Author: Tower Curator

008.027

Posted on by Tower Curator

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Eva stood in the middle of a small clearing. Not the one a short distance from her prison. This clearing was out in the Infinite Courtyard in the center of Brakket Academy’s main building. This would hopefully prove to be a much safer alternative.

Or at least, more difficult to reach for the hunters.

One, perhaps the more troublesome one, was dead.

If Eva didn’t miss her mark, the other might return with something of a grudge. Assuming she didn’t starve to death because she couldn’t feed herself with her paralyzed body. As much as Eva wanted that to be the case, she wasn’t going to get her hopes up too much.

But with the death of one hunter and the idol destroyed at Nel’s hands, Eva was feeling safe enough to attempt clearing out an area for the ritual again. There might be other nasty surprises waiting, but it needed to be done sooner rather than later. It needed demons to work.

Between hunters running around and the doll—who Eva hadn’t seen since she ran off after the battle—the ritual needed to be done before they all wound up dead. If they ran out of demons, there would be nothing to do but wait for Life to bring Void over on its terms.

Something Eva had accepted would likely be far more destructive than doing it their way.

But those were all concerns that only might come to be a problem. At the moment, not having a ritual circle—or even a place to start the ritual—was a far greater problem.

Eva glanced over towards Srey. The demon was relaxing on a toppled log, using it as a chair as he thumbed through the pages of a book.

Fiction. Some fantastical story about a steam-powered society, judging by the cover. Not a book on magic or any sort of useful topic. Much like Catherine, he was reading purely for the fun of it.

Demons and their distractions, Eva thought with a slight shake of her head. Maybe I should find a hobby.

“Anyone watching us?”

Srey glanced up from the page. “Nope. We’re good at the moment.”

Eva gave him a curt nod in return as he went back to his book. He didn’t look as if he had any intention of helping out. However, Eva didn’t much care. So long as he warned them of any approaching hunters, his value was perhaps greater than everyone else combined.

Lips tightening as her gaze connected with Arachne’s, Eva offered the spider-demon a small smile.

Arachne was still injured. Even two days after the battle, her chest still had a hole in it. Her legs as well, though she had managed to pull her severed legs back inside her body, making them far less obvious.

It was that sword. Something about it acted similar to nun lightning, though only towards demons. Not quite the same, as it lacked the magic eating property, but it did inhibit healing.

Arachne was healing, just slowly.

At the moment, Eva was torn between destroying the sword or keeping it around just in case she needed to fight some demons. A third option, one she had been considering more seriously ever since she realized just how slowly Arachne was healing, was handing it off to Zoe.

If Zoe could come up with a method of reversing the effects, that could prove invaluable. Any similar swords would be rendered useless as far as their magical effects went. They would still be sharp bits of metal and thus still dangerous, but not cripplingly so.

There was just one problem with that line of thinking.

She really didn’t want anyone else to touch the sword.

Eva trusted Zoe. Quite a lot, in fact. She had been given almost unquestioning support from the theory professor since they first met. That was more than she could say about most other humans.

However, the sword was a danger to Eva. A direct personal danger that couldn’t really be compared to anything else. Not to mention the danger it posed to Arachne, Catherine, Lucy, and… well, just about half of everybody Eva knew. So long as it was in Eva’s possession, hidden behind her blood wards at the prison, it wasn’t going to be used against them.

While Zoe would probably keep it safe, she didn’t exactly have a home to hide it in anymore.

Again.

Though, maybe now that her third residence in as many years had been blown up, she might actually consider Eva’s offer of housing her at the prison.

Of course, Eva wasn’t too thrilled with the prospect of her prison blowing up a few months after Zoe moved in. She seemed to have extraordinarily bad luck with regards to homes. Unless the bad luck followed Ylva around. But Ylva hadn’t been living at her first home when it was burned down by Qrycx and the jezebeth. So it couldn’t be Ylva’s bad luck.

At the moment, Zoe was living with Wayne at his house. A place Eva still didn’t know the location of. She had never once been there. Wayne had never invited her. Or even mentioned his house. For all she knew, he teleported in from wherever Serena lived—a place a few states away based on hints dropped by the vampire.

Ylva had moved into the Brakket dormitory. Eva didn’t know if she had asked Anderson for permission or simply decided that it would be her new residence. Either way, she was now living two doors down from Eva’s dorm room. Along with Nel.

Neither had mentioned Alicia, but Eva had noticed a certain hardness in Nel’s eyes when asked about the former nun. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.

Of course, neither were in the clearing at the moment. Eva was still keeping the ritual secret. And she was doing a remarkable job of it, if she said so herself. Given her failures in keeping several other things about herself secret—diablery and blood magic, namely—she was quite pleased with the low amount of people around her.

Vektul was here. He had the exact designs for the ritual circle in his head, making him not only indispensable but also more knowing of the secret than most everyone. That said, Eva doubted that he would be helping much either. He really didn’t seem to be the strongest demon around.

And heavy lifting was what they needed at the moment.

Last was Juliana.

Eva gave her a smile.

She only half returned it.

“Ready to begin?”

Juliana fidgeted, glancing around to the other demons. After eying both Vektul and Srey for a moment—something that had Srey shifting in his seat, though he didn’t look up from his book—she turned back to Eva. “Are you sure we should be doing this?”

“Mostly sure.”

The metal coating Juliana’s arms rippled before returning to its still state. “Only mostly? This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you should be mostly sure about.”

“Well, yes. I agree with that. However, we’re not actually performing the ritual today, as I said a thousand times, just clearing the area.”

Something that shouldn’t be too much work. The grass and brush were a tad overgrown, but it could definitely be worse. There could be trees and boulders littering the clearing. It was part of the reason she had chosen the location in the first place.

Finding the spot hadn’t been that easy. While the Infinite Courtyard was grossly misnamed, it still covered a fairly large space. Roughly ten square miles according to Zoe. Enough that the entirety of Brakket city could fit within and still have space left over. Eva had wandered around, picking the fifth spot she had come across that looked even mildly usable.

There might be better areas. In fact, there were almost definitely better areas. It was hard to imagine there weren’t any given the size. But they couldn’t be anywhere too close to the school, or near any paths leading to the handful of buildings that had been built out in the courtyard. Not to mention, Eva didn’t really want to spend ages just wandering aimlessly about.

“We should really talk to Zoe,” Juliana said. “I mean, bringing a Power to Earth? I’ll admit, I don’t know much about the Powers. But, that can’t be a good thing. They’re in their own planes of existence for a reason.”

Eva just sighed. Explaining things a hundred times got annoying by the second time. For some reason, she felt like she would be explaining things a hundred more times before the ritual was complete. They did have to bring other people in at some point, after all. More demons and more humans were needed.

“Like I said, Zagan’s theory is that Life is bringing Void and all of Hell over into the mortal plane. Probably destructively. This ritual should only grab the Power.”

“So says Vektul,” Juliana said. “This guy just shows up out of nowhere and you’re going to trust him?” She paused for just a moment, turning to the demon in question before adding, “No offense.”

Vektul just tilted his head to one side.

“But you’re supposed to be in the center of this circle. Arachne too. How do you know it isn’t going to do something terrible to you? You should at least have Zoe look over it. Catherine too. You said she was good with rituals, right?”

That was something that Eva actually had been considering. They would need to bring in more demons before the ritual actually started. Catherine was not only good at working on and developing rituals, but she was also a demon that Eva knew. Just because the doll hadn’t come back to kill off the rest of the demons did not mean that they were good, trustworthy, and not about to stab Eva in the back.

But Catherine had her own interests and designs. She was currently picking out demons for her upcoming ritual. While Eva had offered again, Catherine still hadn’t decided on what she wanted to do. And if she wanted one of the other demons around Brakket, she had to pick them while they were still around. Especially those who might become bound familiars.

They might not be around by the time she performed her next ritual.

“I might,” Eva said, voicing her thoughts aloud. “But not today. We need to clear out brush and grass from here to about halfway across the clearing,” she said with a gesture of her hand. It wasn’t a very useful gesture. Pointing at this distance wasn’t very precise.

“Preferably with as little burning as possible. I’d rather not have a column of smoke pointing out our location for everybody to find.”

“So I’m doing most of the work,” Juliana said with a sigh. “Great.”

“Well, I do recall saving your life. Wasn’t going to force you or anything, but consider it a nice way to pay me back.”

Juliana craned her neck, looking up to the sky. “How would smoke even look from outside?” she said after a moment. “I mean, would someone sitting on the dormitory roof see a great black plume that appeared to come from the whole courtyard or would it be a thin streak, barely visible?”

Eva shrugged.

Space manipulating wards were some of the most complex bits of magic that were possible, according to Professor Lepus. Wards that Brakket Academy made liberal use of in both the main building and the dormitories. Apparently that same professor not only created the wards when the school was first built several decades ago but still maintained all of the wards to this day.

All without looking a day over twenty.

Eva had considered asking her about it, but eventually just shrugged her shoulders and assumed ‘magic’ to be the answer.

“But don’t worry. I’ll help out as well.”

— — —

Zoe let out a long sigh. “For the last time, I didn’t even come close to dying.”

In contrast to her own morose exasperation, Zoe got a fanged grin in return. Hands on her hips, Serena spun around, walking a few steps away.

“Zoe, Zoe, Zoe. Wayne told me you know? You would have been a crispy corpse without him.”

“He exaggerates. I was fully prepared to escape.”

“But you didn’t. Wayne had to save you and you know it.”

Again, Zoe sighed. Arguing with the vampire was just not something that could be done. “Serena, what are you doing here? And how did you get here?”

Pausing, Zoe glanced out the window. Night had fallen a mere ten minutes ago. It still wasn’t completely dark. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that the sun had dipped below the horizon ten minutes ago. About a minute later, Serena had waltzed into her office.

She should have been back in Michigan. A bit far to travel in the span of sixty seconds. At least, a bit far for Serena to travel.

“I can’t imagine Wayne would have brought you here,” Zoe finished, looking back to Serena.

“But he did!” She spun back around, boring her eyes into Zoe. “His sister can take care of herself. She doesn’t need me babysitting her at all hours of the day. And if you two are going to get nearly killed every few months, I should be here. Somebody has to protect you. And I don’t sleep—at nights—so I can hover creepily over your beds and ensure nothing disturbs you.”

Zoe rolled her eyes, shaking her head.

Ylva had essentially performed that task for the last several months.

Serena spun back around, walking through Zoe’s office. A stack of ungraded papers caught her attention. She skipped over and started thumbing through the top few, pausing every now and again to read some of the text.

“So he just brought you over?”

“Well, there was a bit more arguing. As I told him, I’m not some pet to be chained up. I do as he asks because of respect and friendship. Also because your company is far more enjoyable than that of my brethren kin.”

“I hope you didn’t threaten him.”

“Of course not. Friends don’t threaten each other. I merely suggested that I would be making my way here anyway. The long and laborious task of crossing several state lines would be dangerous to only myself. Well, myself and whatever I was traveling with. I might have mentioned that his car might not survive the journey.”

Deciding to ignore the fact that she had threatened him, Zoe sunk down into her office chair.

“Well, I hate to break it to you, but there isn’t anywhere for you to stay.” She waved her hand towards the couch in her office. A small case full of clothing had been shoved underneath while a few of her teaching suits hung off a rack overhead. “I’ve been sleeping there almost every night.”

Serena paused her rifling through the papers, looking up to Zoe with a frown on her face. “Wayne doesn’t let you stay with him?”

“I spent a few nights with him, and I’m sure I could say longer should I ask.”

“Then–”

“I am not a little girl anymore. I prefer to live on my own.”

Though, she had been living with Ylva, Alicia, and Nel since being kicked out of the apartment, and next to them before that. But they were more like roommates than anything else. It was somewhat like being back in school dorms.

“Besides, its only temporary.”

“Moving into the dorms?”

“I– How did you know?”

“Even in a housing market as poor as this city’s, buying a house isn’t a thing you can do lightly. Burning one house down, being kicked out of your apartment for vandalism, and blowing up another house? I doubt that any insurer will cover you. Which means somewhere free or exceptionally cheap.” Serena dropped one of the essays onto the center of the desk.

Eva, read the simple print at the top. No last name. One of the longer essays in the stack. Then again, it was on the topic of demons. Not something Zoe usually included in her curriculum. With all their new guests around the school, she had thought that assigning a research paper on the subject wouldn’t be the worst idea.

“Prisons just don’t seem your style.”

“You’re right, but your deduction is off. The apartment and second house were both owned by or, in the apartment’s case, paid for by the school. Both were something of bribes to keep me in my teaching position. Anderson is not as willing to pay for my housing as Martina was.

“I could buy a smaller home. I’ve saved up enough. Wouldn’t even need a loan. But you are right. I don’t really want to talk to insurers. More, I’d rather not have another house destroyed in another six months.” Zoe sighed. Again. “If, in six months, the dorms have become uninhabitable for some reason, I’ll probably just take Eva up on her offer to live at the prison.”

Serena hummed a few times before walking over to the window. She took a moment, just staring out at the black surface that now made up most of the ground between the dormitory buildings.

After Genoa had taken down her walls, Eva went around smoothing the place out. There were still no patterns in it. Just a smooth sheet of glass-like material that Zoe worried might become too slick once the winter weather started up in force. On her suggestion, Eva had added a slight slope and channels for water to run down, as the crystallized blood was otherwise nonporous. It wouldn’t help with anything that stayed frozen, but would get the water off the platform.

Assuming they could remove the ice, magically or through mundane salt, it shouldn’t be much of a problem.

Serena’s interest with the world outside the window gave Zoe a moment to tidy up her desk. Papers which had formerly been in a neat stack awaiting reading and grading had been strewn about into a disorganized mess. It was a good thing that she kept her desk neat. With only one other stack of papers, one that Serena had barely touched, it wasn’t hard to put everything back in its proper place.

Whoever said that vampires had an obsession with order and counting had never met a real one.

“Wayne said that new students will be arriving soon.”

“The top ten students of the top four North American schools. Here to show off what they have learned.”

“How many are going to be demons, vampires, dragonkin, necromancers, or half-fae?”

“I would say hopefully none. We have enough excitement as is. However, the Nod Complex has been invited. I know at least a dryad will be arriving with them.”

“Yet a bunch of humans are expected to compete with demons?”

“Mr. Anderson,” Zoe said through pursed lips, “hopes to show off alternate methods of utilizing magic. A protest, if you will, against what he feels is a society stagnating by restricting itself to thaumaturgy.”

“Sounds like cheating to me.”

Zoe kept her mouth shut. The same thought had occurred to her. But it didn’t really matter. He would be getting the school’s name mentioned alongside the names of actually reputable schools. For the next school year, they might not have to go around, scrounging for students. Some might actually apply willingly.

“Who is running the betting pool on some disaster happening while the other schools are here?”

Zoe blinked in confusion. “I’m… What?”

“Figures you wouldn’t know,” Serena said, turning back to the window. “But somebody has to be gambling over this. Maybe I’ll try to sniff them out.” After a brief moment, she shook her head. “Though I don’t know why. Probably terrible odds on something happening and I’m certainly not betting against.”

Leaving her chair and walking around her desk, Zoe approached the vampire at the window with a long sigh. The fourth in seemingly as many minutes.

“Yeah,” she said, resting her forehead against the cool glass. “I wouldn’t bet against it either.”

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>>Author’s Note 008<<

008.026

Posted on by Tower Curator

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“This is a disaster.”

Eva took her eyes off Arachne for the first time since the hunter died and the doll ran off. She had plugged every injury that was bleeding, either stopping the blood completely or bridging the gap between veins with solidified blood. Of course, apart from patching them up a little bit, Eva couldn’t do all that much to fix Arachne’s internal organs.

Then again, Eva wasn’t sure how much they mattered. Her brain and heart tube were still intact. So the important parts were alright. But her stomach had a gaping hole in it. Eva had never seen Arachne eat, so it probably wasn’t a huge deal, but having whole organs had to be better than damaged ones.

However, the demon seemed to be alright at the moment. Not in danger of dying at least.

More importantly, a certain someone was walking towards them.

Governor—or Dean Anderson walked across the lake of blood. Though, Eva just about started laughing as she watched him.

He, like most of Brakket Academy’s staff, wore a suit. In order to keep the suit clean, he was walking while hiking up his trousers. More than that, he was tiptoeing across, trying to keep his shoes up and out of the liquid as much as possible. With his hands on his legs and his tiptoeing, the way he walked was almost more of a waddle than anything.

Stopping at the damaged fountain not far from Eva, he lifted one foot up on the ledge before releasing the leg of his trousers. He took hold of a small bit of rubble with his now freed hand, turning it over.

One side was obviously brick. The same material that made up most of the courtyard. As he turned it over, it glinted in the sun. The opposite side was a smooth and shiny glass surface.

The basin of the fountain had been destroyed by the doll. However, now that Eva was actually looking at it, the actual fountain itself was still intact. Functional, even. It spewed liquid out the top.

Black liquid.

Eva couldn’t be sure if she had turned the water to blood or if the damaged basin had let in enough blood to stain the water. Either way, she actually somewhat liked the effect.

And if it stayed like that—if Anderson didn’t clean it out, it could be a handy supply of blood in case the school was attacked again. It wouldn’t last. Open air preservation of blood was difficult. Her vials kept it nice and fresh for a good amount of time, but the fountain would be unusable after a few days. So not a real solution.

Fun to think about though.

After a moment of examining the rock, he set it down carefully so as to not splash the pool of blood. Hiking up his pants again, he started waddling towards Eva and Arachne.

“This,” he said as he got closer, “is a disaster.”

“I heard you the first time.”

Eva narrowed her eyes, waiting for Anderson to start laying blame at her feet for the mess the courtyard was in.

It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t Arachne’s fault either. If anything, they had saved the school from far worse damage. Not to mention all the demons that the hunters would likely have torn through.

While the demons were demons without a doubt, they weren’t… too scary. From watching them since they arrived, Eva got the distinct impression that all of them were relatively young. They grew excited about things that Eva couldn’t even imagine demons like Catherine or Arachne blinking an eye at. And they socialized. Perhaps not the way a human would, but they still seemed almost eager to be around people.

Well, except for Srey. Eva had a feeling that his particular abilities made him far more paranoid than the rest of the demons.

They, as a group, had dispatched hunters before arriving. Eva couldn’t guess how dangerous those hunters had been.

Eva glanced over, staring at the remains of the hunter she had just killed. Given how much trouble he had given Arachne, Genoa, the doll, and herself, she was willing to assume that he was a step above the hunters that the demons had fought before their arrival.

Of course, had they not cowered away from the doll, the fight might have ended with far less difficulty.

Or they might have all died.

Hard to tell. However, should anyone ask, Eva was going to claim that she had saved all of them.

“We need to clean this up,” he said, interrupting Eva’s thoughts. “With your specialty lying in…” he trailed off, glancing at the blood on the floor, “all of this, might I ask for more of your help getting rid of it?”

She blinked, not quite expecting that. She had been expecting something like, ‘how could you have let this happen? Why did you destroy half the plaza? Your blood is everywhere!’ To which she would have mentioned something about not seeing Anderson anywhere around, helping out.

“The representatives from other schools are arriving next weekend. I need this place presentable.” Dropping his pant legs, he reached out and touched the web wall. After a sigh, he turned to face the giant earthen wall that had risen up around the Rickenbacker. “What am I going to do,” he mumbled.

Eva bit her lip. Now she was actually feeling a little sorry for the man. Not guilty, just sorry. He wasn’t blaming her and had even asked for her help.

“I could get rid of the blood,” she said slowly. With her control over it, that shouldn’t be a problem. Of course, how was the big question. She didn’t have anywhere to store this much blood. Leaving it out would render it useless soon enough. She supposed that she could clap her hands and be rid of most of it instantly, taking care not to kill herself, Arachne, or Anderson.

“But the ground beneath is quite a mess as well,” she continued part of her thoughts aloud. Blowing it up would only make that worse. “Especially where the sky crack hit. Maybe…”

Eva started to smile as a thought occurred to her.

The surface of the blood was perfectly still. Smooth and glass-like. It covered almost the entire courtyard between the dormitories. With a thought, she spread some of the blood out, evening the distance with the fountain as the main center point.

Starting at her feet, Eva hardened the blood. It crystallized, becoming as solid as the claws she had used against the hunter. The crystal portion crawled across the ground, growing larger and larger until the entirety of the blood had solidified into a smooth surface.

Eva grinned. It resembled obsidian. Black glass. She doubted there was anything like it in the world. Even if a solid chunk of obsidian existed at this size, this was made of demon blood. Which, in her opinion, was much better.

“Looks nice, right?” she said, turning towards Anderson. “I can’t do anything about the stone pillars. Genoa could probably…”

Anderson was looking around the landscape with a look a horror on his face. Though that horror was slowly receding to a more thoughtful expression as he crossed an arm over his chest and brought the other up to his chin.

Eva barely paid attention to him beyond that cursory glance. Apart from herself, Arachne, Anderson, and a certain hunter’s legs, the courtyard was empty. Nobody had emerged from either dormitory. Something that would be difficult for most people inside the Rickenbacker given the giant earthen shield blocking the entire front.

