Canceling the darkness spell, Eva almost threw up as she looked on herself. It was like looking into two mirrors with both facing one another. An endless recursion of herself.
It would definitely take some getting used to.
She pinched her eyes shut and leaned in to whisper to her other self. “Attack Zoe,” she said, pointing for good measure.
A razor wind immediately slammed into the tree they were hidden behind. The clone didn’t notice or care. It had received its orders and moved to carry them out.
Eva stayed behind the tree with her eyes shut.
Through her clone’s eyes, she watched Zoe’s eyes widen as fake-Eva charged. They widened even more as a wind blade passed harmlessly through fake-Eva’s midsection. The blood parted to allow the wind to pass before reforming seamlessly.
The clone threw an open-clawed punch at Zoe. The blood mimicked carapace in every way that mattered.
For a moment, Eva felt a jolt of fear. She hadn’t directed her clone to do anything but attack. No qualifiers like ‘non lethal’ or ‘spar’ to dampen any blows.
It swung with all of its might, putting every ounce of strength it had behind the sharp tips of its claw.
Eva’s real body winced as Zoe lifted an arm to block the strike. Her empathetic pain turned to confusion. Zoe hadn’t raised any thaumaturgic shield, yet the claws stopped before touching her arm with space to spare.
Before Eva could begin to consider what had happened, an explosion of air knocked the clone’s arm clean off. It was just blood molded together by magic, after all. The loosed liquid splattered against the ground.
Feedback from the clone jolted Eva’s own arm. Or her phantom mental image of her clone’s sensation. It hurt no worse than the tingling from a limb that had fallen asleep. Something, Eva suddenly realized, that she hadn’t felt in her legs or hands since the transplant.
Zoe faltered. Her expression turned to one of shock as she stared at the missing limb.
The clone was under no such distress. It lashed out with its still intact arm even as the blood within its body bubbled out into a new arm.
Zoe’s distraction almost cost her a rather unflattering scar across her face. As it was, she had to stumble backwards to avoid the claws. Not enough to fall down, but enough to send her off-balance.
And then she noticed the new limb on the clone. Zoe tried to say something, but was immediately cut off by the clone not caring to hear her words in the slightest.
The clone pressed its advantage, moving in harder and faster.
For a few minutes, Eva watched Zoe, surprised at how much of a back foot the professor had found herself on. The clone was nothing if not relentless.
As she watched, Eva opened her own eyes. She sat behind a tree, just focusing on taking in the two differing inputs. It was disorienting and nauseating, but got better as time passed. Definitely not something she should be testing in a combat situation.
And then, while watching her clone’s no-holds-barred beat down of Zoe, Eva had another idea. Another idea that shouldn’t be tested in a combat situation.
Zoe lifted her dagger. Lightning crackled on the end. She pointed the sharp tip of the dagger directly at the clone’s chest.
The clone knocked her arm to one side, sending the charged lightning off into the sky.
Eva used that moment of thunder to enact her plan.
She stepped.
Not to anywhere she could see. Rather, Eva tried to step in her clone’s field of view, directly behind Zoe.
The world
For a moment, Eva just lay there.
Her clone was still fighting Zoe and the professor was far too concerned with fighting back the onslaught to look behind her.
Zoe had started pushing back. Her initial timid attacks had given way to far more vicious strikes. The clone was slowly shrinking as it lost more and more blood. Reddish-black blood had splayed absolutely everywhere; a good portion of the blood was coating Zoe herself and had soaked into her exercise clothes.
Like the giant blood hands Eva could produce, none of the created blood was actually useful. A huge element of blood magic was the shedding of blood. Stolen or otherwise unwillingly taken blood had different properties compared to willingly given blood and both were different from unknowingly given blood. Blood stolen from a third party or taken while the donor was unconscious would both count as unknowingly given.
For a good number of spells, such a thing didn’t matter all that much. It was mostly the more ritualized aspects that required keeping it in mind. Taken blood worked best for damaging effects while given blood strengthened positive rituals.
