010.036

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“You really can’t leave?”

Eva shook her head. Taking one step forward, she fell through the asphalt as if it were nothing more than an illusion and splashed into the waters of Hell. Zoe blinked, glancing left and right to try to find out where she went. Eva took a step back before her professor could panic, she moved back onto the island proper.

Which only caused Zoe to jump back with a slight gasp. Closing her eyes momentarily as she let out a short sigh, she said, “You aren’t just blinking away and back, right?”

“I don’t know why I would do that.”

Zoe just shrugged. “That’s what it looked like from my perspective. I haven’t forgotten how you disappeared when we very first met each other.”

The shrug made Zoe’s shoulders rise and fall. Shrugs tended to do that. However, the motion made Eva’s eyes follow her profile down to her missing arm. Eva had seen it before. Obviously. She had formed a cap of her own blood around the end to keep Zoe from bleeding out. Doctors or Zoe herself had managed to remove the blood, but they hadn’t replaced it with a proper arm.

Eva couldn’t say why. She wasn’t a medical professional. Though it had looked like a clean cut, maybe it had been damaged too much. Maybe the wound was cursed. Maybe reattaching an arm wasn’t as easy as slapping the two ends together with some thread and super glue.

Since Zoe hadn’t brought it up, neither had Eva. If she had a more normal set of arms, Eva might have considered chopping off one of her own the way Arachne had done for her. Unfortunately, Eva didn’t really have any arms. Unless Zoe had a bloodstone hidden in her chest somewhere, Eva really doubted that her arms would work properly for anyone but her. They would just make a mess.

Which brought up another problem. She had turned her heart into a bloodstone. While nothing had gone poorly so far, that wouldn’t be the case indefinitely. She needed to find a way out of her entrapment within approximately three months. If she couldn’t make another bloodstone, she would probably die. Her absent heart was regenerating, she could tell that much, but not as quickly as she would have liked. Void had apparently accepted her as a demon, so death wouldn’t be permanent, but it would be annoying. Her choice was to either get to Florida and find some thugs, or to start asking for human sacrifices.

For some reason, she doubted that the latter would go over well with many people she knew.

Actually, that wasn’t quite true. Catherine would likely have no qualms about finding her someone to turn into a bloodstone. However, she would likely be far less discerning of individuals to be sacrificed. Eva would probably end up with someone a bit too innocent for her liking.

Another possibility was to simply locate her dagger. Which didn’t sound like it would be too hard so long as it wasn’t lost to the void of Hell. Unfortunately, she wasn’t exactly in a position to wander around and search for it. Everyone else was busy with their own things in the aftermath of everything that went down.

Alternatively, she could figure out how to create the everlasting bloodstones herself. Which probably wasn’t something she could get done in a mere three months. It was true that she had never sat down and just dedicated three months to researching bloodstones, but she still doubted her ability to do so. That was assuming that she were left alone for three months.

Despite everyone being busy with their own things, Eva had a strange feeling that she would be kept busy. If not with Zoe, Devon, and Catherine, then with the demon hunters that would undoubtedly be arriving now that all the demons and people were gone. Their arrival was almost assured, the question was whether they would search around for any demonic books and beacons or if they would simply try to torch the entire town.

However, Eva doubted that any of them would be quite as tenacious as the hunters she had already killed. And if they stepped onto her domain to attack her, they would find the very world set against them.

Maybe she wouldn’t need to visit Florida for bloodstones after all.

“None of the other remnants have…” She trailed off, glancing around Eva’s domain. “Have done anything like this yet. We need to figure out a method to counteract and dissolve them.”

“I thought Devon said that he would work on that?”

“So he said,” Zoe nearly spat. Apparently, she still didn’t like Devon even though he had closed off the portal to Life, cutting off the flow of enigmas. “It is merely something to keep in mind.”

“I hope he doesn’t come up with a solution that would cancel out my domain,” Eva said, more as musing to herself than to Zoe.

“You are one thing, but imagine if one of those remnants connects to Willie’s domain.”

“Then he would be trapped in his own as I am, unable to properly interact with the outside world?”

“You’re willing to take the chance that a far more experienced demon than yourself will not be able to escape?” Zoe shook her head. “I’m sorry, but that isn’t a chance that I can take. If we can’t be discerning, cutting off all of Hell would be for the best.”

Eva harrumphed, feeling a tinge of mild annoyance even though she fully understood Zoe’s fears. Clasping her hands behind her back, she started heading away from the edge of her domain and towards the center. Towards the buildings that had all been partially destroyed by whatever—the obelisk, apparently; it had been out in the real world as well as her domain before the two connected. Which made Eva wonder if anyone would have been able to see her had she stood right up against it for long enough. Of course, the buildings weren’t still destroyed. Or maybe they were, but they didn’t look it.

Since everything around was within Eva’s domain, she had control over it all. A simple thought restored the destroyed portions of the buildings back to their working state. Shattered glass was whisked away, turned into the sand of her beach. Which then formed back into smooth panes of glass to fill the vacant holes where windows had once been. Brickwork mended itself much the same way. Even the mildly damaged ovens inside the pizza place had all been fixed up.

