Part 1Evlin loves animals. when she was younger she got a little traumatized when the small black cat that her parents gave to her sister as a Christmas gift ended up dying due to an unfortunate disease. She herself wasn"t all that attached to the small feline but seeing her sister so devastated after their separation inspired her to never try and get a pet for herself.
As the years went by thought, she got introduced to many friends at school who had pets at home and would often invite her to play with them. At first she went along just for the sake of being polite, trying to keep a safe emotional distance in case something similar would happen in their future. And, just as she expected, many of her friends ended up depressed after losing their precious animals due to a sudden illness, the coming of old age or sometimes a case of car accident.
Raising pets was a recipe for a future heartbreak since these lovely creatures were much more fragile than a regular person. Seeing the pain of others made her scared of feeling that same pain herself at some point, so she always secretly would tell her parents to not give her a pet as a present.
During one of her visits to her grandmothers house however she received some surprising change of heart. Evlin was extremely close to her grandmother since she was the youngest granddaughter of the family. Playing with Evlin would often remind the old lady of her times when she was just starting as a mother.
On one of her birthdays she was presented with an adorable white bunny from Evlin"s uncle which worried her because she didn"t think such an old lady would have a heart strong enough to deal with the eventual pain that animals could bring. But despite thinking like that, Evlin started to realize the magic that taking care of a pet could create when she started to look at her grandmother making smiles that she had never seen before while raising that small rodent. She believed that letting her grandmother take care of it would backfire in a tremendous way but it seems like the small creature was actually bringing back years of her life by spending each day together with her.
Seeing how much joy that white bunny was giving her grandmother Evlin decided to get closer to it for her sake, and before she noticed, she feel in love with it. Maybe it"s because she was the youngest child but the feeling of taking care of something so small and delicate was completely new and hypnotizing for Evlin, and after that she basically turned into a completely different girl.
Every time one of her friends would call her to play with their pets Evlin would rush like a bullet at the first chance she would get. She never said no to the offer of meeting new animals or hanging out with them. To the point where her mother was forced to take her to the zoo every year for Evlin"s birthday or as a reward each time she did extremely well during exams.
So it"s safe to a.s.sume that the moment she noticed that gang of hunters mistreating that griffin and putting all those creatures in cages, something inside of her started to snap. For the last few days many things were on her mind. Protecting Ashley, saying farewell to Dalla, challenging Xadi, meeting Marceus, reaching Emerald Dawn, but suddenly none of that mattered anymore. Catching a glimpse of that demonstration of animal abuse had s.h.i.+fted all of her gears towards one new goal, protecting those creatures.
After making sure that Ashley was in a safe place Evlin rushed towards the area where the hunters were performing their crime. She could hear her new sister trying to call her out and asking her to go back, but it was hopeless, Evlin was acting on autopilot by that point. She modeled all of her wood armor towards her legs and performed a ma.s.sive jump above the trees followed by landing on top of one of the hunters that were harming the griffin with it"s whip.
The hunters all stopped what they were doing and stared at the young girl that had appeared from the sky bearing a look on her face that was holding so much fury it could make bystanders start to ask who was the real beast in that situation. One of the hunters approached Evlin and started to question her.
"You again? Didn"t you just run away a few second ago? Who are you?"
Evlin s.h.i.+fted her armor towards her arms making a pair of wooden gauntlets and sent that hunter flying upwards with an uppercut. A few second after he finally returned form his little flight and got smacked against the ground Evlin decided to answer his question.
"Karma..."
Part 2
Ashley was desperately rus.h.i.+ng across the forest trying to find Evlin. That crazy girl had a psychotic look on her eyes as if she was finally ready to kill someone. She had seen Evlin upset or angry before many times when she would return from a stressing quest from the guild. But maybe it"s because Ashley never really had a chance to see Evlin in the battlefield but that was the first time she looked so scary.
Because of how fast she was with her healing magic boost Ashly ended up staying really far from where the hunters were camping, but she managed to find the location after hearing the sound of battle not too far from where she was. She took a peek from behind the trees and saw Evlin fighting like a demon against the entire group of hunters.
Her crossbow was completely gone and so was her backup necklace, which means that all of her extra wood was being used to power up her arms and legs. Ashley was pretty sure she had heard that Evlin always had a combat-style focused on safe distance use of long-ranged magic attacks and would only try to rely on close combat during emergencies. But what she was looking at was not even close to what people described to her.
