010.035

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Finally

Blood flowed out to fill the vacancy where Eva’s legs used to be. Enough time had passed that she could form nearly full legs with the amount of blood that she had. They might have been slightly thinner than Arachne’s legs, but that wouldn’t impact their ability to carry her around in the slightest. After a few more days, she should have enough blood for a proper set of arms and legs.

Eva glanced to the side of her leather seat—modeled after the most comfortable chair in Brakket Academy’s lobby—and checked the time. Seven days since she awoke and began her work on the obelisk.

Aside from the chair, a tall grandfather clock was the sole decoration on her island domain. That she had created, anyway. Obviously the obelisk still stood not far from her chair and the little tree without leaves was still around. She hadn’t tried doing anything with the latter; and for the former, she was still pumping as much of her domain’s magic into it as she could.

Nothing else existed as far as her eyes could see. She hadn’t bothered recreating the alternate women’s ward building. Shelter didn’t do much here. It wasn’t like she would suddenly be caught out in the rain. Eva highly doubted that it would rain in her domain without her permission. Same with wind or temperature. Nothing would change unless she wanted it to change. Not needing to sleep or eat, she didn’t have much use for a bed or kitchen.

Of course, she hadn’t been idle for a full week. Eva had conducted numerous experiments in an attempt to escape Hell; most of her experiments revolved around teleportation. So far, she hadn’t been able to force herself into the tunnel of flesh that normally ferried her between her prison and the Brakket dormitory.

Obviously. Or she wouldn’t be inside her domain.

It wasn’t just that they were unsuccessful, but any attempt at teleportation worked instantly. One moment she was seated in her chair, the next she was falling on the ground on the opposite end of her island having forgotten to make legs first. She didn’t pass through any tunnel. The world didn’t fall away to reveal that blinding white place she saw when Zoe teleported her. Neither did she feel even the slightest sensation of movement like she did after blinking. She was just there.

Unless she tried to teleport outside her domain. In that case, it simply failed. No headaches or running into brick walls like had happened on occasions where she had tried to teleport out of anti-teleportation wards. Just nothing at all.

But now, finally the obelisk was reacting. She had been thinking about diving into another demon’s domain if it stayed inert for much longer.

She stood. The hardened soles of her blood feet pressed into the sand as she walked closer to the obelisk. Moving closer, she could feel an air of magic about it. Much like how wards felt, though far less directed and controlled. At times, the obelisk felt almost full of magic. Only for it to feel vacant a moment later. No matter how full it felt, Eva had never stopped pressing magic into it. Some of that fluctuation might be the magic leeching into the air.

It wasn’t like the ambient magic would harm her. Her domain absorbed it all without issue when the magic haze got far enough away from the obelisk.

While most of the island’s sand was lighter in color—not quite the earthy yellow of normal sand, it was a bit grayer than that—the sand immediately around the obelisk was a darker hue. And it was spreading. Grain after grain of the tan sand turned dark.

A crack echoed off the nothingness in her domain. In an instant, the black sands covered every inch of her island.

Her attention, however, wasn’t on the sand anymore. As soon as the dark sand spread out beneath her feet, she noticed a set of bodies and quite the assortment of rubble appearing around her domain. Four bodies, to be precise. Three demons and a human. One looked like a reject from a wax museum. Another was human save for the thick tentacles on her head. The last demon was the most traditionally demonic of the three, complete with wings, horns, and a spaded tail.

But Eva ignored them for the moment, squatting down near the human. Garbed in a trench coat, he had a long beard that had been a goatee at one point. He really needed to shave it down. A bit of red blood matted it against his face, but the injury wasn’t too severe. He had no internal bleeding, just a fresh cut on his forehead and a couple of bruises. She reached over and poked him in the shoulder. “Devon?”

His eyes snapped open. With a hiss of pain, he closed the one on the same side as his cut. Getting blood in the eye wasn’t much fun. Eva had some first hand experience. His still open eye darted about, only staring at Eva’s face for a moment before glancing over her shoulder towards the obelisk, then around everywhere else as he propped himself up on his elbow.

“Thought you were in Hell,” he said as he pressed his fingers up against his cut.

