They were awoken the next day by a knock on the door from another one of Vivdus’s creatures and were motioned to follow it down to the main hall where the great life spirit was waiting, another monster standing beside her.

With a head as big as any of them were tall and little in the way of any sort of body to go with it, Thera couldn’t help but think the creature's existence was pitiful. It looked like the majority of it was just a mouth, no facial features beyond that, and dozens of tiny limbs to carry itself with. She couldn’t begin to imagine the point of it but assumed she would soon as she focused on her aunt.

“Alright, so where are we off to then?” She asked, not having the will to be patient. Just being close to her aunt was aggravating her, like she was constantly being pricked at and there was nothing she wanted more than to finish their business there as fast as possible.

Her aunt seemed to be of a similar mind as well, and without a word tapped the beast to her side, its outrageously large mouth opening as it activated a spell within it, a hole in space appearing in its jaws that Vividus stepped through.

Casting a quick look between each other, they hesitantly followed, finding themselves in a land of snow and ice, freezing temperatures chilling them to their cores with the only sign of anything else around being another outrageous mansion amidst the tundra.

Her aunt headed right to it, clearly expecting them to follow which they did, the only other option being to suffer through the snow and cold, but as they walked she shot one final look back to the portal they’d come through, instantly regretting it as she did.

Whatever the creature that made it was, it had still existed on the opposite side of it, and with the hole through space being squarely in its mouth, it seemed like there would be no way for it to come through, but the solution to that seemed as creative as it did disturbing. Thera caught sight of what looked like flesh and organs squeezing their way through the hole as it turned itself inside-out to make its way through, the portal vanishing as it did before it righted itself and followed its maker.

I already regret seeing that, not sure I want to know what we’ll be witnessing next.

It seemed like another area that her aunt had a home set up in so she braced herself as she went through the door, only to feel a bit of relief up seeing it was as normal as the last building had been. The entire place seemed to be made of wood, but there was some sort of heating going on that kept it significantly more comfortable than the outside as they were led through it.

“I’ll show you both your room later. Since the examination will take place over the span of a few days I’m sure you’d prefer a bit of enrichment so you can help yourself to the library while you’re here, just this way.”

The room they were led to was large, not as much as any time they’d been to the craftsman’s guild, but with a big enough selection that Thera knew she’d never be able to make it through everything in their time there, though given all the mind skills he had she couldn’t be sure of the same for Ben. More interesting to her was just how filled the room was with life spirits.

They both went in, though Thera was stopped by her aunt's firm grip as Vividus spoke to Ben. “Read whatever you want while the life spirits in the room examine you, we’ll be back later. Thera, with me.”

“What, why?”

“At the ninth level of life magic, I’m not letting you miss the opportunity to learn from me whether you like it or not. Argue and you’ll find out nothing of what’s happening to the boy.”

With that she started walking off, fully expecting to be followed as Thera glared at her from behind. The only thing that seemed like it would be worse than spending a week with Vividus would be spending a week alone with Vividus, but as much as she wanted to argue she needed to understand what was happening to Ben’s body and couldn’t deny that as much as she hated the woman, she’d likely be able to learn things about life magic she never would otherwise.

“Why do you even have a meeting room?” Thera asked as she took a seat while her aunt stood above her. “We seem pretty out of the way for you to be having guests.”

“I’ll admit, there aren’t many times I’ve needed to bring anyone to the polar region but I find it’s better to have it just in case. You mortals are so much more comfortable in these sorts of settings so it makes things easier overall. Now tell me, how do you use your life magic?”

“Mostly just general healing. In the last few months, I’ve been using it to strengthen different creatures and I’ve also used it in attacks, either by disrupting a target's internal systems or overwhelming them with life mana.”

As much as she didn’t want to cooperate out of spite, if she had no choice but to learn she’d do it to the best of her abilities and forced herself to keep a neutral tone as she spoke while Vividus nodded.

“As I expected, all of the more standard ways to use the magic, not that it’s a problem, though you’re still lacking any experience with the more interesting ways of applying it. Still, I really should test you on each of those options, just one moment.”

