The hulking brute standing behind Syd was easily the largest person Jadis had met so far during her time on Oros, though she almost had to second guess herself on the “person” part. He had to be more than seven feet tall as the top of his head nearly reached Jadis’ shoulders, though his great height was almost an afterthought. The truly eye-catching aspect of the man was that he was a bear.
Not a bear in the term Jadis thought of as large, hairy men, but a literal bear. His head was ursine in shape with a large muzzle, thick black fur, and distractingly cute round ears on the top of his massive head. In the instant she saw him, Jadis almost thought the man was literally just a bear standing on its hind legs, though a second’s longer inspection showed that while the stranger’s head was essentially identical to a grizzly bear, his body was more human in nature. While his shoulders were thick and wide, his arms were human-shaped and his clawed hands had a normal number of fingers. The shape of his lower body was no different from any other man’s would be, though like the rest of him his legs were thick and densely muscled with a heavy layer of fur and fat making him look even wider.
He was wearing a dark gambeson that looked like it was barely containing his bulk along with leather pauldrons and vambraces, though none of his armor looked to be made of metal. The only marking visible on the dark cloth was an imperial crest stitched into the breast, though he also had a strangely familiar marking etched into the leather of his pauldrons. The leather belt around his waist had two short axes hanging from it. In one hand he carried a flanged mace that looked almost comically small in his huge paw.
The other man in the duo who had managed to surround Syd from front and back was a much smaller human. He was five and a half feet tall, at the most, with a stocky and muscled frame. His plain face was unremarkable except that he had a twice broken nose. His hair wasn’t visible under the leather cap he wore, but his close-cut beard was as brown as his eyes.
He was also wearing a gambeson, though he had far more metal components to his armor pieces. He, too, had an imperial crest stitched into the breast of his chest armor as well as the same familiar symbol on his shoulder guards that tickled Jadis’ memory, though she couldn’t place where she had seen the pattern before. He wasn’t carrying any weapons beyond a sheathed dagger on his belt, though Jadis noticed that his forearms were wrapped in thick leather and metal bands while his hands were protected by metal-studded cestus.
Everything about the two men Jadis took in in the blink of an eye, her mind already gearing up for combat. She doubted the two men had approached one of her bodies while alone for good intentions. With her Jay and Dys selves already at the door to the Fortune’s Favored headquarters, she immediately went inside to alert the rest of her companions while she tried to stall for time with Syd. She didn’t have any of her weapons or armor on her and while she was confident in her ability to defend herself without them, Jadis wasn’t going to make the mistake of underestimating either man.
“What do you want?” Syd asked, standing at an angle to keep her back pointed towards the wall of the building on her right. “I’m kind of busy at the moment so—”
“You’re under arrest,” the hulking bear-man thundered in his ridiculously deep voice. “Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head.”
Syd blinked in surprise; the command was more confusing than angering. Why would the city guard be trying to arrest her? She had literally just walked out of city hall after a meeting with Vraekae. Except, Jadis didn’t think this bear was with the city guards. She’d never seen him or his short friend before, and they weren’t wearing the usual uniform, even if their armor had imperial crests.
“What’s the charge?” Syd asked, her voice incredulous.
“Suspicion of consorting with the Cult of Samleos and aiding demonic forces in their war against the people of Oros,” the bear-man intoned. “Comply now or we will use force.”
Cult of Samleos? Aiding Demons? What the fuck was this idiot talking about?
Jadis nearly lost track of what her various bodies were doing as she focused on the utterly insane accusation that the bear brute had levied against her. Considering how many demons she had slain in her efforts to protect both the city and Weigrun at large from being overrun, Jadis couldn’t possibly imagine that the charges were anything more than a joke. Except, she had just made a major shift in the understanding of demon kind by bringing Alex to light. From an outsider’s perspective, Jadis could see that as being viewed as some kind of tactic to stir up discord and division among the people when it came to demons.
But she had literally just gotten permission from Vraekae, the high arbiter of law in Weigrun, to let Alex basically walk free. None of this made any sense coming from a logical or legal standpoint. Vraekae wouldn’t go through all that show just to have her arrested out in the street. And these men weren’t guards, Jadis was more and more certain. No, they had the look of mercenaries. Or, considering the crests on their chests, soldiers. Soldiers could be commanded to make arrests, though that command wouldn’t have come from the Magistrate.
A command like that would have come from General Egilhard.
“Well, tell your fuckface of a leader he can come arrest me himself if he’s going to start slinging lies about me,” Syd snarled as her temper flared at the thought of the general interfering with her life again.
A deep growl from the bear shook the night, visibly causing the small snow flurries falling around them to vibrate in the cold air.
“Let’s not be stupid about this,” the smaller man said.
As he took a step forward, leatherbound hand reaching out towards Syd, Jadis reacted. Her right hand snapped out and grabbed hold of the smaller man’s wrist and whipped him around like a ragdoll. She hurled him at the bear man with enough force to throw him clear across the city.
At least, that’s what she tried to do.
