“Aila! On your right!” Dys shouted from where she knelt next to Eir.
Whipping around on Dys’ command, Aila fired a blast of her arcane magic in the direction of the centipede Demon as it crested the fog on the far wall. The spell went wide, aiming too far behind the rapidly moving Demon to be a hit. However, as Dys watched, the translucent ball of arcane might curved in its flight path, homing in on the nightmare centipede. It struck near the tail end of the beast, blasting a chunk out of its body and splattering black ichor and broken limbs across the marble.
The Seeking Modification was a powerful tool, but the cost was double that of a normal Arcane Bolt, so Aila was even more limited in her ability to cast. Still, the expensive spell had been worth it.
Jay and Syd dashed after Alex and the centipede. Using Knight’s Daring Charge, she drastically increased the velocity of her already incredible movement speed. As the two of her leapt into the air, launching her selves at the Greater Demon, Syd was caught in the side by an unseen attacker.
The wight rocketed out of the toxic smoke cloud, its approach unnoticed as it blended in with its surroundings thanks to its transparent nature. The Demon latched onto Syd, slashing its foot-long scythe blades into her shoulder and neck.
“Fuck!” Syd cursed as she twisted in mid air to pull the wight off.
The distraction of having her throat slit was more than enough to cause Syd to miss her mark. She slammed hard into the wall of the building, cracking the stone under her bulk before crashing to the ground. With a few quick punches, she managed to kill the wight, but not before it had turned her exposed neck and right shoulder into a bloody mess of sliced flesh.
Acting to save her own life, Jadis transferred the wounds from Syd to Dys so that Syd could immediately get back up on her feet. In consequence, Dys staggered as gaping wounds suddenly appeared on the right side of her body. The men and women around her recoiled at the sight, some letting out shouts of alarm as her blood spilled onto the floor.
“I have you,” Eir said as she placed her hands on Dys and poured her healing magic into her. “Don’t move.”
“What about Sabina,” Dys asked as she put her hands over her neck where the blood was the worst. “You need to keep her health up from the poison.”
“She’s stable for the moment,” Eir spoke with a calm voice. “I can’t purge the poison in her, but its effects have slowed with her low health. I think the damage it does is based on current health percentage. I’m sensing the same for whatever has poisoned you.”
Checking her status sheet, Jadis saw that her health had dropped significantly. She had a little less than half her health left thanks to the constant poison damage and being struck critically by the wight. While the poison continued to tick her health points down at a fast pace, Jadis could tell even with a brief glance that her health wasn’t falling as quickly as it had been earlier.
Her health wasn’t the only thing falling, though.
Jay landed on the back of the centipede with the force of a freight train. She struck somewhere around the back third of the Demon, somewhere near the part where Aila’s force bolt had hit it. Wrapping her arms around the crushed, bulbous body, she dragged the centipede off the wall as she fell. All three of them landed in a flailing heap on the ground.
As Jay wrestled with the grasping limbs that clawed at every part of her, Syd dashed up to assist. Rearing back one fist to strike the Greater Demon, it did something she didn’t expect.
Twisting around, it lurched towards Syd and put its front half in her way. In consequence, Alex was put in the path of Syd’s attack. Pulling her punch, Syd barely managed to avoid smashing her fist into Alex’s body, though the maneuver unbalanced her and she fell partially into the tangle of Demons.
“Jadis…” Alex said in her usual flat yet dissonant tone, “You are injured…”
“So are you!” Syd shot back as she grabbed one of the centipede’s legs and violently tore it off its body. “Let’s get you back to Eir!”
Jay grimaced as she got one arm around the Demon while the other dug deep into the open wound that Aila had created with her magic blast. Tearing away at the horror’s flesh, she felt something vital break as the back quarter of the centipede broke off and flopped onto the marble floor.
