When she next opened her eyes, Kerri was now an infant in a crib.

Amazing...it actually worked! she thought gleefully. She’d managed to achieve the grand feat of reincarnating into a brand-new world!

She had to hand it to herself, she'd achieved something incredible here. Most people her age could barely force themselves out of bed for school in the morning, but here she was, traversing to different dimensions through pure force of will.

It had been a dangerous risk, but it had paid off. She’d even gotten to physically maim a few police officers and inflict a heavy emotional scar on a beautiful girl along the way. What a wonderful way to exit her former life and start over.

Yeah, she really was the best.

It wasn't very fun being an infant again, though. Having a teenager’s intellect inside a baby’s tiny body made certain activities feel far more awkward than they should. Take breast feeding, for example.

When babies were hungry, they had to be fed. That’s just how it was; it’s a perfectly natural part of life.

And yet, being held up to her new mother’s exposed nipple was such a cringe inducing experience for her. Anyone else in her situation would have felt just as embarrassed! She always tried to get the ordeal over with as quickly as possible. It wasn’t always easy, though. Sometimes it took a while to get the drip running, so to speak.

She hoped her hesitation wasn’t too stressful for her new mother. She seemed like a kind person, and she knew feeding time was supposed to be a bonding activity for the two of them. But she'd still feel much happier when she was ready for solid food. Yes, that would be much better for them both. She was a normal person; she really had no interest in developing an Oedipus complex, or whatever it was girls got when they were down bad for their mothers.

Interestingly, she’d apparently been born into nobility. Unexpected, but not unwelcome!

Her new father held the rank of count, a title of considerable importance in this country. That meant he was a man of wealth and power whose children would enjoy a life of comfort and privilege. Even better, as the fourth child of the household, Kerri was considered little more than a potential replacement in case something disastrous happened to one of her more important siblings.

In other words, no one expected anything from her, and she’d be free to do whatever she liked. It was the ideal situation for a child who fully intended to one day become an enemy of the world. Food and lodging and lots of leisure time. What could possibly beat that?

Although…if she wanted to, she bet she could easily oust her brothers and take their place in the family hierarchy. The more she thought about it, the cooler the idea of being a Count sounded. It was a noble ranking that had appealed to many grand doers of evil before her. Great men like Count Dracula, Count Vertigo, Count Neferia, and Count Dooku had each held that title.

All bad guys. All legends. Christopher Lee had played two of them!

Couldn't she do it if she wanted it badly enough? Was there really such a thing as being too ambitious?

Oh, who was she kidding? She didn’t need some silly title of nobility in order to feel important.

After all, wasn’t nobility just an ornamentation bequeathed to others by royalty?

That fact lessened a title’s value, in her opinion. Anything that was given could just as easily be taken away. Even worse, although being a noble made someone appear important, their rank was just a means of being controlled by the crown. The higher one stood, the more taxes they had to pay, and the more soldiers they had to conscript for the king during times of war.

Out of their own pocket.

Really, the whole thing seemed like a scam. A way for the government to fleece its wealthier citizens for more gold.

Not interested, Kerri decided. Also, I guess I’d be called a countess. That sounds far less iconic.

Genderized titles of nobility were so pointless. No one would ever call a female Darth Vader, Darthette.

No, she would gladly play the role of the useless spare part that fate had so kindly prepared for her. Life held greater things in store for her than squabbling with her family over their social pecking order. She wouldn’t be caught dead vying for such a meaningless thing.

Anyway, if she disguised herself adequately enough, no one would ever know her true identity. That meant if she ever needed to hide herself from the eyes of the law, then secretly being a worthless fourth child would be the perfect smokescreen.

Who would possibly suspect a notorious criminal of being a girl named Everly Vae Belsar?

She still wasn’t certain how to feel about her new name.

Well, I suppose it sounds better than my old one, she eventually decided.

It wasn't as though she had a choice in the matter. Besides, since this was a new life, she may as well immerse herself completely within it.

