Magically created blood was neither given nor taken. It wasn’t even shed. It never flowed in the veins of any living creature. As such, it was worthless for haemomancy. Even more so than the blood of an animal.
Still, Eva had been hoping that the clone’s lost blood would rejoin with the whole–it was made out of the stuff–but that didn’t appear to be the case. Her clone was a full head shorter than it should have been.
And it was only shrinking more. Zoe stepped forward, burying her dagger in the clone’s chest. A lightning bolt exploded out its back. Blood splattered around the woods and an acrid scent filled the air.
Through her clone’s eyes, Eva saw herself lying face down on the ground. There was a small twig sticking through her foot, but that wasn’t such a big deal. Her teleport had been successful, if painful.
Eva’s nose wrinkled as she pushed herself up, clamping down on a groan that wanted to escape from the effort. Lying unmoving felt nicer, but she had to end this before she threw up.
Clambering to her feet made enough noise to finally alert Zoe to Eva’s presence a few feet behind the woman.
A breeze brushed a few hairs back behind Eva’s head. That breeze picked up into a gale.
Eva’s feet left the ground. Both of her perspectives flew apart from one another and away from Zoe. One vanished as the clone splattered against a tree.
Lacking the luck of being made out of blood, Eva’s back slammed into a tree. Harsh bark cut into her back–straight through her brand new tee-shirt–and left small wounds. She slid down the tree, further scraping her back, until her feet caught the ground.
Zoe was sprinting towards her. Eva tried lifting an arm to toss out a wreath of flames. Suddenly missing the senses of a second person was just as disorienting as suddenly gaining them. Unable to think clearly, her flamethrower ended up more of a flame-spittle, drooling on the ground in front of her.
A gust of wind knocked her hand to the side before she could try again.
She felt a sharp tap on the top of her head.
“Dead.”
Eva reached up and rubbed the top of her head.
“I was confused at first,” Zoe said, breathing in deep pants. She reached her arm up and wiped off a slew of sweat onto her sleeve. “You charged out at me. Naturally, I didn’t want to kill you. ‘You’ didn’t seem to have the same reservations.”
Eva shook her head, fuming at herself for failing
“Then your arm came off and everything. It was quite the shock, I almost stopped then and there.”
“Good thing you didn’t,” Eva said with a sigh, “it wasn’t told to stop fighting.”
“What was it?”
“A new spell I found. It’s going to take a lot of getting used to before I try again in a fight. There’s a one-way sensory feedback from it to me, so I saw double of everything. Extremely disorienting.”
Zoe tapped her chin. “Sounds useful if you can overcome that issue.”
“Maybe I’ll practice by sending it to history class.”
“I think that someone bumping into it too hard might raise a few uncomfortable questions. Can you make one of someone else?”
“Not sure. The book didn’t mention anything about that, but I’d need a sample of someone else’s blood at the very least. I’m not sure if they’d get the feedback effect or if I would… or if it would even work at all because they weren’t the ones to cast the spell.”
A musing hum from Zoe filled a few minutes of silence.
“You never said
“Frankly, you’re too much trouble.”
Eva immediately tried to protest. Zoe held up a hand.
“Since you came to Brakket, there’s been zombies, nuns, and demons–so many demons–all running about causing problems.”
Eva pressed her lips together in a frown. “I’ll have you know, very few of those are my fault. Especially the necromancer and the nuns.”
“Be that as it may, the relaxing life of a teacher just isn’t what it used to be. And then there is the
“So why not Wayne?”
“Oh, we have been sparring. You think this is my first day? He just had a meeting to attend with a parent. I thought you might be interested. And it made for a nice change of pace.”
That made sense. She seemed a lot better than she had during her summer lectures. Until just now, Eva had assumed she had been simply holding back for the students’ sake.
Which just made all those losses all the worse. If Eva couldn’t even beat ‘relaxing teacher life’ Zoe, how was she supposed to compete against a gung-ho version of the woman.
Maybe it was time to go for some hardcore combat lessons herself.
