At least nothing worse than snow had fallen from the sky. Not since the enigmas had crashed down three days ago. Apparently one was still unaccounted for. Nel had seen eight things fall. Between Ylva, the Brakket security, Genoa, and Eva’s own enigma-demon creature, they had only dispatched seven. However, nobody around the city had mysteriously disappeared. Nobody had reported anything wrong. Not even pets had gone missing, apparently. Of course, nothing said that wild animals and birds weren’t being consumed in droves.
While she wasn’t too worried, the missing creature was cause for some concern. It was the other demon-feeling creature. She had tried to track it, but the feeling was so faint that she could hardly tell it existed, let alone where it existed. If it was anything like the other one, it would be fleeing from people rather than trying to eat them. So that was a plus. If it had tentacles on its back, it might even be trying to eat itself continuously, preventing it from causing any trouble.
She still had warned Anderson and his security force. They would try to locate it.
Eva wasn’t holding out much hope.
More importantly, she had arrived at the ritual circle. And found a single butterfly fluttering around in her stomach upon seeing it.
Her ward had held. In fact, it was still holding.
The hemisphere that was her ward had a thin layer of snow coating the entire thing. A giant dome of snow. It was thinner in some parts than others. The base where the dome met the ground was especially thick. But because of its size, it had a fairly gradual curve to it. Plenty of area for the snow to land on and not slide off. There were probably ways to prevent the dome from forming—infusing the ward with some heating element would probably work to melt it all off—but Eva hadn’t constructed it with that in mind. Truthfully, she hadn’t even considered that it would dome up like it had.
Raising a hand, Eva sent out a wave of fire magic-powered heat. Enough to form a decently sized doorway. Her melting disturbed the snow above the doorway for a good few feet, sending it all crashing down onto the ground. Thankfully, the ward worked perfectly fine on water as well as snow and kept the rapidly liquefying snow from pouring into the ritual circle itself.
Which meant that the ice-cold water ran right over her feet instead.
Eva hopped back, taking in a slight hiss of breath as she lit her feet on fire. Maybe a bit of an overreaction, but she really didn’t like the cold.
With dry though still slightly dirty feet, Eva stepped into the dome.
Her jaw just about hit the floor. Few things could actually make Eva stop and stare. Especially not general scenery. But the interior of the smooth crystal dome stopped her cold. Sunlight filtered through the layer of snow in thin rays. Weak sun, as it had already been stopped from its full brightness by the somewhat overcast sky outside the dome, but that was fine. If it were brighter, it might ruin the effect. Where the rays didn’t pierce the thin layer of snow, the sunlight diffused across the entire dome. It was like looking at a night sky except inverted from pitch black to brilliant white.
Pretty, but it really had to go.
Snapping out of her reverie, Eva turned slightly towards the entrance she had made and watched as her two followers stepped inside with the same slack-jawed gazes that she had initially walked in with. Luckily, she had been at the head of the group and therefore had not shown off her face to any of them. So she put on a slightly condescending smile instead.
“It’s beautiful,” Anise said. Her voice snapped Chris out of her gaze. Though Anise stayed staring at the ceiling, Chris turned to stare at Eva.
“Bit conspicuous, isn’t it? Giant white dome in the middle of the forest? You did mention that you wanted to keep this place a secret from others.”
Eva grinned as Arachne moved up to her side. “I’ve actually told a few people, getting second opinions on the project as well as double-checking that there are no errors in our work. However, you’re right,” she said with a nod of her head. “I’ll be spending some time walking around the thing, melting off the snow.”
“Aww,” Anise said, drooping her shoulders. “But it looks so pretty. I can’t believe I’ve never seen it around a weather ward before.”
“That’s because regular weather wards aren’t supposed to do this. Miss genius over there screwed up in her casting,” Chris said, waving her hand in Eva’s direction.
“Hey, it was my first time casting a ward of this type and of this size. Before this, a dinner plate was about the largest I had tried. I think I did pretty good.”
Chris crossed her arms, staring at Eva while making a slight ‘uh huh’ noise without opening her mouth. After a moment, she shook her head. “But you have some explaining to do.”