Kerri was the past.

The future belonged to Everly.

__

The more Everly thought about it, the more it seemed like this world was begging for her to mess with it. Not only was she now a member of a noble household in a medieval-ish society, with all the assorted advantages that would surely come with being a part of society’s upper crust, but she was also one of the chosen few who had access to magic.

That didn’t come as a surprise to her. In her humble opinion, Everly had developed an extremely powerful mind in her past life. She was certain that she would have eventually developed superpowers if she kept at it. It was only natural that she'd excel in an environment infused with actual magic.

This nation’s magic took the form of elementalism. It was the traditional fantasy package she remembered from countless books and shows like Avatar: the last Airbender. Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Spirit. If someone could use magic, then they would develop the ability to communicate with beings composed of mystical energy called sprites. Sprites were like little balls of light that followed people everywhere, but only their owners could see them.

For most mages, shortly after their twelfth birthday, they’d bond with one of these sprites at random, which became their servant. If you were a man, the sprite transformed into an Animus, which was male. If you were a woman, you received an Anima, which was female.

The element their servant represented became the element their master could channel and manipulate. There were no limitations on which gender could control which element, but their level of strength could vary wildly. A huge man bonded with a wind animus might not have enough magical power to shake dew off a leaf, but a tiny girl with a fire anima might possess enough strength to put an entire city to the torch.

No one seemed to understand the reason for this.

What differentiated Everly from those who came before her was that she wasn’t bonded to only one sprite. Instead, she was bonded with two! She had no idea why that was. The only reasonable conclusion she could draw was that she was the main character of the story, and therefore the rules which governed the lives of other people this world didn’t apply to her.

She was just better than everybody else.

Yes, that sounded about right.

Both of her new sprites were very confused when she tried explaining the concept of a main character to them, but she paid no mind to their befuddlement. They’d catch on eventually.

Besides, she was far too busy gloating.

In this world, the younger you were when you bonded with a sprite, the more powerful you became as you grew. Your ranking corresponded with how old you were when you awakened to your abilities. Talented mages bonded with their servants at the age of twelve. Average ones usually awakened at the age of fifteen. Exceptional mages did it when they were eight or nine.

Legendary mages were empowered at the age of five. Those were the chosen elites who went on to make their mark in history as heroes.

Everly received her sprites when she was only three days old. And no one had ever heard of someone having two of them at once!

There had never been anyone like her in this world. Hers was a unique existence.

It felt good. It felt very good.

Everly gained all this useful information from her first servant. That one had a gift for stealing knowledge from other people, and she was always eager to share her findings with her new master.

Both sprites were extremely competitive with each other for her favor, which Everly found amusing. That was just how a villain’s servants should be! Desperate to curry her favor and quick to stab each other in the back if it benefited them.

Everly decided to name the younger sprite, Titania. She was an earth elemental, which was considered the most common type. So common in fact, that they were looked down upon by other mages. Everly could see that Titania had a chip on her shoulder because of that. Her low ranking made her eager to prove her strength.

Titania’s older sister, she named Eris. As a spirit type, Eris was the rarest of the rare. Having her as a partner was a lot like winning the lottery. Spirit elementals were considered aetheric royalty and had the ability to manipulate the minds of mortal beings. She wasn’t humble about her gifts either. In fact, Eris really loved rubbing her exalted status in Titania’s face and provoking angry reactions from her.

It was cute. Everly enjoyed watching their little spats. Sibling rivalry made for some quality entertainment.

Everly’s first order to them was to always mask their presence from others. She didn’t want anyone else to know how special she was. To better mask her identity from the public, the two of them would have to remain a closely guarded secret.

My lady, I don’t understand, said Titania’s voice in her mind. The element of earth is already scorned for being the weakest of the five. If you insist on hiding your powers, lesser mages will foolishly believe themselves superior to you.

