Holding onto the energy she pulled it up and away, separating a tentril-like but less tense strand of it, and walked towards her core, placing a hand on the swimming blue sphere before pushing herself into it. Not only did the massive amount of energy it sear her body like touching an oven, with electricity aching her nerves and made her grit her teeth to bare it, the strand in her hand fought, whipping around like a panicked snake like she had done in the cave troll's grip. It took wrestling it for a long time a while baring the pain before it relented and finally allowed her to take it back inside with her. Thinking she was safe to let go of it she loosened her grip a little before it tried to whip free and align back with the rest. She swiftly caught it, somehow, and held onto it tightly like a fishing pole until it settled again. This time she would not let go.
Tracing it back was much harder than she expected it to be based on how he had made it sound. The strand she was holding, though it felt relatively different and still gently resisted her, looked exactly like the rest of her environment. It was almost like fighting an invisible foe except she could phisically feel the flow of energy trying to pull away. She got an idea, letting the energy loose enough that it could mostly flow back out, freeing up the string so that it was easier follow it backwards with her hands, she pulled herself along like walking with a rope tied to a tree at the end of a maze.
It was starkly more painful to hold on to than when she was outside of the core. The energy was like a hot iron cable, rubbing her hands raw, sparking like an outlet, and as she moved further towards the source there was an increasing backwards pressure like a strong water current, but at least this helped prove that she was getting closer. What she didn't know was that even outside of her subconscious her phisical body was growing hot, her hands were red, and her body occasionally twitched with each wave of pain.
Finally, after an agonizingly slow baker's dozen of minutes in her mind, which wouldn't even be a second in reality, she found the knot of energy. Just touching it was like putting her hand directly into a fire that could also zap her, but Nova was stubborn and knew that if she backed out of this trial she would never be able to harness her own abilities. She would be helpless to herself. Her spell would continue to bother Beil and anyone else she came into contact with. Sure she longed for company, but she didn't want it to be forced because of the spell, and if she ran into a spat of bad luck and couldn't hunt for creatures with spirit energy the damn spell would drain her reserves away. She could lose her eyesight, or her soul would leave and she would die, again. This was something she must do, so this pain was going to be worth it.
Wrestling with the knot of energy to unravel it inch by inch, Nova fought against the increasing drag as it was trying to pool into the spell like a disobedient child. She felt it tighten her chest and she strained every part of herself just to keep going. She even started talking to it, both feeling like a mad woman and not caring one little bit, asking it to stop, begging, threatening it, crying in agony.
"Bare it, just bare it. You're not actually bleeding. Your fingers are not melting. It's all in your head. You'll die if you don't face this here and now. This hurts so bad. You have to. Nova, and Emilia, you can do this! Holy hell. Your fingers are okay. Almost there, come on!"
Until finally, it released its grip.
All at once a feeling of freedom, an ease of tension, even a drop in voltage, and the constant draw of energy stopped as quickly as popping a bubble. Everything was still for a moment before the intense pushing reversed and started to gently pull. The core, which had been draining more than it was gaining back, began slowly but steadily changing from one third to two fifths full and still filling.
Nova, still pushing with adrenaline and blinded by pain, kept working. She was entirely unaware of her success, there were still two more knots after all, so she remained.
Beil looked up once the infatuation spell had dissolved the path and smiled. No longer fighting the endless draw to her that had just felt wrong in so many ways, he could now appreciate her more for who she was. She was innocent, intelligent. and so very strong willed, that little Nova. He was glad that Nana Wanita had let him know how to undo a spell so many years ago, even if he himself wasn't able to accomplish it.
His relief was short lived. Nova had made progress unraveling the very center of the spells for her soul and eyes, and as she did the nothingness border of her body rumbled from the shift in energy pressure. Beil stood and looked around frantically as the other two paths began to dissipate and had to force himself not to charge into her core after her. Doing so could backlash and kill him, or change her forever. He waited impatiently, staring at the core that was becoming less spherical with every breath.
Just before he thought it would crack, Nova came limping out, missing skin and hair, shaking from pain and exhaustion, and collapsed into Beil's arms. He only had a second to set her down before he was jettisoned from her subconscious like a bungee cord had suddenly yanked his mind away and he was plopped unceremoniously back into his Itsumade body.
Beil lost his meal and nearly fell unconscious before he recovered enough to just stay upright, leaning against a tree. He had never experienced such intense mind transport in his life. Sure he'd been blocked, like a mental wall or shield, and he'd been shoved out of people's minds like backing up from a door frame and the door slamming in his subconscious self's face, but he had never before been flung like a sack of potatoes into a woodchipper.
"Nova, are you alright?"
He looked up and saw her face down in the dirt and rocks, unresponsive, and practically ran to pick her up.
"Nova? Oh lord."
Nova's phisical body wasn't as torn up as her subconscious, but her fingers were split in several places and her whole body was hot with a fever.
"Maybe this spell was too much for a first time."
Nova, however, was unaware of him or anything else. Her Spirit energy was actively swirling around in her nothingness, no longer contained within her core, and it was going about doing weird things to her. Not only were the pathways to her eyes and body swollen like a dam had opened and flooded the rivers, they were now a much darker blue, like lapis lazuli or the ocean at night, with flecks of sapphire and ribbons of mazarine. The electricity was now spreading throughout the area as the energy sloshed wherever it could reach. In fact, her core had been morphed so dramatically it had snapped open like an egg.
