[Reminder: This story contains explicit sensual content, violence, mature themes, and references to trauma/abuse. Reader discretion is advised.]
Training in the dojo was her favorite of daily lessons. It was usually before the last meditation before dinner.
Taking such a liking to it, she sometimes continued training after, with her favorite tutor, Magi Rai.
From all these lessons she gathered she was meant to protect others and herself, to understand others and herself, and to learn from and teach others and herself.
Magi Rai taught her to be swift, yet still, observant, yet unrevealing, striking, yet defensive. She was far from being as he was, yet she was closer still.
And through the punches and kicks, slashes and slips, quick thoughts, and long tracks, she had toughened her body and strengthened her mind.
Salīa had much energy to use and use it all she did. It was he she would talk to, and he would listen intently.
He offered few words in return, yet they often made her smile or think. Sometimes they displeased or disrupted her, yet she hadn't liked him less for it.
This elder yet younger-looking man of long, straight indigo hair and indigo fighting robes with indigo hilts of his long and short sword, had returned suddenly to his homeland less than a moon ago.
He would be back, they told her, and nothing more.
She couldn't help but miss him.
He was the one magi who didn't scold her for her crude jokes or punish her for sneaking off. In a way, he did, but it was never as severe as some of the others. At most, he'd make her sweep his dojo and clean his belongings.
Though it was fair to call it a punishment, with the dojo being so large one might mistake it for a small palace.
The curved eaves were finely glossed, and lanterns lay both in and out of the ornately painted walls.
Everything from the thread of the carpets to the wood of the chairs to the kind of ceramics used for the tea sets were particular.
Even the incense cones had a certain luxurious waft to them, which made one feel they were in the heavens.
While she had mostly only seen the inner and outer gardens where she trained and the tea room which overlooked the mountainous valleys, there were certainly many other rooms here, one having been where Magi Rai must be resting.
She'd always ask about the other rooms, yet he never sated her curiosity and only showed her the places she'd be cleaning. In a sense, she was grateful. As she quickly learned, large places, even if untouched, required frequent upkeep.
One time, she was made to dust each shelf of his grand library and discovered an odd book.
It almost looked like any other of his wondrous collection, yet something about it stood out. For one, it just had a black binding without a carved title.
The edges of the pages glimmered in gold and carried a scent of cedarwood despite the dust that had long collected on it. It was buried so far back she almost missed it—but she opened it, only to drop it just as quickly.
What did I just see? Is this really Magi Rai's book? But he would never have something like this. I must be seeing things. Yes, that's it.
Upon checking again, she found she had indeed not been seeing things. Inside, gleaming black ink wove over the smooth parchment.
Passionate colors erupted, bleeding through like streams, deeply shaded into each intricate illustration. Words appeared here and there—sometimes between characters, sometimes as notes.
Yet what swept her through each page was the people drawn on them, their faces in a mix of agony and awe, pain and pleasure, desperation, and desire.
The touches they shared were not settled and simmered, but blended between wanting and needing. Both soft and rough. Denying and accepting.
It wasn't just touch. It was also each word they shared or didn't. Each expression they hid or could not. Each secret and revelation.
It all tangled and disheveled again and again as the pages fluttered by until they were all undone completely and yet felt wholly.
Salīa knew it might be bad of her, yet she borrowed the book, unable to bring herself to ask Magi Rai, out of fear that he might ask what book drew her in so much that she wouldn't read it there.
And the moment she was alone in her room, she opened it again as if it were the first time exploring it and exploring herself.
She couldn't help it, and she didn't care to remember if it was permitted or not. Yet she touched herself relentlessly, begging her own hands to take her the same way, stroking each part of herself until she shivered and shook, gasping for breath as those in the story chased their release.
She did this almost every night. Even after she returned the book, she'd open it up whenever he was away just to grasp onto the story again.
She found a strange realization that she had suspected before. That every time she had brought herself to herself in such a way, her ability to spar and heal accelerated swiftly.
It's not that she could beat Magi Rai or surpass Magi-Mi Lali, but both their eyes lit up with delight at her resilience as she went on.
Of course, Salīa knows better than anyone that one's own mind can almost convince oneself of anything when becoming addicted to vices. This led her to test herself to be sure it wasn't just soothing her guilt for such a compulsion.
She spent a moon without such acts and found that while she advanced, it was nowhere as rapid.
That was all she needed to believe that there was some link between her pleasure and her power, yet she was still too ashamed to ask any of the magi if any sense was to be made of it.
Magi-mioa Lali would've been the best to ask, as she always centers everything around love, intimacy, and sensuality, yet what Salīa would be asking far exceeded the allusions or implied words spared in her lessons.
She even reasoned, although reluctantly, to ask Magi Rai about the meaning behind the book. Yet when she went to find him, it was found that he had left to tend to some matters, and this time his return was not promised.
Not only was he gone—the book was too. Just an empty space left where it once was.
Yet she found she just couldn't accept this. She missed him, and even more so, she craved that book. It was unreasonable to crave a fantasy so intensely, and she knew it, yet she was unable to dismiss it.
At first, she said it wasn't so ill of her because she'd seen plenty of lewd illustrations in her time and in great variety too. Yet this book was different, for it was the first time it had a story to it that intrigued her almost more than the…other stuff.
Though it became such a distraction that even thoughts of such things interrupted her meditations, leading her to get scolded often.
Unrelenting, she became an abstinent and devoted student for her remaining time and focused wholeheartedly on each lesson.
She even willingly took to studying the tables and tended to the houses of being, trying her best to stay away from all those filthy ruins of none.
While she had mostly achieved this, these drawings were mischievous enough to find their way into her dreams. And worse still, these dreams turned lines of ink into flesh and blood. She saw herself as one of the lovers and a blurred figure hovering as another.
While she craved these moments, it also frightened her.
There was too much happening that should've remained no more than a fantasy and not something to ever be realized. And yet she was feeling it all as if it were happening right in that moment.
Without fail, she woke most mornings gasping for breath and sweating. Her heart racing ahead of her.
"I must be going mad after all this lechery," she sighed.
Her resolution was to see the healers and undergo a cleansing, pulling out that which is impure. The dreams became somewhat lighter, and she woke up calmly again. Yet they never fully left.
If anything, they just felt more and more familiar.
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