All I felt was relaxation.

Then, between my drifting thoughts and the lack of physical awareness, appeared a new sensation. It was cold, like the void between the stars. A chilling touch that would have made anyone of sound mind snap back. The Dimensional Truth reached out to my soul. An ephemeral awareness, guided by no will, following no purpose. Raw energy, permeating and seeping into the cosmos. Astral might, whose capacity to wield we all were here to increase.

Close to my awareness, it stopped. Close enough that I could have communicated with it. That I could have joined drifting fragments of the universal power with my own soul.

The Astral Essence, resting against my solar plexus, sent silver light in every direction. It pierced my mental form, on its way to the edge of my soul. A myriad of pathways were created, needle-thin voids of light. The Dimensional Truth rushed in, eager to find another host. It touched my mind with an eldritch lack of intent or curiosity. Like water flowing where it could rest the easiest, so did the power fill the space of my awareness. It reached the Astral Essence. Then it filled my mental form. Like a smooth piece of ice being slammed through my forehead, I felt freezing cold and pain pulse through my brain. I resisted the urge to inhale forcefully, as my eyes flew open.

Nothing.

Around me was a vast expanse of nothingness. Midnight blue, gradient towards black, endlessly in every direction. I took a deep breath. My projection needed no air, but it was a habit that made it easier to maintain my presence here. If I grew too uncomfortable or agitated, my body would snap out of its relaxed state and my awareness would be pulled back where it belonged.

“Fairly dull around here today,” I remarked, looking around the void for any sign of something. “Perhaps I should know better than to scout the Astral Sea for distractions,” I mumbled. I had meant to think that, but my mastery over projection was not yet so far that I could think in a body constructed by my thoughts. Any word I formulated would just drop out of my mouth. “Do I even have a mouth right now?”

I looked down at my hands. They were rudimentary, thin constructs. Sticks of light with wiggly end bits more than proper limbs. A showcase of just how insignificant my capability to wield it was compared to the might of the Astral Sea.

Extending my will into the void, I pulled tiny threads of silver, sparkling energy from the environment. They originated somewhere close or infinitely far away, moved crawlingly or with immense speed, the lack of reference points made that impossible to judge. Streams of starlight, the finest of threads, joined my left arm.

Through skill and determination, I willed the Astral Energy into the form of a human arm. Well, the core of one. Joints and bones, slowly, meticulously, crafted with the same care as a smith would need to carve the gears used in wristwatches. Focused, working hard, I pushed my mind like a physicist on the edge of solving a formula.

The Astral Sea became part of me. Energy was the medium in which I stored the information. The more details I added to my form, the more I expanded my Astral Capacity and the power my will had in this realm. This was the core of all cultivation that we, observers of the Dimensional Truth, did.

Beyond my arm, I saw the darkness shift. Something moved inside it. A remnant of a thought that had stayed here, perhaps, or a figment of this ocean of untapped creation that had developed a mind of its own. I knew what swam these waters. Most of it was ambivalent to my existence, some of it was benevolent, some of it would ravage my thoughts and reave my soul.

Vastness protected me. I was a speck of dust in an endless expanse. A tiny fragment, a visitor, who, even if found and hunted, would yield little to no sustenance.

I continued my work unabated. Just when I had finished with my skeletal lower arm and was starting work on my elbow, I felt a distant shift. After a few seconds, I realized what it was. The music the teacher had put on had stopped. The class was coming to an end. Sorting out dual senses was a bit difficult, but I had ample practice in it.

I unravelled the paths that the Astral Essence had laid through me. Without ways to reach me directly, the Dimensional Truth had to retreat. As it ebbed away, it filled my mind with images of distant stars. Cold balls of barren rock, circled close to an abomination of metal and fungus. Twisted it gnawed and cried like a goat mid-bloodletting, as tendrils of-

The vision was gone, the Dimensional Truth ebbed away and in the absence of its absolute cold came the heat of reality. It burned on my skin. I was stepping out of a blizzard and dropped into a steaming hot bath, with little transition. Inhaling sharply, I opened my eyes. I closed them again immediately. Even the twilight of this room was too much initially.

I stretched, revelling in the fact that at least my muscles were my own and functioning without complaints. After about ten seconds of readjustment, I opened my eyes a little and gradually managed to get back into reality in its entirety.

___________________________________________________________________________

“You can do it, honey!” I shouted over the sound of flying lightning bolts and cracking stone. Esther shook her head slightly in disbelief. That was all the acknowledgement she had for me. Her concentration lay with the stone that was flying towards her at moderate speed.

