“I believe the measurement is meters here? We need ten thousand square of them.”
“That’s…” she paused. Ten thousand square meters didn’t mean all that much to her. She knew that a football field was one hundred yards long, so maybe a square field? But she didn’t have a very good mental model of just how large that was.
Eva was not a sports fan.
“Probably pretty large,” she finished.
They fell into a light silence as Vektul finished off his second apple—again, including the core and its seeds. She could tell that everyone was deep in thought.
Or at least she was. Arachne as well. Probably deep in concern about being used as a ritual reagent while Eva was in the middle.
“What is going to happen?”
She hadn’t meant to ask anything, but she was worried.
Void would manifest in the mortal realm. Even if she didn’t perform the ritual, even if she actively sabotaged it, Life was working to that end as well. The difference would be on whose terms Void came over. If Void came over on his terms and without merging Hell and the mortal realm. On his own terms, he might be able to disrupt or foil any plots against him.
Otherwise Void might be injured, weakened, or even killed. Such a result would not bode well for demons in general and Eva in particular.
Not so long ago, Eva had held a conversation with Catherine. It had been shortly after the demon hunters had attacked. In discussing the murdered security guards, the topic had turned towards elves.
Catherine had gone on a long rant about how much she hated elves. Something about how they used to be some great warriors and their decline into ‘pathetic, mortal-pandering weaklings’ who were shades of their former selves.
Apparently there was some history between Catherine and the elves. At least, the rant had continued for far longer than Eva had been interested in the conversation.
But she had got one thing out of the conversation, the elves’ current state wasn’t because of their own fault. Not really. They had once been beings akin to demons. They had a Power that created them and they all lived primarily in another plane of existence. The only times they ventured out was to enact war.
How they got out of their plane of existence, Catherine had never said. Neither had she said its name or the name of their Power.
What she had said was that nearly everyone, Powers included, had grown tired of constantly being brought into conflicts that didn’t suit their interests. Banding together, they destroyed the patron Power of the elves, leaving the elves both bereft of their unique magics and without a home.
Upon being asked, Catherine hadn’t been certain what happened to those elves who were in their home realm at the time.
Those stranded on Earth tried to keep a low profile, eventually transforming into how everyone knew elves existed today. Most of their warrior ways had died off. Human mages now knew them as herbalists and healers. Very little evidence of their fearsome past or mysterious magics remained.
Hearing that tale had put a bit of fear into Eva. Being
She still couldn’t cause that to happen intentionally.
The immortality that demons enjoyed probably came straight from Void. Demons had intense regenerative abilities—something Eva was still lacking—but when terminally injured, Void opened a portal to reclaim them. If demons could regenerate from anything, such an action would be unneeded.
Unless it was just a punishment for dying.
That was all just problems that might be if Void did not manage to fend off his attacker. After that, there was still the issue of Void being brought to the mortal realm in the first place.
Though, from the sound of the ritual thus far, it was sounding more like they were summoning a much smaller demon-like being. Far from the literal universe that Eva had originally pictured. Just Void and not the whole of Hell along with him.
Glancing between the two demons seated around her, Eva found neither of them jumping to respond to her question. Though, in Vektul’s case, her question had probably been too vague.
Sighing, Eva shook her head. “Alright, let me grab a notebook and we’ll get all the minor details written down. We can start real planning after that.”
Spies
“You were noticed?”
Clement started to shake his head, but paused after considering the question. “I wasn’t noticed, but one of the demons was aware that he was being watched.”