Why should we care about their opinions? Everly asked her. Let them laugh at us! The real joke will be on them when we flatten them in battle. Instead of worrying about what others think, let’s bask in the exquisite pleasure that comes with hiding our true strength in plain sight!

Wasn’t that a cool thing to say? It was, wasn’t it? She felt like a shadowy overlord giving guidance to an apprentice.

But why must I stay in the shadows, master? Eris whined. I stand above all other elements! Why should I be forced to dim my radiance? It isn’t fair!

Don’t be upset, Eris, Everly thought to her, soothingly. Like I said to Titania, who cares what lesser beings think? All that matters is that I will know how glorious you are. No one else is worthy of beholding you. You’re mine and mine alone.

Really? Eris asked.

Really, Everly assured her.

Eris buzzed vividly with happiness and nestled against Everly’s chest like a happy puppy eager to kiss its owner.

Wow, Everly thought to herself. Some people are just that easy to please, huh?

__

Everly couldn’t immediately resume her physical training due to now being so young, so instead, she spent most of her time training her new servants. Thanks to the spiritual bond she shared with Eris, she could send the two of them miles away to the wilderness to slowly strengthen themselves, while still being able to observe them and give instructions.

How could an elemental become stronger? That was the riddle Everly now had to solve. She reasoned that an important part of it was a combination of the sprites themselves and the willpower of the master they bonded with. Titania and Eris were attracted to her because she desired an immense amount of power. That meant that they wanted to be powerful as well. That was the common goal that united them.

Titania’s desire for strength was easy to understand. She had an inferiority complex the size of a kaiju that made her feel like a loser. Low self-esteem was a desirable trait in a minion. It made manipulating them a piece of cake. Eris wasn’t difficult to figure out, either. She had a superiority complex and couldn’t stand the idea of not being acknowledged for how incredible she believed herself to be.

It took a bit of experimentation to figure out how to make the sprites grow. There was a lot of trial and error. Despite all her potential, Eris wasn’t much stronger than Titania. Neither of them was very impressive, really. But Everly had a vision for what she wanted them to become. She just had to devise a means of making it happen.

Guided meditation didn’t do much for them. Since both sisters were comprised of magic, there really wasn’t anything to be achieved by encouraging them to visualize themselves as beings of energy floating throughout the air. After all, they already were beings of energy floating throughout the air.

They couldn’t do any yoga stretches either. You needed a body for those.

Trying to teach them mental exercises quickly became a frustrating endeavor.

That was basically when Everly said screw it and forced them to use their powers until they nearly died from exhaustion, rested them up for a bit, and then had them repeat the process. Everyone received much better results that way.

It made sense from a certain perspective. When mortal beings lifted heavy weights and exercised, it made them stronger and faster. Surely that meant that if a spiritual being were to use its power to the point of total collapse, recover, then do it again, they’d gradually become better at generating and controlling energy.

A human’s ability to physically grow would always be limited by factors such as genetics, health, and age. Once they reached the limits of their body, they would eventually level off, then begin to decline. But elementals weren’t held back by mortal limitations. Their strength could grow without limit if the will of their master was equal to the task. And Everly certainly possessed a very strong will.

So, she essentially placed her servants on a regimented exercise program. They hated it at first, but the results certainly spoke for themselves.

__

 

Deep in the heart of the gloomy forest that stood to the east of the count’s estate, where there was no one to bear witness, the land constantly trembled and quaked as Titania flexed her metaphorical mystical muscles. Her growth had been astonishing. When she first came to Everly, she could barely make a doorknob rattle. Now, she could knock over boulders, sunder stone, and shatter steel. It seemed she was reaching new heights every week.

Everly felt so proud of her!

It was such a shame though, that in her opinion, Titania was slowly turning into a fitness maniac. She really was. Titania was now totally that ultra-fit chick in the gym doing a million sets to failure with dumbbells while leaving her towels all over the equipment she wasn’t even using. Except her version of dropping weights on the floor, was knocking down redwoods.