“I don’t think she likes you anymore,” one of my fellow students poked fun at me. Malana, was her name, a busty woman with bright red hair and eyes, harmonizing nicely with her caramel skin tone. She was definitely a stunner, fun to talk to, and single. That she continuously sought me out in conversation made me wonder if she wanted me to change that last fact.

If she did, I sadly had too much on my plate at the moment to invest time into that.

“She loves me,” I assured her with a broad smile, “for many good and varied reasons.” Just because I didn’t have time to pursue a new relationship at the moment did not mean I wasn’t going to flirt.

“I bet,” Malana purred.

I opened my mouth in response. “No need t-“ I stopped there, the scream of magical lightning, like a songbird crying at full volume, overpowering my voice.

In Esther’s raised hand, a myriad of blue electric arches danced. As she drew her arm back, the energy, incapable of discharging outside the bounds of her demands, crackled and formed itself into a lance. It fused into a single bolt of lightning, arching and writhing in her grasp. Always, it retained a straight core.

With the power of her magic and physical prowess, she launched the condensed lightning. It blasted through the crack an earlier attack of hers had made in the defensively raised wall of rock. Once through, the seal that kept it all together was suddenly undone and an explosion of electrical energy ravished the air. Spasming, clothes partly charred, my Queen’s opponent fell to the modular floor of the artificial battlefield.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Esther reached up behind her head, fastened her ponytail, and walked away. The white feather that adorned her tricorne bobbed with every step. The teacher shouted out Esther’s victory.

Today’s exercise in the Battlefield Training class had been to fight utilizing only our magic, likely to stay in theme for the reveals everyone was supposed to get this month regarding the varieties of magic and how our innate soul-types interacted with them. I had dropped out in the first round. Gravity magic really did not lend itself to this type of exercise. Without my Artefact, all I could do was run up to people and try to tag them. Even if I did that, without a punch to follow, slowing them down was only a momentary inconvenience.

So I had just thrown in the towel. The teacher had not been able to condemn me for it, considering there was literally nothing I could have done, short of revolutionizing my field of magic by coming up with a working ranged attack.

For the entirety of the class, I had watched Esther fight her way through the other contenders. As per usual, she proved herself highly capable. A fight purely on magical grounds, even without Artefacts, against her was incredibly unfair in the first place. Esther was one of the few freshmen who had immediately jumped into the Advanced level of her magical inclination.

“Once more, I stabilize our finances,” Esther remarked.

“I didn’t even get the chance this time,” I complained, while greeting her with open arms. She stepped right into my embrace, which swiftly turned into a deep, passionate kiss. We were no strangers to public displays of our affection, but this one was charged, to say the least. The last class of our day had concluded and, like every Tuesday, our excitement had reached a veritable peak. Barely, I managed to pull away from Esther’s lips. “Well, goodbye Malana, love calls.”

The redhead just smiled and waved, while I grabbed Esther by the hand. Not bothering to change back, we grabbed our bags. We hurried our way to the train station, felt one another up most of the ride, walked as quickly as was possible to our mansion, and made our way to our bedroom.

I wasted absolutely no time. Esther had barely pushed down the handle when I was shoving her through the door. There was no other floor to land on than the soft mattress. Excitedly, Esther looked over her shoulder, but did not turn on her back.

With my foot, I closed the door, and descended on my Queen. A dull sound filled the room, as my hands smacked down on her butt simultaneously. Esther gasped and raised her hips. The already tightly sitting fabric of her pants seemed ready to burst at the seams, around her bubble butt. I couldn’t help myself, and drummed her overabundant backside for a little bit, just enjoying the confined jiggles.

That only increased my appetite. When lust overpowered patience, I reached under her and swiftly undid the button and zipper. Immediately thereafter, I treated myself to the unpacking of her alluring ass. The difference between her narrow waist and wide hips was stark and some force was involved in dragging her pants over the hill of her displayed backside. Bit by bit, the juicy, smooth spheres came into view, in all their taut glory. Then, suddenly I was past the widest point and her pants were yanked all the way down to her thick thighs.

I did not spend a fraction of that time on her practical panties, just pulling those obstructing things out of the way. Tongue extended, I leaned down to her exposed pussy. A long lick let me taste the sweetness of her honeypot, mixed in with a bit of fresh sweat from the earlier fighting. I penetrated her tight folds, feeling them shift and clench around my tongue.

She was wet. Without any action from me in this bedroom, she had already been plenty wet. Teasing her the entire trip home definitely paid off. Still, I wanted to hear more of her cries. Face buried between the symmetric halves of her heart-shaped pillow of an ass, I spanked her, harder than before, creating sharp sounds born from the impact of my palms directly on her smooth, lightly tanned skin.

