Not what Eva would have expected from the well-dressed and tech-minded succubus that she knew. Then again, if she hadn’t been summoned in a century, maybe it made sense. When her current contract was over and done with, perhaps she would come back and update everything to be a bit more modern.
Rolling off the bed, Eva got to her feet and looked around the area as a whole.
She was standing atop some sort of raised tower. Tower might be too tall of a word, but there was a decently sized staircase leading down to the main area. Another staircase led off below the main area, adjacent to where the tower’s staircase ended. The steps dipped below the surface of black colored water.
A large red windmill towered over a smaller rectangular building. To the side was a metal elephant, at least twice as large as a regular elephant. Probably more. It looked like there was some sort of room inside. There were definitely windows looking out the front and sides.
The actual main building appeared to be made from brick and stone. There wasn’t any paint, though the red bricks matched the red-painted windmill.
Nothing really matched the iron elephant.
Walking down the steps, Eva wasn’t sure what to think. It was definitely a place. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around the windmill or elephant and why they were here. They didn’t exactly scream succubus. Then again, neither had Prax’s castle.
Placing her hand on the handle of the door, Eva paused. Did she really want to go in?
But, would Catherine appreciate it? Probably not. Who knew what kind of stuff she had hidden inside that she wouldn’t want other people to see.
If she liked Catherine any less than she did, Eva would have damned the consequences and gone in. Instead, she removed her hand from the door without opening it. Taking a few steps backwards, Eva just looked over the buildings once again.
Eva turned away with a shake of her head. “I don’t get it.”
Maybe that was the point. There wasn’t anything to get. The decor was just something that Catherine liked. Or maybe something from Earth during one of the times when she had been summoned that she fancied.
Walking down the steps towards the waters, Eva considered her next destination.
Lucy was a demon that had never once been summoned before. While Catherine’s windmill and elephant could have been heavily influenced by things that she had seen while summoned, Lucy’s domain shouldn’t have anything like that. It would be completely uninfluenced by anything in the mortal realm.
With how excitable the demon was about everything on Earth, Eva wasn’t expecting all that much. Perhaps a flat featureless plane or the simple island with a tree that Eva’s domain had started out as.
Dipping her head beneath the water, Eva waited for the gripping sensation to pull her off to Lucy’s domain.
Almost immediately, she found herself falling through the air. The fall was already taking much longer than it had in Catherine’s domain. It took a little bit of effort to avoid panicking. If there was nothing soft beneath her, she would be in for a hard landing.
Worse, everything was dark. She couldn’t see anything. For all Eva knew, there was nothing to land on, hard or soft. She would just be falling forever.
Turns out that her fears were unfounded. Almost as soon as she considered trying to blink to some kind of ground even without being able to see, something caught her.
It wasn’t that she landed on something.
Something literally caught her out of the sky, moving downwards just enough to dampen her speed before bringing her to a stop.
Eva let out a slight sigh of relief before feeling whatever it was that had caught her move slightly. It didn’t just move all at once. Thousands of things moved against her back. It was as if she were lying on a bed of snakes.
Or tentacles.
The latter made much more sense.
Except she couldn’t see any blood inside the things. Though her body didn’t resemble a human beyond the superficial, Lucy still had blood that Eva could perceive. This thing didn’t.
Scrambling to her feet, Eva tried to move. Something–tentacles–caught on her foot. With a slight yelp, she started tipping forwards.
Only to be caught again. Something slithered around her waist before latching out to her arms.
Eva wasn’t about to stick around to find out what would happen next. Her arms and her legs burst into flames. The tentacles holding onto her quickly retreated save for the one around her waist. Clawing at it resolved that situation.
Thankfully, the glow from her fire illuminated the area. She could actually see what was around her.
The writhing and squirming tentacles surrounding her were not what she wanted to see. Long and thick tubes of flesh curled around the ground, far thicker than any one of Lucy’s tentacles. At least there were no eyes or mouths. They were all coated in some sheen that glistened against the light.
