Jadis’ hearts leapt up into her throats as she watched Alex get dragged down to the floor below. The danger she was in could not be overstated. Not only had Alex been caught in the jaws of a Demon that was physically strong enough to contest Jadis’ raw Strength, but there were also an unknown number of Demons fighting the gods knew how many guards and combat-capable nobles in the swirling toxic gas. With how badly the smoke cloud was blocking vision, any of those defenders could attack Alex, mistaking her for a hostile Demon in all of the blind frenzy of the battle.
The instinct to leap over the edge after Alex was immediate, but Jadis resisted the impulse. She still had Sabina in Jay’s arms, Syd was at least partially disabled, and a powerful poison was coursing through Dys’ veins that was eating away at her health pool. She still had two thirds of her health left, but that number was going down, not up, even with Eir’s healing. Jadis couldn’t just blindly jump into the fray and hope to survive.
Of course, none of those obstacles were going to stop her from going down into the smoke and rescuing Alex. She just wasn’t going to do it blindly.
“Heal Sabina!” Jay commanded as she slid across the ground on her knees, coming to a stop next to Eir. “I can take the damage while you heal her!”
Eir didn’t waste any time arguing. She immediately switched her attention from Syd to Sabina, her hands glowing with healing light. Syd was already up and moving by that point as Jadis switched the damage again, putting all of her physical wounds onto Dys. Since Dys still had the poison in her body, that part of her multi-bodied self was the greatest liability in combat. Dropping Kerr from her arms, Dys fell to one knee as the accumulated wounds suddenly appeared on her.
“I’m going downstairs to get Alex!” Syd called out as she headed out of the gathered circle of her companions. “Thea, Bridget, protect Eir and Sabina! Kerr and Aila, support me from above!”
The crowd of survivors who Jadis and her companions had saved on the second floor, as well as all of the survivors from the third floor, had formed a sizable crowd by that point. All of the non-combat capable nobles and civilians had concentrated in the center of the group around Eir, while the guards and nobles who could fight ringed them, creating a defensive wall that fought off any crawlers that came at them from over the railing or the stairs. Jadis noted that Eir’s father, Einer, had taken command of the guards and nobles around him, calling out simple and direct orders with a calm and clear voice that was at odds with the chaotic situation. With Margrave Kernagin and his group joining up with Einer, she saw that the two men acted with a familiar compatibility as they actively worked together to face the crisis.
The fact that Vikwas, who did not have a combat class, was still standing side by side with Einer and the guards, was not lost on Jadis.
As Jay moved to join up with Syd at the top of the stairs, a sudden shout behind her made her pause and look over her shoulder.
“Where are you going!?” Senta cried out as she held onto Aila’s arm. “Stay here, where it’s safe! Let the people who can fight be in front!”
“I can fight!” Aila shot back, her voice raised but calm. “And I am needed in the front!”
With that, Aila pulled out of her mother’s grasp and ran forward, pushing past the nobles and guards who ringed the gathered crowd.
“Stay at the top, here,” Jay told Kerr and Aila as she pointed at the top of the stairs. “If I call, rain death on the fuckers.”
“Go get our squid,” Kerr told Jay with a fierce snarl. “I’ll keep Aila safe.”
“I have half my magic reserves left,” Aila quickly informed her. “No canteen, so I can’t replenish. I’ll hold back until you call.”
“I’ll be right back,” Jay and Syd told her two lovers in unison before charging down the stairs.
The toxic miasma that flooded the first floor burned Jadis’ eyes and stung her lungs as she breathed. Her vision wasn’t completely obscured, but anything further than ten feet away was no more than indistinct shadows. The constant tearing of her eyes didn’t help with visibility, nor did the constant urge to cough and sneeze. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Jay and Syd could see that the floor around the stairs was littered with bodies, most of them Demons, though more than a few were innocents caught in the attack. Blood, bodies, and all manner of stone and wood debris littered the ground, making every step an unstable gamble.
Inwardly cursing at the situation, Jadis kicked the high heels she had been wearing off, preferring to rely on bare feet than the impractical shoes. As she did so, she called out through both of her selves, hoping for an answer.
“Alex! Where are you!”
Her conjoined shout was answered by a blast of ice magic that struck Syd in the side. A spike of icicle the length of a spear hit her just under the ribs, the icy lance shattering on impact. The spell hurt, but Jadis was certain that anyone else would have been skewered through and through rather than just gaining a nasty welt.
Turning in the direction of the attack, Syd saw a shadow figure in the distance. She could just barely make out the telltale sign of arcane magic glowing around the silhouette. Not wanting to wait and see what else was going to be thrown at her, Syd and Jay both charged at the figure.
It was a dead head, this one with the body of an elf with blue tentacles. Reaching it, Jay and Syd both began punching in a simultaneous barrage of blows that struck so fast they were practically a blur.
