As expected, Zoe compressed air around the area Eva had initially stepped to. She released it in an uncontrolled explosion of bark and wood just as the inky black darkness enveloped the area.
Eva’s first instinct was to unsheathe her dagger, jam it into her arm, form up a wire ball of blood, and launch a car-sized fist made of blood at her professor.
But Eva had something new to try.
She was
After starting at Brakket, Eva had weaned off the blood books in favor of proper thaumaturgy. Then she had lost her eyes and had to get Arachne to read to her. Because of the demon despising that particular activity, Eva barely managed to keep up in her classes.
Once she recovered her sight, Eva started off on the necromancy books she had stolen from Sawyer. What a bore. One would think that dead bodies, skeletons, blood and gore, and all that would be exciting. Even aside from the loathsome aspects of murdering everyone, the magic involved was simply uninspiring. All of it revolved around life, and how to instill that life into just about everything.
Not quite what she had been expecting. It made a certain sort of sense. However, Eva felt it would be far more practical to just acquire the help of regular living people rather than mess around with brain-dead zombies.
Blood magic, on the other hand, was something that just spoke to Eva. Every little tangent wound up all the more interesting simply due to how long it had been since she last read a blood magic book. Everything she came across had been just too tempting to skim or skip over.
As such, Eva had a number of things to practice.
Eva pulled out a large metal flask. Unlike most blood Eva used, it wasn’t her blood or Arachne’s blood. It was filled to the brim with the blood of an animal.
Normally, an animal’s blood would be useless. Even more so than her own semi-demonic blood. Animals simply lacked the worth that humans, demons, elves, and other magical creatures possessed.
This particular spell required animal blood from a large work animal. Cows, oxen, and donkeys would all work. Probably camels too, but they weren’t exactly on hand. Eva had selected a horse from a nearby farm. She hadn’t taken enough to kill the thing–it didn’t need to suffer for her experiments–but it might be lethargic for the next day or few.
As if animal blood wasn’t enough, it needed some of her own blood mixed in. Mixing blood tended towards diluting effects or otherwise making the blood worthless.
And yet here she was, making a cut on her wrist and adding to the pool.
Shaping the blood in the air, Eva formed a humanoid shape that wouldn’t look out of place as an ancient cave-drawing. Convinced that her amazing work of art wasn’t getting any better, she started channeling magic into the blob.
As she channeled, the flask-worth of blood started multiplying. It churned in on itself, exploding outwards with twice the amount of blood before collapsing in on itself again to start the process over. Eventually it reached her size.
And then Eva started feeling a little queasy.
Eva considered herself as far from squeamish as one could get. She blamed the turning of her stomach on the massive amounts of magic she was pouring into the human-sized column of blood.
Vague shapes formed on the surface of the blood. It started out as depressions in the blob. Before long, it morphed into more recognizable human features. A mirror image of Eva formed along the surface of the blood. Eva couldn’t see the colors due to the darkness, but she had no doubt it would look proper. If her blood sight only extended a centimeter beneath the skin, she wouldn’t be able to tell her clone apart from herself.
Eva gave her clone-self a poke. She could see that it was made up of nothing but blood. No bones or musculature at all. Despite that, it felt relatively solid. She wasn’t even holding it together with her magic anymore. It was entirely on its own.
Poking it did give Eva a slight turn of the stomach.
The real queasiness didn’t come from looking at her blood-mirror. She could feel what it felt. After about sixty seconds of construction, Eva realized she was seeing double. Double of nothing, again because of the darkness, but the odd sensation was still there. It would take some getting used to.
There was a problem with the darkness. Though she could see through her clone’s eyes and she could sense blood, her clone didn’t operate on her mind. It gave a one-way flow of information. She couldn’t tell it where to go or what to attack without real words.
A full minute of construction time left much to be desired as well. Against any opponent like herself, Eva wouldn’t be able to use anything similar to this technique. It simply took too long. As it was, she felt relatively safe from Zoe. The professor was still tossing razor wind aimlessly.
