It wasn’t like she was tied to her chair. She could leave. The exit hatch wasn’t locked or anything.
That didn’t change the fact that she was stuck where she was. The map wasn’t the fold up piece of paper type of map. It was a part of the room. A whole table with models of the town and glowing representations of all of her forces. Any time one of her three observational eyeballs passed over an area or her regular soldiers sat around long enough to relay a message, the map would be updated.
Without her at the monitors and maps, her troops sat around doing nothing. Verbally directing them did nothing. Pointing and other gestures did nothing.
Only the map worked.
She had considered leaving it anyway, running out and fighting on her own was more her style. But, frankly, Genoa’s soldiers were almost on par with the woman herself and she had already been told in no uncertain terms that allying with Eva would lead to both of their demises.
Confident though she was, Arachne wasn’t certain she could fight off all of Genoa’s soldiers and the woman herself at the same time. Sure, she might be able to kill Genoa, but she didn’t like the idea that she could die in the process.
Death did not frighten Arachne. More unnerving was the thought of leaving Eva alone inside another demon’s domain.
Arachne sighed for the third time in as many minutes. They should not have left without a plan. She should have objected. Even delayed Genoa for a few minutes while they discussed a few things about demons and their domains.
And then she foolishly carried out Eva’s desire to sever the strings controlling Juliana. It had been almost reactionary. Her Eva called out orders and she moved.
Had she waited, Genoa would have been the one to notice and sever the strings. Given how Genoa was a part of their little war, it might not have changed anything at all, but at least the theater-demon’s ire would have been directed at someone else.
Shaking her head, Arachne turned her attention back to the monitors. Genoa was still pinned down beneath practically her entire army. The building was well fortified. A bank or something of the sort. And Genoa’s crew had reinforced the walls beyond anything remotely reasonable.
The eyeball drones only seemed to be able to observe from a high angle, unfortunately. Without some heavy damage to the building, she was unable to actually see inside. The only way she knew Genoa was still inside was thanks to the occasional volley of attacks clearing out any of Arachne’s swarm that got too close.
There remained a remote possibility that Genoa was tunneling out of the building. An earth mage of her caliber would have little trouble escaping. Arachne guessed that she did not wish to leave behind her few soldiers or run the possibility of being trapped underground with non-earth mages if Arachne decided to charge in.
Two blips vanished from her map at almost the same time. A third one was quick to follow. Not a big deal; they were just some of the fringe of her swarm. She couldn’t be bothered to manage all of them–her army was huge. Still, she directed her spare observation unit over to the area.
It took a few minutes to get eyes on the situation, but when the third monitor finally changed to show the battlefield, it brought a smile to Arachne’s face.
Eva had decided to quit slouching around.
Her master was in the burnt out husk of some building or other, crouched behind a conveniently placed waist-high wall to avoid acid spit–almost too convenient–and tossed fireballs with some decent precision at the eyes of another three members of Arachne’s swarm.
The balls of fire were not doing much damage on their own, but she had a few of those cat-eared monsters at her side. Eva had improved in her fireball casting since her first year, but those things at her side were in another league. They didn’t need to hit the insects’ eyes to do some damage with their fireballs.
Fireblasts, more like.
The headless bears kept Arachne’s swarm from progressing. One was fighting the same snake-like insect that was being pelted with the most fire while two mauled another of the crawling type of insects.
Arachne frowned as she took note of the final bear and final member of her swarm in the area. The rest of the situation was well in hand from an overhead perspective. Both of the other insects were pinned down and would die before long.
But the final member of her swarm was in active pursuit of the final bear. And gaining. Arachne’s little six armed bugs were surprisingly fast. They looked like they should be far slower.
Yet Eva wasn’t even glancing in the final insect’s direction.
Just as Arachne was about to direct the bug over towards Eva to force her master to take notice, Arachne started grinning.
A whole horde of green-skinned lizard things jumped from the second floor of an adjacent building. Only three of them actually made it on the bug’s back, but those three surprised it enough to force it to a stop. All the lizard things started stabbing it with little knives while the bear stopped, turned, and hammered a heavy paw into the bug’s face.
Three blips all disappeared from her map at roughly the same time.
“Oh, my wonderful Eva,” Arachne said. “You want to play?”
She dragged a finger across her map, selected a small group of her swarm. Nothing that was pinning down Genoa, just some idling fringe bugs. With her units selected, she started tracing a line through the map.
The line ended right in Eva’s flank.
“Let’s play.”
Chapter 021
Eva wiped a handful of sweat-soaked dirt from her forehead. The sounds of fighting died off. Except for the goblin things. They apparently still needed to be taught at what point to cease tearing the enemy apart.
“All targets down, commander.”
Nodding at her lieutenant, Eva surveyed the battlefield with a small smile on her face. Everything had gone far better than she had hoped. With direct orders, her soldiers were not as bad as she had originally thought.
“Any injuries?”
“One of the dullahan-bears suffered minor injuries before we could defeat the insect. It isn’t a major wound, but it might be a good idea to keep him in the back for the next few engagements.”
All of her headless bears were lumbering towards her position. It didn’t take long to spot the injured one. He had a large red streak running from his shoulder down to his paw. It gave him a slight limp, but he was otherwise unaffected.
“And no one can heal? Or mundane first aid?”
“Not unless you can.”
Eva frowned at her lieutenant, but nodded. Being able to heal most minor cuts in the blink of an eye and larger wounds with some effort and a bloodstone had made learning first aid significantly less attractive to her. And she had no potions.
Which wasn’t so bad, actually. Eva considered herself far from squeamish, but there was something off-putting about the idea of dumping liquid down their headless necks. And that was assuming potions would work on them in the first place.
A moot point, as it did not change the fact that she didn’t have any.
“Anything else I should be aware of?”
“Nothing comes to mind, command–”
Another vampire-cat–the one that was supposed to be on lookout–dropped down between them, giving a rushed salute to Eva. “Enemy force fast approaching from behind.”
“How many and from which direction?”
Her lookout whipped an arm out, pointing towards the street behind the burnt out building they had just fought within. “Coming up the road. At least seven, possibly eight.”
Eva cursed under her breath. Seven wasn’t a huge number. Arachne could certainly have sent more. While they had just taken out six of the bugs, three of those had been in the initial ambush. Four if she was counting the one the goblins took out.