“Don’t dawdle,” Wayne grunted. “There aren’t many here, but if they call for backup, escaping will be problematic.”
Zoe had no intention of slowing down. Neither did the snake. It crashed its bulk into the closed stairwell door, turning it to wood pulp as it started its scramble up the stairs.
The second floor wouldn’t be so bad. While there were plenty of augur rooms to set up ambushes in, Eva should be able to spot anyone inside with her blood sight. Wayne would be able to seal the doors by melting the handles. Zoe could toss up a few barriers of solid air around the doors for good measure. It wouldn’t stop anyone permanently, but it would delay them.
And delaying them was all they really needed. Once they arrived at the top floor, they should be home free according to Wayne.
At the staircase’s landing, the stairs looped back. The basilisk turned with the stairs, offering Zoe her first good look at the front of it.
She did not like what she saw.
What she had originally thought to be only marginal damage–judged by the lack of debris coming off the basilisk when it got hit–looked far worse now that she got a better view.
The scales that had been hit looked like a slab of meat being pulled apart. Each spot was roughly the size of her head. Not what she would have expected from a stone carving.
Both spots that had been hit looked like they were trying to repair themselves. As Zoe watched, one thin strand of meat latched on to the opposite side of the wound and started growing. It didn’t make it very far before disintegrating into dust.
The anti-magic qualities of the Elysium Order’s lightning at work, no doubt.
Whatever Eva had done to the snake was too far out of Zoe’s expectations to accurately predict anything.
Just before exiting the door–or making a new exit as the case may be–the basilisk was overcome by the same unnatural stillness that it had when Eva stopped it earlier.
“Four hiding in the room immediately on our right. Another three in the room after that. They’ll probably wait for us to pass before pinching us against whatever lies at the end of the hallway.”
“Wayne and I will take care of that.”
“You concentrate on keeping your monstrosities from murdering us,” Wayne added with a disgruntled grunt.
Eva didn’t rise to his comment. She might not have had the energy to. There were small beads of sweat forming on her forehead.
Zoe almost asked why she hadn’t just handed the obelisk off to Arachne when the answer became obvious. Arachne was a front line fighter. If and when the basilisk fell, Arachne would need to rush in to take its place. Doing so with an obviously weighty obelisk wouldn’t be easy. Probably. That would have been Zoe’s plan, anyway.
With a short nod towards Wayne, Eva released her hold over her basilisk.
It didn’t hesitate to charge straight through the door, taking part of the wall with it.
Lightning rained down the hallway. The majority of it sunk into the semi-organic scales of the sculpture. A few bolts did get past, but they were ones that had been angled upwards. Though she kept low anyway, Zoe doubted she needed to duck to avoid anything. The snake’s bulk was simply that massive.
Purposeful or not, the few bolts that missed the snake did impact the ceiling. Most only left scorch marks.
Zoe and Wayne had to pause their blocking of the side rooms to erect quick thaumaturgical shields around themselves. Almost as an afterthought, Zoe tossed a quick shield around Serena as well.
The vampire was visibly looking better than she had only a minute ago, but it didn’t look like she was quite ready to walk just yet.
After shielding Serena, Zoe thought to put up a shield around Eva as well. Her spell stopped mid-cast.
Arachne, ducking low at Eva’s side just behind the basilisk, plucked a stray brick right out of the air without so much as glancing in its direction. It would have struck Eva in the shoulder otherwise.
Pulling herself up to her full height, Arachne reared back and pitched the brick like it was a baseball.
It zipped through the air before coming to a stop with a meaty thud. Zoe’s enhanced ears picked up a masculine groan.
The lightning stopped a moment later–
Shards of carapace exploded off her front and back.
Wayne was on point in incinerating every piece that detached from the demon. They didn’t have time to land before an orb of intense heat enveloped each individual shard. Several of them were flying towards the two of them, but they wouldn’t be anything a shield couldn’t handle. It was more likely that he was incinerating them to keep them out of the hands of the Elysium Order’s augurs.