Oh well, Everly figured. There was nothing wrong with a little focused narcissism if it fueled the need for progression. She had plans for Titania. As strong as the earth elemental had become, Everly wouldn’t be satisfied until she was completely unstoppable. In the future, she would serve her mistress as her shield and chief enforcer.

But hey, she was on her way, that was what mattered.

Eris required more subtle training than that. As a spirit elemental, she was literally a creature of the mind. So, Everly had her relentlessly practicing useful techniques that she remembered from all the X-men comics she’d read over the years. Eris was essentially a telepath, right? That meant her wheelhouse included bodily possession, mind reading, casting illusions, and the ability to erase and falsify memories.

That was a broken skillset, wasn’t it? That was why more people should fear telepaths. So hard to beat!

Just like with Titania, the more Eris was worn down with relentless training, the more powerful she slowly became. She enjoyed making things a little awkward, though. The more minds she visited, the more human she became. And the more human she became, the uh, kinkier she got.

Oh, Mistress. I’m so exhausted. You wear me down daily, forcing me to my very limits without mercy. And yet, I cannot resist your commands! Push me HARDER. Scold me! Tell me what a worthless beast I am! I’ll do ANYTHING you wish. I’ll be ANY fantasy you want…

Jeez, Everly would think to herself. She knows I’m still a baby, right? I mean, come on! Even if you accounted for the age of my mind, I was still only sixteen when I died.

She wondered if this was how people normally behaved in this world. She hoped not. It sometimes felt to her like they were starring in an episode of television called: To catch a predator: Narnia edition.

Hey, Eris? Everly later said to her.

Yes, mistress? Eris asked eagerly.

Tone it down a little, okay?

__

The recent history of the continent had been dominated by a bloody tale of two feuding brothers.

Not long ago, the great kingdom of Winstead, which Everly was now a proud citizen of, had been embroiled in a terrible civil war. It had lasted a full decade and ended just before her birth. The previous king had been a kind man who’d been blessed with twin sons, both of whom he dearly loved. He loved them so much, in fact, that he dithered too long on choosing which of them would be his successor.

Then one day he suddenly died without naming an official heir, leaving chaos in his wake.

(As irresponsible fools often do.)

It was a shame that this happened, because both of his sons quickly declared themselves the new and rightful king before their father’s body finished cooling. Naturally, the brothers strongly disagreed with one another, but rather than settle their differences with negotiation and compromise for the good of the realm, they instead conscripted thousands of soldiers and forced them to fight to the death in support of their individual claims.

The greed of the brothers plunged the realm into needless war entirely for each one's selfish benefit.

Everly couldn’t be bothered to remember which prince had won. She did know that the loser had his head snicked off with a guillotine, though. Now, after ten years and thousands of pointless deaths, Winstead was heavily in debt from money borrowed from other nations, many citizens were hungry and struggling under the burden of enormous taxes, and the losing army had degenerated into roaming mobs of bandits.

(Pay attention to that last part, it’ll become plot relevant in a few paragraphs.)

Really, the entire situation was a hopeless mess. But that was royalty for you, wasn’t it? The people with power always treated their subjects like toys in a sandbox.

But Everly didn’t feel that she was fit to judge them. She was hardly better than those privileged twins had been.

She also enjoyed playing roughly with her toys.

__

One day, Titania informed Everly that a bandit group of thirty former soldiers had taken shelter in the woods that the elemental liked to train in. Titania was upset because their presence was throwing her out of her rhythm, so she asked her master for permission to dispose of them.

As a true and loyal subject of King Whatever-his-name-was, Everly couldn’t possibly dream of letting such a golden opportunity to dispatch a remorseless gang of traitors and thieves pass her by! Obviously, she had to give Titania the *thumbs up to destroy those scoundrels. Wasn’t that her duty as a servant of the crown?

(*She tried to, at least. Give a thumbs up, that is. She had clumsy baby fingers, so it was difficult for her.)

