Kassandra Hearthflame, tenth of her line and wielder of the White Flame gritted her teeth as the ‘little archduchess’ paraded in her forge with a greedy look on that young face.

  Being not just a blacksmith, but a Forgemaster, Kass could feel the minerals in her shop, their properties and positions a map in her mind that pointed her towards the best ways to smelt and build their strengths.

  So hearing how they were being abducted made it pretty easy to spot the culprit.

  “Oi! Yer ‘royal’ assness! Place teh fecking silver back on the shelves before I introduce you to Pick!” Kass waved her hammer Pick, which responded to her rage with its own flare of white fire.

  The culprit in question tried her best to hide her crimes, but even deep within that blob-like flesh, Kass could feel her precious stones screaming for help.

  “D-Don’t know what you’re talking abou-.”

  “You have three seconds, thief,” her breath belched a flameing ball.

  “Oh! Look at that, I found them!” The shameless lass dumped them all onto the floor, not a hint of accountability on that innocent looking face.

  Kass really wished that the damn General didn’t promise her a contract with the palace, because she really wanted to give Pick a chance to help her vent her frustration.

  Instead Kass took a deep breath, scooping up her silver pieces and placed them back on a shelf for someone else to sort through, turning her full attention on the pint sized perpetrator.

  “To what do we owe yer presence, duchess?” She put as much emphasis on the ‘duchess’ as she could, which for some reason made the creature in the shape of a girl cringe.

  “Ew… still not used to that title. Just call me Mera like Lys does please.”

  Kass smirked, “not one for fancy titles? You looked like a noble brat before that dame told me the truth. Most would prefer to be treated so haughtily.”

  The girl Mera gritted her teeth, “just Mera, I’m no noble haughty bitch. I’m a Hero damnit…”

  Hero eh? Kass heard about their kind from her great grandpappy long ago, supposedly met the man and his companions.

  It was before the Empire, when all of the moons and Steros were separated by clans and leadership, before the Hero Empress and her unification brought them all under the flag of Elderbloom.

  They always seemed so unreal when her told her about them, and seeing the young girl in front of her, she couldn’t help but be skeptical.

  This little thing supposedly fough off an entire camp of snakeskins with no casualties? Took their ship and stopped the scaleys from blowing themselves up?

  Whether it was all true or not, Kass wasn’t sure. However, she did have one thing she was sure of.

  Girl’s strong in mana, loved by it.

  Being of fire and bound to its power, Kass could sense mana in the flame and ground, could feel the levels of power that each could give off.

  It normally didn’t work on people, and yet, the ‘girl’ in front of her radiated the stuff. Like a forge herself, the girl Mera sat on what felt like a leyline of mana, that simply powered her and poured over her surroundings.

  Simply being in the forge made the workers energized and helped their tasks.

  Kass shook her head.

  “Alright ‘Mera’, what do ye want?”

  The girl smirked as she pointed at her, “I want to know about aura, and you said something about it when we talked about the crocodilian Hoodian.”

  Mera approached her, her carefree expression and smirked replaced with a look of determination.

  “Please show me, so I can stop him next time. I don’t want anyone being hurt by him or his cronies again.”

  It was that moment that made Kass say yes, the look of pure confidence, but also eagerness to overcome her flaws.

  She was like a new material, filled with promise and begging her to be made into a blade.

  Kass grinned, “first, we got to temper yeh, then I can show yeh how.”

  The look of confusion on Mera’s face didn’t stop Kass as she grabbed the tiny thing’s hand and dragged her out into the backyard forges, where her blacksmiths tested the edges of their weapons and durability.

  She led them to an open area, letting go of Mera as she swung Pick a few times, gaining some distance from the alien girl.

  “So… by tempering…” Mera asked as she noticed Pick’s fire flare.

  Kass let the grin on her face spread till it reached her ears, “to know of aura, you must be near the brink of death, Tempering is just like it sounds little lass,” Kass covered her body in the red energy of her aura, “Got to beat yeh half to death to bring it out!”

  Mera began panicking, “w-wait! I could just take some DNA, t-that should be all I nee-”

  Kass rushed the girl, the hammer colliding with what looked like a shield made of gelatnous mass.

  Pick didn’t let it stop her completely though, as the flames began to burn the edges of the improvised shield.

  “AHhh, Fuck!” the girl cursed, pushing the anvil hammer back as Kass used the momentum to spin into a whirlwind strike, attacking from the other side.

  This time, the girl was ready as tentacles launched out to try and grip Pick’s handle, yanking it away and tossing it to the side.

  “Don’t have your dumb hamm-,” Kass ignited her fists, smashing the girl in her gut.

  Aye, that looks like it hurts.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Kass watched as Mera held her stomach, fluids pouring from her mouth as she tried to steady herself with the tendrils on her back.

  Still, it's not enough yet, she must go further.

  Kass didn’t relent, even as Mera tried to talk to her and ask for the fight to stop.

  Such was the need for Aura to be brough forth, a reasonable amount of danger and fear of death could bring forth the phenomena, but if the person searching for it wavered, or could not summon their resolve to survive…

  Well, Kass had seen many warriors fail and lose their lives because they could not survive the training necessary.

  After a while, Mera stopped trying to talk, settling into a rhythm as Kass punched, pulled and beat the young alien with her flaming fists.

  Mera took it all, to her credit, the girl’s heart and stubbornness bringing forth a sort of angry will to beat Kass at this ‘aura farming’ as she called it.

  A dance was formed from their fight.

  A punch, followed by a block.

  A kick, turned into a grapple.

