An Owl's Rise

With Evelyn's harsh glare trained on him, Verrader felt his elated demeanor rapidly deteriorating.

Instead of Aralee's evolution being celebrated as he had expected, Evelyn was instead angry and suspicious.

Naturally she could not fathom that Verrader could have gathered what Aralee needed to evolve on his own in such a short time.

"Don't just continue to stare there. Tell me what you did to obtain the items Aralee needed." Evelyn said, offering no room for Verrader to change the subject.

No matter what she felt she needed to find out how and why he had done this.

'What could his motive have been?' Evelyn thought as she kept a sharp gaze on her brother, trying to read his intentions.

Eventually he seemed to have worked up the courage to answer.

"I got a loan of credits from a faction and used that to purchase two of the items that Aralee needed and spent my time gathering the other."

Hearing this Evelyn found that the explanation was plausible in that it was a method in which Verrader could have accomplished obtaining the items, but it still did not sit right with Evelyn.

She could not tell if he was outright lying, or if perhaps telling only a half truth, but something about it seemed off.

'Probably because it is idiotic. If it was so easy to get such a loan every owl would do so.' Evelyn thought.

From what she had heard from Melisandre, it was imperative that she never take out a loan from any source in the Roost unless she absolutely trusted them.

So far, Evelyn had taken a loan from Melisandre and Bylur and Rehni through their shared funds, but she had already paid all of those back by now.

These were personal loans between her fiends and mentor with no strings attached, but any other loan was going to be highly skewed in favor of those lending the money.

Evelyn had been warned that some of them were extremely predator and plenty of owls had ended up as debt slaves because they borrowed more than they could hope to pay back.

When that happened, whoever owned their debt was able to order them around until they paid it off, and if you died, or were crippled and could no longer work, they had every right to chop you up as materials.

'It is morbid to think about, but every owl is still a beast and our parts have value in and of themselves.'

Unfortunately, it had not been like it was not this way on earth either to some degree. She had certainly heard of people selling off their organs for money, or even being kidnapped and having them forcefully taken.

"How much was it, what is the interest. and how long do you have to pay it back?" Evelyn asked an exasperated look on her face.

Had Verrader done this for completely selfish reasons, Evelyn would honestly write him off as too dumb to continue associating with, but he had done it to help Aralee, so she was willing to at least hear him out.

Perhaps she was being too soft on him, on both of them. But she remembered how her own older brother had helped her out even when she made bad or rash decisions and wanted to be like him.

'Mason would never just give up on me so easily, therefore I should at least take the time to understand exactly what is going on.' Evelyn thought, waiting for Verrader to speak up.

Soon enough he told her what she wanted to know about the loan eh had taken, and she could only close her eyes and sigh.

"Why would you ever take such a horrible deal?"

After listening to the details, Evelyn had found that Verrader had taken a loan for two hundred thousand credits, and had to pay it back with fifteen percent interest in a month. Otherwise, he was going to end up a debt slave.

He had already spent almost all of it apparently to obtain the items Aralee needed and was severely lacking in funds. At this point he did not even have the fifteen percent interest let alone the rest.

For her this was not a difficult sum to get since her alchemy skills were at a higher level than any other owl at the awakened rank thanks to the high-quality equipment Melisandre was letting her use and her heavenly flame.

Except for a normal low tier awakened rank owl like Verrader with no specialized skills, this would be a very difficult sum to acquire in only a month.

As for the reason why he had done this, it was actually quite simple.

Since Evelyn had said the three of them could not work together until Aralee was at the awakened rank, Verrader had accelerated the process as fast as he could.

"I really just wanted us to be useful to you. As much as many things happened, we are family. I want us to support each other again." Verrader said as heartfelt as he could.

Nevertheless, Evelyn was not totally fooled by his theatrics. His true intentions were elsewhere, she could feel it.

'I can understand. He wants to rely on me and my team. If he has strong allies that will help him as well. But first before I even give him a chance, he is going to have to prove himself.' Evelyn thought.

She then gave both her siblings a serious look before telling them what they needed to do before they could even begin to attempt working together.

"First, you will need to clear that debt of yours together."

At first Aralee looked confused, she had not incurred any debt, but when Evelyn spelled it out to her, she understood.

"Verrader did this for you, so I believe you should help him out. This will also be a good chance for you to get some experience together. You are now both at the same rank and tier, so you should be close to the same level of strength. Only after Verrader is debt free will I begin thinking about trying to incorporate you both with my teammates." Evelyn said, making her stance clear.

Immediately Verrader agreed, thrilled to have what eh considered an easy chance to prove himself.

Of course, he had not actually incurred any debt at all. He had requested the items Aralee needed from a source outside the Roost, and saying he had taken on debt was just the lie he had come up with.

Now all eh needed to do was wait nearly a month while gathering credits and pay off the supposed debt he had.

And while Evelyn had figured he was not being wholly honest and some of his story did not make completely sense, she was giving Verrader the benefit of the doubt.

She had come up with her own conclusions that she figured were plausible, and was not being as suspicious as she would normally be.

Only because Verrader and Aralee were her siblings did she not push further or think something else was up.

Had she just been her usual cautious self, she would have seen that something more was afoot. That Verrader was all too desperate to get close to her.