Chapter Eighteen: Unusual Technique
With a new set of duties, Nilhin had been moved to a new set of rooms to occupy, closer to the Zaw family’s rooms. They occupied the living quarters on the main floor of their underground fortress, and took up several buildings due to the complex and large number of living siblings and ancestors. Nilhin was placed only a three minute walk from the library, which Nilhin took great advantage of, often spending his time studying in the massive towering halls and shelves. There was information on everything and anything that Nilhin could imagine ever needing, and it was all headed by a kind librarian, Zaw Kefa, a cousin of the main family.
He finished his sword lessons at po-chas, and then he went to eat dinner with the servants in the lower levels of the many layers of Neuma. When he returned to the main floor, he went to Zaw Rronov’s study for their nightly magic lessons.
The problem was that Zaw Rronov was so patient with him, and yet no matter how hard Nilhin studied and practiced the many techniques from all the clans, utilizing everything he discovered in the library and from Zaw Rronov himself, he still failed to gain any more powerful than before. His internal energy was still too conflicted and out of order to be of any use to him. The only way Nilhin knew how to fix such a problem was to steal energy from another person, but he figured that there was nobody with any energy worth stealing that the clan leader would allow him to kill.
He knocked on the doors to the study, and they opened on their own. He kept his head bowed as he entered the room, walking towards the sitting area where Zaw Rronov already rested, a scroll laid up on his knee as he perused it, his fingers hovering over the dried ink letters and the ornate diagrams in thick paint that stuck off the page. Nilhin stood by the cushion in the corner where he often meditated under Zaw Rronov’s observation so he could be corrected. It had been quite some time since his form, posture, or technique had been corrected, yet he still didn’t improve.
“I’ve read something very interesting today, Nilhin,” Zaw Rronov began. “Make us tea, and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned.”
Nilhin made tea, heating the water in the ornate metal teapot with a hand seal specific to gelids and women, this one had been learned in Neuma rather than the library with Hvit Svani in Storkott. He had many new books in the library of Neuma with much more information on gelids and how they could utilize gelid-only energy to perform magic. However, the strongest, and the most effective and stable magic came in the form of a complimenting pair of intertwined gelid and pyretic energies. That was how the apex was formed well enough to begin cultivating energy with the intention of achieving enlightenment, immortality, both, or neither. There were many reasons why one wanted to have a strong apex, and immortality wasn’t always a goal, but it most often was the desire.
“We both know how fox beasts obtain their pyretic energy, to fuel their apex and bring them internal harmony, but that requires a steady supply of mortal life, especially if they are starving as you currently are.” Nilhin poured Zaw Rronov a cup of black tea before he poured himself one, and he sat on the cushion on the ground to sip and listen to his mentor and clan leader. “You are part human. Despite being a gelid, you are also a man. You should be able to make your own internal pyretic energy and cycle it, reusing it to generate more. It’s not as effective as stealing it, but it should do, for now.”
“This one assumes that his master has learned the technique in which this can be done.”
“Of course,” Zaw Rronov said, picking up his cup of tea and sipping the steaming liquid. “Like your heritage indicates, it requires sex--” Nilhin frowned-- “but thankfully, for now, you can do this on your own. It would be more beneficial and fulfilling to you, theoretically, with more partners to feed you, but self-stimulation should also work, to ease the burden of your current starvation enough to allow you to feast without murdering your partner.”
Nilhin finished his cup of tea, not sure what else to do with his mouth as Zaw Rronov informed him of this new, and very strange and unorthodox, technique that he could use. If it was going to help him do magic, then Nilhin would do whatever he needed to do. His mother had always had very few wishes for him, one was to never become a courtesan like herself, another was to live with his father, and the last was to be a great mage. While some of those were out of his control, or no longer threats, he could control the effort and sacrifices he made in order to achieve the feat of being a great mage. If he worked hard enough, what was to say he couldn’t be as impressive as the legendary Xiu Ming?
“You know how to meditate,” Zaw Rronov said, breaking Nilhin from his thoughts. “Stimulate yourself, bring yourself near orgasm, and then stop and meditate to properly distribute and recycle the energy you’ve created inside yourself. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Nilhin said. “May I ask you a question, your excellency? About my mother.”
“I may not have the answer, but you may ask.”
“She stole small amounts of energy from many men, they barely noticed it, to keep herself sustained. She didn’t kill anyone for as long as I knew her. Is that possible for me to do, one day?”
“Of course it is. I suspect you’ve only killed your targets thus far because you’ve been either upset, thus out of control, or you’ve been starving to the point of desperation, in which case you were also out of control. Fox beasts are nowhere near mindless, and neither should their offspring be--” Zaw Rronov, despite being human, knew so much about fox beasts that it put Nilhin’s own limited knowledge, despite descending from one, to shame-- “I think it is best for you to hold off on gaining a partner for your cultivation until you reach maturity, however. It may be harder for you to act on anything but instinct at this age. Surely you know how fox beasts and their children age…” Nilhin didn’t respond, because he had no idea how fox beasts aged, nor how it applied to him. Zaw Rronov didn’t sigh, but his lush lips parted as if he wanted to but refrained.
