The group trekked quickly back through the jungle area, retracing their steps to avoid encountering any new monsters. They ran into a few of the venomous frogs creeping through the trees, but handled them with no difficulty thanks to the mini-map. None of the birds had reentered the area, though Sinaya could have handled them with little trouble. In a short while, they found a trio of the large Sun bears munching berries growing in a small clearing in the jungle.
Anika examined the auras of the bears, noting two were green and one was blue. Lily said her ability had to be used on something her level or lower, and Anika would prefer something closer to their level, if possible. The green ones had a 66% chance to be the same or lower level, as they indicated something within one level of the person. Hopefully one of them would work. They could always find another pack if it didn’t. Better to get something level 9 or 10 than chance having something level 6 or 7.
“Okay Lily, you’re going to try to use your ability on the bears with green auras, and Sinaya and I will target and kill the lower level bear on the left first. Have the Capy pack move to block the other two bears from reaching you when you try to cast your spell. We don’t know what will happen when you cast it.” Anika thought about how playing a Hunter in some games caused them to get attacked by a beast as they tried to tame it as a pet. If the spell Lily needed to cast had a long cast or channel time, it could lead to her getting attacked and she would rather be prepared.
“If it doesn’t work on the first one, tell us before you try the second one so we know which of the bears we should target next.”
“Okay!” Lily said while performing an excited tippy tap dance at Anika’s feet. “I can’t wait to get my new friend!”
Anika nodded to Sinaya, who moved forward so she could easily step into range of the bear once they engaged, and the Capy pack moved with her. Anika conjured a globe of water above her and started moving it towards the bears, ready to slam it down into their initial target. Once Sinaya was in position, Anika told Lily to start casting her spell as she and Sinaya simultaneously attacked the bear on the left.
The bears let out a collective roar as the attack interrupted their mealtime. The bear taking Anika and Sinaya’s attack fell forward as the weight of Sinaya’s meteor hammer slammed into the top of its head, preventing it from moving towards the party. The other two bears began casting their rock skin ability before charging towards them.
Anika only lost about a quarter of the water in her orb during her attack, so she slammed it down into the bear a second time while Sinaya whipped her meteor hammer around for a second pass. The bear fell to the ground, unconscious but not entirely dead. Anika slammed her water orb down onto the fallen bear one last time to kill it, letting all the water disperse this time as she turned to Lily.
The capybara stared intently at the two bears that had now reached the line of capybara.
“Is it working? Which one are you focusing on?” Anika asked her companion.
Lily continued to stare intently towards the bears, too focused on whatever her spell required of her to answer Anika. Anika assumed that meant the spell was working… but it also meant she wasn’t sure which monster they should attack. She should have told Lily which monster to start with rather than telling her to let them know if it didn’t work on whatever one she tried first. That was poor communication on Anika’s part.
“I don’t know which one we should attack, and I don’t know if attacking them will disrupt Lily’s spell.” Anika directed her comments to Sinaya, who swung her meteor hammer at her side in circles, ready to strike once directed to do so. Meanwhile, two members of the Capy pack took brutal slashing attacks to the side, causing them to collapse to the ground. Anika doubted they would survive another attack. She wondered if she could create a water shield similar to the one that the water buffalo cast that would help protect the capybaras without disrupting Lily’s spellcasting.
Shrugging and figuring it couldn’t hurt to try, Anika conjured another globe of water, moving it towards the capybaras while flattening it out into more of a squished oval. She imagined herself pulling the water tightly into itself, gripping her fists tightly together to reflect the magical muscles tightening to hold the water in its shape and not let anything pass. She moved it into position in front of one of the capybaras as the bear swung its clawed paw towards the downed creature.
When the bear encountered the barrier, Anika felt the impact in her magical senses, like getting slammed in bumper cars. Droplets of water splashed out and the barrier shivered as the bear’s paw entered it, and Anika strained to hold the water in place against the penetration of the dangerous claws. The bear’s physical strength was higher than Anika’s magical strength, and the pointed tips began to pierce the barrier.
When the water of the barrier finally parted due to Anika’s inability to hold the magical form of the water any longer, the momentum driving the bear’s attack was sufficiently slowed so that it didn’t make contact with the injured member of the Capy pack before it, and the bear roared its frustration. Anika quickly tried to repair her barrier, as she hadn’t lost much of the water when the bear finally smashed through it. She willed the separated pieces of the watery shield back together, attempting to reinforce the area by shifting more water towards the center, causing the oval to plump up to an egg shape.
The bear swung again, and her barrier once again slowed the movement enough to prevent damage to the capybara. She still couldn’t maintain the barrier through the strength of the attack, but the resulting shield certainly did its job, and Anika filed it away into her magical knowledge. She would have to figure out a way to practice holding her magical shapes against other attacks in the training facility. If she could figure out how to conjure it quickly and develop more magical strength, it might work as a defensive mechanism for herself or to protect Lily.
Anika hadn’t paid attention to the other bear, but now she realized it had stopped attacking and instead sat down on its haunches. Its unblinking eyes stared back at Lily. Anika didn’t know how Lily’s clone spell worked, but she could take a solid guess at this point about which bear Lily targeted. She looked over at Sinaya, whose eyes flicked back and forth between Lily and the now sitting bear.
