Of course, she hadn’t been idle for a full week. Eva had conducted numerous experiments in an attempt to escape Hell; most of her experiments revolved around teleportation. So far, she hadn’t been able to force herself into the tunnel of flesh that normally ferried her between her prison and the Brakket dormitory.
Obviously. Or she wouldn’t be inside her domain.
It wasn’t just that they were unsuccessful, but any attempt at teleportation worked instantly. One moment she was seated in her chair, the next she was falling on the ground on the opposite end of her island having forgotten to make legs first. She didn’t pass through any tunnel. The world didn’t fall away to reveal that blinding white place she saw when Zoe teleported her. Neither did she feel even the slightest sensation of movement like she did after blinking. She was just there.
Unless she tried to teleport outside her domain. In that case, it simply failed. No headaches or running into brick walls like had happened on occasions where she had tried to teleport out of anti-teleportation wards. Just nothing at all.
But now,
She stood. The hardened soles of her blood feet pressed into the sand as she walked closer to the obelisk. Moving closer, she could feel an air of magic about it. Much like how wards felt, though far less directed and controlled. At times, the obelisk felt almost full of magic. Only for it to feel vacant a moment later. No matter how full it felt, Eva had never stopped pressing magic into it. Some of that fluctuation might be the magic leeching into the air.
It wasn’t like the ambient magic would harm her. Her domain absorbed it all without issue when the magic haze got far enough away from the obelisk.
While most of the island’s sand was lighter in color—not quite the earthy yellow of normal sand, it was a bit grayer than that—the sand immediately around the obelisk was a darker hue. And it was spreading. Grain after grain of the tan sand turned dark.
A crack echoed off the nothingness in her domain. In an instant, the black sands covered every inch of her island.
Her attention, however, wasn’t on the sand anymore. As soon as the dark sand spread out beneath her feet, she noticed a set of bodies and quite the assortment of rubble appearing around her domain. Four bodies, to be precise. Three demons and a human. One looked like a reject from a wax museum. Another was human save for the thick tentacles on her head. The last demon was the most traditionally demonic of the three, complete with wings, horns, and a spaded tail.
But Eva ignored them for the moment, squatting down near the human. Garbed in a trench coat, he had a long beard that had been a goatee at one point. He really needed to shave it down. A bit of red blood matted it against his face, but the injury wasn’t too severe. He had no internal bleeding, just a fresh cut on his forehead and a couple of bruises. She reached over and poked him in the shoulder. “Devon?”
His eyes snapped open. With a hiss of pain, he closed the one on the same side as his cut. Getting blood in the eye wasn’t much fun. Eva had some first hand experience. His still open eye darted about, only staring at Eva’s face for a moment before glancing over her shoulder towards the obelisk, then around everywhere else as he propped himself up on his elbow.
“Thought you were in Hell,” he said as he pressed his fingers up against his cut.
“I am in Hell. Or… I was in Hell…” Eva trailed off as she glanced around once again. No matter where she looked, she couldn’t see the waters. Buildings had replaced much of her sandy beach. Buildings that looked an awful lot like a bomb had just gone off in the middle of the street.
Then there was the sun in the sky. She had tried to make one earlier, not long after making the grandfather clock, but it hadn’t worked. She wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps it was because of how difficult it was to visualize the distances between the Earth and the Sun. Either way, there was one up in the sky now, although it was slightly obscured by a few winter gray clouds.
However, all was not normal. While there was a proper sky and buildings—was that a pizza parlor?—the ground was still sand. The obelisk still stood tall not far away. The little tree without leaves was just beyond that.
She slowly stood, conjuring up a set of clothes using her domain’s magic—she hadn’t bothered before, but probably should now if she was back on Earth. Conjuring a black skirt and a white button-up shirt worked perfectly. So did providing a couch identical to that of the women’s ward for Devon to rest on. Yet she could see down the sandy street, past the blown-out buildings. This was definitely Brakket City.
Or some deep delusion she had subconsciously built in her domain.
