The tentacle demon was struck simultaneously by lightning, fire, and about a hundred silver spikes. The fire and lightning blasted her into a wall while the spikes nailed her down. She struggled for a moment before hanging there, limply.
“I beat you on my own. And now you think to attack me while I’m surrounded by my master’s allies?”
Arachne casually walked up to the pinned demon. Her hand thrust through the demon’s face.
A purple void opened on the wall behind the tentacle demon and she was dragged in by a few dark tendrils.
Before the portal shut, Arachne called out. “Maybe next time you should consider who your betters are. Then again, I could always use a servant of my own.”
Arachne turned to face the rest of the group. Zoe flicked her dagger towards Devon, lifting him up in the air along with a small black book. The other two looked at each other with the man eventually giving a shrug.
“Demons,” he said as if that explained everything.
Genoa returned his shrug. “Any reason to stay?”
“Let’s get the nun back to my Eva,” Arachne said, absolutely bouncing on her heels.
Again, jolting Nel all over the place.
And Nel couldn’t bring herself to care.
They were finally headed home. To Lady Ylva.
And her glorious bath.
Domains
The surface of the liquid was so close. Juliana could see the light glinting off the surface.
She stretched high, pulling herself up through the murky liquid with a long sweep of her arm. Her metal was gone, left back at the prison. All that she kept was around her arms. The two bracers barely made up enough to form a dagger or two.
And Juliana was very seriously considering ditching that much.
Her movements were slow and sluggish. Like she was swimming in honey. The water she had entered at the prison hadn’t felt like this. It had been normal water.
Well, normal as far as Juliana could tell.
The fall from way up in the air had been bad enough. She hadn’t even been able to reorient herself to face what she was falling towards. It was the liquid. Had she known, she would have taken a deep breath instead of screaming her lungs out.
Screaming never helped anyone. Her mother always gave the best advice
Now she was struggling through the liquid with no air and the bracers were at least partly to blame for keeping her down.
The surface was within her grasp yet her fingers hadn’t broken through.
Her lungs burned. She had to force herself to keep her mouth shut and not breathe in any of the sticky liquid.
There were spots forming in her eyes.
Juliana thrashed in the muck until she felt the tips of her fingers touch air.
She was so close.
Her hand cupped and crashed into the honey, attempting to pull herself up.
The black spots in her vision grew larger and larger until her face broke the surface.
Juliana wasted no time in sucking in as much air as her lungs could hold. Some of the honey oozing down her face flew into her mouth with the intake.
And Juliana couldn’t bring herself to care.
She went still. The honey was thick enough that she didn’t need to tread it; it just held her up all on its own. Juliana didn’t move a muscle. The honey slowly seeped underneath her, pushing the rest of her body and legs up to the surface.
Juliana waited until her rapid breaths slowed down to a manageable level before even turning her head.
As the spots in her eyes disappeared, she realized that her eyes hadn’t been open at all; whatever she had seen of the liquid had been nothing more than oxygen-deprivation induced hallucination. They were almost glued shut by the honey.
Once she managed to pry them open, a thin film of the gunk spread over her eyes. It didn’t cause any pain, but she flinched back anyway. She had to blink several times before it cleared away enough to properly see.
There wasn’t much to look at.
The sky was pitch black save for a pale white orb.
Raising her fingers in the air, Juliana allowed some of the liquid to fall between her fingers.
It was black, as the water in the prison had been. But it didn’t move like water. It slipped between her fingers and around the sides of her hand, meeting back up at the back of her hand. From there, it stretched long and thin while some of the greater mass of liquid rose up to touch the drip.
Only when it connected did the stuff clinging to the back of her hand finally fall into the pool.
There was a thin film left coating her hand and arm.
Juliana shuddered. It couldn’t be a good idea to stay sitting in it.
Sweet. Maybe with a slight acidic tang to it. Honey hadn’t been a bad descriptor; it was rather like licking honey off of a nine-volt battery.
Not that she had ever tried that.
