“Alright,” Eva said with a smile. A wide, teeth-filled smile. “Since you can’t hurt me, I’ll go easy on you.”
Eight marbles of explosive fire appeared between each of Eva’s fingers. None were high-explosives. She had only put a small bit of magic into each one, enough to make them unstable. Nothing compared to the room-destroying explosion she had used to free Lucy from the hunters’ trap.
She pulled her hands back, crossing her arms over her chest with each hand open and clawed around her shoulders.
So long as that drone was hovering around overhead, she might as well be theatrical.
She flung her arms out, throwing the marbles as she did so.
Before the first even touched Lucy, Eva blinked away.
Reappearing in front of the main branch of tendrils holding Emily up, Eva lifted her claws high and swiped downwards. The sharp tips of her carapace didn’t quite cut through the entire branch of tentacles. She only made it about halfway through.
It was enough. Emily dropped out of the main mass of tendrils.
Several explosive pops sounded behind Eva as she bent to flick the wand upwards. Emily caught it without issue.
She started casting as Eva dove to the side, avoiding another bunch of tendrils after her.
Looking up at Lucy’s main body again, she was actually smoking. A number of black scorch marks marred her skin—or the masses of tendrils that were pressed together to appear as skin.
Eva felt a little guilty. More about cutting off some of her tentacles than anything else. But her fingers weren’t Elysium Order lightning or cursed with whatever was on the demon hunter’s sword. She should be able to regenerate a few severed tentacles with relative ease.
Raising her arm, Eva skipped the explosions entirely. A stream of sticky fire flew from her fingertips.
The wave caught Lucy square in the chest.
Or it should have.
Lucy split again. The bulk of the fire passed straight through her, landing on the trees and brush beyond her body. A good amount still splashed around the edges of the hole, clinging to her body as Eva had intended.
Still, it was enough of a distraction to let Eva blink over to Anise.
Unlike Emily, Anise was wrapped up with so many tentacles that almost nothing of her could be seen from the neck down. Slicing through the thick bunch of tentacles would be not only impossible, but also cruel. One or a few, Eva could give herself a pass on. Not a full tree trunk’s worth.
“Can’t you blink or teleport?”
Anise, eyes wide and pleading for release, shook her head.
With a groan, Eva blinked out of the way of another group of tentacles.
Despite telling Lucy that she would be going easy on her, Eva really didn’t have all that much else she could do. Her fingers traced along the scales of the snake wrapped around her wrist. But she shook her head. Basila probably wouldn’t be too helpful at the moment. Not against Lucy.
Anything else she
And, while she did have one other trump card, she really wasn’t willing to play it without being in absolute mortal peril for fear of being disqualified.
Emily, though freed from her entrapment, wasn’t much help. Her concentration was solely on avoiding being recaptured. She ran circles around the area, using her earth magic to create pillars to jump off or to boost her around. Never once did she try sending even a single blade of earth towards Lucy.
Comparing them side by side as earth mages, Eva would much rather have Juliana at her side. While Emily was proficient in spell casting, she didn’t have much in the way of a tactical mind. She couldn’t win without attacking. If she wasn’t going to attack, she might as well run away and remove the danger of being recaptured.
She wasn’t even that good of a distraction with how Lucy could split her concentration and tentacles between the two of them.
“Alright Lucy,” Eva mumbled to herself as she conjured another eight marbles of unstable flame between her fingers.
Unlike her first volley, these might actually do a bit of damage. Still not to room obliterating levels.
She held onto them as she sprinted around, using her blood sense to keep one step ahead in dodging tentacles. Every second that passed, another bit of magic poured into them.
Once ready, Eva flung them one-by-one at the tree truck of tentacles holding up Anise. Each rumbled the forest with the noise as they tore into the tentacles.
“Stop,” Lucy cried out just after Eva released the fifth bomb. The tentacles holding onto Anise withdrew, dropping the nun a few feet down to the ground.
Eva half expected her to jump to her feet and start flinging around white lighting. Instead, she got to her hands and knees, gagging and retching on the ground.
