#evacember

Eva wouldn’t say her time before going to the kingdom of Wawanakwa was that bad.

Sure, there were the harsh winters of the north, struggling for firewood, and occasional Yeti attacks, but that was just life. It hardened you so that you’d be able to handle whatever got thrown at you, and then you just find the little joys in things.

Like traveling bard troupes singing tales of heroes brave and true. Most was drivel, but there were a few that knew how to sing so loud their voices gave out. They enchanted stones to hold their songs. It was a pricey magical trinket, but worth being able to hear it play over and over again. She could only afford the one her parents could get her, but she took it eagerly. 

She didn’t mind that winter being a colder one as a result.

She didn’t get why her parents really wanted to move to where it was warm and all the people were. But she was 12 so she didn’t really get much say in the matter.

Despite having an easier life here, she hated it more. Sure, the warmth was nice, but her parents actually expected her to play with other kids. Do her best to ‘fit in’.

Up north the few kids she did see every now and then were a lot like her. They’d play Slay the Monster and get into tussles. It was fun, and it prepped them for when the real monsters came along.

She loved being the Yeti. Sometimes, when she wasn’t, she’d pick up on attack ideas from the older kids. She hated listening to older kids at first. Her patience was as little as she was back then. But when the ideas worked she began to realize that having someone in charge who knew what they were doing could be really good.

Here, the only kids who were ‘allowed’ to play Slay the Monster were boys. They laughed at her for wanting to play until they very quickly learned why laughing at Eva wasn’t a good idea. 

Eva hadn’t meant to go as far as she did. Once she got started it was just so hard to stop. And they had deserved every bit of it.

It solved the problem of people laughing at her. But it created a new problem of being labelled as a monster herself.

Which of course meant now was when her parents decided she needed more attention than before. Her father stopped asking her to help with hard labor around the house. Her mother tried teaching her things that were more ‘suitable’ for someone her age.

She had no patience for sewing. She always ended up pricking her fingers and swearing at a storm, which just got more looks from everyone around. Cooking she could understand, but didn’t get why you needed to be fancy with it when you could just make sure it tasted good and didn’t kill you. 

Every time she told them that she just wanted something to do with her hands she was given something delicate. Her hands weren’t built for delicate. They were built for strength. Blunt instruments existed for good reason: they got the job done in the most straightforward way possible.

Her parents knew that. They were the ones to teach her. And now they’re turning their backs on it just to make sure their neighbors kept wanting business from them?

She hated it. It filled her broiling with rage, which made people fear her more, which made her even angrier. Taking it out on others meant dealing with the town guard, who knew her well as time went on.

So she took it out into the woods. Danger and beasts be damned, it was the only place she could scream and punch and kick where no one could stop her. The forest went quiet at her rage and Eva cared not for that. She just played her music on her song stone loud to drown out everything else.

If she was a problem then she might as well go all out with it.

She built crude dummies shaped like those she desperately wanted to punch and whaled on them instead. Each time they’d break she put them back together. They were a pile of barely held together sticks but that’s all she needed them to be.

It was only a matter of time that a beast would become bold enough to investigate rather than flee. Just her luck that the beast in question was an owlbear.

A particularly aggressive owlbear.

Not that she would let a stupid owlbear get in the middle of her screaming sessions. If anything, it just gave her a new target.

Raw strength fought against raw strength. Her own roars matched the owlbears. It got some deep gashes in her, but in the end she showed it who was boss. It fled when it realized Eva meant to kill it. 

Eva planned to go hunt it down when an axe buried itself into the owlbear’s skull.

That was enough to stop her roaring rampage of displaced anger. 

The wielder of the axe was a large, tan woman with bleached blonde hair and the first set of muscles beside her own that made Eva feel envy. She introduced herself as Abigail Paine (though she’s better known as Abs) and revealed that she was a mercenary, hunting down that owlbear as it had been nearing civilization and was getting bolder and bolder. Going so far as to maul a few unfortunate victims who traveled the woods.

