Alustriea walked along the busy street coming from the market, the day had been slow going, as it had usually been. Tol-Vatal was a city much like any other, just it was eighty percent adventurers and mercenaries, there were very few common folk who lived here. For good reason at that, adventurers and mercenaries were not the most refined people in existence. Most had started as farm boys and maidens, dreaming about adventure, stealing away in the dead of night with their parents old gear.
These sort found the first life lesson beyond their farms the hardest. Not one person beyond their neighbors gave a rats hairy arse about their existence. If these farmer lads and maids were truly unlucky, they didnt last a week outside their homes. Out amongst beasts, monsters and bandits with nary a copper to their name usually, they found the life of adventure was boring tedious crap. For Alustriea it hadn't been much different. While she had been the daughter of an Archmage, her home was no less tender than the common folks farmstead.
Thinking back when she first set out, she had been full of childish vigor, unlike the typical dreaming adventurer wanna bes she had found herself in good company early, naturally so since few would over look the help of a spell caster! Yet that first adventuring group had over looked a simple rule most adventurers learned, never underestimate even the weakest of monsters. Goblins had always been a joke, the guards of her home and the adventurers she had had limited contact with all had said the same things. Goblins were cannon fodder, they were the beasts most early adventurers cut their teeth on.
They had conveniently left out the tales of how their own initial forays had went. How many companions did they lose back then? How many had slumped down, pissing themselves in fear when the 'canon fodder' were preparing to defile or eat them? Those were never in the tales adventurers told eager kids with Hope's and dreams of a life of adventure. As Alustriea herself had learned, there was nothing glamorous about adventure. It was dirty, terrifying and ugly. Between troubled encounters it was boring and tedious. That never made it into the grand stories either, of the cold wet nights spent under tree and sky cause you needed your coin for food or healing...
Sighing the elf recalled those smiling faces, covered in blood and screaming in horror around her. Alustriea's first real taste of true adventuring sparkle was when her husband rescued her. He admittedly wasn't the shining knight of a little elven girls dreams. Yet he had swaggered in, bold and powerful, saving her from a dark fate. He had rescued her in her darkest hour, and despite his looks she had become instantly enamoured with him. She'd never had thought she'd find love outside her people but she had been really young and as a mage she knew race wasn't set in stone, a polymorph spell or wish and he'd be a proper husband.
Funny how it had never came to that. She laughed at her old naive self. She had tagged along with Xing Lei, a little girl lost in her first love, blind to the difference if species, blind to his true nature. She would learn of it soon enough as he and her come to be sister Osilliaice guided her home. For whatever reason, Loss, Goddess of Misery had taken a disliking to her. From one I'll fated adventure to the next she had found herself unable to fight back. Held hostage or humiliated before her desired one, yet time and time again she had been rescued by him.
It would be much later that she would truly come to understand her future husband. Better for her had he pushed her away, but he had not. Nor had he actively pursued her either so ultimately she blamed her youthful ignorance then. For he had made a wish, a wish that would affect the world. A wish for danger to grow his strength. Again, much like his true nature, the understanding of his life quest would not come until much later in her life.
No, back then her hero had been robbed from her by humans. Cruelly imprisoned and forced to battle for their sick amusement. She and her sister had sought help from her homeland but returned to find, he hadn't needed it. For reasons only he knew he had spent years locked away, all under a misguided belief. When at last the elves had marched on the humans, she had been with the advance forces. Alustriea had wanted to return the favor he had shown her but also to confirm the truth of what her father had told her.
The wish he had made years prior would ultimately doom so many weak and helpless. Her hero was like so many of these mercenaries. They were not holy knights and righteous paladins, they were in it for wealth, power and fame. The dreams of a love lorn little girl had crumbled when she was forced by circumstance to turn her magic against him. She recalled the sight of the bloodied ice lance in his flesh, how it had shaken her to the core, and the guilt she felt when it was revealed the catalyst for the whole deadly situation was misinformation provided by her own family.
Alustriea was pulled from her thoughts as she watched a young couple, likely fresh off a boat from the mainland taking in all the shops of the waning daylight hours. Tol-Vatal was a city that never truly slept. Once the sun went down the seedier side of a mercenary town was revealed. Prostitutes, drunks, gamblers and thieves would be thick in the waning twilight and deep into the night, hopefully the couple would find lodging before the dark elements of the city caught wind of them.
