Devon smiled at his own little joke. He wiped it away before either of the other occupants of the room noticed.
He doubted other children got kidnapped and tortured very often either. Sure, a few did. There were a lot of children in the world so statistically some must get kidnapped and tortured. But not most.
But who knew. Maybe they did. It wasn’t like he had experience with the little monsters.
A hospital gurney sat in the common room of the women’s ward. The gurney looked new; it surely wasn’t a fixture of the prison beforehand. Wherever Arachne got it from, he hoped it stayed out of sight and off the cameras.
The last thing he needed was demon hunters running around.
Eva lay on top of the gurney. She happily awaited having her legs chopped off at the hip. Not a hint of nervousness touched her face.
Was that normal child behavior? Or teenager behavior?
Or was it something to do with the treatment. Devon hadn’t observed drastic changes in Eva’s behavior over the course of the last eight years. There were no drastic, instantaneous changes to her body, so any mental changes would have been gradual as well, in all likelihood.
It was times such as this that Devon wished he had a control subject. Some little girl exposed to the same, or at least similar experiences who would have grown up with Eva. It would have been difficult to replicate the home life or events surrounding Eva’s first encounter with Devon, but probably not impossible to get close.
But that would have been just another incomprehensible child following him around.
Of course, her calm smile might be on her face simply because of a bucket load of potions she downed beforehand.
Despite all his complaints, Devon wasn’t actually about to stop it. Eva already had Arachne’s hands. He didn’t anticipate significant contamination to his experiment that wasn’t already there.
Above all else, he was curious about the procedure. Experiencing first-hand the merging of a human body and a demon limb had so far been unsuccessful. There were offers, to be sure, but none that asked a price he was willing to pay.
Eva underwent her treatment just a few days prior. Her teeth had sharpened further, though they were still largely indistinguishable from human teeth without a close examination. Her lack of eyes disappointed Devon. They had been by far the most rapid change to her human physiology.
Overall, he had a decent baseline to work off of and would be monitoring her closely over the next few weeks for any sudden changes the leg-change might cause.
Sure, he could find some other fourteen-year-old and chop off her legs. That wouldn’t risk any further contamination or the livelihood of his test subject. But then he’d have to find a new donor. Eva already had one.
Arachne was an interesting subject. It had a full exoskeleton with no internal structure. Arachne described in detail how the bone and the exoskeleton merged in Eva’s wrist. Eva had told him about her hands, how they felt to move and if she had to think about moving the extra joints in her fingers.
As far as he could tell, she didn’t have to think about her new hands any more than a normal human. Whatever demonic magics merged her hands had apparently rewritten her brain to be compatible with them.
That thought worried and excited Devon, mostly in regards to his own search for an arm. It opened plenty of opportunities he hadn’t been willing to consider before.
The legs were another matter. One he was, again, interested in seeing.
Arachne’s complete exoskeleton had no real analogue to the synovial ball-and-socket joints present in human hips. How would the magic cope with that. He assumed that it would rewrite her brain again to allow her use of the limbs, but how would the actual connection point articulate?
The spider-demon’s feet were only barely synonymous with human feet.
Rather than a human heel, the prominence at the posterior end of its foot terminated in a short, sharp spike. Just above that spike were four long claws similar to its hands. There was no connected tarse and metatarse in Arachne’s foot. Despite the similarity in appearance, the feet did seem less dexterous than its hands, however.
It would be fascinating to watch.
Eva was set on it. She’d already taken full body numbing potions. Devon carefully monitored her for any sudden health risks. It wouldn’t do to lose his test subject after so much work had been poured into her.
“Alright,” Devon said. “How are we doing this?”
“Last time, I bit off her arms. Human bone is nothing against my teeth,” Arachne said with a vicious grin. The grin quickly slipped into a frown. “But I don’t know that I can get her whole leg in my mouth. I could bite it off in chunks, but that might get messy.”
Devon grit his teeth and rubbed his forehead again. “You haven’t even decided on how to do this? And Eva’s already drugged herself up?” No wonder they wanted him to help. This was a disaster waiting to happen.
“Stab Arachne with my void dagger,” Eva slurred. “I’ll detach my own legs with her blood.”
“How do you know you’re not going to detach something important?”
“I have an acute sense of my own biology thanks to blood. I took numbing potions, not stupid potions.”
“Really? It’s hard to tell.”
Devon was certain that Eva tried to glare at him. Even if she had eyes, she couldn’t lift her own head.
“Fine,” Devon said. “And how are we getting Arachne’s legs off? You’re going to bleed out in seconds with your legs gone.”
“I can keep myself from bleeding out. Probably.”
Devon shut his eyes. A headache was on its way. “Probably?”
“Well, I’ve never recirculated my own blood before. There’s no reason why I can’t. Right?”
“You’re the blood mage,” Devon said with a shrug.
“And,” Arachne said, “she can remove my legs the same way. She’s done it before. Not to mention taking off Zagan’s arm.”
Eva winced in spite of the numbing potion. The last time that name was mentioned to Devon, several hours of angry shouting occurred. Mostly directed at Eva.
“So,” Devon said, pointedly ignoring the name for now, “why am I here?”
“If something does go wrong,” Eva said, “you would do everything you could to save me.”
“I’m considering finding myself a less troublesome test subject.”
“Liar.”
Devon sighed. “Where’s your knife? I really want to stab Arachne right now.”
“Table.”
The women’s ward common room wasn’t that large. Large enough to hold several cells, but the cells weren’t gigantic. In it, there was only one table. The small coffee table that normally occupied the center of the room. It had been shoved off to one side for the treatment the other day and hadn’t been moved back.
Devon found the dagger without trouble and, without waiting for any ready signal, plunged it into Arachne’s stomach. At least, it would have been the stomach on a human. He wasn’t sure on the minor details of its anatomy.
The knife dug only an inch or two into it. Either the knife was something special–a possibility due to its void metal nature–or Arachne had done something to allow the knife in. He’d seen Arachne shrug off knife attacks from men far stronger than Devon.
If it did die from such a little stab, he’d at least have something to gloat to it about whenever Arachne managed to pull herself back together in Hell.
Unfortunately, it didn’t die. Actually, a good thing. The decades it would require to revive itself would invalidate Eva’s experiment. He’d have to find a new subject and a new demon.
Arachne’s grin widened as it wiggled itself further onto the dagger’s blade.
Creepy bitch.
Streams of blood poured out of the wound. They formed rings. Two went and encircled the tops of Eva’s legs while another two mirrored the spot on Arachne.