An Owl's Rise

Watching the Verdant Warlord's Vestige fade with a smirk on his face, made Evelyn wanted to burn the entire domain to the ground, but she knew that would not help her in this station.

Her attempt to contact her friends and siblings using a magic message had failed and there was no way for her to know how everyone else was doing or where they were.

'Calm down, calm down, calm down.' Evelyn repeated over and over in her head.

Taking several long breaths and bashing her head against the stone floor of the maze a few times helped Evelyn to regain her senses.

If she thought about things logically, the others were almost certainly still fine at this point in time.

Just like her they had been brought to an inactive warp pad and given an explanation about how this floor works.

'The vestige also gave me a slight bit of information that helps. Probably.' Evelyn thought.

If not for his last comment about magic items such as her message pad not working here, she would have assumed that all of her companions were out of range. Which would be several hundreds of kilometers away.

Of course, this could still be the case, Evelyn had no clue how big this domain was, but at least she could hope that it was not that far.

'First, I need to try and meet up with the others as quickly as I can. Aralee and Verrader especially are in danger being the weakest of our group.'

Without hesitation, Evelyn turned towards the single opening into the maze and began flying through it without any care. Using a large flame to light the way.

Normally it would be best to take some caution when exploring such a place, but Evelyn had decided to go with the brute force method. If something got in her way, she would simply blast through it with her full power.

Unfortunately, dangerous creatures were not the only difficulty that this maze brought. Within just a minute of leaving her starting location Evelyn was met with four different paths going in separate directions.

Without really considering anything, Evelyn chose the path that was furthest to her left and continued down it.

Yet almost immediately she ran into a dead end and had to turn back.

Except the moment she turned around what appeared to be a wall of shrubs just like the ones making up the maze came to life and lurched forward with its mouth wide open.

Suddenly Evelyn was swallowed whole by the two-hundred-meter-tall hedge wall monsters.

She felt sharp branches cut into her, and if not for the strong armor Melisandre had gifted her, she might have been killed.

Luckily all of her vitals were protected and an instant after being eaten she burst into flames and burned the monster trying toe at her from the inside.

After just a couple seconds of being hit by Evelyn's heavenly flame the giant plant monster died and disappeared. Leaving behind seven iron tokens.

'Damn it! What the hell is with this place?!' Evelyn internally screamed.

She had only barely ventured into the maze and was met with a monster that had disguised itself as a wall.

Turning around, Evelyn found that the path was now open to continue down.

'Great now I need to attack every dead end I come to just to make sure it is not a monster. But I can't use my heavenly flame since if it is actually part of the maze I will get attacked by the Verdant Warlord's Vestige.' Evelyn thought, her frustration peaking again.

When she calmed down a little, she remembered that she had more than one type of magic to attack with and decided any future walls she was suspicious of, she would hit with a wind blade.

Without even taking the time to take the iron tokens from the monster she had just beaten Evelyn continued on her way. Her one and only priority was meeting up with her companions. She could not care less about collecting the resources from this domain at the moment.

Unfortunately, despite how frantically Evelyn was proceeding, she did not find any of her compassion before she began to feel exhausted. Both physically and mentally.

At this point she did not know how long she had been flying around since the maze did not change no matter how much time passed.

Everything was simply swallowed in pitch black darkness other than for the light that Evelyn was producing with her magic.

Along the way Evelyn had also gotten into several battles that left her injured and drained of magical energy.

Just about everything in the maze had gotten the drop on her since she was recklessly flying around without any caution.

'I cannot rest yet. I still haven't found anyone yet.' Evelyn thought about continuing to push herself.

She pulled out a bottle of stamina restoration pills and swallowed a couple to keep going.

In an instant she felt a rush of energy and was alert again.

However, after doing this for the fourth time without getting any rest whatsoever, Evelyn was getting close to her limit.

While she did not know it she had been up for three days straight at this point, flying around the maze without any direction. Sometimes she was actually going around in circles without realizing it.

'This is new. First time I have seen a foggy path. I have not been cautious up to this point anyway. I just have to keep going.'

Not stopping to think for even a moment, Evelyn flew into the fog and did not slow down one bit. Currently she was too tired and worried to even think about her own safety. Her mind was stuck on the goal of finding any of her companions.

Soon Evelyn began to smell a sweet scent that was simar to a spring morning after a heavy rain. The fog's color had also changed ever so slightly to have a blueish tinge to it, but Evelyn did not find these changes disconcerting, since her mind was barely functioning at this point after being awake for over three days.

Then Evelyn saw it, an area of the maze that had a crystal archway in it and a warp pad in the center.

'That must be one of the checkpoints that the vestige told me about.' Evelyn thought, feeling a sense of joy and relief well up inside her.

These areas were safe zones within the maze, and as much as she wanted to continue searching for her friends and siblings, an unbearable sleepiness was starting to overcome her.

Evelyn figured that se would be able to search for the others better after getting some rest in this first safe area she had come across.

There was even some hope that she might find someone else waiting for her there but, it was unfortunately empty other than a terminal that Evelyn figured was used to return to the first floor.

'I can worry about everything else later. I am not sure why I was in such a rush anyway. For now, I just need to sleep.' Evelyn thought, her body wobbling around as she was barely able to stay conscious.

But for some reason even though she was so tired and supposedly in a safe zone, her instincts were screaming at her that she was in horrible danger.

Nevertheless, her exhaustion as so great that she could not help closing her eyes after convincing herself that she was just being paranoid.

She had certainly reached a saw zone where she could rest, and sleep was all that she could think about.  At least until she completely passed out and was not thinking about anything else anymore.

…

"Evie, wake up. We are going to be late for school."

Suddenly, feeling herself being shaken, Evelyn shot up and looked towards the person that had been shaking her.

Standing beside her was her brother Mason with an exasperated look on his face.

"This is the second time this week you overslept. I know you have been enjoying that new book that dad bought you, but you need to get to sleep on time. What are you going to do when I am not here to wake you up in the morning." Mason said, chiding his litter sister.

For several moments Evelyn just stared in a daze at the person before her and tears unconsciously began falling down her face.

"Evie, is something wrong?" Mason asked, a concerned expression on his face.

"Huh!?"

Moving a hand up to her face, Evelyn did not understand why she was crying. For a moment she could have sworn that she remembered Mason dying right before her eyes. But there was no way something like that could have happened. He was standing right beside her.

"Sorry, I will get up and get ready. I think I was just having a bad dream." Evelyn said, wiping the tears out of her eyes and getting out of bed.