The Demon shook violently as it tried to disentangle itself from Alex, Jay, and Syd, but Jadis wasn’t about to let it get away now that she had it at a disadvantage. Her two selves and Alex all hit it together, destroying even more of its rancid body in a concerted effort to kill the resilient abomination. A sudden burst of movement on Jay’s side of the Demon caused her to recoil as the torn flesh there split apart even further, catching her off guard. In less than a second, the back end of the Greater Demon transformed into a front end as the ragged split morphed into a set of toothy jaws that snapped at Jay’s face. She managed to pull back just in time to avoid losing her head, but the teeth tore at her cheeks, leaving behind bloody runnels in her face.
As Jadis struggled to deal with the new change in the Demon’s anatomy, Severina’s voice alerted her to incoming danger.
“Jadis! Get down!”
Reacting to the warning, Jay and Syd threw themselves low, making sure to drag Alex down with them. Doing so, she just barely avoided a huge, spiked tentacle that whipped overhead. The tip of the translucent limb tore through the wall, spraying chunks of stone as it passed by. The tentacle was at least as wide around as Jadis’ waist and was serrated with wicked spikes on two sides. Glancing in the direction it had come from, Syd saw the outline of several barely visible figures in the cloud, one of which had to have been the source of the tentacle as it stood taller than even her. Severina’s glowing wings were also visible through the fumes, as was a dark red, familiar glow.
Watching the red point dart through the air in a whirling pattern, Jadis realized that it was Vraekae’s orb of doom. Whatever the Demon was, it seemed Vraekae was fighting the source of the giant tentacle. Considering the way the ball of red light was moving, Jadis figured that Vraekae and her foe were moving all over the middle of the first floor’s open area in a deadly version of the dance Jadis had shared with the magistrate an hour or so ago.
The chaotic frenzy of the battle was dizzying, even for Jadis with her partitioned mind. There were too many individual fights going on at the same time, coming from different angles and intersecting with each other in potentially deadly ways.
Taking advantage of Jay and Syd’s momentary lapse of attention that came from avoiding the giant, scything tentacle, the centipede Demon suddenly shot out of Jay’s grasp. She tried to renew her hold, but the limbs she clutched sloughed off like dead skin. On Alex’s end, a whole five-foot section of the Demon simply broke off, splattering gore across the ground as the now shortened, fifteen-foot-long centipede scurried away into the shadows of the noxious cloud.
“Come on,” Syd coughed as she started pulling the remains of the Demon off of Alex. “We need to get out of here before we get hit by another Demon.”
“Or friendly fire,” Jay added as she joined the effort.
Alex’s right arm was still caught in the jaws of what was left of the centipede Demon. Pulling the jaws apart was like trying to rip open a steel bear trap, but between the two of her selves, Jadis managed. Once freed, Jadis could see that Alex’s arm had been broken and mangled, but it was still mostly there, so it could be healed.
Glancing inside the jaws of the Demon remains, Jadis noted that the disgusting child-like face wasn’t present anymore. She didn’t want to think too hard about how exactly the biology of that particular monstrosity worked to make that happen.
Jadis’ priority was to get Alex back to the second floor where the rest of her companions were. Alex had her regeneration skill, so as long as she was in a safe spot, she would heal, so she didn’t need Eir to treat her. But she did need to get to a safe spot to recover. Jadis had no doubt that Alex was running on empty from the centipede’s attack. Thanks to Dys being on the second floor, Jadis knew the direction she needed to go to get back to everyone, despite the obscuring cloud of noxious smoke. She always knew what orientation her bodies were in relation to each other. The problem was, she couldn’t see what lay between them, which was shown to be an increasingly dangerous proposition.
Glancing behind her, Jay saw the glow of Severina’s wings flash through the fog further down the wall. Jadis guessed that she was probably staying near the alcove where so many had taken refuge. Jadis was tempted to run back in that direction and help the Seraphim but decided against it. It would be better to coordinate with the now sizeable group of fighting guards and nobles that had gathered on the second floor. With them and her companions working together with her undamaged selves, she could sweep down the stairs and attack the Demons in force. Besides which, she still needed to get Alex somewhere secure to recover.
With Alex in tow, Jay and Syd moved along the outer wall of the first floor, circling around the wide-open space where Vraekae was battling the large thing in the center. Several other Demons were dodging in and out of the fray, and there were several moments where Jadis took advantage of the confusion to grab a dead head or a wight and kill the thing before it could disappear back into the smoke.
