“Sorry. You didn’t need to follow me all the way up here.”
“You ran off looking for a demon like you just got possessed by one.”
Zoe opened her mouth to tell him what she was doing. She changed her mind at the last-minute. “Do demons actually possess people?”
Wayne shrugged. “Ask the diabolist.”
“Anyway,” Zoe said with a shake of her head, “just had an idea that could solve at least one problem.”
She started down the stairs at a more sedate pace for Wayne’s sake. A difficult task. She was itching to run–to find Ylva as soon as possible.
As they headed towards the torture chamber, Zoe explained Eva’s condition. A summary. There wasn’t time to get into the finer details.
The torture chamber was directly adjacent to the prison. Considering the size, the chamber should have been visible from the prison windows if not completely obstructing them.
Should being the key word.
Zoe had long given up trying to make sense of how the layout worked in Ylva’s domain. She was half convinced that the archways were portals to their respective rooms, given how much overlap there should be between some of the larger rooms. Especially the bedroom and the bathroom. Both of those rooms could fit almost the entirety of Zoe’s old house.
For as much wonder and awe that Ylva’s domain elicited, the torture chamber only brought up feelings of disgust. Even the eye-stalk room was more strange than disturbing.
It wasn’t the rusted iron cages lined with small spikes. Nor was it the wooden wheel slowly rotating through a trough of boiling water. The racks, and iron maidens, and tools that she couldn’t begin to guess the purpose of didn’t bother Zoe.
Just the very presence of the room implied its use.
What purpose could such a place serve to one who could induce kneeling with a mere word?
Zoe wrinkled her nose. The constant scent of urine and feces did not help.
And yet Zoe knew that their prisoner had spent time within. Almost all of her time, in fact.
Unfortunately for Zoe, the nun wasn’t in today. The racks lay empty, the cages wide open.
No torturer either.
Wayne limped up to her side, staring at the room with narrowed eyes.
Not waiting to answer the questions he was sure to ask, Zoe turned to leave.
She stopped short. Another step would have had her running into Ylva.
The demon’s dead eyes turned first to Zoe then to Wayne. Her ice blue lips parted as she began to speak.
“We observed your entrance.”
“Ylva,” Zoe said, “I was looking for you.”
Her gaze remained steady on Wayne.
“Oh, this is Wayne Lurcher. A colleague. He was hospitalized until today. I think I’ve mentioned him.” Zoe turned to Wayne. “This is Ylva. A, ah, demon.”
“Yeah,” Wayne said with a grunt. “We’ve met.”
Zoe felt her eyebrows rise as she turned back to Ylva.
“Your impropriety in failing to greet Ourself upon entering Our domain has been noted.”
Only after Wayne gave a light shrug did Ylva turn her gaze to Zoe.
“You required something of Us?”
Zoe blinked. It took a moment to remember what she wanted in the first place. “The nun, the prisoner. I need her for an experiment. Possibly a solution.”
“Regrettable. Ali has escaped as planned.”
“That’s…” Zoe’s shoulders slumped. “Is it too late to recall her?”
“Should Ali’s former companions notice her return here, she will become compromised. We will recover her when We recover Nel. Are you unable to enact this solution on your own.”
Zoe frowned. “I’d have to create a whole new spell to emulate their lightning. It is possible, but it would take a lot more time.”
Plans for a few variations of nun lightning flashed through her mind. It helped that she had thought about the topic in the past. There would be complications.
Zoe glanced to her side. Wayne would be able to help. He knew a good amount of non-standard magic.
“I’ll get started,” Zoe said, “but it may be faster to recover Nel. Do we have a time frame for that?”
Blue lips curled into a smile.
“Soon.”
—
The theory was sound.
Elysium lightning would work. Either Ylva had to undo her halting of the curse or Zoe’s counter-curse would break the effect. But the lightning should overpower and consume the curse before it could spread further.
Zoe sighed.
Poor Charlie.
Watching yet another rat slide down into the incinerator weighed on Zoe’s conscience. Charlie, being one of the oldest of her experiments, especially hurt.
Zoe’s attempts at replicating the white lightning still needed work.
She had selected him specifically because Zoe had thought that she might be able to save him had anything gone wrong by severing his tail. It had been going so well too, but she had underestimated the tenacity of the curse.
After applying her counter-curse, it started off working exactly as intended. Her magic sought out and destroyed all magic within the rat. Simultaneously healing Charlie had his tail growing back beyond the point of the cut, though the healing efforts were stymied by her counter-curse before too much could happen.
The moment Zoe had smiled to herself and relaxed back in her chair, things started going wrong.
Her counter-curse ended up eating itself before it could completely eradicate the entirety of the curse.
Zoe snapped her gloves off and dropped them into the incinerator along with poor Charlie. Shutting the lid, Zoe watched and waited as the magic did its work. Soon enough, nothing but ashes remained.
Well, she thought as she slid her chair back to her work desk, back to revising.
She had crossed out no more than three errant lines in her theory before the door slammed into the wall as it opened.
Zoe gave a light start. Her dagger was in her hands in an instant.
She didn’t attack. “Devon?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
The trench-coated man took two steps into the room. One of his arms writhed and squirmed beneath the coat. The small bit that poked out looked like something from a giant squid.
Zoe suppressed a shudder as he glanced at the still warm incinerator.
“No success?”
“Getting there. Any fascinating insights from you today?”
His suggestion that all of her work might fail on account of Eva’s ‘quasi-demonic nature’ had almost caused Zoe to toss out all of her work with the rats. She would have to retest everything on demons anyway.
Aside from Arachne–she had immediately volunteered for testing–demons were in a distressingly short supply. Apparently she couldn’t just summon up some to start experimenting on. If she failed to convince a demon to submit to experimentation, she would have to dominate it. Tricking a demon into a false sense of security was against some ‘rules’ that Zoe had yet to come across in any of the books that Eva had loaned her.
Needless to say, Zoe was far from confident in her ability to dominate a demon’s will.
A short snort escaped him. “When you are ready to test on a demon, let me know. In the mean time… Ylva wishes to speak with us.”
“Us?”
“Everyone.”
That got Zoe to perk up. “Has something happened with Nel or Alicia?” Her pulse jumped as another thought occurred to her. “Or Juliana and Shalise? Are they alright? Nothing happened to th–”
Devon held up a hand–a tentacle. “Why don’t we head over and find out straight from the horse’s mouth? It didn’t sound mad or upset, but who can tell with that thing anyhow.”
Nodding, Zoe stacked her notebooks and dropped them into a drawer.
Devon and Zoe walked side-by-side as they moved to the conference room. Carlos, Genoa–soaked in sweat–and Arachne–covered in dirt–joined them partway there.
Arachne, Zoe noted, glared at her. The demon had taken it as a personal affront when Zoe had said that she wasn’t going to use Arachne as a test subject in a potentially lethal experiment. It had taken an entire afternoon for the demon to see reason and agree that waiting until the kinks had been ironed out as much as possible was the better choice.