A day mostly to yourself

When you wake up, Anastasia is curled against you chest sleeping soundly. You manage to get her off you and yourself out of bed without waking her. You grab your clothes and look at the hole in the crotch that Vatarie had made. You go through a lot of clothes. Sighing you leave Anastasia with a kiss of her forehead and head to the changing room you've used in the past, hopefully their will be another set of pants there for you. As you walk you knock on the wall three times. You've no idea of Anastasia's bodyguard is even awake but maybe this will earn you back some points that you'd lost from not doing that.

Inside the changing room you in fact find pants. They even fit. Shame they were bright purple, but needs must. Pulling them on you decide to leave your ruined pants there, take a pair leave a pair and all that. Heading to the training arena you are alone for a while. You run through your forms in silence.

It had been a long time since you'd been alone.

The thought seemed odd. You'd been largely alone for eighteen years, and sure you'd had near constant company over the last three weeks but you'd enjoyed the company. When you finished your forms you rolled your shoulder and tensed your legs. You were still alone so you figured you should practice some magic and you still wanted to work on defensive magic. You already have a few limited externalized shields but those have the issue of you needing to see where the attack is coming from, or as a bubble around you, it covers more area but isn't as strong as a directional shield and uses more magic. The latter isn't much of issue for you normally but this is about how to survive a fight with a fellow champion long enough to talk to them so conversing magic is important.

Your dead zone was the newest bit of defensive magic you'd learned but was limited. Since then however you had seen something that you might be able to work with. The night you met Eve, she used her aura itself to transport magic into Delilah to put her to sleep, and when you were ambushing each other her tendrils were riding her aura to extend.

You had little to no knowledge of your own aura but you were surrounded by people with significantly more experience and you'd watched them for a while. You let out a breath and your aura expands. You don't let it extend to it's full size, instead holding it to the size of the arena. Now you extend your dead zone bubble.

It was different. Unlike before when you extended your bubble it felt much easier to control. Your cast off magic adding to the density of the air. You imagined an attack from your right and pulled magic into a wall next to you. You felt your aura shift, the shield you made was thicker but moveable. It wasn't just atoms being held together the magic itself was denser. You needed someone to attack you. This new shield didn't feel like it would stop a physical blow any better than your none aura boosted shield but you had a feeling it would hold up to a magical blow better.

"Would you like some help?"

"FUCK ME!" You were so shocked by Asune's presence the control over your aura slipped and it expanded.

Asune was suddenly consumed by it and interesting your dead zone bubble had expanded with your aura without your deliberate action and was holding. She let out a breath that fogged in front of her. "Cold." She tilted her head and waved her hand through the magically dense air. "What does it feel like?" She asked as her hand waved through it.

"Thick." You said pulling your aura back to the size you wanted to work with. It was very good to know that your bubble could be bigger with your aura supporting it. You wonder how your disintegration would work with your aura. "Hey can you throw some magic at me?" The moment the question is finished a fireball punches through your dead zone and connects with a shield you made in front of it. The reaction was unexpected, the fireball didn't explode or splash it was just snuffed out.

"Oh you're using that shield." Asune leaned down and grabbed a handful of sand. You tilted your head curiously. She squeezed her fist closed then opened it to show a shard of glass, which was then thrown at your head.

The shield didn't work on the glass but the dense air did. Asune had used magic to propel the shard, the magic was stripped as it flew through the shield and the speed was bleed off by the denser air it was having to pass through. It feel to the ground at your feet.

"It's not dense enough. You should make sure the physical object doesn't get that far past the magical shield or this can happen." She picked up another handful and threw a new shard at you. It hit the shield and the magic was taken away but when it touched the dense air broke apart reveal a smaller sliver. The smaller sliver had it's own spell on it that had been protected by the layer of glass encase it. The dense air didn't stop this one and you grabbed it out of the air before it ended up inside you.

