Moments later, I found myself seated cross-legged on the bed, Willow slipping in behind me—because of course she did—those wine-dark arms snaking around to rest on my shoulders while her chin nestled in the crook of my neck.

Her breath, warm and unfairly distracting, ghosted over my skin, laced with that maddening signature scent that seemed to emanate from her very being.

Then, with surprising gentleness, she lifted my hand before turning my palm toward the wall. There hung one of her absurdly intricate magical diagrams, all swirling sigils and self-important geometry, looming like the world's most pretentious wallpaper.

"The first step in using excarnic magic," Willow began, "is to draw upon the natural energy of the world around you. Not the energy from your own astral nexus—that's what incarnic mages use, pulling from their internal reserves to enhance their bodies. This is different. This is the ambient energy that exists in the air, the walls, the very fabric of reality itself." She squeezed my wrist, her fingers warm and insistent. "Can you feel it? That subtle hum, like the world itself is vibrating at a frequency just below normal perception?"

I nodded, because of course I could feel it. Or at least I was ninety-eight percent sure I could. There was this delicious little tingle dancing across my skin, the kind that starts in your fingertips and ends up flirting with places polite company pretends don't exist.

It wasn't anywhere specific, no, it was everywhere and nowhere, a sly, invisible static humming through the air, just waiting to be harnessed.

"Good!" Willow's enthusiasm practically radiated through her skin as she spoke. "You need to draw upon that energy, let it slip through your body and guide it into your nexus where it will be processed and transformed. Your nexus acts like a filter, converting that raw energy into something you can actually use, and then you expel it from your body in the form of a spell—directed, focused, given purpose through your will and the proper incantations."

She paused, shifting slightly behind me, her breasts pressing more insistently against my back. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smirking outright.

"The process is significantly more complex than incarnic magic. This requires precision, control, understanding of energy flows and conversions. It took me weeks to get the hang of it when Mavus first started teaching me, and even then I could barely manage the simplest applications so—"

She just... stopped. Completely froze mid-word, mid-breath, like someone had hit pause on her existence.

Then I felt it, the faintest tremor in the hand that had been so calmly guiding mine. A heartbeat later her free hand was off to the races, darting across my wrist, my forearm, my shoulder, frantically brushing up various parts of my anatomy like she was trying to verify something impossible.

"H-how—" she stammered, her voice thick with disbelief. "How are you already—this shouldn't be—You're channeling it! The energy is flowing through you—that—that shouldn't be possible to do on your first attempt!"

I couldn't help the smirk that spread across my face, smug satisfaction warming my chest because of course I was already doing it.

During our little exchange moments prior, I'd been stealing her natural ability to activate the basics of excarnic magic, integrating the pathways she'd painstakingly carved into her magical practice over months of training.

"How?!" Willow demanded, pulling back slightly to stare at me with wide eyes. "It should be impossible to learn this quickly. Even natural prodigies need days of meditation and practice before they can successfully channel external energy. You've been at this for less than five minutes!"

I turned my head to meet her gaze, my smirk widening into a full grin. "I forgot to mention. I can steal other people's traits through intimate contact. Physical touch, sexual activity, even something as little as a kiss—it allows me to copy aspects of their capabilities and integrate them into myself."

I gestured at my outstretched hand where I could now feel the energy humming just beneath my skin. "When you were conducting your examination earlier, I was simultaneously copying your magical pathways. Your understanding of excarnic channeling, the muscle memory of how to draw upon external energy—all of it's been transferred over."

Willow's jaw actually dropped, her mouth falling open in genuine shock that would have been comical if it weren't so gratifying to witness.

"That's—I've never heard of any magic like that. Ever. In all my studies, all the texts I've read, all the lectures Mavus had given me about rare abilities—nothing even comes close to what you're describing." She grabbed my shoulders and spun me around to face her fully. "How did you obtain such a power? Was it taught to you? Grafted through some kind of experimental ritual?"

"I was born with it," I said with a shrug, "Just part of my natural constitution, I guess."

Willow stared at me for several long seconds, her expression cycling through disbelief, wonder, and what looked suspiciously like calculation.

