After nodding, both sprinted out the jailhouse door. Eva watched them scale the side of a building and run along the roof in opposite directions of one another.
“And me, ma’am?”
Eva turned to the sole remaining vampire-cat with a smile. “You and I are going to train up this sorry lot,” Eva said with a wave of her hand towards the goblins. “As much as we can in our limited time, anyway. And we’re going to find out what, if anything, the bear-things can do.”
— — —
Arachne tapped her fingers on the edge of her throne. This was something she could get used to.
Well, she could if it were bigger. The tiny room was cramped beyond reason. Half of her wanted to shrink down into her spider form just to get some arm room.
It would be nice if everything were real, too.
It obviously was not.
If she looked close at the members of her swarm, she could see literal strings attached.
Everything here was a combination of Willie’s natural demonic abilities and his interpretation of reality through his domain. It was a pretty good usage of his domain. Arachne doubted she could come up with anything close to realistic.
It took her a good thousand years to get her domain into the rocky crag that she had it at now. It was far easier to turn it into something she had visited
Two red blips vanished from her map. They had been inside the tavern if she was reading the infernal map correctly. Those two blips were supposed to have been scouting, not fighting.
Arachne sighed, wishing that any of her soldiers were at least capable of speech.
Dragging a pointed finger across the map, Arachne directed another soldier to investigate. It would take a few minutes for it to arrive, but the other two had likely died to Eva. Genoa’s entire force of four mages plus the mage-knight herself was already under observation by a few of her eyeball soldiers.
Still, there was always the chance those two had died to something else. Arachne couldn’t shake the feeling that there was another element at play. Something that wasn’t just the three of them.
Of course, that element would be the director of this little farce himself.
Arachne sighed as the observation unit failed to update her map. That meant that there was nothing in the tavern or that the theater-demon simply did not want himself to appear on her map.
Again, her fingers tapped against the side of the throne she had been unceremoniously deposited upon.
Directing a battle was actually somewhat fun. Not as fun as being in the thick of it herself, but fun in a different sort of way. The things similar to human computer monitors gave her a crystal clear view of anything her observational units could see.
But it was missing something. The smells. The sounds. The feel of blood splattering over her carapace. None of it existed within the small command center.
It wasn’t like she was tied to her chair. She
That didn’t change the fact that she was stuck where she was. The map wasn’t the fold up piece of paper type of map. It was a part of the room. A whole table with models of the town and glowing representations of all of her forces. Any time one of her three observational eyeballs passed over an area or her regular soldiers sat around long enough to relay a message, the map would be updated.
Without her at the monitors and maps, her troops sat around doing nothing. Verbally directing them did nothing. Pointing and other gestures did nothing.
Only the map worked.
She had considered leaving it anyway, running out and fighting on her own was more her style. But, frankly, Genoa’s soldiers were almost on par with the woman herself and she had already been told in no uncertain terms that allying with Eva would lead to both of their demises.
Confident though she was, Arachne wasn’t certain she could fight off all of Genoa’s soldiers and the woman herself at the same time. Sure, she might be able to kill Genoa, but she didn’t like the idea that she could die in the process.
Death did not frighten Arachne. More unnerving was the thought of leaving Eva alone inside another demon’s domain.
Arachne sighed for the third time in as many minutes. They should not have left without a plan. She should have objected. Even delayed Genoa for a few minutes while they discussed a few things about demons and their domains.
And then she foolishly carried out Eva’s desire to sever the strings controlling Juliana. It had been almost reactionary. Her Eva called out orders and she moved.
Had she waited, Genoa would have been the one to notice and sever the strings. Given how Genoa was a part of their little war, it might not have changed anything at all, but at least the theater-demon’s ire would have been directed at someone else.