With the fight over, she had expected Genoa to have emerged at least.

But there weren’t any windows in the earthen shield. No way for Genoa to know that the fighting had ended. Something that Eva felt was a huge oversight.

What if things had gone poorly?

What if the hunter had circled around to enter the building through another entrance? Or if he had gone towards the Gillet?

Blocking herself off completely was simply irresponsible. More importantly, it wasn’t something Eva believed Genoa would do.

With a worry building in her mind, Eva started to walk away.

“Wait,” Anderson said, finally letting his pants down and getting off the tips of his toes. There were small indents where he had been standing. Things Eva could fix later, along with the spots where Arachne and the remains of the hunter were. “Where are you going?”

“Genoa isn’t here,” Eva said, not stopping. “She might be in trouble.”

“I’m coming with you,” Arachne said, trying to get on her feet.

This time, Eva did stop. She turned with a shake of her head. “You focus on getting better.”

Turns out that she needn’t have stopped. Arachne wobbled on her feet, trying to maintain balance. A futile effort. She overcorrected and fell flat on her face with a growl.

“Mr. Anderson, ensure Arachne comes to no more harm and I’ll help you do whatever you want with this,” Eva said, waving her hand around the plaza.

Without waiting for a response, she turned and ran towards the Rickenbacker.

Not directly towards it, of course. She couldn’t phase through the stone wall. Neither was her earth magic up to taking it down. But there should be doors around the sides. The webbed net posed no obstacle to her blinking past it.

There was a door on the side of the building. A good distance away. Windows were much closer. Eva blinked straight into an occupied hallway. Eva ignored the students—possibly first years judging by their shorter heights, wide-open eyes, and screams as they ran back into their rooms—choosing to run straight for the stairwell she had last seen Genoa in.

She skidded to a stop on the second floor landing, just in front of the large window they had all been looking out from earlier.

The good news was that Genoa was still there. Unfortunately, she wasn’t standing.

Genoa had collapsed with her back against the window. Her head had dropped to her chest with her eyes closed. However, she was breathing. Her heart was beating. Without any obvious injuries, Eva had to assume that she had simply pushed herself too much. Between managing that golem and creating the wall that obscured the window, it wasn’t hard to guess how.

“Genoa?” Eva asked in a quiet voice from several paces away. She didn’t want to startle the former mage-knight. She was liable to get her head chopped off thanks to Genoa’s instincts and reflexes.

Sure enough, that single word was enough for Genoa to snap both her eyes open and her focus up. She held her hand out, keeping the tip of her dagger steady as her eyes focused on Eva.

“Eva,” she said, dropping her arm back to her side. “I see you’re alive.”

“I am. The hunter in the courtyard isn’t doing nearly as well. The other hunter ran away. Again.”

With Genoa’s focus down and the woman recognizing her, Eva finally felt safe to approach a few more steps.

“We should get you to a nurse. I don’t want to explain to Juliana why her mother died of exhaustion.”

As soon as Eva was close enough, Genoa’s hand shot out again. This time, lacking her focus. Her fist gripped the front of Eva’s shirt before she had a chance to react.

“Where is Juliana?”

Eva winced at the harsh tone of voice. “She’s fine. I left her on the roof where we fought the other hunter. Not a scratch on her.”

“Alone?”

Wincing again, Eva nodded her head.

“You didn’t think the hunter might return?” Genoa pushed Eva back, releasing her shirt. “Go find her. Ensure she’s safe.”

“But you’re–”

“I can handle myself. Get out of here.”

With the glare Genoa was giving Eva, she didn’t try arguing again. As before, she ran up the stairs. She skipped over her hallway this time. The clothes and equipment she had on already would work just fine.

Now that she was running, she realized Genoa was right. Leaving Juliana alone was stupid. How could she have done such a thing? Even if the crippled hunter didn’t come back, she knew that other hunters were in the area. Someone might come along to check out what had happened with that second sky cracking.

Juliana was human, but would a hunter stop to ask? Probably not.

Eva reached the roof and immediately started blinking through the air. Having just done this, it wasn’t difficult to follow her path back. Thanks to Juliana having already destroyed all the shackles, navigating through the remaining wards wasn’t an issue.

She stopped on the first roof. Saija was still lying on her stomach with a slowly melting shard of ice sticking out of her back.

Eva paused in her rush to find Juliana. On one hand, Juliana could be in trouble.

On the other… Saija was looking pitiful. Very pitiful. And she had saved Eva from the first set of shackles, if only because she had delivered Juliana.

So Eva nudged the fallen succubus with the tip of her foot. “How are you doing?”

“Oh, just fine,” the succubus drawled without turning her head to face Eva. “This roof was so comfortable I thought I would just lie here a little longer.”

“In that case,” Eva said, starting to walk away.

“Wait! You can’t just leave me here! What if those hunters come back?”

“One is dead. The other hasn’t come back?”

Eva sighed. That was good news. If nobody had been around, Juliana should still be safe.

No longer in quite the rush, Eva knelt. Pressing one hand on Saija’s back, she gripped the icicle and yanked it out of her in a single twist of her hand.

Saija shouted out, clawing at the roof. “That hurts!”

“Oh quit being such a baby.”

Eva stood, inspecting the wound. She could block off the blood vessels and keep her from bleeding out, but it didn’t actually seem to be bleeding that much. Maybe the ice had helped close off the punctured veins or maybe that was just natural demonic healing at work.

Either way, Eva shrugged her shoulders.

“It missed your spine. You shouldn’t be paralyzed or anything.”

“I hurt when I try to move.”

“Well, just sit tight here then. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve found Juliana.”

The succubus started to protest, but Eva ignored it as she walked away. Following her path across the rooftops, Eva reached the partially destroyed, partially glassed building.

The roof was empty. No Juliana. No metal-encased idol.

But that wasn’t surprising. Nothing to worry about. Juliana wouldn’t have wanted to stick around on an unstable roof. She would have gone down inside, maybe even down to street level.

“Juliana!” Eva called out as she leaned over the edge of the roof.

No Juliana down on the street. No answer either. She must be inside.

Eva dropped down into the main building, landing roughly where she and Juliana had landed after the crack in the sky. Landing elsewhere could be dangerous. In fact, moving through the building could be dangerous. The kind of dangerous that wound up with her stuck in shackles.

And if Juliana was in trouble, it might be some time before someone came along to free her. A potentially deadly situation should the shackles drain her as the other shackles tried to do to her.

“Juliana,” Eva called out again.

This time, she actually heard something in response. Nothing clear. A mumbled noise coming from somewhere below.

The staircase leading up to the roof had fallen with the blast. The way down from whatever floor Eva was on looked more or less intact.

Unfortunately, she spotted several demon shackles just waiting for some poor demon to try to walk up it without glancing above them. They were much easier to notice while facing the stairwell from the wrong direction. However, they spoke of just how on guard she would have to be while walking through the building. Or any of the buildings around.

If she had her cellphone on her, she might have called up Irene to see if she could get a human walking her through the area. At the very least, Irene should be able to scuff up the shackles enough to break them.

Not a choice at the moment, sadly.

Eva overpowered a fireball, throwing it right at the shackle before it exploded. When it did go off, it took most of the ceiling with it.

Surprising, given the difficulty in destroying the shackles within the apartment building. Perhaps they hadn’t had time to make them difficult to remove. Though they had managed to set up all the other wards that littered the rooftops.

“Oh well,” Eva mumbled to herself. “No complaints here.”

She carefully descended the staircase, checking every nook and cranny for more shackles. Even underneath the handrail and the vertical slat on each stair. Rubble from the ceiling of the stairs or the roof itself littered the landing, nearly causing her to miss another set of shackles.

This time, she tried a far less explosive fireball. Just enough to chip into the concrete platform and disrupt the shackles.

She made it all the way down to the first floor.

And promptly froze.

“Am I glad to see you,” Juliana said.

Eva wasn’t sure what to say in response.

A half-sphere of water sat in front of her. Somewhat like an above-ground swimming pool. Except there were no walls. The water was entirely held in by magic.

Wards.

Juliana stood inside it, feet about an arm’s length away from the ground, standing on a pillar of metal. Her pillar let her stick out from her chest up, but she had clearly fallen in at least once. She was soaked from head to toe.

Obviously, given her toes were underwater.

The pillar was probably made of her armor; she was only wearing her regular clothes at the moment. The only metal on her was her ring foci and Ylva’s black band.

The metal-encased idol was lying on the floor right next to the metal pillar.

Eva reached out, about to touch the bubble of water.

“Don’t!”

Juliana’s shout had her pull her hand back, clutching it to her chest.

“What if you got stuck in here? How would we get out then?”

“I’m just confused as to how you managed to fall into this trap?”

In slow motion because of the water, Juliana placed a hand on her hip. “It wasn’t full of water when I walked in. I didn’t see a thing until I ran into an invisible wall. Then it started to fill with water.” She paused, lifting a hand out of the water. Her hand hit something about a foot over her head, roughly twice as high as the water level. “I’m glad somebody showed up before it finished filling. I was about to try summoning a demon.”

She pointed down at her feet. As she lifted one foot out of the way, Eva found a mostly formed summoning circle had been etched into the top of the pillar.

“Of course,” Juliana continued in a quieter mumble, “probably would have gotten an enigma which would have just killed me. Better than drowning though. Even if I got a demon, no room for shackles here.”

“Don’t worry about either. I’m going to get you out of there.”

An easy statement to make. Much harder to follow through with. Now she was wishing she had a phone to call up Professor Lepus. The warding professor should be able to tear it down in the time it took to snap her fingers.

“How fast has it been filling?”

“Fast enough that I’d rather get out now than later.”

“You didn’t think to call someone once you got trapped?”

Juliana pulled a cellphone out of her pocket. One long dead from the water.

“Was the first thing I thought of once I realized I was trapped. Unfortunately, the water was rushing in much faster then. Enough to knock me down.” She dropped the phone with a shrug. It sank down alongside the idol and her pillar. “I honestly thought I would drown before I even had a chance to form the summoning circle,” she said.

Faster before, but now the water was slowing? The ward is running out of magic. Or maybe not the ward but whatever is filling it with magic, Eva thought, slowly circling around the bubble.

She kept a careful eye out for any shackles as she moved.

Packing both the invisible wall and the water conjuring into the same ward wasn’t impossible. Difficult maybe. Especially for someone who had only been in the class as long as Eva. But probably difficult for others as well.

With the staggering amount of wards and shackles around the place, Eva couldn’t imagine that they would have gone with the more complicated and more time-consuming route of wrapping both effects up into a single spell. They would have built everything within the last hour or so, or people might have noticed. Two people did all that. Maybe a few more if they had recruited the hunters who were attacking Nel and Ylva.

They had to have made mistakes in their castings. Eva doubted that the water conjuration was supposed to have given time to escape.

“Maybe it will run out of magic soon,” Eva said, mostly to herself.

Apparently Juliana heard. “I’d rather not take that chance.”

“Right.”

Eva considered going back up the stairs and finding a decently sized bit of rebar and having Juliana smack it against the top of the shell for a while. But if the shell and the water were separate as Eva suspected, the shell could last for a very long time before running out of magic enough to release Juliana.

She would have to try deconstructing the ward.

It was simple in theory. Being able to tear down their own thaumaturgical wards was one of the first things taught. Otherwise the teacher would have to go around and dispel everybody’s practice wards every single time they went into class.

Professor Lepus had warned them never to tear down other people’s wards. It was possible to build traps into the things that activated upon attempts to break them. From simple things such as alarms to full on explosions.

But in the hunters’ haste to erect these defenses, would they have put more time and effort into trapping them?

Eva reached out again, keeping her hand hovering just above the bubble. She channeled her magic through her fingers as if she were conjuring a fireball. Instead of flames, she forced the magic into the shell.

All while focusing on the level of the water.

The water did not significantly rise from her added magic.

“Excellent.” She could toy around for a moment without accidentally drowning Juliana.

Forcing her magic into the bubble again, Eva waited just a moment before yanking it back. Much like removing excess hair with a strip of hot wax paper. Or so went the example Professor Lepus had used; Eva had never had a bikini wax in her life. They sounded painful.

Also, since about a half an hour ago, entirely unnecessary given her lack of hair.

Eva held her breath, waiting and watching.

No explosions. She was taking that as a good sign.

Trying again and a third time, Eva smiled.

A leak had formed in the shell.

“I see the water going out,” Juliana said slowly, “but it’s up to my shoulders now.” Her voice had just a tinge of panic in it. “And still rising. I can make my pedestal bigger, but not by much.”

Eva grit her teeth. Is it trapped then? Or worse, is it intended to cause slow and painful drowning? These hunters were terrible, if so. Still terrible anyway, but worse. Absolutely sadistic.

“Just hold on a minute,” Eva said, pouring more and more magic into the shell.

She tore it all away, peeling it back. More cracks were forming. More water escaping.

“My chin, Eva.”

As she had said she could do, Juliana’s pillar stretched, growing slightly narrower at the top. The water level moved from her chin back to her shoulders as her head bumped into the top of the ward.

“Working as fast as I can,” Eva said, continuing to rip apart the shell.

“Eva…”

“When this thing shatters, try not to get washed into another ward.”

“Gee, okay. That’s first on my priority list at the moment!”

The water had risen back to her chin despite the additional cracks in the shell.

“If you get washed into another one, I’ll have to do this all over again. And maybe it will be fire instead of water.”

Juliana grimaced without speaking. She had to tilt her head back to try to keep her mouth above the water line.

As she continued ripping apart the ward, Eva considered something. It might not have been designed to speed up because she was ripping apart the barrier. The fact of the matter was that the shell was in the shape of a sphere. Beyond the half-way point, for every inch the water level rose, less water would need to exist to fill the next inch.

That didn’t really help much, but at least she knew that she wasn’t fueling some trap.

Feeding in enough of her magic to detonate several of her most explosive fireballs, Eva tore it away in a single jerk of her hands.

It started around the middle. Water exploded outwards in a ring. The rest of the water held its shape for just a moment. All at once, that sphere failed. The ring traveled upwards and downwards, letting the water collapse in on itself as it rushed to fill the rest of the first floor.

It was enough water to almost knock Eva off her feet.

Juliana, being in the water, did exactly as Eva had asked her not to and started to head towards where she knew another ward was waiting.

Eva snapped a hand out, grabbing Juliana’s arm. Her other hand wrapped around Juliana’s waist.

As soon as her arms were around Juliana, Eva stopped fighting the water and let it sweep her backwards. The stairs were already clear of traps. She could fall towards them all she wanted.

Juliana coughed a few times, sputtering out a bit of water.

She didn’t speak.

Neither of them did. They just sat, soaked to the bone. Eva had her arms wrapped around Juliana while the other girl coughed every once in a while.

As the water settled—save for a weak fountain floating in the middle of the air where the bubble had been—Eva gently shoved Juliana off.

“Let’s not do that again, shall we?”

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008.025

Posted on by Tower Curator

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With a long guttural noise from the back of her throat, Arachne tried to sit up.

Eva slammed her foot down on Arachne’s shoulder despite the sword at her neck. The sudden move shouldn’t alarm the doll too much. In fact, pretty much nothing alarmed the doll. Throughout that entire fight with the hunter, Eva hadn’t noticed a single recognizable emotion cross her face.

And even with a sword at her neck, Eva couldn’t allow Arachne to move. The sword had come perilously close to cutting straight through her heart tube. Of course, she probably shouldn’t have kicked her down so hard, but the sword didn’t cut anything vital.

So long as Arachne didn’t move more, everything would be fine.

To that end, Eva kept her foot firmly planted on Arachne’s chest.

“Look,” Eva said, turning her head slightly to address the doll, “I’m not going anywhere. No need to be so touchy.”

The doll said nothing. Only half looking at her, Eva couldn’t get a very good picture of what the doll was doing. Even if she could, she doubted she would gain any insight from looking at her face. The term ‘doll’ was quite apt in her case.

As the silence continued, Eva slowly raised a hand. She used just the very tip of one finger to slide the blade off her shoulder. When she failed to encounter any resistance, Eva grew a little confidence. As soon as the blade wasn’t touching her, she twisted around and stepped onto the other side of Arachne to face the doll.

Of course, she didn’t take her foot off Arachne as she moved.

“While running around, I had some time to think. I think I’ve come up with something that might convince you to not send me to Hell or the Keeper.”

The doll remained where she was. Now that Eva was actually facing her, Eva found herself somewhat disturbed.

Blood hadn’t bothered Eva in years. The sight of it didn’t elicit any real feelings. Nor did the smell. Not fresh blood at least. The memories of Sawyer’s autopsies while she had been in his head were about where she drew the line in terms of body decomposition.

So it wasn’t the blood alone that made Eva take in a sharp breath.

It was the doll and how she just stood there, covered in blood, as if she didn’t even realize it. Her whole face was stained red, losing the alabaster look. Her hair as well. And her eyes… she obviously had them open when Eva had clapped her hands together. Larger bits of flesh hung off her body as well. A chunk of skin clung to a matted strand of hair.

Perhaps she did realize it. Without it factoring into her current mission, she just didn’t care.

Eva grimaced, remembering that she had her back turned while the hunter was busy exploding. She had definitely felt some blood hit her—and now that she was looking at herself with her blood sight, her worries were confirmed.

She definitely needed a shower.

Shaking her head and clearing her throat in an attempt to take her mind off the matter, Eva moved on with her explanation.

“Ylva killed me.”

The doll just continued staring.

Perhaps it wasn’t the best explanation. Eva had more to elaborate upon it, but at the moment, Arachne was letting out an even deeper growl as she struggled to get up.

Which was exactly why she had never told Arachne about that little incident. She knew that the demon would become agitated. Eva did not want Arachne trying to fight Ylva.

Eva lifted her foot and slammed it down. A few cracks spread through her carapace.

“After this incident you’re concerned about,” Eva said as Arachne settled down, “the one where I took a beacon from Hell, Ylva killed me. It was an experiment. One I was somewhat displeased to be the subject of. However, no portal to Hell opened to draw me back in. If I’m not demonic enough for Void to draw me in, I must not be demonic enough to have the Keeper’s laws applied to me.

“That combined with my earlier argument about realizing my mistake and destroying the beacon should be enough to absolve me.”

Or so Eva was hoping.

“She’s out in the city,” Eva added after a moment. “You can even ask her if you don’t believe me.”

Throughout the entire time Eva spoke, the doll had just stood there. Her sword was not up and at the ready, but hovering off to the side. Her facial expression never changed from her impassive stare.

So Eva held her breath, waiting and hoping that the doll judged her innocent.

Though she did have something of a backup plan. Unlike Eva, the black pool of blood they were all standing in did not avoid the doll’s feet. It was all still under her control. While it might not have seeped up into her boots, a great deal had splashed around the doll just from walking. Much of it had joined up with and been contaminated by the hunter’s blood, but plenty more was still pure enough to work with.

Eva could distinctly tell the difference between the hunter’s blood and the demon blood. A clap of her hands and the doll should be crippled if not killed outright.

Hopefully, anyway. Before any of that, Eva would be blinking away to give herself some time to clap.

Just as Eva was thinking about good locations to blink to, the doll’s sword-arm shot straight up into the air. She didn’t have time to react before it came back down.

Eva winced, expecting to find herself split in two.

But the doll’s sword came down to the side, splattering a great deal of red blood into the pool of black.

In one swift motion, she slid it across the opening of her scabbard, stopping at the tip, and plunged it in.

With the doll’s sword put away, Eva breathed out her held breath.

Eva turned her attention to Arachne now that the doll had sheathed her sword. Ever since she had stomped on Arachne’s shoulder, she hadn’t tried to get up. That wasn’t to say that she was sitting still and content. Her fingers were scraping through the pool of blood as she clenched and unclenched her fists.

More, she had an almost constant low rumble coming from the back of her throat.

“Just sit still,” Eva said. “I’m obviously alive and fine. Ylva put me back together after killing me. And, thanks to her, I am no longer in danger of…”

Eva trailed off as she glanced back up at the doll.

Or where the doll had been standing. She wasn’t there now. It took Eva a moment to realize that the doll was walking away. And then, she only noticed that the doll was still in the area thanks to the ripples in the blood.

She watched for a moment as the doll approached the webbed fence, hopped straight over, and came down on the other side.

“Well, I think she has decided to let me go. Which is great news,” Eva said, looking back to Arachne.

“Ylva killed you,” Arachne snarled.

“And I’m still here. If you go off and attack Ylva, she’ll kill you. And maybe she’ll be mad enough to kill me. And if either of us die, I will be very upset,” Eva said, leaning over Arachne to better glower at the demon.

Arachne’s teeth clicked together. She somewhat shrunk in on herself. As much as she could with a sword through her chest, anyway.

Which just brought Eva’s attention back to how close it was to cutting into her heart tube.

“Now, let’s get that sword out of you.”

“My legs are still bleeding. I can feel it. They should have stopped by now.”

