“No.” The oversight made Eva sweat buckets when she first thought about it. “If someone heard one of our discussions in the shower…”
“They’d just think you were with Juliana or Shalise, right?”
“I can’t say that you sound like either of them,” Eva said. “Not to mention the things we talked about were definitely dangerous.”
“So you’re going to fix that?”
“At least for our room, I will.”
Eva set to work. She started with a blank piece of paper. It was easiest to start from scratch and then tie the sound runes into her already existing anti-scrying runes rather than try to get everything working at once.
Waves in the air cause sound. It seemed a good place to start.
Isaz tied to aesh to freeze the air. She tied them together and set up a boundary similar to the scrying runes. A uath and naudiz would be tied in later to cause fear and distress in anyone attempting to listen. For now, they were just to the side, unconnected. With the simple array in place, Eva charged the runes.
Nothing happened.
Eva looked up to ask Arachne if she had any way of testing.
She tired to speak, but no words came out.
A small feeling of panic settled in.
Eva took a big gasp of air. Relief replaced panic as air flowed into her lungs. She wasn’t sure if Arachne needed to breathe or not, or how often, but Eva still needed air. Adding pargon power runes might have solidified the air. If she had frozen the air so solidly she couldn’t even move, she would probably still be able to overload the regular ink, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.
Glad nothing went seriously wrong, Eva tore the paper in two, ending the effect.
The mistake was an obvious one, one she’d learned when she first made her anti-scrying runes. She forgot the praecantatio rune attached to the isaz rune.
Her first runic sheet blinded herself and Juliana, scaring the poor girl for a minute.
Praecantatio changed whatever it was attached to into magic, in this case, freezing magic that interacts with the air. Hopefully most forms of magical listening would pick something up from the air.
Eva quickly redrew the paper, changes in place, and activated it.
“Arachne,” Eva said, “know any means of scrying with sound?”
The spider-woman shrugged and nestled back into Eva’s bed.
Eva didn’t expect any other response. In all her years knowing the demon, Eva never once saw her casting any magic. Her blood was magical, very magical if Eva’s blood magic was any indicator, so she could in theory. Arachne was probably just too lazy to learn.
“I’ll be heading to the library for a few minutes then,” Eva said.
The runes were a good start. They felt promising, at least. It wouldn’t do to leave them untested. They almost assuredly needed testing. Hopefully, she would find a book on the subject.
Arachne perked up.
Eva was quick to crush her hopes. “I’ll only be gone for a minute. Stay here. We don’t want to run into any nuns out in the halls.”
Arachne fell face first onto the bed. She grumbled something into the pillow. Eva had a decent guess as to what she said.
Eva moved up next to her, patting her on her back. “Don’t be like that. They’re to our advantage right now. Plus there are at least thirty of them, probably more.”
Another set of grumblings rumbled out of the pillow. It sounded suspiciously like, ‘eh, I could take them.’
Eva ran her fingers through the semi-stiff hair tendrils running off onto the bed. “One other thing. Juliana is out shopping with Irene. When she comes back, Irene might help carry things into the room. It is safer for you to be a spider when that happens.” At further rumbles in the pillow, Eva added, “they won’t be back until curfew, I bet. Just keep an ear out. If you hear anything, change into a spider quickly.”
She gave a quick pat on Arachne’s head and headed down to the library.
The musty scent of the Rickenbacker library filled the air as usual. It seemed to have gotten worse after snowing. Students tracking in snow made the books moist.
If Eva were in charge of the library, there would be several runes set up around the entrances to keep dampness at bay. She’d done that at the prison and her Florida home.
David Sunji wasn’t Eva. He sat at his usual spot behind the counter and gave Eva a polite nod. He made no effort to make sure her shoes were clear of snow and water.
They were clear, of course. She cranked up the temperature in her shoes at the prison the night before to help dry any wayward snow.
Her next task at the prison was to inscribe some more permanent runes along every path in the prison. Something to keep the winter away while walking around.
Sadly, winter proofing the prison was not an immediate concern. Necromancers were. Ensuring privacy in dorms came pretty close to necromancers.
Eva made her way to the section she found the scrying book at. There had to be something around that she could use.
It didn’t take long before she found a book that looked promising.
