“Actually,” Eva said, looking up at Zoe, “could you go back to where we fought? Sister Cross hit me pretty hard,” Eva said, once again gesturing towards her hip. “Between Nel, Sawyer, and my own blood ritual experiments, I’ve been somewhat conscious of leaving pieces of myself around. If you could grab Wayne and have him burn down a section–”
Eva froze, voice catching in her throat. Her eyes grew wide.
For a moment, Zoe was worried that something happened. Heart failure or some other sudden illness. She reached forwards, placing a hand on the young girl’s shoulder.
“Um, if there is even a forest left. Sister Cross
Zoe blinked. “She attacked right after the spar?”
“Put up anti-banishment wards, probably while we fought, which have the unfortunate side-effect of breaking my teleportation.”
There hadn’t been a hint of that anywhere. Even with all her enhanced senses on, Zoe hadn’t so much as suspected that someone else had been in the area. And she knew that Eva had a method of sensing any living person within quite a range around her.
“How did we miss her?” Zoe asked, dumbfounded.
Eva shrugged. “I was focused on fighting you. You were as well. Don’t forget that Sister Cross can teleport; it wouldn’t be difficult to stay on the edge of our senses with that. But maybe worry about the fire first?”
“Right,” Zoe said. She swung open the heavy entrance to Ylva’s domain and let Eva head off towards the women’s ward.
As soon as her phone found a signal, it started vibrating like crazy. Six missed messages from Wayne. All despite having told him she was entering Ylva’s domain. After skimming through them, she sent out her responses.
Messages on their way, Zoe pulled out her dagger and allowed the world to fall to between.
— — —
Irene lay back in her bed, staring at the ceiling. She traced out a wide circle in the air with her finger.
As far as she understood, shackles were the single most important aspect of dealing with demons. Some might say that summoning circles were the most important, but Irene had already disregarded those ideas–and half of her classmates–as idiots. Sure, there might not be a demon without a summoning circle, but without the shackles, there was no protection. Shackles were the things that kept a summoner alive.
Really, it was some fascinating magic from a purely analytical point of view. Very similar to some of the stuff she had already decided she wanted to do for a profession. Irene had already signed up for enchanting and warding for next year’s electives. Shackles were very much a sort of written ward.
As the book explained, it was technically possible to wave a wand and erect shackles purely through magic. Unfortunately, all but the weakest of demons would break through a magic-based ward almost instantly. Being highly magical creatures, demons required their shackles to be set in stone–so to speak.
Drawing the patterns out in the air didn’t do much for practice however. She really needed to draw it out on a paper to see how it all came together. The boundary, sigils to strengthen the boundary, demonic magic suppressants, thaumaturgical magic wards, and so on and so forth, they all were far too complex to wave about in the air.
But that wasn’t something Irene could do. While drawing on a piece of paper wouldn’t violate any terms of her contract, Shelby would be sure to have questions about what she was doing. Shackles and summoning circles looked like rituals–and they were in a certain sense–but rituals weren’t something Irene had ever expressed much interest in.
Jordan would probably recognize demonic shackles right out.
Irene was already struggling to explain her two-hour twice-a-week absences without violating any of the contract. The terminology was uncomfortably strict about describing any aspect of the class. A good portion of the others didn’t look like the types of people who had many friends, so it probably wasn’t such a big deal for them.
Just her.
So far, ‘reconnecting with Eva’ had worked out well enough. And Eva was actually present, if as a teacher, so it was mostly true.
Irene let her arm flop to her side. The pointless exercise was little more than a time sink until it was time to go. She had already finished her homework for all of her regular classes, but they could always use more studying. Especially the practical side of things, given end of the year exams were a scant few months away.