Eva blinked. Apart from her initial shock at seeing how dismembered Arachne was, she hadn’t paid all that much attention to Arachne’s legs. She lost them often enough that Eva never considered them all that big a deal. Just a measure of how dangerous whoever she was fighting might be.

But now that she was looking, she could see that Arachne was right. The stumps on her back were still bleeding, as was her chest where the sword had partially come out.

Most of it was beneath the surface of the black pool.

Which helped Eva immensely. She solidified some of the blood around each of Arachne’s major wounds and even a few of the minor cuts and cracks in her chitin that looked like they were leaking.

Now for the sword, Eva thought, reaching out for the hilt.

She stopped her hands just before touching the hilt. As with the idol, this sword could be trapped somehow. Or worse, made of the same metal that hurt demons when touched.

Eva pulled back, choosing instead to call up the surrounding blood. The blood swarmed around the sword, swallowing it up in an inky blackness. Eva solidified a large portion around the hilt. As added security, she solidified more blood in a handle that extended well beyond the original hilt.

Even with all the crystallized blood, Eva still only grazed her fingers along the surface.

Really, she was probably being paranoid. Arachne had part of the sword buried in her and had gripped the hilt to get it away from the hunter. Though injured, most of that looked to be because she had been stabbed. Unless there was some enchantment that caused the blade to turn on its wielder, Eva should be fine.

As nothing had killed her yet, Eva gripped the handle with both hands and hefted the sword up.

And just about stumbled forwards, coming far too close to dropping it back into Arachne for her tastes. Even using her legs to do most of the work for her didn’t help much. The sword had to weigh twice as much as Eva did.

She did get it up enough to clear Arachne. Despite the demon’s injured state, Arachne managed to slide out from under the hovering tip.

As soon as she was out of the way, Eva threw it back down, fully encasing the rest of the blade in crystalline blood drawn from the pool it had landed in.

“How,” Eva groaned between sucking in gasps of air, “did that hunter manage to lift that thing.”

Even when it fell, some of the hardened blood cracked. Eva had to spend a moment shoring it up and ensuring that it wasn’t going anywhere.

With a sigh, she finally turned to face Arachne. There were still a few spots where the sword had been that were bleeding, so Eva fixed them up.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I have a hole in my chest,” she groaned, sitting up properly. She paused, glancing downwards. “Oh. Look at that.”

Eva rolled her eyes. “You’re hilarious.” She took a deep breath and just sighed. Arachne was alright. “About Ylva… just let it go. Pretend nothing happened. She killed me only because I asked. It was all an experiment.”

Sure, she hadn’t explicitly asked to be killed, but if Arachne believed so, then all the better.

“Though,” Eva said before Arachne could do more than growl again, “Nel mentioned that they were fighting another group of hunters just a few minutes ago. I wonder how they’re doing.”

— — —

Nel shrieked as something flew right towards her. She ducked back behind her altar, letting it sail overhead. It bounced off a wall and…

Is that a grenade?

She scrambled around to the other side of the heavy marble, just barely making it with enough time to clamp her arms over her head.

An explosion sent her eardrums ringing. All the sounds of gunfire died off, replaced by a high-pitched whine. Shards of marble from the altar went flying through the air while the main bulk of it collapsed into where Nel had just been hiding.

The lack of gunfire was actually quite refreshing. Guns were noisy. Painfully so. Every time one of the hunters fired off a shotgun, she feared that she would never hear again. And not just because she was dead. The way it echoed in the small home burst her eardrums again and again.

Though, just because she couldn’t hear didn’t mean that the battle had stopped.

And, though her altar had saved her from the grenade, it was no longer protecting her from the flying bullets.

Marble dust exploded around Nel’s head as a bullet whizzed past her ear. She pinched her eyes shut, throwing herself back down as flat on the ground as she could possibly make herself.

Scrambling along the ground, Nel made it back to the safer side of her altar. Shrapnel and debris littered the small corner of the room. The wood floor had a hole in it at the main point of the explosion. One full of splinters that were just waiting to become slivers.

Nel pressed her back against the largest still intact chunk of marble and let out a breath. The ringing in her ears was slowly dying down, only to once again be replaced with the cracks of gun reports.

There had been five hunters to begin with. Two were little more than husks.

Nel took a quick glimpse of the area, making sure that none of the remaining hunters were circling around to get her.

A white lightning bolt crackled through the air. Alicia flung two more, but they both missed. The first hit the hunter that Ylva was stalking square in the back, sending him crashing to the floor.

He managed to roll on his back, bringing a shotgun around and leveling it at the skeletal form of Ylva.

The roof had partially collapsed thanks to one of the hunters and his fireballs. He had been the first to go. But the damage had been done and Ylva was out in the unobstructed sunlight. Her white dress was riddled with holes from the hunters’ bullets. However, with no skin or organs, it was nearly impossible to tell how injured she was. One of her ribs had broken off, but that was about it.

The hunter on his back unloaded three shotgun blasts straight into Ylva’s chest.

Not one of the shots gave her even the slightest pause. She reached down, brushing her skeletal fingertips across the hunter’s cheeks.

Screaming, the hunter writhed on the ground as black veins spread out from the touch. Within a few seconds, his screams died out and the hunter went still. As with the other dead hunters, it was as if all the water in his body had dried up, turning him into a sort of mummified husk.

“Hey Dean?”

Nel turned her attention to one of the remaining hunters. A younger man with somewhat long brown hair.

“Little busy at the moment Sammy,” the other one—shorter and with a crew cut—said. He leaned around the corner, brandishing a heavy pistol.

Nel clamped her hands over her ears. Despite that, she still heard the crack as if it were right next to her head.

Ylva’s head snapped to the side. The bullet had been traveling too fast to see, but a bullet-sized hole appeared in the side of Ylva’s skull. Only one side. It didn’t make it out the other.

Snapping her head back upright, she lifted a hand to just under her jaw. A single silver bullet fell down into her waiting palm. She looked it over for a moment before dropping it to the floor. Her skull swiveled over to face the hunter with the pistol.

“I don’t think this is a succubus,” the taller hunter said.

The hunter with a pistol ducked back behind a broken wall just in time to avoid a lightning bolt from Alicia. “You think? What gave you that idea? Was it the turning into a skeleton? Or maybe the fact that it didn’t die with a bullet to the skull. Find a way to kill it.”

“Just keep it off me,” the first said, opening a small leather-bound book. “I’m going to try to banish it.”

Alicia snarled upon hearing that. Emerging from her cover, she threw lightning bolt after lightning bolt at the wall the taller hunter was using for cover. With every step closer, the lightning grew more intense than the last bolt until it was almost blinding to look at even through Nel’s glimpsing.

The hunter with the pistol didn’t seem too concerned. He leaned around the corner, aimed, and fired all before Nel could even think to do anything.

Alicia crumpled to the ground, blood leaking from a hole in her own skull.

Her shield should have protected her. Nel saw it. It flashed for the barest moment in Nel’s glimpse. Nel had never heard of an enchanted bullet that could penetrate an Elysium Order shield with only a single shot. But then, perhaps Alicia hadn’t been maintaining her shield properly. Her fellow former nun did not display the best mental discipline. Something that had only been getting worse as time went on.

With her real eyes, Nel started to see ice crystals forming from her breath. She started shivering as the cold set in, penetrating straight to her core.

“I think you just pissed it off!”

Ylva marched towards the pistol wielding hunter, ignoring shot after shot even as parts of her body were pulverized by the bullets. Even while fighting with the other hunters, Ylva had a grace about her. A certain regal bearing that she managed to maintain no matter the situation.

That regality was gone. Her footfalls were heavy and angry. Her hands clenched into fists. The teeth in her fleshless jaw ground together.

Just outside her reach, the hunter decided he had stuck around long enough. He turned to run.

And found himself facing the bright pinpricks in the back of Ylva’s skull.

She reached forward, gripping his neck. As with all the other hunters, black veins started spreading from her touch. Unlike the others, the veins spread slowly. They crept from her fingers, lingering in spots before moving on.

Nel stopped watching. She stared at her feet with her hands clamped over her ears, trying to shut out the noises the hunter was making. She had thought that she had seen Ylva angry before. How wrong that was. Nel now believed that she had never seen Ylva more than mildly irritated. With a shudder, Nel considered just how grateful she was to be Ylva’s servant and not her enemy.

When she finally worked up the courage to look again, she found nothing but dust around Ylva’s feet.

And an unmoving Ylva.

The taller hunter had his hand thrust outwards towards Ylva with a look of abject anger tormenting his otherwise pretty face. His lips moved, murmuring something.

He was trying to banish her.

Judging by her immobility, he was succeeding.

Nel jumped up. She couldn’t fight, but she could throw a lightning bolt or two. Enough to distract him and let Ylva free to take him out.

But before she could properly connect to the Source, the hunter’s head fell from his neck.

His body stayed upright for just a moment before tottering to the ground.

A woman covered from head to toe in blood stood just behind him, not even tracking his falling corpse with her eyes. She flicked her sword to one side before sheathing it.

“I have an inquiry,” she said, stepping over the body towards Ylva.

Though she was obviously not frozen anymore, Ylva stood still, watching the sword-wielder approach.

“The individual known as ‘Eva’ claims to have been killed by you.”

“Her claim is accurate.”

“No portal to the Void opened beneath her corpse?”

“Your statement is accurate.”

“I see.”

The two stood, staring at each other for another minute. Neither said another word. Even still, as if by some agreement, both started moving at once. The sword-wielder turned on her heel, stepped over the body, and walked out through a hole in the house.

Ylva turned to face the crumpled form of Alicia.

Her strides still heavy though lacking their anger, she approached the body. Half-way there, she stepped out of the direct sunlight and into a portion of the house that still had a roof overhead. Her flesh returned, appearing on her body as if nothing had happened. Though her bones had been damaged and even broken in places, not a single blemish marred her skin.

The only evidence of a battle was her long dress and the tatters the bullets had made of it.

She stopped a foot away, standing and staring.

With the danger passed, Nel stepped out from behind the slab of marble. She wasn’t quite sure what to do. Comfort Ylva?

She wouldn’t know where to begin in doing such a thing.

For the time being, she merely stepped up beside Ylva.

Nel couldn’t say that she ever really liked the other nun. Quite the opposite, in fact. Nel frequently felt an uncomfortable sensation on the back of her neck only to turn and notice Alicia staring at her. It gave her the creeps. And after Eva had mentioned how Ylva recruited the nun, that creepy feeling only grew. She knew Eva felt the same. They had both worried that she might betray Ylva.

Yet here she lay, having given her life in an attempt to stop Ylva from being banished. All while Nel cowered behind cover.

Ylva’s face was set in stone. Yet there was a certain sorrow behind her eyes. Something Nel hadn’t ever seen before despite all the time she spent around the demon.

She couldn’t keep silent any longer.

“Can you not bring her back?”

“No.” Ylva’s voice came out heavy and full of conviction. Not the voice she occasionally used when she wanted to make an impression. That voice tended to echo everywhere and force people to their knees. Just one with a hint more emotion than she normally expressed.

Nel shook her head, not quite understanding. Was she not a servant of Death? Did she not have certain powers over death?

“But you killed Eva. She’s still around.”

“None came to collect Eva. She is unwanted by all. Perhaps in time, Void will stake a claim on her being. Even had a reaper come, We may have been able to stake Our own claim. Yet We did not kill Ali. She is not Ours to restore.”

Ylva reached over, tapping Nel in the center of her forehead.

Nel blinked as a rush of cold passed through her body. Not the uncomfortable sort of cold she had felt when Alicia had been shot. Just a chill. It lasted a mere instant.

When she opened her eyes from her blink, she could see.

The world had become muted. Blood from the hunters had turned grey. The pictures on the walls, grey. Everything she could see had been drained of color.

Yet Nel didn’t waste her time looking around.

An ethereal Alicia stood just in front of her. Her face was devoid of all expression. No staring at her own corpse, no longing for Ylva. Just a vacuous gaze that stared off to one side.

Another being stood nearby. A kindly old man stood just over the beheaded hunter’s corpse. Despite his somewhat disturbing location, Nel didn’t get any worrisome feelings about him. If anything, she found him pleasing to look at.

With his lightly wrinkled face, she thought that he might be the kind of person that might be found in a park, reading a book under the warm sun. While Alicia looked like a ghost, the man was far more solid. Nel could almost see through him, but at the same time, she felt as if she might bump into him were they to touch.

He drifted forward. Though his feet moved in proper steps, his body moved so smoothly that it was almost as if he were gliding. As soon as he reached Alicia, he reached out, tapping her on the shoulder.

Alicia’s face came alive. First, her initial snarl. The exact same expression she had on while marching after the hunter. That disappeared in an instant, replaced with open-mouthed confusion. She stared at Ylva first, then Nel.

Then down to her own body.

Nel clamped her jaw shut, not trusting herself to not make a noise. The anguish on Alicia’s face, the despair. It was enough to make Nel want to cry. As it was, her stomach was churning.

“Thank you, Ali, for your service.”

The former nun’s head snapped up to Ylva. Her eyes looked wet, full of tears. But not a single drop made it out. She gave a shallow nod of her head.

The old man spoke. At least, Nel assumed he was speaking. His mouth was moving and Alicia had turned as if listening. However, Nel couldn’t hear a thing. She watched as Alicia opened her mouth as if speaking in response before the old man started talking again.

After they had spoken, the old man turned to Ylva. He gave her an almost imperceptible nod of his head. One which Ylva returned.

He took Alicia by the hand. Both vanished in a flash of white light.

Nel blinked, looking around. They were well and truly gone.

“Humans have hourglasses,” Ylva said. “We know rumors of such have been distributed throughout the mortal realm. Not literally true, but a decent metaphor. Getting the hourglasses to turn around is difficult. Though not truly a crime. Attempting to freeze the sand in place through idols of gold is what Death finds most offensive. However, sometimes sand can be added. Sometimes, taken away. Alicia… was taken before her sand had run its course. Her hourglass had cracked, to continue the metaphor.”

Turning away from Alicia’s corpse, Ylva glanced down. She pulled at her dress, looking it over with a deep frown on her face. After a moment, she released the fabric.

“Alicia may prove worthy. A reaper. Maybe a valkyrie. Should she prove worthy, I may put in a request to have her assigned to me.”

Nel didn’t say anything. She was relatively certain that she should never have seen what Ylva just showed her. The churn in her stomach was still there. Worse now, with what Ylva had said.

She opened her mouth.

How long is left in my hourglass?

She almost asked. Came so close to spilling the words.

But she was afraid. Ylva would answer. She would speak honestly and probably bluntly at that.

Nel shook her head, narrowing her eyes. She latched onto Ylva’s other words.

“H-How do I become worthy?”

— — —

“Eh, I’m sure she’s fine,” Eva said with a shrug.

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008.024

Posted on by Tower Curator

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Eva dropped out of the sky, seething with her fists clenched tight as she grit her teeth together. Her final blink had carried her over the makeshift wall of the Brakket dormitory plaza.

The first thing she noticed were the arachnid legs scattered about. Arachne’s dismembered legs. Perhaps the source of the disturbing feeling.

Or so Eva thought until she spotted the rest of the demon, the hunter, and the doll.

The hunter’s curved sword was buried in Arachne’s stomach.

Blood boiled the moment Eva saw Arachne’s state. Time stood perfectly still as Eva’s brain screeched to a halt.

Arachne’s eyes were wide. As wide as they could be with the way her facial carapace worked. Her body was half twisted, as if she had tried to avoid the blade only to miss it by just a few inches.

Her carapace was cracked. Black liquid oozed from the wound. It dripped along the length of the sword, staining the edge black. When it hit the emerald encrusted hand guard, the blood flowed over the gemstones until it reached the very lowest point.

From where it dropped down onto the ground, creating tiny splashes as it pooled on the glassed-over surface.

The pool expanded slowly. Blood seeped from the ground, filling the area around the fighters’ feet. It spread outwards, the circle growing to cover more of the plaza with blood. More than could possibly have seeped from Arachne’s wounds. Even with her severed legs, her body simply couldn’t hold so much blood.

Arachne had her mouth open in apparent shock.

But only for a moment.

As Eva watched, Arachne’s mouth curled into a vicious grin.

Time snapped back into place, reality resettling as Eva let out a short breath.

Arachne was still alive. For the moment, at least. No portal had opened to ferry her back to Hell.

Hands snapping forward, Arachne clamped down on the hilt of the sword, locking it in place and preventing the hunter from pulling it out.

He only tried for a moment longer before releasing the sword.

The doll forced him into a retreat. With his sword stuck in Arachne, there was nothing aside from his armor to protect him from the doll’s blade. He was obviously not willing to take the chance his armor could handle the blow.

He slid backwards, just barely ducking his head under the doll’s sword. His head came back up.

And he caught sight of Eva.

She couldn’t see his eyes. The visor of his helmet was nothing more than a thin slit. Even were she closer, she would have trouble seeing what lay behind it. Yet him noticing Eva was plain to see.

He stilled ever so slightly, angling his helmet further towards her.

Eva broke into a run. She could have blinked across the battlefield, but she was still forming a plan in her mind. Without his sword, the hunter would be far less deadly. Though, given how prepared he and his partner were, Eva couldn’t discount the possibility of traps or secondary weapons.

She was half hoping that he would pull out something else before she got to him. Preferably with enough time for her to react.

One thing was certain, this hunter was not leaving alive.

The other hunter had escaped, barring the suicide theory. It didn’t bother Eva that much. She had been able to confirm that the hunter was crippled. More importantly, they had gotten a hold of the idol. So long as it wasn’t a trap, Eva likely had Juliana to thank for that acquisition. She had been the one to knock over the hunter’s chair, putting her farther away from the idol and making sure she couldn’t teleport away with it.

Without the idol, creating a large ritual circle would be significantly easier.

But seeing what this hunter had done to Arachne… for that alone, he would pay.

Eva did note the blood around the hunter was freezing. White frost started close to him. It spread out in an almost perfect circle up to a few feet away from him.

At first, she considered the notion that the other hunter had come back. While a possibility, there was a far more likely explanation.

His armor had been enchanted to freeze liquids that came too close. The other hunter had never been actively protecting him. She had merely been watching from a distance, perhaps looking for another opportunity to crack the sky.

It hadn’t frozen Arachne’s blood as it dripped down his sword, but perhaps there hadn’t been time. In her momentary shock, the moment had felt like it had taken forever when, in reality, the entire interaction between the hunter, Arachne, and the doll had passed by in an instant.

Eva moved close enough for her feet to touch the black liquid. It didn’t splash or even ripple where her feet came down. Rather, it moved to the sides, allowing her to reach the dry ground beneath.

Despite not having touched her dagger into the liquid, it moved.

Which gave Eva an idea.

She called on the blood, willing a small orb to move up to her hand just as if she were manipulating regular blood.

The black liquid answered her call.

Eva let out a small chuckle as she ran, calling up more and more to surround her in a nearly opaque whirlwind of blood. Of course, with the hunter still able to freeze it, it wouldn’t do that much good. Perhaps she could bury him, but that could give him time to think of a way out.

She would much rather just tear out his throat and be done with it.

The blood twisting around Eva drew in close. It ran along her skin and her carapace. With a thought, she formed it into sharp claws extending from her hands. As soon as the blood was in place, she solidified it into razor-sharp crystal claws.

If the hunter was going to freeze it anyway, she would act first. Better yet, if her theory was correct and the hunter was only freezing liquids, she would still have enough control over her solidified crystals to explode them should any shards make it through his armor.

Eva called up the blood around her feet. It was nice that it wanted to give her a decent grip on the regular ground instead of the likely slick surface caused by the blood. However, that wasn’t what Eva wanted at the moment.

The last—and first—time she had tried this had been during her first trip to Hell. She had stood on liquid blood, using it as a step-ladder to get over a wall. The blood had only been able to act as a platform because of her will holding it together.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t been thinking much at the time. The reaction had been mostly fear driven.

The sounds the Keeper made as he moved, the pain, and being blind had all made the situation somewhat hectic at the time.

Just before she reached the hunter, Eva pushed off the ground. A jump with Arachne’s legs could carry her straight over the hunter with no problems.

The hunter pulled a dagger from his armor, slicing it through the air right in Eva’s path.

Still in the air, Eva kicked. The blood on her feet acted as a solid platform for a mere instant. The strength behind her kick ricocheted her at a right angle. With the hunter turning to slash at her old position, it put Eva right behind him.

Eva wasted no time. There was a small seam near his waist. Larger gaps in his armor just under his armpits and the backs of his knees.

She swiped at the easy to reach spot first. With his arms raised to attack Eva, it was almost like he was offering himself to her.

The crystallized claws extending out from her regular hands barely skimmed the surface of one of his pauldrons. Before Eva even realized what had happened, the hunter had vanished.

Without the expected impact and the unfamiliar weight on her hands, Eva stumbled forwards. Her foot hit against the ground.

In trying to dig her foot into the ground to catch her stumble, her foot slid out from under her. Eva did the splits as she fell to the ground.

She grit her teeth, letting out a slight hiss of pain.