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“This one!” Anika called, pushing her barrier water back into a ball and slamming it into the bear’s face before it could attack a third time.
A blur of silver whipped past Anika’s face as Sinaya lashed out with her weapon, slamming into it several times in quick succession using vertical strikes to the top of the bear’s head. After the third hit, the bear collapsed to the ground, leaving only the now sitting bear that stared deep into Lily’s eyes.
Anika examined Lily and the bear before looking at Sinaya and shrugging. She had no idea what the spell entailed, and right now, the situation seemed under control. She plopped down to the ground rather than standing around twiddling her thumbs, and soon after Sinaya did the same. Leka, on the other hand, remained standing at the edge of the clearing.
After a few minutes, the bear began to change. Its body swelled like a balloon slowly inflating with air, and slowly took on a profile that looked more similar to a capybara. The head began to change as well, the nose filling out and broadening, though the jaw remained filled with sharp teeth. The biggest change came to the back paws, with the hair falling off, replaced by webbed feet the same size as the original paws, the claws retracting into the toes.
In a flash of light that reminded Anika of the Death Star explosion, the rays starbursting out of the bear and causing a loop of light parallel to the ground to expand out and pass through everyone else in the clearing, What remained behind looked like an oversized capybara with the same dark brown hair and tan sun marking on its chest as the original bear, bear paws on the front and webbed capybara feet in the back, and fluffy bear ears atop a face halfway between bear and capybara. It was kind of adorable.
At the same time, Anika saw a notification blink in her vision, and she opened it up.
New Anima-bonded Companion Detected
Accept and update party?
Anika quickly accepted the bond and another status bar appeared in the side of her vision under Lily’s bar. The name “Hawthorn” appeared beside them.
“I have a new friend!” Lily exclaimed and excitedly ran to the new party member.
Anika looked over to the much larger bear… capybara… capybeara? Anika mentally congratulated herself for that one. Capybeara. Perfect.
Lily barely came half way up the hybrid-clone’s leg and was about the size of the creature’s head. The capybeara shook its head and sat back, looking like an extremely oversized teddy bear, and Anika walked over to the pair to get a closer look.
“Uh.. hi! I’m Anika.” Considering she had accepted Hawthorn as a companion, she figured the new addition already knew her name, but couldn’t think of a better way to break the ice.
“This is Lily.” She pointed to the capybara and then pointed to the other women, “And this is Sinaya and Leka. Welcome to the group.”
A low, rumbling voice appeared tentatively in her mind. *Hello? I.. Hawthorn.*
The bear looked quizzically at Anika and Lily before his mental voice echoed in her mind again. *How… here?*
“I got a new spell and I used it on you and now we can be friends!” Lily hopped up, putting her front legs up on the bear’s back leg.“
“It’s uh… a long story.” Anika couldn’t exactly explain how their new companion came into existence and also had the capacity for language. And somehow had a name? The gods had created Lily, Epona, and the other companions, so their language ability and names made sense. This came from a magic spell that Lily gained. Was it also a spell created by the gods? Had they planned this?
Leka moved forward to examine the capybeara. “Well, this is exciting!”
-------
The Pantheon control room erupted into Chaos.
“How did this happen?” Air demanded of Water.
Water’s eyes remained glued to the screen in front of her. “I have no idea! But I need to go make this a new template immediately!”
“Not so fast, Water!” Fire pushed past Earth and Aether to stab her finger at the bear-capybara hybrid on the screen. “This is unnatural!”
“Oh, pssh, it’s no more unnatural than a platypus.” Water waved a hand at Fire dismissively.
“You gave your creation the power to replicate our magic!” Air accused, not containing the anger in his voice, “THAT is unnatural. Near blasphemous!”
“I’ve told you before, I only made my capybara adorable. None of its magic is mine. Ask Aether.” She pointed casually towards Aether, who stood silently watching the screen, his face impassive.
“You both colluded to give your Champion the ability to create an army!” Fire glared at both Water and Aether.
“One little creature is hardly an army.” Water brushed off the concern.
“There was no collusion.” Aether stated, his expression a mask. “Neither of us dictated the powers of the gift. We imbued our will and domain in the ritual the same as you – the ability to manifest what is needed to allow the Champion and companion to be successful.”
“If we had known this was a possibility we never would have agreed to that!” Air raged and began pacing back and forth.
“I do not believe any of us considered this a possibility. I did not know such power could manifest from the magic available. I would have limited the power had I known.” Aether answered.
“Then what do we do about it?” Fire demanded.
“There is nothing to do!” Water glared at Fire. “We can’t interfere. We agreed on a path forward, and we used all our cosmic influence in the summoning, and we used most of our stored energy to provide these rituals.”
“They aren’t hurting anyone.” Earth spoke tentatively. “We need them, and we need them to be powerful and effective or it will be game over for our planet.”
“Precisely.” Aether nodded. “Unless they do harm to our people, we would cripple our world by removing them. We need them, and we do not have the ability to replace them at this time. We cannot expend power we do not have.”
Air and Fire continued to boil with rage, but they knew Earth and Aether spoke the truth. They needed the summoned Heroes to grow their power and to protect their world. They just had not considered or prepared for every eventuality along the way.
