“Bartimeaus, how are you? I haven’t seen you in ages, is that a new mace?”
Eve’s hair blew wildly in the wind of the night. A cool mist sent a chill through her, despite the egregiously long, beige, trenchcoat she now wore.
, she thought,
Jace stepped in front of the group as they walked and approached the great stone behemoth with open arms. “Wow it really smells like brimstone over here tonight, you guys are crushing it with the ‘shock and awe’ effect, huh? Love the mist. Great touch.”
The gargoyle shifted slightly, regarding the group behind Jace. Behind it a decrepit looking metal sign read “VEILWARD MILITARY ACADEMY OF THE MORTUARY ARTS”.
A rockslide of a sound came from the gargoyle.
“Oh, them? They’re boring, just a stupid study group I was hosting at my place. The one in the coat had a little too much –” he made a drinking motion with his hands – “you know what I mean? We’ve all been there.”
Nisha motioned for them to keep walking.
“But hey, listen, I was around campus the other night and – what? Oh, come on, you know me, I wouldn’t – well, anyway, I was walking around campus and I saw the most grotesque, disfigured, absolutely gigantic female gargoyle…”
Jace’s distraction faded into the background as they walked through the cast-iron gates.
A chill ripped through Eve. She buried her face in the soft cotton of her father's old jacket. The scent of parchment and ink tickled her nose as she inhaled a ragged breath. It smelled like home. Like some of her earliest memories. Like dad.
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Through the warm folds, Eve could make out a great onyx building up ahead. Dark spires reached up into the night sky, the ghoulish faces of countless gargoyles looked down in perpetual judgement. The walls spilled down from the sky and dug into the earth greedily, as if they had been raised from the very soil itself. The word “Administratorium” was chiseled neatly into the stone.
, she thought,
It had only been a few months since she'd been kicked out. Since she'd ruined her and Nisha's grand plan of graduating together. It had felt like years - this was where she was supposed to be. Where she was raised to be. She leaned hard into Arric’s chest, bracing herself against the pain of a deep breath. She’d needed it to steel herself.
It was a cruel irony that Arric’s soul shard was the first on her path to expulsion. The first shard she’d mined from the Incorporeum on her own. “Illicit” they called it. “Unregulated”.
“We need to get you to the campus hospital. They handle all of the incoming wounded from the training grounds and from the war,” said Nisha. “It’s going to get us as close to ‘no-questions-asked’ as you can get. It’ll be more like, ‘questions-asked-but-when-the-war-allows-it’.
“War?” Eve felt Arric pull her closer to his chest. His fists clenched. “What war?”
“Well…Thanacea has been at war with The Dominion for abo–”
A scream flooded Eve’s throat as the blade inside her heart pulsed. Her voice bounced endlessly through across the stone walls and towers of the campus.
“Eve? Wha –”
The blade vibrated, twisted, shooting pain through the wound as she gasped.
Eve could hardly make out Rose's thoughts through the pain.
“Go…please” She gasped as her chest filled with blood.
“Run! This way, to the hospital. Follow me!” Nisha shouted.
Arric moved. Eve couldn’t control the spasms that shot through her legs, her arms. If she could focus on the pain she’d have wondered how Arric managed to carry her at all.
“Eve,” he whispered as best he could as his footsteps pounded against the brick beneath him. “Eve, hang on. We’re going to get you help.”
The cold metal of the blade drove itself even deeper into her chest. She could feel the pressure of its guard as it drove down into her ribs, crushing her. Leaving indentations in the skin. Harder and harder.
A sharp crack echoed across the campus as her ribs gave way. Another crack, a moment later.
Her heart was still beating as it hit the stone. The blade clattered next to it. Lifeless.