"You're half succubus," she said finally, more a statement than a question. "That's... extraordinarily rare for our species you know? Most succubi births result in full-blooded demons, but occasionally—very occasionally—a half-breed emerges with one parent from another species entirely."

She tapped one finger against her lip thoughtfully. "I wouldn't be surprised if that mixed heritage brought about a few strange quirks. Unique abilities that don't fit into standard demonic classifications. Your trait absorption could be a mutation caused by conflicting magical bloodlines trying to coexist in a single body."

I nodded along to her whirlwind of theories, letting the words wash over me like an expensive perfume I only half recognized. Then, because patience has never been my strong suit, I decided to skip straight to the good part, channeling that current still humming under my skin directly into my astral nexus.

The sensation was strange—like swallowing something that had no physical form, feeling it pour into the core of my being where my magical reserves resided. I felt it begin processing immediately, converting from raw energy into something more refined.

Willow, still touching my shoulder, snapped back into focus as she felt the shift in my energy signature.

She scrambled off the bed with frantic enthusiasm, nearly tripping over her own tail in her haste, and began digging through one of her various desks with the kind of desperate searching that suggested she'd just remembered something crucial.

Papers flew everywhere, books toppled from stacks, and then she was pulling free a tome bound in leather so dark it seemed to swallow the light. She thrust it skyward, eyes blazing with manic triumph, tail whipping hard enough to generate its own breeze. Honestly, the enthusiasm was criminal.

If adorable were a felony, she'd be doing life.

She bounded back onto the bed a second later, her body launching through the air with more energy than grace—then snaked around me before opening the tome with reverent care.

Her hand pressed to my back, fingers splaying wide to maximize contact, before I felt her sensing my energy completely now, tracking every flow and conversion happening inside my body.

"The next step," she explained breathlessly, her sheer excitement making her words tumble out faster than normal, "is to activate an ability that only our kind and other demonic beings possess. You need to weave the spell—convert the energy you've gathered into what's known as chaos energy, one of the three primary forms that spells can be woven into." She flipped through pages covered in diagrams and symbols I couldn't decipher. "To do this, you need to—"

She paused, her entire body going still against my back as I felt her hand tremble slightly where it pressed against my spine. I already knew why of course. I'd already converted the energy resting in my nexus, turning it, completely upon instinct, into something darker.

"You've already converted it," she whispered, a nervous little giggle escaping her throat. "On pure instinct. Without instruction. You just... did it, gods..." She took a breath, steadying herself before she continued. "O-okay. Last step. This one's crucial—you need to actually cast the spell, give the energy direction and purpose."

I focused up then, my playful demeanor shifting into genuine concentration because this was the part that actually required learning.

The energy conversion might've been instinctive, but spell-weaving required specific knowledge—patterns, incantations, methodologies I still needed to learn.

Willow flipped through that ominous tome like a woman possessed, pages rustling with the urgency of someone who'd just realized the answer was in the back of the book all along.

Her fingers—elegant, wine-dark, and currently trembling just enough to be flattering—halted on the exact spread she needed. She paused, eyes darting across the text as if double-checking the universe hadn't changed the rules while she wasn't looking.

Then she started whispering.

Not speaking. Not chanting in the polite, scholarly sense. Whispering a string of demonic syllables that scraped against the air like claws on velvet—harsh, guttural sounds that no human throat had any business producing without a safeword.

"Repeat after me," she instructed, then began the chant again—slower this time, breaking it into manageable phrases.

I tried to follow along, stumbling over the pronunciation, my tongue struggling to form sounds it had never been designed for.

The first attempt came out garbled and wrong, the second was closer but still off, and on the third try something clicked.

The words flowed from my mouth with sudden ease, and almost immediately I could feel the chaos energy inside me responding, trying to shoot out in a specific direction like it had been given marching orders and was eager to comply.

Willow brightened up immediately, her entire face lighting with genuine delight. "Yes! That's it! You've activated it!" She bounced slightly with excitement. "Now try to direct that energy to your outstretched arm. Guide it through your body, down your shoulder, into your hand—visualize the path you want it to take."

I extended my arm again, palm facing outward, then concentrated on directing the energy flow. It was harder than I expected—the chaos energy felt slippery, difficult to control now that it had been converted and given purpose, like trying to grab water with your bare hands.

