An Owl's Rise



Evelyn felt her body aching and her head spinning after crashing into the wall at the end of the maze's corridor. She had endured her fair share of attacks within the maze, but this was definitely among one of the worst.

'I have to get back up. The battle is not over yet.'

Gritting her beak, Evelyn forced her body back up, but it was far more difficult than she had been anticipating.

Despite only coming in contact with a small amount of the bramble dragonfly's poison, she could feel the deadly substances already slowing her down.

Unfortunately, Evelyn did not have a single moment to try and recover before she felt an extreme sense of danger coming from behind her.

'Reverse Press!'

Evelyn immediately grasped that she would not be able to block or dodge the attack coming from her in a conventional manner and instead massively lowered the gravity around herself and pushed off the ground into the air.

This allowed her to leap out of the way of the incoming blast of poison from her enemy, but the next thing she felt was crashing into the ceiling of the hedge maze.

Luckily, with the gravity being far lesser around her the impact was not nearly as bad as it would have been otherwise.

The instant after she felt her momentum stop, Evelyn scanned around for where the bramble dragonfly was and saw it repositioning to take another shot at her.

Evelyn braced for impact, understanding that dodging or blocking this attack was only going to force her back into a defensive battle she was going to lose. She needed to attack if she wanted to win.

Focusing on speed above all else, Evelyn created a single javelin of of fire wrapped and win and fired it off at the monster.

Her attack came off just a second after the bramble dragonfly's and all she could do was move her head out of the way and let it hit her in the shoulder instead.

This time her armor was not fully able to take the direct hit, and she felt part of the high-speed jet of liquid break through and pierce into her right shoulder.

A decent amount of the poison also splashed against her face and into her eyes, causing Evelyn and excruciating amount of pain.

She nearly lost focus on her own attack, but pain was something she had plenty of experience enduring and she barely kept her wits about her and launched her counterattack. The single javelin made of her heavenly flame and enhanced by wind magic blasted off towards its target.

Yet, the bramble dragonfly was easily able to evade, its agility being far greater than anything Evelyn had ever faced before.

It would seem that Evelyn's last-ditch attack had failed but she still smiled even as she began to fall towards the ground.

The bramble dragonfly seemed to understand her intentions a moment later and turned its body around to see the false hedge wall getting blasted by Evelyn's attack.

Just as the bramble dragonfly had been aiming its attacks at Aralee to force Evelyn to intercept it, Evelyn had done the same now that their positions had changed.

Surely, her opponent would never put itself in harms way to take an attack for another monster in the maze, but at least Evelyn was able to help Aralee out and damage her opponent.

Nevertheless, Evelyn's attack had not finished off Aralee's opponent, and she was barely able to move after all the damage she had taken.

Still, she did not believe the situation was hopeless, and when the bramble dragonfly turned to finish her off, she felt assured of her victory.

Before it could launch another attack against her, Evelyn spread out her increased gravity field. 

As the magic advanced it was noticeable from the leaves of the hedge maze dropping under the increased gravity, and the bramble dragonfly sensed the magic coming its way.

For the second time it avoided Evelyn gravity magic by swiftly flying to the edge of the gravity field's range.

However, the monster found itself under attack again before it even realized what was happening. A glowing yellow orb impacted its body just as it escaped the range of Evelyn's gravity field.

From behind, Aralee had attacked it with her momentum magic and was slowing it down. Now the bramble dragonfly's greatest asset, its agility was crippled.

Aralee spun by the monster, turning her body into a twister of sharp wind as she did.

Unable to fully avoid the attack, the monster folded its wings in and contorted its body into a ball where only its hardened wooden body was exposed.

Aralee's wing sliced into it as she flew by, but she only inflicted light scratches.

At the very least her wind magic launched the bramble dragon fly away and she flew past it towards her sister.

Evelyn, seeing Aralee, approaching though blurred vision. Deactivated her gravity field and allowed her little sister to reach her.

Immediately she felt a cold liquid splash against her face, before a pill bottle was jammed into her mouth.

A soothing sensation quickly began to spread over Evelyn as the healing position Aralee had doused her in began to take effect, and the four antidote pills that Evelyn swallowed took the edge off the poison coursing through her body.

Blinking her eyes a few times, Evelyn felt her vison beginning to return now that the poison's effects were lessening, and the healing position was fixing the damage.

For good measure she took out another healing position and drank it. Before turning her attention towards the enemy that had put her into such a terrible state.

Aralee's attack had only slowed it down and pushed it away. There was no doubt that it would not be back.

'It looks like we are in luck though. We have a few more seconds to recovery.' Evelyn thought as she watched the current situation.

While monsters of the same type would team up and not be hostile towards each other, the same could not be said for those of different types.

When it lost its current target, the false hedge wall had started attacking the next closest entity, which was currently the bramble dragonfly.

Certainly, the hedge wall was going to lose against the far stronger monster, but it was at least holding the creature off while Evelyn recovered.