Attempting to use her blood to explode the chalky circle was the same. Her blood couldn’t pass through the barrier any further than Eva could. Like her flames, they didn’t damage the ground outside the circle.
Which made a disturbing amount of sense. If a demon could just use their magic or abilities to break the circle while stuck inside it, nobody would bother with shackles. They would be worthless for any demon more magically inclined than Arachne.
There was one thing she hadn’t tried yet.
Her blood hand spell didn’t need to physically pass through a location. They appeared around the targeted area. If she could make a hand appear outside the barrier, she could rake it across the ground and disrupt the circle. Even breaking a single line should be enough to get her out of the trap.
Failing that, maybe it would at least stop the draining effect.
She was exhausted. Not thinking properly. There were probably ten thousand reasons why she shouldn’t try it—it had to backfire somehow—but she was running out of options and time.
The thing that made her most nervous was the hunter. She was still just sitting a few rooftops away. Her eyes were glued to Eva, but otherwise doing nothing.
Eva kept expecting a crackling in the sky overhead. She had a shield all prepared and ready if such a thing did happen. Her shield couldn’t go outside the barrier, but it worked just fine inside it.
But nothing had happened. Maybe the hunter couldn’t use it so soon after firing it off. How long had it even been since then? Five minutes? It couldn’t have been much more, but Eva had been unconscious for a portion of the time immediately after the initial sky cracking.
Or, more likely, the hunter didn’t want to ruin her own trap so long as Eva was stuck inside it.
It was wearing her down. Even if it didn’t kill her, it wouldn’t be hard to walk over and slice off her head if Eva did lie down and take a nap.
So she had to get out.
Drawing her dagger, Eva made a small slit in her upper arm. If her own blood wasn’t enough, she could use Arachne’s blood later. No sense wasting Arachne’s if this experiment failed.
She drew out a strand of blood, formed it into a ball, and took a deep breath as she plunged her hand in.
Eva had been aiming just outside the barrier.
Instead of her claw appearing outside, Eva found herself thrown back and pinned against the opposite wall of the shackles. Her hand was pulled from the ball of blood, killing the spell near instantly. Eva fell to the ground, collapsed in a pile of worthless blood.
Not a drop of blood made it outside the barrier. It had successfully contained her spell.
She was well and truly stuck. Climbing to her feet, ankle-deep in magically worthless blood, she continued hitting against the barrier with her fist. There wasn’t much else she could do.
If she could get a message off to someone, maybe. She should have kept a hold of Juliana’s cellphone.
Eva jumped back from the shackles as something fell from the sky. It landed with a clatter in a heap just on the other side.
“You didn’t have to drop me,” Juliana shouted as she picked herself up.
Blinking twice, Eva let out a small sigh of relief. It wasn’t an enemy. At the moment, Juliana was even better than someone like Arachne or Ylva showing up.
Juliana was a human. She could waltz in and out of the shackles as if they weren’t there.
Again, Eva sighed. The relief brought with it exhaustion. A sudden lack of adrenaline through her system had the barrier’s draining effect feeling ten times as strong.
“Juliana. I need you to destroy this circle as soon as possible.”
Juliana’s eyes went wide as her head whipped over to face Eva. It wasn’t hard to imagine why. Eva was covered in blood and, currently, sitting in an ankle-deep pool of the stuff.
Normally, such a thing wouldn’t be that big a deal for Eva. Good, in fact. Unfortunately, none of it was controllable. It was all magically created blood. She wasn’t sure what was up with the bleeding walls. That blood seemed usable, or at least, Eva couldn’t remember even running low on blood during the previous fight with the hunter. She hadn’t been thinking perfectly straight, but the blood had just been flowing. She couldn’t even remember cutting herself after the walls had started bleeding.
The only real downside was that Eva couldn’t trigger it. It was obvious to see that the walls started bleeding during emotional distress. Obviously, being trapped in a set of shackles and nearly dying was not quite as distressing as Eva thought it should be. Or the shackles were preventing the effect from manifesting.
Either way, she would soon be out of her predicament.
While her hazy mind was going over useless thoughts, Juliana actually got to work.
She recovered from her brief shock at seeing Eva’s state and got to work. With the rooftop covered in a layer of gravel and the shackles drawn out on top in a layer of paint, an earth mage was its greatest enemy. Stretching out her hand, Juliana churned the gravel.
Eva felt herself drop an inch, landing atop the gravel as the blood escaped its confinement and spread over the roof.
Along with the barrier, the draining exhaustion immediately receded. She didn’t feel reinvigorated, but it was like shrugging off a weight from her shoulders. Breathing was easier and, after standing up, Eva didn’t feel a need to go take a nap.
An improvement no matter how one figured it.
“Thanks,” Eva said just as Saija landed on the roof.
Unlike Juliana, Saija landed on her feet. She touched down on the tips of her toes and stepped forward twice, almost like a dancer just landing out of a particularly tricky jump. The smile on her face wasn’t one of pride or joy. It was the nasty grin of someone who realized their rival just stumbled down the stairwell.
“Big bad Eva getting stuck in such an obvious trap? Here I was thinking you were something special. And after that big speech about fighting too.”
Eva didn’t bother responding. She twisted to one side, feeling the cold of an icicle brush past her skin. It landed in the rooftop with a thunk. Had she not moved, she would have an arm-sized hole in her chest.
The thunk was quickly followed by a metallic clang and a wet squelch.
Both Juliana and Saija fell to the ground. The former had torn clothes and a slight dent in her armor with an icicle lying at her side. Juliana quickly got back on her feet, molding over the dent with fresh metal as she moved.
Saija didn’t get up.
“Ahhaha, what?” Saija said as she lay face down in the gravel. An icicle stuck out of her back. Black blood dripped around her side to join with the blood from Eva’s claws. “It hurts.”
“Watch out for flying icicles,” Eva said, ignoring Saija as she glared at the red-haired hunter. “Traps too. And keep an eye on the sky.”
There were only three buildings between Eva and the hunter. Three trap filled buildings. She could try blinking across. Even blinking out to points in the air to avoid the three buildings. However, she didn’t have a lot of time to think while in mid-air. She could just wind up in another trap.
With Saija down and now shouting about a pain in her back and how much the hunter would pay, Juliana would have limited mobility. Assuming Saija had been the one carrying Juliana in the first place.
“What about Saija?”
“Can’t help her while being bombarded. Since no portal opened, she’ll survive.”
Probably. Eva doubted that she would perish because of her injuries. However, the hunter could still drop a spike of ice right over her head. The best way to avoid that was simply to keep the hunter too busy to fight an already downed opponent.
“We need to move,” Eva said, grabbing Juliana by the arm and pulling her out of the way of another icicle. Once clear, Eva didn’t stop. She continued across the roof towards the next building.