Unfortunately, if she was unconscious, that left an injured Eva with a full-grown woman to lug around.
And she was injured in both her hand and her waist.
For the moment, Eva tended to herself. She couldn’t do much about the missing bone, but she could at least complete her veins and arteries with hardened blood so as to keep her from bleeding out if she let her concentration slip.
It took more than a few minutes of strengthening the passageways to her satisfaction. They needed to be able to survive a moderate jostle while still being flexible enough to move in. As it was, she would have to keep her hip straightened out for the most part.
Fixing her blood vessels did nothing for the pain.
Still, with as much self-maintenance as she could do completed, Eva turned to the probably unconscious nun.
“Now,” Eva said to herself through grit teeth, “what do we do with you?”
After a few minutes of deliberation, Eva made her decision. She propped up the nun, slung an arm around her shoulder, and started dragging.
Every so often, Eva suffered through the debilitating headache and lurch of the world as her teleport failed. It wasn’t quite so bad on repeated attempts as it had been the first time. Either the wards were weakening with distance or with the brute force of her teleport attempts.
Ten minutes into dragging Sister Cross through the woods and Eva was starting to get nervous. The nun’s heart rate and breathing showed signs of her waking up. She still hadn’t moved significantly on her own, but she could wake up at any moment.
Eva’s next teleport attempt nearly got through the barrier. She could feel it; both in that it caused very little mental pain and that it tainted the air around her with the pungent scent of brimstone.
She lugged Sister Cross’ unconscious carcass another ten feet, built up her magic, and teleported.
Eva’s method of teleportation wasn’t pleasant at the best of times. The sound of meat tearing and slopping against hard floors combined with the screams–Eva wanted to say ‘of the damned’ but that didn’t seem likely; the teleport took them through Hell, not through Death’s realm–burned on her very being. Then there was the more literal burning of her flesh. Skin seared off down to her bones.
Over time, Eva had either grown accustomed to the pain of having her skin flayed off or her increasingly demonic nature was protecting her from the ill effects. She could keep a level head through the pain and come out only slightly shaky when she arrived at the gate.
Sister Cross had neither her demonic nature nor her pain tolerance.
The nun’s eyes snapped open the moment the real world had been replaced with a tunnel of flesh. She tried to scream. Eva’s blood kept her mouth sealed for the moment, but it wouldn’t hold under the nun’s fright. Only moments after the teleport had begun and her skin and lips were already tearing from the strain.
Where Eva felt her skin incinerated during the teleport, Sister Cross experienced the pain differently. Her skin started peeling off in long strips. Like someone took a potato peeler to the woman and went crazy.
As her skin vanished into the walls of flesh, the unseen entity exchanged its potato peeler for a cheese grater. Thin strands of her muscles and organs separated themselves from her body.
All at once, the pain ended. Eva’s teleport spat both of them out in the gate of the women’s ward.
The screams, however, did not end.
Sister Cross lay on the floor in a bloodied mess. Unlike Eva, who was whole and hearty, the nun was still missing huge chunks of skin. What little scraps of clothes she had worn had been almost completely torn away and her flesh had gone with them.
Her shield bubbled up around her, but she continued to scream like she was still being mutilated.
It took Eva only a second to figure out why.
Slamming her dagger down into the pooling blood around the nun, Eva gathered up a small marble as fast as she could.
She sent it whizzing off through the air to join with her blood wards with as much haste as possible.
Eva felt the blood join with the ward just as Sister Cross’ shield shattered into shards of solid magic. They disappeared into tiny motes, leaving an extremely injured Sister Cross on the floor.
It was a good thing that Sister Cross had that shield. Eva’s wards were not designed to cause mere discomfort.
That crisis over for the moment, Eva turned her attentions to the downed woman and how to save her from her injuries.
Luckily enough for Sister Cross, the effects of the teleport seemed to have reverted to before the cheese grating had started. She was only missing surface skin.
Which would probably still have her bleeding out in a record time. The human body wasn’t meant to survive without skin.
“Arachne!” Eva shouted out, even though she could already hear the stomping footsteps coming her way over the screaming noise coming from the hole Sister Cross had torn in her mouth.
The spider-demon burst into the room a second later.
“Eva–” Arachne stopped as she spotted Sister Cross on the ground. Her eyes drifted over to the injury on Eva’s side. Her hands clenched together, squeezing tightly for just a moment. “I’ll fetch the potions,” she said, turning on her heel.
Eva stayed where she was, blinking in confusion.
She had fully expected to have to order Arachne not to slaughter Sister Cross. Instead, she runs off an gets potions?
Strange.
But gathering potions was what Eva was going to ask her to do, so she refrained from protesting.
Instead, Eva pulled out her dagger and pressed it against Sister Cross’ arm. With her shield shattered, there was nothing to get in the way.
With her dagger, she could keep the woman alive for the moment. Circulating the blood over such a huge surface area took a huge amount of concentration, but it should work long enough for the potions to make their way through her system.
Arachne reentered with a whole case of potions. Eva broke her concentration just long enough to rummage through and pick out anything that could help repair tissue or replenish blood.
Especially blood replenishment.
Selection made, Eva tossed the rest of the case back to Arachne before turning to Sister Cross.
It took both Eva and Arachne working together to pry open the nun’s mouth despite the hole at her lips. Even then, she tried to spit out the potions. At least, she tried until Eva covered her mouth. Eva didn’t even have to use her hand, she just replugged Sister Cross up with the plentiful amounts of blood coating the woman.
Potions administered, Eva kept her concentration on containing Sister Cross’ blood. They would need time to work, after all.
“We need a safe place to store her where she can’t teleport out of,” Eva said. “You think Ylva would mind us using one of her prison cells?”
“What about your injuries?”
Eva glanced down at her side. The hole was still there, blood tubes still holding. It didn’t even hurt so much. Nothing like a trip through a Hell-based teleport to put pain into perspective.
“I’m fine for now. She’s the more pressing matter at the moment.”
Arachne grit her teeth together hard enough to make noise. Otherwise, she remained silent.
“Come on,” Eva said, “help me get her to Ylva. I doubt that she will mind. She has a thing about collecting nuns anyway.”
As Arachne moved in to pick up Sister Cross, the nun started to thrash about. Her eyes blazed bright white with the Order’s unique brand of magic.
Before she could manifest a so much as a spark, Eva hovered her sharp fingers over the twitching eyeball set into the woman’s chest.
“Try anything and I will tear out your eye,” Eva said, voice stone cold.
Sister Cross glared, but the white died down to her natural brown.
“The only reason you are alive is because I still consider myself friends with Shalise. I’ve turned people’s hearts into bloodstones for less than what you’ve done to me. You’re lucky to be as you are now.”