She jumped onto his back, knees on either side of his ribcage. One hand gripped one of Prax’s horns. The other took hold of his chin. With a flick of her arms, an audible snap echoed through the office.
Just in time for her to freeze another two globs of blood that Eva had attempted to hit her with while her back was turned. Each shattered on either side of the portal that was swallowing up Prax’s body.
The hunter got to her feet, brushing her hands off as if Prax had been covered in dust.
Though, given the blood on her hands, Eva doubted that the action was all that effective. It was merely an intimidation tactic.
Eva would be lying if she said that she wasn’t a little intimidated at the moment.
She may have taken Prax mostly by surprise, but Eva was getting serious ‘Genoa’ vibes off this hunter. Eva doubted that she would be able to take on an injured Genoa, let alone one able to walk under her own power.
The best course of action might be to simply flee back to Zagan. He would surely be able to do something.
Unless the presence of the hunter distracted him enough for the knight to get a critical hit in.
And even if Eva fled, there was no guarantee that the hunter would follow. She might chase after Catherine.
Catherine was right. She wouldn’t die. She’d be back eventually.
But she wasn’t the only one there. Martina would be with her. And maybe the nurse.
Eva might have found it amusing that she was more worried for the nurse than Martina had the hunter not decided to charge straight at her.
Blinking past the hunter to the opposite side of the room, she ignited her hands. Blood was obviously not working on this person. Granted, she had only tried twice and neither of those attempts had been her giant blood-claw. That took time, unfortunately.
Time that I really don’t have, Eva thought as she tossed a small fireball at her opponent. She didn’t have time build it up more. She didn’t have the time to stand and watch the explosion.
The hunter twisted around the fireball as an icicle flew towards Eva.
Blinking again, Eva found herself just outside of the office, looking in through the broken window.
The fireball hit the ground, erupting with little more than a snap. Like a small firework going off.
For a moment, the two just stared.
Eva didn’t remain idle while staring. She built up a fireball in each hand, both larger than the earlier one. With slightly more distance between them, Eva actually had the time to do so.
“What are you? You’re not a demon.”
Eva opened her mouth to deny that claim. Except, perhaps she wasn’t a demon just yet. A few more treatments.
In the mean time…
“An abomination.”
The hunter blinked, confusion radiating from her eyes. The confusion gave way to about three other expressions, all competing for dominance. Anger, disgust, and maybe a little excitement. She then blinked again.
“Oh,” she said. “Ohhh, you’re the person that nun was talking about. I have to admit, I wasn’t paying much attention. She was kind of annoying. No. Really, really annoying. She kept going on and on about… well, you. I suppose.”
Waving her hand, the hunter opened her mouth to continue rambling. “Doesn’t really matter–”
As the hunter waved her hand, Eva caught a light glow on her rings.
Without hesitation, Eva blinked.
She snapped into being back inside the office, just to the side of the hunter.
Eva dropped both of her firebombs as a boulder made of ice crashed down into the window right where she had been standing.
Window blocked off, Eva blinked to a corner of the room and uncorked a vial of blood. Her own blood, all of Zagan’s blood was lying frozen on the floor. She formed up a blood shield around herself. All in the time it took for the two firebombs to fall to the floor.
Heat and flames filled the room. Strong enough that Eva could feel a small portion of it through her shield. Much of the already wrecked room turned to cinders. What wasn’t burnable was crushed under the pressure of the two bombs’ shock waves.
Eva’s shield was included in that second category. Demon blood would have been able to stand up to the explosions. Only using her own blood, the shield cracked and shattered after only a few moments of staying up.
Luckily, most of the power in the explosions had already been used up by the time the fractured shield collapsed. All that was left was the fire and the heat.
Neither really bothered Eva.
Except, there was more left behind. One thing stood out.
A pillar of ice, stretching from the ground to the ceiling.
Eva didn’t need her blood sight to tell that the hunter was still alive within.
Uncorking every vial of blood that she had left, Eva formed it all into a massive ball made up of thin rings. The rings all circled around each other, gathering to form a frame of blood wires. Spell set, she plunged both hands into the ball.
Two car-sized hands of blood, mirrors of Eva’s claws, appeared in the room in front of her. Eva pushed her hands farther into the rings of blood. The larger versions of her hands moved together, one of them scraping into a wall and tearing it apart as it continued forwards.
The palms of her blood-hands hit the ice pillar. Eva gripped it and squeezed.
Cracks formed in the ice, starting as small fractures before growing into larger and thicker crevasses.
The hunter was actually panicking now. Her accelerated heart rate and more frantic movements within the pillar were unusually satisfying.
At least, it was until her blood claws started to freeze. They were huge, several hundred times the size of the small globs of Zagan’s blood that the hunter had frozen earlier. But locked around the pillar of ice, slowly crushing it, ice started to form on the palms of the hands.
Eva redoubled her efforts, pressing her hands together as hard as she could, forcing more and more magic into the ball of blood to keep the hands under her control for as long as possible.
The top half of the pillar broke off, collapsing into one of the hands. Eva pulled her real hand out of the ball as if she had been stung. The blood forming the hand fell to the ground, forming a large pool of inert liquid.
Glancing down, Eva found small amounts of frost shining white against the normally black carapace of her hand.
Eva grit her teeth and focused on her remaining hand, crushing the top of the already damaged pillar where it was more brittle.
With the hand still freezing over, it was fighting against time.
And Eva didn’t feel like she was winning.
Pulling her hand away from the pillar, Eva lifted it up and over the broken top. Curling the hand into a fist, she slammed it back down.
The hand fell apart, shards of blood and ice scattered everywhere. Most of it went into the pillar of ice through a hole at the top from where the upper part had broken off.
The shards rained down on the inside, each as sharp as knives, cutting into the hunter.
Unfortunately, that was all they were. Tiny knives. Inflicting nothing more than superficial wounds on the woman inside her makeshift shield.
A moment of silence passed. Eva started building up more compressed flames. Dropping them into the top might be her best option.
Rather than tossing the fledgling fireballs, Eva found herself extinguishing them as she dove to the side.
The pillar exploded outwards. Not in shards, but heavy chunks each at least the size of a large brick.
On the ground and curled into a ball, Eva clasped her hands over her head. Just in time to feel a brick of ice hit the chitin on her arm. It sent a hairline fracture up the carapace, but nothing more.
Eva remained on the ground for a moment after the last brick had struck the wall. Just in case.
A moment too long.
The hunter jumped on top of her. Bleeding from hundreds of tiny cuts, the woman clasped a hand around Eva’s throat. Her other hand grasped towards Eva’s face.