Maxine waited with Amanda for what seemed like an eternity when one of the doctors finally came out to reveal her mother's condition. They had stopped her internal bleeding and managed to put her shattered bones back together using a series of pins. However her mother had recieved a severe concussion and that had caused brain damage. They wouldn't know the full extent of it until she woke up. Unfortunately they didn't know for certain when her mother would regain consciousness.
Maxine felt a combination of releif and despair at that news. Her mother was going to live, but could end up being an idiot from her injuries. Maxine hoped that wasn't the case as she embraced Amanda and started crying again. Amanda brushed Maxine's hair with her hands soothingly while Maxine cried.
However as Maxine's sobs lost their intensity, her rage at General McKenzy started to intensify. He could have prevented all of this from even happening and made it so Emily couldn't even come to heal her mother. She wanted to kill him, but she didn't dare. It would make Emily cry and Maxine didn't want to hurt her like that.
Maxine pushed herself away from Amanda after she finished crying and came to a decision. She would finish teaching those soldiers, but after that she would no longer volunteer to help that bastard. Nor would she talk to him unless she had to. However Maxine would still talk to Emily and Amanda regardless of how much she hated the general.
Amanda offered to let Maxine stay with her for the night, but Maxine declined. She lied when she told Amanda that she wanted to sleep in her own bed. What she really was going to do tonight was to devise a means to protect her mother even if she wasn't present. There was only a few ways that Maxine could think of. The first one that came to mind was to create a semi-permnament golem made of her shadow essence to protect her mother. It could hide in her shadow until it was needed. However the biggest problem with that was figuring out how to supply it with the necessary essence to maintain it's existence.
After Maxine got home, she quickly ran into her room and formed a small wolf using her shadow essence. She left it in a shadow, but as soon as she stopped feeding it essence it faded out of existence. She tried filling it with a chunk of her essence, but that only slowed down the rate that it disappeared. Maxine needed a container for essence and remembered the twelve copper essence cores she had yet to give to Emily. She pulled one out and used her shadow essence to create a Copper Fang Wolf around one of the esssence cores. This time it's body only fluctuated for a few moments before dispersing.
Maxine knew she was on the right track and tried various different ways to manifest the wolf. However in the end, she was forced to recreate the wolf down to each of it's cells before it became stable enough to stay in existence for an hour. She was frustrated that it wouldn't last longer and thought she was missing some important detail to complete it. Unfortunately her repeated attempts at forming a stable wolf constuct had drained all but one of her essence cores.
Maxine got an idea and injected her shadow essence into the copper essence core in her hand. Her shadow essence devoured the essence that was already inside of the core. After that, she quickly formed the wolf around the core. When the wolf finished forming, it no longer looked like what she originally wanted to create. It's coloring was completely different. Instead of the copper and grey colored fur, it was now the same silver-grey as her hair and it possessed golden eyes. The simple change of coloring made it appear more noble. Maxine reached out and touched it. It felt real enough to her.
Maxine couldn't help but marvel at her own work as she scanned it's body with her spiritual sense. Because she had made it so perfectly, it was now able to draw in more essence than it used and could maintian itself indefinitely. In fact, she thought it might actually rank up it's essence core. Something she wasn't even sure was possible.
However Maxine needed to test if it could follow simple orders and ordered it verbally to enter her shadow. It stared at her for a moment before it transformed into a greyish mass that lept into her shadow. She quickly recalled it back out. It simply stood there motionless after reappearing. She didn't know what to call it since it didn't have a consciousness of it's own. She just went with calling it a Shadow Wolf since it was made from her shadow essence.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Maxine looked at the time and it was only a few hours from dawn. She decided to lay down and ordered her new golem to guard her. She figured that if it was still stable by morning then she would make more using the bronze essence cores to protect her mother. Unfortunately she didn't have enough bronze essence cores to make enough of these Shadow Wolves.
When Maxine woke up and saw that it was almost eight in the morning, she checked on the wolf golem and saw that it was still there. She quickly ordered it back into her shadow and swiftly got ready for the day. She wasn't going to even bother with teaching those soldiers today. Maxine was going to check on her mother before hunting for some more bronze essence cores. She didn't think the general would hold it against her for taking a day off because of her mother.
Maxine checked on her mother at the hospital after finishing breakfast. Her mother hadn't woken up yet. Maxine checked her over with her spiritual sense while she was there and found that the damage to her brain wasn't that bad. She may not remember anything from the last few days, but otherwise she would mostly recover.
Maxine made her way to Silky's nest after she was done at the hospital. When she arrived, she told Silky about what happened. Silky's normally black eyes immediately turned crimson as she screamed in rage. She looked completely ferocious. Maxine had never seen such a reaction out of the normally very adorable Silky. She only calmed down after Maxine explained that all of the people responsible had already been taken care of and that Maxine's mother would most likely recover.
After promising Silky that Maxine would bring her mother when she recovered, Maxine began hunting bronze stage essence beasts. She hunted for three hours and managed to collect seven bronze stage essence cores. She had been having a harder time finding bronze stage essence beasts the past few times that she had hunted in the area around Silky's nest. Maxine knew those things bred faster than rabbits after all. Only after thinking about it did she realize the reason for it. Her constant hunting of the area must have been their equivalent of establishing a territory and the essence beasts were respecting her territory. Maxine understood she will need to change the area that she hunted for essence cores in.
Maxine returned to Silky's nest and checked the time. She still had an hour before lunch and made two more Shadow Wolves. She didn't make more because it would drain too much of her essence and she needed to test their capability at fighting on their own.
Maxine had them hide in her shadow and found a large group of twenty Copper Fang Wolves. She unleashed her two Shadow Wolves on them. Maxine immediately noticed that her Shadow Wolves moved awkwardly and paid no heed to any attacks directed at them as they tore into the Copper Fang Wolves. When they had finished killing their opponents, her two Shadow Wolves returned and sat down infront of her. Both of them had sustained some damage. However their wounds were regenerating at almost a visible rate. When Maxine scanned them with her spiritual sense, she found that the essence being drawn in that wasn't being used to maintain their existence was being directed to repair their wounds automatically. Maxine found this extremely fascinating, but didn't have the time to study them further. She quickly recalled her Shadow Wolves back to her shadow and harvasted the copper essence cores from the wolves. She immediately headed back towards the hospital where her mother was.
As soon as she got there, Maxine found that her mother had woken up from one of the nurses, but was in alot of pain. She quickly went towards the room that her mother was in and practically jumped with joy when she saw her mother's eyes open for herself. Maxine resisted the urge to hug her mother and went over to her side. Maxine covertly ordered her Shadow Wolves to enter her mother's shadow and to protect her if they detected killing intent directed at her.
Maxine talked to her mother to find out what she remembered about the whole thing. Her mother remembered only that she was kidnapped and nothing else, which was for the best Maxine supposed. It would be better if her mother didn't remember such a horrible event. Maxine stayed for a few hours before heading home. She had to prepare some more Shadow Wolves and fashion some armor in order to protect her mother as well as finish teaching those soldiers over the next couple weeks while her mother healed.
Her mother wanted Maxine to turn on the TV and started going through the channels. However when she found the news channel, she froze. They were showing Maxine with her essence armor on as she retreived her Twighlight Iron Blades out of her shadow before running off into the distance. If someone saw that much, they may have seen my face too. She suspected that her life was about to get alot more troublesome.