"I'm betting we will find out that the whole place is underwater!"
A group of seven youngsters was traveling on a path in the middle of the mountains alongside a massive feline-like creature with a pair of wings on it's back and an eagle head.
"Mmm... Maybe... I'm betting that we will find out that it was actually relocated to space!"
The group was formed of four young ladies and three young lads, with ages that ranged from seventeen to twenty-two. They were heading towards their destination while being careful not to attract any unwanted attention.
"Space huh!? Let's see... I bet... We will find out that the place is surrounded by a giant snake and that we will need to make her let us pass by giving her something to eat!"
"Oh! That's a good one Evlin! Ok, ok... I bet... Mmmm... I bet we will find out that we need to be on fire to enter the place!"
"On fire...? Ria, how would that even work...?"
Among the women, two of them, a beautiful lady with long dazzling black hair and dark skin and a young girl with messy short hair and wearing wooden armor were having a small debate among themselves.
"Just imagine! The whole place is on top of a mountain right? So the inhabitants to survive the cold must use some kind of fire spell to warm their bodies! And if we don't want to attract attention we would need to be on fire as well!!"
"Oh!! I see!! That does make sense!! Nice one Ria!!"
"Thank you, thank you! I'm awesome, I know!"
"The heck are you two talking about...?"
Another one of the girls, one with short red hair approached the two trying to understand the root of their conversation.
"Oh, hey sis! Ria and I are playing a game! We are trying to guess what's going to go wrong this time! Wanna play?"
"Are you serious...?"
"Come on!! It's fun!! Just think of something that's going to get in our way and cause a lot of trouble for our plans! You know... Like it always happens to us!"
"That's not... That's not true, right?"
Evlin and Ria exchanged a look among themselves and returned their attention to the red-haired girl.
"No, I'm pretty sure it's true..."
"Yeah same here... When was the last time one of our plans went exactly as we wanted...?"
The red-haired girl started to recollect her memories to try and disprove that theory.
"Come on... You can't be serious... Do you want something bad to happen?"
"Of course not... But I know it will... We will probably find some crazy person who will try to capture me to obtain the secret location of Marcus..."
"Or maybe we will find some monster that will attack us to stop us from advancing unless we managed to fill him with food..."
"Or maybe we will be attacked by the citizens of some random hidden village who will try to steal our metal or my crossbow... You know... The usual..."
"Why are you two talking like this is normal...? Maybe things will work out peacefully just this once you know?"
"You mean like that time we almost got fried by Xadi while trying to reach Emerald Dawn? Or like that time we were assaulted by a crowd of desperate men while I was looking for Marceus's friends? Or that time we were literally standing still doing nothing and out of nowhere, a group of demon-slayers showed up to capture me? Or maybe that time our house got sliced in half while Ria was being proposed?"
"... Ok... So maybe things tend to go wrong with us every now and then... Doesn't mean things will go wrong this time..."
"Ash... My dear sister... Love of my heart... We are going to enter a kingdom ruled by demons... How can things not go wrong this time?"
"Because... Because... We have Daren and Lilith with us!!"
Daren, a young man with brown hair and thin arms and Lilith, a young lady wearing metal armor, heard their names being called while walking ahead and turned around to see what was going on.
"What's that?"
"Miss Ashley, you called?"
"Daren, you know the southern kingdom pretty well right? You can guide us with no trouble towards it, right? And Lilith, you can use your future sight to predict any incoming danger to keep us safe... Right?"
"Huh... Yeah... No... I haven't been there for the last two hundred years... For all we know the place might not even exist anymore..."
"And my future sight gets weaker the further away into the future I try to look, so we won't know for sure until we are very close to it..."
"Come on guys..."
Evlin came closer to Ashley and tried to calm her down.
"Sis, relax! Whatever happens, we can handle it! After all... We have the blessed shield of the goddess of the west on our side now!"
Ria heard that and rushed towards the side of her fiance Auren, a young bald man with a muscular physique, and grabbed his arm.
"That's right Ashley! As long as we are together, we won't let any evil touch any of us!!"
Ashley was still not convinced.
"You guys sure have a lot of confidence..."
Evlin smiled at her and hugged her neck in a childish manner.
"How can we not? We managed to come so far now! We are so close to fulfilling our goal of defeating the goddess of the east! A few months ago I would have considered this some kind of crazy dream from a bunch of delusional people!"
"I heard that..."
Daren answered in frustration but Evlin didn't care.
"But look at where we are now!! All we need to do is enter this kingdom, defeat every single demon in it, find out how to curse a person, and make the south god indebted to us! We will probably end up in some kind of trap along the way of course, and many things will end up going wrong... But that will just make our victory in the end even more fulfilling!!"
"Ugh..."
"So...? Wanna join the game??"
"I don't want to think about ways in which we will end up failing along the way..."
"Come on Ash!! Being boring is Daren's job!!"
"Again... I can hear you... I'm very close to you, I can hear everything you say..."
