“No, no, no,” Jay and Syd both said as Jadis scrambled to save Severina.
“Get the fuck off of her!” Jay continued her panicked, shouted words as she launched herself at the head of the centipede.
She was already half on top of the monstrosity, grappling with its many arms and legs, so it shouldn’t have been hard to get to its head. However, instead of striking back at her, the Demon dodged away, discarding several more arms as it scurried off across the floor. She was left holding another human arm, this one much fresher than any of the others and with clear signs that it had belonged to one of the nobles at this very party, going by the torn sleeve still dangling from it. Before she could toss the limb away and grab another piece of the Demon, it had all but disappeared into the fog.
“Hold on, hold on!” Syd said as she knelt on the floor next to the fallen Seraphim. “Don’t close your eyes! Stay awake!”
With one of Syd’s hands occupied with the squirming possession Demon, the Greater Demon escaping, and Severina bleeding out on the ground due to her horrible wound, Jadis had a difficult choice to make. She only had two of her selves available, and three objectives. Four, technically, since the men and women cowering in the musician’s alcove had just lost their only protection with Severina falling.
Syd tossed the squirming tentacle monster to Jay, who caught it blindly before standing and moving to the front of the alcove to block any more Demons from getting to the people there. Syd, meanwhile, tore the cloth from her dress’ skirt and wrapped it around Severina’s gaping wound.
“Come on, don’t you fucking die on me,” Syd told the deathly pale Seraphim. “You’ve got too much left to do to die now!”
“If Valtar… calls for me…” Severina mumbled with barely moving lips, “Then I must… answer…”
“Fuck that!” Syd shouted as she pulled the torn clothing tight around the wound to staunch the bleeding. “You think Valtar wants you dead more than he wants you here, doing his work?”
Syd’s angry question seemed to spark a light in Severina’s eyes as her vacant, pained gaze hardened for a moment. She glared at Syd with her strange, cross-shaped eyes before placing her trembling left hand over her own wound.
“No… No he damn well does not.”
A golden light suffused Severina as she cast healing magic on herself.
“Damn straight,” Syd growled as she lifted Severina and carried her over to the alcove.
By the time she gently set the Seraphim down on the alcove a few seconds later, the light had faded and Severina had slipped into unconsciousness. Pointing at the closest person, an older man who looked like one of the musicians, Syd told him to watch over the paladin before she turned away to help Jay with the defense. Jadis needed to get Severina out of the building and into Eir’s care, but she couldn’t do that until Vraekae and the soldiers had made it to the alcove to protect and evacuate the survivors.
Of course, there was also the issue of Eir and those around her not being safe, either.
“Someone here has to be a cultist or possessed,” Dys spoke quietly to Sorcha and Eir. “There’s no other way this fucking necklace got onto my wrist. Someone had to slip it onto me without me noticing.”
Dys held the necklace up, the flower pendant dangling from her clenched fist. Jadis knew she had torn all three of the necklaces from her selves as soon as she had figured out that it was somehow the cause of the illusions that had plagued her at the start of the Demon’s ambush. She hadn’t been careful about what she’d done with them in the moment; she had simply ripped them off and tossed them to the ground. Since that had happened when all three of her had been on the second floor, that meant someone had to have picked it up while they were on the second floor, and then found an opportunity to slip it onto Dys’ wrist without her or anyone noticing during the fight.
“What do we do?” Sorcha asked with a worried frown. “How are we supposed to root them out? I mean, if it’s someone possessed, a detection stone should find them easy enough. But if it’s a cultist, there’s no way to know.”
“We should alert the guards,” Eir said as she continued to heal Sabina, who was still unconscious. “They need to know.”
“Yes, we should,” Dys agreed. “Sorcha, can you please get whichever guard is in charge over here? If they give you any shit, tell them I’ll drag them over if I have to.”
“Got it,” Sorcha nodded before hurrying off to the front of the building.
Dys, Eir, and Sabina were in the back of the pastry shop, where several large ovens were located. They were mostly alone in their small, warm corner, though with all the people crowded into the shop there wasn’t a lot of privacy. The most injured people had been moved into the back where it was warmest and Eir was constantly darting around, laying hands on those who needed immediate healing before rushing back to Dys to heal her or Sabina.
