The Dao of Magic

The soft twittering of birds pierces into Re-Haan’s consciousness as she crawls of out a deep slumber. She has trouble opening her eyes as she blearily sits up. She feels a cool wind against her bare skin and sniffs the air.

Her nose is overwhelmed with a heavenly aroma. It reminds her of some human cities, they have these buildings with big glass fronts that smell sort of the same. Was it some grain product? She takes another whiff and smells something more earthy with some undertones of roasted meat.

Turning around, she stares at the golden tree towering above her. Her gaze slowly explores the place but gets stuck on the large streams of floating rock, ground and plants that surround the clearing. She didn’t pay a lot of attention to the place previously, but now she notices the large volumes of dirt moving over her head. A few trees surround a colourful collection of buildings. Is that a fat tree with a wooden door?

She moves and immediately notices a rather large wet spot. Her face flushes a bit as memories of a dream come back to her. That was amazing on a whole different level. She must have wanted it pretty bad if she starts dreaming of a certain weird human.

She spins around as she hears some clattering. In the middle of a clearing he stands, his back to her, he is bent over some sort of table. Dark, simple clothes adorn his figure as his arms move around. He straightens back up and throws something her way.

“Drink up Rhea, you lost a lot of fluids.”

Her eye twitches as she sees that stupid human grinning wide. A glass floats closer and Re-Haan suddenly realises that she is indeed very thirsty. She manages to keep glaring at him as she drains the glass, throwing it back with excessive speed.

“Want another one? It feels like we kept going on for a couple of days.”

Anger fights with embarrassment as she can’t decide what to feel. It felt so… beautiful is not the right word... when it happened, but he just ruins the memories by grinning like that. An angry pout on her face, she drains the glass he filled once again.

She stands up, and with a toss of her hair, she walks over to the big Tree.

“Hello, Tree. He told me a lot about you. I'm Re-Haan.” Her touch and smile cause the towering plant to glow brighter as she whispers a greeting. She closes her eyes for a moment, slowly turning around when she is done. A white piece of cloth hangs in the air in front of her.

“Breakfast is ready. I don't want you to get burned.”

Still not talking to him, she narrows her eyes. A small staring contest later, she shrugs her shoulder and wears the soft, white shirt.

⁂

Women in oversized shirts are the best! I finish cooking the bacon and place the crispy slices of Heaven Devouring Pig on the tray. I grin wider at the sexy sight of curves clad in silk and pull a large couch and a single table from my ring. It isn't my most comfortable couch, but this one fits two.

She saunters over, hips swaying seductively as she licks her lips again. Not quite as sexy when she is drooling and showing so many sharp teeth. I think this morning went very well, all things considered.

My tired psyche must have clung onto her consciousness somehow, searching for some kind of companionship, shelter or just warmth. I regained clarity of mind when the heavy petting began, and we must have fucked like rabbits for at least a day or two from our perspective. All her injuries were totally healed when I woke up.

The fact that she stank like a badger - and waking up next to her filth covered form - was a major boner killer, but that tends to happen when a solid core cultivation gets shared between two people while they have mind sex. That is the only reasonable explanation that I can come up with. The woman didn’t have a speck of qi in her system when I last checked, and now she has the same cultivation base as me; first crunch solid core forming. With a dual-core setup… I make a note to discuss this later.

I carefully washed her, removing all the stinky goop that she expelled through various means, and gave the filth to Tree. He used it as fertilizer for some plants, the massive plant was excited at being able to fulfil the ideal growing conditions for a few more seeds.

Then I had a long think. Mind-sex-based cultivation sharing was still the only explanation I could come up with after a long time of theorising. Then I started breakfast.

“How do you feel?”

She stretches a bit as she chews on a strip of bacon. I shove some vegetables her way but she pretends they're air.

“Fine, actually” The reply sounds slightly unbelieving. She moves her arm while grabbing for more bacon.

“No pain?”

Her hair flutters around her ears as she denies the question. “There was a lot of pain suddenly. Then there was… you...”

Naked, an oversized shirt and a blush. I don’t know how she does it, but she hits all my weak spots with full force.

“What happened… back there...”

More blushing as she looks to the spot of trampled grass we collapsed onto. Her ears are red now, pretty cute.

“You got hit by-”

“I know. Must be an enforcer trio. Typical, no report for a week after a mana disturbance and he sends a kill squad.” She snorts as some odd expression flickers across her face. ”What happened in the dream?”

This time, she manages to look me in the eye. She keeps her face straight but her red flush isn't fading. I grin as wide as I can.

“You lost a wing and a large chunk from your back. Forcing you into humanoid form did - proportionally - the same amount of damage to every single cell.” At her confused look, I put together a small information packet on cells. I pull a small shard of green jade from my ring and shove the thoughts into the stone before touching it to her forehead. I cup her face as she looks over the information. I kiss her the moment she opens her eyes again. Her eyes flutter for a bit, but she kisses me back and pushes me away a few seconds later.

“That sounds very bad, no? Cells seem useful for staying alive.”

I nod emphatically. “Cells are really useful for staying alive. A lot of qi was needed to keep your body going. I fell asleep while healing your brain cells, I think. This allowed some mental walls to come down and...” I helplessly shrug. “...sort of synced our nervous systems? Not really sure. First time I ever experienced mind to mind communication like that. I need more data to make conclusions.”