"Huh." This isn't something you'd thought about before. A lot of possibilities were coming to you, two stage magical attacks using a physical bullet to ensure your disintegration spell broke through any shield or shell in it's way. "Is that how your cutting works?" You ask looking at Asune. You felt something move through your zone but you couldn't do anything to it and a cut on your cheek opened up.

"No." Asune answers walking into the zone. "I will tell you how it works on one condition."

"What condition?" You ask feeling skeptical.

"You cannot tell anyone how it works."

"Oh yeah of course." You say without hesitation.

She nods and walks over to you, her breath a heavy fog coming from her nose. She comes to a stop with her chest almost touching yours when she turns around. You feel her ass press against you and you wonder if one of you misunderstood something. She pulled the back of hair apart and points what looks like a golden circlet running for the top of one ear to the other concealed by her hair. The circlet then disappears and you feel a cut on your other cheek and it reforms.

You stare at the gold for a bit longer until it clicks. "You're imbuing it."

Asune turns around with a broad smile. "Yes, gold can but turned into threads thinner than any other metal before breaking, and can then imbued with magic."

"That is, brilliant." You remember a little about the uniqueness of gold from your last world, importantly for this, you remember that it can even be spun into a thread a single atom think and still hold together. "Did someone teach you?"

"No I experimented with various metals until I settled on gold. Learning it imbue it and retain directional control was the hardest part." From how much pride was flooding her aura she was very happy at the praise, you wonder if anyone other than you had ever been told how this works. "A weapon I can also carry with me, without worry of it rusting or deteriorating with time."

"You are," you try to find a word other than brilliant, "amazing." She smiles at you.

"So long as you don't tell anyone I can spin you a circlet as well."

That isn't a bad idea, if it wasn't for your problems with imbuing. "I'm not even close to as good as you at imbuing. If I tried to use that I'd probably cut my head off." You laugh but are entirely serious.

Asune looks at you neck. "I would rather you not die." She runs a hand along your neck. "I like how cold you made it." She blows out a foggy breath and you feel the temperature rise a little.

"Are we interrupting?" Vataire's voice carries through the moment and you look up to see her, Delilah and Anastasia standing there watching.

"No." Asune said stepping back. "We were testing his magic." She walked out of arena and you pulled your aura back inside you as you let the dead zone dissipate.

"You all going to practice?" You ask as the three walked onto the sand.

"Delilah needs to get stronger to earn the right to you. Only one way that is going to happen." Vatarie said as she took position to run forms. Delilah mimics the stance and you are a little surprised to not see Eve directing a sardonic grin at Vatarie. "Want to join?"

You take a breath and consider. "Sure." You take the stance and Asune decides to join as well. All of you run through the forms until the sun has finished rising.

"Keep this up and you might earn the right to join us." Vatarie's lack of mocking or domineering attitude disarmed Delilah a little. You could see they were getting ready for a teasing match, the genuine desire to see them improve was not what they had been expecting.

"Thank you my Lady." Delilah said without Eve throwing any remarks outs. The five of you ran through a bit more exercise before heading to the dinning hall for breakfast. As you all arrived as a group something happened that hadn't happened in ages. Anastasia got swarmed by the students and she handled it perfectly. Greeting everyone happily, shaking hands and sharing auras freely. No one offered you or Asune a hand but Vatarie received a few. You saw the friends she'd been with in the first week approach and Vatarie left your group to talk to them. Anastasia ended up being pulled away to keep interacting with her peers so just you Delilah and Asune ended up in sitting together in the dinning hall, and were swiftly joined by Oriana, Auria and Cynthia.

"The Priestess would like you to come to the church Christopher." Oriana said. "Would you like to join us today?" She asked Delilah.

"Church?" Delilah asked.

"The Church of the Mother of All." Auria filled in. A moment of recognition hit Delilah.

"I wouldn't mind attending." Eve said.

"So would I." Asune said. You were surprised by that however, she has had sex with one Goddess and she knows there is another Goddess out there, religious curiosity is probably to be expected.

You would like more information on why the Priestess wants to see you, but the obvious response to her letter is, well obvious.