Rise of the Goddess

Chapter Thirteen - Corvus

Corvus sat crisscrossed on the floor, her eyes closed, deep in thought. She felt warmth coming from the fire in front of her, she felt the smooth grooves of her bow in her hands, she felt the cold winds from around her. She took in a deep breath, rejoicing in the clear mountain air.

She exhaled, opening her eyes. She sat at the archery range, completely alone. She found herself here often, it was one of two places she could find solace from the constant attacks from everyone she lived around, only a few people showed her mercy from their hatred.

Around a month and a half had passed since she was released.

She had spent the entire time getting used to being free again, trying to recover from 15 years of rotting away. Her old strength and agility was gone, her skill had been lost, using Revali's Gale typically meant getting viciously beaten alive. She was determined to get it all back, not for anyone else, not to be able to fight off monsters or enemies or anything, but for herself.

She had been doing well so far, she'd finally gotten used to the draw weight of her bow, it took a lot more strength than she remembered. Luckily for her, she was strong by nature. Her short height also helped her balance herself easier than most people, she was naturally agile. The problem she had to deal with was the speed. Years upon years of practice as a teenager was what made her so swift with her bow, now she was slow, clumsy and she couldn't help but despise it.

She heard footsteps approaching from the side and turned to face whoever had come. It was Evek, she recognized his green feathers anywhere.

"Isn't this the part where you show off?" he asked, raising his voice so it carried to where she stood over the wooden planks of the archery range.

She rolled her eyes, approached the very edge of the deck, and fell. She let her body plummet down into the valley until she stretched out her wings. The updraft immediately rocketed her up into the sky. With one hand she felt for arrows — that was another thing, she'd lost all of her arrow supply and was struggling to get them all back — she found around 30 bomb arrows. So instead she used her 60 to 70 normal arrows.

She let herself fall down from the sky again, drew her bow back and shot her first target. She flew back and forth, going up and down again until she was satisfied and every single target had been broken with one arrow cutting straight through the middle of it.

She landed down roughly next to Evek, stumbling a little as her legs recovered. She turned to Evek, remembering their old practices.

"Two and half minutes," he said, raising an eyebrow

She let herself drop to the ground. That was actually one of her faster times, the past few times she'd gone after every target it took her little less than 4 minutes. She knew it was going to take a long time before she got back to how skilled she was before, but she couldn't help but miss the times when she thought shooting them all down in 40 seconds was too slow.

Evek seemed to recognize this disappointment on her face, "You know if you keep practicing obsessively like I know you do, you'll be shooting all the targets down in less minute in no time,"

"Yeah, I know," she said.

Evek joined in her sitting down in the snow, "Whenever I remember what happened to you, getting thrown in the dungeon and all, I always can't help but feel so sorry for you. When I heard what you did, what they said you did, I couldn't help but remember sitting by in awe, watching you train every day, standing by as you refused to let anyone get you down, I couldn't believe it," he looked over at her.

His words only made her feel uncomfortable. In the past month, she could not count the number of times her imprisonment had been brought up. She hated it, she hated being forced to remember that place. She had been freed now, the last thing she wanted to do was get dragged back to the memory of sitting in absolute isolation, fighting with herself in her mind, not being able to sleep, ripping the feathers out of her skin, trying to commit suicide all those times...