An Owl's Rise

Once the crimson heavenly flame had finished being absorbed, Evelyn let out a long breath of relief as the pain subsided.

Though while it no longer hurt, she could now feel a perpetual warmth in her chest where the flame had taken root around the Aethersphere.

\'Ugh, a little warning would have been nice. I had no idea that it was going to force that flame into me. And why do these stupid magic items always have to hurt when they integrate themselves into me?\'

A bit angry from the extreme pain she had just experienced, Evelyn was fed up with everything hurting her.

Still there was no doubt she felt a sense of strength in her body now that the flame had become a part of the Aethersphere.

Sending her senses towards the heavily flame she felt it pulsing within her.

Focusing on it she sent the magical energy in her body towards it, and the flame began to devour the energy and grow larger.

Luckily this did not cause her any distress. and focusing on the flames as she did with the Aethersphere, she brought it outside of her body.

BOOM!

As the flames left her body, they went wild and hit the floor in front of her causing an explosion.

Being blown back. Evelyn felt her head spinning from the concussive force of the explosion.

But the heat had seemed to have no effect on her now the heavenly flame was a part of her.

Of course, what she did not know was that most entities that tried to merge with this flame ended up nothing but ash, and it was only thanks to the Aethersphere\'s intervention that she had gained control over it.

Nevertheless, now that it was hers, her body was practically immune to heat and fire for the most part.

\'Okay, not doing that again in an enclosed space.\' Evelyn thought as she got up off the ground.

Her head was still ringing from the explosion, and as she looked over, she saw that a portion of the floor had been blown away and melted.

Once the pain in her head subsided, she turned her attention to the shelve full of books her brother had left.

Truly what she needed right now was information, which was something she was sorely lacking in this new world.

Normally if she had been born to human parents, she probably could have picked the langue up naturally, but her owl family communicated in hoots, squawks, and gestures instead of words.

Luckily her brother had left her what she needed to learn the langue of this world, and she was going to take advantage of it.

\'Time to get started.\'

Flying over to the bookshelves, Evelyn began pulling them out, and looked for any that had been written in the langue she knew from her old world.

She flipped through dozens of books in search of anything she could read, but most of them were written in the strange langue she did not understand.

Sadly, there were only two books that had any of the langue she recognized in them. One being the guide Mason had handwritten for her, and the other being his diary.

Though as she flipped through the diary, she found that it was a mixed with this world\'s langue, and that the further into it she went the more it transitioned into the langue she did not understand.

\'I am in for a real slog here trying to learn this new langue. But I suppose I do not have anything better to do, so I might as well get started.\'

Opening up the book, Evelyn found on the first page that Mason had left her a little note saying that he believed in her, and that she could learn this langue if she put her mind to it.

Seeing this and recognizing his handwriting, tears started welling up in Evelyn\'s eyes again, but she forced them back down and continued on.

To start, the first section had a list of the symbols used in the writing of this world and what Mason considered to be the closest counterparts to the letters Evelyn knew.

Unfortunately, it was definitely not a one-to-one translation as there were thirty-one symbols used in this world for writing.

At the very least when she flipped the page, she found the numbers to be relatively easily with just ten symbols representing zero to nine.

For the whole rest of the day, she practiced the alphabet. Trying to memorize the symbols and what they equated to, as well as sounding them out in her head according to the phonetics that Mason had written down next to them.

Nevertheless, even with her best efforts, progress was slow, and she soon felt her mind begin to muddle as she became tired.

Feeling that she was not going to be able to make any more progress today, she lifted her head up from the book and looked around.

Scanning the room she found quite the pleasant surprise, in that Mason had left a small living area for her in one of the corners of this room.

There she saw a bed and chair along with a small kitchenette.

\'I guess if I had to spend the time to head back up and out of this place everyday just to get food and find a place to sleep, I would spend the majority of my time just moving around.

Flying on over Evelyn was surprised how good the condition of everything was, and that there was not a speck of dust anywhere.

She figured it was probably due to some magic imbued in the items to prevent them from degrading.

Unfortunately, it appeared that none of the food items had survived this long other than what looked to be honey.

\'I will find something else to eat tomorrow. For now, I need some sleep.\'

Moving over to the bed, Evelyn perched herself on top of it and leaned back, before closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep.