An Owl's Rise

'That should do it.' Evelyn thought with a satisfied expression on her face.

Standing at the front of her store in the Alchemy Hall, Evelyn turned her head from side to side and checked over the product on each of the shelves.

Today was her first day back in over a month and she wanted to make sure that everything was well stocked and ready for her regular customers.

'I have more in my storage cuff if I run out of the more common items. I just have to hope things like my tar do not sell out since what is on the shelves is all I have except for three bottles I have made for myself.' Evelyn thought as she took up the counter and waited for the hall to open.

When it did the usual mass of owls flew in and began heading to the favorite shops.

Alchemical items were always in hot demand and every owl worth anything had at least a few on them at all times in case of emergency.

To start with Evelyn's shop saw pretty much no traffic since she had been closed down for so long.

A few curious individuals popped their heads and and looked around, with even fewer buying anything.

Nevertheless, Evelyn knew that business would not be slow forever and around three hours into the day, some of her regulars had noticed that her shop was reopened.

After that she received a steady stream of owls coming in to restock on her potions and pills.

Many of them made inquiries about why she had been gone for so long, but Evelyn just told them she had lost track of time while training and gathering out in the wilds.

'Things have been going pretty well already. At this rate it should not be too long until I can repay the debts I owe to Melisandre as well as Bylur and Rehni.' Evelyn thought while she made another sale.

Her credits that had plummeted to basically zero after she bought the storage magic tool for Lucia, but now that her shop was open again, she was steadily increasing her funds once more.

However, not long after the halfway mark of the Alchemy Hall being open did a group of owls Evelyn had not seen before moseying into her story and acted like they owned the place.

They did not do anything overtly against the rules like stealing or breaking anything, but they would stand around grabbing things slowly before putting them back in incorrect places.

Also, they were exerting their auras to make the shop's atmosphere feel oppressive and as some of them were at the peak of the awakened rank, plenty of owls unrelated to this group that wanted to buy from Evelyn's shop turned around and left before entering.

This was clearly a form of harassment and Evelyn figured that these were the ones that had similarly approached Bylur.

'It does not seem that their boss is here. Bylur gave me a pretty good description of him.' Evelyn thought as she memorized the appearances of the sixteen owls that were crowding her store.

Keeping her eyes out, Evelyn watched everything that her current 'customers' were doing.

Eventually some of them would trickle out, but not long after more would come in and take their place.

For over an hour this kept up and during that time Evelyn had not made a single sale since no other owl was willing to come in while the group harassing her was still inside.

Of course, Evelyn could get one of the guards to try and get them to leave, but the moment she left they would almost certainly all leave and when she returned with the guards her shop would be empty.

'Oh, is one of them actually going to buy something now?' Evelyn thought, seeing a pair of the owls approach her and place down a single bottle.

When they reached her counter, they slammed it down with as much force as the bottle could take without cracking and glared at Evelyn.

"Your prices are way too high, and your assessment of your items is way off. I am an alchemist myself and can tell that the healing potion in this bottle is not as high quality as you say it is. It is easily eight percent less effective. I demand that you lower the price by fifty percent to be more in line with the market value" The owl that had slammed down the bottle said to Evelyn.

"I am sorry, but I can assure you that all of my items are the quality that is advertised and that the price is already at the lower end of market value. If you have a problem with my items, you do not need to buy them and can go somewhere else." Evelyn said with a plastered-on business smile she had learned from Katrina.

Yet while her face may have seemed to be smiling her eyes were radiating hostility and the owl that had been complaining took an instinctive step back when they felt how dangerous Evelyn was.

"What to do you think you are doing?" One of the two peak awakened rank owls in the group said, coming up to her compatriot's defense. "Is it part of your business practice to be so rude to customers when they bring up valid complaints.

The peak awakened rank owl then fully exerted her aura towards Evelyn in an attempt to intimate her and get her to back down.

Except, while most mid-tier awakened ranks would have difficulty standing up to such pressure from a higher-ranking beast, Evelyn shrugged it off easily enough and turned her head towards the obvious leader of these owls.

"Frankly I do not care what any of you think. You can all just get out of my store and never come back for all I care. Do not think I have not noticed what is going on here. I have been pretty patient, but I will not take this type of harassment forever."

A malicious smile creeped onto the lead owl harassing Evelyn as she acknowledged them, and she said, "What are you going to do about it? You have had free reign for long enough and been hurting our businesses. One of our top alchemists used to have this storefront until you displaced him. I do not know what the Alchemy Hall was thinking when they moved an upstart like you to such a prime location after only a few months, but we are not just going to let this injustice pass. Plus, we know it was you and your team who attacked and killed some of our faction members when they were out in the wilds. You may have thought you got them all but one survived and told us everything. We are going to make sure you pay us back in full for that."

After saying this the lead owl turned around and went back to skulking around Evelyn's store.

Yet Evelyn did not have the wherewithal to say anything else since she currently was completely baffled.

'Killed members of their faction? Me? When? I haven't even killed a single owl from the Roost!' Evelyn thought, frantically combing through her memories in search of the supposed killing she was being accused of.

Certainly, she had beaten up a few individuals but that was when they attacked her or in the ranking hall. But she had never killed another member of the Roost, or even serious injured one for that matter.

Once Evelyn got her thoughts together, she decided to ask for more details as it seemed that some sort of misinformation had been spread.

True she had taken over her current storefront from another, but she had never gone out and killed any members of their faction.

But before she could another group of owls she had never seen came flying in and were glaring at those harassing Evelyn.

"Using your same old tricks on up-and-coming owl to try and force them to join your faction, aren't you Trine. Doesn't you faction ever learn." The leader of this new group of owls said.

It was clear at a glance that they knew each other, and Trine, the one in charge of the owls harassing Evelyn, returned a hateful look towards the owl that had just addressed her.

"Legget, I see you and your faction still like getting in our way. You should back off this time. We are not going to stop just because you are interfering. We are not going to be satisfied until we have pushed Evelyn here into a corner and turned her into our faction's alchemy slave. We will have her pumping out potions and pills for us until she dies." Trine said with a practically vicious tone.

She seemed to really hate Evelyn and was no longer trying to act cordially in front of this new group. To the point that she just outright said what her faction was planning for Evelyn.