205 Proper raising

She was laying on a soft bed with her face aiming the ceiling covered by a long blanket over her body. The room was big and painted in white color with a few details in the shape of fire colored in red. She recognized that pattern, it was the same one from Leona's robes.

"Where... Am I...?" she whispered.

"Ellie!!!" several people shouted.

She lowered her view and noticed her friends, Claire and Joseph, both wearing white robes, as well as her allies, Marcus, Lilith, and Detra, with Leona and a woman with long red hair standing on the back of the room.

They all took turns hugging her and asking if she wanted food or if she needed to rest more. Everyone was just relieved to see her waking up. The girl took a little time to catch her breath from them and finally felt like she was good enough to start talking properly.

"Ellie!! Ellie are you ok!!??" Marcus shouted.

"We were so worried about you!! You just kept sleeping and would barely move!!" Claire added while holding the girl's left hand.

"I'm fine... I'm fine... I'm just tired, that's all..." Ellie explained as she realized she was probably in a facility from the east followers.

"Ellie..." Lilith spoke next, "what happened to you??"

Ellie tried to think back to the last thing she remembered before passing out and tried to retell her tale, "I was dragged out of nowhere by the forest and forced to fight her in the core ring..."

"The forest?? You faced the forest on your own!!?" Lilith gasped.

"Yeah... It was really annoying because she kept coming back even after I slashed her a bunch of times... It looked like the only way to beat her was to go for the core itself, but I didn't want to touch it before finding out what kind of powers she had... so I kept stalling until I found out more about her abilities..."

"Wait... Stall...?" Detra interjected, "can't the forest read our minds? How did she no see through your plan?"

"Oh, that... I kept distracting her by trying to annoy her... she was so angry that she could barely read what I was doing..."

"That's true... Blue can be really annoying when she wants to..." Claire commented, trying to lighten up the mood.

"You would know best... You taught me most of what I know after all..." Ellie replied.

Claire then raised her hand to fist-bump Ellie, "damn right I did!"

Ellie grinned back at her but when she raised her arm as well, both hers and Claire's face began to lose color.

"Aaaaahhh!!! What happened to my hand!!!???" she yelled as she gazed at her amputated arm tied up in bandages.

Claire became shocked as well, so did Joseph. The two hadn't seen Ellie until now so they weren't aware of her current state.

"What!!?? What!!?? What happened???" Ellie kept shouting. Her loud scream could be heard from outside by the two kids as they continued to leave. Claire was about to start crying after realizing what she did.

"Ellie calm down!" Marcus tried to say while raising his hands.

"Calm down!!??" Ellie yelled while starting to tear up, "WHY IS MY HAND GONE!!!??"

"We don't know... When I found you your arm was already like this... we tried to apply some healing magic once we were back but they said that there was no saving it..."

"No... No saving it?? I'm going to stay like this!!?? This isn't fair!! Why did this happen to me!!?? What did I do to-" Ellie was about to continue to cry but then she looked at Lilith who was now also wearing a bandage on her eyes to block the light.

She thought about how unfair it would be to complain about losing a hand while Lilith had lost her vision when trying to help them and started to feel embarrassed.

"I... I'm sorry..." Ellie whispered.

"You don't have to apologize..." Marcus commented, "We were the ones that did a poor job on protecting you..."

"That's not entirely true actually..."

The entire room turned around to glare at the one who said that, Detra.

The woman quickly noticed their anger but decided to continue anyway, "young miss... you said that the forest dragged you to fight her, right?"

"Tha- That's right..."

"Why didn't you just use your power to escape? With the mirrored ability from Marcus, you should have been more than fast enough to successfully run away from her."

"Run away...?? I- I didn't even considered that..." Ellie admitted while lowering her head.

"East!! What are you doing? Can't you see that she's already feeling bad?" Lilith shouted.

