But no one was around at the moment, so screw them.
It probably would have been even more cathartic had she a certain necromancer or a few nuns to tear apart with her bare hands, but she would have to make do without for the moment.
A real smile grew across Eva’s lips. The first she had felt in several days.
Nel had found Sawyer before they invaded the cathedral. She had found him, and Eva wasn’t going to let the opportunity slide.
With a renewed drive, Eva started running through the women’s ward. She selected a handful of books that might come in handy and dropped them in a large bag. From her potions room, she grabbed a medium-sized potions satchel.
Most of the beneficial potions got tossed out–they barely worked on her anyway. She filled the empty slots with poisons of varying types.
While she really,
Her spare blood situation was dire, however. She had a mere three vials of Arachne’s blood.
Unless she had filled some that Eva had left before they went off to the cathedral.
With a hesitant frown, Eva turned towards Arachne’s room.
She hadn’t been inside since.
Shaking her head, Eva shoved away any unnecessary feelings and pushed open the door.
The room inside wasn’t drastically different from any other room. It was just a normal cell.
In their most recent contract, Eva had offered Arachne the same thing she had offered Ylva that had allowed the hel to link her domain to Earth. However, Arachne had never actually acted on it. Eva had a sneaking suspicion that Arachne did not know how to do it. Like how she didn’t know how to make void metal, or teleport, or even use magic in general.
Arachne relied solely on her strength and natural resilience. She found books to be a chore and had turned down Ylva’s offer of tutelage.
Eva couldn’t actually blame her for that last one. Five hundred years of servitude sounded intensely unappealing, even if Ylva would probably be a kind and fair, if stern, master.
One thing that Eva could say about Arachne’s room was that it was decorated.
Tapestries of varying types hung from the walls. Some were larger, some were smaller. Not a single square inch of brick had been left unadorned. Some were of pure scenery–a forest-filled recreation of the landscape outside of the prison was done up on one of the larger ones. A number of them were portraits of people as well.
Well, not so much
One whole wall held nothing but images of Eva.
Red eyes with slit pupils stared back at her. For a moment, she thought she was looking at a mirror. It took a second or two to realize that her reflection wasn’t moving. Her eyes just looked so real, her hair had individual strands matching her real-life self.
But it was just a portrait. The largest of many.
One had her sitting, as if posed for a camera. Others looked like they had been created in the middle of fights. Eva couldn’t recall actually fighting any of the demons or people in most of the pictures, but they looked lifelike enough that she almost considered the idea that her memories had been modified.
One tapestry was an image of her sleeping, with Arachne asleep in her small spider form on Eva’s bare stomach.
Eva wasn’t entirely sure if she should be flattered or disturbed by the shrine of herself, but seeing that last tapestry brought a sick sensation to her stomach.
She should have been more firm.
Their most recent contract had been more verbose than the first one as it had been made in far less haste. After Arachne had exchanged her hands, Eva had decided to include a clause about following orders.
Arachne wouldn’t have been able to go against it. They could have all escaped so easily. Their task had already been finished, after all.
But Eva had never once exercised that clause. It felt gross, to manipulate someone she considered a friend. She had ignored it and forgotten about it on purpose.
Until just now. Seeing the two of them, peacefully sleeping.
It hurt.
Eva grit her teeth and tore her eyes from the portrait wall. She had come in here for any spare vials of blood that she could find.
Instead, she found something else.
Arachne had a bed in her room. Eva doubted that it had ever seen even five minutes of use.
The moment her eyes drifted from the walls, Eva spotted a dress draped over the bed.
It was a simple garment. Long and black with thick straps that would stretch from the top of the shoulder to the edge of the neck. No cleavage to speak of, though it did have an embroidered ‘V’ shape running from the shoulders to a point at the center of the waist.
