Eva stared at Arachne. “I don’t have much of a problem sacrificing people, but children?”
Arachne just shrugged, glancing to the side. “Better than you.”
“I appreciate that. But we have time. You yourself said that this ritual is not small.”
Despite her calm words, Eva was somewhat worried. The center of a demon summoning circle was normally where the enticements went.
Enticements were an odd thing. Ylva needed a vial of raven blood. Arachne, a living black widow spider. Neither, to Eva’s knowledge, actually did anything with their enticements except for to accept them. A haunter usually wanted fresh meat. And then a storehouse—or in Eva’s case, a jail house—full of meat to help calm them down. The haunter actually consumed the meat. Whether it was considered a treat or actual nourishment, Eva had never asked.
The thing Devon had summoned for fighting the nuns, the one that was hard to look at, seemed to have had a portion of its body used as an enticement. The waxy headache inducing demon had an actual wax candle used for its enticement that turned into its body.
So, while using terms like enticement, Eva would much prefer to not be in the circle. There was a much higher chance of nothing terrible happening if she were far away.
What was it that Void said during one of my first trips to hell? I’m destined for greater things? This is probably what he was talking about.
Eva couldn’t remember exactly when those words had been said, but she was relatively certain that it had been before any enigmas had shown up. For how long had Void known that everything that had happened would happen?
Unless he hadn’t known. Maybe he had been planning this even beforehand.
Of course, like sacrifices, Vektul hadn’t actually mentioned the word enticement. It was probably all in her head.
Turning back to Vektul, Eva frowned. “Though Arachne isn’t the best mage around,” she said, continuing her earlier thought. “So I’m loath to trust her words about the ritual circle’s size. In fact, I’d trust a freshman before her. I hope you have a good idea of exactly how this circle is to be drawn.”
“That statement would be accurate.”
Arachne gave another low growl.
“Don’t be offended, Arachne. You know it’s true.” She kept watching Vektul, waiting for him to continue.
Only to realize he had no intentions of doing so.
“How large is this ritual circle?”
“I believe the measurement is meters here? We need ten thousand square of them.”
“That’s…” she paused. Ten thousand square meters didn’t mean all that much to her. She knew that a football field was one hundred yards long, so maybe a square field? But she didn’t have a very good mental model of just how large that was.
Eva was not a sports fan.
“Probably pretty large,” she finished.
They fell into a light silence as Vektul finished off his second apple—again, including the core and its seeds. She could tell that everyone was deep in thought.
Or at least she was. Arachne as well. Probably deep in concern about being used as a ritual reagent while Eva was in the middle.
“What is going to happen?”
She hadn’t meant to ask anything, but she was worried.
Void would manifest in the mortal realm. Even if she didn’t perform the ritual, even if she actively sabotaged it, Life was working to that end as well. The difference would be on whose terms Void came over. If Void came over on his terms and without merging Hell and the mortal realm. On his own terms, he might be able to disrupt or foil any plots against him.
Otherwise Void might be injured, weakened, or even killed. Such a result would not bode well for demons in general and Eva in particular.
Not so long ago, Eva had held a conversation with Catherine. It had been shortly after the demon hunters had attacked. In discussing the murdered security guards, the topic had turned towards elves.
Catherine had gone on a long rant about how much she hated elves. Something about how they used to be some great warriors and their decline into ‘pathetic, mortal-pandering weaklings’ who were shades of their former selves.
Apparently there was some history between Catherine and the elves. At least, the rant had continued for far longer than Eva had been interested in the conversation.
But she had got one thing out of the conversation, the elves’ current state wasn’t because of their own fault. Not really. They had once been beings akin to demons. They had a Power that created them and they all lived primarily in another plane of existence. The only times they ventured out was to enact war.
How they got out of their plane of existence, Catherine had never said. Neither had she said its name or the name of their Power.
What she had said was that nearly everyone, Powers included, had grown tired of constantly being brought into conflicts that didn’t suit their interests. Banding together, they destroyed the patron Power of the elves, leaving the elves both bereft of their unique magics and without a home.
Upon being asked, Catherine hadn’t been certain what happened to those elves who were in their home realm at the time.
Those stranded on Earth tried to keep a low profile, eventually transforming into how everyone knew elves existed today. Most of their warrior ways had died off. Human mages now knew them as herbalists and healers. Very little evidence of their fearsome past or mysterious magics remained.
Hearing that tale had put a bit of fear into Eva. Being almost a demon, it could be said that Void was her Power. She didn’t know what magic, if any, she actually got from Void. Perhaps none at all and all of her magic was fueled solely off what humans could produce. Though that did leave open the question of where the bleeding walls came from that had happened once or twice in recent months.
She still couldn’t cause that to happen intentionally.
The immortality that demons enjoyed probably came straight from Void. Demons had intense regenerative abilities—something Eva was still lacking—but when terminally injured, Void opened a portal to reclaim them. If demons could regenerate from anything, such an action would be unneeded.
Unless it was just a punishment for dying.
That was all just problems that might be if Void did not manage to fend off his attacker. After that, there was still the issue of Void being brought to the mortal realm in the first place.
Though, from the sound of the ritual thus far, it was sounding more like they were summoning a much smaller demon-like being. Far from the literal universe that Eva had originally pictured. Just Void and not the whole of Hell along with him.
Sundering reality doesn’t sound very good though.
Glancing between the two demons seated around her, Eva found neither of them jumping to respond to her question. Though, in Vektul’s case, her question had probably been too vague.
Sighing, Eva shook her head. “Alright, let me grab a notebook and we’ll get all the minor details written down. We can start real planning after that.”
Chapter 011
“You were noticed?”
Clement started to shake his head, but paused after considering the question. “I wasn’t noticed, but one of the demons was aware that he was being watched.”
“As long as the augur didn’t spot you. The enchantments provided by the naughty nun,” she said with some amount of disdain in her voice, “won’t work if they know where to look.”
“I know,” Clement said for what had to be the tenth time. Just because he couldn’t use magic himself didn’t mean he couldn’t understand simple concepts.
Especially concepts related to enchanting.