Only now, her Power was taking a nap while they needed it.
Attacking Serena didn’t quite sit right with Eva. Serena was one of those few who she would protect first. Not first first. Arachne was first. There were probably several other people between Arachne and Serena. But Serena was definitely not an ‘everyone else.’
Eva’s hesitation took the choice out of her hands.
Serena sailed straight over the top of Shalise, grabbing hold of the tentacle and stopping it mere centimeters from Shalise’s face. Her feet touched down just on the inside edge of Shalise’s circle. The second her feet hit the stone, she spun around and flung the snake-like tentacle right towards Eva.
Raising one of her bone-shaped wings, Eva caught the tentacle like a pencil might catch a straw. As the tip of her wing passed through the tentacle’s body, she left several deposits of blood. A clap of her hands vaporized the entire thing.
Back near Shalise, Serena collapsed with one arm propping her up and the other curled across her chest. Right where her coat was torn from being tossed into a tree. It looked at first like she had been forced to kneel. Eva quickly spotted the gash in the vampire’s puffy coat sleeve. A fine gray powder leaked out from inside. She didn’t stay down for long. A second or two later, she dashed off, making haste in removing herself from the ritual circle.
Eva found herself grinding her teeth together. That answered that question. Serena was her own person and she would be on their side for the foreseeable future. She had even gotten injured doing so. Some sunlight must have made it through her coat. The dust was ash.
Bradley Twillie’s magizoology classes only covered vampires lightly. Eva hadn’t signed up for more in-depth classes as she chose golemancy and warding as her electives. As such, she wasn’t sure how well Serena could heal from sunlight damage. Hopefully well enough with time and blood. If not, Eva might consider chopping off her own arm and seeing how well it grafted onto a vampire. Just as thanks. As a soon-to-be full demon, a severed arm should only be an inconvenience for a short time.
So long as Eva paid proper attention, Serena shouldn’t need to intervene again. Unfortunately, even as she clapped her hands together to destroy another tentacle, Eva realized that she wouldn’t be able to contain the avatar for long. It was a war of attrition and not one that she could keep up in. Soon enough, her prepared bombs of blood would run out. She could move on to slicing off tentacles with her wings or generate more blood and throw it around the ritual circle. But for how long? How long would the Avatar of Void remain dormant?
Indefinitely, obviously. Realization dawned on her.
They had messed up.
The ritual would never reactivate Void’s avatar. It wasn’t intended to. This ritual was designed to bring the slice of Life’s brain into the mortal realm. The previous ritual had been the one to summon Void. They would have needed to swap the positions of the two avatars and then reset the lines Eva had been forced to claw into the center. Perhaps they would have needed to have gone over the entire thing again from start to finish in order to make sure that no other changes had been made by Void while the avatar had been crawling around the circle. Which was entirely possible.
And entirely too late. They had already restarted. Eva could try skewering the ritual circle again. But she couldn’t remember the exact spots she had hit. If that had even been the actual cause of the ritual shutting down in the first place. Eva still wasn’t so sure. With a ritual circle as large as they had, there were bound to be minor flaws in the stone or elsewhere around the area that Catherine and Zoe hadn’t caught. Catherine had said that none of the spots her spikes had touched should have been interacting with anything else.
Can’t dwell on the past. What could she do about it now?
Void wanted to corrupt Life. How? Eva hadn’t the slightest clue. Likely some enigmatic method known only to the Power.
Would destroying this segment of the brain put Life into dormancy long enough to come up with a better plan?
No. Void had said that Life would simply grow it back. It was possible that the avatar had meant over the course of millions of years, but its statement about how they only had a few chances at this made her think otherwise. Hopefully it hadn’t already grown it back and that was why the earthquakes and lightning had started up. If so, they may all be wasting their time trying this ritual again.
A bolt of lightning struck not far from Eva. The tip of her wing pierced through the expanding mass left behind. She took care not to scratch the surface of the stone as she hoisted the wood-like lump into the air and clapped her hands together.
A second, much thinner beam hit Vektul. Unlike the other lightning bolts, which all came from some abstract point overhead, this beam came straight down from the eye. It didn’t fade away immediately either, but neither did it grow in intensity. Just like before.
Activity on the mass of flesh tripled in intensity as more and more tentacles started sprouting off the sides. A slab of skin slid down from the top, revealing a massive eyeball with a lopsided pupil. Looking closer, it wasn’t the pupil that was lopsided. Several other smaller eyes bulging out from the large one just made it seem that way.
Was this it? What Void had been talking about? Life might be trying to reconnect with its severed part. Assuming Void had intended to begin corrupting Life right away, then conditions were now ‘perfect‘ to use its word. Or it would be perfect if the avatar was actually active.
Eva glanced back over her shoulder. Just a quick glance at the body of the immobile avatar. She had been holding out just a slight glimmer of hope that it would wake up and fix everything. But it looked like that wasn’t the case.
It would be up to her to figure something out.
Eva blinked as another bolt of lightning hit the ritual circle. This one was too far. Near the edge. Rather than a mass of flesh, this one looked more like a base enigma. It didn’t quite have enough legs and its back was smooth. Eva didn’t get much of a chance to stare at it any further. Blinking again, it had tumbled over on top of the ritual circle, leaking blood. Or rather, its insides weren’t inside anymore. Another blink and it looked like nothing had ever happened.
Which was great news. The only ones Eva could think of who might be able to do such a thing were Juliana and Zagan. If they were keeping people safe along with Serena, Eva could take a moment to think.
Eva dropped her shoulders, letting her wings shift to compensate for another tremble in the ground. Slowly she turned to stare fully at the Avatar of Void, only keeping watch on the Life equivalent through her sense of blood.
Could she draw out a summoning circle in the air, just around the smoking beast? They had needed this massive circle to summon whatever sliver they had managed to pull through, but the body was already there. Surely it could slip through a standard summoning circle and take over what was already here.
So long as she used her blood and kept it off the primary ritual circle, it shouldn’t interfere. So long as she had her ritual circle theory down. Zoe’s class wasn’t really supposed to go in depth into that subject for another year or two. It might have been a good thing to research up on her own prior to starting anything, but it was obviously too late now.
Eva threw out an arm. With it, a stream of blood snapped around the avatar. Inside the perfect circle, Eva drew out a star and several assorted lines and sigils. Constructing it out of blood took mere seconds thanks to her being able to build the entire thing with nothing more than a thought. She didn’t have an enticement to toss in. If the avatar’s body wasn’t enough of an enticement for Void, she didn’t know what would work.
Unable to move closer, Eva left a thin strand of blood stretched between her and the circle. She treated it like an extension of her own arm and forced her magic through it and into the summoning circle.