“I am in Hell. Or… I was in Hell…” Eva trailed off as she glanced around once again. No matter where she looked, she couldn’t see the waters. Buildings had replaced much of her sandy beach. Buildings that looked an awful lot like a bomb had just gone off in the middle of the street.

Then there was the sun in the sky. She had tried to make one earlier, not long after making the grandfather clock, but it hadn’t worked. She wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps it was because of how difficult it was to visualize the distances between the Earth and the Sun. Either way, there was one up in the sky now, although it was slightly obscured by a few winter gray clouds.

However, all was not normal. While there was a proper sky and buildings—was that a pizza parlor?—the ground was still sand. The obelisk still stood tall not far away. The little tree without leaves was just beyond that.

She slowly stood, conjuring up a set of clothes using her domain’s magic—she hadn’t bothered before, but probably should now if she was back on Earth. Conjuring a black skirt and a white button-up shirt worked perfectly. So did providing a couch identical to that of the women’s ward for Devon to rest on. Yet she could see down the sandy street, past the blown-out buildings. This was definitely Brakket City.

Or some deep delusion she had subconsciously built in her domain.

Frowning, she stepped away from Devon as he started fussing with his eye and approached Catherine. It took more than a poke in the shoulder to wake Catherine up despite her lack of apparent injuries compared to Devon. Dumping a portion of her arm’s blood onto the succubus as one might dump a bucket of water over a sleeping person worked well enough. She started coughing and sputtering as if Eva had gotten it in her mouth and nose despite taking care not to.

Eva pulled back as much blood as she could. It wasn’t a hundred percent of it all, Catherine’s skin and other contaminants prevented that, but it was enough to form her arm back into its proper shape without any noticeable deficiencies.

“Oh my head,” Catherine groaned, flopping over on her back and pressing the palms of her hands to her brow. “I feel like… like someone took the most magically potent wine, filled it with even more magic, then bashed me upside the head with the bottle.”

“How would you even know what that feels like?”

Catherine moved her hands just long enough to shoot Eva a glare. Apparently realizing how undignified and ungraceful she was being, she shot up, moving to a sitting position then standing. She didn’t stay standing for long. Catherine wobbled back and forth, almost toppling to the ground until Eva caught her.

“Are you alright?”

“Were you not listening a moment ago?” she asked with a mild groan. “I’m surprised I’m alive.”

“None of you look particularly hurt,” Eva said as she glanced around. Devon’s small cut aside, everyone looked hale and hearty to her sense of blood. At least, everyone except for the ruax looked normal. It was a bit difficult to get a read on the waxy demon.

Not wanting to hold on to the surprisingly heavy succubus forever, Eva conjured up another chair. The sands around them rose up and formed into a soft leather. Lightly nudging Catherine sent her falling into the seat. One of her wings bent slightly in a way that made Eva wince, but Catherine just leaned forward, rearranged herself, and leaned back again with her wings pressed tightly against her back.

There she sat, once again moving her hands up to rub her forehead. Devon was doing the same thing not far to the side. Maybe he wasn’t fiddling with his cut after all, maybe he had a headache as well. Eva considered waking up the two other demons before realizing that she really didn’t like the carnivean all that much and the ruax would be better off asleep until Devon was feeling positive that he could fully control her.

Unless the ruax was the cause of their headaches. But… no. The ruax’s face was pressed into the sand, half buried even. Devon had said that she required eye contact to work her debilitating ability.

If the ruax did wake up and wasn’t under Devon’s control, Eva was fairly confident in her ability to contain or kill it. With the area around her acting like her domain, as evidenced by her clothing and the seats she had created, she had tools at hand.

Tools that Catherine stared at with a curious look on her face. Her fingers traced over the top of the leather armrest as she inspected its surface. Without any warning, she dug the sharp tip of her nail into the leather and peeled it back to reveal a padding underneath. She plucked some out and stared for a moment more before her red eyes flicked towards Eva.

“What did you do?”

Eva blinked. There was a harsh accusation in Catherine’s voice. If anything, she would have expected a note of thanks for the seat, but apparently that wasn’t a concern at the moment. So Eva shrugged. “Made you a chair. Thought you might want somewhere comfortable to sit rather than the sandy ground.”

