Rin soon discovered that magick was a tiresome affair. It was the same as physical fitness, everyone had a certain level of endurance and noobs like her were on the lowest end. For their first incursion, they could stay in her mothers vault for 1 hour only before she felt drained as if she had been battling monsters for a whole day in Earth´s hellish 1g.
-You will get better at this with time and practice-Lyn said as he took her hand in his to guide their counciousness out of the space- A person with your potential should be able to even stay in places like that for decades without effort or damage to your body-
Rin sighed. Their bodies had stayed the same, sitting crosslegged over the bed. Mentally, the experience had felt completely inmersive to her, like a training in full virtual reality did, however, when she came to her own, she noticed that her body had also experienced the drain which was something that virtual reality had not been able to completely grasp yet.
-Let´s go to sleep, we will have to start our journey well before the sun starts rising if we want to make progress soon-Lyn said as he started to go about settling them for sleep time. It was clear that he was used to preparing his own sleeping routine as he fluffed pillows and took our more covers. In silence, Rin did take out a few layers of clothing and carefully drapped them over a nearby chair until she was left with just an inner robe with long sleeves over her intimate garments. She then, dove into the thick bed covers, arranged her now long red hair over the pillow so it did not get in the way, settled on her right side and closed her eyes. She felt tired again, but still she did remember to wish him a good night before falling asleep within less than 3 minutes. To her, who had been a soldier in military barracks and battles, the whole procedure had been proper and fast, certainly not in the slightest bit a display of alluring beauty or a striptease.
Lyn, however, felt as if he had just witnessed a most sensual episode despite knowing that his wife had been aloof and unconcerned about sleeping in the same bed with him. His eyes couldnt have missed the way she shed layers of cloth or the way her flaming red hair drapped all over her back and waist as she bent to set the outer robes in the chair. Even the shades cast by the stones iluminating his quarters felt different as they caressed her pale skin and added to its dreamy appearance. As she laid there fast asleep, he feasted on the sight of her body, of her hair all over the pillows and his mind could not avoid conjuring images of her drapped over his chest, of what it would feel like to be nearer... It was in that moment when he understood that intimacy with a woman meant not only touching or getting near for sexual activities, but all of the moments when they were together in a space, her mere presence during activities he had been going about on his own. He was pretty sure he had slept alone since he was an infant, sharing a nap with his mother maybe once or twice when he was a toddler. The experience of sleeping in the same bed with his wife certainly meant more than he had expected to, specially as he felt calm and content with it. After a lifetime of being unable to and even disgusted by the idea, it was certainly progress towards a better situation for himself.
As he laid in bed too, he thought of the many times he had mocked his servants and the guards over their love of women. After his experience with the drug the first time and being tied down, molested and almost raped, he had spent a number of years during his teenage years feeling justified in his disgust to womenkind. The environment where he grew up certainly not helping with his issues as all he could see was women trying all kinds of methods to gain the attention of his father, women using sex as a currency that was exchanged for power and gains from men. In recent years, his beliefs became cemented, it was as if finding a woman that did not seek him for power, wealth or status was an impossible thing to do, even more complicated when his identity as the Demon Lord came into light. It was simple, women either wanted to take advantage of him or downright feared him as if he was Evil incarnate. While most men he knew where concerned with having wives and children, heirs to whatever legacy they could leave, he had long been convinced that he would spend his entire life alone and the best legacy he could leave at the end of his life was living without truly becoming the Demon Lord.
He thought that the Phoenix Warrior would never appear, specially not as he had vowed to never truly step into the path of a Demon Lord. He also never expected that it would be a woman from another universe, much less that he would end up marrying her before knowing who she was. However, his entire life had changed the moment he mixed his blood with hers, the second he came to know that there were other worlds, universes and realities apart from the one he had lived in. Sifting through her memories had affected him on a deep level as he became more and more convinced that the world she had left could very well be the end result in his, what the world came to be when the Phoenix Warrior lost against the Demon Lord.
It took him councious effort to fall asleep that night. There was much to think and meditate about given the many things that had happened in less than two days. The priority stood clear as daylight, he needed to be the strongest and sharpest if he wanted to hold onto the treasure that was his wife because many would seek to use her power for their own gains and were no less than the fabled Demon Lords of ancient times, many would not see anything else but a woman to be used because no one else had the same insight he did about her. No one else in this world could protect her better than he did. His last thought was a funny one, maybe in their case, the Demon Lord and the Phoenix Warrior would battle it out, just not in a fight to the death...