In the stunned interval of silence, I shrugged the big demon boar off to lie upon her lesser offspring, and knelt to proffer the necklace of demon boar tusk, jade, gold and amber I had crafted for her. The burning demon gem in its heart flashed between the colour of her lips and horns.
“Astrella, Maiden of the Mountain, the sun rises and sets in your eyes. It is you alone I seek and you alone I will have. I bring you this token of my seriousness, and all I ask is that you allow me to prepare a meal for you and your family. If you still wish to kill me when it is done, then I will gladly die at your hand.” I said, and given the first gift of Odin, I let my will and my intent, my spirit and my soul flow in those words. Holy inspiration vibrated in my voice and the chi of the world carried it. It was pure melodrama, that did not make it less true.
Hey, I read a lot on deployment, and not all of it was quality novels. A lot of romantic melodrama got in there, and my taste in movies has likewise been on the slightly cheesy side. Some of the classic romances were more than half tragedy and no matter how your rational mind may want to laugh at them, they had POWER.
Astrella looked like I had just hit her in between the horns with a Warhammer. Sister Annis cooed “He cooks?” Mother Pon reached out and smacked Sister Kivy before her next demand for my death, and echoed. “He cooks!” The matter was settled.
Honey glazed boar, mushrooms, herbs, lots of glazed root vegetables cut thin and allowed to simmer in the juices of the boar, the great oven used for making bread for the village was sized to roast an elephant (but I don’t know how to cook one) and were perfect for less than a half ton of boar.
Mother Pon got about the serious business of preparing what she felt was the minimum essentials to match what I was preparing. Her understanding of minimal and my understanding of Yule Feast are very similar, but I had a feeling her daughters could eat. Through the meal, I kept noticing three things. Her sisters and her could eat. Second, that my own appetite since forming my crystal mana core and opening my last gates was at least their equal. Third, Astrella kept stroking her necklace and stealing glances at me, then blushing and looking away. I tried my best to look noble and attentive to her families conversation, while letting her catch me looking at her with a soul deep hunger that even the feast could not dent.
Sister Kivy looked at the small amount of leftovers, then back at me as if debating whether it was better to kill me now, or see if I could cook anything else before murdering me. Sister Annis sighed, then looked wistfully at me, as if wondering why she didn’t get any spear carrying love obsessed oger chef’s calling on her. Mother Pon looked at me critically then called for Annis and Kivy to help her clean up.
“Astrella, you and Bolverk should go take in the night air and the stars while we clean up.” Mother Pon pronounced, and Astrella blushed, Kivy looked like she was going to burst a blood vessel, and Annis clapped like a spectator at her favorite part of a play. I reached out and took Astrella’s large and red clawed hand in mine and went for a walk under the stars.
“Why are you here, really?” She asked.
“I came originally to learn the spear from you. I came to this world to prevent my niece from being summoned. They brought us as cannon fodder to fight a demon war. I know war. I have lived through war, and I got good at it. My world doesn’t have chi, or magical beasts, demons, or ogers, dragons, waters spirits. I have killed a few demons, a few cultivators, and few magical beasts, but only through brute strength and trickery. I don’t know how to fight with chi, or the elements. Even my martial arts seem to be nothing compared to the skills you have. By the time tonight came though, I have changed my understanding of why I am here. I now have come for three things I will not leave without.”
Astrella turned to face me. “What three things?”
“I will learn the spear from you, learn how to use chi and essence inside my body to perform martial techniques. Second, I will teach you how to use chi and essences outside your body, like a human cultivator or a male Oger.” I said.
Astrella shook her head. “The first one I can do. Great Grandmother’s youngest aunt taught the first human emperor how to use our arts, then he murdered her and used those techniques to build an army and forge the empire. The second one is impossible. You also forgot the third.”
I smiled and took her hands. “No, the third one is you. I have a war to fight, a world to save, but I am bringing you with me. I came for you Astrella, and I plan on leaving with you. That is part of how I am going to teach you the second one, how to use chi outside your body.”
She looked at me suspiciously, good, she was on the right track.
“How?” She asked.
I traced the symbols on either side of the demon gem, noting how her breath caught, her pulse rushed, and the light of the demon gem blazed brighter as I traced the Yin/Yang symbols along side the central gem.
“Dual cultivation. A gift for a gift. You teach me how to command the power in my body to master the arts of the spiritual warrior, and I will teach you how to command the heavens, call the rain, and reshape the earth.” I said then I pulled her in for a kiss. She allowed me to, for even with my demonic strength, her body naturally drew on earth and wood chi to strengthen herself beyond what rational limits should allow.
