An Owl's Rise

As Evelyn flew straight for the peak fiend beast bat coming her way, she built up the wind around her and prepared to use a huge gust to launch herself forward.

To increase the effect, she also lowered her gravity making her much lighter so that she could move beyond fast.

Her plan was to rake her talons through the bat's right wing before it even had time to react and then one it was grounded it would be easy prey.

Yet right before she was about o unleash her gust of wind, she started to feel nauseous and her trajectory changed, so she instead launched herself into the side of the cave.

BANG!

She hit the wall incredibly hard, to the point that she felt something break, and she soon crumpled to the ground.

'What the hell was that?' Evelyn thought as she lifted her head up.

She had not seen the bat make any sort of move other than opening its mouth to use what she assumed was echolocation, but she some ow ended up dizzy, and now her left wing had a fracture in it.

Looking up she saw the bat hovering in the air not far from her staring at her warily.

Though when it saw she was still alive, it opened its mouth again, and an instant later Evelyn felt the same sickening feeling.

That was when she remembered something she had read about on earth.

There was a weapon that emitted a low frequency sound that could not be heard, but still had enough decibels behind it to cause damage.

It seemed that these bats were able to do something similar and unleash unnoticeable sound-based attacks.

Eventually Evelyn could not take it anymore and fell over onto the moist floor of the cave.

She could not keep her balance with how bad she was feeling and in just one encounter the bats she had been killing easily in ambushes had gotten one up on her.

Luckily as she fell over the bat stopped its attack, since it did not have enough power to kill with it.

Instead, it opened its mouth where its sharp venom coated fangs were and moved in to deliver a lethal bite to Evelyn now that she was incapacitated.

'I am not going to go down this easily.'

Regaining a bit of her focus, Evelyn knew that her body was still not functioning properly and with her injury she would be unable to dodge anyway.

This left her with pretty much one option, and that was to explode.

Her mind was still a bit muddled, and it was hard to concentrate, but just recklessly sending magic energy to her heavenly flame was within her current abilities.

The powerful divine item began growing and swelling, and as the venom bat got close to deliver the final blow, she erupted in a bright flash of flames it had not been expecting and had no chance of avoiding.

In an instant the tables were turned again, and the bat was turned into charcoal by the intense heat, while the rocks around Evelyn had melted and crystallized.

Lifting herself up Evelyn felt really sick and nearly released the contents of her stomach onto the still smoldering ground.

However, she held it end because she knew she would be much worse off if she expelled her last meal.

'I got to keep it down. I will not be able to heal as effectively otherwise.' Evelyn thought to give her some motivation.

When her head stopped spinning, she accessed her storage amulets and began taking out some healing items.

First, she took out a salve and applied it over the areas of her body where she was injured before down a potion to speed up the effects.

It was far from as fast as the last time she used a magical healing item, but unfortunately, she had already drunk her best potion, and was now using some that would be considered a more middle quality.

Nevertheless, after a few minutes her wounds had pretty much all vanished, and with a few test flaps of her wings she knew she could fly again.

'Okay no more trying to take them intact. If I see them, I just need to hit them with my heavenly flame and burn them to a crisp.'

Resolving not to take these bats lightly anymore, Evelyn continued breaking apart the deposit of vendelrite.

Once that was done, she felt she had enough and just wanted to get out of this cave before anything else showed up.

'I have had enough of these bats already, and the flowers I used to bloke the horrible scent are starting to wear off. I just want to get the hell out of here.'

Flying back the way she came Evelyn planned to exit the cave and never look back now that she had the minimum requirements needed to finish her missions.

Yet life was not going to be so easy on her, and as she was turning a corner and entered the passage to exit the cave system, she heard the sound of heavy wingbeats behind her.

They were even louder than that of the peak fiend beast rank bat she had heard before, and there was no doubt in her mind that what was coming after her was an awakened beast.

'Crap!'

Picking up speed and flying as fast as she could Evelyn tried to outfly the beast that was coming for her.

Unfortunately, even as she lowered her gravity and used gusts of wind to propel herself, she could still hear the thing getting closer, obviously having picked up on her already.

Her wing that was fractured not long ago still ached and using any more speed than she already was made it hurt unbearably since it had just been mended.

'Okay I am going to have to fight. But I soon as it is in range to use its sonic attacks, I am done for. Even just the one at the peak of the fiend beast rank was able to incapacitate me, so this one just might outright kill me.'

While trying to think of a strategy Evelyn heard the large bat closing in, and to make matters worse, some other bats returning to the cave.

Naturally they were all startled to see Evelyn coming through, and before they could do anything else, she unleashed a blast of her heavenly flame and torched them.

'Whew none of them were above mid-tier fiend beasts, so they went down easily enough.' Evelyn thought as she flew by the charred corpses of the bats.

Still, she had to slow down a bit to deal with the incoming bats and as she looked back, she caught a glimpse of the bat chasing her.

It was far larger than any of the other bats she had seen. Being around fourteen feet long and having a wingspan that just barely fit in this cave.

Its face was incredibly vicious as well. Looking like rabid wolf with a sunk in nose, and to makes matter worse it had something utterly despicable looking around its neck.

Dangling around its neck was four dead venom bats that had been at the peak of the fiend beast rank when they were still alive.

All of them had their eyes gouged out and huge hole in their chests, likely where their cores had been.

Seeing this Evelyn now realized why all the bats at the peak of the fiend beast rank had been injured. It was because of their boss being an absolute tyrant.

The bats at the peak of the fiend beast rank were the ones closest to evolving, but before they could even attempt to, this one would cripple them to prevent any challenger from appearing to try and take its place as the boss of the bats.

'Great, if it kills me, it might string me up on its neck as well.' Evelyn thought as she flew towards the mouth of the cave.

She could now see the exit in sight and if she could get out, she would have a much better chance since the bat's sound attacks would have more space to spread out and not be as precise.

But before she could make it to the exit the boss bat opened its mouth and unleashed a wave of sound towards Evelyn.

Sensing the danger incoming this time, Evelyn acted quickly and began spinning around to whip up the wind.

Sound could only travel through a medium, and where they were right now that was air which she had some power over.

As she spun and lowered the gravity around her, she made the air around her thinner, and when the soundwave hit far less of it made it to her than before.

An instant later she blasted out of the caves and into the open air. Swiftly flying upwards and towards the canopy of the frost.

The awakened beast bat, however, was not intent on letting her go, and blasted out of the cave right behind her with fury in its eyes.