As she spun and released her hold on the man’s wrist, he somehow moved fast enough to catch hold of her own right wrist in his other hand. The force of her movement still snapped his body out like a wet towel and his legs slammed into the bear’s chest, but to her surprise he clung onto her. Even more shocking, getting hit in the chest full force like that did not knock the bear man down. He did rock back, but not even by a full step.
Moving quickly, Syd leapt back several feet while trying to violently shake the smaller man off. Instead of being flung away, the man had wrapped his arms and legs around Syd’s right arm in what Jadis recognized as an arm bar hold. Pulling hard, he actually managed to wrench her arm back, locking her elbow into a bad angle that Syd had to use all the strength in her arm to keep from getting worse.
“Get the fuck off me!” Syd shouted before turning slamming the man against the stone wall of the building next to her.
The man’s head went straight through the thick stone, a hole three feet across blasted open by the force of her blow. When she pulled her arm back out, she was shocked again to see the plain-faced man was still hanging onto her, a fierce look of determination in his eyes even as his blood trickled down one side of his head. She couldn’t waste any time wondering at the man’s resilience though, as in the next instant the bear was on top of her.
The dark-furred beast man rushed her, one clawed hand reaching to grab at her. Syd blocked the move with her free left hand, but an instant too late Jadis realized that was the reaction the bear had wanted. His mace slammed into Syd’s left knee, causing her to buckle as the blow caused not only a lance of pain to race up her leg, but an electric shock that caused her muscles to uncontrollably convulse for a split second.
The effect of the enchanted mace was brief, barely even a moment, but it was more than enough time for the powerful bear man to slam his mace down onto Syd again, then a third time, both follow up blows striking her left shoulder with enough force that Jadis felt the bone crack.
“Fucking tough bitch,” the smaller man mumbled as he strained to wrench Syd’s right arm out of its socket.
“Fuck you!” Syd growled as she twisted around, purposefully letting herself fall back onto the frozen cobblestones.
Rolling back, Syd got her right leg against the bear’s stomach and kicked out. It didn’t matter how strong and sturdy the furry fucker was at that point. Even if he did look like he weighed the better side of five hundred pounds, the power behind her kick was fueled by three hundred and twenty-six points in Strength. He had just volunteered to be in the Jadis Space Program.
The bear rocketed into the sky, flying at least fifty feet back before slamming into the overhang of a roof on the other side of the street. Stone, wood, and broken shingles went flying everywhere as the bear ricocheted off the building, landing somewhere distant in the dark.
Flipping forward and back onto her feet, Syd took the opportunity to grab hold of one of the smaller man’s arms and pry it off of her wrist. She was still surprised by how much effort it took to move him, though the look on the man’s face showed that he was just as shocked that she was able to actually pry his hold apart.
“Tough fucking bitch…” the man gasped out again as he strained to maintain his hold against Syd’s superior strength.
“Damn fucking right,” Syd snarled as she finally broke the man’s grip and spun with all her force to slam him through the already broken wall of the building.
The opening attack had been far, far more powerful than Jadis had expected. In fact, she wasn’t certain that she would have been able to withstand it if she hadn’t both immediately transferred Syd’s injuries to her other bodies and had Eir heal her right away. The blow to her knee alone had dropped her health by two hundred points and the attack had definitely broken bone. Jadis had to wonder at the strength of the two men. Where the fuck had they been during the attack on the city? She felt like those two could handle a small army of Demons all on their own, maybe even as well as Noll could.
Noll.
That was where she had seen those symbols on their pauldrons before. They were the same symbols as the crest on Noll’s belt buckle. The same one that signified that the wearer had surpassed CLR one hundred.
A tremendous roar, loud enough to shake the glass windows in their frames, came from the distant hulking figure now rushing back towards Syd. It seemed like she’d just gotten into a fight with not one, but two warriors who both had CLRs closer to Noll’s level of power than even the elite mercenaries stationed in Weigrun.
Fuck it. Jadis could deal with them. She had a lower CLR, but she was about to introduce them to her massively boosted attributes. Plus, her other two bodies were now moments away, her companions in tow. If these assholes wanted a fight, she’d give them one they’d never forget. And when she was done, she was going to pay that shithead general a visit and—
Darkness overtook Jadis as her vision was completely cut off. It wasn’t even the same as shutting her eyes or having her head shoved in a bag. It was as though all light in the universe had been instantly snuffed out. She couldn’t see. She was blind.
All three of her.
In the next moment something heavy slammed into Syd’s knees from behind, once more knocking her to the ground. A fist she couldn’t see coming cracked against the side of her right knee, once more breaking bone with a precise strike. Blindly lashing out at where she thought the assailant had been standing, her arm met only air. In the same fluid motion, the man had taken hold of Syd’s other leg and had put her into a leglock, his whole body straining to either break her ankle or pop it out of joint.
At the same time, Jadis could hear the thunder of the bear man rushing towards her, as well as other footsteps rushing up from the opposite direction that definitely were not her other bodies or companions. Armored footsteps. Lots of them.
Damn it.
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