As I kissed her, I set my chi flooding into her through her mouth. I drove my power into her, shattering the mana gate I suspected was there. Her hands grabbed the back of my head and her talons grabbed my left shoulder blade so hard they drew blood as the hunger in her body tore the chi out of me to fill the void inside her. I put my hand to her chest, between her heaving breasts, not to push her away, but to pull through my left hand the power that raged inside her, threatening to tear her apart. A tiny thread touched my palm and both our bodies shivered as pleasure lanced through us, then the dam broke and the power she tore from me through her hungry mouth returned twofold to me through my hand as her heart mana gate opened. We moaned into each others mouths as the chi of the world began to respond to us. We began to tear at each other’s clothes, desperate for more contact, for more connection, deeper connection.
I kissed down to her magnificent breasts and fed from the power within her as hungrily as a sucking infant. She reached down and grabbed my member like it was a spear carved exclusively for her use, and my own power surged into her, shattering her the mana gate in her right hand as she drew more power into her. I kissed down her belly, lines of white fire sparking at each kiss until I traced the pink perfection of her center and I felt her titanic thighs close around my head as her legs locked across my back. I gripped her with my left hand as my right teased then probed as my tongue made nine kinds of wickedness in her. Our souls did not merge, they clashed, they came together like flashing blades and sparks flew from it, sparks that grew into lightning. I felt our hunger rising together as I brought her to a shattering peak, lightning shot down from the sky to strike her, and passed into me, tearing at me inside, reshaping me. Her spirit rode the lighting into me and she remade what did could not resonate with her until it could. Water hammered down from the sky to wash us as fire burned from our flesh in rising clouds of steam like two quenching blades.
Growling like a tigress, she pushed me to the ground and the roots surged up from the ground to bind and raise me as on an alter. She rose above me, and plunged, impaling herself upon me with a cry. Her claws fell upon my chest and on each breast they dug in until hot blood flowed. She began to thrust down, her hot wet tightness not wanting to yield before the invading spear, but her hunger demanded it. Her core called to mine, her dantain was a hungry storm in her belly, and my manhood surged with the need to plunge itself fully in that see of her power. I thrust up as she thrust down. We screamed together as the lightning flared around us, the red demon gem blazing like a star in the night and lighting our union in hellfire. We both burned, her soul reshaping my body, bending the elemental essences inside to respond to my spirit, reshaping and remaking my flesh into a mirror of hers, no longer separate from the world, but a part of it. A part of it yet infused with my soul and will, now our joined soul and wills as we made that most ancient of magics.
I could not reach her lips to kiss, so I claimed a breast and sucked on it as she rode me. I drove my spirit through each of her gates and tore her mana with me to touch the world. She was so rich with essences, the five elements were woven in every fiber of her being, in every cell, every bone, every sinew. As I had been mana blind before Nyan’s gift, so had she been, but now I had used my own mana channels to burn clean her own, my own mana to direct hers out those newly opened gates to touch the chi of the world, and with her chi came her essences, and the world answered.
We loved in the heart of a storm, our wills and desires clawing at the world in elemental fury and the five elements responded to us, the world filled us with power neither one of us could contain, but we were not alone, and combined we were so much more.
We woke ten feet in the air, inside a great tree that grew up as our bower, surrounded by small pond fed by the spring we had apparently also called. There was a smoky smell to the air that argued that before the pond got filled, what used to be under it burned in the sort of fires best used in making crucible steel, not baking bread. The ozone in the air told the tale of lightning that would love any excuse to continue falling. A surprisingly soft voice muttered in my ear.
“Mother Pon was right. You are fluffy, and very warm.” I looked up from the boobs I had been nested between and saw the most lovely scarlet bed head rising above surprisingly soft blue eyes. I grinned.
“Your horns look really cute in the morning.” I said, and she snorted.
“You were not lying about being able to teach me to cultivate like a human, or a male oger.” Astrella said with wonder.
“That means that I can learn to use my chi inside my body to enhance my fighting, like you do.” I said with smugness.
Then she tossed me out of the tree to land upon the ground. I called speed from the wind and flipped myself to land upon the shore beyond the pond’s edge. I drew upon wood chi to anchor me in the mud so I landed firm rather than slipping. Holy crap, is that how she lives? The elements inside her just draw on what they need in the environment? No wonder she didn’t tremble in fear before spellcasters. So what if they could call upon the elements, she lived them. Well, I guess, I was learning to as well.
I looked up at her, and got hit in the face with pants.
“Go make breakfast. I am very hungry for some reason, and you have a long day of training ahead of you. No more limits. Now I will train you like my sisters and I were trained. Don’t worry, after the first twenty or so times you get your legs broken or arm cut off, you will get a lot faster.”
I heard laughter coming from behind me. I turned, aware suddenly of my nudity to see our audience. I looked at Sisters Annis and Kivy.
“Are you sure I can’t borrow him?” Annis asked.
“It’s not too late to kill him. Let him make breakfast, and then we kill him.” Kivy countered.
Astrella jumped down from the tree, fully dressed and with a smug grin upon her face.
“No.”