That night, Titania struck the rebels hard. Her viciousness was impressive to behold. Everly had to give her kudos for her absolute lack of mercy, because she really didn’t believe in holding back. The first thing Titania did was viciously shake the earth beneath the bandit’s feet until she’d put them all on their backs. Before they could recover, she split the ground with a massive fissure that quickly sent half of them tumbling to their deaths, screaming as they plummeted to the depths below.

The remaining bandits began running for safety, desperate to survive, but Titania wouldn’t allow them to escape. For them, she caused countless razor-tipped bits of granite to erupt from the soil they fled on. The sharpened stones easily tore through the worn leather soles of anyone unlucky enough to step on one, crippling many of the men outright and causing the rest to slow their flight to avoid injury to their feet.

Sadly, for them, their caution gave Titania the time she needed to transmute the terrain into a massive pit of quicksand, which bogged down their movements and drained away their stamina. Before long, they were all ensnared up to their shoulders and too exhausted to offer resistance.

By that point, they had no chance to recover. Slowly, they were swallowed below to a dark and miserable ending.

All they could do was curse their fates before vanishing forever from the sight of the world.

“We’ve run afoul of a demon!” the last surviving man managed to scream before Titania brought a tree branch down on his skull.

Well, not exactly, thought Everly.

Still, it wasn’t as though that poor fellow would have believed it if he were told the architect of his death had been an infant. Such a thing was impossible, right?

Common sense was a wonderful thing to hide behind.

__

 

The terrified cries of the bandits had been a delight to Everly’s ears. Three of the men in that group had been bonded to elementals of their own, but their feeble magic had been nothing before Titania’s overwhelming brute force. It was like comparing a pebble to a mountain!

Best of all, Titania was nowhere near the limits of her growth.

One day, she'd be an absolute terror. A tool worthy of enacting Everly's will.

__

Things returned to normal for a while, until another morning began with Titania angrily informing Everly about more bandits entering her forest. Apparently, this group had been tasked with locating their dead comrades from earlier. Titania asked for permission to give these new pests the same treatment as the others, but Eris objected. She complained that Titania had already gotten to have some fun and now it was her turn.

Everly saw the logic in her words and let her have her way.

That was a mistake. She’d made a mistake.

Just because she was conditioning herself to be a callous, black-hearted egotist, didn’t mean that Everly wanted to be completely dead inside. She was still human, after all. She reasoned that there should be limits to the sort of utterly messed up things a person might accidentally witness in their lifetime. It couldn’t all be carnage!

Perhaps this moment was the birth of her lawful evil alignment?

Maybe reality needed a moderator?

But seriously, what Eris did to those men was bad.

It was very bad.

It was what the heck is the Geneva convention, giggle snort? levels of bad.

Everly knew she was going to have nightmares because of what she saw Eris do to those men. And so, she did.

She still does.

Jeez, Eris, she thought to herself once she finished recovering from the shock. Jeeeeeez.

When Eris came to her later that night and happily asked what she thought of her performance, Everly was forced to have a difficult conversation with her servant about the sort of operation she wanted to run. She tried not to be overly critical and offered praise for Eris’s…creativity, but she also set some firm ground rules.

Listen, we’re going for stylistic evil above everything else, okay? she told her. That means looking cool takes precedence over being sadistic. We want to be something that people can aspire to. They should fear us, but they should also want to BE us, you know? When they see us coming, their primary feelings should be overwhelming terror and envy. You understand, right?”

I think so, Eris replied. So, we want to frighten them, but we also want…to make them feel insecure about themselves?

Exactly! You’re a very smart girl, Eris, Everly beamed at her warmly. Now, with that in mind, the following is a list of things I don’t ever want to see you doing again unless I give you permission, okay?

Okay! Eris said enthusiastically.

Great! Now, here we go…

Eris’s important guidelines for being a Much Cooler Villainess.

