24. Regeneration (Patreon)

Food, however delicious it may be, couldn't be enjoyed with the same pleasure as always when one ate in front of a sultanzade. In the end, Aloe had to wait for Fatima to finish as she devoured one plate after another.

"You need more meat on your body." The princess let an off-hand comment between plates, refusing to elaborate any further.

If I get more meat on this body, you people may get ideas. The scribe sulked in her thoughts as she waited patiently. That was the only thing she could do. Wait. Thankfully for her, Fatima was only mildly malevolent and ate fast even if there were tens of plates.

The princess rang her bell again, which prompted Nasira to come back with the cart and recover the plates. The maid didn't leave the table empty, though, and put a bowl with fruits and a stand with steaming pastries on it.

"Let us get down to business." Fatima stood up and cracked her body. Fingers, arms, legs, neck… it was faster to mention what she didn't crack. She then swiftly stepped next to the scribe's palanquin and moved her hands below the prone woman's body, prompting a squeal out of her.

Aloe reacted fast. She didn't fight against the sultanzade, for she knew that it would not achieve anything, at least not until she got in the right position. Instead, she shifted her internal infusion to toughness and freed her body from any resistance once she noticed what was going to happen.

The sultanzade clutched her body and raised her up in a sudden swoop.

If she had been putting in any resistance or struggle, it would have ended up badly for her. Fortunately – or maybe consciously – Fatima carried her by the shoulders and knees, meaning none of her body weight fell on her pelvic region.

"May I ask why I am being carried?" Aloe managed to control her expression superbly, only a slight blush escaping her clutches.

"The palanquin is a nuisance if I am going to teach you," Fatima responded as a matter of fact and started walking. "If you have to be prone, my bed is more than big enough for the both of us."

No amount of self-control could prevent Aloe's eyes from swelling up. Her breath became erratic, and her heartbeat followed suit. The commoner looked up to the imperial, her lips curving into a djinnish smile. She's not serious. Aloe almost panted in relief. Actions spoke louder than words, but reactions were war cries in a silent night.

"Grit your teeth," Fatima said out of nowhere.

"Grit my…?" Aloe's eyes shot wide open as the strong arms that were holding her up lost strength and her body plummeted to the ground.

She was already donning toughness, so the only way to mitigate the damage was with normal tactics. There were only a few fractions of a second before the impact, so she twisted her body to the side and put her arms below her body so they could soak most of the fall. Whilst difficult, she partially curved in a fetal position.

A blink later, she landed.

On a mound of soft pillows.

"Ah, that look in your face~" Fatima moaned melodiously on her back. "Outstanding fear."

Aloe slowly turned to face the woman with a scowl, but she knew it didn't work much as an intimidating tactic as she noticed the wetness in her eyes.

"Now," The princess jumped onto the bed, the sudden shift of weight almost launching the petite scribe into the ceiling, "let us get with the actual stances."

There was an infinitude of things Aloe wanted to say. Each one worse than the previous one, but she kept her mouth shut. She knew better than to speak up. At least this is better than… than… She bit her lips.

"How do we start with the regeneration stance, teacher?" Aloe asked with a wry smile, deflecting herself from her thoughts.

Fatima slithered through the bed like a snake, her movement coming out sensual rather than ridiculous thanks to her breathtaking body. She placed a finger on the frontal part of the scribe's neck base.

"Like all stances, the beginning is nothing more than visualization." The sultanzade traced circles with her finger as she lay on her stomach. "For regeneration, what tends to work is thinking about your skin."

"My… skin?" Words of confusion escaped Aloe's lips.

Fatima nodded. "Visualizing regeneration itself is hard. Concepts are abstract, better to look at objects. And what better image than the organ of the body which gets hurt more and heals faster than them all?"

Aloe hadn't had high hopes for the princess' lectures, but there was a hint of intellect in her eyes as she spoke. Whether it was regurgitated knowledge from her family or her own discoveries, Fatima knew what she was talking about. She was confident about it.

"Close your eyes." The princess spoke and the commoner obeyed. "Imagine your skin, any part of it. Feel it in your mind, how that black patch feels the heat of the sun and the winds of the desert. Some hairs curl at the sensation, the skin detects a lot of things…"

Her voice was sweet and enchanting, Aloe found no difficulty in following the steps that were so methodically dictated. The spot she imagined was the skin a bit upward from her sternum, the part where the sultanzade circled even now with her finger.

"Now, a cut. It is shallow and it stings. You feel how blood slowly pours out of the body and covers the wound. It does not hurt, yet you feel the heat and the discomfort." Aloe felt clearly the heat and the sting on her neck, the princess' finger had been substituted by an imaginary wound. "Slowly, even more than before, the sting fades out and an itch emerges. You feel the need to scratch it, yet you do not."