A powerful ice shield appeared around the dead head, acting as a solid barrier that shot out a spray of icy flechettes with each punch. The shield showcased the immense magical power of the dead head as it managed to withstand Jadis’ double-bodied barrage. For all of two seconds.
The moment the shield was down, the dead head was struck by two simultaneous haymakers that struck with enough force to splatter its body like pudding. With the threat eliminated, she moved on, trying to find Alex.
Since her sense of vision was hindered, Jadis focused on her sense of hearing. There were clusters of loud, violent actions happening around her, with at least four points of major combat that she could identify. Normally, she would split her bodies up and investigate as many as possible at the same time. But with how disadvantageous the conditions were, Jadis kept her two bodies close. She could handle the dead heads individually, but without her Mirrored Strikes, they would take too long to slay and would slow her down more than she could afford.
Rushing towards the clot of shadows she heard crashing together in the space under the second-floor overhang, Jadis hoped she would find Alex there since it was close to where she had been pulled down. Instead of Alex, however, Jadis was greeted by a chaotic line of guards led by Roy, the goblin paladin. There were maybe fifteen of them, and they had formed a wall between the open space of the first floor and the entrance to the hallways that led to the back of the building. Having been to Trummelton’s previously, she knew that the open archway was where the first-floor restrooms were located. Looking beyond Roy and the soldiers, Jadis could barely make out a crowd of mostly women who were packed in behind them, protected from the attacking Demons. Among them Jadis spotted Lady Vanessa Brunholt, Egilhard’s wife. She was standing off to one side, eyes closed as she held her hands together in what looked like a prayer but had to be something more as a sparkling shine of arcane energy flowed from around her and reinforced the guards nearest to her with magic light.
Crawlers were throwing themselves at the line of men, but these guards were armed and armored and were making quick work of the Demons. The real danger from what Jadis could see were the dead heads. None of those creatures were nearby. They didn’t need to be, since not only were they ranged spellcasters, the lack of vision wasn’t much of an issue for them. Demons didn’t care about friendly fire. As long as they had an idea of where their targets were, they would just attack.
A flaming orb rocketed through the miasma, coming from an angle out of Jadis’ view. Before it hit the line of soldiers, Roy leapt into the air and intercepted it with the slash of his sword. The ball of flames dissipated into mist, the magic completely negated by whatever skill or spell the goblin man possessed. As he landed back on the ground, he struck a strangling crawler that was creeping along the ground, cutting it in half with one blow.
“Jay!” Roy called out when he spotted Jay and Syd approach. “Be on guard! Crawlers, Dead Heads, Belgramathr, Wights, and at least two Greater Demons!”
The warning, while appreciated, wasn’t wholly clear. Having killed them, Jadis knew what crawlers and dead heads were thanks to the death notifications, but wights and… belgramathr? She didn’t have a clue what they were.
There wasn’t any time to stop and ask questions, though. From what she could see, Roy and the guards with him had things under as much control as could be expected. Shouting out a quick word of care to the Goblin, both of her selves rushed off to the next cluster of activity.
As Jay and Syd moved across the floor, she tried not to pay attention to the things she was stepping on. The wet of blood, both red and black, was everywhere, as were pieces of both bodies and stone. Nothing was sharp enough to cut her skin just by treading on it, but the disgust and revulsion of who she could be putting her bare feet on, or into, was nothing she wanted to focus on. Which was why she almost didn’t notice when something wrapped itself around Jay’s left foot.
The thing she had stepped on was lumpy and slick, almost like a wet leather bag. As soon as her foot was on it, the thing snapped up, wrapping around her leg all the way to her knee. It wasn’t actually that much of a hindrance since the weight of it was nothing to her, and it didn’t get far enough up her leg to impact her movement, but she could feel the sting of something trying to burn its way through her skin where the thing had enveloped her.
Swinging around in a horizontal kick, Jay brought her leg up to Syd so that she could rip the thing off of her.
It was skin. A moldy, decaying, blanket of thick skin. Syd could see the pieces that had come from a human body clearly, as the torn face and scalp of an old man was visible on one side. The rest of the mass looked like pieces of smaller animals, like dogs and cats, that had all been smushed together into a single rotten sheet. There were signs of fungal growth all over the surface, with threads of slime mold running across it and pockets of oozing stinkhorn mushrooms. A constant stream of yellowish fumes leaked from holes in the surface, adding to the thick cloud of stinging gas filling the air. On one side of the skin-thing, an apple-sized red eye blinked.
Syd grabbed hold of the edges of the disgusting Demon and tore it off of Jay’s leg. It put up some resistance, but ultimately couldn’t compete with her strength. As the nasty thing was ripped away, more noxious gas that had been filling the space it had created around her leg puffed out, releasing a nauseating smell that made Syd gag involuntarily. Whipping the Demon away from her and Jay, she heard it splatter against a wall some yards in the distance. To her surprise, there was no notification of having slain the Demon.
