"At your age? Yes, I agree that you are rather young."
Nova blinked as her brain backpedaled to keep up. She was nineteen? Wait, not anymore.
"But you are in need of training. Lost souls such as Beil have very little chance to recover from the transition in order to utilize their cores. You, however, were plucked from death and contained rather professionally until your mishap with soul bonding. Beil mentioned that someone managed to get their hands on you afterwards and where they dumped your soul, though perhaps that mistake was in your favor, given the circumstances."
Recovering from wanting to argue about school after hearing Beil's misfortune, Nova resigned to her guidance. If she was casually able to obtain skills, information, and training that others were unable to gain due to an unfortunate lack of stability or opportunity, she wasn't going to be bratty about her good luck.
"If you believe that this is for my benefit, what do I need to do?"
Wanita looked at her properly, watching Emilia's body language. Her back straightened as she moved into an at-the-ready stance, her resolute face showing calm acceptance with a strange mix of anticipation for a fight, and noticed the blue grey eyes had a touch of Nova's sharp icy tint in them. A very slight grin touched Edna Wanita's lips.
"Very good, child. First," she barked and it actually made Nova flinch for the first time since coming here. Wanita had shifted from giving off the mature woman with gentle wisdom vibe to straight up sounding and standing like the General of an army. Her light dress dissolved into a battle suit, skin tight with everything in a jet black color and a pink belt, and her hair had shifted into a tight bun on the back of her head. Her heels, Nova realized, were replaced by flats made for the quick feet of combat. "Become yourself."
"Wait, what does that mean?"
"Whomever this is," she said sternly and made a motion of addressing all of her, "is not who you are now. You must understand who you are from the inside out to comprehend what you are capable of. So the first step is changing from the girl you look like now into the form you are in the real world, or at least the human version to start."
"How am I supposed to go about doing that?"
Wanita started pacing in front of her with her hands behind her back, allowing Nova to notice that she still had one of the black ribbons tied in the bun. "You must first annul any feelings that who you are now and the you of your past are the same person."
"But I know that it's still me."
"Do you?" Her black eyes raked over the form of Emilia who instantly felt the need to shrink down like she did all her life, but a strangly opposing force urged her to maintain eye contact and even challenge Wanita. This caused her form, unbeknownst to her, to fluctuate like touching the still surface of a body of water, but every third ring was Nova instead of Emilia.
"It seems to me that you can tell, even if you do not know the reason why you have conflict with your responses."
Wanita suddenly stomped closer until she was nose to nose with the wavering form. The Emilia side of the girl really wanted to look away and apologize, just like on the bridge where she died, but Nova didn't. Nova was taking charge and stood tall, fighting against herself carefully. She could sense it now, the distinction between her and her old self. Yes she had fought in school, but every time she had it was at the end of a breaking point. Nova had started out hiding around as a snake, but once she had met Beil she had changed, not only phisically but emotionally. Especially with the release of her suppressed memories and the emotional attachments to them, Nova had rapidly become bold, proud, and adaptive. She would easily accept a fight now, even if she knew she would lose, because going down without a fight felt wrong now. It felt very wrong. It was almost as if, in the face of Emilia's mistakes and weaknesses, Nova was very willing to step up and correct them.
She maintained eye contact as Wanita's flicked from one eye to another. Nova was ready to face what was thrown at her even while somehow sensing that Wanita was very much stronger than her, and the urge to back down faided. As it did, Emilia was becoming an after image.
Just before she flickered away, Wanita backed up and relaxed her stance, returning to her easy going demeanor. "Do not forget who you used to be, you are the same soul, but you are not the same person. She was you, and you were her, remember her but move on."
Nova nodded, and this time it really was Nova. Emilia was not entirely gone, Nova clearly remembered every detail of her and her life, but now her subconscious self was represented by the human looking Nova. She would never let Emilia truly fade away, she still had some unfinished business to do.
"Okay, now that you have taken the first step, we need you to turn your form into a snake."
Nova just realized that ever since she had gained a humanoid body again she had never tried to turn back. "Uh, how do I do that? And why?"
"You agree that this form is not a full representation of yourself, right?"
She nodded. "Good, well you first came to as a snake. In essence, you are a snake, not a human, not a wyvern, a snake. Now, feel your real body. Your limbs should start to--"
"Wait, hold on. I can't feel my body in here."
Wanita froze. "So this entire time that you have been meditating and manipulating your spirit energy you can't feel anything?"
"Yes, I can feel pain, I can feel this body," she said and held up an arm. "I just can't feel that body while I'm in here, " she said and pointed out to the nothingness which she just realized was a dark grey instead of pitch black. She could better see outlines of what she was looking at and saw that the shell of her subconscious was massive, stretching for what looked like a mile, and it definitely wasn't the same as when she had first extended a line of energy beyond herself and touched Beil, something that she now also realized didn't feel as scandalous as it had.
"Okay."
"What?"
"I now know the issue. Something was very strange about why your spirit core and soul seemed unaffected by the rapid progress. The connection between your mind and body are incomplete!"
"You seem happy about that."
"Oh, well yes I am, but I should not be. This is a serious issue, child. How do you normally leave this space?"
