An Owl's Rise

\'Damn it. Why are they always so persistent.\'

Glancing behind her Evelyn could see the four pursuing humans that had managed to break away from the fighting.

Still, at the very least these humans were weaker than the azure haired man that had been easily pushing her around.

\'If I had my full magical energy, I could easily lose them. But they are not even giving me a chance to recover.\' Evelyn thought as she dropped another pill bottle.

Every time she took out a recovery item the four humans would launch attacks at her and force her to rapidly evade.

Among them one of them especially was giving her trouble with his spear that was able to extend insanely fast and catch up to where she was in only a second. And unfortunately, as she was now, she had no way to block the attack.

The only thing keeping her going was her superior physique she had obtained from the Aethersphere reworking her body and the powerful evolution she had recently attained.

However, even this one advantage was slowly failing her. The poison that was still in her body despite the antidote she had taken was seeping in deeper and making it more difficult for her to move. Every rapid movement she made to avoid an attack only sped up the spread of the paralytic poison.

Panic was starting to set in as her breathes became more labored and Evelyn frantically tried to think of ways to get out of her current predicament.

\'I am not going to be captured again. I refuse to be a lab rat. If I am going to lose, I might as well take the out with me.\'

Feeling her body starting to seize up Evelyn decided if she was going out, she would go out with a bang.

She had enough power left in her for one final attack and would use it to create an explosion with her heavenly flame.

\'Here goes nothing. I am leaving everything else up to the fate my brother saw and bet his life on.\'

When she had built up her remaining magical energy, Evelyn abruptly stopped her momentum by holding her wings out, and with a heavy flap launched herself back towards the humans chasing after her.

They had not been expecting her to suddenly fall back towards them, and the attacks they had already initiated were going to hit her.

All of them had been doing their best to not kill her since their leader had asked for her alive if possible. But her unexpected movement placed her directly in the path of their attacks.

Yet despite it seeming like she would take a fatal wound; Evelyn jerked her body around to take the hits where her armor protected her.

With expert precision she managed to have all the attacks glance off her, though that is not to say they did not hurt quite a bit.

Her amor had prevented her from being sliced or pierced but the impact of the attacks still hurt, and she felt some bruises already setting in.

\'But you are all in range now.\'

\'Flare Burst!\'

Positioned in the middle of the four humans Evelyn unleashed the magic she had been building up and a powerful explosion created by her unrestrained heavenly flame enveloped the area.

Unable to withstand the surprise attack, all four of the humans found themselves burning away and frantically trying to use their magical energy to protect themselves.

In the end only one of them managed to survive. Though their left arm and leg had been turned to ash and the entire rest left side of their body had terrible burns.

Evelyn of course escaped from the blast mostly uninjured, but she had drained the last of her magical energy and the poison in her system had made it difficult for her to move.

Quickly she plummeted from the air, and with her fading consciousness saw that she was about to plunge into the river at the bottom of the gorge.

\'This had better work.\'

Before passing out from expending all of her magical energy Evelyn activated the effects of her sea serpent armor and created an air bubble around her head.

This would allow her to breath even underwater for thirty minutes, and she hoped that it would make a difference.

She then fell right into the river unconscious and was dragged away by the current.

Along the way she was thrown about and smashed against rocks. Completely at the mercy of the river.

If she had been a normal owl there is no doubt her body would have been broken within just a few seconds, but she was tougher than steel now that she had made it to the awakened rank. And even though it left her battered, none of the impacts into the rocks caused major damage.

However, while she could take the thrashing from the river even while unconscious, she only had thirty minutes of air.

There were numerous times when the current dragged her under for a prolonged time and without the magic from her armor, she certainly would have drowned.

Dozens of minutes passed for Evelyn as the rapids of the river pulled her further from where she started, and soon her armor\'s power was going to end.

When it did, it was likely that she would drown as her body was seized up from poison and unconscious.

Yet by some miracle the river began to calm, and Evelyn\'s limp body washed up on a shallow bank.

Her body was slowly sinking into the mud, and she was covered in dirt, but she was no longer begin dragged away by the river and at risk of drowning

Except this brought with it a new set of problems.

Now that she was out of the raging part of the river there were beasts that were living in the calm, and one of them noticed Evelyn unmoving body.

A large alligator that was at the high tier of the fiend beast rank eyed Evelyn warily while lowly moving closer to her.

Even though the alligator was an apex predator, down here at the bottom of the Elmot Gorge his rank made him a small fry in comparison to many others.

Normally he would never move towards the bank and had gotten by eating the numerous lower ranking fish that lived in the river and absorbing the plentiful magical energy in the area. But the prospect of being able to eat Evelyn who was at the awakened rank was too tempting to pass up.

The lumbering beast soon was standing in the shallows and walking towards Evelyn with a gleam in its eyes.

It could tell how much eating her would raise its rank, and its instincts compelled it to consume the meal that it normally would never have a chance to get.

"It has been a while since I have had alligator. You will make a nice treat."

Without any warning the alligator that thought it was all alone heard a voice and felt a presence that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

It slowly turned towards the direction of the voice and found that a cloaked figure was standing there.

Immediately it tried to turn around and flee back into the river but found that its head was separated from its body before it could even take a single step.

After the alligator was dead, the entity that had killed it swiftly shoved it into a spatial bag.

"Oh, and what do we have here. I cannot remember the last time I saw an owl down here. Some poultry might be nice as well."

Noticing Evelyn, the hooded figure leisurely approached her, but stopped when she caught sight of something on Evelyn\'s body.

"I see. A member of the Roost. I suppose that I cannot just eat her then. I might as well take her back and see if she will wake up on her own."