Alex and Elodie had done a great job of getting the place open and secured in a very short amount of time. Not that Alex did much talking. She mostly just acted as Elodie’s legs as she carried the woman about the store and helped her arrange things so that as many of the injured could be put somewhere safe and secure as possible. Water, blankets, and even the leftover pastries were being passed out, all by the young noblewoman’s direction. Dys even overheard her briefly discuss with the owner of the shop that her family would be paying for the cost of all the goods used that night twice over. For being a catty bitch, Elodie had proved to have a decent head on her shoulders during a crisis.
Almost everyone who had been evacuated from the second floor of Trummelton’s had been escorted to the pastry shop. Some of the guards had stayed in the fight, as had Eir’s father and Margrave Kernagin. Aila, Kerr, Thea, and Bridget had also stayed, picking up weapons from the fallen soldiers and diving into the fray. Other than them, though, all of the nobles and servants had been gathered into this one building.
“You called, ma’am?” A middle-aged human man in a guard’s uniform said as he hurried up to Dys with Sorcha.
“Yes. Don’t spread it around because I don’t want people panicking, but there’s a strong chance there’s a cultist or maybe someone possessed among the crowd in here,” Dys told the guard with her voice low. “Tell your men not to let anyone out of here. Not until they’ve been checked over.”
The man’s eyes went wide at her words, but his grim expression showed how seriously he took her command.
“Yes ma’am,” he nodded and gave her an imperial salute. “No one leaves.”
“What about the guards?” Sorcha asked, drawing the head guard’s frown. “Couldn’t one of them be a cultist?”
“No,” Dys shook her head. “I wasn’t near enough to any guards for one of them to slip this shit on me,” she raised the dangling pendant. “It had to have been someone close enough to touch me. That’s not a small list with all this chaos, but I know I wasn’t close enough to any guards for one of them to have done it.”
How exactly they were going to track down who the culprit was, Jadis wasn’t sure, but not letting any of the suspects slip away in all the chaos seemed to be the best first step. They could sort out how to question people later. There were more immediately urgent concerns to deal with.
Back inside the besieged restaurant, Jay and Syd were busily crushing any Demons that got close to the alcove while trying to keep an eye out for the centipede Demon that had slipped away. The Greater Demon wasn’t like others Jadis had fought. Most Demons, including the strong ones like the greater and matriarch varieties, were so set on killing that they would sacrifice their own lives to do so. Not this one. The centipede had abandoned the targets of its attacks multiple times now, if it looked like it was in danger of being slain itself. It utilized hit-and-run ambush tactics, and it used them well in the environment that had been created by the attack.
Twice since Jay and Syd had taken up a guard position around the alcove, she had seen the centipede Demon’s shadow move through the fog. It never tried to attack her outright, instead probing for weaknesses as the other, lesser Demons attacked. Nor did it linger in one spot. For long stretches Jadis lost track of the centipede as it disappeared into the toxic cloud. She had no doubt that it was attacking others in those moments, striking at whatever opportunity it could find.
There wasn’t much Jadis could do to stop the Demon. Not without exposing Severina and the other innocents to attack. In the moments of tense quiet that came between killing the crawlers and wights that rushed her from out of the fog, Jadis had the time to realize that she had been well and truly outmaneuvered by the Demon’s attack. Any action she took other than being on the defensive would put others in danger of being killed. All Jadis could do was stand her ground and keep guard over the dying Seraphim and the people she had been putting her life on the line to defend.
“Jadis!” a familiar voice called out through the obscuring gas cloud a few minutes later. “Where are you?”
“This way!” Jay shouted back to Kerr. “Back wall!”
After a few tense seconds, Jay saw a large group of soldiers push through the cloud. They were led by Kerr and Bridget, both of whom had taken up discarded spears. Bridget was still holding the lamp she’d ripped off of the wall and the blue light of her magic was pulsing from it, invigorating all of the soldiers in a radius around her. The soldiers formed two walls as they came, creating a corridor that would protect those who moved between them.
“Fucking Charos’ balls,” Kerr coughed as she came up to where Jay and Syd stood. “Nobles sure know how to throw a party.”
“I think I’ve had enough of this one,” Syd answered dryly. “I get enough of this shit at work.”
