An Owl's Rise

Flying higher into the air Evelyn gave herself some breathing room away from the barrage of fireballs flying her way.

'And my backup has arrived.' Evelyn thought, her gaze drawn towards Krunnen.

She was recently surprised that he was able to move as fast as he was. She had only taken off ahead of him a couple dozen seconds ago.

Yet, once he got close enough to see how the situation had developed, he stopped abruptly with a look of terror on his face.

"I am guessing from your reaction that this is not an ordinary fire elemental." Evelyn said reconnecting a magical link to Krunnen so that they could speak.

"Yes, it is called a duplicator. A really nasty creature. As long as it has excess magical energy it can keep breaking off parts of itself to create copies. And judging by how many clones it has created, it must have stockpiled a great deal of magical energy." Krunnen replied with a grim expression.

Unfortunately, once an elemental noticed any other living creature it would stop at nothing to kill it. The only option was fight or flight, and clearly Krunnen was not going to be able to get away now that he was in the duplicator's sight.

Though, while he did not seem to have much confidence and appeared to want to avoid conflicts, Krunnen was a peak awakened rank beast like Evelyn and adept at using his magic.

Several fireballs flew towards him as well, but he skillfully used his earth magic to raise up a curved barrier of stone that deflected the projectiles.

He then raised his two front legs and slammed them down, causing a tidal wave of dirt to crash towards the duplicator.

Unfortunately, the attack failed to connect.

The duplicator along with all of its copies launched high into the air like rockets and flew over Keunen's magic.

Most of them headed directly towards Evelyn, while a few broke off and went after Krunnen.

'This is a good time as any for another test.' Evelyn thought, not showing any signs of fear towards the dozens of approaching fire elementals.

Accessing her storage cuff, she took out a large container she could barely hold up with both of her claws.

With nimble movements she grabbed hold of a piece of rope attached to the container and pulled.

An instant later the lid popped off and the substance inside began to flow out.

All at once a large quality of aqueous foam fell out of the container and Evelyn used a quick burst of wind magic to spread it over a wide area.

The several copies of the duplicator did not falter in front of the unknown substance and kept flying. It was used to burning through almost anything.

Yet, when the aqueous foam hit, Evelyn heard a cacophony of pained screeches.

Every one of the induvial fire elementals that were coming towards Evelyn began plummeting as the concoction Evelyn had made snuffed them out.

'Looks like that was pretty effective. I suppose that it must be like poison to a fire elemental.' 

Ever inquisitive about her alchemical creations, Evelyn carefully watched how the duplicator related to the aqueous foam she had just used on it.

For several moments each of the individual elementals that had been hit writhed around on the ground trying to get the foam off. 

Eventually they got free of Evelyn's alchemical creation, but each of the copies of the duplicator were noticeably dimmer.

'Time for the next test.'

From her storage cuff, Evelyn pulled out another container, this time one filled with a flame-retardant salt.

She poured some of the substance over one of the elementals and watched it burn out incredibly quickly. This time it did not separate and create a clone of itself.

Smiling, Evelyn flew around dumping the flame-retardant salt on the duplicator's copies until the container was empty.

By the time she was done, the duplicator had been cut down to only about a third of its numbers.

Satisfied with her second experiment, Evelyn put the container away and pull out a large glass potion vial instead. This was something she did not have much of and needed to be stored in a breakable container to be effective.

'Ah, a volunteer.' Evelyn thought, watching one of the duplicates flying towards her.

This elemental was condensing itself, and Evelyn could tell it meant to blow itself up and take her down with it. A practical strategy for a creature that could create copies of itself.

She casually tossed the glass vial towards the fire elemental and the talisman attached to the lid caused it to shatter.

The compressed carbon dioxide exploded from the container and engulfed the fire elemental.

Suddenly, being deprived of oxygen, the bright flame that was about to explode in Evelyn's face diminished and soon blinked out.

'They all worked quite well. Probably a waste to have used my limited supply on such a weak enemy, but I did need to test them out before trying them on a stronger fire elemental.'

She still had a couple other items she had made that would be useful against beings made of fire, but her supply of them was very limited so she figured she would save them only for an emergency.

With all the tests she wanted to run completed, Evelyn finished off the rest of the duplicator's clones with her magic. 

All of them had already been weakened by her aqueous foam and she had little trouble dispatching them thanks to her heavenly flame that could destroy lesser flames.

'Now, how is Krunnen doing.' 

Turing her head, Evelyn looked towards her temporary companion and saw that his battle was not going nearly as well as hers.

While he wielded both earth and water magic which were both particularly effective against fire elementals, he was having difficulty going on the offensive.

Being attacked by several of the duplicator's copies he was busy using his magic to protect himself and found little room to counterattack.

'As much as I want to see how he would get out of this on his own, I should probably help him.'