The last part felt more like an order than a narration of the events. Her storyteller prowess was so great that Aloe felt her whole body itching at Fatima's command.

"The itch grows and grows. You do not touch it because you know that doing so will only slow the healing process, so you wait. And wait. Your body shudders. It is only a small cut, yet your whole body suffers from it. Agonizing." The last word contained impossible ardor, making Aloe pant and becoming aware of her slow breathing. "It takes time, but slowly, painfully so, it grows. The skin. One patch at a time, the wound is slowly covered. It is small, yet it takes so much time. Patch upon patch. It grows like a river that is slowly poured more water. A drop at a time. Constant. Uninterrupted. Blood disappears from sight, barricaded by bright pink skin. Time flows, wounds heal, and before you notice, there is no trace of that wound, as if it had never been there in the first place. Open your eyes."

Aloe did so with an exhalation and turned her head to the side to see how a prone Fatima was observing her with a smile on her face.

"Did you understand?" Fatima's pink lips contrasted perfectly against her dark skin, an expression worth a sculpture as strands of messy hair partially occluded her face.

"Yes." A total affirmation, yet the scribe wasn't as sure in her mind.

She closed her eyes and got back to that image. Of healing, of reconstruction. She saw her current flow of vitality, a river of slow yet potent water. An immovable force. A certain direction and flow. A river that gets water poured… that analogy may be useful. Aloe took a deep breath and focused.

Toughness was calm, strength was potent, speed was rough, acuity was sleek, and charm was hot. So what could regeneration be?

Nine stances, eight if I don't count the weird flowing one. The idea blossomed in her head. Four pairs… toughness and speed are already opposite, could regeneration be the opposite of the one I know? Mathematically speaking – if, and only if her theory was correct – it should. Only three unconnected pairs remained, and she already knew three free stances.

What can be the opposite of regeneration, or rather, of the other stances? It was a transitory thought, deviated from the path she should be walking right now, yet she still followed it. The opposite of potent… Weak? Maybe, but regeneration wouldn't be weak. Or at least, it didn't give her that idea. How about sleek? Does it even have an opposite? The more she thought of the theory of hers, the weaker it became. Maybe sleek isn't the right word… But I'm already getting into semantics here.

Aloe recalled the feeling that Fatima's words had produced on her, that itch. An initial sting and a lingering itch. The feeling was hot with blood. No, but hot is charm. Unless… Unlike the others, it was easy to imagine the opposite of hot.

So easy in fact that she could feel it on her body.

Vitality was the cool vespertine breeze. A helping hand in the scorching desert. Water to a dying body.

The scribe – the cultivator – felt her inner vitality. How that energy produced by her own body refreshed her. I see! It's so clear now! Since the very beginning, vitality had been an ice cube on a hot day. Aloe panted in excitement. Regeneration restores vitality! Vitality is cold! The opposite of hot! Whether the thought was justified or just a mad rumbling, the flow of her vitality started changing.

It wasn't the potency or the movement patterns of the vitality that shifted. But its temperature. She embraced the temperature inside of her. She was a desert dweller, she always had lived in oppressive heat, yet the cold was natural to her. Whereas charm she repelled, regeneration she embraced.

Aloe opened her eyes and looked at Fatima. A charged breath from all the air she had held escaped her orifices. Whilst invisible, she managed to see the contours of the vapor, as if it was a cold winter night. Her breaths felt fuller, more filling, and refreshing.

"Hmm." The sultanzade raised her back from her bed and examined the scribe slowly, panning her gaze up and down, only to finish with a nod. "Switch to another stance and try again, let me see how long you take."

The cultivator nodded back.

The change to toughness took but a thought, and she worked her way back to regeneration. From a slow and constant flow to a cool and refreshing river. The question of switching from opposite stances blossomed in her mind, but she ignored it. Unlike before, she was now in a race against time, the only thing she could afford to do now was focus on her stance shifting.

Frigidness, focus, and rest became her tenets.

As if she had taken a sip of ter'nar tea, her internal infusion became her everything.

Her flow of vitality gained speed, or rather, it recovered the one it had lost from toughness and instead lost its temperature. Slowly, but constantly, the degrees of her vitality went down. The coldness made her thoughts sharper. Similar to acuity yet worlds apart at the same time.

Aloe opened her eyes.

"Huh." The sultanzade giggled. "Good time."

She hadn't counted it, but she knew it wasn't much. Whether it was by her accumulated knowledge of stances and vitality, or because she was suitable for regeneration, Aloe couldn't tell.

"How long?" The expectation poured through her mouth as much as the white mist.

Fatima lay on the bed again, her breasts giggling with the gesture, and she led a hand to her cheeks in amusement. "Three minutes."

Thrice as fast as charm, almost twice as her first toughness internal infusion.

For once, the sultanzade's antics didn't matter to Aloe. For once, she was… happy.