An Owl's Rise

Flying down from her bed on top of the tree like branch in her room, Evelyn moved into a corner of a room where she could test out her new power.

She imbued some magical energy into her left foot and discharged it into the floor where a slight flash shone for just a moment before everything went back to normal.

It seemed that the floor was unchanged, but Evelyn could feel where she had left her magic behind and jumped onto it.

The effects were immediate a dull purple light flashed again as soon as she stepped on the area and she felt her body become lighter and she shot towards the ceiling.

It only moved her up around six feet before gravity went back to normal, but she was very satisfied with the successful test of her new power.

'So, this is the gravity trap. It is certainly impressive. I cannot wait to try it out some more.' Evelyn thought with a truly delighted expression.

Her new power allowed her to imbue her magical energy into anything and leave a delayed area of either lowered or greater gravity.

She was not even limited to setting it on surfaces or solid objects. It could be left in the air or even in an area of a complete vacuum.

Still, it was not an ability that would do best in a one-on-one combat that happened in the heat of the moment. She needed about a dozen seconds to set one of these traps, but it would have plenty of uses even then.

'I need to practice using it. If I can quicker at setting the parameters, I can leave the trap faster.'

Once she was satisfied with the application of her new magic, Evelyn exited her room and washed up.

She had fallen asleep before cleaning herself yesterday and could smell all manner lingering scents of things on her from moving around the alchemy hall.

'Ah it feels good to be clean. I got so used to living with dirt all over me and not beign able to be properly cleaned that I forgot how refreshing it is.' Evelyn thought as she rubbed herself down with the cleansing powder.

It seemed to have a magic effect that allowed it to seek out and destroy grim while enhancing the natural oils that Evelyn's body produced.

By the time she was finished she practically was gleaming, and she felt like an entirely different owl.

When that was done, she made her way to the kitchen where Anneli was waiting for her with some food ready.

"Lady Melisandre is going to be busy for the next week at least, so you will be without her until then. I will make sure that you have food to eat, but other than that you will be on your own. Your only goal during this time is to train your control over magical energy."

Having been given her task for the week Evelyn made her way to the training area that Melisandre had showed her before and got started.

She was heavily motivated now that she had gotten a new power from the Aethersphere and wanted to advance as quickly as she could.

Unfortunately, as much as she started out with plenty of drive, after hours of failure to achieve anything, she started to feel down.

'Damn it. Everything I do just ends up the same. How the hell am I supposed to bring out pure magical energy instead of just using the magic of my affinities.' Evelyn thought in frustration.

She had been at it for hours and this was her second time trying but she had made no progress.

Already she felt like she was on the brink of collapse having used all of her magical energy, and she was no closer to her goal.

'Why is this even necessary? Shouldn't there be a better and quicker way to train other than just exhausting myself over and over again.'

Beginning to get frustrated Evelyn wondered why there was not a more efficient way to learn control over magical energy.

Unfortunately, this was a product of her quickly learning to do everything else she had set out to do so far thanks to either her human intellect or natural talent.

She was used to only needing to put in an extreme amount of effort for a few days to at least get the basic handle of something and show some progress, but this time she was getting nowhere.

Nevertheless, even as frustrated as she was, she kept at it doing what Melisandre told her to and dug in deep to pull out her magical energy.

Soon the entire week had gone by, and other than eating, sleeping, and training Evelyn had done pretty much nothing else.

Sadly, even with all the practice she had and all the time she put towards gaining control over her magical energy she had no real success.

However, in order to keep herself motivated she did practice with what magic she could, focusing on her new gravity traps.

This allowed her to take a break from the monotonous task of trying to control her magical energy and focus on something that she felt she could improve on.

She now had a much better understand of this magic and was able to set the traps a bit faster and make them quite versatile in their effect.

'Gravity really is something. It has so many applications and I am sure that I have not even figured out most of them yet.' Evelyn thought as she practiced setting the gravity traps not only to hinder any enemies but to help herself.

She could use them to abruptly chance her momentum while flying and make herself unpredictable.

It would be really powerful in keeping any foes on their guard, as even if they learned to avoid her traps, she could use them as support for herself instead.

Another aspect of her magic she had focused on controlling was shaping her fire and wind like she had seen other beasts do.

Apparently, this was much easier once one could control their raw magical energy, but Evelyn honestly got tired of just trying that all the time and figured that practicing a little precision with her wind would not cause any harm.

'And wind blade.' Evelyn thought while flapping her wings.

This time she managed to sharpen her wind into the form of a blade and fire it out.

It left a slight scratch on one of the steel plates in the training room and she was a little proud of her accomplishment.

'Yep, I can do it if I try. My parents could do this since I was born, and they were not able to freely control their magical energy. Still, I know from the demonstration that Melisandre showed that this is basically just a parlor trick compared to what she can do. I still need to keep at it until I have true control over my magic.'