Abs had assumed that Eva would have become one of them, and would have intervened. Except she saw Eva go toe to toe with the thing without a single bit of magic to be had. She kept watch in case Eva was actually in danger. 

She has to say she’s impressed. Eva’s got a strong future ahead of her with moves like that.

Anyways, Abs is going to go now since she does have a bounty to collect, and just slings the owlbear over her shoulder.

Eva doesn’t let her leave so easily. She’s never had anyone compliment her in a while. Not since she moved into this stuffy town. And she’s never met anyone at her level before.

There’s no way in hell that she’s letting Abs go that easily.

She puts herself in Abs’ path and reminds her that Eva did most of the hard work, so she deserved a cut. It didn’t need to be money though, no.

Eva wanted Abs to teach her how to be a mercenary. 

Abs thought about it for a moment, as she’d never trained anyone before. And said that if Eva could withstand what Abs considered training, then she’d consider it. Abs would come back for her after dropping off the owl bear. 

Eva wasn’t about to risk losing track of Abs. She didn’t really have anything tying her here either. So she let Abs know that as soon as Eva got some stuff, she’d go ahead and join her now.

So she ran away from home. Just like that. It wasn’t that impulsive of a decision for her. She hated this place, her parents were failing her, and here was someone who could offer her better. Seemed pretty simple to Eva.

Abs wasn’t kidding about the training. Whether it was to try to scare Eva off, or if she genuinely thought it was a good idea to start the morning off with bench pressing an owl bear corpse, it was hard to say.

She climbed barehanded up cliffsides. Dragged large hauls of their kills for reward. Endured each sparring match against Abs.

She lost each time. She had raw strength going for her, but so did Abs and Abs had years of experience ahead of her. 

Yet rather than get mad at her losses, Eva relished in them. Abs respected her enough to hold nothing back. Encouraged her to use her rage at losing to push her even harder.

Turn her rage into a weapon she could use to protect herself and others.

Finally, something that made sense to her.

She longed to just use her fists for everything. She was plenty strong on her own. The problem was some of the beasts they’d come across. Creatures like vampires or werewolves couldn’t be hurt with a fist like they could with a silvered weapon. Not to mention the risk of getting turned.

So she agreed to start using an axe. It relied on her strength to use well, and she could also use it to cut down trees for firewood and the like.

She stayed with Abs for a few years. Although her fighting skills improved, her reputation didn’t get much better. Being apprentice by Abs didn’t help with her.

Which Eva didn’t understand why. She’d seen the woman grab an ogre and toss it halfway across town. Landed right in the middle of a ballroom. Fight kept going and it was as much a screaming match as it was a fight.

It was glorious.

Everyone needed to stop complaining about collateral damage.

Still, for as much as she loved learning under Abs, she couldn’t help but feel as if something were missing. She thought she’d be content punching things so long as it was with someone else.

But she always had to follow Abs’ way. Her rules. Her whims of going after jobs that offered the most pay. Eva wanted to go after things that would be a challenge for her. She wanted the exhaustion of a near death battle to ease her into a peaceful sleep. 

So she set off on her own from Abs. Abs wasn’t happy to see her go. Kept telling Eva that this was quitting, though deep down she was sure Abs didn’t want to lose her. They had one last sparring match, at Abs’ insistence to prove if Eva was ready to be on her own.

It was the first time Eva won. First time she saw Abs cry, too. 

She promised to keep in touch.

Like that, she was off on her own. Her reputation did proceed her, which was both good and bad for her. 

Good in that she didn’t have to convince others that she could do a job. Especially the dangerous ones typically reserved for older mercenaries.

Others just assumed she was an adult from her disposition. She didn’t feel a need to correct them if it meant she could go head to head with ents.

The bad news was that her anger issues were still the thing she was known the most for. Nobody wanted to hold a conversation with her any longer than it took to talk about a job.

She hadn’t noticed it much when Abs was around. Abs made for good conversation and would fill the space while Eva silently brooded or worked out.

Now if she wanted to have someone else to actually talk with, she’d have to do that on her own. With small talk. About something other than violence.