1. No forcing parents to suffer visions of their children crying alone in a dark basement while a menacing, shadowy figure slowly approaches them.
2. No forcing our enemies to self-cannibalize.
3. No tricking someone into believing they’re making love to their romantic partner, only to awaken and realize what they’ve really been having sex with.
4. NO CLOWNS. NEVER CLOWNS. NO. BE BETTER.
5. No whispers from deceased loved ones encouraging our enemies to atone for past mistakes with suicide.
6. No causing anyone to go mad from the revelation.
7. No convincing anyone they’ve made eye-contact with an elder god.

 

It was a long list. They were at it for quite a while.

Eris was a diligent listener and took many notes.

 

__

 

Months passed since then. Eris and Titania continued to grow stronger, which in turn made Everly’s magical abilities grow as well. Things were going great! She felt very happy for the two of them (and especially pleased with herself) but if she were being perfectly honest, she was also growing bored out of her tiny, adorable baby’s skull.

It had been far too long since she’d held a sword in her hands.

Outside, on the estate training grounds, she could hear her father’s men practicing with their weapons and she desperately wanted to be out there with them. She wanted it so badly that it was driving her nuts.

She had once spent countless hours honing her skills with her blade. The idea of being forced to wait until her new body was big enough to pick up a training sword was unbearable. Just think of how much knowledge she was losing daily! Years of hard practice were going right out the window! Although meditation ate up a fair chunk of her day, it wasn’t enough to keep her mind completely occupied.

Fortunately, for the sake of Everly’s sanity, a solution soon presented itself in the form of an amusing little story she’d read as a child back on Earth. It was an enchanting novel named The Silence of the Lambs.

For those not well versed in the classics, The Silence of the Lambs was the captivating story of a wrongfully imprisoned former psychiatrist named Hannibal Lecter; a foxy, silver-haired gentleman who knew how to pose dramatically in the shadows. A trickster at heart, Lecter would often appear from nowhere to drop an absolutely cutting one-liner on anyone who behaved boorishly in his presence.

Everly thought the man was just class personified. The very embodiment of dignified cool!

Sure, he also enjoyed eating the people he killed, but that wasn’t an important detail, was it?

After being caught and locked away for his supposed crimes against humanity, Doctor Lecter found himself burdened with endless amounts of free time, just as Everly now was. But, instead of going crazy(ier) from boredom, Lecter learned to pass the time inside of his head, with the use of a famous mental exercise known as the memory palace technique.

Thank you, contemporary pop fiction, for once more giving guidance to a troubled young soul! she thought appreciatively.

The memory palace technique consisted of using your imagination to create new environments around yourself and storing your memories inside the spaces your creation contained. The stronger your focus was, the easier it became to immerse yourself completely within your palace; to the point that your imagination could feel as real to you as reality itself.

By placing her mind inside a memory palace, Everly would be able to perfectly relive any moment of her life that she chose.

That included her countless hours of precious sword practice and mixed martial arts training. She would reclaim every single moment of them.

__

 

Everly decided that her memory palace would be a massive black tower stretching upwards towards a nightmarish red sky in a barren wasteland.

She’d built one exactly like it in Minecraft as her crowning achievement in that game. To hell with all creepers!

“Very impressive, mistress,” Eris said to her as together they watched the tower slowly assemble itself from thousands of floating black bricks that gently drifted towards each other before merging into place.

“Thank you. I’m beyond pleased with it, myself,” replied Everly with a smile.

Here, within her mind-space, Everly’s form now resembled the teenager she’d once been in her previous life. Just a normal looking girl in athletic shorts, trainers, and a pink t-shirt bearing the marvel comics logo. At either side of her stood Eris and Titania, who’d joined her to observe the construction of the memory palace. They’d each taken a human form as well.

Titania appeared as a tall, Amazonian beauty who wouldn’t have looked out of place in the roman colosseum. She embodied health, rugged strength, and athleticism. To Everly’s way of thinking, she resembled a member of a woman’s football team. Probably the striker.

