An Owl's Rise

'It is clearly wary of me, or more precisely my heavenly flame. Still, it has not given up. It clearly wanted to kill us.' Evelyn thought, watching the monster.

"Thank you for rescuing me, Evelyn. I did not expect to be captured by such a method.' Verrader said, his head lowered.

"Don't worry about it. We are a team, any of us would do the same. Now stay focused. This thing definitely has other tricks it can use." Evelyn said.

Soon the others had met back up with them, and Evelyn instructed them to take up positions to encircle the moss monster and cut off its escape routes.

The moment it realized that it was being closed in on the monster picked out who it thought was the easiest target and began bounding through the trees towards them.

It had chosen Aralee who it perceived as the most vulnerable and multiple tendrils of moss shot out of its body and wove itself into a spiked net.

As this happened Rehni who was nearby sent out spinning blades like buzz saws which cut through the moss.

At the same time Aralee created a gateway of magical energy that continued her momentum magic right in front of the moss creature.

When it passed through he gateway its already fast speed exploded and it found that it could no longer control itself.

Its body then flew forward and slammed hard into one of the trees and splattered across it.

Nevertheless, the impact seemed to cause it no real damage and its viscous body reformed quickly.

'Die.'

Creating a wide blaze Evelyn unleashed a storm of fire over the area where the moss monster landed and engulfed everything in her heavenly flame.

The sturdy trees began to catch fire and the moss creature was engulfed.

'Looks like I can at least burn thought he trees if necessary.' Evelyn thought.

She had seen so far that none of their stray attacks or impacts had caused any damage to the trees, but her heavenly flame with its properties to be able to burn through just about anything could destroy them as easily as any other tree.

Yet, despite her attack encompassing a wide range, a couple of seconds after Evelyn unleashed her wide range attack a figure jumped out of the blazing area of the forest.

It was now only around a hundredth of its size, but the moss monster had managed to escape Evelyn's attack by sacrificing the majority of its body.

Moss from the surrounding area began being attracted to it and its tiny body began increasing in mass once more.

"Don't let it recover. We need to take it down quickly while it is still weakened." Evelyn said, charging towards the creature.

However, now the moss monster was incredibly on guard against Evelyn and scrambled away from her as fast as it could while collecting more moss to replenish its body.

As it hoped around all over the place it left ball of moss that would expand whenever any of them got near them.

These moss balloons would knock them around and made it difficult to catch up to the moss monster.

The biggest advantage this creature had was its ability to perfectly use the terrain while Evelyn and her companions were limited by the thick foliage.

Eventually Otis managed to catch up and having created sand that he could manipulate sent several thin beams towards the moss creature that cut it apart.

The damage he did though was quickly recovered since his sand was not able to fully destroy the moss like Evelyn's heavenly flame was.

Still, this kept it from running around as fast and Bylur caught up to it and fired off a massive snowball that swallowed the monster.

The creature tired to pull its way out of the snow, but now that Bylur had caught it, he was not going to let it go.

Rapidly he froze its body and the water in the moss expanded as it flash froze.

"Good job, Otis, Bylur." Evelyn said, flying down next to them.

Their efforts had finally allowed them to beat their first enemy in the domain of the Verdant Warlord.

Both Bylur and Otis beamed at receiving Evelyn's praise, before glaring at each other.

"I did not need your help. I was just about to finish it off myself." Otis said.

"Yeah right. Your magic may be strong, but it was mostly ineffective. My ice magic was best to take it down." Bylur retorted.

"Enough of that you two. If we beat it, why has it not turned into tokens yet." Rehni said, putting an end to their bickering.

It was at this point that they all realized that this domain did not act exactly as the real world. When they defeated an enemy here, they were supposed to turn into tokens. That meant that this moss monster was not dead yet.

"Stand back. I will make sure that it gets incinerated this time." Evelyn said, busting into crimson flames.

All of her companions flew back away from her and she wrapped a twister of flames around the frozen moss creature and made sure it would not escape this time.

Swiftly Evelyn reduced its body to ash and had a satisfied look on her face.

Except her smile soon faded as she saw a hole in the ground below where the creature had been.

It was in this moment she realized that the reason Bylur's attack had not finished it off was because the core of the moss monster had already escaped before he froze it.

In the next instant Evelyn eyes went wide and she Jumped up and to the side. She had felt her instincts suddenly screaming at her that she was in danger and a spear of moss had shot out from behind her.

But despite her quick reaction she had not quite been fast enough to escape and she felt a searing pain as the moss pierced into her side and ruptured one of her lungs.

'Damn it!' Evelyn thought as she turned around and saw the now small form of the moss creature hiding among a group of rocks with its arms outstretched into the spear that had pierced her.

Immediately Evelyn created a wind blade and severed the arm as she felt it starting to shift and push its way further into her body.

The moss monster tried to launch another attack, but Bylur had sent out several ice spikes that it had to dodge and prevented it from continuing its assault on Evelyn.

Following Bylur, Otis began viscously attacking the creature and the others soon joined in.

"Evelyn, are you oaky!" Bylur shouted, glowing white as he surround Evelyn with his life magic to heal her.

"Yeah, I am fine. It only got one lung. I will recover quickly enough." Evelyn said as blood dribbled out of her mouth.

Thanks to Bylur's healing she felt the pain began to subside and the wound was closing.

Nevertheless, he was not quite good enough with his life magic yet to heal her injury quickly and Evelyn needed to use a powerful healing potion to fix her lung so that she could rejoin the battle.

"Now let's go destroy that thing. I will not be able to rest until it is dead." Evelyn said once she had recovered, her fury palpable.

With Bylur in tow she flew off into the air towards where Otis, Rehni, Aralee, and Verrader were fighting the monster.

For several minutes the six of them chased it around the forest, the moss monster evading their assaults with its ability to change its body shape at will and master over moving around the forest.

In the end though, Evelyn and her companions managed to catch it and surrounded it.

"Nowhere to go now. You made a mistake of coming to this area. There is way less for you to hide behind." Evelyn said with a smirk on her face.

Where they were now, had far few trees standing as many of them had collapsed onto the forest floor and had mushrooms growing all over them.

Except Evelyn was soon to find out that this was exactly where the moss monster wanted to lead them.

As they were all reveling in having caught their elusive enemy and preparing to finish it off once and for all, Aralee noticed movement coming towards them out of the corner of her eyes.

"Everyone! More enemies!" She shouted over their connection. Gathering all of their attention.

Running towards them were what looked like wolves, but on closer inspection it was clear to see that their bodies were made out of mushrooms.

'What the hell is going on with his place?!' Evelyn thought watching these incomprehensible creatures coming towards them.

In this moment of confusion the moss monster made its escape, no longer trying to kill them. It was simply to worn down to continue fighting.

Unfortunately, Evelyn could not chase after it, since the mushroom wolves were upon them and had fired off several shroom bullets at them.

Creating a wind barrier around herself, Evelyn deflected the projectiles away from herself and those near her.

Yet, when the mushrooms hit her wind, they exploded, and clouds of spores spread out all around them.

Evelyn did her best to keep them away, but a few breached her defenses and she breathed them in.

Almost instantly she felt the moisture in her body and some of her magical energy being sucked up as the mushrooms rapidly expanded in her throat.

'If I ever find this Verdant Warlord, I am going to kill him.' Evelyn thought in a moment of frustration as her consciousness began to fade.