“As cute—or disturbing—as it is to watch you two playfully argue with each other, I really am more interested in the goings on outside this street.” She ignored both their glares and continued. “Where is everyone else?”
“Gone.”
“Evacuated.”
“Brakket is abandoned.”
“Not likely to reopen anytime soon.”
“Your obelisk,” Devon thumbed over his shoulder, “scared most everyone away.”
“Anderson was quite upset given all the work he put into the tournament and the academy. Quite the embarrassment,” Catherine said with a vicious grin.
Eva snapped her head back and forth between the two, staring at each until the other began to speak. When it seemed that they weren’t going to continue their routine, she blinked. “Juliana? Shalise?”
“Both gone. Don’t know where they are,” Catherine said with a shrug. She was starting to get a little more animated, leaning forward and stretching out her wings. Perhaps her headache was going away. “I assume they both went home to wherever they lived before attending Brakket.”
Devon, on the other hand, still cupped his face in his hand, barely looking towards Eva even while speaking to her unless he really felt the need to glare. “Which I find concerning. If the girl truly has one of the seventy-two in her head–”
“She does.”
“Then who knows what kind of trouble they are getting themselves into.”
“Better to cause trouble away from us than live around here.”
Devon opened his mouth, but hesitated, considering Catherine’s words for a moment before he ended up nodding his head in agreement. “Can’t argue with that.”
“Zoe,” Catherine said, “is still around. She spends the nights either at the dormitory or her office. A few mage-knights wander around along with a few members of the Elysium Order. I’d be watching out for them if I were you. You’re obviously not an enigma, but they get jumpy sometimes.”
Good news. Zoe was still around. While Devon grumbled and Catherine was mildly helpful, Zoe would help her get in touch with Juliana, Shalise, and everyone else. Before handling the Avatar of Life, she hadn’t had much of a chance to ensure that everyone was alright. Catherine wasn’t mentioning any deaths, but she just might not care enough.
“Right. Going to visit Zoe then. Come find me when you two are feeling better.” She started to walk away, only to stop as a thought occurred to her. A small table built itself up between the two of them with a few glasses of water sitting on top. Sand had formed the water which Eva found somewhat strange, but shrugged her shoulders. It probably wouldn’t hurt either of them. Shalise and Lynn had drunk and ate things provided by her domain for months in the former’s case. Neither had turned out wrong in the end.
With them having a bit of water in case they needed it, Eva took off in a light sprint towards Brakket Academy. She considered blinking, but didn’t want to accidentally leave her legs behind in front of Devon and Catherine. Old-fashioned walking would have to do.
The moment she crossed over the threshold where sand met asphalt, something felt wrong. Just a queasiness in her stomach. Another step and she felt her foot starting to erode away as water splashed against it, dissolving the blood. A quick thought hardened the liquid all the way up to her knees as Eva scowled at the sight before her.
Gone was the asphalt of the street. Before her lay a black void, stretching on for eternity, filled with the familiar waters that surrounded her island.
She turned back to find Devon, Catherine, and the other demons still right where she had left them, along with the half-destroyed buildings in the immediate vicinity of the obelisk. Grinding her teeth together, Eva took a few steps back from the waters of Hell. The sky went back to a sky familiar to Earth. The rest of the street reformed behind her.
Stepping onto the asphalt, her foot plunged straight through as the street wavered like a mirage, splashing into the waters of Hell once again.
“Great. Just great.”
Beacon
“You really can’t leave?”
Eva shook her head. Taking one step forward, she fell through the asphalt as if it were nothing more than an illusion and splashed into the waters of Hell. Zoe blinked, glancing left and right to try to find out where she went. Eva took a step back before her professor could panic, she moved back onto the island proper.
Which only caused Zoe to jump back with a slight gasp. Closing her eyes momentarily as she let out a short sigh, she said, “You aren’t just blinking away and back, right?”
“I don’t know why I would do that.”
Zoe just shrugged. “That’s what it looked like from my perspective. I haven’t forgotten how you disappeared when we very first met each other.”