Her fixing everything didn’t make the people come back, however. Zoe had said that most of the city had been evacuated entirely when the obelisk lit up with only a handful holding out and weathering the metaphorical storm.

“What’s going to happen to Brakket?”

“The academy or the city?” Zoe asked as she walked a step behind Eva.

They weren’t really walking anywhere in particular. There was nowhere to go aside from around the sandy dunes that made up her domain. Eva had considered turning it all into asphalt and cement to match the street and the sidewalk, but found she liked knowing exactly where her domain ended. Had she still had Arachne’s legs and hands, she probably would have done so in an instant. Sand was coarse and rough. It had a strange property where it managed to get in all the nooks and crannies of anything it touched which tended to cause an unpleasant sensation everywhere.

So long as she kept her current limbs solid, sand didn’t bother her much anymore.

“Both,” Eva eventually said.

“Not sure about either in the long term. For now, Anderson made a deal with Nod Complex. They will house and instruct Brakket’s displaced students for the remainder of the year. The remainder of the tournament will be held out in the Nevada desert near their school.”

“That’s still continuing? Don’t you need to be down there to commentate or whatever your job was?”

Zoe gave a wan smile behind Eva’s back. “I’ve been replaced. With Nod being the new hosts, they wanted one of their own people doing the commentating. Likely for the same reason Anderson wanted the tournament and mundane news networks around Brakket in the first place; publicity and money.

“As for the tournament itself, it is still going, though enthusiasm for it has drastically dropped off since the ‘terrorist attack’ on Brakket Academy.”

Eva blinked. Stopping her aimless wandering, she turned to face Zoe. “The what?”

“Brakket Academy’s official position and statements on the New Year’s events are that they were attacks carried out by degenerates and isolationists, designed to drive a wedge between mundane and magical communities. Everything in the sky was an illusion and the monsters were just that, monsters. Released to inspire terror.”

Scratching at her head, Eva lifted an eyebrow. “He knows what actually happened?”

“Wayne and I told him mostly everything.”

“Huh. If I were Anderson and I wanted good publicity, I would have claimed that Brakket Academy, its students and professors, defused a potentially world ending threat.”

Eva sank down into a seat that appeared beneath her, gesturing for Zoe to join her in her own seat. Teacups and a pot of tea molded themselves out of sand on a table between them. A good host offered refreshments, right? And she was technically a host.

Zoe seemed to mull over her thoughts while partaking of the tea, not responding to Eva right away. Eventually, she set her teacup down on the table and folded her hands in her lap. “I think it was a bigger picture situation. Brakket Academy may have received some praise and prestige, but it would have introduced the concept of literal apocalypses into the minds of mundanes who had only just become fully aware of the magical world.”

“He was concerned about panic.”

“Indeed. We spoke afterwards. While I believe it is unlikely, an extreme he mentioned was that mundanes would attempt to completely eradicate magic through killing or destroying magical people, creatures, and items in the hopes that if there was no magic, there wouldn’t be any world-ending situations.”

“A flawed reasoning,” Eva said immediately. “As soon as mundanes tried any offensive action against mages, everyone would go into hiding. It would be quite literally impossible to kill everyone. That’s not even going into the fact that other planes of existence exist and they would have no access to them. The whole spat between Void and Life would have happened regardless of whether mortals knew of their existence or not.”

“You know that and I know that, but frightened people are far harder to convince. Already people are using the incident here to stir up fear mongering and to rally support for actions against mages; mandatory registration, a cataloging of all known magical creatures, restricted sales of wands and other foci, and so on and so forth. That’s not even mentioning more violent actions. There haven’t been any large incidents yet, but…” She shook her head with a long sigh. “I have a feeling that it is only a matter of time.”

Eva leaned back in her chair. That sounded incredibly annoying. While it probably wouldn’t come to pass anytime soon simply because of the red tape involved, Eva would definitely end up on the wrong side of the law should it pass. Solely due to blood magic, entirely discounting the fact that she was a demon. Because she was a demon, however, she was far less dependent on society. She didn’t need sleep, food, or even a focus. Avoiding government registrations wouldn’t be difficult. No different from her living off the grid as she had been between her prison here and the abandoned hospital in Florida.

Thinking about the hospital in Florida had Eva frowning. Not because she missed the place. It was kind of a dump in retrospect. The women’s ward at the prison was far more habitable. Rather, thinking about it had her thinking about Florida in general and her time there with Devon and Arachne.

Though it had been a week and several days, she had still heard nothing from the spider-demon. No sign that Arachne had returned. No word from Void either, not since the ritual. Even before her domain got merged with the real world, it hadn’t said a word to her despite the occasional questions or comments that she shouted out to nothingness.

“I heard a little from Catherine,” Eva said, mostly to distract herself from her thoughts of Arachne. “Shalise is alright, right?”

Zoe nodded her head in the affirmative. “I was still at the circle, but I heard afterwards that she was found confused and apparently couldn’t recall how she arrived in the infirmary, but otherwise unharmed. She’s currently at Nod Complex, finishing her schooling.”

