Aryn - A story of five heroes

2: Self-study

Aryn arrives to the forest and searches herself a nice spot. "Now... What do I have here..." She looks at the front page. "That's... me. Dark brown hair, green eyes, a smile on my face... That's how I was 13 years ago... I hope I still look the same..." She reads information on her surgeries and what they were for.

There are many where she's been installed some kind of devices such as blades and guns and armor under her skin and replaced some of her bones with artificial ones made of more sturdy material. She has 6 implanted jewels that contain magic power, allowing her to use powerful elemental magic of all types. The record tells that she also has enhanced strength, speed, senses and healing. She's amazed of the hypothetical amounts of speed and weight she could do. She looks at her arm and shakes her head. "There's no way I could lift 300 pounds with one arm..." She reads a few more pages that reveal poison, anesthesia, heat and cold resistances.

Aryn stands back up, throws the record to the ground and walks to a nearby pond. She looks at her reflection in the water. Her skin has gone pale - almost white, just like her hair. Her eyes have changed their color into somewhat pinkish color and all in all her facial features have grown more mature. "17, huh... I wonder if mom and dad would ever recognize me if I found them..."

She leans back from the pond and lays down next to it. Her eyes close. "Fire... Water... Earth... Air... Darkness... Light...... I haven't even used all of them. Fire and earth... I can handle a little bit of those by instinct but nothing more..." She hops back up and looks at her left hand. "A gun with self-sustaining ammo... huh..." Aryn tests it out and it works. She also tests the several blades she has, as well as running speed, jumping and lifting little by little before she sits down to test her hearing, smell and sight.

A couple hours after, she calls it a day since the sun is setting. She picks up firewood and makes a fire. "I'd better not be showing all that to just anyone... I feel like it's a bad idea..." she thinks to herself and tucks in.

In the morning she wakes up to birds chirping happily in the forest. She got an idea. She could hunt some monsters by herself in the forest and sell parts of it to get money to get clothes and equipment, remembering her dad did the same when he started out as an adventurer. "I'll have to learn how to use all the magic little by little too..."

She starts walking around the forest to find anything that could lead her to some smaller monsters. After a while she finds an empty nest of some medium sized simian monsters. She uses her great sense of smell to trail them. In a bit she encounters a red-faced white monkey with sparkly iris purple horns clinging on a tree and watching her before it attacks. She stands there calmly and punches it in the face when it's close enough. She confirms it's dead and takes a proper look. "I guess the horns will sell... So will the fur. It's smooth and warm..."

Then she stops for a moment. "But how can I remove them? I don't have a knife on me... Just blades that I can't get out of me..." After a bit she realizes she could make a disposable knife out of stone with magic. Only if she could control the magic freely. She hunts half-a-dozen more of the same species and returns to the spot she camped last night with the bodies.

"Now... How does this magic work? Do I imagine it? Do I force something to come out? I don't even know..." She tries to feel the power of the earth-type jewel, remembering the spot where it's placed. "I have light in my chest... Darkness under my navel... Fire left under my rib cage and water right... Wind under the water one around a little bit above my hips and earth... left... right where I kept bleeding for two weeks...." She places her hand there. "Now if I just place my other hand here..."

She touches a stone nearby and tries concentrating the jewel's power on the stone. It just ends up cracking so that a part of it comes off. "Too small..." A few more tries after she gets a part of it that's big enough to make something out of. She uses the other stone parts to hit the stone, trying to make it pointy, since she's getting a little tired of using magic. Sadly the stone breaks in pieces and she's back where she started. ".....Shit..." However, after staring at the pieces for a moment in disappointment she notices one that's sharp enough at its edges. It's not too big but she decides to make-do with it. She's in luck.

She cuts the skin of a monkey open from the front, then cuts it open from the arms and legs. With a little difficulty she gets it removed. It took longer than she expected. After that she notices the bones are made out of the same shiny material as the horns and removes the innards and the muscles carefully to get the bones off. At the end she takes the horns apart from the skull and goes to the pond to wash the parts. It's already getting dark.

After returning from the pond, she makes a fire and even if she's tired, she skins and takes the bones and the horns from the rest of the monkeys. She washes the parts too and decides to tuck in for the day. She uses the skins as a blanket. "Tomorrow..." she says and yawns, continuing. "Tomorrow I'm heading back and selling these in the town... and get a proper knife..." She shuts her eyes and drifts off to a restless sleep.