Ice crystals coated her feet. The blood had stayed liquid long enough for her to pull off her aerial trick, but it had frozen soon after. Combined with the already frozen ground, her footing was in a precarious spot.

Eva rolled along the ice, avoiding a dagger in her back thanks only to a moment of forewarning from her blood sense.

He didn’t stick around for long. Somehow, someway, he noticed the doll sprinting up behind him. Her blade sailed clean through the air as the hunter moved to escape.

“Thanks,” Eva said as she climbed back to her feet. She made sure to brush off the lingering ice before planting her feet down again.

A quick glance behind her showed Arachne still around. She wasn’t moving much, just lying on the ground while holding tight to the hunter’s sword. That she hadn’t been drawn into a portal to Hell filled Eva with relief. If she had survived this long after being skewered, Arachne would live.

So long as she kept the hunter from finishing the job.

The doll twitched her head ever so slightly in Eva’s direction. “This… human is a troublesome opponent. He doesn’t move like a human.”

“Fighting is taking its toll on him,” Eva said, swinging her head back around to face the hunter full-on.

He was just standing there, panting for breath. He gripped his dagger tight in his hand.

For all the similarities between wards and enchantments, Eva couldn’t actually tell if it was magical or not. His sword gave off a feeling of revulsion that made Eva want to avoid it. But his dagger looked utterly normal to her eyes.

The bones in his body were slightly misaligned. Especially down in his legs. Were he to take off his boots, he would probably need a cast for several weeks. There were a couple of spots that looked as if they had broken clean through. He was held up thanks only to the rigid armor he wore.

Of course, Eva fully intended to help him avoid such a dismal fate.

“I don’t think he was meant to be in such a prolonged battle. So long as we keep him from escaping, he will wear down until he makes a mistake.”

“I would prefer if this ended sooner. I do have other business I must attend.”

Like standing around, frozen in indecision?

Eva almost spoke her thoughts, but the doll had moved before she could open her mouth.

Rather than follow after only to find that the hunter had moved before she got there, Eva waited. There was almost no chance that he would attempt to engage with the doll using only the dagger. Either he would reveal some other trick from up his sleeve or he would be forced to move.

If he didn’t… well, no need for Eva to get involved in that case.

The second before the doll reached the hunter, he vanished. As Eva expected.

He was dashing back towards the web wall in a straight beeline.

Straight to his sword and Arachne.

Eva blinked towards him with a snarl. Three rapid blinks to disguise her intentions. One to his left, one to his right, and finally one right in his path. Eva kicked off some of the slowly freezing blood to dodge a downward slash of his knife. On her way, she raked the jagged tips of her claws across his armor.

It wasn’t the weak points. Her claws scraped across his chest and arms, shedding thousands of tiny shards into the air. A few even got caught in his armor.

She blinked just a short distance away before he could properly retaliate, clapping her hands together even before she had fully rematerialized. Eva made sure to target only the crystalline shards. Normally, when she clapped her hands, she obliterated any blood that wasn’t near her body. That usually covered any attacks she had thrown. A few special cases, such as when she amputated her legs, required more precise targeting.

In this case, such indiscretion could be bad. She had considered just detonating the entire battlefield. But who knew how much debris would fly around. Not to mention the problem of Arachne. The spider-demon was lying right in the middle of the deepest puddle. Theoretically, she could try only exploding the pooled blood around him.

Theoretically, she could accidentally explode it all.

Not to mention the fact that he froze the blood around him. That would give him enough of a buffer that his armor could probably take any residual impact from the still-liquid blood.

Loud snaps accompanied the clap of her hands. Pockmarks dotted his breastplate and arm guards. A few of the holes even started bleeding, especially those around his arms. Not much red liquid dripped out of the holes. But Eva could still see it. It dripped down his arms, pooling inside his armor.

More important were the holes. Openings for a second, deeper attack.

The hunter had to break off his charge for the sword. Eva’s interception bought time for the doll to close the distance. Again, the hunter chose to retreat rather than meet her blade. He moved quick enough that Eva couldn’t follow. Somewhere to the side.

Eva heard a soft groan just behind her. She started to turn.

Only to feel the cold edge of a blade against her throat.

“Stop her,” the hunter hissed with wet words. Though her back was to him, she could clearly see blood splatter against the inside of his helmet. “And you get to live,” he added after taking in a labor-filled lungful of air.

Her first thought was to simply blink away. She could. She had just before been blinking around him, so he didn’t have any sort of mobile anti-teleportation wards about him.

In front of Eva, the doll was approaching. Not with the speed that she normally used, but walking. The heels of her leather boots made slight ripples in the sea of black blood as she moved. Her sword was held downwards in a single hand with her arm stretched at a slight angle to keep the tip from touching the ground or the liquid.

Her eyes stared forwards with a certain coldness that Eva might have otherwise ascribed to only Ylva. Only, they lacked the dead milky grey of Ylva’s eyes, being a vibrant silver instead.

For some reason, staring into those eyes, Eva got the distinct impression that the doll wouldn’t hesitate to run her through to reach the hunter. It would probably resolve her indecision as well.

More to the point of the hunter’s request, Eva doubted she would be able to stop the doll. At least, not without fighting. Fighting the doll didn’t seem like it was the smartest idea.

So Eva just stood still. She spent a moment, listening to the heavy breathing of the hunter behind her. Each breath came in strained and sounded as if he were gargling blood with every exhale.

It was a wonder he was even standing.

“Tell her to stand down,” he hissed into Eva’s ear as he dug his blade deeper into her throat. It was still not quite cutting. He held it at just the right angle to where most of the pressure came from the flat of the blade rather than the edge.

Even if he did twist his arm, Eva doubted it would be that troublesome to deal with. Small cuts could be healed in an instant. Even deeper gouges could be repaired or at least contained with assistance from her dagger.

In contrast to his already fast heartbeats increasing in speed, Eva was the epitome of calm.

She had a plan.

She just needed a few more seconds.

It would be nice if the doll would hurry up.

To be fair to the doll, her languid approach might possibly be an attempt to give Eva the time to escape. Eva wasn’t sure if the doll would or even could think along those lines, but the only other option was that she was moving for intimidation purposes.

Smelling the rancid stink of sweat pouring out of the hunter’s armor, Eva doubted that he needed anything more to intimidate him.

Tapping her leg, Eva gave the slightest jerk of her head towards the hunter. Just moving her neck a fraction of a hair in the hopes that the doll might hurry up.

While she could escape, as she had already considered, doing so would just continue the chicken chase around the arena.

The doll apparently got the message or got tired of waiting. She kicked off the ground, sending a wave of black blood high into the air as she rocketed forwards.

Eva felt the hunter tense through his armor. She wasn’t sure if he tensed to run or to slice her throat.

Shedding the larger portion of her crystalline claws to avoid jabbing herself in the face, Eva snapped her regular claws up to the hunter’s arm. She clamped down, holding his arm, and the rest of him, in place.

The dagger he had half stuck into her neck didn’t even factor into her concerns.

She was too busy watching the doll.

Three more steps, Eva thought. Two.

Once the doll raised her sword to strike, Eva released the hunter and blinked away.

A clang of metal on metal echoed across the battlefield.

Eva wasted no time, she turned and blinked straight back behind the hunter.

The hunter had both arms in the air. One still held his dagger, dripping with Eva’s blood. The other crossed his dagger, using both his armor and the blade to catch the doll’s sword. Despite stopping the doll’s blade, his own dagger had been half buried into his arm.

Bending her wrists, Eva moved the remainder of the crystallized blood into place. A single spike on the end of each arm. She pulled back and jammed both straight into the hunter’s armpits and pulled away, leaving the spikes in place.

He let out a cry. Knees buckling and arms weakening, it wouldn’t be long before the doll beheaded him.

Eva didn’t give her the opportunity.

Blinking away, Eva clapped her hands as she moved. She didn’t even turn to face the hunter when her hands touched.

A spray of warm liquid hit her back.

She waited for just a moment as more blood rained down, joining with the black demon blood.

Eva let out a long sigh before finally turning around.

The doll stood to one side, covered in red with her sword angled downwards at her side. Eva half expected her to be caught in the blast. If she had, oops. But obviously the explosion hadn’t harmed a hair on her head. Aside from the red, she looked as pristine as she had when Eva first saw her.

As for the hunter…

His legs were still there.

Some of his torso as well. Everything from ribcage and up was simply gone. His armor had split apart like a soda can that had been left in the freezer. One of his arms was lying a good distance away, sticking out of the black blood. Scanning the area, Eva couldn’t see the other.

Or a head, for that matter.

Despite the lack of head, Eva felt quite confident in proclaiming him deceased. The jury was still deliberating over Sawyer, but this man had not been a necromancer.

In fact, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure that she had seen him cast a single spell.

Breathing out a sigh of relief, Eva just about sat down for a rest. She did take a quick moment to patch up the hole in her neck before she remembered something.

“Arachne,” she hissed to herself as she whirled around.

The spider-demon was still lying on the ground. Still grasping the sword. Still on Earth.

Still alive.

Eva blinked over.

Arachne was staring up at the sky with her teeth set in a grimace. The moment Eva stepped over her, that grimace turned to a smile.

“Don’t worry,” Eva said before the spider-demon could try to speak. “I’ll take you to the nurse right away.”

That smile immediately slipped back into a grimace.

Just as Eva was reaching out to pull the sword from Arachne’s stomach, she felt another blade against her neck.

“We have yet to resolve our dispute.”

Eva closed her eyes as she drew in a deep breath. She was really getting sick of having blades at her throat.

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008.023

Posted on by Tower Curator

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Arachne hissed through her teeth. Another of her legs was lying on the ground. Attacking with them had definitely been the right choice. Arms, and the hands attached to them, were just too valuable. Especially while she was weaving webs.

It hurt to lose them. When Eva had amputated her legs, she had taken several anesthetics to numb herself to the pain. Arachne hadn’t. And frankly, it hadn’t hurt much at all. The following weeks she had spent regrowing her legs had been more annoying than any kind of suffering.

But the hunter’s sword was odd. It cleaved cleanly through her limbs as if they weren’t even there. The human phrase would be ‘like a hot knife through a stick of butter.’ Worse than that, it reminded Arachne of being hit with lightning from the Elysium Order’s nuns. Not so much the time her face had been exploded—she hadn’t felt much from that incident—but she had been hit with it enough otherwise to remember its feeling.

That feeling of it crawling through her, eating away at even her demonic regeneration.

But still, better to lose a leg than lose an arm.

Though, that didn’t mean that the legs were infinitely disposable.

There were only the six on her back plus her two primary legs in her human form. Well, there had been six plus two. At the moment, there were only the two left.

The hunter was getting desperate. With the way the doll moved and hounded him, he had been largely ineffective in doing anything.

Except for when he sliced off her legs.

Really, that was more Arachne’s fault than anything. She didn’t have to put herself in danger. He would hack his way through the makeshift walls penning him in and escape. Arachne could just let him go instead of intercepting him.

But Eva was out there.

Seeing Eva stand up and walk into the dormitory had been a relief. Feeling her leave towards the city had been a shock. Arachne wanted nothing more than to chase after her. Her Eva could be walking into more danger.

Let’s be honest with myself, Arachne thought as she watched the hunter duck under the doll’s sword only to find himself punted across the plaza by the golem’s fist. Eva is definitely heading into danger.

That was just how Eva worked.

Arachne narrowed her eyes as the hunter crashed into Brakket Academy’s brand new fountain, mostly destroying it. The doll jumped high into the air, dropping down with her blade pointed straight at the ground.

The hunter managed to roll out of the way, dodging the attack just as he had the last four times the doll tried to get the drop on him.

It was enough to make Arachne wonder if the doll couldn’t learn properly. If he could dodge it three times, a fourth was probably not going to help. A fifth certainly not. She might eventually get lucky, but Arachne might be dead of old age by then. And Arachne didn’t even age.

The hunter continued his roll for a short distance before snapping up to his feet and charging the webbing separating him from the rest of the city.

And that was another reason Arachne couldn’t leave to help Eva. He was getting desperate to escape. Perhaps he had noticed Eva leaving as well and wanted to stop her from doing whatever she set out to accomplish.

That was something Arachne could never allow.

Glancing down at her severed leg, Arachne picked it up.

Not to mention, he is really pissing me off.

The tip of her leg was still sharp. This one had been severed at the first joint, leaving it looking more like the top of a spear than anything else.

Pulling back her arm, Arachne threw the leg at the hunter. She didn’t expect it to do much damage. His armor could stop the doll’s sword from slicing all the way through.

But the hunter did stop hacking at the webbing long enough to slice at the flying limb.

He backed away from the webbing almost immediately. The doll was still digging her sword out of the fountain, but Genoa’s golem was moving into position.

With two quick steps, he made it to the doorway of the Rickenbacker dormitory building.

Genoa’s golem crumbled to a mound of lifeless earth.

At first, Arachne thought that Genoa was fleeing, running away like a coward before the hunter could reach her.

A wall rose from the ground in front of the Rickenbacker. A smooth sheet of stone stretched high up, rising even higher than the roof of the building.

Arachne grit her teeth. The stupid woman should have just done that in the first place instead of creating the small pillars that Arachne used to web in the plaza. It would have been far more effective.

The reason why quickly became clear.

The golem was down. A fact that did not escape the notice of the hunter. Getting obviously desperate, he charged straight back towards the section of the web he had just been hacking away at. A section Arachne hadn’t had a chance to repair.

Golem down. The doll was still busy for another few seconds.

Too long. He could be gone by the time the doll got into the fray again.

Arachne grit her teeth and charged. Spare legs or not, he would not be making it to Eva.

— — —

Eva landed right on the edge of the roof, almost falling backwards onto the minefield of wards.

A barrier from a set of shackles that she had landed on saved her. It caught her, acting like a wall to lean against. Juliana wasn’t stopped by the barrier. She went straight through. It was a bit disorienting to have the weight on her shoulders not be stopped by the wall that Eva hit, but the situation quickly resolved itself as Eva shoved off the barrier.

At the same time, she slung Juliana around, dropping her onto the rooftop. Eva hadn’t intended to drop her, but the sensation of being off-balance combined with Juliana’s weight had her moving not quite how she wanted.

“Shackles,” Eva said.

Though her words were unneeded. Eva was kept from interacting with the shackles and the rest of the roof by the barrier. Juliana wasn’t. The moment she hit the ground, her flailing hands disturbed the chalk enough to break the shackles.

And a good thing too.

Eva needed the mobility.

She gripped Juliana’s hand and pulled, dragging both of them out of the way of an icy boulder crashing down right where the shackle had been.

After making sure that Juliana was actually on her feet this time, Eva ignited her hands and started tossing fireballs. It didn’t matter that the hunter intercepted every single one with a flurry of snow. So long as she was busy defending herself, she couldn’t conjure up giant balls of ice.

Eva let out a sharp hiss of pain as something tore into her side. Just because the hunter couldn’t conjure boulders didn’t mean that she couldn’t slip in an icicle.

She realized in an instant what had happened. Eva hadn’t see it coming. When her fireballs hit the hunter’s snowballs, they exploded in a burst of steam, snow, and flames. The icicles came straight through, leaving her with very little time to react.

Worse, Eva couldn’t take cues from the hunter’s body language. Now that Eva was closer, she could clearly see that the hunter wasn’t moving in the slightest.

She had something around her neck, encrusted with gemstones. Some kind of focus, probably. But she barely moved her neck. Her arms hadn’t moved. Her legs were just as still, bent in her chair at a slight angle. It would have been an awkward position to sit in. Eva doubted that she could feel it.

The holes in her back were still there. Someone had tried to stitch her skin up, but they hadn’t fixed up the actual punctures in her spine.

Really, it was amazing that she could cast at all. Eva didn’t need a focus. Her entire body, being mostly demonic, acted as a focus. But even though the woman clearly had a demon’s eye, Eva doubted that would allow her to cast spells with no focus.

Devon had a tentacle for an arm and still used his rings on his other hand.

If Zoe were here, Eva might consider asking her how foci worked with severe nerve damage and how magic flowed through the body. But she wasn’t. Eva didn’t know where she was. Maybe Wayne had teleported her back to her house only for them to get caught up in whoever was attacking Ylva.

Also, probably not a good idea to have idle conversations while fighting.

The fact of the matter was that the hunter was casting spells and she was doing it without moving. The hows and whys just didn’t matter.

Of course, being close enough to see into her body through her blood gave Eva hope. The hunter was undoubtedly paralyzed from the neck down. At least.

To the hunter’s side was a small table. Atop it sat the corrupted idol, the one Nel believed to be the cause of the sky cracking effect.

Eva jumped to the side, avoiding an array of icicles while launching a few more fireballs of her own. None of her fireballs were the big explosive kinds. The hunter would likely see them coming from miles away. Even in her debilitated state. Eva didn’t want explosions being somehow rebounded on her.

Juliana was finally getting her bearings. Only a few seconds had passed since they landed on the roof, so Eva couldn’t blame her too much for being a little stunned. Especially with the dropping and dragging. The icicles pinging off her armor probably didn’t help much either.

But once she finally got to work, she didn’t waste much time in becoming effective.

The rooftop gravel around the hunter exploded. Her chair tipped straight backwards as rock flew up into the sky.

Eva didn’t waste the opportunity. They might not get another one.

She charged forward. There were no wards on this roof to get in her way. Juliana had handily taken care of all the shackles with her explosion. Nothing was in her way.

Not even a wall of ice sprouting from the ground would stop her.

Eva vaulted it, hopping over to the other side with only her hands grazing across the top.

She landed on the other side and purposefully fell to her knees. Between her knees, she pinned the hunter down.

Just in the off-chance that the hunter was feigning her paralysis.

Eva drew back her fist and brought it down, bashing out a few of the hunter’s teeth. She had to keep the hunter as disoriented as possible to avoid becoming an icicle pincushion.

For just a moment, she paused. Eva almost said something incredibly silly. ‘That was for Martina,‘ or something similar. But it was too embarrassing. In the end, Eva just shook her head and punched the hunter a second time.

As she drew her hand back again, Eva opened her fist. She clawed her hand, preparing to tear the hunter’s throat out.

But paused again.

Though a few of her teeth were missing, the hunter was smiling.

Eva felt a chill run down her spine. She had missed something. Some trap. Some weapon.

Juliana!

Had she still had hairs on her neck, they would be standing on end. Eva blinked away from the hunter. The ice wall was still just behind her. It had grown for a few moments more after Eva had vaulted it, but it wasn’t much of an obstacle when she could blink straight up.

Landing on the top, Eva was overjoyed to see Juliana standing right where she had been. Her first thought had been that something had happened to Juliana. That not being the case did not mean that everything was fine. She could hear a light crackling somewhere in the air.

Eva jumped from the top of the ice wall. As she moved, her vials of Arachne’s blood exploded, releasing their contents. The blood swirled around behind her. She landed on Juliana, tackling her to the ground. The blood formed into three overlapping shields around the two of them.

The outermost shield collapsed almost instantly. The second followed, lasting a few seconds longer than the first before succumbing to the heat.

Eva never got to find out how the third shield would have fared. A lurch in her stomach and a lack of building beneath her had Eva falling straight downwards.

She lay still for a moment. Powdered brick and sawdust clouded the area, making breathing unpleasant.

On a brighter note, while the heat was still around, it wasn’t scorching her. In fact, it was at the point where it was almost a pleasant heat.

For her.

Juliana was… not screaming. However, she wasn’t sounding as if she were enjoying a nice vacation on the beach either. Muffled moans and groans escaped from the vents in her helmet.

“Are you alright?”

At her words, Juliana just gave a loud groan. A louder groan.

“Right,” Eva said, taking her eyes off Juliana to look around. Just because she wasn’t dead now didn’t mean that the hunter had expended all of her traps.

While there was evidence of more shackles having been drawn on the walls and what was left of the ceiling of the building they had fallen into, it was all damaged beyond a working state. Probably meant to hinder or trap Eva if she chose to get to the roof from street level instead of hopping across the neighboring buildings. It certainly wasn’t meant to operate after destroying half the building.

It wasn’t hard to imagine what happened. The hunter had obviously been channeling magic into the false idol during their fight. She made another of those sky cracks.

And, unless she had been intending to commit suicide, she was likely still alive somewhere.

“Juliana, I’m leaving for just a moment,” Eva said, turning away.

She had to find out what happened to the hunter and whether or not they were still in immediate danger. Before moving, she did glance down at the obviously in-pain girl. Through her sense of blood, Eva could see no immediate problems. She wasn’t bleeding out or even hemorrhaging blood internally.

“Try not to die. Your mother would kill me.”

“Me too,” she said after drawing in a labored breath. “She threatened me with necromancy.”

Eva smiled for just a moment. It disappeared as she turned away again.

The building had survived the attack for the most part. Half of the roof had collapsed. A good portion of the debris was glassed over similar to the bricks in the Brakket dormitory plaza. The edge of the roof looked to be relatively stable. Mostly because of the brick wall beneath it. It hadn’t collapsed and it wasn’t swaying. Even if Eva’s weight disturbed it enough to cause the whole wall to come tumbling down, the building’s roof was only three stories high.

She would survive a fall.