"I know!! but that doesn't change the fact that she made a mistake! Again! What kind of mentors would we be if we just patted her on the head every time she messed up? She needs to learn from her errors or she will never really grow!"

"East!!" Lilith shouted again.

"She's right..." Ellie interrupted, much to everyone's shock, "I wasn't thinking... I just assumed that taking the fight until the end would be what my aunt would do..."

"Well, you're dead wrong!" Detra added, "Your aunt was a violent short-fused person... But she was never an idiot... She never entered a fight without being sure she had ways of getting away from it if she needed it... She never went after an opponent without a party or at the very least without some kind of ally... And she always had an escape plan ready in case things went south..." Detra then looked at Marcus, "Isn't that right?"

"Y- Yes..." Marcus admitted, thinking back about the time Evlin tricked him by using his naivety to escape from him when they first met, "you should have tried to get away from the fight the minute you saw you were cornered... We could have backed you up and tried to face her together..."

"... Yes... I... I know... I'm sorry..."

The entire room went into silence at the sight of Ellie's depressed look.

"Can I... Be alone for a minute? Please...?" Ellie asked.

The whole room then exited the door one after another and reunited with Joseph and Claire outside. Once they were all gone, Ellie took another look at her missing hand that probably got torn apart when she made that giant spear to pierce the demon's core and started to imagine the dozen of opportunities she actually had to escape if she really wanted to.

She once again suffered a loss because she wasn't smart enough to properly think about the best way to approach a situation.

She grabbed a pillow to muffle her noise and began to cry desperately for a couple of minutes. She didn't know if she was crying over her lost hand or because she could have prevented it if she had been better.

On the outside, the group was waiting for her to be done and began to chat about how to proceed.

"Did you really needed to say that at a time like this?" Lilith asked.

"If she goes after Mia with no plan just like she did before and got demolished again, would you have been ok with that?" Detra replied.

"But... She's just a kid!"

"Kids need both kindness and harshness to help them grow... None of you are willing to show anything besides kindness... So I need to be the one to show harshness..." Detra added.

Lilith just remained silent wondering if they did the right thing.

"So..." Detra commented while looking at the woman with long red hair, "that was Evlin's niece... What was your first impression?"

Ashley just placed her hand on her chin and began to ponder for a bit, "She doesn't really remind me of her, to be honest..."

Detra raised an eyebrow, "really...?"

"I mean... Physically, they really look alike... You could even fool me into thinking she could be her daughter..." Ashley admitted, "but trying to take a demon on her own? And holding back her tears so she couldn't look bad in front of others... right after realizing she lost her freaking limb? Evlin was never that confident in herself, nor was she that mature... She always cried anywhere she wanted when she was upset, not giving a damn who was looking or not... And she always made sure she never entered a fight alone...

At least... not unless someone was in danger..."

Lilith smiled for a bit thinking back about all the times Evlin would just cry when traveling with them, always complaining about how unfair things were and how much she missed home.

"This girl..." Ashley continued, "she's not Evlin... But she probably doesn't need to be... She's going to grow a lot... And become her own amazing person in the future!"

Detra smiled, "you should probably tell her that... she needs desperately to stop trying to be her aunt and start becoming her own person..."

They all continued to wait for a bit before Marcus asked Ellie for permission to enter again. They wanted to give her a little more time to recover, but they were sadly on a deadline.

The battle with Mia would be tomorrow and they still had a lot of preparation to complete.

Ellie understood their intents and wiped her tears before allowing them to come back.

"Ellie, do you need more time...?" Lilith asked.

"No, no... I'm... I'm gonna be ok..."

"Good..." Detra commented, "because we have a lot to discuss!"

The room's mood became serious again. They all began to think about what was going to happen tomorrow.

"First things first..." Detra continued, "Did you managed to unlock terminal energy?"

Ellie began to remember why she even took the risk in the first place and gave a definitive response while also wondering if losing her hand was worth it for what she acquired.

"Yes!"