"The first time I just walked out and woke up, but the next few times I realized I wanted to come back and I woke up without having to move."
Wanita nodded. "It is a good thing you were able to do that, there have been cases of Yokai and Ayakashi becoming trapped within themselves if their bodies are too constricting for their souls. Your mind and body are disconnected, which is both a a solution to avoid such a problem, and it is a problem in and of itself. Have you had any issues with spirit energy not doing what you tell it to?"
"Frequently. I had to really fight with it just to end the spell I had going on without my knowledge."
Wanita looked at her core and sighed. "Your energy core is treating you like a foreign entity. It should have been effortless to end a spell you yourself had cast. Maybe not for Beil, but for you at least, although I can sense a difference between your energy and that of someone else's. The difference is faint."
Wanita looked at the core and followed the path sprouting from it. "It feels as though it used to not be. Has a spell been cast upon you recently? Other than my calming spell which I cut off as soon as you began meditation."
"Yes, my eyes."
"Your body is being maintained by this energy path, what spell had to do with your eyes?"
"Actually there used to be two pathways, they merged when I became a wyvern."
"Two pathways-"
She vanished and Nova's head darted around to try and find her before she popped right back where she had left. "Wait here, do not wake just yet," and she was off again.
Standing around awkwardly, Nova took a second to unwind. That was a lot. Everything was a lot. At least in here she could grip her face with her hands right now.
She couldn't feel any sort of discomfort from not being connected through her mind and new body. Then again, her energy core would claim otherwise when she touched it. So this swirling ball of light hurt her so bad because it didn't recognize her? Maybe she could fix that.
"Um... hey." Nova felt really stupid talking to an inanimate sphere, but she didn't have any better ideas. Right now it wasn't hers, at least it didn't seem like it was, but maybe she was just psyching herself out. What if all it took to bond with it was to communicate?
"Energy, Spirit Energy? Not sure if words are something you can understand. Not sure if you even have a conscious or if you're acting like white blood cells on the war path, but... I'm okay. I'm not a threat, I'm actually here to help. Look," she said and placed her hand on the energy ball. Fire from hell scorched her for a split second making her want to flinch back but she stayed put. After a good second it shifted into something light, like hovering a hand over a candle flame with enough distance that she could only feel residual heat. That was much different than the first time, shockingly different.
Wait, shockingly... hold on. Something she suddenly realized was that any and all electrical properties were missing. While before it was like a swimming ball of hot liquid energy and sparking electricity, now it was calm and quiet.
Wanita popped back into her subconscious like a bubble and found Nova arms deep into her core.
"What are you doing?"
"It's not as hot as it was, and the electricity is gone."
"Okay, that is quite the anomaly, but why are you still going in?"
"Curiosity, mostly, but I'm also trying to connect with it."
Wanita's expression looked as if she was seeing a deer barking like a Saint Barnard as she moved to gently pull Nova back out. "While that is a valiant effort, please do not rush this. The Spirit Core does not have a will of its own, it is reacting to you like dumping ice on hot coals."
"Really? It doesn't feel that extreme. It feels more like repelling magnets of the same polarity."
It was Wanita's turn to take a second to think, because none of that made a lick of sense to her. Whatever language that was or a phrase she had yet to learn, if it helped the child understand the severity of the problem then she was all for it.
"If that means it feels less intense than I would have expected this is better than I had hoped, but you must still pace yourself and try to manipulate single strands of energy at a time, training your spirit core to accept you like training a feral cat. If you rush it your body could reject your soul."
"I thought it already had?"
Wanita shook her head. "No, the fact that you are present here and now without having to try means that your body is well aware that your soul is trying to use it as a host, but because you are not an active threat you have not been destroyed or locked out. It is almost like you and your body have an agreement, you don't harm it, it won't harm you, you can linger all you want. The moment you try to use the spirit energy on your own terms instead of letting it create its on paths, it will determine you to be a threat and try to stop your progress."
"But I was able to stop one of the spells before, and I was in the center of the core."
"Was it an easy thing to do?"
"No, not at all, it felt like I was being burned alive."
"Had you tried to cast a spell instead of fiddling around in there-"
"I was actually loosening the tight coil of energy at the very center, but once I did my body woke me and every muscle started to hurt like I had just been in a really bad fight, and lost."
Ignoring that Nova had inturrupted her, mostly because the information was needed, Wanita paused before she continued.
"If what you told me is true about having a second pathway, lossening them triggerd the merge. This means two things: First, if your body is damaged badly enough, even if your eyes have not been hit, you will still lose your sight. You must be careful with how much energy you use and determine for yourself what the limit is, and second, if your eyes are destroyed your body will begin to rapidly break apart. Protect your eyes, girl.
"Now, as I was saying, if you had tried to cast your own complete spell your spirit core and body would have destroyed you at worst or kicked you out at best, but if your soul has no attachment to the body it will move on to the next plain of existence for a time before you will eventually be reincarnated. I am assuming you do not want this?"
Nova could understand that the question was rhetorical and her lips became thin as she thought back to just how close she was at attempting to cast a spell. Both she and Beil were none the wiser about just how serious her situation really was. Oh, thinking of which...