A jolt ran through Catherine as she turned to look over the edge of the chair. Eva followed her gaze, but found nothing other than the sand. The obelisk, now dark and back to its smooth obsidian, was the next object of Catherine’s scrutiny. Then the tree, until she finally looked down the road towards Brakket Academy, though the school building wasn’t actually visible from the street.

“We’re in your domain,” she said with a slight note of fear in her voice.

“Something like that, I assume.”

“How? It shouldn’t be possible?”

“Why not? Ylva’s domain was connected to Earth for a year or more. And then there was my dormitory room a while ago. It got connected on accident roughly when the sky first turned purple.”

“Ylva was given permission, was she not?” Eva winced slightly but nodded her head; Ylva’s domain being connected to Earth had been her fault even though it turned out alright in the end. “Your room at the dormitory was given permission by the school, even if it was a vague sort of permission. The other demons residing there were given specifically worded housing permits to prevent them from connecting domains. The same went for me when I was working for Martina.

“Nobody gave you permission for the middle of a street.”

Eva blinked and stared a moment as her mind churned. “A street is public property, isn’t it? I don’t need permission to use it as I see fit.”

Really, Eva didn’t have a clue what was going on. She was taking things in stride as she usually tried to do. If Void decided to drop an obelisk into her domain that let her forcibly connect to Earth as thanks for her fixing everything, she wasn’t going to complain.

Complaining might make it take its gift back.

However, public property seemed like a good explanation. At least, it did until Catherine started shaking her head.

“It doesn’t work like that. If it did, every demon who ever got summoned would have covered the Earth with their domains long ago.”

“Have you ever tried?”

“I… well, no,” she said slowly and with a slight uncertainty, quickly adding with a glare, “Because it wouldn’t work. How did you even get here? Was the remnant of Hell always your domain?”

Eva blinked and stared around again. Remnants of Hell were what they were calling the bits of land left behind when demonic enigmas died. And this one… Ah, she thought, recognizing her surroundings. She had missed it the first time because it looked like a bomb had gone off, but one of the blown out buildings was clearly the pizza shop she had killed an enigma near.

She was about to answer that no, it hadn’t always been part of her domain and it must have been her charging the obelisk that connected it, but that wasn’t accurate, was it? “Shortly after killing the enigma here,” she said to Catherine, “I walked up to the sand and pulled out a metal bar.” Holding her hand to the side, the sands jumped up, forming into the cold iron that could be found everywhere in her prison, mostly on doors to cells.

“So it was always yours,” Catherine mumbled, closing her eyes and pressing her hands to her head once again.

“I guess. Didn’t really think about it at the time. Neither do I know how it happened, so don’t bother to ask. More importantly,” Eva said, pausing a moment as she turned her gaze upwards. She had noted before, but just wanted to make sure. There were no purple streaks lining the skies, no giant eyeballs crying out enigmas, nor any lightning bolts or earthquakes. Not since she had arrived, anyway. “How are things around Earth?”

“Tedious,” Devon grumbled the instant Eva asked. “But that describes life in general. It’s always an awful bore. If you’re asking about Life, also tedious, though in a different manner.”

“A large number of enigmas have yet to be terminated,” Catherine said. “Though I don’t know what he thinks is tedious. He hasn’t lifted a finger to help. Most of the work is being done by Ylva and her nuns.”

“Her nuns?”

Catherine shrugged. “Not sure what she did with the ones who disagreed with her.”

“Ominous.”

“I’m not crying over it.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”

“Lynn completed her research. Killing enigmas permanently is a possibility now. With their semi-shared memory, the Elysium Order are the best cleanup specialists for enigma-related matters at the moment.”

“Except the damn demon ones.”

“Except them, yes,” Catherine said tersely. “We hope you don’t mind, but the prison is something of a zoo these days. Killing the demonic enigmas still results in remnants of Hell spawning around their bodies so we needed to contain them. The prison worked the best given it was already set up to handle a few and we knew how to handle more. Although…” Catherine trailed off as she looked around the sandy area of the street. Eva could almost see the gears grinding in her head.

“Don’t even think about it,” Devon snapped. “You’ll wind up making an even bigger mess than this.” He waved his hands around, splattering a little blood from his fingertips over his seat. Not that it mattered. Eva could easily remake the seats blood free later. “I expect messes from Eva, but you’ve always been tidy.”

“Hey!”

