Part 1For as long as she could remember, Evlin had one goal of what she wanted to be once she grew up, a teacher.
She would often share this little bit of trivia about herself with people around her and would sometimes get some weird glances from them in return.
"Why would a ten-year-old ever want to be a teacher?"
This is how most reacted when she would comment on that.
Evlin"s desire to teach didn"t come from her love of studying or anything like that. She was actually really bad at studying due to finding really hard to keep herself focused during cla.s.ses and having a hard time memorizing important information, on top of sometimes just not knowing why learning some of the subjects would ever be important to her future.
No, the reason she had this goal in mind was for something else. For Evlin, teacher was something that she a.s.sociated with the word "hero".
When she was young she went through a rather traumatic experience where all of her cla.s.smates one day joined to write on her desk the message "You should die!" in twenty-seven different versions.
When she saw how all of them had banded against her she desperately started to look for someone that could be on her side, give her support, save her. But she found no one, even those she considered her closest friends had abandoned her.
The girl was filled with despair and began to hate the concept of ever going to school again. But while she couldn"t find anyone that would be by her side in cla.s.s, she found someone that would be by her side at home, her mother.
Her mother had a natural talent for understanding children. She knew how to talk to them, how to listen to them, how to know what they needed, and how to help solve their inner problems. She had to since it was part of her daily job. She was a teacher. Her life was about knowing how to communicate with young people and helping them grow as better individuals.
And just like she would do in cla.s.s, she stayed by her daughter"s side and helped her get over her traumatic experience, trying to remind her of the importance of not giving up on the path of learning.
To Evlin, her mother was her hero, and she wanted to be just like her. She wanted to help others the same way she was helped. Save children who were desperately looking for someone to be by their side and help them become proper adults, trying to avoid what happened to her from ever happening to someone else again. She wanted to be the children"s hero by helping them in their time of need.
She managed to start walking the path of her dream once she became an art teacher and started to get involved with kids, helping them develop their creativity and imagination along with their production skills. It wasn"t exactly what she imagined, but it was a step to what she believed she wanted.
But even before that, there was one case that came much earlier where she helped one lost boy grow into a proper adult.
This boy was suffering from being abandoned, having no one that could help him, feeling alone, and like the world hated him, just waiting for a savior to end his suffering. But n.o.body had come to save him, the same way n.o.body had come to save Evlin until her mother arrived.
Evlin saw the boy in pain and decided that she would be his hero, she would take on his pain, and that she would help him in his time of need.
The boy tried to fight back, screaming he didn"t need her, that he wouldn"t listen, that she was wrong. But Evlin didn"t give up on him. Every time the boy tried to attack her she simply received his painful fists and responded with hard truths in an attempt of waking him up to reality.
The two continued this until the boy finally surrendered and decided to at last listen to Evlin. The two finally connected with each other and started to work on making the boy"s pain go away.
There were tears, there were hugs, and there was a lot of pain mixed with some heavy words. But in the end, the boy was saved. The first real step for Evlin to become the hero she wanted to be. She had saved a young man who was filled with suffering and became a beacon of hope to him.
Now, years later, she had once again turned into another child"s hero. Her little niece who would always follow her around after finding out her aunt was not like other adults.
Evlin was someone who she could talk to with more freedom, more openness, something she felt she couldn"t do with her mother or father. Her aunt made her feel safe, feel welcomed.
And right at this moment, both of these kids, the kids that looked at Evlin as if she was their hero, her young niece Ellie, and her old friend Marcus, the first child she ever saved, were right in front of her standing strong after working together to save her life.
The two children she tried so hard to support had just showed her that all her effort had paid off. They were s.h.i.+ning with confidence and making Evlin feel prouder than ever before in her entire life.
"My heroes!"
But just as soon as she released these words, both Marcus and Ellie began to fall exhausted from their battle. Marcus was still covered in injuries from receiving so many attacks from the crystal spider monster and Ellie was completely burned out from releasing so much magic energy for the first time in her life.
Marcus simply fell on the pavement, but Ellie who was on the edge of a building started to fall at immense speed.
"ELLIE!!!!!"
Evlin screamed in panic at the sight of her niece approaching the ground at immense speed and hoped on top of Sphinx. The two began to rush towards the girl while Evlin"s heart continued to beat at an absurd rate.
"Listen Sphinx, I know you don"t like flying, but this is a case of life and death! So please, just this once, use your wings to save my niece!! Please!!!"
The golden griffin heard his owner"s command. Evlin wasn"t aware of this but the creature was also another kid that she had saved when he needed her.
A young baby griffin that had just been captured by a group of hunters that wanted to cut off his wings to sell on the black market. During that time, Evlin appeared out of nowhere and freed him from his cruel fate while giving him a new meaning in life.
Sphinx loved Evlin as well, and if she was saying something was so important that he needed to fly, then there was no fear of heights strong enough to keep this half-lion half-eagle monster down.
The griffin raised its wings and dashed across the sky to rescue the unconscious girl. Ellie briefly opened her eyes to witness the sight of her hero soaring through the sky while riding a mythical beast to come and save her.
"Aunt... Evie...?"
"Gotcha!!!"
Evlin held her niece in her arms and was filled with a wave of pain due to the injuries that still covered her body. But that wasn"t enough to stop her. Her niece"s safety was more important than all the pain in the world.
