The majority of it was the same as last year, so Eva felt little need to pay attention.
Instead, Eva cast her sight around in full, inspecting everyone she could. Irene was correct. Including Irene and Max, almost the entire second year class had shown up along with more older students than the previous spring.
Not many first year students. Only two, though Eva couldn’t be entirely sure; some freshmen might be big enough to pass as third years.
The two freshmen bothered Eva. There was something off about both of them. The male barely had a heartbeat. It beat at about the same rate a regular person’s heart ticked at during sleep. Apart from that, he wasn’t that strange.
The female, Eva didn’t know what to make of her. Her heart worked fine, but the veins were all messed up. Every so often there would be a jagged point. It was like looking at her circulatory system through a broken mirror. Some parts of it seemed disconnected entirely. There were blood pockets that didn’t seem to move at all.
All that was in addition to her missing several organs.
Eva nudged Juliana and leaned in to whisper. “Don’t look too long or too obviously, but you see that girl over there?” Eva asked with a hopefully discrete point of her finger.
Juliana leaned around Eva’s shoulder. It didn’t take long to figure out who Eva was talking about despite the crowd if her elevated heart rate was any indication.
“Describe her for me.”
“Curly blond hair, short. One green eye and one brown eye. Stitches all over her face, down her arms, and around almost every joint on her fingers.” Juliana gave a small shudder. “She looks like she lost a recent fight with a lawnmower.”
Eva nodded her thanks.
“Something wrong with her?”
“Apart from everything you just said? Her insides look like they’ve been through a blender.”
More than a few people were staring at her. With Juliana’s description, it wasn’t hard to see why.
“Should we be keeping an eye on her?”
Eva shrugged. “I don’t see why we should. So long as she doesn’t bother me, I don’t particularly care about her.”
“That seems cruel,” Juliana said with a frown.
“Cruel would be making fun of her or otherwise bullying her. I don’t care about a lot of people in this room, because she has a few stitches and scars doesn’t make her special. I was merely curious about her appearance.”
A lie, but not an overly big one. The jagged veins and arteries didn’t disturb Eva so much as her missing organs. She had a stomach but no liver or kidneys. Her intestines were far shorter than normal, only a few feet. There were no reproductive organs at all. Or, at least, they weren’t receiving blood.
She did have three things inside her abdomen that Eva couldn’t identify.
A demon, perhaps. Not one she’d ever heard of, but that wasn’t saying much.
Zagan and Arachne had odd internal biology as well, Zagan having four stomachs among other things. Arachne’s tube for a heart and general weirdness due to a lack of an internal skeleton.
Of course, Eva’s own insides were off as well. Her lack of internal skeleton was confined to her hands and legs, but anyone who observed the world in the same manner that she did would be thrown for a loop.
Except Arachne wasn’t freaking out. The spider-demon stayed latched to Eva’s chest in a calm manner. Maybe she simply did not view the girl as a threat.
They’d need to have a talk later.
Or…
Eva focused on Zagan.
Uninterested. Eva couldn’t see anything else in his posture. His eyes focused off on some point above the student’s heads. With his arms crossed, he leaned back against a wall.
A wall that certainly wasn’t in the middle of the room.
Some invisible thing? Blood flecks passed through the area without resistance.
Eva wondered if anyone else noticed. His clothes might obscure the lean, but from her perspective, it was pretty obvious.
Still, he didn’t so much as glance in the direction of the blender girl.
Zoe Baxter, on the other hand, alternated between glancing at the girl, glancing over the students, and glaring at Zagan from behind his back. Surprisingly, Zoe hadn’t spoken to Eva about Zagan.
“Upper years will be instructed and monitored by Professor Zagan, middle years by myself, and lower years by Professor Baxter,” Franklin Kines said at the end of his speech. “Gear up and pair off.”
Eva sighed as she followed Juliana and Shalise over to the racks. She pulled on a knee-length vest and a helmet. Her own gloves were better than the ones offered. Even if they weren’t, it wasn’t like anyone she’d be up against could actually harm her hands.
“Well,” Eva said, “shall we get to it then, Shalise?”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Professor Baxter to give us instructions?”
Eva shrugged. “I was only half paying attention, but I think we’re meant to work on shields and basic projectiles. If Zoe has a problem with it, she’ll stop us and let us know.”
Shalise gave a hesitant nod before they moved to one of the unoccupied dueling rings.
“I’ll attack first then?”
“Got something that will hit me this time?” Eva asked with a grin.