Eris was a harder thing to describe. She seemed familiar, but that familiarity couldn’t be narrowed down to any one person from Everly’s memories. She just looked…familiar. She could have been anyone Everly had ever met, or a stranger who was completely new to her.

She guessed that was the point. Eris enjoyed defying easy description.

She just likes being difficult, Everly thought sarcastically.

It was thanks to Eris’s power that Everly could visualize the creation of her memory palace so perfectly. The elemental’s illusory gifts were incredibly useful. The mind was Eris’s playground, which made it Everly’s playground as well.

She had to love it.

The best part of all had to be Eris’s ability to slow the perception of time in this place. It was an incomparable bonus. In the real world, time continued to pass at its normal rate. But here in the dreamscape? Eris’s powers made it possible for a day to last a lifetime. Everly would be able to do months of training in the span of a two-hour nap.

That meant she’d lose none of the skills she had worked a lifetime to acquire and could only develop her abilities even further. It was just another great idea she’d gotten from watching old Japanese anime.

Man, television can teach you all kinds of useful stuff.

When the palace had finished construction, the trio entered its first level. This would be Everly’s personal training grounds. But instead of that lousy basement she had to use in the cold of winter, or the sweltering heat of summer, here she envisioned a spacious dojo that had a solid hardwood floor on one side and a spacious section for grappling practice that was covered in tatami mats.

“Nice,” she said happily as she reached for a perfect replica of the sword she used in her past life.

Next, she assumed a ready stance, then began practicing her lunges. Instantly, she fell back into her old training routine, losing all awareness of her surroundings as she repeated the exercises, hundreds of times, then thousands, lost in the wonderful sensation of trying to perfect her movements while eliminating any extraneous motion.

Scraping away at all the unwanted rust until what remained was purest steel.

Eris and Titania stayed for a while and watched, but eventually they wandered away to explore other areas of the tower. That was fine. Everly appreciated an audience, but training was always best when it was done alone.

Nothing else existed for her now. There was nothing but her and her sword.

Thanks again, Doctor Lecter! she thought with gratitude.

 

________________________________________

Glossary

Terms

Elementals: Beings descended from the astral realm who are the living embodiments of the five classic western elements.  Most elementals are wild in nature and dwell apart from civilization.  But a small number of them for unknown reasons become attracted to human beings and develop lifelong partnerships with them, which in turn imparts the ability to control elemental magic to their chosen masters.

Places

Belsar County:  The ruling seat of the Van Belsar family.  Did you know that the territory that a Count is in charge of is called a county?  I had no idea!  I live in America, and we have all kinds of districts and counties over here, but I never knew the name was derived from a European rank of nobility. Hell, I live in a place called Hamilton County.  I bet people in England already know all about this kind of stuff, but I just thought it was interesting.

People

Lyona Skolder: Everly's mother. A daughter of a family that immigrated from the Oldstead Republic, she's a famous researcher of Imperial lore who specializes in recreating medical technology from the past that doesn't require magic to use.  She's intelligent, independent, and determined to carve out her own path.  Unfortunately, she's also a commoner and in the kingdom of Winstead, birth matters more than talent.

Count Marcis Van Belsar: Everly's father.  A famed Knight-Ignis who participated in the civil war.  Although he was one of the kingdom's greatest warriors and the hero of many battles, his crushing defeat at the hands of The Mountain Splitter and subsequent ransoming was a humiliation he has yet to recover from.  He is distant and controlling yet has no interest in forming a bond with any of his illegitimate children.

Everly Vae Belsar:  Just your average, every day, adorable baby girl.  Daaaw, idn't sheee schweeet?  Where's Everly?  Where's Everly?  There's Everly!  Whoops, I your toes!  Are you going to smile?  Come on, smile!  Smile!  Hey, why isn't she smiling?

Titania: An anima elemental with the power of earth.  She's gonna be great!  Don't distract her when she's working out.

Eris: Please don't ask about Eris.

The Rebels: You picked the wrong forest, boys.  Sorry.