Aneria

When magic was still free and being explored there was many that had different ideas on what it could do, the boundaries of magic hadn’t been discovered and the dangers were still unknown. Every different way that magic could be used it was being tested, cooking and cleaning to creating life and ending life, the scholars of their time made it their life goal to understand the parameters that magic exists under. One of the scholars who was in the for front of this discovery was Aneria, she was a young lady that was found as an orphan after she drew attention to herself in a market square when she accidentally set herself on fire, a fire of her own creation that didn’t burn her. Initially she was taken in so that the scholars and mages could study her, specifically to learn how she was so connected to the force they were trying to understand. In their findings they not only discovered that because she was born and had survived off nature on her own for so long she had the bond that had been lost long ago. But they also found that she was extremely intelligent and had a fascination of her own that they could use to help them reach their goal.
Aneria grew into her adult life constantly testing her limitations and those of the physical world around her. It was Aneria that first discovered the use of energy conduits to strengthen the connection to the elements, unfortunately as with all scientific testing there are undesirable outcomes and side effects that weren’t accounted for. For her these meant that she slowly was becoming dependant on them because of her frequency of using them. When you use magic, you are essentially using your own body to tune into the element that is magic and as you tap into that force you push it through yourself so that it uses the direction you give it to become tangible however the action of doing this cause the manifestation of magic to drain energy, whilst this is a very basic explanation it will help understand where Aneria went wrong. Because she was so connected to magic she could easily channel the force through her so when she started to push and test the limits she built up a tolerance and stamina that was unlike anyone else’s at the time. Introducing energy conduits to this caused the energy she was exerting per casting was greater than her physical body could handle, when she was using a conduit this was fine, for a while. As her body adjusted before to the new limits, it did so again with these additions, it soon became that she couldn’t perform any simple magic without it draining a substantial amount of energy from her. To combat this, she looked for ways to convert her energy and control how much the magic took from her. As anything that lives or survives in the natural world in connected to an element, she started using anything that has a strong connection, this included animals both alive and dead. When you use the animal bones as a conduit you’re tapping into the force that is connected to the elements and the left over life force of the animal, the outcome of this can be dependent on the way that the animal died, for example if it was a natural death then it’s using the animal as a form of respect as you’re passing the life force onto something else. But if you kill the animal to use its bones for your own personal gain then the life force taints everything that it channels, thus making the magic that you’re trying to control a different entity as its stronger, darker and more dangerous. Now if you kill an animal that taints the magic, so Aneria thought that if she took the life directly from an animal that she loved and raised but didn’t kill that it wouldn’t taint the magic.
She was wrong. It didn’t just turn it darker and more volatile it made it as strong as both the animal she’d chosen and her own power. Instead of taking the warning that she should stop she became obsessed with the idea of stealing another’s energy and the uses that it could have in the world. She saw the battles and disputes over the lands with the warriors sacrificing themselves to win disputes of others and thought of the mounted men who would ride into battle on horses, if only they had the combined strength and control of one rather than the rider and horse separate. By now Aneria had been dismissed for her use of animals in her magic, as it went against the gifts that the earth gave them to help them survive. Fixated on this idea of an immensely strong mounted warrior she retreated from view to raise horses, the strongest and fastest stallions she could find. Having created a bond so strong with them, she tested them all for speed, strength and size
To test her theory and to prove that the animals she used were in fact gifts for them from the earth she took the best of the horses, Aberth, back to the scholars and mages claiming that she would be the revolution of the military. Sitting on Aberth’s back she performed a ritual to combine their energies together so that she would have the strength of her steed. Much to the scholars shock she managed to do it, showing them the strength of her magic and how unstoppable they would be. Only the more that she cast the magic it became twisted, forcing its way through Aberth and Aneria dissolving the lines between the two of them, not only spiritually but physically. In her obsession in showing the men she was right, she didn’t notice Aberth as she sunk into him, fusing their lives into one, until her legs where just like his only in between his original four, as though she’d been stretched over his back. Un able to move her waist she was stuck clinging to his mane until her chest became one with his neck.
From a quick glance one would assume that it was a girl leaning forward hugging her beloved horse, but the more you look you’d see the distress as she claws at his neck and her chest, the flailing, kicking legs you thought were the back pair but in fact a third set protruding from his sides trying to run from the body they’re attached too.