Eva caught it in her left hand with a wince. Her hands and wrists might be strong enough not to shatter from the force, but the jolt it sent up her arm and into her back was nothing to scoff at. Had the angle been slightly different, she might have had to fight with a dislocated shoulder.
As it was, she simply closed her fingers around the pole with a grin. “Mine now.”
The flames in her left hand ramped up. Not hot enough to melt the steel beam, but hot enough that the thug could definitely feel it in his hands only a few inches away.
At the same time, she gathered up a ball of flames in her right hand and spread it towards the other two thugs in a long stream. More to keep them at a distance until she was ready for them than to actually harm them, but she wasn’t being too careful.
One guy’s shirt caught a trail of the flames.
If he ended up slightly crispy… Well, he only needed to survive just long enough.
Wrenching the bar out of the thug’s weakened grip, Eva took it in her own two-handed grip and brought it down on the guy’s knee with as much force as she could muster.
He went down to the ground screaming with his knee bent the wrong direction.
The guy she had caught in her flames was on the ground, rolling back and forth in a mad effort to put out the flames.
After causing the remaining fire to flare, Eva continued on past him. The final guy had run off towards the door during her beat down of bar-man. He was repeatedly slamming his shoulder into the door.
Shame the doors opened inwards.
Eva marched towards him at a glacial pace, making her footsteps as loud as possible on the concrete floor.
“No, please!” He pressed himself against the door, raising his arms in front of him for some minute amount of protection.
Eva paused just a step away from him. “You want mercy,” she growled out.
She lifted the bar overhead and brought it down on his outstretched arm. The snapping noise barely audible under his screams was not the bar breaking.
“I’ll show you the same mercy you were going to show a little blind girl who had lost her dog.”
Eva raised the bar again, preparing for a second strike.
Something cold and hard penetrated through her side. Right where Lynn Cross had taken a chunk of her hip.
It had healed, but perhaps not as well as it should have. Though thinner at her hips than her legs, the carapace should still have stopped most everything that hit her.
Letting out a cry–frustration more than anything–Eva used one of her vials of blood to form up a shield around herself.
Just in time for two loud cracks to ring out through the warehouse.
Two flattened bullets hit the ground just outside of her shield.
With a feral growl, Eva tore the icicle out of her side, unsheathed her dagger, and plunged it back into the hole. Eva shored up the damage as best as she was able as she turned to face her attackers.
The thug that had run off stood on the second floor walkway with a small revolver in his hands.
The man standing at his side held a small metal stick.
A wand.
Another bullet and four more icicles hit Eva’s shield in the time it had taken her to turn and glance up to the walkway.
The moment her eyes met those of the mage, he took a few steps backwards. Eva might have smiled at that had she not been fighting through the pain of having a hole in her side again.
After a few more impacts from both men, her shield had started to crack. They were far from the tier of attacks employed by the Elysium Order, but she was using her own blood.
Eva fired off an oversized fireball towards the two along with an orb of blood.
The blood homed in on the gun. The moment it hit, Eva clapped her hands to obliterate most of the gun.
Parts of the thug’s hand as well, but Eva couldn’t bring herself to care.
Both men dove off to opposite sides to avoid the oncoming flames. The fireball wasn’t intended so much as an attack as way to obscure the mage’s vision. Eva charged in straight after it, leaping off the bottom floor.
With Arachne’s legs, reaching the walkway was no issue.
Eva tore through her fireball, emerging on the other side to land on top of the diving mage.
One hand crushed his wrist while the other snapped his silver wand in two.
Digging her claws into him, Eva hefted him up and over the railing.
She would rather have them all on the ground floor.
Unfortunately, despite the relatively low height of the walkway, she had thrown him over head first. Eva watched with a frown as his body stilled, neck bent at an angle necks were not supposed to bend at.
The mage had been fairly small, a skinny guy without the muscle that the rest of the thugs had. The thug was the exact opposite. Possibly the largest person in the room. He was a pain to deal with. Especially with the struggling.
Eva had to break his nose and crush his hand that hadn’t gotten blown off just to get him to stop resisting.
Taking more care with the handless guy, Eva pushed him over feet first, dangling him by the shoulders to help lessen the height. He landed in a heap.
