Oh yeah. She definitely knows. It was a strain to try to roll her eyes, but Shalise tried to anyway.
And it worked. Her vision twisted up for a brief moment before centering on Juliana. Unfortunately, it was not thanks to her efforts. Prax rolled her eyes on his own. She could feel his amusement as he looked over Juliana’s stance.
Prax brought his hands together, pressing down on each finger individually. Each pop gave Shalise a little mental jolt. She had never liked seeing people pop their knuckles. Popping her own felt disgusting.
But Prax continued, ignoring her silent outbursts.
“Are you wanting to fight me?”
“Maybe.” Juliana cracked her own neck, giving Shalise another shudder. “What did you do to my friend?”
“You follow me this far and you have to ask that question? What would you do if I said that I merely took on her appearance. The real one is back near the crystal.”
Don’t taunt her! Just tell her. You’re wasting time. Shalise wanted nothing more than to slap him. Or herself. Or whatever. This is going to get annoying really fast.
Prax rolled his eyes again as Juliana tried to both keep her eyes on him and glance back over her shoulder.
Not that she would see anything. They had come too far for them to even hear the noises of the battle echo down the corridor.
Juliana’s fingers tensed into fists. The metal coating her arms and chest started moving and flowing, though she took no note of it. Subconscious activation?
Prax was telling the truth about that as well, it seemed.
“I’d say you’re lying.”
“Why?”
Juliana’s eyes looked her up and down. “You did such a terrible job of looking like her, there wouldn’t be any purpose to changing your shape. And that mark on your chest,” Juliana pointed a finger out.
Prax made a show of gripping the rag that had once been a shirt. The demon tore it off without a second though. Shalise didn’t even get a second to protest the impropriety of it all.
Interestingly enough, even though she felt embarrassed, none of the associated actions came with it. No glance to the side or heat in her cheeks. Just the vague feeling of being embarrassed without actually being embarrassed. It was an awkward sensation.
Probably because Prax felt absolutely no embarrassment or shame at being half-naked, save for a partially damaged bra. None of the demons Shalise had seen in the prison actually wore clothes.
Maybe a security measure, but Arachne never wore anything either. Not unless the armored chitin counted. Now that she thought about it, she had never actually thought of Arachne as being naked.
Ylva, on the other hand, wore clothes. They were very bad at covering anything. It might have been less lewd had she worn nothing at all.
So it was probably a cultural demon thing, rather than any real disregard for Shalise’s modesty in particular.
Shalise mentally frowned. Thinking about that brought another distressing topic to mind.
There was a very-definitely-with-no-doubt-about-it male demon inside of her body. More than that, there was a male demon in control of her body.
And that male demon had just started to make her body chuckle.
Shalise did a quick mental rewind to see if Juliana had done something chuckle-worthy. Unless gaping counted, she hadn’t.
He was laughing at Shalise.
I-I swear, if you do anything to my b-body. I’ll–I’ll–I’ll sic Arachne on you. You’ll be sorry.
That only made him laugh harder.
Juliana glowered. “What’s so funny?”
“Inside joke,” Prax said. And then he laughed again.
Jerk.
Juliana frowned, shook her head, and glared at Prax. “Those markings bind you to her body, don’t they?”
“More of a gateway in and out, but close enough. That is pretty hefty knowledge there. More than I would have expected from a budding diabolist, even in light of our conversation.”
“Mostly a guess,” Juliana said with a shrug. “Read it in the book, but it didn’t actually show the designs. Wait. Our conversation?” She relaxed slightly, moving from her ready stance to standing with her head quirked to one side. Her metal armor flows slowed but did not stop completely. “Prax?”
“In the flesh,” Prax said, spreading his arms wide. “Or my servant’s flesh.”
“Servant?” Juliana pressed her palm to her forehead. “Shalise,” she mumbled, “what did you do?”
Nothing! I’m not his servant.
Juliana narrowed her eyes. “Is she still in there?”
“She is.”
“Prove it.”
Once again, Shalise’s eyesight rolled. “Just how would I do that?”
“Tell me something only Shalise would know.”
Something only I would know. Shalise mentally frowned. It couldn’t be something that only she would know or how would Juliana know it was true? Something instead that only they had experienced. Oh, remind her about me being eaten by the zombie and she helped save me.
She could feel Prax raise an eyebrow along with a low undercurrent of both disbelief and amusement. “And you would believe anything that I said came from Shalise and was not something I either pilfered from her mind or learned from her after you passed out.”
That’s not what I said! If Juliana thought she wasn’t Shalise anymore, she might attack. And Prax might hurt– Wait. You can pilfer things from my mind?
Shalise’s lips curled into an unnatural smile just as Juliana responded.
“It couldn’t hurt, but no. Not really.”
“Then,” Prax said slowly, “you will simply have to extend trust towards me. Or take your chances in combat.”
There was a tense moment while Juliana glared. “No,” she said eventually. “I’ll not fight you.”
Shalise let out an immaterial sigh of relief.
“Isn’t that sweet.” Prax shook his head side to side. “You mortals–”
“Don’t make me regret this, Prax.”
Prax tilted his head. “Regret what? Not attacking your mortal friend? Why ever would you regret–”
Juliana stumbled forwards as a low rumble shook the floor. She stumbled right into Prax’s arms. He caught and steadied her, holding her close to his chest while the ground shook. Juliana actually started to blush.
If Shalise had control of her eyebrows, they would have been up in her hairline. She had to shake herself out of her stupor to ask the important question.
Does Hell always have so many earthquakes?
“Is an earthquake still an earthquake when there is no Earth to quake?”
Before Shalise could come up with anything to say to that, Prax threw Juliana to the ground. He dove after her just in time to avoid a falling hunk of rock.
It slid into a wall, knocking out the barrier to a cell.
“I believe,” Prax said with a glance towards the now violently thrashing demon chained within, “it is time we cease existing within this place. We have overstayed our welcome and I have long since tired of its walls. Mother will be getting reinforcements. As valiant as the sword-doll may be, she can only lose her battle of attrition.”
Prax stood up. A few other cells had been damaged, though no demons were pouring forth. “I wonder where Keeper has gone.” He took one step only to frown and look down. “Servant,” he said, “your body is failing to heal.”
One pant leg had a tear at the knee. A small amount of blood soaked into the cloth around the hole. The injury wasn’t worse than a skinned knee.
Idly, Shalise noted that while she could feel things that Prax touched, she couldn’t feel whatever pain had to be coming from her knee. Concentrating harder, she found that wasn’t entirely true. She could feel it. The stinging was dull and plain in comparison to what skinned knees normally felt like.