Eva blinked up to the top and froze again.

She hadn’t been able to see the top of the intact portion of the roof from below. It was a solid sheet of glass. No evidence of the ice wall remained. No chair. Not even splinters of the table. Even the neighboring buildings had their roofs half glassed. A good portion of the wards on them had failed entirely. At least, Eva could detect nothing from them.

Because the roof was a smooth surface, it didn’t take long to find one thing that had survived the destruction.

A simple idol. A statue of a woman in tears, holding her hands up to her face. It was small enough for Eva to carry. About the size of an extra-large water bottle.

But there was no way she was going to touch it.

There was a zero percent chance that it was not a trap in some way or form. The hunter might have teleported away after being knocked down. She might have actually gone through with the suicidal route and vaporized herself in her own attack. But no matter what, she wouldn’t leave behind a weapon of such a magnitude. Even if she assumed that Eva had perished in the attack, there were still other enemies of the hunters around.

And yet, Eva couldn’t leave it where it was. The hunter was gone at the moment, but leaving it behind to rejoin the fight against the armored hunter would let somebody else collect it.

Eva grit her teeth. She had accomplished her objective. The hunter wouldn’t be bombarding them with the idol anymore.

Unless it was a fake. That was also a possibility.

But for the moment, she was going to both assume that it was real and that the hunter had retreated.

Glancing back down into the building to make sure that Juliana hadn’t been attacked while Eva had been distracted, Eva found her to be sitting upright. Which she took as a good sign.

“How are you?” Eva called down.

“Achy. I could use a massage.”

“Just be glad you didn’t get boiled alive in that armor.”

“Yeah, thanks for that.”

“I need you to come up here and encase something in a solid block of metal. Can you do that?”

“Probably.” Juliana slowly got to her feet. There were a few choked off grunts of pain as she moved. Most of them happened as she tried to straighten out her back. Once on her feet, she placed her hands on her hips and arched her back.

The pops were audible even from where Eva was standing.

“The stairs,” she said once she finished stretching and had a moment to look around, “I think they’re gone.”

Eva jumped off the edge of the roof, touching down next to Juliana. “Don’t worry. I can carry you.”

Juliana immediately took a step backwards. Holding up her hands in front of her, she said, “I don’t think–”

“No time to argue,” Eva said, grabbing one of Juliana’s outstretched arms. She used the arm to help heft Juliana up into a fireman’s carry. “Don’t worry. It’s a higher jump than last time, but not as far horizontally.”

“Eva, I don’t–”

“Too late.”

Eva jumped back up to the roof. This time, she didn’t land right on the edge where the brick wall turned into the roof. It wasn’t a very wide landing spot. With a squirming person on her back throwing off her center of balance, Eva wasn’t feeling too confident balancing on a thin beam.

Especially with how she had nearly fallen off the roof the first time, only saved by the shackles.

The glassed over part of the roof that was still intact had looked stable enough.

Eva’s carapace-covered feet touched down on the smooth surface. She immediately froze.

Cracks spread out from where she landed. A spiderweb of lines appeared in the glass, accompanied by high-pitched snaps.

Holding her breath, Eva waited. She didn’t think that falling through the roof would kill her. Or Juliana, for that matter—though she had been banged around a lot, she was well protected within her suit of armor—but it could cause more of the roof to collapse on top of them after they fell through.

The cracking stopped shortly after Eva landed. She let out her breath in a sigh of relief.

“Let’s be careful where we step,” Eva said as she gingerly set Juliana down.

Juliana didn’t move from where Eva set her. “This doesn’t look very safe.”

“Probably not. The sooner you encase that thing in metal, the sooner we can both…”

Eva trailed off. There was something. Something in the air. A feeling she had not felt for some time.

And a feeling she had only felt once before.

Confusion settled in as Eva tried to puzzle out just what was causing the disgusting sensation in her stomach.

“Eva?” Juliana said, voice full of concern. She glanced this way and that as if she was expecting an ambush. “Are you alright?”

Waving her hand, Eva closed her eyes. The feeling wasn’t around them. It was coming from the direction of the school. Not a danger to them. No ambush to be worried about.

At least, not one from the sensation she was feeling. There was still the possibility that the hunter was still around.

“I’m alright,” Eva said, snapping her eyes open. “But someone else isn’t.”

“What–”

Eva was gone. Blinking away as fast as she could.

The feeling was something she had felt before. Right before her first real encounter with the hunters.

When Daru was being tortured. Given that Daru hadn’t ever turned up again, he had probably died as well.

Someone, some demon was in a serious state of injury back towards the school.

Clenching her teeth together, Eva felt her rage burning.

Only one demon had been in direct danger. Only one demon had been fighting with the other hunter.

“Arachne,” she hissed. “I’m not letting you die again.”

— — —

Juliana watched as Eva disappeared, leaving her all alone on the roof. At least the hunter was gone. And the thing Eva pointed out…

Thinning the metal armor on her legs gave her plenty to work with. She set to covering the disturbing little idol with metal. After a few moments, she had a shiny smooth tube. It looked like something that would be launched out of the main guns of a battleship. Except much smaller.

With that done, she tried nudging it with her foot.

Nothing happened.

She picked up the encased idol. Just in time for a small portion of the roof to crack and fall into the rest of the building.

I really need to get down from here, Juliana thought as a few more cracks spread across the top.

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008.022

Posted on by Tower Curator

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Eva hit her fist against the barrier. Unlike her first several hits, the barrier barely flickered. Every time she hit it, her strikes got weaker. She could barely lift her arms. Worst of all, she couldn’t tell if it was doing anything. The barrier was still keeping her stuck on the platform.

Even if it was weakening, it wasn’t going to fall before Eva collapsed.

Really, she should just stop. Her arms were exhausted. So was she. She should just sit down for a moment, shut her eyes, and take a quick nap. Just a little rest to reinvigorate her.

The moment her eyelids started to droop, Eva slapped herself on the side of her face.

Whatever she was thinking, it wasn’t her proper thoughts. Something about the circle was draining her and she was falling into its trap.

More than she already had, anyway. How foolish. One step to the side and she found herself caught already.

There had to be a way out.

Teleporting didn’t work. Neither did blinking. They were among the first things that she had tried. Both felt like running headfirst into brick walls. Her flames didn’t scorch the floor. They just slid off the surface. Despite the roof being made of gravel, it was like there was there was a layer of water over the surface that just made her flames stay inert.

Attempting to use her blood to explode the chalky circle was the same. Her blood couldn’t pass through the barrier any further than Eva could. Like her flames, they didn’t damage the ground outside the circle.

Which made a disturbing amount of sense. If a demon could just use their magic or abilities to break the circle while stuck inside it, nobody would bother with shackles. They would be worthless for any demon more magically inclined than Arachne.

There was one thing she hadn’t tried yet.

Her blood hand spell didn’t need to physically pass through a location. They appeared around the targeted area. If she could make a hand appear outside the barrier, she could rake it across the ground and disrupt the circle. Even breaking a single line should be enough to get her out of the trap.

Failing that, maybe it would at least stop the draining effect.

She was exhausted. Not thinking properly. There were probably ten thousand reasons why she shouldn’t try it—it had to backfire somehow—but she was running out of options and time.

The thing that made her most nervous was the hunter. She was still just sitting a few rooftops away. Her eyes were glued to Eva, but otherwise doing nothing.

Eva kept expecting a crackling in the sky overhead. She had a shield all prepared and ready if such a thing did happen. Her shield couldn’t go outside the barrier, but it worked just fine inside it.

But nothing had happened. Maybe the hunter couldn’t use it so soon after firing it off. How long had it even been since then? Five minutes? It couldn’t have been much more, but Eva had been unconscious for a portion of the time immediately after the initial sky cracking.

Or, more likely, the hunter didn’t want to ruin her own trap so long as Eva was stuck inside it.

It was wearing her down. Even if it didn’t kill her, it wouldn’t be hard to walk over and slice off her head if Eva did lie down and take a nap.

So she had to get out.

Drawing her dagger, Eva made a small slit in her upper arm. If her own blood wasn’t enough, she could use Arachne’s blood later. No sense wasting Arachne’s if this experiment failed.

She drew out a strand of blood, formed it into a ball, and took a deep breath as she plunged her hand in.

Eva had been aiming just outside the barrier.

Instead of her claw appearing outside, Eva found herself thrown back and pinned against the opposite wall of the shackles. Her hand was pulled from the ball of blood, killing the spell near instantly. Eva fell to the ground, collapsed in a pile of worthless blood.

Not a drop of blood made it outside the barrier. It had successfully contained her spell.

She was well and truly stuck. Climbing to her feet, ankle-deep in magically worthless blood, she continued hitting against the barrier with her fist. There wasn’t much else she could do.

If she could get a message off to someone, maybe. She should have kept a hold of Juliana’s cellphone.

Eva jumped back from the shackles as something fell from the sky. It landed with a clatter in a heap just on the other side.

“You didn’t have to drop me,” Juliana shouted as she picked herself up.

Blinking twice, Eva let out a small sigh of relief. It wasn’t an enemy. At the moment, Juliana was even better than someone like Arachne or Ylva showing up.

Juliana was a human. She could waltz in and out of the shackles as if they weren’t there.

Again, Eva sighed. The relief brought with it exhaustion. A sudden lack of adrenaline through her system had the barrier’s draining effect feeling ten times as strong.

“Juliana. I need you to destroy this circle as soon as possible.”

Juliana’s eyes went wide as her head whipped over to face Eva. It wasn’t hard to imagine why. Eva was covered in blood and, currently, sitting in an ankle-deep pool of the stuff.

Normally, such a thing wouldn’t be that big a deal for Eva. Good, in fact. Unfortunately, none of it was controllable. It was all magically created blood. She wasn’t sure what was up with the bleeding walls. That blood seemed usable, or at least, Eva couldn’t remember even running low on blood during the previous fight with the hunter. She hadn’t been thinking perfectly straight, but the blood had just been flowing. She couldn’t even remember cutting herself after the walls had started bleeding.

The only real downside was that Eva couldn’t trigger it. It was obvious to see that the walls started bleeding during emotional distress. Obviously, being trapped in a set of shackles and nearly dying was not quite as distressing as Eva thought it should be. Or the shackles were preventing the effect from manifesting.

Either way, she would soon be out of her predicament.

While her hazy mind was going over useless thoughts, Juliana actually got to work.

She recovered from her brief shock at seeing Eva’s state and got to work. With the rooftop covered in a layer of gravel and the shackles drawn out on top in a layer of paint, an earth mage was its greatest enemy. Stretching out her hand, Juliana churned the gravel.

Eva felt herself drop an inch, landing atop the gravel as the blood escaped its confinement and spread over the roof.

Along with the barrier, the draining exhaustion immediately receded. She didn’t feel reinvigorated, but it was like shrugging off a weight from her shoulders. Breathing was easier and, after standing up, Eva didn’t feel a need to go take a nap.

An improvement no matter how one figured it.

“Thanks,” Eva said just as Saija landed on the roof.

Unlike Juliana, Saija landed on her feet. She touched down on the tips of her toes and stepped forward twice, almost like a dancer just landing out of a particularly tricky jump. The smile on her face wasn’t one of pride or joy. It was the nasty grin of someone who realized their rival just stumbled down the stairwell.

“Big bad Eva getting stuck in such an obvious trap? Here I was thinking you were something special. And after that big speech about fighting too.”

Eva didn’t bother responding. She twisted to one side, feeling the cold of an icicle brush past her skin. It landed in the rooftop with a thunk. Had she not moved, she would have an arm-sized hole in her chest.

The thunk was quickly followed by a metallic clang and a wet squelch.

Both Juliana and Saija fell to the ground. The former had torn clothes and a slight dent in her armor with an icicle lying at her side. Juliana quickly got back on her feet, molding over the dent with fresh metal as she moved.

Saija didn’t get up.

“Ahhaha, what?” Saija said as she lay face down in the gravel. An icicle stuck out of her back. Black blood dripped around her side to join with the blood from Eva’s claws. “It hurts.”

“Watch out for flying icicles,” Eva said, ignoring Saija as she glared at the red-haired hunter. “Traps too. And keep an eye on the sky.”

There were only three buildings between Eva and the hunter. Three trap filled buildings. She could try blinking across. Even blinking out to points in the air to avoid the three buildings. However, she didn’t have a lot of time to think while in mid-air. She could just wind up in another trap.

With Saija down and now shouting about a pain in her back and how much the hunter would pay, Juliana would have limited mobility. Assuming Saija had been the one carrying Juliana in the first place.

“What about Saija?”

“Can’t help her while being bombarded. Since no portal opened, she’ll survive.”

Probably. Eva doubted that she would perish because of her injuries. However, the hunter could still drop a spike of ice right over her head. The best way to avoid that was simply to keep the hunter too busy to fight an already downed opponent.

“We need to move,” Eva said, grabbing Juliana by the arm and pulling her out of the way of another icicle. Once clear, Eva didn’t stop. She continued across the roof towards the next building.

She was only barely watching the hunter as they charged across the rooftop. Juliana had armor covering every inch of her body. She had wrapped it around her head with only a hole for her blond hair to trail out the back. Eva herself was fairly resilient. So long as she used her hands to shield herself from any oncoming icicles, she would be fine.

Of a much greater concern were the wards and shackles. None of them would be good to get stuck in.

Although, she didn’t have much to worry about. Juliana was being extremely proactive in keeping the roof churned. Shackles vanished before Eva even had to worry about standing in them.

The wards weren’t so easily removed. The roof wasn’t large. It shouldn’t take longer than about a minute to run from one end to the other. However, the maze of wards that Eva could sense had her backtracking half the time.

By the time they made it, Juliana had formed an arm’s worth of metal into a shield, holding it out in front of them as they ran.

“We’re jumping across,” Eva said, planting her feet just at the edge of the building.

Juliana screeched to a halt.

“Jumping?”

“Can you make it?”

“I…”

Eva didn’t wait for her hesitation. She scooped up Juliana much like how Arachne had carried her on occasion. The girl was heavy, especially on her upper arms, but she could hold her for the few seconds it took to cross the gap. It wasn’t even that long a gap. A few feet at most.

Arachne’s legs could carry the two of them that far, at least.

Eva took two steps back, giving them a short runway to springboard off the ledge.

Juliana made it. Being a foot forward in Eva’s arms, she sailed onto the next roof with ease. Eva would have made it as well had she not run into another barrier. She smacked into it, stopping straight away with a pain in her hands and face.

And started falling. A tiny bit of the ledge was barely within the barrier.

Eva stretched, grasping for it.

Her fingers scraped along the brick, leaving long gashes as she failed to slow down. Eva kicked a foot into the wall. Brick shattered under her carapace. She still fell a bit more as the bricks crumbled, but managed to slow herself enough to dig her hand into the wall as well.

Only the tips of her fingers made it in before she felt the barrier prevent her from going any further. So long as she wasn’t tipping backwards and falling on her head, she was fine with being stuck for the moment.

Glancing over her shoulder at the alley below, Eva snarled. Rows of shackles had been set up adjacent to one another. No matter where she would have jumped from, she would have wound up stuck. There weren’t any shackles out in the streets, but Eva could feel wards out there. Not as visually obvious as the shackles, but still potentially as problematic.

Worse, the wards would probably hurt Juliana as well. In that line of thinking, jumping over shackles had been the correct choice.

Of course, it would have been better to have checked before jumping. They could have avoided this whole mess.

“Eva?” Juliana called out from somewhere up above.

“Over the edge!”

A metal helmet peeked over the top of the building, accompanied by a metallic clang as an icicle glanced over the top of her head. It wasn’t a direct hit. Just enough to clip the helmet.

But it had enough force to send her forehead straight into the ledge, eliciting another clang.

“I am sick of these icicles,” Juliana said, lifting her head and rubbing her forehead. The rubbing probably didn’t do much given her helmet.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Eva said. “It isn’t practical to throw car-sized ice boulders at us from this distance.”

A crumbling of a brick forced Eva to dig her other hand into the wall for stability. She couldn’t dig it in too far. The barrier of the shackle extended only a few inches into the brick wall, not giving her much room to dig her claws in. She wasn’t sure if the barrier extended beyond the exact lines of the drawing or if the building was leaning or otherwise built poorly.

Given that this was Brakket, probably the latter.

Either way, she was thankful for it. While she wouldn’t die from the fall—she had jumped from the top of the dormitory building before—it would still be unpleasant and all the more distance to go to get back up to the roof.

“Worry about the icicles and boulders later. Mind destroying the shackles down there?”

She stretched out her hand.

But the shackles stayed where they were.

“It’s asphalt.”

“I really wouldn’t care if it was reinforced concrete. It needs to go.” Preferably before any sort of secondary effect started up. Eva did not need magical sleep trying to take her while hanging off the side of a building. “If you have to make a sinkhole that swallows up both buildings beneath them, do it.”

Eva paused as a thought occurred to her. “Actually, could you swallow up the building the hunter is on in a giant sinkhole? She isn’t very mobile, so she would probably get caught in it.”

“I’m not my mother, Eva…” Juliana’s voice came slightly strained. And slightly annoyed. As if she were carrying a couch all by herself while Eva just sat to the side and watched.

“Thought I’d ask anyway,” Eva said.

A cracking below her pulled Eva’s attention back to the ground. The center of her shackle was sagging downwards, unable to support itself fully as Juliana moved the earth beneath. Another moment—and several clangs of ice off Juliana’s armor—and a part of the center fell inwards.

Eva immediately kicked her foot back and dug it deep into the brick wall. She repeated the action with her hands and other foot, giving her a much better hold of the wall.

“Thanks,” Eva said.

Juliana let out a few short pants. “Just don’t ask me to do that again,” she said between breaths. “I’m really not so great at manipulating earth I can’t see.”

Eva had really only touched earth magic. Nothing more than dipping her fingers into it. And what she had tried had been inside a classroom. Not enough to really get a grasp on the limitations of the element.

So she just nodded.

Rather than try to climb up the wall, digging holes into it as she went, Eva blinked upwards. Just above the level of the roof. Without hesitation, she blinked straight forwards.

And landed on her feet just a step away from Juliana.

Thankfully, not in another set of shackles. Twice in one day was beyond enough. A third time would just be embarrassing.

She did have to dodge one icicle, bat a second out of the air, and catch a third mere seconds after landing. The third icicle exploded into shards of ice as Eva crushed it in her fist.

Glaring at the hunter a mere two roofs away, Eva dared her to sling a fourth icicle over.

She wished that she had a valid means of striking back. The hunter would just freeze over any blood that came close. Even fireballs had been woefully unhelpful during their previous engagement. Ice could work as a shield just as well as a projectile.

Really, Eva was putting far too many eggs in the basket that kept the hunter from moving. Injured though she appeared to be, it could all be a feint. She could throw off the blanket that covered her chair to unveil forty shotguns aimed right at Eva. As soon as they fired, she might blink straight behind Eva and slice off her head.

At least, that was one of the worse case scenarios that Eva could come up with.

It really didn’t fit with what little she knew of the hunter’s personality, however. The hunter seemed more like Arachne. The kind of person to charge her foes head-on with as much force as she could put behind her attacks. This mostly ineffectual long-range bombarding wasn’t doing much of anything except for annoying the two of them.

Though, if they let their guards down, they could easily wind up like Saija.

“Let’s move.”

Eva took off. She didn’t need to look behind her to tell that Juliana was following. The traps on the roof disappearing as the gravel churned was proof enough of that.

The next building didn’t have a large gap between the rooftops. At least not a horizontal one. There was a few foot drop, but nothing that Eva couldn’t handle with a small jump. Juliana took a little bit longer to climb down as she decided to lower herself down. Eventually, she made it.

Only this roof left before the hunter’s roof.

“Why aren’t we moving?”

“I’m not sure where is safe,” Eva said.

Though Juliana had taken out all of the shackles before them, Eva still stood frozen. Bubbles of magic that Eva had taken to be wards dotted the rooftop. She wasn’t entirely certain that they were wards; Eva had only been in the warding class for a short while. But if the previous roofs had been mazes, this was a minefield.

It wasn’t a long minefield. Whatever was inside the building obviously didn’t need much floorspace. Were the wards gone, Eva could be across the roof in ten steps. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see a path through.

The only real consolation was the short drop. It put them out of line of sight of the hunter, granting them a short reprieve from the ice. Though the hunter should still be able to see them through the walls if Nel was right.

Which meant that the reprieve might only be around until they were successfully distracted or lulled into complacency. She would then rain ice down upon them from above. Possibly with the boulders that Eva had mentioned earlier.

Great. One more thing to be worried about.

“So what do we do?”

“I’m not playing her games. We’re skipping this trap.”

“Skipping? What do– Hey! E-Eva! Wait–”

Juliana’s protests were torn from her mouth as Eva hefted her up and slung her over her shoulder. Perhaps not as comfortable as the princess-carry that she had just used to cross the gap, but Eva needed a proper center of balance and a much better grip.

“Just clear out any shackles you can see when we land. I’m not getting trapped again today.”

Before Juliana could protest, Eva coiled the muscles in her legs and sprung off from the side of the roof.

