“No? Well then, this thing here is flexible, see?” He bent the tip of the thing. “By pulling on a string at the end, it can hug whatever it is around. By pulling another string it goes snip-snip.” He demonstrated. The little flexible end snipped shut.
“Would you like to
Sawyer gripped her forehead with one hand and pulled her eyelid open. With one deft movement, he jammed the thing into her eye.
Eva tried to scream. She tried to step. She tried fireballs and blood. Nothing worked. Nothing helped.
“Snip.”
Eva’s eyeball jiggled in its socket as Sawyer slid the implement around.
“Snip.”
Her toes and fingers were nothing. Losing her leg was nothing.
“Snip and snip. Okay, now the big one. Big smiles for the last one.”
Eva tried to scream. She tried to cry.
The cutter shoved further back. She could feel it. It wrapped around the backside of her eyeball.
“Snip.”
Her left eye went dark.
“And,” Sawyer made a popping sound with his mouth as he forced her eyeball out of its resting spot.
He held it up. A red-hazel eye stared back at Eva.
Eva threw up. For the first time in nearly eight years, Eva threw up.
It flooded into her mouth. With nowhere to go, it spewed out her nose. Two nostrils were not enough for her stomach. It dribbled down her bare chest, pooling under her seat.
Her lungs burned. Her nose cleared. Eva greedily inhaled, some of her own stomach acid flew back in, burning her lungs from the inside. With great effort, she swallowed back the stuff in her mouth before she started coughing.
Coughing didn’t work so well with your mouth covered.
It just hurt more.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Sawyer said, having taken a step away from her. “There’s still one left though.”
He moved in while Eva was still reeling from the first one. He quickly snipped out the smaller cuts and then stepped back.
Eva couldn’t move her eye anymore. It hung loosely, affected more by gravity than any of her will.
“You know,” he said, “demon eyes will fetch quite the price. Regenerate them quickly enough and maybe we won’t kill you. We’ll just harvest your eyes until you pay us back.
“With interest, of course.” He lunged forward, jamming the tool into her eye.
Eva’s vision went dark.
“If you promise to work on growing back your eyes, I’ll leave you alone for now.”
Eva felt fingers touching her cheek. They pulled away. A moment later, footsteps walked away from her. A door opened and slammed shut.
It took all of her willpower to concentrate on stopping the blood. Her eye sockets were slowly filling up behind the useless flaps that were her eyelids.
Eva slowly got herself under control. It might have been an hour or ten hours, she couldn’t tell.
Eva couldn’t even slump. She just sat in her chair. Body fluids still dripped from her chin down her chest. The dried parts cracked and stuck to her, but they were far from the most unpleasant thing she was feeling.
Maybe if she had been caught a few years from now. Somewhere in the final stages of her treatment.
As it was, Sawyer would just come back and see no progress in healing. She’d get her stomach cut open and everything valuable taken out.
She tried casting fireballs. The heat just fizzled out the moment they left her finger nubs. She tried another midway up her arm, right next to a restraint. There wasn’t even any heat with that.
Stepping didn’t work. Her blood wasn’t working. She could still see it. It was the only thing she could see, though it wasn’t true sight.
There wasn’t much to see. It was mostly a small section of the floor splattered in front of her, the ends of her feet and hands–and her face. Maybe some of the tools as well; they were too far away to do anything with even if she could move.
Demonology wouldn’t help either. She had no summoning circles nearby to call out to. No runes anywhere to charge. She hadn’t read the necromancy books, but she doubted they would–
Or would demonology help. Arachne was always pestering her about moving through Hell to reach their other home.
Infernal walks were dangerous for mortals. Even if Eva went, she assumed Arachne would be there to help.
Hell couldn’t be any more dangerous than waiting for Sawyer to return.
Eva concentrated. She would have closed her eyes but…
Eva didn’t shake her head. She tried, but failed.
Focusing, Eva channeled her magic into herself. Not elemental magic, not chaos magic. She channeled it into herself the same way she channeled magic to summon demons. Arachne hadn’t been clear on exactly what to do–the demon had never done it herself–but Eva got the gist that it was almost the same as summoning.
Except backwards.
Eva vanished from the room.
— — —
Her Eva was missing.
The stupid human returned without any real answers. She flopped down on her bed and shrugged it off saying Eva was ‘probably fine.’