Devon ignored Eva’s outburst, continuing to glare at Catherine. “We continue with our original plan. Gather them up then use a transference circle to make them someone else’s problem.”

“If my domain had a connection point on Earth, we could simply throw them into the waters of Hell and be rid of them,” she said as casually as if she were discussing the weather.

To which Devon scoffed. “Even if that would be significantly less troublesome than a transference circle, which it isn’t, it is also wholly unnecessary now.” He waved his arms in a wide circle around him again. “Eva’s domain will suffice. We can disconnect it later.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, there are no waters around.”

Devon opened his mouth, then snapped it shut as he slowly scanned around the street. As soon as he had finished, he looked back to Eva with an accusatory glare.

Eva spoke before he had a chance to berate her for something she probably had no control over—though, being her domain, she probably had more control over it than anyone else. Maybe she could make a small pool somewhere just to toss enigma bodies into.

“As cute—or disturbing—as it is to watch you two playfully argue with each other, I really am more interested in the goings on outside this street.” She ignored both their glares and continued. “Where is everyone else?”

“Gone.”

“Evacuated.”

“Brakket is abandoned.”

“Not likely to reopen anytime soon.”

“Your obelisk,” Devon thumbed over his shoulder, “scared most everyone away.”

“Anderson was quite upset given all the work he put into the tournament and the academy. Quite the embarrassment,” Catherine said with a vicious grin.

Eva snapped her head back and forth between the two, staring at each until the other began to speak. When it seemed that they weren’t going to continue their routine, she blinked. “Juliana? Shalise?”

“Both gone. Don’t know where they are,” Catherine said with a shrug. She was starting to get a little more animated, leaning forward and stretching out her wings. Perhaps her headache was going away. “I assume they both went home to wherever they lived before attending Brakket.”

Devon, on the other hand, still cupped his face in his hand, barely looking towards Eva even while speaking to her unless he really felt the need to glare. “Which I find concerning. If the girl truly has one of the seventy-two in her head–”

“She does.”

“Then who knows what kind of trouble they are getting themselves into.”

“Better to cause trouble away from us than live around here.”

Devon opened his mouth, but hesitated, considering Catherine’s words for a moment before he ended up nodding his head in agreement. “Can’t argue with that.”

“Zoe,” Catherine said, “is still around. She spends the nights either at the dormitory or her office. A few mage-knights wander around along with a few members of the Elysium Order. I’d be watching out for them if I were you. You’re obviously not an enigma, but they get jumpy sometimes.”

Good news. Zoe was still around. While Devon grumbled and Catherine was mildly helpful, Zoe would help her get in touch with Juliana, Shalise, and everyone else. Before handling the Avatar of Life, she hadn’t had much of a chance to ensure that everyone was alright. Catherine wasn’t mentioning any deaths, but she just might not care enough.

“Right. Going to visit Zoe then. Come find me when you two are feeling better.” She started to walk away, only to stop as a thought occurred to her. A small table built itself up between the two of them with a few glasses of water sitting on top. Sand had formed the water which Eva found somewhat strange, but shrugged her shoulders. It probably wouldn’t hurt either of them. Shalise and Lynn had drunk and ate things provided by her domain for months in the former’s case. Neither had turned out wrong in the end.

With them having a bit of water in case they needed it, Eva took off in a light sprint towards Brakket Academy. She considered blinking, but didn’t want to accidentally leave her legs behind in front of Devon and Catherine. Old-fashioned walking would have to do.

The moment she crossed over the threshold where sand met asphalt, something felt wrong. Just a queasiness in her stomach. Another step and she felt her foot starting to erode away as water splashed against it, dissolving the blood. A quick thought hardened the liquid all the way up to her knees as Eva scowled at the sight before her.

Gone was the asphalt of the street. Before her lay a black void, stretching on for eternity, filled with the familiar waters that surrounded her island.

She turned back to find Devon, Catherine, and the other demons still right where she had left them, along with the half-destroyed buildings in the immediate vicinity of the obelisk. Grinding her teeth together, Eva took a few steps back from the waters of Hell. The sky went back to a sky familiar to Earth. The rest of the street reformed behind her.

Stepping onto the asphalt, her foot plunged straight through as the street wavered like a mirage, splashing into the waters of Hell once again.

“Great. Just great.”

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