She wasn’t the smartest but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Even when she did try talking about music first, she could tell the other person was just too scared of her to ask her to stop talking. 

She’d prefer it if they just told her to go away.

But it was fine. She could manage. She’d just talk violence with other mercenaries she met along the road.

Most of which were older men who were just as shitty as the people in her village. 

Which meant she got angry at them and showed them why they shouldn’t underestimate her. 

Which meant word spread that she was a rage monster.

God.

Damn.

It.

She could just try to find Abs again. But that’d mean admitting defeat, so it wasn’t really an option.

Instead she just settled for having a bad reputation, and going back to chopping trees in the woods with one swing.

Her music being one of the only things to keep her calm enough to not just say fuck it and go on a killing spree. It was loud and it drowned out her angry screams.

What it didn’t drown out was a scream that came from above.

Before she knew it, she had a cackling ginger-haired girl landing on her and refusing to let go.

The two tussled for a while. As her opponent was on her, there was no room for her to grab her axe. It was a brawl, pure and simple. The ginger went so far as to just bite her in the arm. Not one to back down from a challenge, she returned with a bite in the shoulder.

The fight still kept going until the other girl finally relented and got off. The only reason Eva didn’t start swinging her axe was because the gremlin had actually managed to tire her out.

The best sparring partner she’d had since Abs introduced herself as Izzy. She was an outlander who went where the winds carried her. Though she usually stayed in the woods. She heard the screaming and came to see what was going on.

Izzy’s also decided that they’re friends now. Izzy wants to start a collection, and Eva seems perfect for it.

Which throws Eva for a loop. Because who the hell would want to be friends with someone like Eva?

It’s how she knows Izzy’s got to be crazy. That or she’s lying. Something like this is too good to be true and Eva isn’t buying shit. Besides, she’s doing just fine by herself, and if Izzy’s not a mercenary looking to partner up, there’s not much use of them sticking together anyways.

Izzy keeps trying to prod at her. Insist on it. So Eva throws her axe at Izzy to prove her point. Given what she’d seen of Izzy, she’d probably be fine.

And she was right, as Izzy dodged it rather effortlessly. Seemed like she finally took that as her cue to go.

Leaving Eva alone with an axe now halfway stuck in a tree. Her strength worked against her as it was wedged in there.

While grabbing at it, she mulled over whether scaring Izzy off had been a good idea. That conversation had been the best one she’d had in a while. Not to mention the fight. Izzy’d seen what she was capable of and rather than balking, she’d leaned into it. 

She never would have thought a sack of crazy would have been good company, but here Eva was.

No matter, Izzy was gone now. It was just Eva, the axe she’d wrenched free, and peace and quiet. 

Lots of quiet.

Too quiet.

Eva couldn’t hear her songstone. It’d been playing in the background, but in the fight Eva had just assumed that it had gotten turned off. 

She went to where she’d last seen it and-

Gone. 

It was gone.

Eva started throwing rocks and branches to the side and gone gone gone.

Eva was going to kill Izzy. She was going to slaughter Izzy. Behead her and crush her skull with her bare hands.

She packed up her belongings as quickly as she could manage.

She was going on a warpath.

Humans weren’t that different to hunt than monsters. They left their own trail. Izzy couldn’t have been lying about living in the woods, because her trail was hard to find.

Unless you knew what you were looking for. And were very determined to not lose a trail.

Every time she thought she was getting closer, Izzy always seemed to just escape her grasp. Eva would lose the trail for a day or two, but with enough threats, people would usually help point her in the right direction again.

She followed Izzy’s trail all the way to the capital. She didn’t have a proper permit to get in, but with enough knuckle sandwiches and trudging forward for her goal, she made her way through. 

And finally, finally after three weeks of tracking her down, Eva caught sight of the little nutcase. Izzy even turned around and winked at her before continuing to run away. 

Eva plowed through bystander and guard alike, all the way to the castle. It took longer than she would have liked to muscle her way through palace guards. She just wanted her songstone back. They were acting like her storming her way in meant she was going to go kill somebody.

