An Owl's Rise

"Now, you're going to tell me everything I want to know about the Deamhain Sect." Evelyn said, wearing a devilish smirk.

In response Uriah simply scoffed and told her to kill him. He knew that he was caught and beaten. Evelyn had already made the difference in their abilities abundantly clear. Every one of his attempts to fight back or escape had been met with instant reprisal.

"Do what you will, but I won't succumb to torture." Uriah said defiantly.

"I doubt you know the true meaning of that word. Given enough time, you'd tell me anything."

Evelyn spoke from experience. In both her lives she had endured unbearable horrors at the hands of others. If at any point she thought something she said would stop the pain, she would have professed it with her entire being.

Nevertheless, she had no intention of taking the time to really torture someone. Threats and breaking a couple of bones was one thing, but truly subjecting someone to agony that bordered on crushing one's sanity was not something Evelyn ever wanted to do.

Instead, she had a far easier, and less messy method to get what she wanted out of Uriah.

"I believe that your Sect's Leader employs similar methods. At least my brother told me about what was done to him. With the right magic, the mind can easily be swayed." Evelyn said, taking out a Domination Potion.

Uriah looked at the bottle fearfully and attempted to bite through his own tongue in a final desperate attempt to keep himself from betraying his Sect.

Yet, before he could, Evelyn jammed the bottle into his mouth with a bit more force than necessary.

She then closed his nose and slowly forced him to drink the contents.

Try as he might to resist, Uriah eventually succumbed to the potion's power.

With languid eyes that seemed to be unable to focus, Uriah now hung in the air in Evelyn grasp completely limp.

After giving him a few test commands to make sure that he truly was under her control, Evelyn released her captive.

"Okay. First, what does the Deamhain Sect want with the owls that are being held in the Miris Sect?"

Without the slightest bit of resistance, Uriah spilled everything he knew to her.

It turned out that the Deamhain Sect was not only collecting owls from the Miris Sect, but all of the weaker Sects. Apparently Diomed wanted to broker a deal with the Roost. The Tyrannis Union would return all of the captured owls and sign a treaty of nonaggression so long as Evelyn was handed over.

Naturally they did not know that her connection to the Roost was currently severed. As far as anyone from the Tyrannis Union knew, she had escaped along with the rest of the majority of the members of the Roost. It would have been impossible for them to find out that her identification cuff had broken part way through the teleportation.

'I doubt that Melisandre or Minerva would be willing to give me up for practically any reason, but that would not be so for most of the Roost's higher ups.'

Evelyn could imagine the outcry for her to be handed over if the information spread throughout the Roost. For only a single owl, the entire organization would have thousands of its imprisoned members returned and a binding treaty that protected them against further aggression from one of the strongest world powers.

Of course, this plan was highly flawed since Evelyn was not currently a part of the Roost. It would be impossible to make a deal when one half of the exchange was missing.

Still, there was one thing that Evelyn found to be suspect.

"Uriah, does Diomed or some other member of the Deamhain Sect have a contact in the Roost? As far as I know, they have sealed themselves off from the outside world."

To broker a deal, both sides needed to be able to communicate. It did not matter how far along Diomed moved his plan if he was never able to reach Roost.

"I do not know."

Uriah's response was less than satisfactory, but there was nothing Evelyn could do. He was not a generic grunt within the Deamhain Sect, but neither was he part of their upper echelon. There was only so much he would be privy to.

'Osvaldo probably knows more but capturing him and pulling information out of him would probably be impossible.

Unlike Uriah who Evelyn was able to control with relative ease, Osvaldo would undoubtedly put up a far fiercer fight.

Even if she was able to incapacitate him without drawing the Miris Sect's attention, it was unlikely that her Domination Potions would work on some that was at the arcanist rank.

"Fine. Next question. How many members of your Sect are at the Arcanist rank and above, and what are there magical affinities?"

Evelyn continued to siphon pertinent information about the Deamhain Sect and Tyrannis Union from Uriah for the next twenty minutes. To go any longer would increase the risk of her being found.

While her captive did not know some of the intel she wanted or could only give partial answers, Evelyn learned a great deal about her enemies.

"I suppose that will have to be enough. Thank you for your cooperation, Uriah. Not that you had much of a choice."

Evelyn then snapped her fingers and cancelled the magic that had taken ahold of Uriah's mind. She wanted him to be fully conscious for what came next.

With her gravity magic, she slammed her hated foe into the ground.

"Should you awaken in your next life with your memories intact just as I did, remember this moment. Everything that happened to you today was brought about by your own hands. I just wanted to live an insignificant, peaceful life. But you forced me to this point. Now you have to pay for the poor choices you made."

Uriah stared at Evelyn with eyes filled with several emotions. Fear, rage, confusion, regret, and realization.

Unfortunately, he was not given another moment to process what Evelyn had just told him. An instant later he was engulfed in crimson flames that incarnated his body to only ashes in less than a second. Before he could even feel pain, he was already dead.

"Another one of my monsters is finally gone from the world." Evelyn said, a truly relieved expression forming on her face.