Unlike her, they had no powerful kobold protector that constantly would be there for them. When trouble and death knocked on their door, the shockingly large back of Xing Lei would not be there to hold up the world for them. Shaking her head she hurried on, she needed to get home, not only due to the dark elements that would soon be roaming, but the trembles of her addiction were starting again. A part of the elf hated herself for not rejecting her love out right, it would have saved her so much discomfort.
Yet she needed to understand him. She had balked the prior times he offered, but the third time... her stubbornness won out. Her need to understand the one that had so tightly grasped her heart and why he so easily tore it apart drove her to go through with it. He showed her a glimpse of his world. Even to this day she could not describe it, she had tried, she had tried constantly to use magic to get back that one Fleeting moment that would forever more tie her life with that aggravating kobolds journey.
Closing her eyes she breathed in, not the sour scents of the city around her but the hint of the energy she had glimpsed what seemed forever ago, yet was still as clear as pristine glass. The broadened universe, an existence that denied mortals and gods. A power that swirled around her, through her. A feeling of being one with everything. She could feel him, her sister, her self, her father so far away. The energy was in that one brief tormenting moment... everything.
Like an opiate addict since then she had followed his tail everywhere. He had taught her to temper her body, while it still felt smooth and tender for an rather young elf, she knew that most basic weapons would not cut her flesh. As a mage, knowing that even if an orc got in close and swung with all its might that you could laugh in its piggish face with no consequence, it was intoxicating. Her body, so lithe and tender... was also strong beyond sensibility.
Yet it was nothing before that brief moment. Despite the hardship of drow and demonic gods, despite travelling across the vast ocean to a land so alien to her forest homeland. All this strife was worth it to reclaim that feeling. If she were asked to give up this power, her magic, her vitality... she would do so in a heart beat just for a minute of being in that state of everything. Frowning, Alustriea looked down the road towards their home, to be honest with herself, she was starting to worry.
It had been months since she achieved the ninth level of body tempering, she could feel something deep inside her body urging her forward. The next step, to seize the ability to exist with that energy as both Xing Lei and Osilliaice did... yet he had denied her. It was frustrating being held back for some unknown reason. Her body felt ready, her mind suspected she could just push through... yet Xing Lei urged her to hold back, to let him figure something out, but was it truly necessary?
Sighing she rubbed her angular face, idly stroking her long wheat colored hair. Thankfully she had consummated her relationship with Xing Lei, and even better, the childhood dream of her former hero using magic to be with her intimately had come to pass. He had seemed to gain the ability to shape shift which he showed off to her and Osilliaice when ever he took one of them to bed. She felt a warmth crawl up her neck to stain her cheeks red as she recalling seeing Xing Lei in his high elven form.
He had become so beautiful, a slight inch taller than herself but chiselled in his body. His pale skin was like smooth white marble, his golden eyes were filled with such warmth that it made her squirm every time he had looked deep into her own emerald gaze. She had no idea how he did what he did, but she could feel a connection with that form, when she was beneath him, entwined in passion it felt just shy of that experience. Such is probably why she regularly pushed for more intimacy these days.
That moment of climax was just like what he had guided her through, while it was localized between himself and her, it truly felt like he was one of her people, and so damn beautiful. She would swear often that he wasn't a kobold anymore but an incubus, so addicted to amorous pursuits she had become that it wasn't hard to push the fact that he might have gone full lust demon. The fact it took the 'edge' off was icing on the cake to her.
While their coupling would not replace that longing for experiencing the worlds energy, it was at least enough to cure her withdrawal symptoms. Sighing as she saw their house not far off, the elf hurried her steps, tonight was Osilliaice's turn but maybe her sister would be willing to share knowing she was regressing a bit... Shaking her head she pushed open the door and stepped inside, through her tempering she could tell the house wasn't empty, the rhythmic beating of a heart told her who was home.
Setting aside the unsold pill bottles she walked over to the living area and smiled seeing her husband sat in the middle of the room meditating. Padding over silently she settled onto the cushion and looked at him. He had come a long way since that goblin cave, he was bigger, stronger and still no clearer to her. Glimpsing 'cultivation' did not expose all his secrets, it had simply removed the cover off a well, the more she looked, the more she saw that the descending darkness stretched so far.
Alustriea glanced over and blushed seeing Xing Lei looking at her, that tilt of his head as she felt the blush on her cheeks deepen. Smiling at him, she was about to greet her husband when she noted he was holding a scroll out to her. Glancing from the scroll to his eyes she saw the intent look in his yellow gaze, "Xing Lei, is that...."
Xing Lei nodded, "Tonight, when Osilliaice gets back, it's time for you to break through. It's time to properly become a cultivator."