But I pushed it anyway, forcing it through pathways I could barely perceive, before I felt it shoot to my palm with sudden intensity.

And there it was, leaking out of me like a secret I'd never bothered to keep. That same wild, crackling lightning Willow had zapped me with earlier, now purring across my skin in lazy red sparks. They were barely visible, just a faint scarlet flicker, but unmistakably there.

I burst into laughter then—loud and unrestrained, the sound echoing across the room and startling Willow enough that she jerked back slightly.

The sheer absurdity of it all hit me at once—that I'd gone from knowing nothing about excarnic magic to successfully casting a spell in less than an hour, that my ridiculous trait-stealing ability had, once again, proven to be beyond useful, that I was sitting naked on a bed with a succubus and learning to shoot lightning from my hands.

I spun to face Willow, practically vibrating with glee, my eyes wide and my grin sharp. "Teach me more," I demanded.

Willow caught the spark in my eyes—literally and figuratively—and answered with a feral grin that could have curdled milk and started wars. It promised nothing responsible, nothing safe, and absolutely everything deliciously catastrophic.

Gods, I liked her.

From then on, I'd hastily redressed myself in the clothes that had been scattered across the floor before we were off, bouncing across the room like a pair of over-sugared imps who'd been told the library was made of candy and the rules had all been burned for firewood.

Tomes flew open, diagrams unrolled like treasure maps to forbidden continents. We dove in together, unearthing spells that made the earlier lightning trick look like a party sparkler. Willow explained each one with breathless, infectious glee, words tumbling over each other as her tail lashed in excitement.

The first spell we tackled was designed to increase arousal within a certain radius—a subtle manipulation of pheromones and emotional energy that would make anyone nearby significantly more receptive to sexual advances.

The second was dreamwalking, the ability to enter and influence someone's dreams while they slept, planting suggestions or experiencing their subconscious alongside them. Both required similar channeling techniques but different incantations.

"Your powers will start off weak," Willow cautioned as we worked through the third spell in rapid succession. "You can only produce a minimal effect with the pleasure shock right now—not the overwhelming orgasm I gave you, but something slight. The arousal increase only works within about a one-meter radius, and dreamwalking will last maybe a few seconds before your concentration breaks and you're ejected from the dream."

She tapped the tome for emphasis. "But by using these abilities in intimate settings, you'll be able to feed on other people's sexual energy. That energy will build the strength of your spells exponentially. Every successful application makes the next one more powerful."

She flipped to another page covered in complicated diagrams. "And given enough practice—we're talking weeks or months of consistent use—you'll be able to activate these spells upon mental command. No incantations necessary, just pure will directing the chaos energy to manifest in the patterns you've trained it to follow."

I bounced up and down in the room, unable to contain my excitement, my body practically vibrating with the need to do something with all this new power.

"I need to test these abilities out immediately," I announced, already heading toward the door. "Like right now. This instant. Before I explode from anticipation."

Willow's smile turned into the most predatory expression I'd seen from her yet—which was saying something considering the competition—before her eyes gleamed with mischief.

"I know just the place," she said, her voice dropping into that purr that promised chaos and poor decisions.

She grabbed my hand and we burst out of the room together, our footsteps pounding against the wooden floor as we ran toward the lobby. We skidded to a stop at the balcony railing overlooking the first floor. There I spotted Julius below carrying a crate full of props that looked far too heavy for one person to manage comfortably.

"Julius!" Willow called down, leaning over the railing with her dark hair falling around her face. "Let's go to the hot springs!"

Julius glanced up at us, his expression shifting from concentration, to confusion, to what might have been resignation. "The hot springs? Now? I'm in the middle of—"

"Hot springs!" I echoed with enthusiasm, cutting off whatever logistical concern he was about to raise. "It's important! For magic! And relaxation! Mostly magic though!"

Julius set down the crate with a heavy sigh, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "Fine," he said, though his tone suggested this was anything but fine. "Give me ten minutes to gather everyone. And someone please tell me this isn't going to result in property damage."

Willow and I exchanged glances, our grins matching in their absolute refusal to make any such promises.

Gods, this was going to be perfect.

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