Book 2 Chapter 57

A week had passed since Willow had met Jimena for the first time. Since then she’d met with the girl a couple other times since they’d both expressed interest in meeting up again.

So far things had gone great!

She learned that Jimena’s family, the Martells, were technically one of many branch families of House Herrera, but they were quite low in terms of importance. All of the women and girls at the shop were family members, and it was kind of a Thing that women of the family were smiths, while the men took up more martial pursuits.

There were apparently exceptions, but they were looked on disfavorably by the higher ups in the house.

Jimena apparently didn’t mind too much since she liked working with the forge and hoped she’d be picked to bind her great aunt’s hammer spirit. One of her aunts had apparently already gotten the flame spirit in the forge, and her mother had the anvil beast spirit which Willow was still curious about.

Her family having three spirits of decent strength in one smithy apparently helped to prove how well off her family was. Especially in a crowded city like Acerorazon where regular spirits were quite rare.

Willow constantly wanted to ask her how House Herrera made tool spirits so consistently, but felt it would likely be rude to ask her new friend since Miss Mu had made it out to be some big secret. Besides, it was doubtful that she even knew anything considering her family’s relatively low status with the house.

Still, it was nice to have a friend close to her in age. She’d become at least passingly familiar with some of the recruits at the training yard, but none of them really wanted to spend time with her for whatever reason. The young man she regularly sparred with had gotten friendlier with time, but he typically didn’t interact with her outside of training.

All of this and more were going through Willow’s mind as she prepared to start her core training for the day.

She sat on her bed, as per usual, and was about to start cycling the energies when Harmony spoke up.

“Child, me and my brother have been discussing and there is another step to the process you might want to consider doing.” She chimed from her dark void.

Willow tilted her head in confusion as she sent back. “Oh? Are we starting the next step of my core training already? It’s only been a year since the last one.”

Change took over the explanation from his sister. “Nah, it’s technically something a little different. You’ll still be doing the same stuff to your own core, but we feel it might be beneficial to the little ones if you start looping them in.”

Willow’s brows knit together as a frown formed on her face. “Is that safe? I don’t know too much about conceptual energies just yet, but wouldn’t the two of yours hurt them, even with the little you’re putting into me?”

“Not necessarily.” Harmony picked the explanation back up. “Exposure to high amounts of yin and yang energies should help them in developing their own concepts while also imparting them with a similar state to your own.”

“Meaning what?” She asked, though she had an inkling of an idea of what her friend meant.

“Meaning, for a time at least, the young ones would have twin concepts that they would cycle between as you do your boy and girl forms. Eventually they would have to either reconcile the two disparate concepts or split themselves apart, but that would likely be many years down the road.”

Willow fell back so that she was now fully laying down in her bed, sensing that this discussion might take some time. She also wished that Miss Mu were around so that she could pick her brain on the matter, but her mentor was currently out on a mission dangerous enough that she felt uncomfortable taking Willow with.

Eventually she decided that the best course of action was likely the obvious one.

Ask her friends what their feelings were on the matter.

So she sent her projection to Change’s void and dragged the rest of her friends into it with her.

After another year of growth the five younger spirits had changed quite a bit, though it had all happened so gradually that Willow had barely even noticed as it was happening.

Eos now had a tendril of flame that dangled under them as they floated around, and if she looked closely she could see little nubs on the bottom and middle of the tendril. She suspected that her fiery friend was trying to grow a more humanoid body, but it currently looked a little silly if she was completely honest. Still, she greeted the flame of her heart with their usual hug, much to her friend’s delight.

Andrea seemed to also be trying to make a body for themself, their roots and stem growing to look vaguely like the upper half of a doll. They then danced around with their flower acting like a makeshift skirt. When they’d first turned themself upside down Willow had worried there was something wrong with her flower friend, but as their project went on she began to see what her wood spirit was going for.

Phoebe could now float and zoom around at their whim. Something that they always seemed to take great joy in. Physically they’d also developed some patterns on their surface, but Willow couldn’t decipher their meaning. Perhaps they helped with her friend’s flight, or maybe they were part of a different project Phoebe was working on. Time would tell.

Xandra had gained the ability to project three dimensional images outside themself. Which they almost always used nowadays to project a mini version of Willow to stand on the surface of their mirror. She’d been quite shocked the first time, especially since the process had been far more jittery and uncanny to watch. However the reflection spirit had worked hard at their craft and now always greeted her with a smiling and waving version of herself, that Willow was happy to return a wave to.

Calypso had been the one that changed the least. The raindrop spirit had grown in size, and the shapes on their surface had grown more detailed with it, but Willow still couldn’t tell if her friend was planning their growth in any way, or was simply seeing what would happen when they got more power.

She explained her dilemma with the help of the twins, asking each of them what they felt about the potential risks and rewards of going along with the more powerful spirit’s plan.

For the most part everyone agreed to go forward with the twin’s proposal. Willow still wasn’t sure if Calypso really understood what was being proposed, but they still wibbled their agreement so she supposed that counted.

She still felt uneasy about doing this to her friends, but supposed that if things start to go wrong she could stop with minimal consequences. Something that the twins even agreed with.

“We feel that they should be stable enough now that our energies wouldn’t overwhelm them, but if me and my brother are wrong then it should only cause minimal harm at worst and we won’t broach the subject again.”

Willow disliked the fact her friends were going to be tested on, but her whole path so far had essentially been one big experiment.

What was one more test?

After sending everyone back to their respective places Willow began flooding their core with the energies of Harmony and Change in the familiar cycle. This time they let a trickle of the same energies go through all bonds save the twins.

The child could not spare the concentration to check on their friends as they went through the rest of the core training, but trusted them to let it be known if any problems arose.

At the end, as his core ached from the training, Willow checked on his friends and found them hale and healthy, if clearly also a little exhausted from what they’d just gone through.

No changes were visible on the young spirits from the first round of the training, but Willow would keep an eye on them and make sure they weren’t harmed from what he was doing to them.