"Kneel here and strip."
By the time Theo's words voiced out, he had already turned away from the girl and towards a small table where he prepared a bunch of tools for the lesson.
Or rather, for the initiation to the magic itself.
A vial of ink with a few drops of his blood mixed in, a vial of ordinary ink, several sheets of paper, and, finally, a bunch of clean rags.
It was a set of items that would look absolutely ordinary to an untrained eye while appearing as the obvious initiation toolset for anyone in the know.
Theo followed through on his policy of wasting no time, reaching for the vial of the slightly special ink and turning back, only to see Tia kneel down on the floor and, with her trembling hands, start to drag the cloth of her robe down her shoulders.
"Oh," Theo jumped a bit, "right, my bad, you have no idea about the initiation," he commented under his breath while slapping his face with his free hand. Then, as the girl froze, stuck between her embarrassment, hesitation, and surprise, Theo removed his hand from his face and then painted a small circle in the air with one of his fingers, indicating for her to turn around.
"I'm not here trying to take advantage of you but to set the foundation for the first lesson, so stop acting like a fair maiden about to be violated and show me your back instead."
Tia's eyes widened only for her face to then cover with a deep blush.
"Y-yes," she muttered, lowering her gaze as she shifted on the floor and ended up sitting down on her knees with her back towards Theo.
Her robe soon slid down from her shoulders, dropping as far down as the bottom part of her waist, revealing everything above save for the bosom to which Tia held the edge of her robe up to.
'Right, this place is a lot more prudent in this regard,' Theo thought as he carefully lowered himself down, taking utmost care not to spill a single drop of the special ink. Yet, rather than getting to the task at hand, he opted to lean over to the side and reach out for the bed…
Only to grab an edge of the simple, thin blanket covering it before tearing a considerable chunk of it away from the rest.
A few moments of twisting, turning, and knotting later, he turned it into a weird kind of dining napkin that he then threw over Tia's head.
With the loop of the cloth safely secured on the girl's neck, the bulk of the material fell down and covered the part of her upper body she would be most reluctant to reveal, adding another layer of material to keep it from Theo's eyes.
"Huh?" The girl nearly jolted up when the foreign, coarse material dropped down on her, freezing in place for a moment before looking over her shoulder and giving Theo a puzzled look.
"Once you feel it, you are likely to forget about holding up that cloth," he explained with a shrug of his shoulders. "Consider this a professional courtesy."
Tia's eyes widened, only for a small, restrained smile to appear on her lips as she turned her head back. And as she did so, her body visibly relaxed, as if this small gesture was what finally hammered down the point Theo spelled out loud for her already—he wasn't here to take advantage of her.
"I'm going to move your hair now," Theo announced right as he reached out and gently scooped Tia's long, perfectly white, straight hair before pushing it over her right shoulder, away from where it could obstruct his view upon her back.
And what a sight it was!
For anyone less used to the process, just the sight of Tia's hourglass figure, the gentle indentation of her waist begging to be caressed, the slight ridges of her shoulder blades trembling slightly in anticipation underneath her skin, the line of her spine…
Just those seemingly non-sexual details would be enough to get any man's engine going.
But where normal men would see the naked back of a lovely girl, Theo saw nothing but canvas.
A canvas that he still had to explore, though.
"I'm going to begin now. I will start with tracing several points and lines on your back. During that part of the process, I need you to breathe steadily, just like you would while sleeping or meditating," Theo continued with the instructions, his voice turning perfectly monotone.
Even this, the discovery part of the whole procedure, was but a part of the process, a protocol that was perfected over thousands upon thousands of instances of it happening in the magic towers all over the world. A formula refined up to its finest detail in service of very specific purposes.
The monotone, soothing voice aimed to put the subject of the procedure at ease, forcing them into the mindset of the whole process being just an impersonal procedure. The explanation served to remove the aspect of the unknown, turning the foreign into something the subjects could actively anticipate. The directions were there to involve the subject in the process, making them an active participant in the procedure rather than just its subjects.
Every detail was there for a very specific purpose. Which is why, when Theo placed his thumb directly in the middle of the girl's spine, he saw it as nothing more but discovering the canvas upon which he would paint rather than a sensual, seriously intimate moment.
"Ah!"
Tia moaned slightly the moment Theo's thumb made contact with her skin.
"Too cold?" Theo asked absentmindedly, his responses pretty much automatic at this point. "It's going to be even colder when I start inking you up, so better steel yourself for it now."
With the act of taming the unknown on his mouth, Theo closed his eyes and then started to slowly drag his thumb down, all the way to when he felt a slight bump of condensed mana underneath his thumb.
'There it is,' he thought, making a mental note of the point's precise location before turning half of a right angle to the left and then dragging his thumb diagonally up.
Tia's skin was soft, almost too soft for a human. It felt like a delicate slik underneath Theo's thumb, with the warmth of her flesh underneath making it all the more delightful to touch. And yet, even as her delicate flesh gave in under the gentle pressure of Theo's thumb, he refused to let that feeling get to his head, fully focused on his task instead.
Theo found the second bump in the middle of Tia's second rib, only to then change the direction of his thumb at a right angle to the right before dragging it up all the way to where the rib-bearing part of her spine ended, turning into the base of her neck. From there, another traced line brought Theo's thumb down to Tia's second rib on the other side of her back, only for his thumb to then return to where his mental canvas started.
'Okay, that should be big enough.'
Taking a deep breath, Theo opened up his eyes and then reached out for the vial with his special ink, removing its topping only to then press at the opening with his thumb and swing the bottle up and down, leaving just a tiny amount of the ink on the surface of his thumb.
"Now, I'm going to mark the canvas on your back," Theo calmly continued with his commentary as he brought his thumb right back to where he felt the first bump before pressing it at that precise point.
This time, rather than tracing the full lines between each of the points, he merely marked the points themselves, each mark created by the inked imprint of his thumb laid down so that upon the moment of marking, his thumb would be facing the direction of the line it drew before.
"Haaa…"
With the fourth and the last point marked, Tia breathed out a long, exhausted sigh.
Even though she didn't know a single thing about the procedure, she appeared to be smart enough to understand that the first stage of the process was now over.
"Now, I will paint the…" Theo hesitated for a moment, searching for the right word only to then shrug his shoulders as he settled on something Tia could actually understand, "…the array on your back, to create the foundation for your initiation into the world of magic."
"Wait, what?"
Finally, Tia snapped out of her current daze, nearly jumping up and destroying the focus of both of them, something that Theo worked so damn hard to achieve. Thankfully, while her back jolted, she managed to calm herself down before her emotions could affect her internal mana to the point it would shift, rendering all of Theo's careful work obsolete.
"That's right," Theo continued with his monotone voice, "I'm about to set you on the path that supersedes cultivation."