Again, Lucy mulled it over before nodding. She deformed and reformed with Irene in her arms.
Her suit must be part of her body. There was no way it could just float in the swarm of tentacles and put itself back perfectly.
Eva idly rubbed her fingers on the trench coat. It might be tentacles too. Just a sheet of tentacles that had been colored and detached from the mass. It probably wasn’t since Daru wore an identical one, but the possibility was there.
Maybe I’ll get a new trench coat for master, Eva thought as Lucy ran off with Irene. His got more raggedy every time she saw it.
Eva shook her head. Not the time.
She sat down in the shadow of the elephant and started to carefully channel magic into herself for an infernal walk.
Five minutes and a quick flay through Hell had Eva stumbling out of her gateway circle in the prison.
After taking another minute to collect herself, Eva grabbed her old, crystalline dagger and her spare bloodstone–the one from Weilks. Fitting, she thought with a sardonic grin. The bloodstone was still unmounted, still too large to fit, but she could cut and then touch the bloodstone to the blood.
In fact, Eva thought. She slit open her arm and coated the bloodstone in enough blood to keep it aloft on its own. Quickly healing the cut, Eva rummaged through her spare vials of blood. Her stock had not recovered from Genoa’s attack. Less due to a lack of Arachne blood and more due to the shattered vials she hadn’t replaced. She pocketed two vials–enough for one good blood-claw, a dismemberment ring, or a small shield–and marched outside.
The area still looked like a war zone. They were supposed to clean up after themselves. Maybe they decided the day wasn’t over yet and they could clean up later. Eva couldn’t hear any signs of battle, so they must be done or taking a break.
Except they hadn’t ever taken a break while she was around.
Frowning, Eva headed towards Ylva’s domain. She pulled open the door.
A curled up Nel sat in front of Ylva’s throne. Her knees were pulled up to her chest. Very reminiscent of how Irene was acting before everything went to hell.
As Eva got closer, she could hear Nel mumbling to herself.
“They’re coming for me.”
Extra 007
An excerpt from Supernatural Flora, Fauna, and Things that Just Do Not Fit by Carlos T. Rivas:
How is one to classify magical life?
Mundane scientists begin with deciding whether or not the item of their interest is living. A reasonable starting point. They then categorize it based on its characteristics. Is it an animal? A plant? Fungus? And so on and so forth. They then further divide it down a list of taxonomic ranks until they end up with a the item’s scientific name.
However, mundane scientists exclusively deal with the mundane.
Or they did until the Lansing Incident. When the magical world’s masquerade was torn down to the rest of the world, all manner of researchers found a whole slew of new topics to explore. Since then, there have been numerous discussions on how the magical world’s many creatures should fit within biological classifications.
The simple fact is that many do not. Where is one to place the man who turns to a wolf on the nights of a full moon? If that were a sole exception, it could be classified relatively easily. A man and a wolf are not so far apart in taxonomic ranks.
Where then should the man who can turn into a tree be placed? Or the fae who turns to whatever it wishes on a whim?
Are vampires, ghouls, and liches even alive in the first place?
That has been the topic of much debate over the last few years. Many mundane creatures fit within a single classification. It might not always be perfectly neat, but at least mundane creatures do not often change domains or kingdoms.
With further study, it becomes clear that the standard hierarchy of biological classification’s eight major ranks are simply insufficient. New proposals have gone out through scientific circles to resolve this issue. From the simple adding of new categories to the extreme destruction and reconstruction of the entire taxonomic pyramid.
The most popular proposal is one of the simpler ones. A new binary rank. Any item is sorted first into mundus or magus. A cat will keep its current classification prefaced with mundus while a lamia or a goblin will fall under the magus category.
Some believe there should be another rank in addition. A plane rank.
It may come as a surprise to many, but a number of creatures living alongside us do not originate on Earth. Or at least not this Earth in some cases. These planes of existence, or realms to some, come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
Some realms could be mistaken for Earth by the unaware. Some are alien enough to make one wonder if they hadn’t walked into a storybook.
Most are accessed through specific rituals. Sometimes the creatures living on the other side need us to open a door for them, sometimes they can open a door from their end.
Fae originate from the Wyld. The Wyld is an exact copy of Earth as if it were looked at through a mirror. Most fae can use mirrors to hop between their version and our version of Earth.
Mirror-Earth is at least somewhat understandable to most people, but the fae are not the only ones to come from other places that the magical community has dubbed as planes of existence.
Demons hail from Hell. Yes, Hell is a real place and verifiably exists. No, you do not actually go there when you die. While the fae all live together in a version of earth, every demon is segmented into individual separate worlds. The worlds themselves are at the beck and call of the owner.
Volve come from another plane as well, though far less is known about that side of reality. While plenty of demons will talk about their ‘domains’ with enough enticement, volve tend to be far more volatile. Few humans have braved what the magical society calls The Corruption. Most do not return. The few who do tend to be far less… helpful.
Elves lost their origin plane and are now residing alongside humans in the mortal plane of existence.
For reasons unknown even to magical researchers, the mortal realm–Earth–is the plane of existence that all the others are bound to. Here connects to everywhere and everywhere connects to here. How and why are questions best left to other researchers.
Goblins, dwarves, gnomes, and plenty of other species all come from our plane of existence. The mortal plane. Even that, as shown by the Lansing Incident, is not everything it appears to be.
Who knows what secrets could be hidden even from the secret keepers in the magical society.
Perhaps in time, more revelations will be made that require modifications to how the scientific community views the world. For now, we must deal with what we have on hand.
Chapter 021
Eva vanished. Irene vanished. Worst of all, she was in history class.
Easily the most boring class at Brakket. Juliana found most of the practical classes to be fairly dull except on the odd occasion that they let her cast magic at her level instead of the class’ level. Zagan’s class turned out to be one of the better classes in that regard.
Zoe’s class was actually her favorite. She often challenged Juliana to think in new and unusual ways.
History tended to be the exact opposite.
Professor Carr wasn’t a bad person or a bad teacher. She made jokes every now and again, she spoke well, and she was very enthusiastic about history.
The biggest problem was that Juliana wasn’t.
She loved her mother’s tales of her mage-knight adventures. They were fascinating. Part of that was simple respect and love for her mother. The rest was sheer awe at what she’d accomplished. How much she’d survived.