“Foxes aren’t mature until they’re a year old, and the many records we have on fox beasts insist that this equates to about seventeen years of human age. You’re not yet fifteen. You’re still smaller than an infant, and from what little my personal collection has on fox paragons, they age even more slowly in regards to their powers than fox beasts, who are considered kits until they are over three hundred years old.”
Nilhin was still a baby by fox beast standards? That was impossible. He was fifteen, and he would like to think he was rather mature for his age despite this. He had lived through more than the fifteen year old young masters certainly did, those who lived unaware, coddled by their privilege and creature comforts.
“I’ll keep track of your progress,” Zaw Rronov announced. “I will measure the amount of internal energy you have, and document it, for my records. Every night you will complete this unique cultivation technique, and once a week, every six days, I will measure your apex to see how you have improved.”
“Would you like to measure my energy now?” Nilhin asked.
“Yes, let me measure it once now, and then once after you perform a small spell,” Zaw Rronov said. He rolled his scroll up while Nilhin stood and set his teacup down. Zaw Rronove grabbed an empty booklet and a pen made of specialized reeds that grew in the gardens below and above the mountain they lived beneath. The people of Neuma were less fond of brushes, and preferred these special pens, however they functioned very similarly. Nilhin had already grown proficient in his use of his, although he found it was less beautiful than the calligraphy he obtained when he used a brush.
Nilhin raised the front of his shirt to reveal his stomach, and Zaw Rronov rested his palm against his lower stomach. The sensation of someone directly feeling his apex forced him to repress shivers of revulsion lest he offend the clan leader, but he had only ever been touched like this by Zaw Rronov. It left him with all of his extremities feeling overwhelmed with an excess of energy, and he often couldn’t sleep well at night due to his restless legs seeming to think he ought to be moving, and his twitching hands. It only lasted a second, before Zaw Rronov sat back in his chair, once again blank in his expression, although he was rarely anything else.
“Hold fire in your hand,” Zaw Rronov instructed. Nilhin held his hand up and he tried to use his spell. The key word was try. His curled fingers provided a neat shelter to birth the beginning of flames, but his sparks consistently died out, fading quicker and quicker the more he attempted to make it work. This continued for many minutes, until the tea had long gone cold, and Zaw Rronov finally shook his head.
“Let me see how your energy has changed,” the clan leader said. Nilhin let his hand drop, frustrated at another consistent failure. Zaw Rronov touched him again, only this lasted longer. Zaw Rronov recorded information in his notebook before he set it aside, open so the ink could dry. “Go try the technique. Tomorrow we will continue the lessons on theoretical internal alchemical processes. These are fundamentals that most other clans neglect to teach. I refuse that any of my direct pupils are uneducated in any matter.”
Nilhin left, having been dismissed by Zaw Rronov’s waving hand, and the fact the man returned to the scroll he had been reading when Nilhin arrived. Nilhin went back to his room, his limbs tense by tingling with energy that didn’t belong to him nor could he absorb.
Once he was in his room, he slid his sandals from his feet and set them near the door. He approached his bed, passing the office full of cataloged letters belonging to the first and second princes and the sitting area, to open the sliding doors to his room. He walked inside and closed the doors behind him, as if that could shield him even further from what he was about to do. Nilhin lit the candles around the room with a small hand seal. Igniting candles, with a source to burn, was easier than sustaining a flame with no fuel besides oneself. Once one candle flickered to life, he only sent the flame around the room to light the others -- it was still exhausting to his menial reserve of energy.
He stripped his clothes, folding them and setting them on the bench at the foot of his bed until he was left only in his underwear, in which he finally sat on his bed. He knew how this worked from a mechanical standpoint, but… he had never done such things before. He had never felt the urge or the interest in it. Certainly the other servants boys did, sometimes while he was in the room, when they thought he was asleep, but they were… well, he supposes they had been the same age as him, they only looked like they were older because Nilhin still appeared so young. Of course, he wasn’t destined to reach maturity, likely even experiencing puberty, until he was seventeen according to Zaw Rronov, a man who always knew more than what he said.
It was best, he decided, to lay on his back, pulling the blankets up to cover himself, like he could hide what he was doing from the nonexistent spectators. He feared he wouldn’t do this right, he feared that he would be unable to impress Zaw Rronov at all, and perhaps lose what little favour he had with the man, in which case he would be relegated back into a life of even harsher servitude. The pressure of his success weighed heavily on his narrow and weak shoulders.
Then Nilhin touched himself, and he immediately closed his eyes. It was a strange sensation. He suddenly understood the desire to be touched in such places, since it did feel good, but his lower belly growing pleasantly warm, and his head growing pleasantly cloudy -- like he had no worries, his problems eased as his mind melted through his ears. His spread thighs closed on themselves as he turned on his side, rutting against his hand. A few tears leaked from his eyes as he pulled his hand away. The warmth in his body, created from such an experience, needed to be distributed and recycled. His thighs were sore from their pleasant tensing, his hips having moved of their own accord to seek out what he could get. How wanton he was…
Meditation was difficult, with both his frantic breathing and his unclear mind distracting him, but by the time he felt he had done a good job at willfully sending the accumulated energy through the channels and paths of his meridians before reclaiming them in his apex, he settled back into bed. When he extinguished the lights, with a hand seal at the nearest torch along the wall, it was easier than he had ever experienced it before. Unlike his intentions, all of the lights were snuffed out, filling the room with the scent of smoke. What an unusual development.
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