She thinks this over as she nibbles on some toast. I smear one with jam and hand it to her, biting into some nice basilico vinaigrette (or at least a close approximation of the wonderful stuff) covered salad. She wipes a bit of the black gold from my cheek with her thumb and tastes it. Her eyes open wide and she steals the bowl from my hands and begins scarfing down the salad.

“I agree, let’s eat first.” I can finally show her the full extent of my cooking skills. The salad, meat and condiments are all rich in qi and very tasty. We eat in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the soft breeze, chewing noises and the occasional chirping of birds. Now and then the earth rumbles a bit, but Tree seems to have slowed the reconstruction process down since we awoke. I give it a stealthy thumbs up in thanks and it rustles its leaves at me in response.

“So, why do I feel so different?” Done eating, Rhea is now slowly moving a hand and fingers around. She looks me in the eyes. “And was the story I heard true? Are you a thousand years old?”

I freeze. My thoughts come crashing to a thunderous halt. I check my face and notice the capillaries constricting.

⁂

Re-Haan is incredibly smug at this moment. She finally has something she can take back control of the conversational flow with. She observes his face as the colour drains and his features twitch. It takes him a few seconds to compose himself.

“If you really heard all of it… What was the first thing you heard?”

“You turning your house into a library.”

Covering his face with his hands, he mumbles on. “Absolutely fantastic. It’s going to take a while to recover from this blow...”

He laments a bit longer, afterwards raising his head slowly with a determined expression on his face. “I think we shared my cultivation base. I don't need to explain qi to you, right?”

She nods, so he continues. “Here is my theory on what happened. Our nervous systems began running in parallel, we both must have been reaching out or at the very least escaping from something. Then my energy ecosystem and yours merged, which equalised the power in-between us.” He holds up a hand and wind starts blowing around it. “I got some of your wind affinity, and you got half of my entire cultivation. We seem to be both in the core forming stage. Let me check something.”

He walks over and brazenly places a hand on her chest. She is about to protest loudly but the memories of what happened a few hours earlier cause her face to flush as she bears the tantalising touch. She feels power flow into her, similar to her own but slightly different.

“We are both at the first crunch of core forming. We both have a dual-core setup. All four cores are around ten per cent of their maximum size. I was at a quarter, so some of that power must have been wasted? Or maybe...”

More power flows into her, but this time it comes with a pink heat. He tries to keep a serious face, but Re-Haan can see the beginning of another grin.

“Five per cent must have been used to reinforce your body. You have a late-stage liquid-realm body cultivator’s worth of passive qi in your body. So more than half must have been used to repair what was left of the cell damage. That left both of us with cores one-tenth of the way to completion.”

The heat is rising from her belly again. Biting her lip, the dragoness thinks over her options. She deliberates carefully for a moment, but then another wave of loaded power flows through her.

“Fuck it,” she growls and jumps the man.

⁂

I spin the flying woman in a tackle hug, bleeding off her momentum. My danger detection process put me in full crisis mode just now. She jumped at me with massive force, but I found the optimal way to slow her down by spinning her around a bit.

“First, you need to acclimate to your cultivation base. I never heard of a qi-less being forming a solid core cultivation in the span of hours, you need to get used to your new strength.”

I put her down on her feet and kiss her. It does not feel like we are touching with our brains this time, but her physical reactions are a lot clearer in real life.

“And I know just the way to do it.” I push her down while grinning widely.

⁂

Five figures stand on the deck of a battered ship, looking out towards a large and dark shape looming over them.

“A-are you sure that they won’t be able to see us? This is the most secretive and guarded area of all the mage factions, after all. I only know about this place because I overheard some teachers talk about it.” Ares asks with a nervous voice.

“You haven’t seen anything yet, sis.” The carefree smile on Vox’s face does very little to reassure the worried mage.

“We are drifting again, Selis...” Angeta pokes the smaller girl standing next to her in the arm.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll keep us steady.” Selis closes her eyes and a slow shudder runs through the ship. “There is a strong current here, so I have to keep us still and remove our traces at the same time, it is quite dr-”

“WE'RE BACK BA- Ouch, stop hitting me Tess, I made a sound shield.”

“That doesn’t mean you can start shouting directly next to my ear.”

The sudden intrusion of two shapes jumping from the shadow of the splintered mast catches everyone's attention. Ket coughs as he rubs his side.

“Our scouting mission went well! I am not going with her next time, she's no fun. OUCH. Stop that! Also, anyone who thinks of joining her in traversing the shadows better have a steady stomach.”

Tess retracts her fist from the boy's stomach and faces the group. “There are a couple of thousand mages around the dungeon in total, a few hundred guard the entrance with the rest spread out on the encircling docks and buildings.”

Bord has one of his rare moments where he is visible thinking of something. “I would have laughed in anyone’s face if they told me I’d be doing this a month ago.”

Ares is the only one who doesn’t get a contemplative look on her face as the others think of their transformed lives. Ket is the first to speak. “Heh, we are planning to sneak through one of the most heavily guarded doorways in this part of the world without any support or fallback plan. But something tells me that Tea.. he is in a worse situation at the moment.”

Bord has another of those weird smiles on his face as he replies. “Maybe not worse, probably a lot more dangerous though.”

He receives some odd glances at this but is picking his nose with a dumb look on his face a few seconds later.