Opening her mouth, Eva found herself hesitating. Was it just a method of teleportation that looked like what happened when a demon died? Was it more than that?
Did it really matter?
Not at the moment. She might interrogate him later. For now, the longer they waited, the more likely it was that the hunters would turn their gaze in Eva’s direction.
“Alright. Let’s get moving then.”
Eva blinked to the ground, letting the others follow her in their own ways. Once on the ground, she just ran. Blinking might put her too far out of earshot to hear any warnings from Srey.
The actual run was a bit colder than Eva would have liked. Winter came early this year, though there was still no snow on the ground. At least it wasn’t pitch dark out in the early evening just yet. The sun was close to the horizon, but not quite at it yet. They should have a good hour of light. After that, if they were still outside, Eva could toss a few light spells around for a decent amount of light.
“This is around where I was thinking,” Eva said as they crested the top of a shallow hill. There was an equally shallow valley on the other side. Not too much plant life. A few stray bushes here and there. Lots of grass and underbrush, but that would be easy to burn away. Because it had once been a farmland, there were no major trees. Just little saplings that had sprouted since the farm had been abandoned.
Vektul hummed, glancing around the place. He walked along the top of the hill around to one side, pausing to observe from there. Eva followed behind him as he ran through his inspection. She gave the occasional glance towards Srey who always responded with a shake of his head.
“It’s large enough.”
“Maybe not flat enough,” Eva said, preempting any arguments on that front. “But that shouldn’t be hard to solve.”
“No overhead cover. This
“Also somewhat easily solved.”
Warding was an amazing thing. While she might have been able to whip up some sort of protective shield through runes—such a thing should be entirely possible, though she had never tried to do so over such a large area—warding could do it all and much faster. Not only did she not have to write anything down, she also did not have to experiment too much. Shifting most of the busy work to pure thought removed a lot of the effort.
Of course, she wasn’t quite certain that she was good enough to do something like that.
“I think it should work then,” Vektul said. “You still have not collected the necessary mages and demons.”
“First thing,” Eva said, holding up a finger, “we have a lot of work to do before then. This ritual circle is not going to be drawn in a single night. One thing at a time.”
A month might be too generous of a time frame even if they recruited Juliana to help dig out the lines for the ritual. Without her, Eva would be out using a shovel. Her meager skill in earth magic wasn’t quite up to the task of drawing out such a ritual site.
Eva lit up her hands. First things first.
She started marking out a wide outline of a ring, keeping the flames carefully controlled on the outside so as to not burn more than she needed. The ring wasn’t perfect. She didn’t want it to be. At least not yet. Some hunters would almost assuredly stumble across this place. If it looked like an obvious ritual circle, they would do the same thing that she had done to Sawyer.
Fighting with Arachne might work as a cover guise should anyone start spying on them. However, there was a point where tearing down the bushes just became too much work and too impractical while mock-sparring. After a few minutes of no one watching them, Eva dispensed with the cover and started throwing flames around.
After an hour, she only had about an eighth of what she wanted to have done. Burning everything wasn’t difficult work, but it did consume some time. Especially with only her able to really do the work.
Arachne did her part by uprooting the small trees and larger bushes and tossing them out of the ring Eva had made. Neither Vektul nor Srey were really equipped to help out much. They just stayed to the side and watched.
At least, until Srey stepped forwards.
“It’s started again.”
A Crack in the Sky
“Alright! Let’s move!” Eva shouted out over the somewhat smoldering field. Arachne was a short distance away, clearing out a few tumbleweeds. Vektul and Srey were both near each other and, as such, near Eva as well.
As soon as Arachne heard the shout, she dropped her tumbleweed to the ground and started running towards Eva without hesitation.
