They found nothing. No sign of another forced entry. Nothing in Eva’s blood sight except herself, Shalise, and one corpse–the other having been drained of blood.
“Alright,” Eva said, “we’re going on a quick run around the island. I’ll not suffer an enemy running free in my domain.”
She wasn’t expecting them to be difficult to kill either. Shalise managed two on her own. Catherine hadn’t killed hers, but Eva didn’t think she had much trouble containing it based on her story.
Besides, she was in her domain. While she might lack the absolute control that Willie had, Eva was confident in its desire to protect her.
Shalise gave a shaky nod of her head. Her eyes were still darting all around the common room as if one of the enigmas would jump out at her at any moment.
“Stick close,” Eva said as she threw open the main door.
There wasn’t all that much land to cover. The alternate women’s ward, its small courtyard and walls, and then the beach surrounding it. There was nothing else within Eva’s domain. Even the beach didn’t extend too far. Perhaps just far enough that Eva had to move to keep the entirety of the island within her blood vision.
The lack of anything on her island had been the cause for some concern. When Eva first built up the alternate women’s ward, she had been worried that the showers and sink would flood. Water was created from her runic arrays, but the drainage pipes didn’t lead anywhere.
After leaving the water on for a long while under her watch, Eva came to the conclusion that the drains simply disappeared the water because that was the apparent effect of the real life version. She never thought about or cared about where the water was going so her domain didn’t either.
She actually hadn’t checked to see if the water drained off into the ocean, though she doubted it did. If Eva were to take a shovel all the way around the building, she doubted she would ever find a pipeline leading out.
But unless the enigma had crawled down the pipes, the point was moot anyway.
Eva and Shalise stuck to the surface. They walked around both the building and the exterior of the walls around the beach. Eva even jumped up to the roof just in case the enigmas could hide from her blood sight while they were alive.
The only two living things they could find on the island were Eva and Shalise.
There weren’t even prints in the sand. Not even from the two that Eva had seen with her own eyes.
“Could you have been mistaken about the number?”
Shalise shook her head. “There were definitely three. Prax saw them too. Maybe one wandered back into the waters?”
“Maybe,” Eva said, not really meaning it. That feeling of wrongness she had when she first stepped into her domain, the feeling of something uncanny that did not belong, whatever it was, she was still feeling it.
She walked out onto the largest portion of the beach, directly in front of the gateway of the alternate women’s ward wall. As she walked, she closed her eyes and focused on that feeling. The moment she felt it weakening, she stopped and took a step backwards. Moving side to side, Eva came to a stop on the point where the feeling felt the strongest.
Opening her eyes, Eva looked around.
There was nothing special about the location. It was a spot on the beach. No markings, no discolored sand. The spot wasn’t lined up with the gateway, but slightly off to one side. There was nothing above her but the pitch black void that encompassed the entirety of her sky.
With a frown, Eva turned back to Shalise. “I–”
Eva jumped, leaping with all the might that her version of Arachne’s legs could provide.
It wasn’t far enough. She felt something clamp down on her ankle. Something with sharp teeth.
The enigma had burrowed so far beneath her that it had been out of her blood sight. Eva hadn’t known that her domain existed that deep. Even once it came into her sight, it had moved so fast she hadn’t had the time to properly react.
Eva fell from her leap, dragged and hindered by the thing that was gnawing her foot off. She hit the ground. Sand scraped against her face.
Sending the purple blood to coat the enigma, Eva rolled over to her back and clapped her hands together.
Rather than the utter obliteration she had been expecting, the blood just fizzled. The top layer of skin on the enigma actually came off. That was about it.
Either the enigma was incredibly durable–unlikely based on how Shalise killed the two–or their blood was so weak that even Eva’s mixed blood was leagues ahead in terms of strength.
Dismissing blood magic for the moment, Eva ignited her entire leg. She started building up her flames, much as she had against Willie-Arachne’s giant beetle. Explosions from within a creature tended to work out in the most excellent of manners. If the enigma did have an armored exterior, its insides wouldn’t.
While her flames built, she kicked out with her other foot. Her sharp toes caught the enigma right in the eye.