Each time, she erotically cried. My masochistic love had her lust spike and her sensitivity elevated. Scientifically speaking, the pain was agitating blood flow in the area and releasing a cocktail of chemicals linked to heightened awareness. Realistically speaking, I was doing it because I liked the little rush of power almost as much as her ecstatic cries. Strange that the people I enjoyed hurting the most, be it only in these harmless manners, were those I was the most intimate with.

Further thoughts on that line were eliminated by the lack of attention I paid to what my brain wanted and the attention I directed to what my lower half wanted. Whatever that was, it had nothing to do with unpacking the reasons for my mild sadism.

Her cheeks red, the imprints of my hands faintly visible, I stopped and instead concentrated solely on eating her out. Every day, I studied her sensitive spots. Our first time had gone splendidly and I was better at pleasing her now than I had ever been.

“S-stop,” Esther cried.

Confused, I nonetheless obliged immediately.

“Your cock,” she panted, wiggling her firm, full ass. “I want to climax from your cock.”

“Just what did I do to deserve you?” I asked and gave that presented butt one more smack. Tensing all over, so close to orgasm that even a spank almost set her off, Esther screamed. Pussy juice dripped onto her pulled-down panties, while I rapidly removed my own legwear. I did not bother fully pulling it off. Halfway down the thighs was enough to get my erect manhood out.

I got on top of her, mounting her like we were both animals in heat. Wet as she was, I still had put force behind my plunge to penetrate her tight pussy. I grunted, savagely, while her quivering quim surrounded me. Every last enthusiastic opinion I so openly declared regarding sex was instantly validated by the pleasure we shared.

Almost fully inside her, I pulled back and then slammed back into her down to the hilt. Esther screamed, the impact pushed her hips back down on the mattress and set off that orgasm she had been so close to.

I held her by the back of the neck, kept her pinned down, and kept aggressively panting. When she was in this mood, when she was in any lustful mood really, the sounds of my pleasure were something she desperately wanted to hear. Men and women were more alike than different, in most regards.

“Fuck you’re TIGHT!” I roared, unable to properly move while the orgasmic clenching grabbed my shaft like it was the key to every last satisfaction a person could ever dream of. If my efforts were successful, it would be the key to most physical satisfactions a woman could ask for.

I grabbed the side of her shirt and pulled at it until the metal buttons popped open. While the shirt may have been designed with this kind of pressure in mind, her bra most certainly wasn’t. After spending another day and a train ride reminded of just how much I hated any obstacle between me and her massive tits, I ripped it apart where the two cups were linked. Roughly, I tore the unwanted underwear aside.

I assaulted her now naked tits relentlessly. Two large bags of squishy meat, less firm than her ass, and a lot jigglier in return. They were sensitive in their own right, hers more than any other woman I had the chance to play with so far in this life. Just kneading them created loud moans, running my finger up the valley between them made her shiver, and pinching her nipples made her scream.

Her orgasm had subsided enough that I could resume fucking her. Without any transition, I went into a hard pounding. Her ass radiated heat from the previous spanking. Her screams doubtlessly made it through that door, but who cared? I hoped Aclysia was listening to this, fantasizing at night about her getting hammered into a stupor.

“Karitas! Karitaaaaaaas!” Esther shouted under me. My broader frame pinned her down. I loved this sensation. This position of power, given by a submissive partner not taken by any actual violent means. Esther wanted the exact same thing as I did: for me to use her tight cunt in a rough and merciless fashion.

For several minutes, she got exactly that. Our clothes were sticky. Our breathing ragged. Our groans and shouts frequent. The pleasure mounted rapidly. “I’m going to cum,” I groaned. Esther screamed louder in response, as if to animate herself to a second orgasm just in time. I clenched my teeth and held on for as long as I could – then unloaded inside her.

As one, we became a suddenly silent bundle. Pressed tightly against her ass, which was pushed up against me in response, my seed pumped into the depths of her tight snatch. Motionless, we lay there, me on top, her below, riding out the ecstasy.

My cock was still twitching inside her, when I regained enough control to gently comb through her hair. I pulled the completely displaced ribbon out and put it to the side. Kissing her black, wild mane once, then a second and third time when my love for her overcame me, I worshipped her in all the little ways I could.

Biology and gods had made unfair calls when they decided women deserved to be multi-orgasmic, but for the ecstasy of my orgasm to be generally shorter than Esther’s, I was very thankful. It gave me time to adore her when all of her worries, all of her stern exterior, were temporarily wiped away by the pure orgasmic bliss.