Confusion took over Juliana for a few moments. Is it a ploy? she thought. Some sneaky way to attack?
It quickly dawned on her that Arachne was not trying to lull her into some false sense of security. She was walking away.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“I have better things to do than play with you.”
“Like what?” Juliana asked as she ran after the spider demon. She did pause just long enough to reach down and reabsorb the bit of blade into her armor as she passed it. “Need to ogle Eva some more?”
It was a dangerous game she was playing. Needling Arachne about Eva was one of those things that might really set her off.
But the demon just kept walking.
“What’s your problem?” Juliana asked. She threw a little magic towards Arachne’s feet, causing one to sink into the ground a few inches.
That gave the spider-demon about as much pause as a fly brushing past her face.
“I have had a great deal of time to think,” Arachne said, pulling her leg out of the ground and continuing her stride almost unbroken. “Between my self-imposed isolation after the… incident with your mother and my detention in Hell. I have decided, on my own, to become a better person.”
“By whose standards?”
“Eva’s, of course. A year ago, I would have torn you to shreds. Eva isn’t around. Whatever she thought about it could be dealt with later. Now, I don’t want to fight you.”
“You can’t even spar with me?”
“I’d rather not risk hurting you.”
Juliana froze, looking at Arachne with her mouth agape. Was this even the same demon? What had Hell done to her? Shaking her head, she skipped forwards to catch up with the rapidly retreating demon.
“You sparred with my mother all the time. You never hurt her!”
“Are you forgetting the part where I put her in the state she is currently in? Barely better than an invalid.”
Juliana reached forward, gripping Arachne’s wrist. She made sure to move the metal out of the way before touching her. Burning her with the hunter’s metal right now wouldn’t advance any of Juliana’s goals.
When Arachne didn’t swat her hand away, instead stopping and turning, Juliana grew a little more confident. She stared into Arachne’s red eyes—her main two anyway, Juliana kept her gaze steady rather than flick to each set of eyes.
“You apologized for that. I’ve accepted your apology. More, I’ve decided that you didn’t apologize just because Eva made you.”
That last bit she had been convinced was false up until about thirty seconds ago. Arachne deciding not to fight and her current attempt to escape the situation just made it all the more convincing.
After another moment of keeping their eyes locked together, Arachne turned with a slight snort. Her hand slipped out of Juliana’s grip and she resumed her march.
“Besides,” Arachne said, not looking towards Juliana as they walked alongside each other, “I’ve still hurt her during our spars. Unless we have different definitions of the word. I seem to recall tearing out her throat once.”
“That…” Was true. Partially. It had been more of a scratch, really. A particularly bloody scratch that went just a bit too deep and took out a bit too much flesh. “Well, just don’t do that.”
“I don’t think you quite understand the difficulty of holding back while in real combat.” Arachne did glance down towards Juliana this time. Just long enough to make sure that Juliana saw the sneer. “I suppose that wouldn’t be much of a problem in fighting you. I doubt it would be much of a fight.”
“You won’t know until you try.”
Again, Arachne stopped. “Do you honestly believe that you can fight me? Even with me tying all of my limbs behind my back, do you think you have a chance?”
Gritting her teeth, Juliana broke her gaze with Arachne.
“I didn’t think so. You aren’t your mother.”
“She was the one who suggested I come to you in the first place.
“I need training,” Juliana said when Arachne didn’t respond. “With all the monsters running around, I need to be a better fighter. Zagan’s combat course got canceled with him gone and the after-school dueling club is just fighting other students. My mother is in no position to train me so you’re the next best choice.”
Arachne stared for a moment, eventually shaking her head. The hard carapace covering the tendrils that had taken place of her hair snapped and crackled as they hit each other. “I’m your third choice to teach you to fight?” She let out a cold laugh. “Something has seriously gone wrong with the world.”
“What else is new?”
“But I’m the wrong choice. I know nothing of thaumaturgy. I don’t know how mages should fight with it. I don’t know how to teach. Find somebody else. Your professor knows how to fight, get her to do it.”
“Not an option.”
She had suggested Zoe to her mother. Her mother had shut that option down. Zoe was not a fighter. She could fight, but there was a difference. Being able to fight did not mean that they were a good person to learn from. Perhaps the basics. Her mother hadn’t had any complaints about the seminar that Zoe put on over the summer. She had even attended one or two of the sessions.
But Genoa wanted an opponent like Arachne. Someone similar to what Juliana might have to fight in real life. Preferably someone who wasn’t going to hold back much either.
That didn’t look like it was going to be an option, but Juliana would take what she could get.
“Help me. If you really need, we can ask Eva for permission.”
“That would be more acceptable. I don’t like going behind her back. Though I will warn you: we might not have much time for you.”
Juliana frowned, crossing her arms as she stared at the demon. Was Arachne really that busy? Apart from hanging off Eva like a lost puppy, Juliana couldn’t think of a single thing that Arachne had done that might take up any amount of time.
“We have a certain project we’re starting soon. We’re expecting it to consume a fair bit of time. Lots of work to do.”
“She hasn’t told me about anything like that.” Not unless Eva had decided to sign up for the school’s activities.
“You’ve never asked.”
— — —
“You told her?”
“I didn’t tell her what we were doing.”
Eva rubbed her forehead. “No, but now she’s going to be asking all the time until I tell her something. I guess we can save that for later. Everything ready?”
“Are we really sure about leaving right now? The demon hunters–”
“Are still watching the town,” Eva said. She gave a quick glance towards Srey for confirmation.
His arms were crossed and his eyes narrowed, but as soon as Eva looked at him, he sat up and spoke somewhat respectfully. “Nobody has been watching us with any kind of hostility since we got to this place. For the record, everything about this plan is bad and you all should feel bad for dragging me into it.”
“Noted. Don’t care.”
Eva hadn’t wanted to bring Srey into the loop. The less people who knew about the ritual, the less failure points it had. However, without having a method to block out the demon hunters’ spying, Srey was one of the most valuable tools around.
Unfortunately, he could only detect scrying. And only scryings with less than noble intent in the mind of the scryer towards the subject. That meant that Eva was going to run into the same problem that Sawyer had when she had been stalking him. The only difference was that she knew that she was being watched.
But for the time being, they had land to survey. The ritual wasn’t quite as large as Sawyer’s field. Close, but not quite. They needed a relatively flat area free of most trees, shrubberies, and other foliage.