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008.021

Posted on by Tower Curator

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Juliana turned away from Eva with a slight shudder.

Her skin had cracked and broken in the blast. If her hair loss had been the extent of her injuries, that would be one thing.

It had taken an effort to not throw up when she first saw Eva coming up the stairs. Between her charred black skin, cracks in the char looking like a dried desert, and a red almost glow emitting from between the cracks, she did not look well. Worse, if such a thing was possible, Eva didn’t even seem to notice herself. She walked up with only a ghost of a limp.

‘Terrible’ was the understatement of the century.

But then, while she had been talking, Eva’s skin changed. Some of the charcoal flaked off, replaced by fresh skin. The red glow dampened. She didn’t heal. Not all of her, at least. But the start was there.

It was somewhat creepy.

“Mom,” Juliana said, turning away from the staircase once Eva had disappeared. “She’s going alone.”

“We established that during our conversation. You heard her. She’ll be fine.”

“Not even Arachne is with her.”

“She’ll be fine, Juliana. Stay here and help me.”

“Help you?” Juliana marched over to the window and stared out at the fight below.

“I’ve done nothing so far. What am I supposed to do now? Throw stones at him? I can’t make a giant golem to fight for me and you won’t let me go down there.”

Juliana paused as Arachne moved from her webs at the edge of the fight, darting into the fray. The swordsman tried to move out of the way, but Arachne’s bulk still clipped him. He came out of his flash step in a stumble. Though his step carried him a good way away from Arachne and Genoa’s much slower golem, the doll was on him in an instant.

He twisted out of the way of her first slash and blocked a second with his sword. The stumble and the twist both put him off-balance enough that he didn’t have a steady hand while blocking the strike. He managed to keep a grip on his sword, but it still got knocked to the side.

Leaving him wide open.

The doll brought down her sword again in an overhead strike, apparently intending to split the hunter straight in two.

Ducking his head, he caught the sword right in the center of his off-hand’s vambrace. It didn’t stop the sword completely. The blade bit into his armor far enough to strike his forearm. Bright red blood ran down the blade, dripping to the ground from the end of the hand guard.

Both the doll and the hunter pulled back. The former attempted to strike again, but the hunter activated his speed and once more found himself with a small bit of breathing room.

The golem and Arachne moved in, keeping him from having too much breathing room and pressing their advantage over his injury.

“And what would you be able to do if you went with Eva?” Genoa asked as her golem moved to the hunter’s injured side. “Imagine fighting another one of these people. What would you do against them?”

“I don’t know. Something. Something more than I’m doing here. At least Eva wouldn’t be fighting alone.”

“Or you could find yourself in over your head. These people will not stop with their blades at your throat and ask you to surrender. They will run you through without a second thought.”

She threw her arm out in a wide sweeping gesture out the window. The action came at a cost in her concentration; her golem froze solid, missing an opportunity to grapple the hunter.

He took advantage of the lapse, diving between the golem’s arm and body, using its bulk as a shield against Arachne.

“Look at what they’ve done. There were people out there. Students. Human children. They essentially bombed this place, showing little regard for anyone’s life in trying to hit their target. It is a miracle that everyone had run indoors beforehand.

“If, somehow, they end up walking away from this, I will be personally taking out a bounty with the mage-knights on these demon hunters. Fighting demons? Fine, I can understand that. Attacking a school? Unacceptable. It wasn’t like they were sieging the school. The demons, by all evidence and observation, were behaving and simply attending the school as well.”

Except the demon who the doll killed, Juliana thought. One student had fallen into his trap, possibly more. If the doll hadn’t come along and gotten rid of him, who knew what might have happened. Half the school could be trapped in his delusions.

She refused to believe that her mother had forgotten about him, given Irene and Saija had just told everybody about it less than an hour ago. But, by observation only, the school had been running fine.

Even if the demon hunters knew about Timothy and his indiscretions with his contract, they hadn’t done anything about it. They had gone after Eva and Arachne. Nobody else. Or rather, anybody else had just been a bonus target.

So her mother’s explanation still fit.

“But that doesn’t change a thing. They’re still here now. Eva is still going off on her own. You, Arachne, and the doll are holding off this knight. He only has to fail once and he dies. But even if the other one is severely injured, she could still be a match for Eva on her own. I can’t do nothing.”

Juliana turned, preparing to head up the stairs and see if she could catch up to Eva.

A hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“Juliana Laura Rivas. I won’t stop you. But you come back.”

“Of course I will.”

“Good. I love you.”

Juliana turned back around, staring at her mother. There were no glistening tears in her eyes. Not even a hint of moisture. Her mother was much too hard of a woman for that. There was a certain tightness to her jaw.

“I love you too, mom.”

Genoa gave a curt nod before releasing Juliana’s shoulder. “If your father asks, you hit me over the head and escaped my grasp. In my weakened state, I could do nothing to stop you.”

Juliana rolled her eyes and turned back around. Halfway up the flight of stairs, she heard her mother again.

“And if you die,” Genoa said, voice unusually harsh, “I swear I’ll take up necromancy, summon you back from wherever you’ve gone, bind you to your room, and ground you for the rest of your afterlife.”

Already halfway up the stairs, Juliana didn’t bother addressing her mother’s empty threats.

Probably empty threats.

There was a chance that she would follow through.

In fact, the more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed that her mother was being serious.

She would have to be extra careful to not die.

Eva had to be heading up to the roof. If she wasn’t, Juliana expected to run into her coming back down the stairs. Her conversation with her mother had taken a bit of time. Eva was probably already gone.

Juliana slowed down around the third floor corridor. Even though Eva was probably gone, she still was going to check the roof. However, a pair of familiar voices caught her ear.

“So scary. I thought I was going to die when she looked at me.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I don’t know what happens to you humans when you die, but a demon’s death is no fun at all.”

A short distance down the hall, just in front of Juliana’s open dorm room, Saija was…

Crying into Irene’s shoulder?

“Worse,” Saija said, wringing her hands with the sleeve of Irene’s shirt, “I wouldn’t be able to experience all this anymore. What if I never got summoned again?”

Irene, standing perfectly straight with her arms at her sides, grimaced as Saija wrapped her arms around her. She tilted her head away to avoid one of the succubus’ horns. As soon as she tilted her head, she caught sight of Juliana.

‘Help me,’ she mouthed.

Seeing her dorm room open gave Juliana hope that Eva hadn’t left yet. She must be collecting weapons inside. So, against Juliana’s better judgment, she walked down the hall.

Irene’s face lit up, but fell to despair as Juliana edged around the two to get to her room.

The lights were on, but nobody was in. A few of Eva’s clothes had been thrown about the room. The desk drawers that Eva kept her spare vials of blood in were open and missing their usual contents. With the bathroom door open and the light off, Juliana had lost hope that Eva was still around.

Turning back to the two girls, Juliana gave Irene a shrug. She doubted that Saija had even noticed her presence; her head was still buried in the other girl’s shoulder.

“Eva already left?”

Saija jumped, snaking around Irene to hide behind her. Her apparent fear lasted only a few moments as her wide red eyes narrowed.

“Oh, it’s just you,” she said, moving out from behind Irene. “I thought Eva came back.”

“So she is gone.”

“She just left a moment or two before you arrived,” Irene said.

“And good riddance. She tried to kill me, you know?”

Juliana glanced over at Irene, who gave a brief shake of her head, before she said, “I didn’t know that. You probably did something to deserve it.”

Pressing a hand to her forehead, Juliana ignored the succubus’ outburst of protests.

What do I do now?

She hadn’t seen Eva on the stairs. She might have teleported. Juliana couldn’t teleport or even blink.

Her first thought was to summon a demon. It was a terrible thought. Something she realized a mere instant after thinking it. No demon she had ever summoned had proven useful with the exception of Zagan. Almost all had tried to kill her. The ones that hadn’t tried to kill her had still not been very friendly.

While Zagan had proven useful, even unusually helpful, it hadn’t come without a cost. And, at the moment, Juliana was far from desperate enough to try summoning him.

Assuming any demons could even be summoned. Nobody had gotten anything but enigmas since early in the summer as far as Juliana was aware. Her demons had tried to kill her, but they could usually be argued with for a few minutes before they did so. The enigmas would just kill her, eat her, maybe become her? Eva had explained something about vampire enigmas, but she really didn’t get it. And then they would try to tear holes in reality to bring Hell through.

A great way to make a bad situation worse.

Not something that seemed like a good idea at the present time.

But the idea of demons wasn’t wholly without merit. They could sense Eva to some degree, most had ways of getting around quickly—either through super strength, flight, or outright teleportation—and perhaps best of all, one was standing right in front of her. No summoning required.

“Saija,” Juliana said, interrupting her continued diatribe about how innocent she was and how terrible Eva was for nearly killing her, “your wings are lovely.”

The comment stopped Saija’s comments in their tracks. She drew herself up to her full height, puffed out her chest, tilted her chin upwards with only a shadow of a smile showing on her face, and spread out her wings. The action knocked Irene off to the side, prompting a short grunt from her as she recovered her footing, but Saija didn’t even blink.

In a most humble tone of voice, Saija said, “Thanks.”

“They’re real right? I mean, they let you fly?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t just show them off for looks,” she said with a chuckle. For demonstration, she flapped her wings a few times. A fairly uncomfortable breeze stirred up in the hallway, but Juliana didn’t look away even as it dried out her eyes. Saija’s feet left the ground as she kept herself aloft. After a second or two, she dropped back down, landing with all the airs of a professional performer completing a difficult stunt.

“Wonderful,” Juliana said, clapping a few times. “But I suppose they’re too small to carry much more than yourself. Maybe a few small packages.”

“Nonsense. Just today I offered to carry Irene around,” she said, wrapping one arm and one wing around Irene.

Still partially recovering from being shoved aside, Irene might have fallen again as Saija dragged her back had Saija not wrapped her up in a hug.

Juliana had to admit to herself that she felt a bit bad for the girl. Saija didn’t have any friends as far as Juliana could tell. Everyone who hung out with her fit more in the category of admirer. By the looks of things, Irene didn’t quite fit into that category.

She was more of a plaything.

“Really?” Juliana said, not letting her thoughts appear on her face. “That’s pretty impressive. I wonder if you might be willing to offer me a quick ride?”

“Right now?”

“I’m not that heavy,” Juliana lied. Her armor didn’t double her weight, but it was a significant extra. Were she just going for a ride, she would probably shed it. However, she was going to fight. There wasn’t a chance she would be shedding it for any reason.

Though, if she was going to get carried by Saija, she should push any of the demon-harming metal deep inside her armor, covered by regular metal and her clothes.

“But if you’re worried, I understand. They’re very pretty, just not very functional.”

Saija narrowed her eyes. She parted her lips in something of a sneer, enough to show off her sharp teeth. “I could carry ten of you,” she said.

Which made Juliana feel much better about her armor.

“It’s just a bit… hectic outside.”

“Ah,” Juliana said with a knowing nod of her head. “You’re scared.”

Saija actually let out a low, guttural noise from the back of her throat.

“But,” Juliana continued before Saija could say something about how she definitely wasn’t scared and just didn’t want to scratch her nails or whatever, “I’m a little scared too. So why don’t we fly away from the battle, towards the city. We can get a nice bird’s-eye view of the fight while keeping nice and safe.”

And if Juliana was lucky, she wouldn’t have to ask Saija to sense Eva. The succubus didn’t seem to like her too much, so she might be more cooperative if she didn’t mention her goal. Nel had mentioned that the other hunter was on a roof in the city. Flying overhead might let her spot them much easier.

Juliana waited with bated breath as Saija seemed to consider the proposition. She had wanted to watch the a fight between the doll and Eva earlier, so mentioning being able to watch the fight could help sweeten the deal.

Saija hummed, eying Juliana. Almost as if she didn’t trust Juliana’s intentions.

Sweat dripped down Juliana neck. Here she was, trying to manipulate a demon that probably had centuries more experience than her in everything. There was no way that Saija would agree. Even with the needling of her pride in her wings and her ability, it wouldn’t be enough. She would realize and lash out, maybe even–

“Okay,” Saija said with a smile. “I haven’t had a chance to stretch my wings much since arriving here. I do want to get a better look at the fight and flying seems a safe location. I’ll do it.”

Juliana sighed, letting out a small breath. “Excellent,” she said, giving a half-shrug to a thoroughly confused Irene. “Let’s head up to the roof then.”

Not willing to give the succubus time to reconsider or otherwise back out of her commitment, Juliana took her hand and pulled her along. Being a demon, Saija could probably break free with relative ease. She didn’t. After a few steps, she started walking along on her own.

A few steps more and Saija was practically dragging Juliana instead of the other way around.

Once they got up, Juliana paused.

A human—or human-like being in Saija’s case—carrying a human in flight seemed like it would be incredibly awkward at best, uncomfortable at worst. Well, not quite. Being dropped at a high altitude would be far worse than merely uncomfortable.

“So how are we going to do this?”

“Well, first I’ll wrap my tail around you,” she said, moving up close and wrapping the tail around Juliana’s chest, just beneath her armpits. “That way I will have a chance to catch you if you fall. Like a seatbelt in your car things.”

Juliana glanced down at the tail. It was a thin bit of leathery flesh, far smaller than any staircase handrail, with a spaded tip at the end. Not very long either. Even with Saija standing right up against Juliana, it barely made it all the way around her.

Given its size, Juliana wasn’t feeling very confident. If Saija’s much more normal sized arms couldn’t hold her up, what hope did the tail have?

Maybe I should drop off a few pounds of metal before we get started, Juliana thought.

But Saija had other plans. She bent slightly, hooking one arm right against the backside of Juliana’s legs. Juliana flailed as she fell backwards, eventually grabbing onto both of Saija’s shoulders just as Saija caught her back with her other arm.

“There,” the succubus said. She let out a short, slightly strained breath. “You weren’t kidding about your weight.”

Taking a moment to make sure she wasn’t about to fall, Juliana readjusted some of her metal to make the side closer to Saija a bit thicker. Moving their center of balance a bit closer to the center seemed a good idea. Still, she had to ask. “Too heavy?”

Saija tilted up her chin with a smug look on her face. She tried to puff out her chest, but it wasn’t as effective with Juliana in her arms. “Never. When I said I could lift ten of you, that might have been a bit of an exaggeration. One is still fine.”

She took a few steps forward, each more steady than the last as her confidence grew.

“However,” she said, pausing, “maybe think about a diet? Some of the people I was eating lunch with were asking how I could eat so much and still maintain my figure. I didn’t really understand, but I guess a diet makes you less heavy. So try that.”

“I’ll think about it,” Juliana mumbled. It’s just the armor.

Saija walked them right up to the edge of the building. Craning her neck, Juliana managed to get a quick view of the fight below.

Arachne was missing several more legs. They were lying scattered about the plaza. She had actually shrunken down to her humanoid form, perhaps because she ran out of legs to keep her bulky form mobile. Or even standing.

The hunter was actively trying to disengage. He kept snapping away from the demon and the doll. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t get away. Nearly the entire ground level had been webbed in like some sort of arena cage. Anytime he tried hacking away at the threads, Arachne or the doll made it to him before he could get through.

The doll would hound him relentlessly until he managed to get away again while Arachne just occupied his attention long enough for the doll to get over. She would stop fighting and repair the fencing.

Being less mobile, the golem would help keep him away from Arachne while she worked. Occasionally a rock would fly across the arena like a missile, sometimes missing and sometimes hitting but always forcing him to back away from the fence.

They watched for a few moments before Juliana remembered the whole reason they had come to the roof in the first place.

“Shall we take off now?”

“This seems to be a perfectly good view of the fight.”

“Well, if you can’t do it, I understand. I was just so looking forward to the flight.”

Saija didn’t respond. She tipped forward and stepped off the edge of the roof instead.

Juliana’s hands, already tight around the succubus’s shoulders, clamped down. Saija might survive, but Juliana wouldn’t.

The fall didn’t last long, however. Saija’s wings spread out, catching the air and turning their dive into a glide. A few quick flaps and an angle slightly upwards had them climbing and soaring straight over the battlefield.

“Please don’t do that again,” Juliana shouted over the wind.

“It’s more fun that way.”

Well, I’m not here to have fun, Juliana thought as she turned her attention to scanning the rooftops below. They were quickly moving away from the battle and towards the city, which was good for Juliana. She didn’t need to steer Saija. At least not yet.

“Oh. I wondered what that was,” Saija said.

It didn’t take long to realize what she was talking about.

One of the rooftops was lit up like it belonged in Las Vegas. Neon lights danced around in a large ring, flickering between green and red. Squinting her eyes, Juliana could barely make out the tiny form of Eva hammering her fists away at the flickering barrier.

“Quick,” Juliana said, “put me down on the edge of the roof.”

“Put you down? After all the fuss you made about getting to go flying?”

“Saija…”

<– Back | Index | Next –>

008.020

Posted on by Tower Curator

<– Back | Index | Next –>

“Eva! You look…”

“Terrible. I know.”

Eva let Juliana run up to her. She expected some help. Maybe assistance walking or a potion that probably wouldn’t do all that much for Eva.

But she stopped just short of Eva with a face full of uncertainty and fear.

Without having a mirror handy, Eva couldn’t tell exactly how terrible she looked. For her appearance to have stopped Juliana cold, Eva was now thinking that it was worse than she had expected.

“I’m surprised you survived,” Genoa said from the window, not taking her eyes off the fight going on outside. “And yet you’re climbing a stairwell.”

“Not actually feeling that bad anymore,” Eva said. Which was true, but only relatively. Compared to the pain she had woken up in, what she was experiencing now was significantly less hurtful. Though she did notice that unless she was careful, each step jolted her body and sent short spikes of pain everywhere.

“I think my shield absorbed most of the impact,” Eva said after a moment of silence. “I only caught the tail end. Residual heat and such.”

Which was a total and complete lie. The unglassed brick hadn’t been in the shape of a bubble around her. It had been in a person shape. Which meant that her body had shielded the ground more than her shield had. It helped and had probably taken the initial portion of the blast, but her shield had failed early on in the grand scheme of things.

Genoa just hummed, not giving any sort of real response. To be fair, she was fighting, even if it didn’t look like it from her still position at the window. So she probably wasn’t considering anything related to Eva and her demonicness.

Definitely.

“Zoe and Wayne?” Eva asked, switching the topic away from herself.

“Wayne tackled Zoe to the ground. When the light cleared, neither of them were there. I assume he teleported them out of there. Haven’t seen them since.”

“Neither have answered their cellphones,” Juliana added. “Um, do you need a jacket or anything?”

Frowning, Eva glanced down at herself. “I’m a bit raw at the moment,” she said, glancing back up. “I’d rather not have fabric rubbing against my skin.”

“Fair enough,” she said, looking away. “I got your message. Nel is searching for the other hunter. She said that she would call me back if she found anything.”

Eva wanted to groan. Wasn’t Nel supposed to have been watching specifically to prevent something like this from happening? Eva could give her the benefit of the doubt for the moment. After spotting them in the field, she had said that she could watch them without her vision ‘sliding off.’

Maybe they had split up and Nel had been watching the wrong target, unaware that something like this was about to go down until it was too late.

But Nel would definitely be getting a few harsh questions when Eva next saw her.

For the moment, she just moved up to the window next to Genoa.

The fight was still going on outside.

Sparks exploded off the demon hunter’s sword as he danced around the doll’s blade. Danced might not be the right word. He was definitely on the back foot. Eva had only been watching for a few seconds, but she could already tell that the doll definitely had the advantage.

In fact, the hunter was barely able to keep up a defense against the doll.

Unfortunately, he had gotten free of his ice prison. It gave him the leeway to actually dodge instead of just block. But that was all he was doing. The doll attacked in a flurry. One strike of her sword followed immediately after the last in smooth, fluid movements.

He never actually returned a strike of his own.

Arachne circled around the knight, not really attacking but keeping herself between him and any obvious escape paths. With the doll now fighting as well, actually killing him was looking more viable. Arachne was making the right choice in trying to keep him from escaping.

Genoa’s golem was being far more aggressive. Not to the point where it was hammering its fists over him again and again—she was making an effort to keep out of the doll’s way—but every time the hunter blocked with his sword, the golem tried to grasp on to him. He had to dodge immediately to avoid being rooted in place.

More than that, the ground beneath his feet wasn’t quite as solid as it should have been. Maybe it had been going on the entire time and Eva just hadn’t noticed between her poor eyesight and pain-induced lapses in concentration. Everywhere he stepped was more like mud than any kind of glass or brick. Eva could see it sticking to his boots, slowing his movements.

Whatever speed magic he was using allowed him to escape easily enough, but it did slow him down ever so slightly.

Perhaps if Eva had held him still from the waist up, Genoa could have better glued down his legs.

“I tried collapsing some of the earth into sinkholes,” Genoa said, as if reading Eva’s mind. “None of them worked. He moves too quickly. Almost as if he can sense where they are before I actually place them down. A field a mud everywhere he steps is far more effective.”

“I wish there was more I could do,” Eva said.

“The ice hands were good.”