Evlin was fighting like some kind of angered beast constantly going for fist attacks or fast kicks on every chance she got. The hunters kept trying to capture her with their whips or slash her with their swords but if she wasn"t easily dodging all of them with her superior agility she was grabbing their weapons and using it to thrown them against the ground. She was looking less like a mage and more like a martial arts master.
At one point she even grabbed one of the hunters by the leg and used him as a human bat to hit on other hunters. One of them tried to go for the whip again but she simply grabbed it before it could reach her and started to spin it like a whirlwind. Why was this girl trying to learn more elemental magic? It looked she was controlling wind magic right now, is what Ashley was thinking.
As the fight kept dragging on the number of hunters kept falling more and more. It looked like it was going to be an easy win for the little mage. But as Ashley was thinking that, she noticed that one of the hunters actually managed to land a hit on Evlin somehow.
"Aaaargh!!"
She received a cut on her left arm from a knife that moved so fast that Ashley thought it"s owner was some kind of ghost for a second. The Lady holding the knife started to talk.
"Why are you bullying my men little girl?"
"Your men...? So these guys work for you?"
"They are my family young miss... And i don"t treat kindly those who harm my family!"
"Well, your family is not treating these animals very kindly either..."
Evlin was trying to look composed but she was actually in a huge state of shock. How did that woman managed to hit Evlin with her boosted speed? No one should be able to keep up with her, especially with her re-forced leg armor. Whoever this lady was, she was a much bigger trouble than the rest of the hunters.
"Just doing business sweetie... Griffin"s wings sell for a very high price, and there are many adventures who love to use these creatures as target practice for developing their skills. It"s just a matter of giving people what they want."
"I didn"t ask to hear your dumb justifications... You wanna harm these creatures, you will have to deal with me first!"
"As you wish... Back off boys... I"ll deal with our little monster-lover!"
The woman threw her dagger towards Evlin who raised her arm in a attempt to deflect it, but the dagger ended up tearing apart a piece of her gauntlet and created a huge scar on her arm.
"Kaaaahhhh!! What was that???"
"One of the leftover blades of the living weapon... You have no idea how much it cost me to get my hands on one of those. Can cut anything and gives you a boost in strength and speed."
So that was the reason. No wonder people were crazy to hear about the living weapon coming back. Just that small knife was enough to make some random bandit manage to hurt Evlin that much, imagine what one could do if they had access to the real thing. As Evlin was thinking about that, the huntress revealed another pair of knifes who seemed to be made from the same material as the one she just used. With a blade on each hand she rushed towards Evlin and started to attack her with quick slices.
Thanks to Evlin"s boosted speed she was managing to dodge her knifes but she was starting to feel her body becoming a little slower. She had used too much power against the group of hunters despite probably not needing it. She a.s.sumed they would have been an easy battle so she kept fighting with recklessness, and now she was almost completely drained to fight their boss, all because she had left her anger take control of her actions.
The huntress managed to get another lucky hit and slashed one of Evlin"s legs. She released another scream of pain and proceeded to heal it with healing magic. The pain was momentary but she started to notice that with every successful slash she would lose pieces of her armor, making her power diminish even faster.
The huntress dashed for another wave of slashes and forced Evlin to give up her gauntlets and greaves to form a wooden s.h.i.+eld. Unfortunately, like was stated before, these knifes were made from the sacred sword of the G.o.ds so there was nothing it could not cut. The s.h.i.+eld was sliced into three pieces giving the huntress a huge opening to damage Evlin.
She received a stab from one of the knifes right on her shoulder and started yell due to the pain and fell on the floor due to the amount of lost blood. She was completely defenseless. All of her armor had been torn to pieces and scattered across the field. Only the small remains of what used to be her s.h.i.+eld were left but they were useless to stop those attacks. Playing defensive wasn"t working. Evlin needed to go for the attack and needed to do it in a smart way.
"You almost impressed me for a second... A small child, coming out of nowhere and whipping the floor with my crew... had things been different i would gladly welcome you into my family!"
"The day i join a gang that hurts animals for money is the day i- Aaarghhh!!"
Before she could finish her remark the huntress started to step on one of Evlin"s many wounds making her pain spread even more all over her body.
"Ops... Sorry... It just looked like you were about to badmouth my family for a second and i reacted on instinct... Go on... You were saying?"
