The Poison Lotus Palace glowed soft with lanternlight as evening thickened into night. Ashwin and Marla had been wined, dined, and endlessly entertained all day. By the time the court finally dispersed, King Kenroe himself clasped Ashwin by the shoulder, laughing like an old friend.
"You've been more than a guest today, Ashwin," Kenroe said, eyes gleaming. "You've been a revelation. Stay the night—you've earned it."
Kenroe personally escorted them through gilded corridors to a royal suite. Its wide arching windows looked out over the entirety of Fanghua's jeweled territory, a vista of shimmering canals, lotus lanterns, and the endless star-flecked sea. The King bid them goodnight, returning hand-in-hand with his queen, their laughter echoing faintly down the hall.
Ashwin smiled at Marla and open the door, allowing her to step inside first. "After you my precious." Marla turned her head and blushed at the words, her cross of sickly green and bruised blue skin momentarily flushing up with blotches of bright pink. The suite was extravagant—marble inlaid floors, silken couches, and at its center, a Mana pool that steamed faintly with glowing azure light.
Marla walked to its edge, her snakes uncoiling from her head like curious vipers dipping into the hot Mana pool. She stripped with casual ease, her pale skin shimmering under the mana glow. Slipping into the pool, she sank down until the water lapped her shoulders, sighing in satisfaction as each serpent coiled languidly in the current.
Ashwin sat on the edge of the bed, chin resting in his hand, quietly watching. Marla took her time, fingers tracing each viper one by one, soothing, cleaning, whispering to them as though they were beloved familiars. She picked up a sponge, rubbed slowly along her collarbone, down her chest, then glanced back over her shoulder. Her smile was half-temptation, half-command.
Their eyes locked, the air thickening with unspoken invitation.
Marla leaned back in the Mana pool, steam curling around her, the glow painting her skin like moonlight on marble. She tilted her head, serpents swaying lazily, and crooned, "Are you going to sit there watching forever, or are you going to join me cowboy?"
Ashwin chuckled softly, loosening the clasps of his robe. "How could I refuse such an invitation?" He slipped out of his green and brown layers, stepping into the pool with an easy grace. The mana-infused water embraced him like hot silk, his skin tingling as the hot rejuvenating mana waters seeped into his muscles and bones.
Marla slid through the Mana pool like one of the serpents of her own head, climbing onto Ashwin with a wicked grin. Her legs locked around his waist, binding him with a grip as strong as iron vines. Steam curled around them as she pressed her body to his, her serpents hissing in chorus as her lips found his.
Their kiss was urgent, hungry, the spark that ignited the Heavenly Organa Sutra. The Mana pool itself stirred, waves circling as qi surged outward. Ashwin's Eon Qi flared, a storm of blue frost flame fireflies spiraling into the air around them, while Marla's seething green animus blazed from her skin like wildfire.
When their energies collided, the chamber itself shook. Sparks of viridian flame and frost fire motes swirled together, clashing, merging, erupting into a halo of green frost fireflies that clung to the rafters like constellations. Their qi screamed against each other, not in rejection but in mad union, the sutra forcing their flows into harmony.
Marla threw her head back, her serpents writhing in ecstasy as emerald fire licked off her shoulders. "Ashwin—!" she gasped, pressing tighter, his Eon Qi pouring into her low-level Animus like a torrent!
Ashwin wrapped his arms around her, steadying her trembling frame as his own Eon Qi swelled into her lower Animus. Their breaths came ragged, lips colliding again and again as the sutra spun their spirits into a cyclone. At the peak, their energies detonated in unison.
The palace chamber roared with life. Green flame patterns bloomed across the walls, the air thick with drifting motes of Necro-flies, each one glowing emerald at the core. Ashwin's frost fireflies—once the pure blue of the Glacial Soul Eye now shimmered a brilliant viridian instead, their wings crackling with Marla's wicked animus. Ashwin now commanded Necro-Flies.
They collapsed together, foreheads pressed, bodies trembling from the torrent of cultivation. Marla's aura pulsed—no longer just animus, but something denser, darker, alive with newfound strength. Her meridians, torn wide open by the second session with an Eon cultivator, now surged with thick ropes of emerald Vestigium force, coiling visibly in the Mana pool's waters like spiritual serpents.
Marla clutched him tighter, laughter bubbling in her throat between ragged breaths. "Ashwin...you've ruined me. Or...perfected me."
Ashwin's Necro-flies danced green in his vision, the chamber still vibrating with the aftershocks of their shared breakthrough. He smiled faintly, brushing a hand along her jaw. "No, Marla. We've perfected each other."
Steam curled up from the mana pool as Ashwin and Marla finally pulled apart, their chests still heaving, bodies slick with divine glow. The last emerald sparks of her evolved Vestigium force slithered back into her skin like satisfied serpents, while Ashwin's Necro-flies dimmed from their feverish blaze, green and sparks circling his shoulders like lazy lanterns.
Marla pressed against him one more time, kissing him with that serpentine hunger before she let her legs unwrap from around his waist. Together, they waded through the rippling pool and rose into the cool night air, water running down their bodies like rivulets of molten jade and silver.
Ashwin reached for a robe and slung it over her shoulders, though she wore it loose, smiling with her usual dangerous playfulness. He draped one over himself as well, and side by side they padded barefoot across the gleaming tiles toward the balcony.
That was when the sound reached them—low at first, then building into a monstrous roar that rattled the palace windows.
Ashwin stepped out into the night breeze, Marla at his side, both of them gazing south. The sky split with a streak of fire, a comet blazing across the heavens. But it did not fall. It flew.
Closer. Closer still.
Ashwin's instincts flared—this was no star fall. He summoned his Spirit-Man projection in an instant, Astral Veil shrouding him from prying senses, and vaulted into the sky to meet whatever power approached.
The flames licked and churned like living banners, and yet the body of the "comet" held formation.
As Ashwin flew his eyes narrowed. Not a meteor. Not a comet. A vessel.
And there—finally—the truth revealed itself.
A blazing chariot carved from bronze and magma-stone, pulled by four spirit horses whose manes streamed pure fire. Their hooves struck sparks off the air itself, each step warping the space around them with sheer heat. Upon the chariot stood a towering figure wreathed in flame, a lord of fire and steel, while at his side waited a grim-faced bodyguard, armor glowing with molten seams.
The fire-lord's eyes swept the horizon like he owned it. His arrival was no accident. He had come for something.
Or someone.
Ashwin hovered in the dark sky, heart steady, Astral Veil tight around his spirit form.
"Now who the hell are you?" he muttered under his breath; eyes locked on the burning chariot.
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