An Owl's Rise

She had no intention of letting it regroup with the rest of its flock and inform them of the coming assault.

In an incredible burst of speed, she easily caught up, and before the osprey knew what hit it, Evelyn had sliced its head off with one of the retractable blades attached to her wings.

'That is one more down. Now so long as our estimates were not horribly wrong, we should only be dealing with a dozen more at most.'

Having finished off the guard watching the entrance, Evelyn now had a bit of time before the burrowing owls caught up and she used it to survey the area.

Though as she did, she wondered why the tunnels were so large.

Even the massive ospreys seemed able to fly through easily enough, but the burrowing owls were all tiny and could have made their home much smaller in order to prevent larger intruders in the first place.

'A question for another time. For now, I need to focus on taking out our enemies.' Evelyn thought as she saw the burrowing owls catching up.

Once they had reassembled their forces, Evelyn followed right behind Otis who led the way to the main chamber where the magic spring was located.

It was likely that the ospreys would be entrenched there to make a final stand.

Along the way the burrowing owls checked all of the branching paths and rooms on Evelyn's orders to make sure that the ospreys were not hiding in wait to ambush them.

Luckily it did not seem that their tactics were any better than the burrowing owls without Evelyn and no sort of attack came.

Soon enough they came into a large open area that was illuminated by multiple glowing crystals that jutted out of the ceiling.

Immediately Evelyn could feel that this place had a great deal more magical energy in it than anywhere else she had been in the Velinis Desert.

And in the center was a large circular pool of water that was clearly the magic spring.

However, no matter how amazing the sight she had come across was, Evelyn did not have time to take it in as the ospreys had been waiting for them.

The second Evelyn and Otis appeared in the chamber the two lead ospreys commanded what remained of their subordinates to attack, and multiple spells went flying.

It was clear that the Ospreys wanted to take out as many of the burrowing owls as possible while they were in the tunnel leading to the main chamber.

Of course, Evelyn had figured this would happen and neither she nor any of the burrowing owls were surprised.

With practiced coordination they used their magic to push back, and Evelyn took the lead by creating a vortex that pushed the weaker attacks away.

Without taking any damage Evelyn and the burrowing owls pushed into the main chamber and hovered around in formation while the ospreys were stunned by failing in their attack.

'Looks like there are only ten left at the awakened rank including the two leaders. Most of them are only at the low tier with two at the mid and none at the high. Our earlier attacks really did take out the majority of their forces.' Evelyn thought while analyzing the situation.

Naturally the ospreys were assessing the situation as well, and the two leaders narrowed their eyes and glared at Otis.

They recognized that he was the highest-ranking burrowing owl and believed him to be the leader.

As for Evelyn, they had seen her use impressive magic, but she still only had the aura of a low tier awakened rank despite how powerful she was. This led them to practically disregard her.

"There are only ten of them. Use the formation that we planned for this scenario." Otis said to his fellow burrowing owls.

Quickly they formed up and began charging the ospreys who had been waiting for their attackers' move.

Once the burrowing owls and Evelyn began flying right for them the large birds of prey took to the sky and flew to meet the burrowing owls.

They knew that in a physical fight their large size would give them an edge over the burrowing owls as it was what they had done when they originally invaded.

The burrowing owls were of course aware of this weakness and began spreading out when the ospreys started coming towards them

The enhanced reflexes potions that Evelyn had given them all allowed them take shaper turns and stay out of reach of the far larger ospreys.

Their strategy that Evelyn had come up with was to stay nimble and pepper the ospreys down from multiple sides and use the burrowing owls' now superior numbers to prevent the ospreys from getting to attack.

Though there were two problems with this plan, and that was the ospreys' leaders who were significantly stronger than any of the burrowing owls.

For them they could catch up to the burrowing owls easily enough and overpower them by simply having superior magical energy and control.

This was where Evelyn and the three strongest burrowing owls would step in.

Otis, leading the two mid-tier burrowing owls he trusted the most went after the ospreys' patriarch, while Evelyn went after the matriarch who was the most powerful.

Launching a few weaker wind magic spells, Evelyn easily got her opponent's attention and the ospreys' matriarch followed after her as she separated from the main group.

'This is almost too easy. All of the ospreys moved exactly how we wanted them and now that the two leaders are away from the others the burrowing owls should have no problem cleaning up the weaker ones.' Evelyn thought ass he led the osprey matriarch away.

When she felt she had created enough distance she turned around and faced her enemy head on.

A powerful bolt of lightning flew towards her the moment she stopped and for most low tier awakened rank beasts this would have spelled the end.

For Evelyn though, she had dealt with stronger attacks when training with Anneli and Katrina, who were at the same rank as the two osprey leaders and knew what to do.

Lightning was tricky to block or dodge due to its nature, but a barrier of pure magical energy that was stronger could block it easily enough.

After deflecting the first bolt easily enough Evelyn activated her gravity field and used her most unfair power to send the osprey matriarch plummeting.

'Extreme Press.'

Suddenly being hit with gravity that was around forty times greater than normal the twenty-foot-tall peak awakened rank osprey matriarch was unable to resist.

The ground was only a few dozen feet away with a loud crash the osprey matriarch left a large crater in it.

To follow up Evelyn launched multiple high-speed javelins made of her heavenly flame like missile barrage.

Explosions resounded though the area and bright flashes of crimson light bathed over everything.

For a moment Evelyn could not see anything and her enemy was blocked from view by her own attack.

Any lesser beast certainly would have died from that attack or at least been heavily injured, but Evelyn was surprised to see the osprey matriarch was only slightly singed.

'I suppose that this is not going to be as easy as I hoped.'