Mao Mao's Sisters

Hero's Lesson

The day after Ashaki's nightmare, she and Adorabat were in the astral plane, practicing mystic arts.

"You're learning very quickly," Ashaki noted. Adorabat was at a stage where she could begin to harness chi though her chakras. Well, a few of them at least. Specifically Manipura, Vishuddha, and Ajna.

When chi is passed through these three chakras respectively, they grant supernatural strength, vocal, and sight. Adorabat seems to be able to use these three rather easily, in fact she seems to have used them before. Mao Mao had told Ashaki about how Adorabat used a sonic scream on a cave dragon.

Ashaki felt something disturbing in the space of the astral plane. Looking back, she saw the plumes of the schnepp realm.

"Adorabat, we need to return to the corporeal realm." Ashaki called out.

"Why?" Adorabat asked curiously. "What are those clouds?"

Ashaki moved over to Adorabat, pressing her finger to Adorabat's head. Adorabat felt an incredible weight fall on her, she began falling all the way back to her body in the physical world.

With a gasp, Adorabat fell backwards and onto her back. "What were those clouds?"

"Nothing good," Ashaki answered. "Do you know about the three realms?"

"Hmm, I think Melvin said something about that once," Adorabat replied.

Ashaki's eye twitched at the mention of that quack. Pretending she didn't hear that, she continued. "You have the astral plane, the corporeal world, and the schnepp realm." Ashaki held out three fingers for each of the dimensions.

"The schnepp realm isn't like the other two, it's the realm that lies on the boundary of life and death; because it resides on that boundary, it can sometimes leak into the astral plane and the corporeal world."

"And that's... bad?" Adorabat guessed.

"Yes, the schnepp realm is an extremely dangerous place, even for me. I don't go there unless I absolutely need to."

"But why would you go there if it's so dangerous?"

"Usually to speak with the departed, the ones who still have ties to the living realm any way," Ashaki answered. "But life and death are sacred forces, and not something to be tampered with."

"The departed," Adorabat whispered to herself, staring off in thought.

"I think we may wanna try putting you mystic arts into practice in the corporeal realm," Ashaki said to Adorabat. "What do you think? Want to give it a try?"

"Heck yeah! Wooo!" Adorabat screeched. "What should I do first? Oh, how about my wing beat?"

"Actually," Ashaki quickly spoke. "I was thinking something that wouldn't damage the house. How about using your physical boost in aerial maneuvers?"

"Alright!" Adorabat hyped. "Let's do this!"

Adorabat's wings began to glow with an aqua blue color, much like how Ashaki's body glowed with an emerald color when she made use of the mystic arts. With a push off, Adorabat took off much faster than she usually did, flying out of the gazebo. Flying about in the sky, Adorabat began to get the feel of using her new techniques in the corporeal world.

In the astral plane, it's easier to put the techniques into practice, but there's no gravity, and no air either. So now Adorabat is performing these techniques while weighted and meeting air resistance, and it showed immediately as Adorabat wasn't moving as fast as she did in the astral plane.

Ashaki began thinking that they should move trading to the corporeal world full time. If they continued in the astral plane, Adorabat was sure to pick up some bad habits that she would bring over to the corporeal world.