“Juliana’s with her as well, I assume,” Eva said to herself. She had been somewhat hoping that someone would be around to talk to. One of her friends, maybe someone willing to live inside the domain if only to keep her company for the time being while she figured out how to get out of her domain.

Watching Zoe go silent with her lips tightly pressed together made Eva a little uneasy.

“Zoe?”

“Nobody knows where Juliana is,” she said, voice far more terse than it had been just a few moments ago.

“What do you mean, nobody knows? Nel should–”

Zoe shook her head. “She can’t see anything but darkness when she tries to look for Juliana. Though I don’t know how much she had actually tried; Nel and Ylva have been busy running the Elysium Order. Genoa found a note on Juliana’s bed three days after everything that simply stated that Juliana was off in search of adventure, not to worry, and that she would check in from time to time.”

“Just like that?” Eva asked with raised eyebrows, to which Zoe gave a shallow nod. It must have been Zagan. Or related to Zagan at least. According to Juliana, he hadn’t spoken once since the night she summoned him. Something that had Juliana constantly worried about their agreement. Maybe he had said something or maybe she had simply let her paranoia get the better of her.

Either way, Juliana would probably be fine. With Zagan’s power, Eva couldn’t imagine her dying anytime soon. She had probably used Zagan’s power to keep Nel from locating her in the first place. Unless she got it into her head that she couldn’t use Zagan’s power in some attempt to amuse him.

Worrying wouldn’t help, but Eva couldn’t help but worry. A little.

“Nel isn’t the only way to locate someone. Since we know her name and face, we could send a haunter after her. Of course, if she doesn’t want to be found, I doubt anything we do will work.”

“Genoa and Carlos are running themselves ragged,” Zoe said with a sigh. “I’m sure they would try just about anything up to and including summoning a demon.”

“She has the most powerful demon I’ve ever met with her. They shouldn’t worry too much.”

“That might be exactly why they worry. I–” A light beeping from Zoe’s pocket cut her off. She blinked twice, apparently trying to reach for her phone with her missing arm before remembering that she had put her phone in the opposite pocket. “Phones didn’t work in Ylva’s domain,” she said idly as she pulled the phone out.

“I don’t think this place is connected in the same way that Ylva’s domain was. Or even the bit of my domain that was in my dorm room. It was a remnant of killing an enigma, forced onto the world. Catherine was freaking out about it when she realized.”

“Doesn’t that make Hell and Void vulnerable?”

Eva shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t think Life is in any position to capitalize on it though.”

Humming a thoughtful hum for a moment, Zoe glanced down at her phone and read through a message. “It’s Wayne,” she said. “He still hasn’t been able to find Serena.”

“Serena is missing too?” Eva said with a frown, leaning forward. “I meant to thank her for intervening with Life’s tentacles. I know her suit got all torn up during the ritual. Hopefully she’s alright.”

“Me too. Despite how Wayne acts, I’m sure he’s concerned as well.”

“Nel can’t locate her either?”

Zoe blinked, tearing her eyes from her phone to look at Eva. “I don’t think Nel has anything of hers to focus on.”

“Ask. We took a road trip together. You know how paranoid Nel is. I’m willing to bet that she snatched a strand of hair that got stuck to the seat just in case she ever needed to use it.”

After taking a long sip of tea, Zoe nodded her head. “I’ll mention it to Wayne. Thank you for the tea,” she said, standing up. “There is still much work to be done, but I should be going. I’ll stop by tomorrow to check in on you. Is there anything you need that I should bring by?”

Eva stood as well. As she did, the tea set in front of them turned into a four-poster bed, an ornate marble bathtub filled with water, and a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. “I think I’ll be fine.”

“Then–”

“But, there is one thing I wouldn’t mind if you took with you.” Eva held out a hand, palm down with her fingers curled together. Despite holding her hand out towards Zoe’s only remaining hand, Zoe still started to reach forwards with her severed arm before catching herself. An unintelligible curse escaped her lips as she switched arms, pocketing her phone in the process.

“Can I actually take things you create out of your domain?”

“Not sure. We could try. But this is a bit different, more of a gift for myself than anything.” Eva opened her hand, letting a small black sphere drop onto Zoe’s palm. A red streak shone brightly on one side.

Zoe turned it around, staring at it for a moment before looking up to meet Eva’s eyes. “Your beacon?”

“I consumed my old one to get back after I died. Honestly, I don’t know if this will work. Things are,” she paused to glance around her domain, “a little strange. No harm in trying though. If you just carry it out of here, I can try escaping.”

Zoe rolled it between her fingers for a moment before clasping her hand around it. “I can do that. Might as well see.”

Eva watched, waiting, expecting something to happen as Zoe walked away and crossed the threshold of sand and asphalt. When nothing did, Zoe held up the beacon to show that she still had it before tossing it down the street. It rolled to a stop a short distance outside her domain’s boundaries.

Closing her eyes, Eva prepared to teleport to her beacon.

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