An Owl's Rise

It was very likely that the foxes would demand their lives and some other form of compensation from the Roost.

In that situation even Melisandre probably would not be able to protect them, as what they were doing right now could be considered an act of war.

Another possibility was that these foxes had allies near enough that the message would reach them quickly enough to bring in reinforcements and turn the tide of the battle right now.

'I cannot let it get away.' Evelyn thought as she rushed towards the message realizing all the ways things could go wrong if it got to its destination.

Focusing on all of her powers at once she lowered her own gravity, at the same time created three flames behind her that acted like rocket boosters, and finally moved the air around her to lower its resistance and use it as a tailwind.

This allowed her to burst forward at an incredible speed that the gray furred fox who was her opponent could not anticipate.

In just an instant she caught up to the message and exploded in a blast of fire that burned it to ash.

'Impossible.' The gray furred fox thought.

Not only had Evelyn suddenly moved with speed that should have been impossible. She had also harmed the magic message that should have been untouchable.

They had a magic weaved into them that allowed to pass through solid objects and while in flight only those that had specialized understanding of them or a magic that could interact with intangible items should have been able to destroy them.

Yet Evelyn's fire had just destroyed it without any trouble, which the gray furred fox could not understand.

However, this was simply the absolute power of Evelyn's heavenly flame which could burn through anything so long as it was fed enough power.

'I need to always be pushing him. Not matter what, I cannot let them get out a message.' Evelyn thought as she turned her gaze back towards her opponent.

Immediately she launched some more wind blades at him to prevent him from trying to do anything else sneaky.

As long as she kept the pressure on, there would be no way that he could send another message or use any more magic items to recovery.

Unfortunately, her earlier lapse in judgment had allowed it to use some healing potions. Now most of its wounds were gone with the only noticeable damage being its still missing left front leg.

At the very least it did not have a potion strong enough to restore the missing limb Evelyn had burned away with her opening attack.

The gray furred fox quite easily avoided the wind blades that Evelyn had sent at it.

Even with only three legs he was still a high tier awakened rank beast with dozens of years of experience under his belt.

As powerful as Evelyn was, he was till fundamentally stronger than her in almost every way.

Quickly he created multiple fox paws with sharp claws out of smoke and began sending them Evelyn's way.

Taking evasive action, she flew away from the paws made of smoke, but found that they began chasing after her like heat seeking missiles.

In response she created a wind barrier around herself which managed to blow the smoke away momentarily.

Yet even when it was blown away, the smoke paws reformed and kept after her presently.

And along with having to avoid this assault, Evelyn knew she needed to attack as well to prevent the gray furred fox from having time to breath.

To that end she created to swirling spheres of fire around her head and began having them shot off needles of her heavenly flame like machine guns.

Overall, this attack did not have much power behind it, but right now she needed more output rather than an actually decisive attack.

Luckily this was enough to keep the gray furred fox on its toes, as it could not keep up its own assault and dodge while doing anything else.

This went on for nearly two minutes, and for both of them it seemed like they were in some sort of bullet hell game.

Evelyn was being chased by relentless smoke projectiles while she unleashed a barrage of flame needles at the gray furred fox.

But one of them was at a clear disadvantage. And that was Evelyn.

In terms of overall magical energy, she actually matched or even exceeded the gray furred fox, but the problem was that she had used up a large amount of her stores in her opening attack.

And while it did hit pretty big, even killing on of the foxes. It meant she was running on far less power at the start of this fight than she normally would have and was poised to run out before the fox who was her opponent.

A battle of attrition was completely out of the question for her, and she knew it. But how she was to break through this stalemate was difficult for her to figure out.

'I can only keep this up for another three minutes at most. If I do not win by then I will run out of magical energy and be a sitting duck.'

Evelyn quickly began racking her brain looking for the correct answer, but only came up with three real possibilities.

'I can try charging him with my full speed and unleashing a powerful attack at close range, but if it fails, I will be out of means to win. No, I will have to go with one of the other options even if I do not want to.' Evelyn decided.

She was in no position to hold back on any of her resources, and it was time to take extreme measures.

Stopping for a moment, she activated her storage cuff and pulled out a certain talisman.

However, as she did this all of the smoke paws closed in around her and began crashing against her wind barrier in force.

As much as her wind magic was quite effective against smoke magic, in such a large quantity and with all the power behind it, her barrier was liable to break within just an instant. Which it certainly did.

For all intents and purposes, this should have been the end of Evelyn, as she was hit by powerful magic attacks.

Except before the paws made of smoke reached her a bright blue glow surrounded her body.

Each of the attacks that hit her easily bounced off and were repelled without any difficulty.

It was a befuddling sight for the gray furred fox to witness. Its attacks were by no means weak and should have rended a peak fiend beast into nothing more than scrapes of meat and bone.

'Looks like it works just as well as she said it would.' Evelyn thought as she observed the power of the barrier around her.

She had ultimately decided to use one of the two powerful tressures that Melisandre had given her before her first trip into the glowing woods.

Now she had a barrier around her that could indefinitely take any attacks from an awakened beast for the next several minutes.

With this she would no longer need to worry about expending any of her magic energy on defense and could simply go on the attack with as much reckless abandon as she wanted.

Charing right in Evelyn ignored the powerful smoke magic attacks coming for her and burst through.

Then she swirled her body around and unleashed a torrent of spiraling wind blades that were wreathed in her heavenly fire.

Her two affinities simply worked impeccably well together and allowed her to use such combo attacks like this which increased their speed and attack power by leaps and bounds from what they would be alone.

The entire area around her and the gray furred fox was cut up and melted by this attack and Evelyn's target was unable to get away unscathed.

Multiple of the blades had gazed its body and it lustrous fur was burned, and its flesh cut into.

The gray furred fox tried multiple times to break through the barrier surrounding Evelyn, but all its attacks failed to even scratch the powerful magic barrier that the talisman Melisandre had given Evelyn had created.

Eventually the fox realized it had no chance of winning against such a power and created a smoke screen in an attempt to escape.

But this was just what Evelyn had been waiting for.

As the gray furred fox turned away from her to flee, she put all of her magical energy into one final attack.

'Ignis wings.'

Coating her wings and the blades that extended from the tip of them with her heavenly flame, she turned her own wings into swords that were so hot they could easily cut through steel.

With her attack ready she accelerated forward at her maximum speed and shot towards her fleeing adversary.

In an instant she caught up, and while it tried to jump out of the way Evelyn simply spun her body around and the blade on the tip of her left wing carved into the side of the fox and ran across its body as she shot by.

A horrible wound in its side the gray furred fox collapsed to the ground and howled in pain as its own blood boiled inside it from being hit by Evelyn's heavenly flame.