An Owl's Rise

'To think I would be waiting for it to become daytime to have a clandestine meeting.' Evelyn thought while internally laughing.

For humans it was normally standard to have such engagements done at night when most people were asleep, but with most owls being nocturnal it was the complete opposite.

Slowly spinning her head around, Evelyn took in her surroundings and located where each of the sentries keeping watch over the area currently were.

Then when she was certain that none of them were watching her, she took out two talismans from one of her storage rings.

'Invisibility and scent dampening.' Evelyn thought as she activated each of them.

These were two of the talismans that Katrina had made sure she purchased before coming on the expedition, and while it was the first time she was using them, she was now glad to have them.

Quickly her body began to fade into the scenery and any sort of odor she was giving off was sealed tightly around her and mostly kept from permeating into her surroundings.

Now certain that she was well hidden, she quietly took off from her perch and began flying towards the area she was supposed to meet Katrina and Anneli.

It was around forty miles away from where she currently was and would take her only around an hour to reach at a steady pace.

Luckily, she managed to make it there without incident, and once she had gotten into the area she pulled out her message notebook and sent one off to Katrina.

'Okay they are that way.' Evelyn thought as she watched the paper bird start to fly.

She was currently only in the general area of their meet up and needed to use this convenient magic tool to make it to their exact location.

Within just another three minutes, she saw the large imposing forms of Melisandre's attendants and some of the only beings she trusted at all in this world.

"It is good to see that you have made it." Katrina said with a serious expression.

In contrast Anneli was her usual self, being quite bubbly and unreserved.

"Hey there Evelyn. You would not believe some of the crazy things we have seen and gotten into here. I know we have been communicating via messages, but you can only share so much that way." Anneli said with an exited tone.

Luckily before she went off on a tangent and told Evelyn about the entire adventure she had experienced, Katrina cut her off.

"Anneli we are here for something far more important than relaying our entire journey. We can get caught up on that another time. For now, we need to make a plan for Evelyn to obtain the float stone she needs."

Sighing, Anneli relented from detailing her adventure up to this point.

"To start I want to thank both of you for helping me with this. I never would have known about the float stone deposit without you both and your offer to help is very much appreciated. But are you sure? If you help me and we fail, the two of you could end up in trouble or even dead. I can do it alone if you just tell me where it is." Evelyn said with a concerned look in her eyes.

While she had wanted to avoid making any attachments over the last few months, she had lived and trained with these two and they had helped her out immensely. There was just simply no way she could not become a little close to them.

"No, we want to help you out Evelyn. We have to put in a good showing for our precious junior." Anneli said while raising her head up proudly.

"Well, I am not as magnanimous as Anneli here. But I also do want to help you. And we can simply say that you owe me one." Katrina said with a slight smile on her normally expressionless face.

Nodding her head Evelyn accepted their assistance now that it was clear that they were truly fine with helping her out.

"To start, I guess I need to know where the deposit is. Would you mind showing me?" Evelyn asked.

Pulling out a map she had, Katrina unfurled it and pointed at where the deposit is located.

"As you can see it really is close to the Roost's territory, but I am pretty sure the foxes had already figured out something valuable was there before they sent in an expeditionary force."

Looking at what Katrina was pointing out Evelyn definitely agreed with her, since this was one of the areas where the territories jutted out unnaturally.

Of course, there were plenty of areas like this in favor of the owls as well, but for Evelyn this was quite unfortunate as it was so close to having been very easy for her to obtain the float stone deposit.

"Anyway, Anneli and I approached the area not realizing we had crossed over the territory borders and were met by a group of foxes that are there setting up a way point for a warp gate to lock onto. They were not overly hostile when we arrived, but they did shoo us off pretty quickly and made it very clear we were in their territory."

"So, they already know about you two. That makes some options unusable, but I am glad to know that they will at least not attack us on sight. Oh, and were you able to get an accurate count of how many there are?"

"Yep, I could a good count of them." Anneli said chiming in. "There were five by what I could tell. Three at the peak of the awakened rank and two at the high tier.