An Owl's Rise

Flying through the trees Evelyn continued on her way out of the forest where she was born.

There were simply too many bad memories here, and the thought of being captured again forced her to continue moving.

She had currently been flying for days at this point, but still the expansive forest seemed to show no end.

However, things had slightly changed on her most recent day of flying.

The forest's color became a bit more vibrant, and with her keen vision and impeccable hearing she was able to see and hear the sounds of more beasts. Some of which were quite large.

She had seen to this point a number of tigers, wolfs, and some type of large lizard she had no desire to encounter on the ground.

Luckily, in the treetops where she currently resided, there were not many beasts that were bigger than her. Though there were a number around the same size.

And currently, she was in the middle of a fight over a single piece of fruit that lay hidden high up in a tree that looked different than all of the others.

'That silver plum is going to be mind.' Evelyn thought as she dodged her opponent's talons and smacked them with her wing.

Flapping around wildly after Evelyn essential close lined it, the eagle she was fighting crashed into a few branches before regaining its balance.

Of course, back on Earth it would have been pretty abnormal for an owl and an eagle to fight over a piece of fruit, but not on this world.

Certain plants absorbed magical energy as Evelyn had long since figured out, and eating them definitely made her, or any beast for that matter stronger.

The second she had spotted this silver plum; her instincts had told her to eat it no matter the cost. So, she flew up to grab it, when she found that another large bird of prey had claimed it.

Naturally, this eagle was fighting with its life on the line to take its prize that it had been waiting months to ripen.

Except now a random owl happened by right before the magical fruit that was an incredible rarity was ready.

"Crawwww!"

Screeching loudly and angrily, the eagle announced its anger and hate towards Evelyn for fighting it for its meal.

Unfortunately for it, Evelyn could care less about it, and swooped down for another attack.

Flying up to meet her, the eagle threw its talons forward, ready to rake them across Evelyn who was coming in headfirst.

Yet before they impacted, she spun her body downward and passed right under the eagle.

Then with the flap of her wings she sent a blast of wind up at the eagle and caused it to be pushed up and go off course.

Crashing into even more branches the eagle was battered and scraped up.

Looking back with fury in its eyes, it saw Evelyn charging right for it, now that it was tangled up a bit.

It had never been in a fight like this before, as normally the other birds that challenged it would simply attack head on, and the two would fight with talons and beaks as they tore into each other.

Though while this was the conventional approach that birds at the same level as Evelyn and this eagle normally fought, she had no desire to be clawed up when she could simply use counter tactics to throw the eagle off.

In a straight battle she was sure to lose since this eagle was a bit bigger than her, had longer talons, and a stronger beak.

Still her human intelligence allowed her to implement strategies that this eagle, while not dumb, could never hope to come up with or expect.

Continuing to use disruption and hit and run techniques, Evelyn wore the eagle down while avoiding all of its attacks.

Finally, when she was certain the eagle was livid and nearing exhaustion, she flew away, and as expected it gave chase.

Smirking, she went towards the area she had spotted at the beginning of their fight and knew would be good place to unleash a final attack.

Flying forward Evelyn had the eagle hot on her tail, but this was exactly where she wanted it.

As she passed under a fairly thick but flexible branch, she suddenly angled sharply upwards by using a wind gust.

Heading upwards, she grabbed ahold of the branch and pulled up on it as far as she could, before releasing it.

The eagle who had been following behind her had no chance to slow down or change its flight path in time, and with a loud crack was hit by the branch.

However, this was only the first part of Evelyn's final attack, as just around a dozen feet below the branch she had pulled up on was another that was much thicker.

The eagle before it could right itself crashed into this branch and let out a pained screech.

Spinning around she dove right towards the injured and stunned eagle, and with expert precision jammed her claws right into its neck.

Blood began pouring out of the eagle as Evelyn sunk her talons in deeper, and it began thrashing about, trying to knock her off.

But she was going for the kill and was in an advantageous situation. So, she did not let go even as the eagle's own claws racked against her back.

Soon the eagle's resistance ended, and its life quickly left it as it lost a tremendous amount of blood from where Evelyn had punctured its neck.

With her battle over, she jumped off of the eagle's body and went and laid herself against the truck of the tree she and the eagle's corpse were on.

Even though she had avoided getting injured too much, it had been an exhausting battle for her where she had pulled out all of her abilities and strategy.

'At least I managed to win. When it came flying at me from the branches as I went after the plum, I thought I was going to be a goner for a second there.'

After taking a good twenty minutes to recuperate, Evelyn sprang into action to eat her kill while it was still fresh.

The eagle's meat was as good as any, and she had burned a lot of energy in her fight.

Eating quickly, she tore through the eagle and consumed the meat on its body, before removing its core which was the largest she had ever seen so far.

It was close to the size of a lime, while all the others she had eaten were closer to that of a blueberry.

'Hm, I guess it was a lot stronger than anything I have taken down. Now I wonder what it will feel like to consume this.'

Plopping the stone into her mouth she swallowed it in one gulp, an immediately felt the warmth of magical energy flooding through her body.

Once she had given herself a few minutes to get accustomed to the energy entering her body from the eagle's core, she flew back up into the foliage where the plum was.

Fortunately, it was still there, and now it had a slight glow about it that made it look even more tantalizing.

Flying up to it, Evelyn looked around warily one last time, before ripping the plum from the branch it was one.

However, one pull was not enough to rip it off, and in the end, she had to cut through it with her talons to get the tree to release its bounty.

Having obtained the plum, Evelyn flew over to the eagle's previous nest, and took it as her own.

There she began eating the plum that she had fought hard to win.

As soon as she took the first bite, she got a taste of its sweet juices and flesh, that reminded her of a delicious fruit tart she had once had back on Earth when she was still a little girl.

Digging in she at the entirety of the plum except for its pit. Which she saved to plant somewhere nice as thanks to the tree for giving her this delicious fruit.

Yet as she was about to fly off and continue her journey, she felt her body pulsing and a sharp pain permeated through her body.

For an instance she thought that maybe the plum was poisonous, but she soon recognized this feeling.

It was similar to when she had first taken in the strange purple sphere that was surrounded by four rings.

She could feel it that her body was rearranging itself, as it used all of the energy that had been stored in the plum and the eagle's core to advance her to the next level.

Still, it was a paralyzing pain that caused her to slump over on her side and begin to twitch violently.

Abruptly though, the pain ceased, and her body began to glow slightly. Before an itchy feeling overcame her instead.

It was terribly uncomfortable, but she could hardly move, and anything she tried to do to mitigate the uncomfortable itchiness failed.

Eventually all she could do was grit her beak together and bear with it as her body underwent some type of change.

Hours went by like this, and Evelyn could only wonder how much longer it was going to go on.

At a certain point she felt that this might be even worse than the pain she had experienced, simply because of how maddening it was to feel so itchy.

Nevertheless, eventually the feeling began to subside, and the glow around her vanished.

Letting out a breath of relief, Evelyn was grateful hat she no longer was in extreme discomfort.

Shaking herself off and summoning a gust of wind to cool off with, she accidently blasted herself with her own magic and knocked herself against the side of the nest.

She had just been trying to summon a small breeze, but instead got hit with what previously would have been the most force she could generate.

Immediately she realized that she had gotten a lot stronger, and also quite a bit bigger as well.

She had grown over a foot taller and was now closer to the size her parents had been.

Of course, this was due to her evolving from a wild beast into a fiend beast, which at this time Evelyn had no clue about.