Juliana and Genoa were both forward a bit more, both looking out the window. Even after her brief run around her house, Genoa wasn’t looking significantly worse off than she had during their earlier discussion. Still strained, but maybe even better. She didn’t look quite so out of breath as Eva would have expected. Getting out of the house and getting some fresh air might have done her a world of good.
Zoe rounded out their group for the moment. She wasn’t paying so much attention to the doll outside. Her focus was on her cellphone. She was coordinating with other members of Brakket staff to find any possible missing students. Saija’s warning about the recently deceased demon and how he had likely broken some part of their contract.
Given that she was looking much calmer than she had when Saija first mentioned the possibility, Eva was guessing that the headcount was going well.
Srey had gone to find out where Vektul was on Eva’s request. The demon was somewhat essential to Eva and somewhat absentminded. There needed to be some measures in place to ensure he didn’t go do something stupid.
Like run off and try to speak with the doll. For all Eva knew, the doll would strongly object to interacting. Srey had worried that any even extraordinarily minor breach in their contracts would set the doll off. Something that was only a breach because of some innocuous wording that nobody would have complained about under normal circumstances.
Eva didn’t have a contract. So she was feeling fairly safe around the doll at the moment. Neither did Arachne, but Arachne hadn’t been summoned in the usual manner. Eva wasn’t so sure how they might react if brought near each other.
Though, at the moment, Eva wasn’t sure that the doll was even alive anymore.
For the fifteen minutes Eva had been back at Brakket, and longer according to Irene, the doll hadn’t moved. No breathing, no fidgeting of the arms. The doll hadn’t even blinked, as far as she could tell.
Nobody had gone near it. Anderson had made an announcement over the Brakket speaker system warning against going outside. Genoa and Juliana, being unable to teleport long distances on their own, had to have Zoe bring them inside to avoid going too near the doll.
They might have been able to sneak in through one of the back doors, but it was best not to take any risks with someone who could apparently fall out of the sky to skewer people.
“Nobody missing,” Zoe said as she slipped her phone back into her pocket. “However, Cindy Lovechild’s roommate has been unable to wake her. Wayne took her to the school nurse.”
Saija stepped forward, making sure everybody noticed her before speaking. “If Timothy had enraptured someone in his delirium, they should recover soonish now that he’s gone.”
“How soon?”
“A day or two,” Saija said with a shrug.
“I suppose that is good. I’ll let them know,” Zoe said, pulling her phone back out. “However,” she said with a nod towards the window, “what do we do about her?”
“If she doesn’t ever move, I suppose we could put her up on a pedestal. A free new statue for the school.”
“Eva…”
“Or we could try to talk to her. She was open to speaking the last time I encountered her.”
“Alright. What do we say then? ‘Please leave?'”
“Or find out what she is sticking around for. Maybe another demon has broken its contract in the area.”
“If that is the case, perhaps we should offer our assistance.” She sighed, rubbing her forehead. “I told Anderson that his grand idea was idiotic. One of his perfectly innocent demons has already gone off the wall. When will the rest?”
“Hey,” Saija said. “I’ve got no such plans. I’m rather enjoying myself as I am. I don’t need a sword through my gut either.”
Eva turned back to the window, biting her lip. Being his school, Anderson should be the one out there speaking with the doll. He had a demon bound to him. He should know what it was.
But he was nowhere to be seen or heard of, save for the announcement he had made.
The only real reason why he might not be out there was because he broke his portion of the contract somehow. Perhaps he was worried about being dragged down to the abattoir.
Why isn’t the doll going after him then?
Maybe it was waiting for more orders from Void or the Keeper. Wherever it got its orders from.
She could speculate all she wanted. It wasn’t going to change matters until someone went down there to speak with her.
“We shouldn’t all go down at once. It might startle her,” Eva mumbled to herself.
Not quiet enough, apparently.
“You’re not going alone,” Arachne said almost instantly. “In fact, you’re not going at all. Someone else can deal with this. You don’t need to be involved in all the things that go on around this place. You’re already involved in enough.”
Eva shook her head. “You might think that, but there are enough complications around Brakket as is. It is in our best interest, and everyone else’s, to ensure that another one doesn’t crop up from this. I’d prefer if everything went as smooth as possible in the future.”
Like the ritual, she mentally added. With everyone around, she wasn’t about to speak aloud. Arachne should understand without being explicitly told.
She still wasn’t sure what to do about the ritual. They had cleared that area of the wilderness beyond the prison, but so long as the demon hunters had that replica of the nun’s ability to crack the sky, using that field was somewhat untenable. Perhaps if they had someone running an actual distraction for them. They could still be caught off-guard by a beam of light from the sky.
That wasn’t to say that the wilderness they had started on was the only possible location. The Infinite Courtyard was another possibility. It was still open to the sky, but at least it had Brakket Academy surrounding it. They could set up some sort of defenses around it.
A blood shield might work. It would have to be enormous. Larger than any Eva had ever made. She was fairly certain that she could power it through bloodstones. Provided her minion in Florida had done his job in finding suitable targets for more bloodstones, it could potentially be run indefinitely.
The only real problem with that was that she wasn’t sure how well a shield might hold up to an attack of that magnitude. Her blood shields were strong. Stronger than anything she could produce through thaumaturgy. But strong enough to withstand what was essentially a massive laser from the sky?
Eva wasn’t so sure.
The other option she had considered was somewhere indoors. Someone had set up a thaumaturgical ward that expanded what would have been a few hundred square feet into a few square miles for the Infinite Courtyard. Surely something similar could be done to a room. She wouldn’t even need a single square mile of space. So the ward could be drastically scaled down.
It would be much safer than going outside. Depending on who Eva had to get to set up the ward, the whole thing could be kept much quieter as well. No big fanfare or large crowds to find out what might be going on if people stumbled across the ritual circle. It could all be done in the privacy of one of the side rooms in the women’s ward.
She would cast the spell herself, but she had only been in her warding class for two months. Not even quite that. They hadn’t even discussed spacial expansion. What they had discussed was complex enough that Eva doubted anything useful would be covered for some time.
The teacher, Professor Chelsea Lepus, seemed the easygoing sort so long as her class wasn’t being interrupted. Eva might have to ask her.