Hector woke to the assault of a wet tongue. “No kisses, Jasmine!” The pit bull perked up at hearing her name, looking quite pleased with herself.
A quick check of the time revealed that it was only ten at night. He had only been unconscious for a few hours. Over time, each dream had grown to cover more time from Volithur’s life. The initial experience had covered less than a day in a night of sleep and now he was experiencing an entire week in a few hours.
Jasmine’s entire rear end wagged along with her tail as she head butted him in a demand for attention. Hector pushed her away so he could get out of bed, then lifted the dog to carry her out of his bedroom into the hall. “Jen, don’t let the dogs into my room,” he shouted.
“It wasn’t me. Jasmine knows how to use doorknobs,” came the response.
“So you’re a Velociraptor now?”
The dog smiled up at him agreeably.
“I don’t want to sleep with you. Consent, Jasmine. Consent.”
Jasmine barked at him.
“You can’t just claim an unconscious person wanted it. Haven’t you ever seen an episode of Law and Order?”
She tilted her head to the side.
“The SVU spin-off, not the one with all the murders.”
Another bark.
“I’ve never actually seen Paw Patrol, so I can’t say if the comparison is valid. Though I doubt a children’s show addresses the issue of sexual assault.”
Jasmine moved forward to press her sturdy head against him. Hector patted her on the back and started walking to the living room, the dog following close enough to throw off his walking gait with random bumps. Jennifer sat cross-legged with the blind miniature collie in her lap, a look of intense concentration on her face.
“Are you cultivating life energy from a dog right now?”
Jennifer’s eyes glanced towards him before moving back to the dog in her lap. “You don’t ‘cultivate’ life energy. I think that term is exclusive to the Xian.”
“Absorbing energy seems a lot like cultivating.”
“If I absorbed life energy from an elderly dog, I would be murdering her.”
Hector frowned. “Then what is your process?”
“It’s like breathing. Take and give, take and give.”
“And deplete the air of oxygen?”
“What? No. I’m not consuming life energy. We’re sharing it back and forth.”
“You’re just moving energy back and forth? That’s it?”
“It doesn’t need to be complicated, Hector.”
“Are there more advanced techniques that you will switch to at some point?”
“Why would there be any techniques?”
Hector shrugged. “To attune your soul to a specific energy?”
“My body is alive, Hector. The dogs are alive, too. Life energy is everywhere once you know how to feel it. All you need to do is pass it into and out of your soul and nature will take its course. I never had to use a technique to grow from a child into an adult. I just kept breathing and eating and it happened on its own. There aren’t any ‘techniques’ to study or ‘skills’ to learn. It’s about letting things happen.”
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Hector’s brow drew down. “Then out of the billions of people on this planet, why did no one ever figure out how to use life energy? Think of all those mystics who sit around meditating. None of them were ever able to demonstrate any proof that life energy even existed.”
“Oh, that’s easy to explain,” Jennifer said. “All the energies on Earth are jumbled together. I bet all the monks and martial artists were circulating energy with their souls but didn’t have the experience to separate out life from the rest of it. I wouldn’t know how to do it either if I didn’t have the memories of Justice to guide me.”
Hector pondered the words for a moment. “And the method is working?”
“There’s life energy all over the place. It would be a whole lot faster if I was trying to be an Alfar instead of a dog kin.”
“And… why would you choose the dog thing instead of the Alfar thing?”
Jennifer’s cheeks reddened as she studiously avoided eye contact. “Maybe because people are hard, Hector. All the expectations, all the lying, all the manipulation. Dogs are just joyful creatures. Food, cuddles, walks, and they’re happy.” Her volume dropped as she continued. “Some people think we get the dreams that fit us best. I get to experience living with a wolf pack. You… get to spend all day exercising and working. It’s not exactly a big stretch for you.”
Hector snorted. “If Volithur had even a little discipline he would be ten steps ahead. I would like to grab the kid by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. He’s been through some trauma very recently, I get it. But the world he is in now requires commitment if he wants a better future.”
“This is exactly what I was talking about. You’re a better Xian than the actual Xian you remember.”
“Very recently you were claiming I was definitely a Jinn.”
“Because the Jinn like to upload their minds to machines. I don’t actually know very much about them other than that.”
“And you know about the Xian?”
Jennifer shrugged. “Maybe not directly, but Justice heard enough. The Arahant coming to your planet meant you were going to be ‘civilized’. The Jinn coming to your planet meant resource extraction and abduction of your most talented children. The Xian coming to your planet meant they wanted a training exercise for their armies.”
Hector couldn’t find any fault in her words. “Well, what about the Alfar or the Beast Kin? What happened when they went to a planet?”
“Hector, you can’t rip holes in reality to travel the multiverse with life energy. The Alfar existed on multiple planets because the Arahant like how they influenced the environment.”
“Oh.” Hector squinted at his estranged wife. “And that doesn’t make you want to consider a different type of energy?”
“You mean switch from a healing and nurturing energy like life to something that would let me more easily slaughter my way across worlds? No thanks, Hector.”
“Powerful Xian supposedly become immortal.”
Jennifer arched a brow. “And what about the average Xian? Do they live long?”
“Well, uh, I’m not really sure about that, but there would have to be benefits to body enhancement even at the beginner levels.”
“Life energy is naturally suited to increasing longevity. Even the weakest Alfar can live for hundreds of years just from communing with nature a few times a day. I doubt it is that easy for a Xian. It definitely isn’t for the Jinn, or they wouldn’t need to turn themselves into robots.”
Hector’s thoughts went to his father. “What do you know about Ogres?”
“They’re bad,” Jennifer said.
“Why?”
“They steal life instead of sharing it. A few Ogres can take down an entire ecosystem if they aren’t stopped in time. The Alfar actually consider them a more dangerous problem than the Strigoi. A Strigoi might drain enough vitality to kill a victim, but a single Ogre is a walking famine.”
“An Ogre is worse than a literal vampire?”
“They’re not quite vampires. No pointy teeth or blood drinking. They drain victims by touch.”
Hector nodded in thought. “And how fast does an Alfar become an Ogre?”
“Justice became a wolf kin in a couple of months. I assume it would be the same for Ogres and Strigoi. The process isn’t really understood well. You can only deviate from the Alfar path as a child.”
“Or presumably as an adult who just learned how to use soul energy,” Hector added.
Jennifer glanced to the dog in her lap. “Yeah.”
“Well, I’m going to do some more mental cultivation. Keep Jasmine with you.”