A sick feeling welled up in Nel’s stomach as she spotted piles of bones. The piles formed four distinct pillars, each capped with a human skull, all positioned around a circular table. A sacrificial dagger lay between two basins. An assortment of rings rested on one side of the table.
It was something that all augurs had been trained to recognize. Bones dug from a graveyard built up to form the soul binding altar. One of the easiest signs to recognize budding necromancers with. They would use the altar to call and bind ghosts to anchors.
And, since moving in with Ylva, Nel had discovered that soul binding was the greatest affront to Death. Even moreso than sealing ones own soul away into an immortal object made of gold. The souls to create ghosts were stolen directly from his plane of existence.
Yet it was one of the easiest branches of necromancy to start off with. All it really required was digging up a graveyard. Even the more squeamish of necromancers could do it. No killing required.
Back at the origin point of the scrying, Nel couldn’t help but frown at what she saw.
Sawyer was lying flat on his back between two operating tables. His wide smile was missing from his face.
While covered in blood, he didn’t actually appear injured. Nel couldn’t spot a single injury. There was, however, a pulsing lump of violet fused with his hand.
That probably had something to do with his condition.
Nel almost wanted to cry out in frustration. He couldn’t just die. Not without being killed first. And made to suffer.
A slight movement of the collar on his button-up shirt quashed Nel’s rage. Moving her view closer, she could see that he was breathing.
Satisfied for the moment, Nel looked around the rest of the operating theater. One of those enigma creatures was dismembered on top of one table, mostly unmoving.
The other table held a far more gruesome sight.
The little girl who Sawyer referred to as ‘honey’ or ‘Des’ had her chest carved open. Eyes wide with panic, she was in the middle of swinging her ribcage shut. The bones appeared to be attached to the rest of her with hinges of some sort. As soon as she snapped it into place, the girl pulled a needle and thread off the side of the table and started stitching herself together with skilled fingers.
She had obviously done it more than once.
Before she managed to seal up her skin, Nel spotted something. She did not, in any manner of the word, profess to being an expert in anatomy. However, she was relatively certain that eyes did not belong on the inside of the chest. Whatever rapidly pulsating organ that they were connected to was probably not supposed to be there either.
It looked like a miniature brain.
Even for an augur, that would be strange.
Nel grit her teeth. Those are my eyes.
She must be the one preventing augurs from finding them. Her panic must have caused a lapse of concentration. Or perhaps Sawyer severed something he shouldn’t have when he fell–there was a bloodied scalpel on the floor near his hand.
Once Des finished sewing herself up, she jumped off the operating table and started fretting over Sawyer. An action that boggled Nel’s mind. Des had been as much a victim of Sawyer as she had been during her brief stay in his care.
After watching a bit longer–Des had apparently decided that amputating Sawyer’s hand was the best course of action–Nel pulled herself out of her scrying and got up from her seat.
It didn’t look like whatever was preventing her augur abilities would get itself fixed soon. If Sawyer regained consciousness, he would also have to realize that Des’ brain-eye thing was broken. That should buy time on its own. Even if he did notice, Nel had a good idea of the location. A sign welcoming visitors to Nevada had been a short way along one of the roads.
For now, Nel needed to find Eva.
Swapping fetters to the long strand of black hair, Nel frowned. More of the inky nothingness. A different inky nothingness, though no less familiar than that of Sawyer’s scrying protection.
Eva was somewhere in Hell.
Chapter 022
Eva wasn’t jealous.
Not the slightest little bit.
Prax’s domain was something special.
Willie’s domain had been… less than entrancing. His theater was fancy enough, on the inside at least. But at no point could Eva recall just stopping and staring with a gaping mouth. The only thing of any real note was his golden bee statues. Those just didn’t appeal to Eva.
The first time she had entered Ylva’s domain, she was struck dumb with a sense of awe. The bottomless pit and the storm clouds overhead framed her throne, combined with the massive open space of her main room and it all added to her larger-than-life presence.
It was impressive, as was the rest of her domain, but it didn’t resonate with Eva.
Ylva’s domain fit her. It fit Eva’s regal image of Ylva. Yet, it wasn’t something that Eva thought she could spend an eternity within.
But Prax… he had a castle.
A big castle.
No. Not just big. Immense. Eva had to crane her neck to see the top of the tallest tower. It stretched so high into the sky–if sky was the proper word for it in Hell–that it took her stomach out from under her. The vertigo from staring had her stumbling a few steps as she fought to regain her balance.
That stumbling almost sent her over the edge of the bridge that connected the landing point to the main gate. The bridge was large enough that she should never have been within twenty feet of the edge, but Eva had wanted to see what they were bridging over.
A bottomless pit. Because of course it was a bottomless pit.
Jealous though she was of the castle itself, Eva could do without bottomless pits in her domain. Even if her domain ‘caught’ her should she fall, it really just seemed like an unnecessary hazard.
Moving away from the edge, Eva decided to focus on a portion of the castle a little lower. The main building.
Obsidian bricks that were probably larger than Eva standing on Arachne’s shoulders made up the entire structure. While the walls themselves were smooth and glossy, the shape was blocky and angled for the most part. No spikes adorned the walls, as she might have expected given how Shalise described Prax. The only thing similar were the four spires reaching above the tallest tower.
Now far from the edge, Eva felt safe glancing up once again. Dark clouds hung overhead, threatening rain. It probably wouldn’t start raining unless Prax or Shalise wanted it to, but the atmosphere was set.
As they approached the colossal wooden gate that separated the bridge from the castle proper, Eva’s initial shock wore off.
And she frowned.
Ylva’s domain fit her regal bearings. Willie’s domain had fit his theater-demon nature.
Eva hadn’t seen any other domains. She had visited Arachne’s domain, but had lacked eyes at the time. Same with the abattoir, if that was even an actual domain. As such, she didn’t have much to compare it to. But…
Prax’s domain did not fit him.
Not that she had ever seen or even spoken with the demon directly. But Shalise had described him and his mannerisms. A red-skinned muscle-bound hulk of a cambion did not quite mesh with the elegant structure before her.
Rather, this domain looked more like what she imagined Zagan lived in. He was titled the Great King, one of the seventy-two pillars of Hell, after all.
Eva wasn’t certain what did fit her image of Prax, but this… just wasn’t it.
Shaking her head, Eva glanced towards her companions.
Nothing bad had happened to Shalise upon dropping in. So that was.. good. But she also hadn’t said a word.
If Prax had done something to switch places with her again, Eva wasn’t certain what she would do. Zagan likely wouldn’t help out a second time. Eva still hadn’t made any progress on puzzling out what he might want that would be worth potentially drawing the Keeper’s attention by helping Shalise out of Hell.