“Right, well, I have a feeling that those plants are going to be attacking us as soon as we head down there. I don’t know about you, but if those trees are meant to fight
“We could burn our way across,” Randal said.
Anise crossed her arms with a slight huff. “Unless you have
Eva opened her mouth, held up a finger, cocked her head to one side, and snapped her mouth shut. She nodded slightly in agreement before perking up as an idea struck.
“How about this. We set Basila down and have her clear us a path, barreling over all the trees in our path,” Eva said with a wide grin.
“Basila?”
Eva extinguished the flames around one hand and held it up, showing off the stone-like snake coiled around her wrist.
All three of them stared at her with blank looks.
With both the vampire and the dryad either fighting or fleeing from the giant serpent, who—Eva assumed—would go after whoever was closest to the golden shrine, she felt like she had a few moments to breathe. And, so long as she had a moment, she might as well put on a little show for the cameras.
Genoa, assuming she was watching, might get a little amusement out of it anyway.
“Basila!” Eva said, voice slightly raised. She scratched the little snake beneath the chin to wake it up. “These foolish mortals are mocking your brilliance.”
Its tiny little jaw opened up into the cutest little yawn before its steely eyes turned to stare at her.
Eva quickly pulled the little basilisk off her wrist, setting it on the ground. As she did so, she tore a potion flask from her hip, uncapped it, and upended it over the snake.
She had already ‘fed’ it some blood earlier. Blood she could control. If worse came to worse, she could help direct it to where she needed to go.
As soon as the potion touched its black scales, it started growing.
Eva didn’t bother waiting for it to reach full size.
“Go, my pretty,” Eva said, nudging it along with the blood. “Go and trample this forest. Find the vampire and
With one last look towards Eva, it slithered off into the forest, still growing larger and larger.
Now the others were looking at Basila with impressed looks on their faces. Or… maybe that was fear. Anise’s lower lip was trembling and her hands were shaking.
“Th-that’s a basilisk.”
“Yep! Let’s go. Use Basila as a shield. Fight off the vampire if you can. Distract him. Whatever. The dryad is a secondary priority. I’m heading for the shrine.”
Eva blinked away.
Basila, rapidly approaching hallway size, charged through the forest without a care in the world. Vines never got a grasp on her, seeds bounced off her scales without her even noticing, and the trees were shattered at the trunk as she rammed into them. A few of the trees whacked into her with a disturbing amount of force before she could destroy them, but they had nothing like nun lightning. Her natural regeneration—or unnatural, given the ritual Eva had performed on her—helped to counteract the damage a great deal.
Eva didn’t actually need to hide behind Basila. So she didn’t. She just kept blinking straight across, leaving the others behind.
She did ensure Basila stayed well within her range, however, just in case the snake decided to coil up around one of her teammates. It did take a nudge every now and again to keep her moving in the right direction.
By the time Eva crossed enough distance to see the vampire, he had obviously noticed her as well. He angled his sprint away from the giant serpent to put them on a collision course.
Eva curled her fingers, conjuring explosive balls of flame between each one.
She tossed them out well ahead of when the vampire would have made it to her, conjuring up a second set the moment they were out of her fingers.
The vampire shifted course to avoid the series of explosions. He ran straight past Eva.
As he did so, he took the serpent with him.
Eva paused for just a moment, inspecting it with her sense of blood.
Though it was roughly a snake, it had a drastically different circulatory system when compared with Basila.
Basila was a golem. Originally, she hadn’t had a circulatory system. After the ritual, she got a single tube of blood running from nose to tail. There were no real veins or capillaries.
The serpent had all that and more. She could see organs. A heart, stomach, lungs, tongue, eyes, and anything else one might expect to see in a living creature. That didn’t really tell Eva much aside from the fact that whatever it was, it was real.
And, so long as it was focused on the vampire, Eva had an opportunity to inspect the mural.
Two more blinks through the fake forest had her at a small set of stairs leading up to the shrine.
They were as gold as the pillars and wall.
Eva jumped straight to the top, frowning slightly as her feet dug large gouges into the floor. They were sharp and gold was soft, but this whole thing couldn’t be