By the time she was at the palace proper, she’d lost sight of Izzy. She was about to let a roar of frustration before she heard a very familiar song coming from above. She looked up to see Izzy waving the songstone from a window of the highest tower. Had to be at least 80 feet tall. Bitch was sticking her tongue out.

Dead. She was so very dead.

Eva had no idea how the hell Izzy had gotten up there so quickly. Nor did she care. As far as she was concerned, there was no time to waste. Going inside to chase her up would mean dealing with more guards. 

So she went for the more direct approach.

She began to climb up the tower itself.

It was made of stone, like most of the tower. There were uneven rocks that jutted out only slightly. She used those as her handholds. When there were none to be found, she punched her way into making one.

Up and up she climbed. There were rangers trying to shoot her down, but she use a shield stolen from one of the guards to block them.

Finally, she made it to the window. She threw herself inside and took quick stock of the situation.

Izzy was nowhere to be found. Surrounding her were a bunch of books. There was a desk with papers strewn about in a bunch of different languages. Some weird shapes on there too. A cot with a ton of blankets in the corner.

And then, in the middle of the room, her precious songstone, singing its siren song.

In the hands of some guy with dark robes and a giant forehead.

Without thinking twice, she threw herself at the guy.

As she moved towards him, weird shapes appeared on the stones underneath her. They touched her shadow. Black tendrils suddenly erupted from her shadow and wrapped around her. They were trying to pull her to the ground, but she refused to be brought down by anything. 

It was a struggle to stay on her feet, but she was still managing. She could do nothing to free her arms though, try as she might.

She screamed at the dark magic as if that would do anything. It held firm.

The guy in front of her also screamed, whether from her lunge or from her presence she couldn’t tell.

Shadows danced around his arm as he took on a rather pathetic fighting stance. The form was all off. He’d clearly never seen a physical battle in his life. She’d think he wasn’t a threat if not for the fact that he was the one controlling whatever magic kept her still.

As much as rage had carried her up to this point, there wasn’t much it could do when she was stuck. The exhaustion of hunting someone down for days on end was hitting her now that she was forced to take a break.

Her struggles slowed, though her anger still carried through in her voice as she demanded that this guy give her songstone back or she’d find a way to kill him.

She wasn’t expecting him to pause.

“You…want to kill me over the songstone?” he asked. “Yeah. Give it. NOW.”

 “Real convincing argument you’ve got there. Seriously, magic isn’t raising any red flags for you?”

Magic would explain things, now that Eva was actually taking the time to think about it. “You could be a demon for all I care right now. Give me the fucking songstone.”

“Tell me how it got here. How YOU got here. Then we’ll talk.”

“The hell do you mean ‘how it got here’? Izzy stole it from me because she has a death wish. One I’m gonna deliver to her, and to YOU if you’re working with her!”

At this, the other teen groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course it was fucking Izzy.”

Turned out that Eva wasn’t the only person that Izzy liked to screw over. She was a professional thief who loved taking things just for the sake of causing havoc.

Noah, as he introduced himself, would often find things stolen despite all of his wards. And then the next day, Izzy would come strolling along offering things to sell. Including his own. 

She’d get away before he could get them back by force. Leaving him with the humiliation of buying his own things back. 

The only thing that made tolerating her worth it was that some of the other things she’d stolen were pretty useful to Noah’s studies. 

He could still do without buying back his own stolen property.

Her anger quenched, towards Noah at least, Eva explained her own situation. After agreeing to not pummel Noah into kingdom come, he released her and handed back her songstone. 

Eva hugged it and kissed it. She had no shame. She silently dared Noah to say anything about it, but he seemed rather unfazed by it.

Although she had her songstone back, she still wanted revenge on Izzy. She could tell Noah was just as pissed at her, though he settled for giving up rather than deal with her.

She had no plans to give up on this. With what Noah had managed to do to Eva, she figured that together they could track Izzy down again and take her down.

Noah looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head when she suggested it. Of course. One decent conversation would change shi-

“You seriously don’t care that I’m a dark mage?” he asked.

That…wasn’t how this conversation was supposed to go.

“Are you gonna use any more of that magic against me?”