  Pick would return to her grip, and a smashing blow would echo in the courtyard.

  Fists and tendrils, blows and burns, each side waged a furious ward against their very existence.

  Kass still stood strong however, and it was clear that Mera was weakening.

  Come on, child. Dig into your soul, and find the lever!

  To this end, Kass sped up her assault, her ballet of battle turning into a final act that would end the young hero’s life.

  Mera sensed this, shifting and abandoning her probing strikes to better defend and use her amorphous form to find the best way to attack.

  Kass called upon her heritage, the flaming soul of her birth, and covered her body in flames.

  This caused horror to appear on Mera’s face, her earlier attacks and dodges caving in to fear as her tendrils and blows were no longer able to find purchase without scalding her body. The screams and grunts of pain began to shift into horrific wails and the sound of being burned alive.

  “S-Stop! Please! I… I can’t!” she pleaded with Kass as she continued to attack.

  It’s not too late for you girl. Do not break!

  Kass continued despite the protests of her charge, and her burning strikes were beginning to set the girl’s flesh aflame.

  Mera’s fighting became desperate, firing gravity magic and roots towards Kass in an almost automatic response to the flaming crescendo tha was her fighting form.

  But Kass had been trained by her mother’s side of the family, the fire giants. She was used to being crushed by boulders five times her size, and so feeling a little gravity weigh on her only slowed her blows by a fraction.

  The roots could not grip her, without burning to a crisp, and the needles and blades that Mera would use could not cut or pierce her trained and tempered skin.

  Come child, when your life is on the line and the Goddess is judging you, who do you choose to be?! Who? Are. You?!

  ,,,

  Chimera was dying.

  When she started this whole idea, she figured it would be as simple as grabbing some DNA from Kass and anaylzing it.

  She even had a hold of her hand before they began, and a piece of her DNA had landed on her body.

  She processed it and brough up the blueprints.

  Elfari with some other bloodline in the mix… but nothing about aura.

  Chimera couldn’t believe it, and just as she was starting to figure out the flame aspect of her DNA, Kass came at her with lethal intent.

  Fire had always been a bad match up for her, as flesh and her blobby nature burned too easily when it came in contact with the chemical reaction.

  She had no way to defend against it, and now Kass was using it to kill her!

  The blow to her stomach had done far more than hurt her body, it shattered her Pegs so that she couldn’t access the energy within. Eighty percent of her full energy, lost and unusable.

  Down to less than twenty percent of her energy stores, all she could do was block and strike when an opening presented itself.

  But Kass was a warrior, and from what Chimera could tell, she knew how to fight while capatilizing her strengths.

  Strengths that were destroying Chimera’s pitiful defenses.

  A strike shattered the last of Chimera’s body, her blobby flesh holding together just barely enough that she could try to reform herself.

  What did I do wrong? Is… is this it?

  Dying on a red moon, never seeing her loved ones again. Dying to a giant’s flaming fists.

  She looked up at Kass, the anvil hammer in her hands slowly moving up over her head.

  “Are you weak?” the chieftess said, her face filled with disappointment.

  Weak?

  “Is this all you measure up to be, hero?”

  How… How dare you! I am a hero!

  “Who will you protect, with such weakness?”

  I  AM. NOT. WEAK!!!!

  Something bloomed inside Chimera’s inner space, a furious wave of energy that was unlike anything she had ever felt before.

  It surpassed the Pegs, surpassed even mana, and climbed to a place of absolute power deep within her.

  I will save this world, and everyone on it! I will break this stupid war in half and toss it to the wind! And I’ll do it as I am! As Mera! I AM CHIMERA!

  Kass brought the hammer down onto Mera, just as a red tinged energy exploded outward.

  The energy surrounded Mera, coating her body in power and reforming her into a new being.

  She no longer had an Elfari form, nor a Human one.

  This form built from aura shifted her so completely that she no longer had use for those smaller beings, breaking herself down and rebuilding herself with this new energy.

  She stood six feet in height, a red tinged body with human-like eyes and no mouth. Her hair was a mess of tendrils, shifting and overlapping themselves as they moved without her input. Her lower half was amorphous, ball-like but able to shift into legs at will.

  Spines grew with a thought over her body, extra arms and tendrils took little to no effort to form, and her reservoir of abilities opened before her in the form of smaller bumps, all along her neck like a necklace.

  Mera took a moment to check herself out, watching the shifting forms of her body allocating to this new aura form. It consumed no power, as the power came from her very being, fuled by something deeper than she understood. Even now she was trying to understand it, but the sensations and new experiences made it difficult to focus on the origin of this new power.

  During all of this Kass nodded in satisfaction, leaning against her anvil hammer as she finally spoke.

  “Such power is befitting a hero, but to think this is your truest form.”

  Mera turned to stare at her, “truest form?”

  Kass blew a strand of her hair as she spoke, “aura is the power of the self, the pure expression of your soul. When you unlock such a gift, it remakes you, breaks you down and brings forth your true form, a body that exemplifies the truth of your being. Aura does not accept lies, nor self deception, because its pure power is the truth of your soul.”

  “Truth of my soul…”

  She looked over herself once more, feeling a sense of rightness despite the human-like forms she wore so often.

  Even though those were lies, I mean, I’m not…

  In the end, Mera knew she could never truly be a human, even if she had the feelings of one.

  But to know that even her soul saw her as this new form, it brought home a lot of things she was uncertain about.

  Wait… thats…!

  What concerned her the most though was what she observed on her chest, as she was worried about what that could mean.

  For on her chest, in all of its flatness, was a golden circle with a familiar glowing light.