Motioning with his hand, Devon led Eva down the cell block hallway. The moment they moved away from the cell door, the whine of twisted and torn metal echoed down the hallway. Devon didn’t stop moving so neither did Eva. He didn’t lead her far from the enigma’s room. Two doors away, he came to a stop in front of another cell. Eva slowed down, queasy feeling surfacing in her stomach as she peered in.
The demonic enigma felt more like a demon than an enigma. Normal enigmas gave her something of an upset stomach. In those terms, she much preferred the demon versions. However, turning the corner, she felt that familiar illness. Only a far weaker version. So weak that she hadn’t felt it at all a mere ten paces away.
It only took a quick glance into the room to realize where that feeling was coming from.
The tops of the tentacles were spaced out in the room. Each hovered just a few inches above a small air essence crystal. They snapped and nipped entirely impotently. Everything in the room, including the metal beds that would have been hung on the walls, had been cleared out. As far as Eva could tell, the room had even been swept and scrubbed clean. Devon certainly hadn’t been the one to sweep. For some reason, Eva couldn’t really picture Catherine doing any kind of manual labor either. It had probably been the carnivean.
Only the crystals and the enigma tentacle heads were in the room. Nothing else.
Of the six semi-spherical tentacle heads, two were marginally different from the rest. They were set apart from the others. One, the one that Eva had stopped from eating the cement of the sidewalk, was mostly unchanged from when she had last seen it—stony gray and slightly rough-looking. The others were all smooth and leathery.
One other had been placed right in the center of the room.
It was much larger than any of the others. Where Eva could hold one of the others comfortably in the palm of her hand—so long as it didn’t try to bite her that was—this one was much closer to the size of a thin cat. It actually looked a lot like a cat. Sort of. Maybe like a fat snake with stubby little legs. And it did have legs. Six of them, as all enigmas had. At least, all that Eva had seen. Unlike most standard enigmas, this one had fine and short hairs covering its body. A half-dozen nubs lined its back.
Despite its overall profile looking something like a cat—or maybe a squirrel?—its face was anything but. Four pale eyes twisted and turned to look around the room. Its head swiveled to face Eva as she moved into view. Round mouth baring its sharp teeth, it started snapping at the air.
“We’ve been feeding it.” Devon had his arms crossed over his chest. His tentacle didn’t quite sit still, moving much like a worm squirming to escape the grasp of his other arm. “It was Catherine’s idea. After hearing you talk about that cement one, she wanted to find out what would happen if they ate other things.”
Eva raised an eyebrow. Devon wasn’t one to refer to demons with proper pronouns. All demons were ‘it’ to him. Was it a slip of his tongue? Or was he starting to see Catherine as more of a person than a demon? There was a third possibility. He could be caught in some mental compulsions that Catherine had put him under. She might have grown tired of being called ‘it’ all the time.
She couldn’t even point it out. If she did and he started talking about Catherine again, he would almost assuredly call her ‘it’ out of either spite or embarrassment. Devon was all cantankerous like that. Unless it was Catherine’s compulsions. Assuming it wasn’t, if she mentioned it, then she would never know if it was a slip of his tongue or him actually calling her by a proper pronoun.
So Eva just nodded her head. “You didn’t feed it a demon, did you? Not like one of the carnivean’s tentacles?”
“A squirrel.”
Eva winced, but it was what she had expected. At least it wasn’t a cat. Not that Devon would care. Nor would Catherine, probably.
“Though feeding one a portion of the carnivean’s tentacles might be an interesting experiment. I’ll bring it up with Catherine.”
The carnivean wouldn’t be happy. Hopefully she wouldn’t find out about Eva’s involvement in sacrificing her tentacles to the enigmas. Though, if she did find out, it wasn’t like she could do much to Eva. Arachne had handily destroyed Qrycx on their first meeting. She would undoubtedly be able to do so again. In fact, Eva could probably take on the carnivean all on her own without breaking a sweat.
“So what’s the plan then? Just keep them here and feed them until they’re too fat to move?”
