Willow was quite excited to finally start on the next step of his training. For a while now he’d felt that the current exercise barely put much of a strain on him anymore unless it went on for a far longer time.

  Though he did have one major concern.

  “Shouldn’t Miss Mu be here for this?”

  His mentor was still out on a mission and he was unsure when exactly she’d be back. Especially since he’d noticed that travelling through winter weather was particularly prone to delays.

  He’d much rather have his mentor around to provide her healing services after trying out a new exercise since the first attempt on switching to a new step was often the most painful, and from what he’d heard from his friends this one would be no exception.

  Plus he’d prefer having an adult around on the off chance he screwed up the exercise. Not that he planned on making it a habit of messing up.

  “It should be perfectly safe, child. If anything we have been overly cautious in teaching you the next step on your path.”

  “Yeah!” Chimed in Change. “Just don’t mess up and there shouldn’t be any problems. You got this!”

  That was likely not as reassuring to the boy as the yang spirit expected.

  But in the end Willow gave in and sat on his bed, making himself as comfortable as he could.

  To his senses his core had grown greatly in size since he’d started these exercises. Which for some reason was a problem as part of the goal for the next step was to condense it back down. Apparently it made the energies within more potent and would allow him to start doing more with less qi, and the goal of the next step would be to build it back up again.

  He wondered if there was a better way of going about these steps, but since he still didn’t know the full range of what he’d be doing, he trusted the twins to guide him down the right path even if he felt the steps were arbitrarily meandering.

  He listened attentively to Harmony’s instructions, something he’d gotten quite good at as Madame Park didn’t like it when he fidgeted or let his mind wander and the old woman was scarily perceptive in noticing whenever he’d started to drift off during her lessons.

  This next step was technically similar to the previous one and as the spirit of harmony had explained before it was mostly changed by making sure the energies in her core and body were made opposite of each other. Which meant Willow had to split his focus a bit to ensure the two energy types maintained an equilibrium of sorts.

  He took a deep breath and filled the pathways of his body with Yang energy slightly tinged with volatile Change.

  As the breath continued he filled his core with Yin lightly touched by docile Harmony.

  The two energies tried to reject each other as Willow held his breath for a few moments, the Yang energy pushing down on his core, crushing it on all sides and painfully compressing it. The Yin pushed back just as hard, preventing his core from being fully damaged or destroyed, but not fully stopping the compression.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He let out his breath and the Yang energy left his body through his widened surface pathways, the Yin energy in his core rushing out to take its place. As the energy rushed into their body Willow felt the now familiar shift to her girl form, the change barely registering to her as a lapse in concentration would apparently spell disaster.

  She then filled her core with Yang energy and the cycle began anew.

  Each breath brought them more pain.

  Each breath brought them more strength.

  Willow’s friends seemed to be correct, perhaps they had waited too long to begin the next step as the pain was minimal aside from what the child was feeling in their core.

  Yet she still put a stop to the daily exercise when the pain reached a certain level, settling into her girl form as she did. She could definitely keep going if enduring the pain was her only concern, but she was told repeatedly that this exercise could permanently cripple her if she pushed beyond what her core could take.

  And in matters such as this it was better to take her time with the exercise rather than push through and hurt herself for no reason.

  She brought out her friends after she was done, wanting to spend some time with them like she had most days when she was alone. Though Eos was almost constantly out anyways since the fist sized flame provided much needed warmth in her cold and lonely room.

  She had to be careful and put her fiery friend away whenever the innkeeper came near however. They were still hiding the fact Willow had multiple spirits from Madame Park, and since they were unsure of how much of a gossip the innkeeper could be they decided to keep it secret from her as well.

  Andrea was as cheerful as ever, dancing around the room despite the cold. According to Mu, most wood spirits were low energy during this time period, but since poppy flowers were apparently quite tolerant of cold weather her happy flower would continue to be high energy throughout most of the year. Which was good news as seeing them dance around the room really brightened up the place.

  Xandra and Phoebe both hadn’t really changed in size, unlike the rest of her friends, but the density of their qi had increased instead. The two of them had gained some notable features due to their increase in power.

  Xandra gained some patterns along the edges, and was better able to communicate since they had seen so many more scenes in their life. They could even string them together in a way that was easier for Willow to interpret. It still sometimes took a couple tries for her to get what her friend was trying to say, but it was definitely a step up in how they communicated.

  Meanwhile Phoebe had grown more interestingly textured and could even make themselves float in short bursts. It wasn’t quite as seamless as what Willow had seen with Meteoros or Man Yue, but it was clear that her thoughtful stone was trying to grow in a similar direction as the two stronger spirits. Whether it was a lingering influence of the spirit that created them or just their own growing obsession with seeing the night sky was unclear to the girl, but she was always happy to see her friends grow.

  And then there was Calypso. The little raindrop had grown in size to about the same extent as Eos, with the two of them both about the same size as a loose fist made by Willow. The sanguine patterns marking their surface had grown with them and it was often mesmerising to watch them move across her friend’s surface.

  Despite having spent far more time together there were still times when Willow felt like she didn’t really understand her wibbliest friend. They always looked around in wonder at the world, and Willow often wondered herself at what exactly her friend was seeing that fascinated them so. Though she supposed it ultimately didn’t matter, so long as Calypso was as happy as they could be.

  She’d gotten them to stop wandering off whenever they were let out at least, so that was a win.

  Since her core was quite tender she spent the rest of the day resting in bed with her friends and partners at her side.