The wind crashed against a black transparent shield, scattering harmlessly into the air. The shield fell, revealing Eva with her hands on her hips. Arachne and Shalise stood right behind her as an orb of blood hovered in front of her.
“You’re lucky I had a shield ready,” Eva said with a frown. She took her eyes off Zoe, looking around with a slight whistle. “Guess Shalise won’t be staying here after all.”
“What happened? Where’s Lynn?” Shalise pushed around Eva, eyes frantically darting around the camp.
Zoe let her wand fall to her side. She was still ready to whip it up at the first sign of danger, but keeping it pointed at them wouldn’t help Shalise calm down.
With a deep breath, Zoe said, “I haven’t seen her. She wasn’t around the camp when that thing showed up.”
Stepping up to the edge of the crater, Shalise stared at the enigma with an ashen face.
Zoe quickly placed a hand on Shalise’s shoulder, keeping her from going any further. Shalise had fought a number of them and would certainly recognize it on sight, even in its burned state. She definitely knew how dangerous they could be. However, if she thought that Lynn might be in danger, she might not be thinking straight.
“Why is it here? They’re supposed to be in Hell. We haven’t been summoning demons. We fought so many back there and they’re still hounding us.”
Zoe pulled out her cellphone and pulled up the picture she had taken earlier. One hand still on Shalise’s shoulder, Zoe held it out in front of her. “I don’t suppose you know the purpose of this? It was drawn on Lynn’s window, casting a shadow onto the floor of her tent,” she added after a moment. The picture she had taken was up close of the pattern and didn’t really offer much context in terms of actual location.
After glancing down for a few seconds, Shalise shook her head. “It wasn’t there a few days ago. I would have noticed. I don’t inspect the tents every single day, so it could have been drawn on more recently.”
“Has anyone visited your camp lately?”
Shalise tossed her head back and forth. “No one has ever stopped by. Not until today.”
“We only showed up a half-hour ago,” Eva said, stepping up into the conversation. “How long has it been since Lynn told you to go hide?”
“A few hours? I don’t really have a watch.”
“Maybe she saw the mark and told you to run? Or wrote it herself.”
“Why?” Zoe said with a frown. “A trap for us?”
Eva shook her head. “I didn’t even know I would be here an hour ago. If she knew, she’s been hiding some amazing abilities. And should have probably predicted and prevented both her incarceration, defeat at my hands, and Shalise’s vacation to Hell.”
“Vacation?” Shalise snorted. “Hardly.”
“Well, you got out of schoolwork.”
“Lynn’s been teaching me. I don’t want to say anything bad, but I think I would rather have had a real teacher. Especially if it meant not going to Hell in the first place.”
“Well, for now,” Zoe said, “let’s get you back to Brakket. It’s safer there. Probably.”
“But Lynn–”
“I’m sure she’ll catch up with you.” Zoe rubbed her forehead. She had been doing that a lot lately, but there had been a lot going on that was headache inducing. “If we leave a message, she’ll know where you are.”
“In fact,” Eva added, “we’ll probably have to set up defenses to stall her until she calms down enough to not try to kill us all. Really says something about the one who has decided that she’s your guardian, huh?”
“She… means well.”
“She tried to kill me,” Eva said. She had a pout on, but it was obviously fake.
“Yeah,” Shalise said with a wince. “My statement still stands. She’s just a bit aggressive.”
“Uh huh.” Eva kept her voice flat. “But you still asked to be kidnapped by us.”
“Camping is fine for a day or two. A month? More? I don’t even know how long I’ve been out here.”
“Then,” Zoe broke in, “as I said, let us leave.”
“Hold on, what are we going to do about the enigma?”
Zoe glanced first to Eva then to the crater containing the enigma’s remains. “We can’t leave it to regenerate,” she said after a moment.
While it might just run around the forest without causing much trouble for a while, eventually it could find its way to civilization. Or even another group of campers. While they might be able to eventually kill it, they wouldn’t know or be prepared for it to come back to life. Even killing it a second time could lead to people thinking that they simply hadn’t critically wounded it the first, resulting in a third attack before people finally took proper measures to contain it.
“I could send it to Willie’s domain through a transference circle,” Eva offered. “I’m sure Juliana would appreciate more complications in his life.”
“Is filling Hell with essentially toxic waste really a good idea?”
“It has got to go somewhere. Might as well be with people we hate.”
“There has to be a better option. Sending them back where they came from, for instance.”
“Figuring out how to do that would be your job. And unless you have figured it out, we need a more immediate solution.”