“The ice wasn’t mine,” Eva said, leaning slightly away from the window. “And the hands take a bit more blood than I can comfortably lose during a big fight. Too many and it leaves me full of headaches and lethargy.”

Genoa fell silent for a few moments as she concentrated on directing her golem to attack. Her golem’s hand actually managed to grab hold of his sword. Unfortunately, the armored hunter managed to slice off the fingers in time to catch the doll’s blade on his own.

“They kept him in place long enough for you to convince that doll to work with us.”

Eva frowned, watching the doll flash between her attacks. “I think she is doing this more out of personal need than interest in helping any of us.”

“Eva,” Juliana said, running the short distance over to the window. Again she paused, leaving a small space between herself and Eva. She had her cellphone in hand, hesitating just long enough for Eva to notice her hesitation before she held it out. “It’s Nel.”

“I hope she has good news,” Eva said as she took the phone. Speaking into it, she said, “Tell me something–”

“Rooftop. Near the school but towards the city. She’s watching with a pair of binoculars and keeps flicking them straight towards you even though there are like three buildings in the way of seeing you. Not to mention the building you’re inside.”

“She can see through walls,” Eva said for the benefit of everyone else. “Good to know.”

There was a loud crash on the other end of the phone. Loud enough that Eva had to pull the phone away from her ear for a few moments while it died off. When she finally put it back to her ear, Nel was already talking at a rapid pace.

“–got to go,” she said, pausing for another crash in the background. This one was much quieter than the last. “The hunter on the roof has the idol. Please destroy it this time. It’s… not right.”

Eva ignored the former nun’s concern. She would destroy the idol. Not because of some idea that the Elysium Order had the ‘pure’ version of the idol, but because it was dangerous to Eva and her plans.

Instead, she focused on the noise in the background. It was still going on, but nothing extraordinarily loud at the moment.

“Are you in trouble?”

“Other hunters are here. Ylva is taking care of them. I don’t think–” She cut herself off again. Eva held the phone away, expecting another cacophony to partially deafen her.

None came.

“I’m fine,” Nel said as Eva moved the phone closer. “Got to go.”

With that, she hung up. A simple click on the other end and nothing. Eva paused just a moment before handing the phone back to Juliana.

“Trouble?”

“Hunters attacking Nel and Ylva as well, but Nel thinks Ylva has it covered.”

Which gave Eva a new theory. The reason Nel didn’t call Eva to warn her was not because she had been lazy or skipping out on her auguring. She had her own problems at the moment.

In fact, the hunters—Eva’s hunters—had probably conscripted the ones attacking Ylva specifically to distract Nel long enough to launch their own attacks. It might have been nice to have been warned about that, but Eva could understand the pressure of imminent attacks. Though she apparently had the time to glance over at Eva’s fight with her augur sight.

She might still get a somewhat harsh talking to from Eva when all this ended.

“The other hunter—that’s attacking us, at least—is on a roof towards the city. I’m going after her. She’s the one that casted the light beam and can’t be allowed to do it again.”

“On your own?” Genoa asked just as Juliana opened her mouth.

Juliana snapped her mouth shut, giving a slight glare at her mother. It only lasted a few seconds before the glare softened. “I’ll stay here,” she said. “Make sure mom stays out of trouble.”

“I should be fine,” Eva said with a half-smile towards Juliana. She turned to face Genoa full-on before continuing. “The hunter was injured worse than you were far more recently than you were. No offense, but I think I might have a sporting shot against you as you are now.”

“Come at me anytime and we’ll see just how sporting of a chance it is,” Genoa said. Her gaze never left the battle down below save for one brief moment to glance at Eva. “Though now might not be the best of times.”

“Later then,” Eva said with a half chuckle.

Much later. Like around never. She really didn’t want to seriously fight Genoa. Not only might her injuries reopen, but Eva didn’t fancy losing to a cripple.

I need to win against this hunter.

Three punctures to the spine should have been enough to keep anyone down and out for a good amount of time. It had been a few months, but that was far from what Eva had in mind. Shalise had the nerves in her wrist torn out when the zombie bit her. That had taken Elysium Order magic to heal. Without it, she hadn’t been expected to regain much use of her hand.

The holes in the hunter’s spine should have been Shalise’s injury compounded over and over again. She should be paralyzed. If she wasn’t and Arachne had missed ever so slightly, then she still should be too wounded to move around much.

Which meant she would have other ways of defending herself.

“Be wary of traps,” Genoa said, interrupting Eva’s thoughts while echoing them at the same time. “Juliana told me about the room you found the other demon in. Lucy, was it?”

“I know. I was just thinking the same thing.”

All the anti-demon shackles and circles in the apartment room with Lucy had been doubly protected by either wards or enchantments over the walls and floors, preventing them from being destroyed easily.

With Eva’s warding class, she might be able to spot some wards. But this was likely an expert and Eva had only been taking the class since the start of September. Unraveling them was a bit beyond her abilities at the moment.

Still, if she spotted a magical ward making something invulnerable and couldn’t see any demonic shackles around it, it was bound to be some other type of trap. Good to know, at the very least.

“Just keep that hunter here. Even if you can’t kill him. I can’t do much against him at the moment and won’t be able to fight the other one if he shows up.”

“Don’t worry about that. I can handle him. Focus on not dying. I am not interested in finding out how Arachne would react.”

Eva glanced down at the spider-demon. She was now going between a number of pillars that Genoa had created and creating spider webs between them, further blocking in the hunter. The weavings were abnormally thick. Each strand stood out simply because they could be as thick as one of Eva’s fingers. She was really outdoing herself. Arachne’s threads were normally thinner than a single hair.

She must really be worried about the hunter’s sword.

“As am I,” Eva said quietly. She turned away, preparing to head up the stairwell. A quick comment from Juliana stopped her.

“Good luck.”

“Same to both of you,” Eva said without turning. “Stay safe.”

With that, she sprinted up the stairs.

She stopped at the third floor. There were a few things in her room that might help out. And she might not have been entirely in the right when she declined Juliana’s offer of clothing. She needed pockets for vials of blood, after all.

“Aww, I liked your long hair.”

Eva paused with her hand on her room’s handle.

Irene and Saija emerged from the former’s room just in time to catch Eva heading in. Both were staring. Saija was a bit more obvious about it. Irene kept glancing off to the side before looking back at Eva. More specifically, the top of Eva’s head.

Running her fingers through her hair, Eva found a distinct lack of resistance. Not a single strand of hair came away as she dragged her hand in front of her eyes. She was completely bald.

Eva grit her teeth. “Me too,” she grumbled.

That hunter was going to pay.

“Well, don’t worry. I’m sure there is some hair growing magic around. You should worry about your skin.”

Eva shook her head. “No time to talk. I have hunters to kill.” She swung open the door and took a step inside before pausing. “Speaking of, why aren’t you and all the other demons out fighting? You know he’ll come after you next if he wins.”

“With the doll out there?” Saija said as she slipped around Eva into her room. “Not a chance.” She glanced around the place, eying the fairly spartan room.

There wasn’t much in the room. Everything important was over at the prison. As such, Eva just ignored her to focus on finding some clothes and a few spare vials of blood. She wasn’t sure how much help the blood would be. Not if the hunter could just freeze it all.

But best to take it anyway. Just in case.

For clothes, Eva picked out the lightest shirt and skirt that she could find. Things that wouldn’t agitate her raw skin yet still had pockets. Her belt and its pouches that were specifically designed to hold vials—potion vials, but they worked for blood just the same—was gone. Destroyed along with her hair and her old clothes.

“I have to say that I think most of the demons are hoping that the hunter will win. After the doll is dead, then I’m sure some of us will help out. The–”

“Are you still talking?” Eva said as she glanced around the room one last time.

She wished she had time to go get Basila, damaged though she was. Maybe a few spare bloodstones just in case she found a use for them. Unfortunately, they were important things that she kept at the women’s ward. Teleporting was quick. However, Eva had a really bad habit of finding herself distracted.

It would be just her luck to teleport over there only to find out that nuns were attacking again. Or more hunters. Devon, Catherine, Qrycx, and the waxy demon were all over there. They could handle whatever problems had arisen. Problems that Eva was now certain were definitely going on.

Ignorance was bliss at the moment, or so the saying went.

“Excuse me?”

Saija had her hands on her hips and was glaring at Eva. At least, she was until Eva turned to her. A flap of her wings carried her back behind Irene, once again hiding behind the human girl.

“If you aren’t out fighting, I really don’t care what you have to say at the moment. Of course, I don’t know what I expected from a lowly succubus anyway. Run and hide. Just know that humans are fighting while you cower.”

Eva blinked past them, not even bothering to squeeze by or push them out of the way. Nel hadn’t bothered to say which roof, so she had some scouting to do. Even this little detour to collect clothes and blood might have been enough time for the hunter to leave. Especially if the hunter could see through walls.

Not really the scrying method Eva had expected when Srey mentioned it, but it probably counted as being watched. If the hunter saw or suspected that Eva was coming after her, she would probably leave. Or set up more traps.

But she wasn’t in such a rush that she couldn’t stop for one quick moment. She felt a little bad about her words. Eva didn’t feel bad for Saija. But she wasn’t the only one around.

Irene was looking guilty, rubbing her hands together and averting her eyes—not in an embarrassed way as she had before, but just to avoid looking at Eva.

“Don’t worry, Irene. There are real monsters out there. I wouldn’t expect anyone to fight unless they were monsters as well.”

She stayed paused for just a moment, wondering how Genoa might react to being called a monster before shaking her head. It really didn’t matter at the moment.

The shake of her head almost sent her stumbling. Not because of the all-encompassing though gradually lessening pain of her body. It was almost like she was shaking too hard, despite not moving her head any faster than normal. Her hair wasn’t there to act as a counterweight to her brain. Probably her imagination, but the sensation was there.

Without waiting for a response from Irene, Eva sprinted back to the stairwell and climbed it to the top. From the roof, she blinked straight out towards the nearest building. It was a bit too far. Eva reappeared mid-air. She blinked again before she could fall more than a full foot, landing on the roof of another building.

About three inches away from a circle drawn in chalk that was not quite shackles but was definitely unfriendly towards demons.

“That could have been bad,” Eva hissed to herself as she took a step back. She double checked to make sure that there wasn’t another circle behind her before doing so.

Scanning the rooftops, Eva frowned. They were a veritable minefield of shackles. Concentrating harder on more magical effects, she found a number of spherical wards set up around the rooftops and down on the streets. Some might be barriers. Some Eva couldn’t even tell what they might be used for.

Best to avoid them.

However, in scanning the rooftops, Eva spotted her target.

The bright red hair made her difficult to miss.

Eva had no doubt that she had been spotted. And yet, the hunter made no motion. Not a twist of her head or an attack slung in Eva’s direction. For a moment, Eva thought she might be a mannequin designed to lure people closer into some larger trap, but she caught the hunter’s eyes moving ever so slightly.

A couple of roofs away and who knew how many traps in between, Eva now had her target in sight.

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008.019

Posted on by Tower Curator

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Eva’s head spun. Everything hurt. She couldn’t think straight and she couldn’t see straight. The only thing she could see was a blinding whiteness.

Her memories were hazy. A vague sensation of seeing something dangerous followed by pain.

The crackling white in the sky. That had to be it. She saw it and had activated her shield. Had she shouted out to warn the others? No? She couldn’t think properly.

Everything hurt.

But she was alive. She had to be. If she was dead, she would be in that hallway again. Or the darkness she had fallen into when Ylva tested out her theory. There was far too much pain for either of those options.

As time trickled on, she started to gain an awareness of her surroundings. Not through her eyes, those were still out of action at the moment. But concentrating hard enough let her sense the blood of those around her.

Has it always taken so much concentration to see blood?

Arachne was at her side. As expected of Arachne. She was even on her feet. All eight of them. Arachne had shifted into her largest form at some point.

Possibly because she was fighting.

What was she fighting? A human? If so, it was a very fast human. They jumped around, Arachne slashing with her claws while the human waved around his arms as if he were swinging a club.

It couldn’t be the doll.

That’s right, we were here to talk to the doll. The doll wanted to imprison me.

But the doll hadn’t attacked. Even if it had, Eva couldn’t see the doll through her sense of blood.

Then who had attacked?

Wayne and Zoe should have been nearby. Eva couldn’t sense either of them. Maybe they had been vaporized without a shield to take the brunt of the attack. Maybe she had managed to warn them in time for them to teleport away. She hoped so, but she wouldn’t be able to find out for sure until she managed to get off the ground.

Turning her attention to herself, Eva would have cringed had she not been too busy being in a world of hurt.

Her body was very reminiscent of Wayne’s body immediately after they had gone to Zoe’s house to clear out the demons attacking the place. He had ended up scorched badly enough to require medical treatment from experts at an elven hospital. Not really an option for Eva at the moment.

At least she knew why her body ached so much.

But Arachne was fighting. Fighting someone fast. Someone using a sword. And the sky had cracked.

Eva shuddered.

If she was right, Arachne was fighting the demon hunter who had vanquished Zagan.

Eva needed to get up. She needed to help. Arachne was large, tough, and strong, but she was no Zagan.

And it had to be that hunter. He was the one who had chased them down in the wilderness. His partner must be the one who cracked the sky. Eva hadn’t thought that they would be so cowardly as to attack the school while regular students were around. They hadn’t so far, anyway.

Maybe Eva had been just too juicy of a target. With both her and Arachne essentially standing still along with Zoe—who essentially lived with Ylva—how could the hunters not attack? Wayne might have been a casualty of it all, but Eva doubted they would care. Especially not with him being friends with Zoe.

What about the doll? Did they know who or what she was? Did they care? Did she get hit as well? Maybe they had watched her kill the other demon and assumed that she was another hunter. They might have aimed their spell just enough to miss her.

Eva was guessing that the doll was still alive. Being unable to sense her at all made the guess all the more uncertain.

The hunter kept dodging to the side or locking his blade with something that Eva couldn’t see. Now that she was starting to think properly again, she could easily see that there was another combatant fighting against the hunter. One that Eva couldn’t detect through her sense of blood.

Eva really needed to get her eyes working properly again. All the maybes and mights needed to become certainties. Maybes and mights got people killed.

Gripping her hands into fists, Eva tried to push herself off the ground. She had wound up lying face down in the brick and gravel. She couldn’t feel it in the slightest. Something that probably didn’t speak well of her.

Oddly enough—or perhaps unsurprisingly enough—her hands and legs felt perfectly fine. Between Arachne’s carapace and her own blood shield, she had managed to get away without any damage that she could see through her blood. There might be cracks or warping, but she would have to wait to tell for sure.

Unfortunately, all the important bits were in the rest of her.

Eva paused in her fruitless movements for just a moment.

Focusing on herself again, Eva found her blood-based image of herself not looking quite as poorly as she had mere moments ago. Some of her charred flesh was… still charred. But not quite as badly as it had been.

She was healing. Slowly, but surely.

Not fast enough. She might heal, but if Arachne died in the meantime, it wouldn’t even matter.

Again, Eva pressed her fists into the ground. Even as the aches and pains increased, she didn’t stop pushing. Once she got to her knees, everything became far easier. Her legs still worked just fine, after all.

The blinding whiteness in her eyes was slowly fading away as well. Like looking straight into a camera flash, blinking it away seemed to work. Though, half the problem was probably just her lying face down.

Fumbling around her waist, Eva found her dagger lying on the ground. While she couldn’t feel much of anything aside from pain, the black metal was still cool to the touch. Even through her carapace.

Unfortunately, not much else survived the sky cracking. Her vials of blood were nowhere to be found. There was some half-broken, half-melted glass stuck to her stomach that must have been shielded partially by her body. Not shielded well enough to keep the blood safe.

Her eyes were still blurry and everything still hurt. Moving in to engage with her person was absolutely out of the question.

That didn’t stop Eva from taking her dagger and jamming it into her upper arm, slicing out a relatively large gouge. Blood spilled forth, drawn out by her magic. Some, she spread throughout the area to get a better view of her surroundings.

The first thing she noticed was a human-height wall between Eva and the fight going on with Arachne and the demon hunter. The second thing was that the doll was not fighting with them.

The doll was still standing off to one side. Eva hadn’t been paying that much attention to her exact pose, but she was still staring at the sky. She probably hadn’t moved at all.

There was still something fighting the demon hunter. Something Eva couldn’t detect with her blood magic. As she spread more blood around it, she started to get a better picture of just what it was.

Nearly twice as tall as Arachne, a mass of stone had taken the shape of a person. A very bulky person. Who didn’t so much have legs as it had a tornado of earth that it was propped up on. Eva wasn’t entirely sure why it needed a face. Given that the eye and mouth holes were just that, holes, they really didn’t provide much function. Another twenty arms would have been better. Just a relentless hammering of fists instead of the two it currently had.

But it had to be Genoa. She had probably made the wall around Eva as well. Fighting, as Juliana had insisted, from the dormitory building. She had to be. She wasn’t anywhere else around the battlefield as far as Eva could tell.

And with her eyes slowly getting better, she was able to tell a little more after peeking over the top of the wall.

The ground around her was… less brick and stone than it had been. For a certain radius around Eva, everything was glass. Everything save for a small person-shaped patch right where she had been lying.

Perhaps it was a good thing that she could only feel pain at the moment and not something more specific. If her surroundings had become hot enough to turn the landscape to glass, she didn’t want to know what her back looked like.

Though maybe she had been unconscious long enough for her slow healing to heal enough.

More importantly, a fight was going on.

The rock golem crashed down both fists on top of the hunter. He intercepted with his sword, letting the blade take the full brunt of the attack. His arms and legs bent ever so slightly from the impact. Whatever was keeping his armor undamaged was working to his advantage, keeping his limbs from snapping entirely.

Arachne skittered around to his side while he was distracted. Though fuzzy, Eva spotted long coils of her thread all wound up, ready to throw out and lasso the hunter.

Eva ducked back below the wall. The knight was preoccupied. With his back to her at the moment, he wouldn’t have seen her get up just yet. The other hunter might have. Eva didn’t know where she was at. But for the moment, Eva would operate under the assumption that she was distracted as well.

Rather than send out her blood in plain sight or in large flashy attacks, she formed up a few balls and sent it out slow and low to the ground. If she could get some underneath his armor, she could bypass all his defenses.

The blood didn’t make it far. With no indication that the knight had even noticed, her blood froze solid a few feet away from his legs. The balls rolled along the ground aimlessly, no longer directed by her magic.

Eva grit her teeth. The other one was here and she was watching.

But from where and why weren’t there icicles raining down on Eva?

“Nel,” Eva rasped out. She grasped for her cellphone only to have her fingers brushing against bare skin.

My new phone, Eva thought, wanting to slam her head against the wall. If the vials of blood didn’t survive, what hope had her cellphone. Maybe if it had been enchanted against heat like Wayne’s, but Eva didn’t know how to do anything like that.

Not that it would help now. A bit late for that.

The wall around her separated Eva from most of the plaza between the dormitories. It was open towards the Rickenbacker. If she wasn’t being attacked as she was, then the other hunter might not be able to see her.

She still couldn’t see well enough to pick someone out on the roof of some building.

She needed to get a message to Nel.

Wayne and Zoe, if they survived the initial attack, were probably evacuating students. Or keeping them away from everything. Or in the infirmary if they had been injured.

Genoa was fighting along with Arachne, though Eva wasn’t sure how much concentration that golem took. Probably best not to try to get her concentrating on multiple things at once.

But Juliana should be somewhere around. Eva couldn’t see any attacks that might be from her, so she had to be free to act. And she should have a working cellphone.

Glancing up towards the glass windows of the stairwell where they had been watching the doll from, Eva couldn’t see a thing. Both the glare from the glass and her own fuzzy eyes were contributing to the problem. Eva was counting on her still being there—or on Genoa not letting her daughter out of her sight.

Using her own blood, she formed it into a quick message.

Juli. Call Nel. Find other hunter. In area, watching armored guy.

She held it steady for a few seconds before wiping it away. Juliana hadn’t given any indication in return, but Eva wasn’t sure what she would say anyway. She just had to hope that Juliana got the message and would do something.

Just in case the first attack had been a fluke, Eva sent out several more orbs of blood. All from different directions.

As the marbles rushed towards the hunter, Eva pulled out another strand of blood. She considered making a clone of herself for just a moment, but the nauseating side effect was just too debilitating. Instead, she went with her tried and true spell of enlarged blood-fists.

Even if it did end up freezing, like the orbs she had just sent out, it might be enough to trip him up. Arachne and Genoa could capitalize on any opportunity she could create.

Peeking over the wall again, Eva aimed her spell and pressed her hands into the wireframe ball. Two dripping replicas of her claws manifested around the knight. They immediately started icing over, but their size meant that the ice had to work to encompass the hands.

So she still had some time.

Eva used her time to wrap her hands around the knight’s legs, leaving him exposed and stationary. Her hands were still freezing.

As she thought about it more, it might not be such a bad thing. Her control was failing. However, he would be stuck within several tons of ice.

Genoa’s golem hesitated. Arachne did as well, glancing towards the golem in a brief moment of confusion. The golem didn’t glance back.

