Juliana clicked her tongue and readied her wand. “Do we destroy them?”
“Probably too late at this point. Someone knows we are here. I doubt they matter.” He glanced around. “There should be another room here. I wasn’t told it would be hidden. Damn vanth.” He grumbled more profanity under his breath and set to inspecting the walls.
Eva sent orbs of light crashing against spots around the room. If an illusionary wall existed, the light would simply pass through it rather than splash against the wall. She wasn’t having much success after ten minutes, and started searching the walls with her hands as her master had done.
“Here,” Juliana called. “This bit of the wall is metal, not earth.”
Eva moved over to the blond. She was standing with her wand out in front of a section of the wall that Eva couldn’t tell was any different from the section next to it. Devon and Arachne joined a moment later.
Rather than thank her or praise her, Eva’s master just grunted. “Let’s find out how to open it then.”
“I could just destroy it, if you want.”
“Fine.”
Juliana flicked her wrist. Bits of rock fell from what now looked like a rusted sheet of metal. She tapped her fingers on the sheet. Metal turned to liquid and flowed up the sleeve on her shirt as her fingers moved.
The last of the panel disappeared, causing Eva to wonder just how much of Juliana’s body was covered in metal at the moment. Not a drop had been discarded.
Devon held no such wonders or if he did, he didn’t show it. He marched through the opening and opened a regular wooden door.
The room beyond was tiny in comparison to the cave. It had a modern cot from any sports store and a few blankets. There was a desk and a short bookcase.
Devon moved in and started snooping around the desk.
Eva leaned over to Juliana. “Do you have that shrinking suitcase on you?” she whispered.
The blond just shook her head.
Sighing, Eva moved over to the bookcase. Her small satchel for potions might be able to fit two or three tomes. Five if they were small enough. She grabbed a few with the most interesting titles and tucked them into her satchel. She handed another five to Juliana to do the same with her own backpack.
A grunt brought Eva’s attention to her master. He had procured a set of long-handled tongs from somewhere and was currently pulling a book out of a drawer of the desk. He set it on top of the desk.
The cover had no title. Just an embossed pentagram with a man touching the five points at his head, hands, and feet. Devon lifted the cover with his tongs and flipped a few pages in. Ink had been splattered over the pages, though not nearly as thorough as the book from Toomey’s shop. Large portions of text were visible and whole pages were nearly untouched.
“Poems,” Juliana said as she peeked over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” he said. He left the book lying open and flicked his hand towards it. Green fire instantly consumed the book and moved on to the desk.
“On a positive note,” he said, “I have an idea about that book you found. Downside is that I foolishly did not insist on its destruction upon seeing it.”
“What is it?” Eva asked.
“The contents of this book,” he pointed at the burning desk, “and the book you found were switched. How, I do not know. The book itself, however, is Exanimis de Mortuum. The title has vacuous meaning, something along the lines of Death of the Dead or Fear of the Dead. It is one of the few magical tomes that might be worthy of the title of grimoire, assuming it is the original.”
Eva frowned at that. She leaned against the bookshelf as the fire consumed the desk. She hadn’t given up hope on moving the rest of the books out of the small room. “They wouldn’t put this much effort into a copy, would they?”
“It is far more likely to be a copy. If it was the original, it wouldn’t be in the hands of a few backwater necromancers. They’re most likely trying to turn their copy into a grimoire with the powers of the original.”
“And the powers of the original are?” Juliana asked. She took a seat on the cot on the end opposite the one Arachne had taken.
“Supposedly able to call the souls back from Death and shield those dying from His gaze.”
“Doesn’t seem like something He would like,” Eva said.
Devon snorted. “Let me put it this way: if a second grimoire gets completed then I don’t want to be anywhere on the same continent. He will likely try to destroy it before it gets ‘settled in’ and I want no part of that.”
“Even if we destroy the copy, what stops them from finding or making another copy and trying again?”
A loud thunk interrupted her master. Eva blinked and Arachne had moved to standing in front of Eva.
Streams of profanity flowed from her master’s mouth as Eva uncorked her blood vials.
Chapter 016
“Damnit Arachne you damn demon,” Devon shouted.
Things quickly descended to chaos in the small room.
Eva’s master had thrown himself to the floor. He clutched one hand with the other. An arrow poked through to the other side of his hand.
“This is the sixth damn time you’ve done this.”
Juliana, to her credit, jumped at the action. She erected a large barrier to cover most of the doorway and was launching large chunks of earth at their attackers.
“The girl wasn’t even in line of sight of the doorway. You could have covered me instead.”
Arachne stood over Eva protectively. She ignored all of Devon’s ranting.
Eva hesitated. Her hand hovered just above the uncorked vials of blood, ready to pull the blood out into orbs and begin her own assault. But she hesitated.
Juliana focused on their attackers, launching attack after attack. Her face twisted into a cruel grimace as she pulled up more earth to block the other half of the door. After a moment, the extra earth dropped back to the ground and she resumed her attacks.
Eva wanted to keep her blood magics quiet as long as possible. If the situation was dire enough, she wouldn’t hesitate. For now, she’d help out elsewhere.
“Arachne,” Eva said, “if you can get out there and tear them to bits without getting hurt, go for it. I’ll get master up and be with you in a moment.”
The demon herself hesitated, but nodded and dashed through the narrow opening in the doorway between arrow volleys.
Eva pulled out three potions, one light blue, one yellow, and one violet. The antitoxin might not help against any strong poisons, but it couldn’t hurt and it was all Eva had.
“Damn arrows. Necromancers can’t even dignify themselves with proper magic.”
“Doubt they taught the skeletons magic,” Eva said as she tossed the vials on her master’s lap.
“Skeletons, you’re sure?”
“We passed ten thousand on the way in, why not fight ten thousand on the way out. Just take those potions and make yourself useful. I’ll run out of fuel long before I take out ten thousand.”
Eva left the grumbling man and moved to the side of the door opposite of Juliana.
“I wouldn’t peek your head out there,” Juliana hissed. She flicked her wand and more shards of the cavern wall broke away and flew out of sight. The blond didn’t peek around herself.
She hoped Arachne wasn’t being hit by friendly fire.
Eva pulled the blood out of a vial and formed it into the pattern for a shield. “Hold your attacks,” she said to Juliana. She waited for the blond to finish her volley of stones before snapping her fingers.
The shield sprung to life around the doorway.
“What is this?” Juliana asked.
Eva shook her head. “Ask later.” She desperately hoped the blond wouldn’t.
Eva waited for a few pings of enemy arrows to strike the shield–no sense getting skewered by something that could penetrate her defenses–and she peeked around the corner.
As Eva expected, the room had filled with skeletons. More entered at a steady pace from the tunnel at the top of the stairs. The skeletons did not seem to care about knocking into each other. Several were bumped over the thin railing guarding the stairs. None who fell into the greenish water ever surfaced.