Evlin no longer had any energy left to speak. She had been stabbed many times by that point and was almost starting to make a pool with all her blood. On top of that she wasted a lot of energy sending so much healing magic to her body during her early rampage a few minutes ago. It seemed like defeat was all but decided. After making a declaration that she would defeat Xadi during their next meeting she wasn"t even strong enough to deal with a group of random bandits she saw on her way. If she died she would swear to herself to punch Marceus in the face for just leaving his stupid knifes lying around like that.
She could still feel a little bit of strength left to maybe execute one last magic attack. But what should she use? Her healing was useless against the boost from the blessed knifes. Modeling was also not helping since her wood just kept getting chopped no matter what shape it took. Should she try to go for her famous rock hand and try to end it with a giant punch? Wouldn"t those knifes just cut through it as well?
Evlin was starting to run out of ideas. None of her old tricks looked like they would be very helpful right now. So her only hope was to come up with something new. She needed to try and awaken a new type of magic. She never managed to do it before but it was a matter of life and death now. In the few seconds she had before the leader of the hunters decided to stab her heart she needed to figure it out what was she doing wrong all this time.
She tried to think back to what Ashley was saying before in regards to affinity. Maybe there was some kind of clue hidden on all of her current magic skills. Why is she so good on using healing, earth and modeling? What did these three types of magic had in common? Modeling takes the initial state of an object and completely rewrites it from bottom up. Healing grabs a destroyed body and tries to put it together. Earth finds the core essence of the smallest particles of the ground and execute a change in its structure.
Suddenly something started to click. Rewriting, destroying and putting it together, changing, capturing a structure and giving it a new shape, a new form, a new appearance. Evlin started to realize that she might actually have some kind of affinity for transformation. It would explain why she was so bad at using water, wind and fire, because these elements don"t have a base form, they are already in constant transformation process. Evlin"s affinity was taking something and retelling how it was supposed to be, the same way she changed who she was when she decided to stop avoiding animals or by leaving her path as a teacher and deciding to turn into a mage instead.
"Evlin!!"
Before she could finish her train of thought, she noticed Ashley trying to rush towards her side but getting captured by the huntress and being knocked down on her way.
"So there were more of you? How many are there? Answer now!"
"It"s just us two!! Let us go!!"
Ashley tried to call out the huntress but she didn"t believe her.
"Don"t want to sell out your friends? Fine, i respect that, but i can"t let you ruin my business any longer."
The huntress raised one of her knifes and stabbed Ashley"s hand on the ground, making the poor girl scream in immense pain.
"Kyaaaahhh!!!"
Ashley wasn"t a mage or even an adventurer, she spends all her day in the guild either helping with the bar or handling the paper-work from requests. This was probably the first real adventure she ever had and she was already one step away from being stabbed to death. At that moment Evlin decided to ignore all reason and try to test her theory in one final attempt to get out of that situation. She started to crawl towards the griffin who was still knocked out and full of wounds and started to gather all her remaining energy to perform her magic. The huntress thought she was trying to release the creature in a attempt to have him aid her in the fight but she knew the griffin had no strength left to even stand up.
"This is just sad... Guess i should just put you out of your misery..."
The huntress stopped holding Ahley down and started to walk towards Evlin with her knifes out with the intent to put her down for good. Evlin, realizing she had no time to waste, decided to rush her spell and hope for the best.
"Hey big guy... I"m so sorry... I tried to fight for you but ended up needing to be rescued as well... Could you lend me a little but of your power so we can get out of this together?"
Evlin finished her spell and a huge light covered her and the griffin blinding the huntress. After the light dissipated she took a glance at Evlin and noticed that something had happened to her. The griffin was completely gone and Evlin was now being covered with hair all over her body with the same color of the griffin"s fur. She now had a tail and two ma.s.sive wings coming out of her back, her hands were replaced with claws and her teeth with fangs. The little piece of wood that was once the remaining of her broken s.h.i.+eld was reforged into small bracelets for her arms and legs.
The huntress looked at the girl who was now half human and half griffin while mesmerized trying to make sense of the situation.
"What... Did you do...?"
Evlin glared at the huntress with an expression that was some kind of mixture of extreme calmness and somehow at the same time extreme fury. She opened her mouth as if she was about to answer the huntress but instead left out a huge scream that could be heard from the entire forest.
"Rooooooooaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrr!!!!!!"