It was just a golem.

Eva doubted that either had known that she woke up. Well, they did now. Both recovered quick enough. The golem slammed one fist down then the other again and again on the immobilized hunter.

Arachne stayed back for just a moment longer, not wanting to get in the golem’s way. When she did finally act, it was only with her thread. She took care to not touch with her hands or legs, just trying to tangle him up in a makeshift netting.

Squinting her eyes, Eva realized why. Two of Arachne’s legs were little more than stumps. One looked like it had been cut off, but the other looked more like it had been melted.

Eva should have expected that. The knight was the one who left behind the metal that injured demons. The same stuff that Juliana had collected. It would actually be more surprising if the metal didn’t hurt demons.

Shaking her head, Eva pulled her hands out of her spell. The blood hands had long since frozen over.

A stiffness in her fingers had her glancing downwards.

Her real hands were covered in a thin layer of ice. Forcing her fingers to clench sent shards flying around. Her carapace was undamaged. It was stronger than a little ice could hope to damage. But this happened before to a much lesser degree. Just a little frost after she had attacked the demon-eyed hunter had her recoiling in pain.

Either her healing was keeping her from feeling much of it or she was in enough pain that a little frostbite was barely noticeable.

The knight was still putting up a fight despite his immobility from the ice and webbing. A good amount of that was because of Genoa’s golem. While it kept him busy, it failed to do anything more than that. His armor could take the beating. There were only light dents in the metal. Nothing fatal or even mildly significant.

Between catching the golem’s fists on his sword, he alternated between hacking away at the ice and slicing through the more restricting threads. The only way he managed to move fast enough to get so much done was because of the unnatural speed that his armor carried him at.

Trying to sneak another two globs of blood beneath the large frozen claws wound up with them being frozen again. Eva wasn’t yet suffering a headache from the blood loss—or if she was, she couldn’t tell because of all the other pain—but so long as her attacks weren’t working, she wouldn’t be doing much more of it.

Best to save her strength.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure what she should do to help in the fight. Her flames didn’t seem very likely to work any better than her blood. While they wouldn’t freeze, she doubted that they could do more damage than Genoa’s golem. Rushing in and fighting with her bare hands was completely out of the question. Even putting aside the fact that his armor hurt to touch, she was still in enough pain that she would be a liability, not an asset.

Eva grit her teeth, boiling in frustration. What was she supposed to do? Throw rocks at him? He was armored enough that a ten ton golem couldn’t significantly hurt him. She couldn’t even do that anyway as the ground had turned to glass.

Glancing towards the dormitory, Eva blinked straight through the glass entry door. If she couldn’t fight out here, she could go find Juliana and see if she had made contact with Nel.

The second she tried to take a step, a crash of glass both echoed and exploded around her. Shards of glistening glass tore through her raw flesh and bounced off her carapace. Eva stumbled, only to be caught by a pair of cool hands.

“I cannot allow you to leave until I have resolved my quandary.”

Eva spun around, just about falling over again in order to get out of the doll’s grip.

Her face was placid and neutral. Not a hint of anger could be found in her features. She didn’t even try to stop Eva from slipping out of her fingers.

“I thought we resolved it,” Eva said, trying not to cough. Her throat was dry enough that coughing would only make things worse. “Remember? No crime committed so no reason to chase me down.”

Glancing over the doll’s shoulder, Eva frowned. The knight was starting to break out of the ice. In a few moments, he would be free to start hounding down Arachne once again while avoiding the golem.

“Besides, I’m not leaving. I’m going to find some way to kill that hunter.” Eva paused for just a moment while the doll glanced back over her shoulder. “But perhaps if you might be willing to lend a hand, I wouldn’t need to go anywhere.”

The doll stilled. More than normal, anyway. She turned back to face Eva after a moment.

Her lips were curled downwards in a shadow of a frown.

“It is a human.”

“A human that is standing in the way of your job. And besides, he tried to kill you. And the rest of us.”

At least, Eva was pretty sure that they had tried to kill the doll. She had been standing within the glassy area of the courtyard. More towards the edges, as Eva had been standing a decent way away and she was relatively certain that she had been at the very center of the beam. But the doll had still been within its radius.

Her outfit was barely singed, however. The leather was still leather-looking and her skin and hair were perfectly normal.

“He won’t see a difference between demons and dolls. As soon as Arachne gets killed, he’ll be coming after the both of us. Might be hard to do your job when your head is cut off.”

The doll turned back to the hunter, her slim frown turning more into a scowl. “I see,” she said after a moment of thought. “You must accompany me.”

Eva grimaced behind the doll’s back. She was having enough trouble standing on her feet as it was. Running around while two sword-wielding maniacs were fighting did not sound like something all that survivable.

“I’ll be upstairs,” Eva said. When the doll turned her scowl on Eva, she quickly made up an excuse. “There is another hunter. The one who launched that bright beam. Something needs to be done with her before she launches another beam. I’ll need to find her.”

It wasn’t really an excuse. She really did need to find the other hunter. But hopefully the doll would let her go.

“Don’t worry,” she added after a moment of silence, “I’m not leaving the area. And even if I do, I’ll be back here eventually. You can proclaim me innocent then.”

“That remains to be seen,” she said, turning back to the hunter. This time, rather than just glancing over her shoulder, she actually turned her entire body.

She charged out of the Rickenbacker’s lobby in the blink of an eye, joining the fray.

Unfortunately, her first sword strike was intercepted by the armored hunter’s sword. A shame as it would have taken off his head otherwise.

Eva turned to the stairwell, hoping that Arachne wouldn’t find herself on the end of either of the blades. But for the moment, there wasn’t much she could do to the hunter.

To that hunter.

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008.018

Posted on by Tower Curator

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“Well, that’s definitely the doll that I saw in Hell.”

Eva stepped away from the window, looking at the others. Irene and her succubus were standing towards the back of the stairwell. One was trying to look as small as possible while the other continually preened as soon as she thought someone was looking in her direction. Unfortunately for Saija, the doll standing out in the courtyard below was of far more interest to everyone.

Juliana and Genoa were both forward a bit more, both looking out the window. Even after her brief run around her house, Genoa wasn’t looking significantly worse off than she had during their earlier discussion. Still strained, but maybe even better. She didn’t look quite so out of breath as Eva would have expected. Getting out of the house and getting some fresh air might have done her a world of good.

Zoe rounded out their group for the moment. She wasn’t paying so much attention to the doll outside. Her focus was on her cellphone. She was coordinating with other members of Brakket staff to find any possible missing students. Saija’s warning about the recently deceased demon and how he had likely broken some part of their contract.

Given that she was looking much calmer than she had when Saija first mentioned the possibility, Eva was guessing that the headcount was going well.

Srey had gone to find out where Vektul was on Eva’s request. The demon was somewhat essential to Eva and somewhat absentminded. There needed to be some measures in place to ensure he didn’t go do something stupid.

Like run off and try to speak with the doll. For all Eva knew, the doll would strongly object to interacting. Srey had worried that any even extraordinarily minor breach in their contracts would set the doll off. Something that was only a breach because of some innocuous wording that nobody would have complained about under normal circumstances.

Eva didn’t have a contract. So she was feeling fairly safe around the doll at the moment. Neither did Arachne, but Arachne hadn’t been summoned in the usual manner. Eva wasn’t so sure how they might react if brought near each other.

Though, at the moment, Eva wasn’t sure that the doll was even alive anymore.

For the fifteen minutes Eva had been back at Brakket, and longer according to Irene, the doll hadn’t moved. No breathing, no fidgeting of the arms. The doll hadn’t even blinked, as far as she could tell.

Nobody had gone near it. Anderson had made an announcement over the Brakket speaker system warning against going outside. Genoa and Juliana, being unable to teleport long distances on their own, had to have Zoe bring them inside to avoid going too near the doll.

They might have been able to sneak in through one of the back doors, but it was best not to take any risks with someone who could apparently fall out of the sky to skewer people.

“Nobody missing,” Zoe said as she slipped her phone back into her pocket. “However, Cindy Lovechild’s roommate has been unable to wake her. Wayne took her to the school nurse.”

Saija stepped forward, making sure everybody noticed her before speaking. “If Timothy had enraptured someone in his delirium, they should recover soonish now that he’s gone.”

“How soon?”

“A day or two,” Saija said with a shrug.

“I suppose that is good. I’ll let them know,” Zoe said, pulling her phone back out. “However,” she said with a nod towards the window, “what do we do about her?”

“If she doesn’t ever move, I suppose we could put her up on a pedestal. A free new statue for the school.”

“Eva…”

“Or we could try to talk to her. She was open to speaking the last time I encountered her.”

“Alright. What do we say then? ‘Please leave?'”

“Or find out what she is sticking around for. Maybe another demon has broken its contract in the area.”

“If that is the case, perhaps we should offer our assistance.” She sighed, rubbing her forehead. “I told Anderson that his grand idea was idiotic. One of his perfectly innocent demons has already gone off the wall. When will the rest?”

“Hey,” Saija said. “I’ve got no such plans. I’m rather enjoying myself as I am. I don’t need a sword through my gut either.”

Eva turned back to the window, biting her lip. Being his school, Anderson should be the one out there speaking with the doll. He had a demon bound to him. He should know what it was.

But he was nowhere to be seen or heard of, save for the announcement he had made.

The only real reason why he might not be out there was because he broke his portion of the contract somehow. Perhaps he was worried about being dragged down to the abattoir.

Why isn’t the doll going after him then?

Maybe it was waiting for more orders from Void or the Keeper. Wherever it got its orders from.

She could speculate all she wanted. It wasn’t going to change matters until someone went down there to speak with her.

“We shouldn’t all go down at once. It might startle her,” Eva mumbled to herself.

Not quiet enough, apparently.

“You’re not going alone,” Arachne said almost instantly. “In fact, you’re not going at all. Someone else can deal with this. You don’t need to be involved in all the things that go on around this place. You’re already involved in enough.”

Eva shook her head. “You might think that, but there are enough complications around Brakket as is. It is in our best interest, and everyone else’s, to ensure that another one doesn’t crop up from this. I’d prefer if everything went as smooth as possible in the future.”

Like the ritual, she mentally added. With everyone around, she wasn’t about to speak aloud. Arachne should understand without being explicitly told.

She still wasn’t sure what to do about the ritual. They had cleared that area of the wilderness beyond the prison, but so long as the demon hunters had that replica of the nun’s ability to crack the sky, using that field was somewhat untenable. Perhaps if they had someone running an actual distraction for them. They could still be caught off-guard by a beam of light from the sky.

That wasn’t to say that the wilderness they had started on was the only possible location. The Infinite Courtyard was another possibility. It was still open to the sky, but at least it had Brakket Academy surrounding it. They could set up some sort of defenses around it.

A blood shield might work. It would have to be enormous. Larger than any Eva had ever made. She was fairly certain that she could power it through bloodstones. Provided her minion in Florida had done his job in finding suitable targets for more bloodstones, it could potentially be run indefinitely.

The only real problem with that was that she wasn’t sure how well a shield might hold up to an attack of that magnitude. Her blood shields were strong. Stronger than anything she could produce through thaumaturgy. But strong enough to withstand what was essentially a massive laser from the sky?

Eva wasn’t so sure.

The other option she had considered was somewhere indoors. Someone had set up a thaumaturgical ward that expanded what would have been a few hundred square feet into a few square miles for the Infinite Courtyard. Surely something similar could be done to a room. She wouldn’t even need a single square mile of space. So the ward could be drastically scaled down.

It would be much safer than going outside. Depending on who Eva had to get to set up the ward, the whole thing could be kept much quieter as well. No big fanfare or large crowds to find out what might be going on if people stumbled across the ritual circle. It could all be done in the privacy of one of the side rooms in the women’s ward.

She would cast the spell herself, but she had only been in her warding class for two months. Not even quite that. They hadn’t even discussed spacial expansion. What they had discussed was complex enough that Eva doubted anything useful would be covered for some time.

The teacher, Professor Chelsea Lepus, seemed the easygoing sort so long as her class wasn’t being interrupted. Eva might have to ask her.

But that would be neither here nor now.

They had a doll to deal with first.

“I’ll go,” Zoe said before Eva could open her mouth. “As a member of Brakket staff and someone who wants to ensure that the students are kept safe—safe as can be at Brakket anyway—it falls to me.”

“I’ll follow along at a distance, ready to blink in if anything goes wrong.”

“Eva…”

Eva held up a hand. “It will be great if you can shoo the doll away. Unfortunately, this is a demon thing. You’re not much of a demon.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“I’ll be there as well,” Genoa said, stepping forward.

“Mom, no. They can handle it.”

The older woman sighed, glaring down her daughter. Juliana drew herself up, unwavering under Genoa’s gaze.

“You’re staying right here,” Juliana said, voice firm.

Closing her eyes, Genoa shook her head. “You’re not supposed to be taking care of your old mom for several years. At least.”

“Then focus on recovering. You can go back to being mom after that.”

“Very well. But if something does happen–”

“If something does happen, you can cast long-range support from up here. I’ll be up here to protect you from anything that might come near.”

“If that doll comes up here, I’m running away. I’m not going anywhere near that doll,” Saija said, hands on her hips and chest puffed out with a certain amount of pride that didn’t really fit her words.

Half-hiding behind the succubus’ wings, Irene glanced down towards the ground. “Me too.”

“That’s fine,” Eva said. She hadn’t been counting on either one of them for any kind of support.

“If you do get into a fight, try not to die quite as fast as Timothy did. I mean, it was cool, but a drawn out fight would be better I think.”

Eva gave the succubus a light glare. Just a simple glare of annoyance.

That didn’t stop Saija from jumping backwards, trading places with Irene to hide behind her back.

Cowering behind a human? Eva had to stop herself from speaking aloud. It was amusing, but she just rolled her eyes in the end. Especially because saying something might just bring up the topic in everyone else’s minds. They had surely noticed how the demons acted when in Eva’s presence. It was annoying enough to deal with as it was.

“Right,” Eva said. “I’ll keep that in mind. If there is nothing else of note, let’s get moving.”

Arachne moved in front of Eva, leading the way down the stairwell. Zoe, though she was supposed to be the one speaking with the doll, was trailing behind. Her cellphone was out, typing away almost like Catherine with a deep scowl on her face.

Eva found the reason for her typing as soon as they hit the ground floor.

Wayne teleported in. He appeared entirely unannounced and just about got one of Arachne’s limbs through his throat for his troubles.

To his credit, he didn’t flinch. Though that might have just been him not noticing until Arachne had already started to draw back. Or maybe his mind was accelerated to the point where he had processed the shock of everything already.

Were Eva in his place and she saw Arachne’s leg coming straight for her, she would have moved out of the way. Just in case Arachne didn’t stop in time.

“I told you not to come,” Zoe said. “We don’t want to startle the doll into rash action. We already have more than enough people with Eva and Arachne.”

Wayne just gave a light grunt before narrowing his eyes in Eva’s direction. “We could argue. I’d win. Let’s just get this over with. I have tomorrow’s classes to prepare for.”

“Wayne–”

He turned and marched out of the the lobby ahead of everyone else, leaving no opportunity for argument.

Zoe just looked on, somewhat stunned as Wayne threw open the lobby doors and beelined towards the doll. She recovered fast enough and chased after him. Eva had to step to the side in order to avoid being trampled.

Following along behind the two of them, Eva just hoped that he wasn’t about to do something rash. Poorly thought out actions didn’t seem like the kind of thing that Wayne would do often. In fact, he was quite level-headed. But who knew what Zoe had sent him in her texts. She might have said something that would set him off.

Now that she was on ground level and fairly close to the doll, Eva could clearly see the woman. Only with her own eyes. As before, Eva couldn’t sense the slightest sensation of blood from the woman. Her silver hair framed her face. The entrance and exit of Prax’s domain had been lit, but not nearly as well as proper daylight. As such, Eva wasn’t entirely sure if she had noticed the doll’s eyes.

They were bright silver. Almost glowing.

And currently staring off into nothing. They didn’t move to track Wayne and Zoe as the two approached. They just… stared.

Neither Wayne nor Zoe spoke. They stopped about ten feet away, more at a loss of what to do than anything else. Both seemed to expect the doll to speak first. A fact made evident as Wayne cleared his throat. Loudly.

The doll didn’t react. Not even a twitch of her gloved fingers.

“Can we help you?”

Wayne shot Zoe a questioning glance out of the corner of his eye.

Zoe answered with a shrug. ‘We had to say something,’ she mouthed back.

“Perhaps,” the doll said, drawing all attention back to it. “I am locked in indecision.”

Literally, it seems, Eva thought.

She had moved her mouth, but the doll was still as a statue even after acknowledging the two professors.

“Well, we can help you come to a decision,” Zoe said. “Though I must ask before anything else, do you intend harm—physical or otherwise—to any of the humans around the area?”

“Not at this time,” the doll responded in a whisper. Her head turned slightly. While her eyes were still unfocused, Eva got the distinct impression that she was staring straight at the prison.

Eva immediately made a mental note to warn Devon that an enforcer from Hell might have an interest in him. Of course, the prison was a fair distance away. For all Eva knew, the doll was staring at something else. Maybe one of the demon hunters around town was off in that direction and had done something to displease the doll.

Still, best to err on the side of caution.

“That’s good,” Zoe said after a moment of silence. She probably didn’t like the phrasing, but would take what she could get. “Why don’t we move somewhere to sit down and discuss this then?”

Somewhere away from the children, Eva mentally added.

But the doll didn’t move. A brief moment of silence passed before she spoke. “The target of my indecision is present. I was considering tracking down my target, but that option has been removed. Until I have come to a decision, none shall move. Leaving may allow an escape.”

Up until the doll spoke, Eva had been fairly calm. With both herself and Arachne present, she was suddenly somewhat concerned.

She had several vials of blood. Both her own and Arachne’s. She could form shields and she could attack with ease. But would she be able to in time? Juliana had spoken of the doll’s speed from her experience in Hell.

In preparation, Eva uncapped one of the vials behind her back and prepared a decently sized shield. It would be up and around her in the blink of an eye.

Zoe shared a brief look with Wayne before continuing her questioning.

“What is it you’re having trouble deciding?”

“A demonic beacon was taken from Hell to the mortal realm by a demon. Multiple times. A crime worthy of five centuries imprisonment.”

“That doesn’t sound like much of a problem from where I’m standing,” Wayne grumbled. “Less demons around, the better if you ask me.”

“Why don’t we not interrupt the… person,” Zoe said, clearly fumbling for words to call the doll. Facing the doll again, she said, “What is the problem anyway?”

“My information was incomplete,” she whispered. “The demon in question is not quite a demon.”

Both Zoe and Wayne turned slightly to glance in her direction while Arachne moved from ahead and to the side of Eva to directly between her and the doll. The latter let out a low growl as she bent her knees, ready to jump into action.

Eva grit her teeth, mind searching for possibilities. Unless there was another ‘not quite a demon’ running around, the doll was talking about her. But I haven’t done anything wrong. What is she talking about?

A beacon.

Her hand drifted up to brush at her throat. The only beacon she had been in contact with aside from her own—something that never left the mortal realm—had been Arachne’s. But that had been destroyed. Arachne had never used it. Void sent Arachne to Earth.

It had been around her neck nonstop before that.

Eva clenched her fists together.

Including when I sent Sawyer to Hell.

She had taken both Nel and Serena up to the mortal realm. And the beacon had gone with her both times.

“I destroyed it,” Eva said, stepping around Arachne. The blood was still floating behind her, just in case she needed to use it. For the moment, she would try to get out of this mess through words. “I realized my error and destroyed the beacon. It was never once used.”

Through her sense of blood, Eva could tell that Arachne was looking at her. Her carapace didn’t have blood flowing through it, but she was still obviously questioning Eva’s words.

Eva didn’t glance to the side in the slightest. Her focus was on the doll.

Who was now focused on her. Bright silver eyes stared straight at Eva.

“I didn’t help any demons to the mortal realm. The beacon was destroyed. So there shouldn’t be a problem regardless of my status of being only a partial demon.”

That should work. Hopefully. The logic was sound from Eva’s perspective. But would a demon—no, a doll feel the same?

“It is not my place to make such a decision. And something…” the doll’s whispering voice trailed off, staring at the sky for a moment. “Something is preventing my contact with the Keeper.”

Thank Life for that, Eva thought to herself. Had everything been working properly, Eva might have found herself on the receiving end of a sword falling from the sky. It would have come completely unnoticed, as it likely had for that Timothy demon.

“But you said that perhaps these humans might be able to assist in your decision,” Eva said, turning her stare on to Zoe.

“Right,” the professor said after clearing her throat. She shifted slightly, even less comfortable now than she had been when first approaching the doll. “Well, if no crime was committed, there shouldn’t be a punishment, right? There wasn’t even any intention in the actions.”

Still staring at the sky, the doll made no indication that she had even heard Zoe. “I need to reestablish contact.”

Eva followed her gaze up to the sky.

And noticed something.

A white crackling stood out against the blue sky, the clouds, and the violet streaks.

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