The Soul Refiner Bk. 01 Ch. 07-09

Within a couple of minutes, she wrapped her arms around herself protectively. I paused in concern, but resumed when she made a noise of protest. A few more minutes, and her shoulders began to shake with silent tears. This time I did not stop combing, but simply continued my work. Adding light touches to her shoulders or arms between strokes of the comb. By the time I finished, Myta had regained her composure, and I laid out our new bedrolls.

Chapter 9

"Lay out in the blankets, face down." I told Myta, while retrieving the pot of oil I'd had heating on my brazier. I tried to keep my voice professional and soothing, something most of my patients responded to well. "The next part of your treatment will be uncomfortable, likely even painful. And also intimate, in a way that is difficult to describe."

"More intimate than dreams of fucking?" She responded with a raised brow. I nearly dropped the pot of oil in my surprise.

"You remember that?"

"Quite well, master." Her words carried that warm amusement again. Her tone, combined with the husky quality of her restored voice, felt like warm silk rubbing my skin. "I remember you appearing in some... unpleasant memories from my past. And also a vision of a misty glade, with a great tree. Some of it is vague and faded, but I remember other parts quite well."

"Remarkable." I muttered. She raised her eyebrows in question, but I began to apply the oil to her left hand and arm, and her questioning look was washed away by contented pleasure. The oil had additives to heat the body, and aid in mana circulation. Within moments she began to sweat, letting out a soft groan as I firmly gripped and massaged her hand. Although I spent some time trying to relax her muscles, most of my efforts went to stimulating various pressure points. Soon her hand was trembling with energy, her mana flowing as well as it could in her extremity.

Now the difficult part. I relaxed the grip I normally maintained on my own mana. Allowing my presence, the mana not contained within my anima, to wash over Myta. She gasped, tensing as my presence covered her, then making another noise deep in her throat as I concentrated my mana around her hand.

Myta had very low levels of mana, and what tiny wisps of presence she had seemed almost to welcome the pressure of my spirit. Living beings had hundreds of channels to move mana, called meridians. Most of them corresponding to the systems of the body. Veins, nerves, and bones alike all had reflections in the spirit body. The major ones did, at least. Myta's entire system of meridians had become bent and warped. In some instances outright tangled into knots by the pressure of her soul sickness. With as gentle a touch as I could manage, I began to smooth out the smallest of them. Starting from the ends of her fingertips I wrapped her channels in my presence, in an effort akin to braiding wet noodles. The channels wanted to remain in their already set paths, and for all that her spirit was sick, Myta's anima was strong and well developed. Even so I made steady progress, firmly pressing her channels into healthier configurations. Lines that harmonized with her body's systems.

In only minutes I finished with her hand, and then paused to check on how my patient was holding up. Sweat drenched her whole body now, making it glisten as though I had already covered all of her in oil. Her short, panting breaths were strained, but I judged her able to continue. As I continued my work up her arm to the shoulder there were no screams, only guttural moans and grunts from the back of her throat. It was good that she had a high tolerance for the work. Whether it simply didn't bother her as much, or she had a higher threshold for discomfort and pain than others I'd worked on. I had a long way left to go.

Oil, massage, spirit; I finished her left arm and continued with the right. By the time I began with her left leg she was whimpering softly. I was having an unexpected reaction to the noises she was making. I had treated any number of patients, handled the unclothed bodies of countless women and men. In truth, seeing Myta's wasted frame raised no sexual desire in me. She simply looked too unhealthy, especially after seeing her idealized form in the vision we'd shared. But her noises were... ambiguous. Her moans and whimpers seemed to hover on some border between pain and pleasure. Her body flexed and writhed under my hands like a stretching cat whenever her muscles weren't twitching. Clearly she was trying to suppress the motions, and equally clearly she was unable to do so.

The whole experience was far more sexually charged than it should have been. But, more than that, I felt again that possessive feeling of ownership over her. Myta belonged to me as a slave, yes. But far more visceral than that legal technicality was the feel of her body squirming under my hands, her spirit being shaped by the pressure of my own. She was under my care, under my power, and by the sounds she was making she was just as aware of that fact as I was. When I finished with her left leg I let my hand drift between her thighs, feeling the moist warmth of her sex against the back of it. I lingered just long enough that there could be no mistake of it being an accident. Moving on, I applied the oil to her right leg, and by the time I touched her inner thighs again they were wet with her own fluids.

When I finished with Myra's right leg, I paused a moment to take stock. Forcing myself to ignore the way her hips were grinding into her bedroll. Along her arms and legs, her channels now flowed smoothly. In graceful arcs rather than cramped and ugly knots. The colors of her anima were clearer, purer, although in places where I'd exerted more pressure I saw streaks of silver in her spirit. Perhaps that should have worried me, but I felt only satisfaction at seeing her spirit marked with my mana.

"I have completed the easy part," my voice sounded hoarse in my ears, and felt like it was scraping my throat. "Are you able to continue?"

Wordlessly she nodded, though her whole body shuddered with goosebumps in anticipation of what might come. I didn't leave her waiting, immediately applying more warm oil to her back. I had not been misleading Myta, within the trunk of the body the channels became far more complex, and her sickness was centered right at the root of her spine. I had still only touched the most superficial symptoms of her condition thus far. I propped her shoulders up on a folded blanket, allowing her to face directly to the ground. I had applied the oil only up to the nape of her neck, but resumed my massage with her temples. She moaned louder as my spirit wrapped around the tip of her primary meridian, which terminated at the crown of her head.

Here her main channel ended in a sort of node, where many smaller channels joined together. It was, perhaps, the healthiest point in her core spirit body. Even here however, poisoned mana lingered. I gathered the wisps of her presence, what parts of it were clean and vibrant, pushing that part of her mana back through her anima, while tugging at the corruption. All while massaging her temples and scalp. While one's mana could pass through their anima, this was a very slow process. And although it was much faster at these nodes in the spirit body, only sorcerers, who deliberately altered their own spirits for that exact purpose, were able to push mana beyond their spirit bodies quickly. I knew that it could take upwards of an hour to cleanse even a lightly polluted node, so it was a shock when the mana flooded into me far faster than the slow drip I'd expected.

With wonder, I watched as silver mana concentrated in her crown, still under my own influence two days after I had begun sending it to her. It defied everything I knew about the nature of the spirit. Answering my will, it flooded that section of her spirit, driving the sickness to the edges of her spirit body. Trapped between my presence squeezing from without, and mana pressing from within, I could watch Myta's anima strengthen and refine, gaining silver highlights over its red-gold core. The sickness passed from her to me in an instant, and I barely managed to bundle the corrupted mana in with what I already held.

Crying out, the touched woman shuddered and bucked on the bedroll. I could feel the whirling maelstrom of sensation and emotion that overwhelmed her. The purging of her mana was both painful and cathartic, like a lanced wound leaving behind a healthy ache. And the pressure of my spirit on hers was not the intrusive discomfort I had imagined. Instead, she reveled in the confinement, the perceived weight of my presence against her. Eagerly, almost desperately, she drew in more of my energy, seeking to fill her aching spirit with it. Body convulsing, she found a gentle, extended climax as my power scoured her spirit. I let her take as much of my mana as I could afford.

When I ended the flow of mana, her waves of pleasure also ended. Exhaustion stole the last of her self control, and her shoulders began to shake with silent sobs. Carefully I drew her to her side, curling up behind her rather than finding my own bedroll. I was still mostly dressed, but paid that no mind as I pulled blankets over the two of us, holding the crying woman as she drifted off to sleep. I joined her not long after.