“Can you hold this?” Jay asked as she held the squirming Demon out to Kerr.
“Oh, fuck, really?” Kerr curled her lip at the Demon. “I don’t think any of the ass stains attacking the city here are going to turn out like Alex, you know.”
“This one’s for interrogation,” Jay said as she passed the possession Demon to Kerr. “Don’t let it die or get away.”
With her hands freed, Jay turned and carefully lifted Severina up. The men and women who the Seraphim had been protecting were already moving out of the alcove, rushing past the soldiers to get to safety. Jay went with them, carrying the nearly lifeless body with her. Severina was still breathing, Jadis could tell, but her breath was shallow and her skin was pale from blood loss. She needed real healing as quickly as possible, or she wasn’t going to make it.
“Where’s Vraekae?” Syd asked as she guarded the rear to make sure everyone made it out and no attacks came at them from behind.
“With the Bulwark,” Kerr said as she pointed off in one direction. “They managed to block off the kitchen where all the Demons have been coming from. I helped push with them over there, Syd. It’s a fucking charnel house.”
Jadis could imagine. The air was actually starting to clear a little already thanks to all the broken windows and the hole in the wall, and what she could see of the ground was a nightmare. Bodies were strewn across the marble floors; most were demonic, but far too many were not. There was so much blood and gore that the only reason Jadis wasn’t slipping was because of all the broken stone and debris that gave her bare feet traction.
“Roy was protecting a bunch of people by the bathrooms,” Syd said as she followed the soldiers back towards the entrance. “Have they been evacuated yet?”
“I think so,” Kerr shouted over the noise. “It’s a mess outside! Hard to tell who is where and doing what.”
Indeed, as soon as Jay reached the exit, she saw what Kerr meant. There were soldiers, guards, and well-meaning civilians running around everywhere. It was barely organized chaos. There were some recognizable figures, though, including Eir’s father, Einer, standing in the fore and helping the troops organize and tend to the survivors who were being pulled out of the first floor. Aila and Thea were with him, but as soon as Jay pushed through the crowd at the door and met their eyes, both women rushed over to where she was.
Without wasting any time to stop and talk with her two lovers, Jay sprinted past them and through the crowd, literally leaping over heads to get to the pastry shop where the survivors of the attack were congregating.
“I need to get Severina to Eir before she bleeds out,” Syd told Aila and the others what Jay was doing as she also reached the exit with Kerr. “She was badly wounded by a Greater Demon. But I need to get back in there to help Vraekae clear out the Demons.”
“I’m not sure you’re going to be needed,” Kerr said, drawing a surprised look from Syd.
“What? Kerr, a Greater Demon is still in there and D knows how many Demons. I need to support them or even more people could be killed!”
As Syd angrily turned on Kerr, she saw that her Therion lover wasn’t looking at her, but up at the sky. Following her gaze, she and the other women looked up as well.
A shining golden light was gliding in from on high, swooping low through the buildings to follow the street that led up to Trummelton’s. The many soldiers and civilians who had started to crowd the area quickly rushed out of the path of the descending figure as it touched down on four clawed feet without slowing its speed until it was practically on top of the restaurant’s entryway. When it did finally come to a stop, Syd could see that the creature was a beautiful, golden-winged griffon the size of a draft horse, if not bigger. The griffon wasn’t the source of light, though.
From the back of the beast leapt a figure wearing shining armor that glittered with runic enchantments. The symbol of Valtar shone brightly on his breastplate and a rich, blue cloak fluttered in the wind off of his shoulders. In his left hand was a longsword that radiated the golden light. It was the perfect sword, simple and elegant, yet so impossibly perfect in the straight lines of its edges and the balance of its weight that it almost didn’t look real. As he landed on the ground, the man gave the sword a small, almost unnoticeable flick. Instantly, all of the demonic toxic gas that had been leaking out of the building was purged in a twenty-foot radius around him.
“Wilhelm!” one of the soldiers in the crowd shouted suddenly. “The Hero!”
In moments, half the crowd was chanting the name of the Hero as he strode forward towards the doors to Trummelton’s where Syd and her lovers stood nearby.
“This is going to be interesting…” Syd heard Kerr grumble under her breath.
Jadis couldn’t help but agree.
287