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Faster before, but now the water was slowing? The ward is running out of magic. Or maybe not the ward but whatever is filling it with magic, Eva thought, slowly circling around the bubble.

She kept a careful eye out for any shackles as she moved.

Packing both the invisible wall and the water conjuring into the same ward wasn’t impossible. Difficult maybe. Especially for someone who had only been in the class as long as Eva. But probably difficult for others as well.

With the staggering amount of wards and shackles around the place, Eva couldn’t imagine that they would have gone with the more complicated and more time-consuming route of wrapping both effects up into a single spell. They would have built everything within the last hour or so, or people might have noticed. Two people did all that. Maybe a few more if they had recruited the hunters who were attacking Nel and Ylva.

They had to have made mistakes in their castings. Eva doubted that the water conjuration was supposed to have given time to escape.

“Maybe it will run out of magic soon,” Eva said, mostly to herself.

Apparently Juliana heard. “I’d rather not take that chance.”

“Right.”

Eva considered going back up the stairs and finding a decently sized bit of rebar and having Juliana smack it against the top of the shell for a while. But if the shell and the water were separate as Eva suspected, the shell could last for a very long time before running out of magic enough to release Juliana.

She would have to try deconstructing the ward.

It was simple in theory. Being able to tear down their own thaumaturgical wards was one of the first things taught. Otherwise the teacher would have to go around and dispel everybody’s practice wards every single time they went into class.

Professor Lepus had warned them never to tear down other people’s wards. It was possible to build traps into the things that activated upon attempts to break them. From simple things such as alarms to full on explosions.

But in the hunters’ haste to erect these defenses, would they have put more time and effort into trapping them?

Eva reached out again, keeping her hand hovering just above the bubble. She channeled her magic through her fingers as if she were conjuring a fireball. Instead of flames, she forced the magic into the shell.

All while focusing on the level of the water.

The water did not significantly rise from her added magic.

“Excellent.” She could toy around for a moment without accidentally drowning Juliana.

Forcing her magic into the bubble again, Eva waited just a moment before yanking it back. Much like removing excess hair with a strip of hot wax paper. Or so went the example Professor Lepus had used; Eva had never had a bikini wax in her life. They sounded painful.

Also, since about a half an hour ago, entirely unnecessary given her lack of hair.

Eva held her breath, waiting and watching.

No explosions. She was taking that as a good sign.

Trying again and a third time, Eva smiled.

A leak had formed in the shell.

“I see the water going out,” Juliana said slowly, “but it’s up to my shoulders now.” Her voice had just a tinge of panic in it. “And still rising. I can make my pedestal bigger, but not by much.”

Eva grit her teeth. Is it trapped then? Or worse, is it intended to cause slow and painful drowning? These hunters were terrible, if so. Still terrible anyway, but worse. Absolutely sadistic.

“Just hold on a minute,” Eva said, pouring more and more magic into the shell.

She tore it all away, peeling it back. More cracks were forming. More water escaping.

“My chin, Eva.”

As she had said she could do, Juliana’s pillar stretched, growing slightly narrower at the top. The water level moved from her chin back to her shoulders as her head bumped into the top of the ward.

“Working as fast as I can,” Eva said, continuing to rip apart the shell.

“Eva…”

“When this thing shatters, try not to get washed into another ward.”

“Gee, okay. That’s first on my priority list at the moment!”

The water had risen back to her chin despite the additional cracks in the shell.

“If you get washed into another one, I’ll have to do this all over again. And maybe it will be fire instead of water.”

Juliana grimaced without speaking. She had to tilt her head back to try to keep her mouth above the water line.

As she continued ripping apart the ward, Eva considered something. It might not have been designed to speed up because she was ripping apart the barrier. The fact of the matter was that the shell was in the shape of a sphere. Beyond the half-way point, for every inch the water level rose, less water would need to exist to fill the next inch.

That didn’t really help much, but at least she knew that she wasn’t fueling some trap.

Feeding in enough of her magic to detonate several of her most explosive fireballs, Eva tore it away in a single jerk of her hands.

It started around the middle. Water exploded outwards in a ring. The rest of the water held its shape for just a moment. All at once, that sphere failed. The ring traveled upwards and downwards, letting the water collapse in on itself as it rushed to fill the rest of the first floor.

It was enough water to almost knock Eva off her feet.

Juliana, being in the water, did exactly as Eva had asked her not to and started to head towards where she knew another ward was waiting.

Eva snapped a hand out, grabbing Juliana’s arm. Her other hand wrapped around Juliana’s waist.

As soon as her arms were around Juliana, Eva stopped fighting the water and let it sweep her backwards. The stairs were already clear of traps. She could fall towards them all she wanted.

Juliana coughed a few times, sputtering out a bit of water.

She didn’t speak.

Neither of them did. They just sat, soaked to the bone. Eva had her arms wrapped around Juliana while the other girl coughed every once in a while.

As the water settled—save for a weak fountain floating in the middle of the air where the bubble had been—Eva gently shoved Juliana off.

“Let’s not do that again, shall we?”

Chapter 027

Epilogue

Eva stood in the middle of a small clearing. Not the one a short distance from her prison. This clearing was out in the Infinite Courtyard in the center of Brakket Academy’s main building. This would hopefully prove to be a much safer alternative.

Or at least, more difficult to reach for the hunters.

One, perhaps the more troublesome one, was dead.

If Eva didn’t miss her mark, the other might return with something of a grudge. Assuming she didn’t starve to death because she couldn’t feed herself with her paralyzed body. As much as Eva wanted that to be the case, she wasn’t going to get her hopes up too much.

But with the death of one hunter and the idol destroyed at Nel’s hands, Eva was feeling safe enough to attempt clearing out an area for the ritual again. There might be other nasty surprises waiting, but it needed to be done sooner rather than later. It needed demons to work.

Between hunters running around and the doll—who Eva hadn’t seen since she ran off after the battle—the ritual needed to be done before they all wound up dead. If they ran out of demons, there would be nothing to do but wait for Life to bring Void over on its terms.

Something Eva had accepted would likely be far more destructive than doing it their way.

But those were all concerns that only might come to be a problem. At the moment, not having a ritual circle—or even a place to start the ritual—was a far greater problem.

Eva glanced over towards Srey. The demon was relaxing on a toppled log, using it as a chair as he thumbed through the pages of a book.