As they passed by a few turned over tables, Jay’s foot stepped on something that moved and cried out in pain when she put her weight on it. Fist raised, she almost attacked the movement out of battle instinct. She held back, though, when she saw a delicate, shoeless foot pull underneath a tablecloth that was hanging off of the edge of a toppled table. Quickly pulling the cloth up, she exclaimed at the sight underneath.
“Elodie?”
Lady Elodie Brunholt lay prone under the tablecloth, her hands covering her head. She’d lost one shoe, and Jay could see blood staining that side of her dress. She glanced up at Jay from under her tangled hair, and Jay could see that she’d suffered a jagged cut across her brow that was bleeding badly over her right eye.
“Jadis?” the injured woman coughed out in a tiny voice. “Please, save me!”
There was no decision to be made. As much as Jadis didn’t like the woman on a personal level, there wasn’t a chance in Samleos’ rancid ass crack that she would abandon someone to die among a horde of Demons.
“Come here,” Jay said as she pulled the woman to her feet. “Can you walk?”
“No,” Elodie coughed out as she faltered, clearly unable to put any weight on the leg that was bleeding. “I think my knee is broken.”
Briefly taking Elodie in her arms, Jay passed the enfeebled noble to Alex, who without hesitation wrapped her human-like arms and a few tentacles around the woman.
Elodie let out a fearful cry of dismay when she realized who was carrying her, but Alex shushed her with a stern look.
“Be quiet…” Alex commanded as she followed behind Jay and Syd. “Or I will… Drop you…”
Elodie didn’t protest further.
Continuing onward, Jay and Syd ran interference for Alex and Elodie, escorting the two around the perimeter to get to the front of the building. Several more Demons attacked from out of the dense fog, but Jadis’ two selves were generally fast enough to end them before they could threaten either Alex or the helpless woman she carried with her. At one moment, though, a dead head that Jadis did not spot early enough appeared out of the miasma, its glowing blue tentacles forming a spell. Elodie let out a scream of terror as the magic flashed and a thin wave of cutting water materialized, slicing through the air towards her.
Alex bobbed low in a move no human could make, dragging Elodie along with her and dodging the spell completely. Reaching out with one powerful tentacle, Alex’s smite crackled against the blue shield of magic energy that formed around the dead head. The barrier shattered at the touch, blown away by Alex’s magic, and her tentacle struck the Demon’s body hard and knocked it to the ground.
Syd ended the downed dead head with a definitive stomp of one foot.
“Thank you, Alex,” Syd said as she moved around to check behind and make sure no other Demons were sneaking up on them.
“You are welcome…” Alex replied, no different in tone from when she’d been asked to pass the salt.
Elodie, for her part, looked between Alex and Syd with eyes as wide as saucers.
In the next minute or so, Jay and Syd reached a point near the front of the building when another strong explosion shook the ground underfoot. The floor trembled, but Jadis kept her selves balanced. Whatever had caused the explosion, it hadn’t been inside the building, but somewhere nearby outside. The sound of the city bells ringing was a reminder that Trummelton’s wasn’t the only place being attacked. Jadis wondered how bad it was outside, but as she passed by one of the large, stained-glass windows on the front of the restaurant, she couldn’t make out anything. The cloud of toxic gas was too thick and it was dark outside, so—
“Fucking moron,” Jadis cursed herself for not thinking of it sooner.
Grabbing a table off of the ground, Syd smashed the glass open, allowing the gas inside of the building to release as cold, fresh air rushed in. Jay and Syd ducked outside, bringing Alex and Elodie with them.
For the first time in minutes Jadis was able to take a breath of clean air. As she took a deep lungful, she immediately let out a violent series of coughs that shook her whole body, a natural result from having to breathe in the terrible fumes inside for so long. As Jay, Syd, and Elodie all hacked and coughed in the cold night air, Jadis briefly envied Alex who was completely unfazed. Not needing oxygen to live had advantages.
Blinking hard to clear her eyes, Syd scanned the immediate area while Jay kept an eye on the window they’d just come out through.