The three of them returned safely to the ground and regrouped with the rest of her friends.
Daren was carrying a half-unconscious Marcus on his back, Lilith was holding Lance in her arms, and Evlin was hugging Ellie tightly with all her strength. It probably wouldn"t be that odd of an image to look at if it wasn"t for the two feline beasts surrounding them and the piles of crystals spread throughout the street.
Daren looked around and noticed more people starting to approach them with curious eyes. Many were carrying their cellphones and either filming or taking pictures of the scene.
"I think we should go..."
But Evlin was looking at something else.
"Not yet... Help me carry as many of these crystals as we can. We all almost died to receive Mia"s little gift, I"m not letting it go to waste."
And as she said so, the group start to place as many crystals as they could find inside Evlin"s and Ellie"s bag and returned to their path towards Evlin"s home so she could get her hands on her old wooden armor.
Several individuals began to upload their videos online showcasing the events of a group of people fighting in the middle of the city against a giant crystal monster trying to theorize just what that was all about.
Many of the viewers simply a.s.sumed that it was some kind of prank or special effects for the filming of a movie, but one girl with a pair of ponytails and dual-colored eyes, in particular, was simply staring at her phone grinning from ear to ear as she watched the events herself and released a few words of joy.
"Almost there..."
Part 2
Evlin and her group finally reached her house, only to find the place looking like someone was playing with a wrecking ball inside of it.
Her front door was all the way across the living room, there was debris all over the floor, many of her tables were completely smashed, and all her windows were shattered with pieces of gla.s.s spread everywhere.
Evlin just stared at the scene of her destroyed apartment without knowing how she was supposed to react. Even she was starting to get tired of her bad luck.
"Are you kidding me?? Did I kill someone"s dog in my last life or something?? Why do these things keep happening to me??"
She was about to fall on her knees when she spotted a blond woman inside her bedroom trying to clean it up with a broom.
"East??"
Her housemaid turned around in shock after realizing her boss had returned.
"Oh!! Huh... Welcome back, I guess..."
"East, what the h.e.l.l happened in here??"
"Your airhead friend"s little sister happened..."
"Mia?? Mia was here???"
The former G.o.ddess of the East started to rub her neck after hearing Mia"s name and Evlin then noticed strong red marks in it as if someone had chocked her.
"Yes... She was..."
East then looked behind Evlin and noticed that the woman with an empty look on her face had brought some friends as well.
Two of her teammates from the other world, two huge hairy creatures, one of which was carrying Evlin"s sleeping niece on its back, and finally, her old employee as well as a baby for some reason.
Daren, Lilith, and Marcus all glared at East while remembering all the suffering she had put them through. Daren broke the silence first.
"So I guess you"re still alive?"
"And I guess you"re still annoying, lion boy... It seems we both are disappointed..."
Lilith was the next to speak.
"You should watch your tongue... You don"t have any power here remember? You better try not to anger any of us."
"Right... After all, I have soooo much to lose right now..."
East then looked at Marcus wondering if he would try to threaten her as well, but the lad simply turned his face away as if he had nothing to say to her.
"I see... Well, I have work to do so if you don"t have anything else to say..."
"East!!"
Evlin suddenly grabbed her housemaid"s shoulders while screaming her name.
"Why did Mia came here?? What did she want?? My mother!! Where is my mother???"
"..."
"East!!!! Tell me what"s going on! Just what is happening??"
East finally stopped sweeping Evlin"s room and rested her broom against the wall. She released a small sigh and looked at her boss with tired eyes.
"You wanna know what"s going on? It"s a long story... You better take a seat."
"..."
Evlin didn"t say anything. She knew that whatever mess she was involved in right now, it was much bigger than she initially imagined. Mia had appeared into her life out of nowhere and turned everything upside down. Evlin was starting to feel lost once again. The same feeling she had when she was transported into another world against her will.
Back there she was about to panic and fall into despair as everything around her started to spiral out of her control. She needed something to gain control of her life again, and she knew exactly what it was.
She grabbed a few pieces of absorbing crystals from her pocket and walked towards her closet. She opened the doors and there it was, her old bracelets and grieves made of wood.
Evlin took a deep breath while closing her eyes and made her resolve. She needed to go back to her roots. She grabbed the crystals and started to feel the raw magic energy inside of them.
She wore her wooden armor which was made from the special tree that allowed mages to channel magic energy, and using her crystals, she felt it. Magic. For the first time in years, Evlin was feeling the power of magic once again all over her body.
Memories started to flash above her head. So many fights, so many challenges, so many enemies trying to capture her or kill her, all because of her magic. Her magic that she now needed once again if she wanted to win this upcoming fight.
A life that she was trying so hard to leave behind had now caught up to her and was calling her name once again. Not her birth name, her second name, the name she gained after traveling to a new world and being born once more. A name that caused her so much trouble for attracting the worst kind of people who wanted to get their hands on her due to her reputation.
The crossbow mage.
She once again accepted the role she needed to play and started to release healing magic over her body to fix all the wounds from her little encounter with Mia.
She walked towards Daren, Marcus, and Ellie and proceeded to do the same.
Finally, she turned towards East and after feeling a little calmer for the first time in a long time, decided to sit with her legs and arms crossed on one of the chairs that were still intact to hear the whole story and finally find out just what was it that Mia was trying to accomplish by forcing Evlin to play this stupid game with her.
"I"m listening."