Eva didn’t get a chance to ponder any further. Behind her, one of the tentacles twitched. She whirled around with her great razor wings spread to their maximum wingspan. A thin beam of light stretched from some indefinite point overhead down to the highest tip of the… brain.
Ah, it’s trying to reconnect with its severed self before trying to regrow the segment. Perfect.
“
Hopefully the spikes of blood wouldn’t hurt the ritual. None were near any glowing lines, so it was probably safe.
Gritting her teeth, Eva severed another tentacle before it could become a problem and pinned it to the ground.
Eva had been about to turn over her shoulder and shout at the avatar to incinerate all the tentacles. She stopped the moment she caught sight of Void.
All the fiery glow had dimmed to barely embers. The mane of flames making up its hair had gone out, leaving just the smoke from the main body. Behind him, Eva could see the light from the ritual circle fading out around the edges. The bright violet grew faint pink before being extinguished entirely.
And it didn’t stop at the edge. The color drained further inwards, starting slow but moving faster and faster. In seconds, the absence of light spread all the way up to Eva’s central position, leaving her with no light save for the evening rays of the sun.
“Was that supposed to happen?” Eva shouted. Maybe she actually had messed something up with the ritual circle.
Behind the hulking form of Void’s avatar, Genoa brought a foot up. Her movements weren’t quite steady. She wobbled a little as she put weight on her foot. Still, she managed to stand on her own two feet. It took a few more moments, but others started standing as well.
Shaking her head, Eva refocused on what had once been Vektul.
But it was no longer moving. The twitches in the tentacles stilled as it lay slumped into its own flesh. The beam of light vanished just as quickly as it had come. Eva watched it for a few moments, waiting to see if it was merely pretending. When stabbing its main mass with her wings elicited no response, Eva finally turned away.
Ignoring the slowly recovering humans and demons around the arena, Eva blinked out of her circle and right in front of Arachne. She was still the three-story-tall smoky Avatar of Void, but the last embers of what had been glowing within her had died down. Nothing but wispy black smog remained behind. Yet it still stood mostly upright on its hind legs, supported by the lower pair of arms. It hadn’t collapsed into a formless pile of smoke.
“Arachne,” she said, voice soft. Though she didn’t really wait for an answer. She had a feeling that she would have been waiting for a rather long time.
Before, Eva had been distracted. Between being locked in place, the ritual, Arachne, Vektul, and the avatars, one thing slipped her mind. She hadn’t actually checked Arachne with her blood sight. Not since the first part of the ritual had finished, at least. Now, closer and with her head not quite as foggy, Eva stared at the avatar.
There was nothing left of her friend. No blood. No brains. Nor any organs. As far as she could tell with her sense of blood, there wasn’t anything in front of her at all.
Stretching out with timid fingers, Eva raked her claws through the smoke and encountered no resistance. Were it not for her eyes, she wouldn’t know that the thing was there at all. It didn’t even have a smell despite its appearance. She supposed that it might have a taste, but she wasn’t about to try licking it.
“That was a pain in the… everywhere. Especially my knees and my back,” Genoa said, brushing some dirt from her knees with one hand. Her other held tight to her dagger as she eyed the mass of smoke that was the avatar. “What’s happened? Is it done with?”
Eva shook her head before glancing towards Genoa. She had seen the woman coming through her blood sight and hadn’t even blinked an eye at her sudden question. “I don’t think so. I think something went wrong.” Eva pointed a finger up without raising her gaze to meet the eye overhead. “The portals are still there.”
Genoa made to glance up, but Eva waved a hand in front of her face. “Don’t look at it. It creeps me out.”
Nodding her head and licking her lips, Genoa said, “We can’t leave things as they are.”