Snow was still falling, a gentle curtain of white that instilled a sense of peace on a night that was anything but peaceful. Different men and women, some guards, some servants, and others dressed in fancy clothes, were running around the streets and between the buildings in a panic. Several dead Demons lay on the ground, as well as a few dead civilians. From what Syd could tell, it looked like some of the Demons had spilled out of the building in the initial attack, but the guards outside had responded quickly and mostly contained the threat. To her left, Syd could see that most of the guards were concentrated around the entrance to Trummelton’s where the doors stood open. They had formed a shield wall and were blocking any more Demons from escaping that way.
Belatedly, Jadis realized that she’d just made the guards’ job a little harder by making a fresh opening for the Demons to exit through. Still, from what she could tell, it was only a matter of time before more Demons charged through the windows as several smaller breakouts had already occurred on some of the other windows. As she backed away from the broken window, she saw four guards rush towards her, already responding to the threat.
A flash of light caught Syd’s eye and she turned to see a bright, golden bolt of magic light up the night sky a few blocks away. Now that she was outside, she could hear the sound of battle beyond the restaurant. The cry of soldiers calling out orders, the screams of civilians trying to stay out of the way, and the rumble of powerful spells being cast. In the far distance, Jadis could see a light blue glow surrounding the horizon. It took a moment, but she soon realized that it was the massive arched wall surrounding the capital city. Whatever magic it possessed had flared to life, creating a glow of magic energy.
Another bolt of bright golden light flashed through the sky overhead, the spell slamming into the ground somewhere in the near distance beyond buildings that blocked Syd’s view. In the afterimage of the light, Syd saw a large, winged creature flying overhead. While it was hard to make out the details with her eyes still watering from the stinging fumes, she thought she spotted an armored figure on the winged creature’s back, with a golden sword raised high.
“Ladies!” The guards who had rushed over called out to Jay and Syd. “Please, back away from the window and take refuge somewhere safe!”
“Fuck that,” Syd shot back as she moved towards the front door of the building. “I’m going back in.”
Alex followed behind, still carrying Elodie who was still violently coughing in her arms, as Jay and Syd sprinted over to the doors of the front entryway. The horrible gas was pouring out of the open doors, blinding the guards who were blocking any Demons from exiting, but Jadis knew from both experience and from how her three bodies were oriented to each other that there was a straight shot between the doors and the stairs leading to the second floor.
“Make a corridor!” Jay loudly ordered the men and women. “I’m pushing through! There are people trapped inside!”
“Alex, stay here with Elodie,” Syd told her Demon lover as they paused further out near the street. “I’m going to clear a way for everyone else to start evacuating out of the building. It’s best you stay safe until your health recovers.”
As she spoke, Syd heard the sound of a multitude of boots running across the cobblestones. Glancing in the direction of the sound, she saw a contingent of soldiers making their way around the corner of the street, heading towards Trummelton’s. Backup was definitely a welcome thought.
“Clear the way!” Jay shouted again, forcing the guards to stand aside as she prepared to rush into the building again.
“Be safe…” Alex told Syd as she leaned forward to kiss her on the lips. Elodie let out a squeak of alarm as she was momentarily pressed between their two bodies. “I love you…”
“Love you, too,” Syd said before turning away from Alex.
Jadis was already relaying what was happening outside to the others through Dys, causing a commotion as the gathered learned that help was on the way. Preparing to rush into the fray to help clear out the Demons, Jay and Syd moved through the crowd of guards. Just as her two selves started dashing inside, Jay in the lead and Syd behind, she heard a powerful, coarse voice shout out in a tone that echoed in the cold air.
“Get away from my Elodie!”
Syd jerked around to look at the source of the shout as she ran behind Jay. What she saw was a man sprinting ahead of the troop of soldiers, heavily armored and wielding a massive square tower shield that had Valtar’s symbol emblazoned across the front. A faint glow of magic shimmered across the man’s shield and armor, and she could see a mace in his other hand that had a huge stone head that looked like it weighed as much as an anvil.
What Syd also saw was that the man was charging straight for Alex, who still held Elodie in her arms.
274