An Owl's Rise

With a furious expression Evelyn stomped into the room where Bylur and Otis had been training and fixed a glare at both of them.

"What is the meaning of this? I can tell that your wounds go beyond what should be incurred in training. Not to mention that you have both exhausted all of your magical energy" Evelyn said, a cold tone in her voice.

This caused Bylur and Otis to gulp loudly and struggle with all their might to stand up.

"We just got a bit carried away Evelyn. It is not that big of a deal. Any way your plan worked. Against Otis, I was able to get used to my increased magical energy and even figure out a few new attacks." Bylur said, trying to shift the subject.

He was hoping that Evelyn would latch onto the fact that he had gotten stronger and forget about how much of a mess he and Otis were, but she was not so easily distracted.

"It is good that the training and its intended effect. Still, that did not answer my question. Why are the two of you in such rough shape? Do not think I have not noticed that you two seem to hold some hostility for the other. What sort of problem could you both have with each other?"

Evelyn then turned up the intensity of her glare and exuded all of her pressure to try and force the answer out of either Bylur or Otis.

Under such force Both Otis and Bylur made uncharacteristic squeaks, and it was clear that they were afraid.

Yet neither one of them broke under Evelyn's glare.

"It simply was that we got too heated during the training and did not hold back. I promise that there is nothing hostile between Bylur and I." Otis said, having gathered his courage to speak.

Surprise was written all of Evelyn's face after he said this. She knew that this was not the truth and never did she expect Otis to blatantly lie to her.

"Fine, I suppose that if you two are willing to at least act cordial then I will leave it here for now. But know that the next time you both go this far I will use you for my own target practice."

After giving this warning, Evelyn took out two potions from her storage cuff and splashed the contents onto Bylur and Otis.

Almost immediately their wounds began to visibly heal, and in around a minute they were back to normal.

'At the very least this gave the perfect opportunity to test out the potions I enhanced with the spring water. I can say for sure that they are more effective than normal by probably about thirty percent.'

Once Evelyn had finished analyzing the results of her healing potions, she told Bylur and Otis to get some rest, because they were going ahead with the attack on the brass jackals' den on schedule whether they were fully recovered or not.

Then once they had both left the room, Evelyn turned towards Rehni and asked her if she knew what had caused the tension between Bylur and Otis.

"I do know, but I do not think it is my place to disclose that information. You should just wait for Bylur and Otis to settle it themselves." Rehni said, shocking Evelyn again.

'When did whatever event that caused them to dislike each other even happen? And how do I not know about it?'

Going through her memory she tried to find the point in time when she first noticed that Otis and Bylur started to radiate hostility towards each other.

Except while she could remember around when she first noticed it, no sort of incident occurred that she could think of to set them off.

'It seems that Rehni knows, but why am I the only one that is oblivious to whatever happened?' Evelyn thought, racking her brain for an answer.

Unfortunately, no matter how much she pondered the situation, she could not come up with a clear answer.

Certainly, she never would have guessed that the two of them disliked each other because they were both pursuing her affection. She had died in her own world when she was still just a young girl and due to her family situation, she had never once even thought about romance.

In the end all she could do was push it into he back of her mind and hope that neither of them would do anything rash and try to kill the other.

Several hours went by and when the sun was still in the sky at what would have been around four pm on Earth, Evelyn took off with her strike force.

For her plan to work she needed to catch the brass jackals while the majority of them were in their base, and that meant they had to leave during the day.

'Damn it is bright and hot. It is hard to believe how cool it feels at night in this place. I can understand why most creatures that live here only come out at night.' Evelyn thought as they flew along.

Even when it was late in the afternoon and the sun was on its way down the conditions were intense, and Evelyn felt it chipping away at her.

Not long after they left, she decided that preserving their magical energy was not worth it and had Bylur use his ice magic to cool things down, while Evelyn used her wind magic to circulate the cold air around the entire group.

This at least mitigated the heat by a good amount, but the sun was something that they had to put up with and was hard on their eyes that were geared towards seeing in low-light conditions.

Eventually they managed to make it to the resting spot they had planned in advance and escape from the sun.

"Okay, I am going to sneak into the den as I did before. Give me thirty minutes to come out before you start your attack on the guards waiting outside." Evelyn said, going over the plan one last time.

When she was confident that it was around an hour till sunset, she set off towards the brass jackals' den.

'This is as close as I can get without using the talismans. Time to see if this will work.'

Accessing her storage cuff, she pulled out the invisibility talisman and scent dampening talisman and activated both of them.

Her presence now well hidden, she flew down towards the brass jackals' den and entered undetected once again.

As she flew through the tunnels, Evelyn found that the place was more active than it had been before.

It was getting close to time for the brass jackals to go out to hunt again and many of them were awakened now when almost all of them had been asleep when she was here last.

Thankfully none of them detected her and Evelyn kept flying until she reached her destination.

'Yep, it looks like the majority of the awakened ranks are still in this chamber and the one at the very back. All I need to do is drop the vial here and everything should be over soon.'

After taking a deep breath to calm her nerves Evelyn pulled out a large vial that contained a dark purple liquid that with one look anyone could tell was bad news.

This was a vial of poison that was synthesized from a blight mushroom. It was the strongest poison that Evelyn had on hand, and one that she had made only the single vial of with the help and supervision of Melisandre.

The moment she took it out of her storage cuff all of the nearby brass jackals noticed her.

Naturally they felt the magic in the cuff being used and the vial seemed to suddenly appear from thin air.

However, it was already too late for them. They could not react fast enough to stop Evelyn and before any of them moved she threw the vial down on the ground as hard as she could, and it shattered.

Almost immediately the purple liquid upon coming in contact with the air turned into a gas that began filling the area.

Then Evelyn swiftly turned around, and with the flap of her wings sent a large gust of wind out behind her and blasted the gas into the chambers where the strongest brass jackals currently were, and simultaneously launched herself away.

Without any care for being noticed now, Evelyn shot towards the exit at full speed. Using her wind magic and heavenly flame to propel herself like a rocket.

The brass jackals that did see her as she left were unable to stop her at the speed she was going, and she soon came out over the heads of the six guards. Much to their surprise.

'And it looks like the others are already in position.' Evelyn thought as she saw fourteen silhouettes in the sky rapidly flying down to assist her.