Firing off a spell Thera couldn’t begin to comprehend, in only a few moments a new creature made its way to them. About half her size, it walked on all fours with thick snow-white fur, three shining eyes and sharp teeth gleaming in its jaws, only separated by the knife held in its mouth her aunt took, and in one smooth motion slit its throat.

“You have less than a minute. Start healing it.”

Caught completely off guard by the act, she rushed over to the creature, placing her hands on it and paying no mind to whether it ended up charmed for the trouble as she ran her mana through it. She hadn’t expected to use her magic so suddenly and it showed as she forced more and more power into closing the wound, managing to succeed, but leaving a thick, ugly scar with how rushed it had been before Vividus reached down and touched the creature, fixing her mistake and leaving it in perfect condition.

Unphased, she pushed Thera to show off everything else she claimed she could do, empowering it as best as she could and injuring it with her life mana, all as her aunt nodded along, not saying more than she needed to until she gave her final assessment.

“You use your mana like a mortal.”

“Of course I do, I am mortal.”

“Mmh, that might be part of the problem, you really don’t think of yourself as a spirit, do you?”

“I’d say it’s pretty reasonable I don’t. I’m fairly sure most spirits don’t think of me as one either.”

Even if it was obvious she wasn’t a pure succubus like her mother or aunt, those were the terms she thought of herself in first and foremost. She had a true physical body, more than just a mass of intelligent mana, and she was tied to the form she was born with. She aged, even if it all but stopped after reaching maturity, and even if she could expect a lifespan incomparable to other mortals, she would still die one day. More than that, culturally she was more similar to a succubus or many of the other hominid-type races than she could ever be to a spirit. As much as she liked the ones she’d interact with as she trained her spirit empowering skill, it was clear they all had significantly different priorities to her and interests she could never truly appreciate.

“Again, maybe so but it’s holding you back. If all spirits didn’t have their magics listed as their blessed skills then it would undoubtedly be a passive one. Using a magic is as natural to our kind as breathing is to yours, the fact that you don’t move the earth by instinct or heal with a thought is nothing but a weakness to you.”

“Gee, thanks,” Thera said sarcastically, waiting for something a bit more constructive as her aunt went on.

“More than that is the fact that you still clearly have issues with using your mana that other mortals just don’t have. Don’t glare child, you know it to be true and I’m not even referring to how your control fails when trying to restrain yourself, it’s the opposite actually. I never noticed it before, but you’ve never used a single spell that has used most of your mana pool, have you?”

“Of course not. The amount I have is outrageous, why would I ever need to?”

“It’s not that you don’t need to, it’s that you can’t. While I watched you try to use your healing at first you reached an upper limit for how much you could put out at once. It was still leagues above what a standard mortal could do, but if you start managing to go beyond that you would likely be able to do things that can only be done at the high end of an awakened magic for most mortals, if not some spells that only the soul mages and I can usually pull off.”

As much as she hated it, that managed to properly pull her attention.

“Like what?”

“Where to begin? Permanent strengthening beyond a mere buff, the sort of lifespan enhancements that only the soul mages can normally manage, chimera creation and homunculus creation along with everything in between just to name a few. You might be able to manage bits of it now to a lesser extent, but that’s nothing compared to how any spell would be if you could access your full mana pool and reach your true potential.”

Her aunt continued to drone on but Thera’s mind was fully captured by two words Vividus had said. Lifespan enhancements. There were rumours that the soul mages were capable of such things, but to hear it so casually mentioned among the other topics like it was any other spell just showed how little it mattered to Vividus while it could mean the world to her. Her aunt and uncle, her mother, Ben, she’d told herself she wasn’t going to think about the future where she’d one day lose them to time, there was nothing she could do and worrying about that would only keep her from living in the moment, but things were different if she could exert some real form of control in keeping them all alive even a little longer.

In that moment she didn’t need to push her hatred of her aunt from her mind, all she cared about was what she might be able to learn from her as the lessons began and she put her all into it.