Well, she wasn’t going to go chase after it to finish the filthy piece of shit off. She had more important things to worry about. But she would lay down money that that had been a belgramathr. Mostly because she didn’t have a fucking clue what else she would call a monster that looked like that.
Recovering from the momentary distraction, Jay and Syd made it to a tangle of shadowy knots she had seen through the obscuring miasma. She judged that she was on the far side of the room, close to where the musicians had been set up to play in their alcove. What she found was not Alex, but another ally she had been worried about, to a lesser degree.
Severina stood against a semi-circle of Demons. To her back was the alcove, inside of which was a crowd of people, many of whom looked like they were injured. Severina herself didn’t look great, as blood poured from a ragged wound on her left shoulder and another on her left hip, staining her dress and the floor below her. Despite the wounds she had suffered, she stood strong and tall, her sword glinting with a golden light in one hand. Her wings were spread wide, with more light shining from them that seemed to cleanse the air around her, purging the noxious gas in a ten-foot radius.
The Demons attacking her were a mix of dead heads and something… else. At first, Jadis thought the assailants were more of the tentacle-headed spellcasters since they were humanoid in shape, but as she neared, she saw that they were very different. These Demons were roughly human-looking, but instead of a stolen corpse, it looked like they had made their own bodies out of transparent slime.
The transparent Demons were around six feet tall, maybe a little less, and lacked any kind of surface features. Their flesh was almost completely see-through, with only the barest hint that they were there, like looking at a jellyfish in seawater. While their shape was humanoid, Jadis could see that their arms were elongated and instead of hands, they had large, scythe-shaped claws, two on the end of each arm. Looking closer, Jadis could just barely make out transparent intestines or, more likely, tentacles wriggling around inside of the center mass of the creatures.
As Jay and Syd charged up behind the semi-circle of Demons, she saw a grapefruit-sized orb inside one of the ghostly creatures swivel around to glare at her with a mostly transparent, glowing purple eye.
Jay and Syd let out a joint battle cry as they charged into the Demons. Swinging at the closest ghostly Demon with a powerful backhand, Syd was shocked to find that she hadn’t connected with anything. Not because the Demon was incorporeal like the ghostly form it mimicked, but because it had actually moved fast enough to dodge out of her way.
With a flurry of savage swings, the transparent Demon counterattacked Syd, wielding its scythe claws with such speed that they were like a thresher in motion. Syd felt her dress and skin shred along her stomach and hip as it struck her multiple times in less than a second.
The Demon’s assault was abruptly halted as Jay swung a dead head she’d grabbed by a leg into the ghost, mashing them both together in a tangle of tentacles and limbs. With a swift stomp, Syd crushed the two Demons underfoot, triggering Mirror Strikes. It took a second stomp to finish them both, but after that Jadis received the notifications she was expecting. One was for the dead head, but the other confirmed what she had guessed about the transparent Demon.
| Congratulations! Scythe Wight Defeated. Bonus Experience Points Awarded for Defeating a Demon Spawn of Samleos. |
As Jay and Syd hit them from behind, Severina attacked Demons from her side. Her sword rang with the sound of a bell every time she struck a Demon, and afterwards Jadis could see a holy light burning inside the flesh of the dead heads and wights. The paladin’s smite seemed particularly effective on the wights as it lit up their partly invisible forms, making it easier to see them.
With Severina’s help, Jay and Syd made quick work of the Demons, clearing the immediate area while suffering minimal damage. The wights didn’t seem to have much health as they died quickly, but they were fast and hit hard, cutting through even Jadis’ Fortitude. If it weren’t for her Dys self getting intermittent healing from Eir, Jadis was fairly sure she would have been in much worse condition.
“Have you seen Alex?” Jay asked Severina as she tossed another dead wight onto the ground between them. “Or a centipede Demon?”
“Not Alex,” Severina replied as she held a hand to her own side. A gentle glow suffused her and Jadis could see the wounds on the Seraphim close up. “But I saw the centipede a few moments ago. It was—”
“There!” Syd shouted as she pointed at the wall over the top of the musician’s alcove.
From out of the fog Jadis saw the centipede Demon crawl with lightning speed. It was moving in erratic patterns, twisting and turning as it scurried across the wall. It was bigger than Jadis had first thought, stretching at least twenty-five feet, though it was hard to judge with the way it kept curling in on itself in twisting motions. The head of the abomination was wrapped up in a cocoon of black tentacles, and Jadis could see part of Alex’s human shape crouched on top of the Demon, her right-side monster arm still caught in its jaws. In the split second the two passed over the top of the alcove, Jadis saw Alex strike the Demon with her other huge, clawed arm, causing a neon-blue light to burn the flesh.
“Alex, I’m coming!” Jay and Syd shouted after the two struggling Demons slipped away into the shadows of the miasma.
277