Luckily, in her search for both the ritual for Sawyer and the ritual she had wasted a bloodstone on healing Sister Cross, Eva had come across some rather interesting rituals.
One in particular looked all too enticing. Sawyer, of all people, had hinted at it the very first time he had captured Eva. Back when he had first snipped off her toes.
She really hoped that he hadn’t kept any of those. Eva made a mental note to see if Nel couldn’t track her missing limbs down. They were human limbs and had been taken a good year and a half-worth of treatments ago. For all Eva knew, she was too different now for them to be used against her in any meaningful way.
But Sawyer had found it humorous that Eva couldn’t reattach her own toes with a mere thought.
One ritual contained within the tome sounded a lot like it would accomplish just that. It offered such a great control of her own blood that an arm coming off would be a literal flesh wound. A wound as easy to fix as minor cuts were at the moment. It didn’t actually state how it would repair bone, but Eva assumed that she would be able to hold her arm together using blood until it could heal on its own.
That was, of course, assuming she could be damaged at all. Eva could already harden blood under her control to the point where it could be used as weapons. If, during combat, she could harden her flesh into armor, or perhaps pull a thin layer of blood outside her body to coat her skin, her durability would be through the roof.
As far as she understood the ritual’s effects, that is.
Unfortunately, Eva doubted she would be able to perform the ritual for some time. It required five bloodstones to be consumed in the ritual itself, plus an extra one embedded within her heart. That last one had to be replaced with startling frequency.
All the more reason to save her good bloodstones. If she could get away with not replacing that one by using a good one, she would take it.
Though most of her research had been centered on rituals, as those would be the most likely candidates for ways of finding Sawyer, she had looked through her tomes for any hint of bloodstone creation. If she could find a way to create everlasting bloodstones, it could be one of the most important discoveries in her haemomancy career.
Yet none of the books had any hint towards solving that mystery. She reread through the book that originally taught her how to make them to no avail.
By merely sitting back and theorizing, Eva felt that she had achieved more than she could have by reading the same old tomes on that topic.
Evidence showed that the more detailed and ‘proper’ the symbol used to create bloodstones was, the higher quality bloodstone was produced. During her first stint in Hell, she had created a bloodstone using her elbow. That had only lasted about an hour before crumbling to dust.
The symbol had just been the very basics. Really, it probably shouldn’t have worked at all. An elbow was far from a precision drawing instrument.
Drawing it out with Arachne’s precise claws produced a better result. She had been able to form more of the intricacies. Forming the symbol using blood magic itself produced the best result.
By that logic, an even more perfect symbol would create an even more perfect stone.
But how to create a more perfect symbol? Sure, she had been in a rush while creating the bloodstone from Weilks. But she had created ones before under less strenuous circumstances using that same method that hadn’t turned out significantly different.
So, was something missing?
Some knowledge of the symbol itself was perhaps lost to the ages? A small but key part?
Or else, the quality of the heart affected the quality of the bloodstone. Eva had no evidence for that idea, but it made sense.
Maybe, just maybe, humans just produced short-lived bloodstones being the short-lived creatures that they are. The book strictly specified humans and humans only as being able to be turned into bloodstones, but Eva had to wonder just how accurate that statement was.
Had the author tried on demons?
It was a thought she would have to table for now. Eva wasn’t about to go summoning up demons for experimentation. Definitely not while summoning demons might cause more enigmas to show up.
But if she ever came across Willie in a compromised and vulnerable position…
A throat clearing broke Eva out of her musings. She glanced up to find Erich glaring at her from across the table.
“Something you needed?” Eva asked with a polite smile.
“This, right here,” he flipped his book around to reveal the pages open to a diagram of a particularly complex set of shackles. “Would something like it work on you?”
Something must have changed in her expression. Though Eva couldn’t be sure what–she had tried to keep her face as neutral as possible–something definitely changed.
Erich’s free hand shot straight to the pocket that held his focus. He didn’t quite manage to pull it out before Juliana shouted at him.
“Erich! You just… I don’t…” She cupped her face in her hand, shaking her head side to side. “Could you just not.”
“No,” Eva said with a strained smile, “it’s fine.” Turning her whole body to face Erich dead on, Eva said, “do my limbs and eyes bother you?”
Erich frowned, but didn’t respond one way or the other.
“What about the thought of a little girl being strapped to a chair and having her limbs and eyes removed through repeated applications of rust and offal covered blades?”
Again, he didn’t respond. He did, however, shift in his seat. Uncomfortable? Perhaps?
Eva smiled, flashing her teeth. For a bare instant, she wished they were as sharp as Arachne’s teeth, if for no other reason than to set him further on edge.
On the other hand, Juliana was off to the side rolling her eyes. Eva was almost regretting having told her the real story.
Embellishments always made everything better.
“No? Feeling nothing about that?” Eva shook her head. “Quite the heartless brother you have, Juliana.”
Before Juliana could open her mouth and ruin the atmosphere, Eva got to her feet and leered over Erich.
It was a good thing that he was sitting. The effect would have been lost had he been standing. Erich was a few inches taller than her.
“How dare you judge me without having an inkling of an idea of what I have been through.”
Eva watched him shift and squirm in his seat, idly noting that Juliana was shifting around in much the same manner.
Probably trying to decide whether or not to interfere on her brother’s behalf.
That was not something Eva could allow. If he was so much as entertaining the idea of using shackles on her, Eva wanted to nip that thought in the bud. She was hoping that a little intimidation thrown around would dissuade other such attacks.
After letting him writhe for a good minute, Eva plastered a blatantly false smile on her face and retook her seat.
“To answer your question: no. Though I overcame torture and disability through demonic prosthetics, I remain human.”
A lie. And one that Juliana would know was false. But so long as Juliana, Shalise, Zoe, and Wayne all kept from spreading around the nature of her treatments, Erich wouldn’t know. Eva wanted to keep it as much a secret as possible.
With her quick speech delivered, Eva pulled up her book and pretended to read.
Instead of actually reading, she sat and watched the two of them through her blood sight.
She hoped that Juliana wouldn’t take offense at her theatrics towards her brother. As soon as that thought crossed her mind, Eva quickly resolved to never refer to anything she did as ‘theatrics’ in front of Juliana. She didn’t want any possible link or connotation between herself and Willie, the theater demon.