An Owl's Rise

Evelyn and Krunnen continued to talk using the magical connection until Evelyn spotted something off in the distance that looked suspect.

'Damn, I can't tell if that was just a trick of the light from the constant glow that the rift emits, if it might just be a random fire, or if that flash, I just saw is an elemental.' Evelyn thought, straining her eyes to search for what just made the glow that caught her attention.

Unfortunately, with all the smoke and steam in the air, even with her impeccable eyesight as an owl and having a good vantage point several meters in the air, Evelyn could not determine exactly what it was she saw.

Nevertheless, she informed Krunnen about it to get his judgement. He was the one that had experience traversing the inferno Field and spotting the signs of fire elemental activity.

"It is probably just a false alarm. You can see random flashes of lights out here all the time. I'd say only one out of around every three hundred is a fire elemental. At least this far from the rift. Even with the recent uptick in activity, I doubt that the odds would more than double." Krunnen said, not sounding worried.

Still, it was part of his job to check on every possibility, so he followed Evelyn towards the area where she saw the light.

When they arrived al seemed clear. Whatever had caused the source of light was gone, or maybe had never been there in the first place.

"I guess we didn't get lucky this time." Evelyn said after a cursory look around.

"What do you mean lucky? You make it sound like you wanted to run into a fire elemental." Krunnen said with a incredulously expression. 

He then moved some of the tall orange grass that grew in the Inferno Field to carefully check the ground.

However, just a couple seconds after Krunnen began searching for signs Evelyn was unaware of, he stopped and groaned.

"I am starting to think that you might be a magnet for bad luck."

Krunnen moved aside some of the tall grass to let Evelyn see the scorch marks he had found on the ground.

He explained to Evelyn that the fire elementals were capable of controlling their flaming bodies so that they did not burn things they did not wish to. 

This kept them from causing random wildfires wherever they went, but also made tracking them more difficult.

Luckily most of them were not particularly intelligent and would not worry about restraining the extreme heat coming from their bodies when it came to nonflammable objects. 

"A fire elemental was definitely here not long ago. It must be keeping its body small to move the grass without being spotted. But it still leaves signs we can follow. Though I suppose that it is better it is trying to hide itself. Only weaker elementals do that. The stronger ones don't bother attempting to be stealthy." Krunnen said, displaying his knowledge as an experienced ranger of the Inferno Field.

The two of them followed the trail left by the fire elemental. All along the ground small scorch marks could be seen at regular intervals and lead them towards their quarry.

It did not take long until Evelyn spotted the slight glow that had earlier caught her attention again.

This time she was much closer and with her eyesight fully enhanced with magical energy she spotted what looked like a small flame with legs moving through the tall grasses.

'Just as Krunnen told me, it is heading towards the edge of the Inferno Field.'

After telling Krunnen that she had spotted their target, Evelyn sped on ahead and prepared to engage.

Yet, as she approached, the small fire elemental did not flee as she thought it would based on its behavior.

Despite it having made itself small to avoid detection, it showed no hesitancy in attacking when it came across another entity that was not of its kind. A trait that all elementals had no matter their type or strength. 

In an instant the small flame morphed into one that was much larger. Becoming more imposing than the three fire elementals Evelyn had encountered before.

'Well, just being a bit stronger probably won't help it against me.' Evelyn thought, fully confident in her abilities.

All three of her different types of magic were especially effective against fire elementals, while she was immune to their main method of attack. She may very well be like a natural predator to them.

To start off Evelyn flapped her wings wildly and kicked up a storm of wind blades. She had seen how effectively this worked on one of the fire elementals before and figured it would be an easy victory.

Except, while the elemental was shredded into small pieces, it did not begin to dissipate like she had expected. Instead, each individual piece of it grew brighter and flared to life.

After just a couple of seconds what had once been a single fire elemental had morphed into several dozen.

'What the hell?!' 

Evelyn was stunned by this fire elemental's unusual ability that was far different from what she had encountered before.

It had not simply separated itself into many smaller parts, but created exact duplicated that were just as powerful as the original had been. Frankly, Evelyn could not wrap her head around this unfair ability.

A barrage of small fire balls blasted towards her not long after all the new fire elementals had formed.

Evelyn's entire field of view turned bright yellow and orange as an innumerable number of flames flew her way.

Immediately she knew that she could not dodge and instead used her wind magic to crated a barrier around herself.

The air quickly circulated around her under the power of her magic and soon a tempest of swirling wind in the shape of a sphere had encompassed her.

The fireballs individually lacking in power either faded or bounced off when they reached Evelyn's defensive magic.

Of course, she could have simply tanked the fire balls without taking any damage, but she did not want to reveal her fire immunity to this elemental just yet. It was clearly more dangerous than the other three and she wanted to keep some of her cards hidden until she knew what it was truly capable of.