Nova had not succeeded in untying her life pathway, and the spell for her eyes was only slightly looser, but all her efforts had allowed them more room to expand. The center of her core, like a nucleus of a cell, was working with her energy and created dramatic muscle spasms in her body, of which Beil began to panic in response.
"She's having a seizure? What the hell happened? Nana," he said and carefully hoisted her onto his back, running back up the mountain as fast as he could. They had only made it half a day away before all of this had happened. If he got her back there Nana could help, she knew practically everything.
As he ran Nova was starting to change. Her arms and legs gained muscle rapidly, her fingers healed and her nails became sharp, her once dark brown hair started turning white. Beil ran faster, thinking she was aging rapidly because her life force was draining away, but he exact opposite was happening. While before her body would have probably made it to a thousand, maybe four with good training and her potential, she was now assured to live for much longer. Just how long was undeterminable at this point.
For the few hours it took him to make it back up the mountain, Nova had began to shift. First her body started to grow to the size that only professional bodybuilders could have, then beyond into an almost grotesque level, and not long after that he could no longer carry her. Lowering her down as carefully as he could he hesitated for a moment before dashing up the rest of the path and straight into his Nana's house, startling her awake.
"Good heavens, Beil? I thought you left with your fetching new Kinsoul girl? Is something the matter?" She slid her legs over the side of her bed and fell to her knees in front of a very distressed Beil who had collapsed onto the floor. He gasped for air until he was able to speak and blurted out what was happening to Nova just down the road.
Edna Wanita's eyes hardened and she threw a robe over her nightgown.
Nova jerked awake, thrashing and standing up before immediately crying out in pain. Her body had ripped itself apart and put itself back together and the residual pain, while fading, was still wracking her flesh which was now entirely reinforced. Her muscles were now able to withhold the equivalent of five hundred pounds on each limb, and nearly three thousand pounds if she ever attempted a full body press. Her jaw and spine had lengthened, her senses had strengthened, her eyes stung as the world seemed to be brighter, sharper, like every detail was assaulting her vision so that she was squinting and bent over.
Wide awake but delirious and in her own state of panic, the only thing she could do was abide by fight for flight so she ran for leagues before her mind returned to her and she tried her best to calm down and think. It took a few attempts to regulate her breathing, it took longer to make her heart slow down, and by the time she had settled into a walk her body was telling her that she was starving and exhausted again.
Before she could comprehend what all that was, she felt like something was very strange about herself now. She looked down at her body only to see a solid white chest and a set of gleaming claws. A little spooked her heart sped up again and she realized she wasn't human anymore, or even a snake. What was she? Was she something like Beil? Wait, no. She didn't have feathers.
She turned around, analyzing the details of herself. Her legs were backwards, but it didn't feel wrong. It was kind of like her feet had become really long and she was walking on her toes... claws, and her knees were bent comfortably up against her belly. She noticed she did have a tail but it wasn't nearly as long as when she was a snake, and the base of it was much thicker. Then she tried to lift her arms.
Stumbling back a step, Nova surprised herself yet again when instead of thick arms she had long, thin ones with two large leathery wings that grazed the ground as she held up her small clawed hands that were missing the fingers. Wait. Oh.
Nova flapped her wings once and recognition settled in. Just like a bat's wings, when she flexed them up above her head she could feel that her pinkies now dominated the largest bending point besides her elbow of the now tough, fibrous, vibrantly white leather while her ring and middle finger held up the rest of the wings. Her pointer finger was like a little flap on a plane that she bet could be used for very delicate directional changes while she was flying. At the end of her arm, or maybe it was the base of the wing, she had one digit left that could bend any which way. These felt like her thumbs when she bent them. So that's where they went.
She looked behind her to see how far the wings went and found that her neck had become much longer again, though not nearly as agile as a snake's. It was thick, and had strang elasticity underneath with more of a tough hide on the top, as did her back, and she saw that her wings reached all the way to the base of her tail. She had become a wyvern. A two legged dragon built for flight. She really wished that she could see her head right now. How many times was this body going to change on her? Human. Snake. Ayakashi. Dragon?!
Remembering something important, Nova calmed down and tried to steady her mind as she relaxed her body into a sitting posture to mediate. She slipped into herself rather easily and looked around, expecting damage and chaos. What she found instead was that her core had reformed, bigger and with a much more dense, darker colored energy, and her two dominant pathways had swollen so much that they merged into one. The once blackness around her had lightened some and was now a deep grey, and as she approached her core she felt a low hum in the air. She reached out to touch it and instead of giving her a shock or uncomfortable heat, it felt like she was in full control of it's intensity. She peered inside to see a single uniform pillar of energy such a dramaticly different color than the rest of her core before it faded back into the cerulean that the paths were made of. She backed out and turned her head, noted that her subconscious body was healed up just fine again, and Beil was nowhere to be seen.
Coming back out was like waking up from a mini-nap. Nova shook her body, took a big stretch, and smelled the air. Her neck was strangly prickly for a moment when she did this, and so was her forearms, and she wondered what that was about for a moment before she stood and looked back. She could sense the energy around herself now. It was like an overlay of light sparkles anywhere that she stared at directly, and her eyes itched when she looked too hard at one of the larger patches of spirit energy.
Her own energy signature had left a faint blue trail in her frenzied sprint, as if she was leaving behind just a little in each of her very draconian footsteps. She had really dug her claws in, huh. Beil must be back where they had been meditating, so she walked back to follow them. She'd find him. She wanted to apologize for the troubles she'd caused, and ask how the hell she was like this now.