She was only barely watching the hunter as they charged across the rooftop. Juliana had armor covering every inch of her body. She had wrapped it around her head with only a hole for her blond hair to trail out the back. Eva herself was fairly resilient. So long as she used her hands to shield herself from any oncoming icicles, she would be fine.
Of a much greater concern were the wards and shackles. None of them would be good to get stuck in.
Although, she didn’t have much to worry about. Juliana was being extremely proactive in keeping the roof churned. Shackles vanished before Eva even had to worry about standing in them.
The wards weren’t so easily removed. The roof wasn’t large. It shouldn’t take longer than about a minute to run from one end to the other. However, the maze of wards that Eva could sense had her backtracking half the time.
By the time they made it, Juliana had formed an arm’s worth of metal into a shield, holding it out in front of them as they ran.
“We’re jumping across,” Eva said, planting her feet just at the edge of the building.
Juliana screeched to a halt.
“Jumping?”
“Can you make it?”
“I…”
Eva didn’t wait for her hesitation. She scooped up Juliana much like how Arachne had carried her on occasion. The girl was heavy, especially on her upper arms, but she could hold her for the few seconds it took to cross the gap. It wasn’t even that long a gap. A few feet at most.
Arachne’s legs could carry the two of them that far, at least.
Eva took two steps back, giving them a short runway to springboard off the ledge.
Juliana made it. Being a foot forward in Eva’s arms, she sailed onto the next roof with ease. Eva would have made it as well had she not run into another barrier. She smacked into it, stopping straight away with a pain in her hands and face.
And started falling. A tiny bit of the ledge was barely within the barrier.
Eva stretched, grasping for it.
Her fingers scraped along the brick, leaving long gashes as she failed to slow down. Eva kicked a foot into the wall. Brick shattered under her carapace. She still fell a bit more as the bricks crumbled, but managed to slow herself enough to dig her hand into the wall as well.
Only the tips of her fingers made it in before she felt the barrier prevent her from going any further. So long as she wasn’t tipping backwards and falling on her head, she was fine with being stuck for the moment.
Glancing over her shoulder at the alley below, Eva snarled. Rows of shackles had been set up adjacent to one another. No matter where she would have jumped from, she would have wound up stuck. There weren’t any shackles out in the streets, but Eva could feel wards out there. Not as visually obvious as the shackles, but still potentially as problematic.
Worse, the wards would probably hurt Juliana as well. In that line of thinking, jumping over shackles had been the correct choice.
Of course, it would have been better to have checked before jumping. They could have avoided this whole mess.
“Eva?” Juliana called out from somewhere up above.
“Over the edge!”
A metal helmet peeked over the top of the building, accompanied by a metallic clang as an icicle glanced over the top of her head. It wasn’t a direct hit. Just enough to clip the helmet.
But it had enough force to send her forehead straight into the ledge, eliciting another clang.
“I am sick of these icicles,” Juliana said, lifting her head and rubbing her forehead. The rubbing probably didn’t do much given her helmet.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Eva said. “It isn’t practical to throw car-sized ice boulders at us from this distance.”
A crumbling of a brick forced Eva to dig her other hand into the wall for stability. She couldn’t dig it in too far. The barrier of the shackle extended only a few inches into the brick wall, not giving her much room to dig her claws in. She wasn’t sure if the barrier extended beyond the exact lines of the drawing or if the building was leaning or otherwise built poorly.
Given that this was Brakket, probably the latter.
Either way, she was thankful for it. While she wouldn’t die from the fall—she had jumped from the top of the dormitory building before—it would still be unpleasant and all the more distance to go to get back up to the roof.
“Worry about the icicles and boulders later. Mind destroying the shackles down there?”
She stretched out her hand.
But the shackles stayed where they were.
“It’s asphalt.”
“I really wouldn’t care if it was reinforced concrete. It needs to go.” Preferably before any sort of secondary effect started up. Eva did not need magical sleep trying to take her while hanging off the side of a building. “If you have to make a sinkhole that swallows up both buildings beneath them, do it.”
Eva paused as a thought occurred to her. “Actually, could you swallow up the building the hunter is on in a giant sinkhole? She isn’t very mobile, so she would probably get caught in it.”
“I’m not my mother, Eva…” Juliana’s voice came slightly strained. And slightly annoyed. As if she were carrying a couch all by herself while Eva just sat to the side and watched.
“Thought I’d ask anyway,” Eva said.
A cracking below her pulled Eva’s attention back to the ground. The center of her shackle was sagging downwards, unable to support itself fully as Juliana moved the earth beneath. Another moment—and several clangs of ice off Juliana’s armor—and a part of the center fell inwards.
Eva immediately kicked her foot back and dug it deep into the brick wall. She repeated the action with her hands and other foot, giving her a much better hold of the wall.
“Thanks,” Eva said.
Juliana let out a few short pants. “Just don’t ask me to do that again,” she said between breaths. “I’m really not so great at manipulating earth I can’t see.”
Eva had really only touched earth magic. Nothing more than dipping her fingers into it. And what she had tried had been inside a classroom. Not enough to really get a grasp on the limitations of the element.
So she just nodded.
Rather than try to climb up the wall, digging holes into it as she went, Eva blinked upwards. Just above the level of the roof. Without hesitation, she blinked straight forwards.
And landed on her feet just a step away from Juliana.
Thankfully, not in another set of shackles. Twice in one day was beyond enough. A third time would just be embarrassing.
She did have to dodge one icicle, bat a second out of the air, and catch a third mere seconds after landing. The third icicle exploded into shards of ice as Eva crushed it in her fist.
Glaring at the hunter a mere two roofs away, Eva dared her to sling a fourth icicle over.
She wished that she had a valid means of striking back. The hunter would just freeze over any blood that came close. Even fireballs had been woefully unhelpful during their previous engagement. Ice could work as a shield just as well as a projectile.
Really, Eva was putting far too many eggs in the basket that kept the hunter from moving. Injured though she appeared to be, it could all be a feint. She could throw off the blanket that covered her chair to unveil forty shotguns aimed right at Eva. As soon as they fired, she might blink straight behind Eva and slice off her head.
At least, that was one of the worse case scenarios that Eva could come up with.
It really didn’t fit with what little she knew of the hunter’s personality, however. The hunter seemed more like Arachne. The kind of person to charge her foes head-on with as much force as she could put behind her attacks. This mostly ineffectual long-range bombarding wasn’t doing much of anything except for annoying the two of them.
Though, if they let their guards down, they could easily wind up like Saija.