It wasn’t as hot as she’d been lead to believe Hell should be, if that was truly where she was. It was the only place she could think of based on what she had been doing. Obviously the infernal walk failed. Unless she was supposed to walk somewhere here.
Eva didn’t know how to get back. She could try summoning herself or the same reverse summon she did to get here. For now, she’d look around.
Rather than try to stand, Eva tried to step. A small amount of relief filled her sick stomach when the step worked. She appeared kneeling next to the tree.
As happy as she was about her step working, Eva didn’t know what she expected. The island didn’t suddenly grow, no doors magically appeared, and the tree didn’t have any levers or buttons she could see. All she’d accomplished was moving a few feet to the center of the island.
Eva sighed and stepped back to an edge of the water. She still had dried vomit all down her front, butt, legs, and feet. The bloodied stumps of her toes, while not bleeding thanks to her healing efforts, had both blood and vomit caked on them.
She slowly inched herself into the water. She couldn’t see through the black, mirror-like surface. That made her nervous. Still, the water was without even a single ripple, other than her own.
Eva relaxed back with the water up to her neck. She rested her head on the beach and let the hot water soothe away her aches. Her eye sockets would need cleaning eventually. They had partially filled with blood, tears, and probably a little sand.
The idea of sticking fingers into her empty sockets sent shivers up her spine. Luckily she didn’t have any fingers. Eva didn’t count herself as the squeamish type, but there was something horrifying about her own empty eyes.
The emptiness was there. Almost as tangible as her eyes had been. She could feel the lack of anything pressing on the surrounding socket. Not to mention her eyelids. Without her eyes putting pressure on them, she kept trying to move them and they would just flap.
Eva shook her head. Not the line of thought she wanted to get into right now.
That was something she’d worry about later. Now, Eva just wanted to rest.
—
Channeling magic into herself didn’t work in any way, shape, or form.
Eva awoke after what felt like a very long nap. There was no way to tell exactly how long. The sky was as empty as it had been since she arrived. It felt like a good nap.
All her aches vanished. Eva half expected to have grown new fingers while she was out.
The water ran off her finger nubs as she lifted her arms out of the water. With a sigh, she put any thoughts of immediate recovery behind her. Devon was supposedly getting a whole new arm. How hard could a few fingers, toes, and eyes be.
She’d need to get off the island and back to reality if she wanted her master’s help in recovering lost limbs. Nothing she tried helped. Trying to get out the same way she got in did nothing.
Drawing a summoning circle and trying to summon anything did nothing. Standing in it and trying to leave by walking into it did nothing. Ylva did that both times she left reality. Eva wondered what would happen if her master tried to summon Eva into the real world. Did she need to set up some sort of gate on this side to get back?
Eva had no idea how demons really worked. They could get through to reality even without a summoner making a connection. That required a beacon like the one Eva suspected the black skull might be.
If she could use anything she left behind as a beacon, Eva didn’t know how.
That exhausted her total demonic knowledge. Something she really would like to brush up on one of these days. Her master could probably escape, so long as this truly was Hell.
It matched no description Eva had ever heard. It was hot, but not unbearably so. There were no other demons around. The only reason she still thought this was Hell was Arachne describing Hell as a void on a single occasion and that the Endless Void supposedly held dominion over the entire realm. Whatever that meant.
Devon would know. Eva would definitely ask to restart their demonology lessons.
For now, it left Eva in the terrible position of not knowing what to do. Her magic worked. Mostly. Darkness spells did absolutely nothing that Eva could see. An effect of her eyes being gone or the place, she didn’t know.
Her blink worked. Her fireballs worked. She could dig through the earth as Juliana taught her. Her light spell worked though it was just a dot in the sky, no actual illumination seemed to happen; her fireballs produced no light either.
She sent a ball of light across the glassy water until she couldn’t see the spot anymore. There was nothing but emptiness out there.
