THE TALE TOLD

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Upon the foothills of the Ashen Mountains, Aariah swooped her staff close to the ground before whipping it straight out in front of herself. Her flashy green cloak and dress flared around her. The day was crisp in early fall, and the defense practice was going exceptionally well. Even though her sparring partner had not shown up that day, Aariah could tell her abilities were improving. She backed up and twirled the staff around her in a defensively shielding way while the wind blew fallen brown leaves across the patchy grass like tumbleweed. There had been an early frost that fall and many of the trees were bare already. A pile of leaves formed under the tree where she had left her other practicing equipment. After several slow defensive maneuvers, that she was getting better and better at, she switched practices.

She went over to the stack of stuff, almost buried in leaves and pulled out her pendant of a dagger and her apprenticing magic book. She was so close to finishing the design for her magical circle that would eventually allow her to become more than an apprentice. In the circle were multiple pentagrams patterned to fit as many as she could of that average size. Inside the pentagon of each star was an animal. Because there were only eight pentagrams, she had to limit her animals to that many. She had already picked some animals that would be on there no matter what. They were already placed upon the drawing. She had a Black Panther, a fish, a squirrel, a bird, a mountain goat, and a penguin. Each animal was specifically chosen for parts of its aspects. The Black Panther would symbolize her ambition to be a rather sly individual. The fish was for her ability to swim. The squirrel was for her connection to the wood. The bird was for her ability to let her mind soar. The mountain goat for was for her ability to overcome obstacles. Finally the penguin was for its ability to shut out the cold.

Her only problem was figuring out what two elemental animals to assign to the center pentagrams. She knew she wanted the two creatures to have two of the four elements part of their appearance, but what to have was hard to choose. The four elements were that of fire, air, water, and wood and she had to combine them into couples of a compatible sense. She had now come down to the combinations of water and wood, fire and air. Aariah sighed. She needed to find a creature of water and wood as well as a creature of fire and air. She looked up at the clouds for help. The shapes of the clouds always helped her brainstorm a solution.

She saw the shape of a duck pass by, but a duck wouldn't do. A duck was water and air, and that would leave the incompatible wood and fire. A fish shape floated into view. Obviously a fish wouldn't do. She already had a fish on her magical circle and it was only water based. The sun was getting low before she saw her real inspiration. Rising in the east, as if chasing the sun, was a cloud shaped like a dragon. Aariah knew that dragons could be based off from all different kinds of elements and combinations. So she began to work as the wind picked up. The new creature Aariah made was the dragon of fire and air. That was the easy one for many dragons were imagined flying and breathing fire. Aariah quickly scribed the new creature onto the drawing. Now she wondered how to create the second creature, the one of wood and water. Out of curiosity, she began to draw a twig. That twig turned into a branch as the leaves around her turned and rustled. The branch reminded her of an antler and Aariah got the idea. She made the head and claws of wood, the whiskers and tassels of vines, and the scales of leaves but the body shape was that of a long serpentine dragon. When she finished the drawing of her magic circle, the wind became fierce. It picked up to a whistling, haunting pitch and the strange weather made Aariah stand. She clung tightly to her dagger pendant and cringed, as the wind became a funnel around her.

In a split second Aariah remembered a line from her studying of her book. She remembered that this line would transform a pendant of some sort into a staff. Any defense would be helpful to her situation so she spoke out loud, "I call upon my own might, to release the staff of my right!" To her pleasure, the line worked, extending the dagger's handle to the length of her and it hovered in front of Aariah despite the raging wind. She quickly took it, only then not knowing what to do with it. The air began to lift her slowly off her feet and she cried out, "No!" In a desperate attempt to save herself, she remembered the chant that she had used to make wild animals her loyal pets and servants. "Powered by my might of will, I challenge you to show your face, there will be no need to kill, my power will take your power's place! What I see will become mine, and in my eye I see air!" Upon naming the object, a bright circle formed beneath her. Aariah knew this would happen for it had worked earlier with an instructional magic circle. But now it was her own circle, and she had a staff, her own staff for that matter. Her power was fueling the capture, and it was working.

The visible ribbons of air seemed almost to form a small flying child before they twisted around the lowered, almost grounded tip of her dagger staff. Momentarily pausing, the ribbons of air turned to thunder as their energy raged up the staff and merged with her own. Aariah screamed for she had never been zapped by lightning before, and had never felt such pain of raw power surging through her soul. When the energy finally merged with her own, a few residual sparks sizzled through her tattered green cloak as her stance broke and she passed out upon the top of the hill.

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