High explosive fireballs. And what more did a good fireball need anyway? Absolutely nothing, that’s what.
The compressed balls of fire could do a better job of actually catching her enemies on fire. As it was, when she released her hold over the magic, it rapidly expanded to the point where the flames were less flames and more of intense heat.
The heat in her hands was intense. Her arms and chest could use a decent sized jar of burn ointment after all this. A proper thaumaturge should be able to direct all the heat away from their body, but Eva was just happy to have made it far enough to have useful fireballs.
She had ended up shielding herself from most of the direct heat by keeping the flames enclosed within one of her hands. The carapace making up her skin was more or less immune to the extreme heat. Actually holding the balls was a strange feeling. Almost like a solid ball so long as she kept her concentration up.
Losing her concentration and having it explode in her face would be unpleasant to say the least.
As such, Eva got rid of them as soon as she could.
Gripping the ball of fire in her hand, she wound up and tossed it out over the crowd. With only a few nudges in this direction or that, the plasma ball sailed true. One of the worms taking aim at Genoa swallowed the ball whole.
She had plenty of practice with aiming and had become quite good at it, in her opinion. It helped that the acid-spitting worms had wide mouths that were almost constantly open.
Acid and viscera rained down on all the nearby bugs. So long as Arachne kept everything grouped up, Eva got massive returns on effort spent. None of the smaller dog-type bugs had any protection to the acid, ending up with her killing a whole lot with a single strike.
As soon as Genoa decapitated the last of the smaller bugs around her, she paused her deadly dance to give a slight wave up in Eva’s direction.
Every time Eva assisted her in some manner, Genoa would do that. A nod or a wave. One of the earlier times, she actually blinked straight back up to give a verbal thanks.
Eva just frowned. It was an unnecessary distraction in the middle of combat. Not one Eva could understand. What did Genoa hope to accomplish? Eva wasn’t going to stop assisting her partner because of a lack of immediate positive reinforcement.
Unless, perhaps, she was worried that Eva would drop the plasma ball on her one of these times. It would be a quick way out of the theater-demon’s domain–assuming he could be trusted to keep his word–but of all the monstrous things people could do to one another, betrayal ranked up at number one.
So insistent.
Eva shook her head. What an annoyance. Couldn’t it take a hint?
You’re destined for far greater things than a puppet of the puppet-master.
“There is no such thing as destiny,” Eva muttered.
Shaking her head again, Eva performed a quick scan of the area around Genoa.
No acid-spitter worms in sight. Good.
That only left the problem of where Arachne actually was. As she had told Genoa, Eva firmly believed that Arachne was hidden away someplace where she was unlikely to be discovered.
As such, she could rule out the city hall building. Not only was it the biggest and most obvious place, but Arachne had shown clear disregard for the building’s structural integrity. Assuming Arachne was actually in command of the insect army, of course.
With the bank and the jail having been eliminated as possible hiding places, that left the train station.
Are you so sure of that?
“No,” Eva mumbled more to herself than to the voice in her head.
While the train yard was on the outside edge of the town, it was still a brick building with a high roof. In other words, a decent place to take refuge. It would have been too possible for herself or Genoa to take it over, thereby discovering Arachne.
The rest of the town was nothing more than a pile of broken wood and nails.
Frowning, Eva tapped her claws against the hard carapace on her leg.
That wasn’t entirely true. There was one other structure still standing.
Turning back to the field of battle, Eva was pleased to find Genoa standing atop the corpse of her target. A large slab of earth had risen out of the ground and crushed most of the beetle. With a quick lunge with her sword, Genoa sent the blade through the thing’s compound eye.
A moment later, Genoa blinked straight up to Eva’s side.
“Any progress?”
“Possibly. I’m not going to point or look as I’d rather not tip her off, but would you mind knocking down the water tower?”
Genoa considered for just a moment. She started out facing the same direction as Eva. Raising her sword, Genoa created large sinkholes, eating up more of the bugs. Slowly, she started rotating. The clock tower atop the city hall wasn’t very wide, so she did not have to move much to continue her stream of sinkholes.