Daren became grumpy for a little while and the group continued their travel while Ria and Evlin kept coming up with ways on how things could go wrong with their plan. While that was going on, Ashley noticed that there was one person on the team who was rather quiet for some reason.
Nighttime came and the group decided to give a break to the journey to perform some late training.
Lilith was engaging in battle with Auren and Ria clashing her sword with their shield and trying each to find out weakness and openings among themselves. Lilith seemed to have a small advantage since she was much more used to combat and Ria and Auren were still not used to coordinating their movements very well. However, the power of their shield was very strong and allowed the two to hold off pretty well against the silver swordswoman.
Evlin, on the other hand, used her magic to fuse her body with Sphinx, her pet griffin, and started to exchange blows with Daren while he used his cursed power to change his body into that of a black beast with red eyes.
The sparing looked like some kind of monster battle with a golden Evlin with giant wings on her back attacking a muscular lion-man covered in black hair.
"For the last time Evlin... You have wings!!! Use them!!"
"I told you... I can't!!"
Daren was trying to help Evlin get used to fighting on that form as well as looking for weaknesses in her fighting style. Evlin in her fused form was very fast and strong but she was so big that she would often make herself an easy target for her enemies. The best way to fix that was to improve her mobility during the battlefield.
"I know you are afraid of heights! I get it, I used to have it too!"
"Wait, really?? You were afraid of heights?? But your body is hard as a rock..."
"Even rocks can break if they fall from high places... I used to be terrified of fighting flying opponents, but I managed to get over that, and so can you!"
"How did you do that?"
"I decided to trust in Marceus and he showed me that there was nothing to fear. You need to trust in Sphinx. Believe that he will take care of you!"
"Trust in Sphinx... Ok... I can do this..."
"You can do this!"
"I can do this!!"
Evlin started to try and flap her massive wings in an attempt to raise her body from the ground. She could feel her feet slowly starting to distance themselves from the terrain.
"That's it!! Keep it going!! Don't stop flapping your wings!!"
She could feel herself being pulled upwards by her wings and starting to rise towards the sky. She stared at the mountain in front of her and due to her rising movement, it looked as if the mountain was sinking.
"Evlin you did it!!"
Evlin heard Daren calling for her down bellow and turned her face towards the sound of his voice. She saw Daren and the rest of the group watching her first attempt at flying high.
However, as she kept looking down, many painful memories started to flow into her head. The time she was pushed out of a window and almost fell to her death. The time she tried to jump to dodge an attack from a giant beaver and was smacked against the ground due to the shockwave of his landing. The time she watched her sister almost getting electrocuted by Xadi while she observed from a flying platform.
Her body started to merge the feeling of height with the feeling of pain until both became one. Evlin started to panic as her mind became convinced that flying would equal her death due to all her past traumas.
Her panic stopped her wings and she began to fall from the sky. Ashley observed the scene and started to scream in despair.
"Evlin!!!!"
Auren and Ria created a transparent shield in mid-air that allowed Daren to use it as a platform to jump on to try and catch her.
The winged girl passed out while falling but was rescued by the lion-man before getting into grave danger.
The two returned safely to the ground and Daren tried to talk to Evlin and convince her to open her eyes.
"Evlin! Evlin! It's ok now!! We landed!"
Evlin opened her eyes while being held in Daren's arms and realized the whole group staring at her. She tried to mask her fear and embarrassment by gesturing to them that she was not hurt.
"... Guess I'm still no good huh...?"
She pushed Daren away and separated herself from Sphinx.
"Thanks, Daren... But I think I want to stop here for today..."
"Evlin this was your first try, there is no reason to feel bad about it!"
"... Yeah, I know..."
"..."
"But I still wanna feel bad about it anyway..."
Ashley tried to talk to her.
"Evlin..."
"I just need a minute ok?"
Evlin started to walk away from the group gesturing that she didn't want to talk to anyone right now with Sphinx following right behind her. Daren returned to his normal form and started to show a depressed look.
"... I shouldn't have forced her..."
Ashley saw his expression and reassured him that he didn't do anything wrong.
"She will need to face this fear one day... Don't worry, my sister is strong..."
Daren was still feeling guilty over the situation but Lilith came closer to drive his attention elsewhere.
"Come on Daren, help me train Ria and Auren a bit. We can make a tag practice battle."
"... Yeah... Ok..."
Ashley observed the two resuming their training and noticed that someone was quietly observing everything from a distance. A young man with blond hair and blue eyes. Ashley approached him to see if there was something wrong with him.
"Gustav? Everything ok...?"
"... Everything is fine miss Ashley... Why do you ask?"
"You seemed kinda down ever since Auren and Ria gained the blessing from West."
"I have...? Sorry about that... There were a lot of things in my mind lately..."
"... You want to talk about it...?"
"Thank you for the offer... But I don't want to bore you with my silly problems..."
"Oh... I didn't mean talking to me..."
"... Huh...?"
Ashley smiled at him and stared at the direction her sister had left to.
"Say... Did you and Evlin ever made peace after that little argument you two had?"