“If I have to.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s self defense 101. Whatever. If I don’t hit you first, you’re not gonna attack me?”

“Sure, let me go ahead and sign my own death warrant. Got a quill?”

“Fuck you. Point is, we’re good. Are you in or not?”

Noah agreed, though he still seemed cautious about it. Something about the conversation felt off to Eva.

And then it hit her. For once, it wasn’t her reputation that was the problem here. It was Noah’s.

She didn’t know what he could have done wrong to think that she was going to kill him for the sake of it. 

…Then again, she’d never really done anything to make people not want to talk to her. Her anger issues were a problem, sure, but a lot bigger than other people made it out to be. Yet they still haunted her and everything she did.

Huh. She never thought she’d meet someone else who knew the feeling.

Still, there was revenge to be had, so the two started planning. 

After Noah convinced the guards that eventually made their way up to the tower not to immediately send Eva to the dungeon. Apparently he was the king’s royal wizard. 

Well, made things easier for her. As much as she liked fighting, she was exhausted from it.

It was an ordeal to figure out what to do with Izzy. First to track her down again, though it wasn’t too hard as she was apparently deciding to not leave the castle. How to take her down was the bigger concern.

After some humiliating trial and error, they finally made a plan that worked. Noah enchanted a spear that would release a magic net over whoever was under it when it flew. It was Eva’s job to throw it hard and fast enough to catch Izzy in its path.

They both cackled in joy when it finally worked. All the blood, sweat, and definitely not tears were worth seeing Izzy tangled up.

Working with Noah on this had been rather fun. First fun she’d had since Abs. Different, though. When they weren’t talking about strategy, they didn’t just talk about more fighting. 

Conversation turned to other things. Like making fun of people for being stupid. Complaining about others. Talking about music and having someone who, even though he didn’t get it, would still listen.

It sucked that it would have to end now that Izzy was caught.

Just as she thought that, and the two were congratulating each other for having finally caught her, Izzy decided to say her own piece about how fun this had been. Everyone else were boring to run from because they’d give up too quick or were super serious about it.

These two were much more fun to watch and play around with. She was glad she’d made them her friends.

The two were baffled by the idea that this was what she thought friendship was. It got worse as she slid out of the net that Noah swore by everything unholy was supposed to be impenetrable. 

And she just left. Promised she’d be back and just ran off. They chase and tried to track her down, but this time she was untraceable. 

After some choice words, the two didn’t have much choice but to admit that Izzy had bested them. 

Noah was sure she’d make her way back to them one way or another. There was no telling when, so there was no point in Eva sticking around if she didn’t want to. 

Eva could even keep the spear. Noah definitely wasn’t going to be using it. He had no idea if the enchantment would last or not since he wasn’t used to casting permanent magic on weapons. But hey, if something he made saw a bit more use, he could at least be happy with that.

Even if he made it sound like she was doing him a favor, this was still a gift. Someone else liked her enough to just give her something. Nothing needed in return.

…Fuck it. She didn’t want whatever this was to end. And Noah had just given her an idea for how to keep it going.

She admitted that the magic he’d done on the spear was pretty cool. She’d seen mercenaries who had enchanted weapons, but they were few and far in between. Magic was expensive as hell. 

She’d pay him to put more magic into her axe. Instead of giving her gold, she’d get whatever shit he needed to make his magic happen. She didn’t care what he used the magic for. 

She made sure he knew that she didn’t care about the kind of magic it was used for. Or how fucked up an ingredient he was asking for was. She’d kill any kind of monster she had to for the shit he could make. 

Just let her know what to go hunting for now, and she’d come back with it.

She grinned as he accepted the offer.

Their friendship continued with that excuse for a while. Izzy kept her word in coming back again and again. Eva just accepted that Izzy wasn’t malicious as much as she was just Izzy. She knew better than to go after Eva’s songstone again, at the very least. 

Hanging out with them, whether on the road or in the city, just became routine that broke up her hunting. And it felt fucking amazing to have something like that outside of her hunting.

Yeah, she could get used to a life like this.