The days following Jadis’ meeting with Lady Una were dominated by one activity: discussion.
Jadis had, naturally, gone over what she had learned from the Golem with the rest of her lovers in great detail. With Aila and Bridget able to fill in any bits that she missed, the rest of the group got the full picture and all were able to offer their opinions on the matter. The idea of potential divinity was something that not even Kerr could joke about under the circumstances, so the debates on the validity of Una’s information as well as what Jadis should do were vigorous and thorough. After several days of deep discussion, the various arguments could be combined and summarized into three main points.
Firstly, if Lady Una was correct that Demi-God was a class, then it was highly likely that Jadis was already on the path to fulfilling the necessary requirements. Not only had Jadis created a new species by breeding a Nephilim-Demon hybrid with Alex, she also already had her first Paladin in Alex. The fact that Alex was a Paladin of Jadis was an oddity that the priests had been debating over already since they had found out about the Demon’s class. If Una was correct, it seemed like having a person who had a class normally reserved for those who deeply worship the gods have instead a similar class that was focused on her was a milestone in that path towards divinity. From that viewpoint, the fact that Jadis could even have someone who had a paladin class dedicated to her seemed like a strong indication that Demi-God was a possible Transcendent class.
Secondly, assuming that Demi-God was in fact a class option, it did not seem likely that Jadis would have been offered the potential to become a Demi-God if the gods didn’t want Jadis to take the option. Eir was the main proponent of this position. She strongly argued that Lyssandria would never allow her one and only Nephilim to gain a class that would be directly harmful to the future survival of her avatar children. If Progenitor or a future Demi-God class would cause a schism in her followers, then Lyssandria likely would have blocked the class from being offered to Jadis. Even if nixing the class option wasn’t possible, then Lyssandria would have at the very least given Jadis some gut-reaction instincts to guide her away from the dangerous and destructive class. Since she had never felt any kind of warning sign from Lyssandria, it could be assumed that she wasn’t directly opposed to the Progenitor class. The counterpoint was that Lyssandria had never given Jadis a good feeling about the Progenitor class either, so it seemed she wasn’t strongly in favor of it either.
Lastly, as Aila was the first to point out, it seemed entirely possible that Alex had the potential to also unlock the Progenitor of the Succubi class. She was just as involved in the creation of Succubi as Jadis, after all. If Jadis chose to skip Progenitor, then Alex may have the option to take it later. Then again, there was no guarantee that Alex would be offered the class, nor was there anything that said they couldn’t both have the Progenitor class at the same time. Jadis taking the class didn’t necessarily mean that the option would be removed from Alex’s possible classes in the future.
Ultimately, after many hours of talking and debating and going in circles on unproven theories, Jadis felt like she had come to a decision. The most vital piece of advice given to her by Lady Una, so far as she was concerned, was to think about the future. Long term goals. Not in the typical human sense of a five-year plan or some other silly bit of corporate nonsense, but true long-term planning. Jadis wasn’t human anymore. She was a Nephilim. And from what she had read, that meant her lifespan was significantly longer than what she had once thought it would be. Presuming she didn’t die in battle or from some uncurable disease, Jadis would be counting her years on the same level as elves. There was a legitimate likelihood that she would be able to celebrate a three-hundredth birthday someday.
Jadis had to face the fact that, while she would live for a long time, many of her lovers wouldn’t. Aila, Kerr, Thea, Sabina, Bridget, and Sorcha were all going to live significantly shorter lives than she was. That wasn’t to say they were going to die anytime soon. If Jadis had her way, all of them would be breaking the century mark long before they passed away. But even if everything went perfectly and they all lived years beyond even their most charitable expectations, Jadis would still be alive more than a century after they passed away. The idea was… unpleasant.
She wouldn’t be alone, though. Jadis would have Eir, since elves shared a similar lifespan to Nephilim. She’d probably have Alex as well. She wasn’t sure how long Demons lived for and Alex didn’t know either, but considering that they didn’t need to eat, sleep, or breathe, Jadis doubted that Demons had a short lifespan. More likely they were like Golems or Fetch and could continue to exist for centuries, maybe even millennia. Knowing that she would have those two by her side no matter what was a comfort.
There were others she would always have, though. Her children.
Even if the unthinkable happened and all of Jadis' lovers died young, Jadis would still have their children to look after. None of them had even been born yet, and Jadis was already feeling intensely protective of her offspring. The idea of watching them grow and learn and transform from helpless infants to strong, capable people was bringing her hope for the future in a way that she didn’t know she needed. For that reason, more so than any desire to become a Demi-God, Jadis was looking intently at taking the Progenitor class. After all, there was nothing in the class description that said the skills and spells it would give her would be restricted to Succubi.
Privately, there was one other reason she was narrowing her focus down to the Progenitor class. She didn’t bring it up in any of the debates since the feasibility was unknown and she didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up without good reason, but internally Jadis couldn’t help but wonder. If she did manage to become a Demi-God, could she do something about the lifespans of her lovers? Would there possibly be a way to make sure they lived as long as she did?
Maybe. That was the answer to all of Jadis’ questions as of late. Maybe. Perhaps. Possibly. Unknown. Whatever the case, she was all but set on her decision. Taking a class that would help her protect and raise her children while also having the potential to give her the power to extend her lovers’ lifespans felt like the best option. Those priorities meant more to her than breaking the cycle. It was a selfish thought, she knew, but all the same. Jadis wanted to be with her loved ones more than she wanted to be a Hero.
Despite coming to her decision, Jadis didn’t tell her lovers. Instead, she continued to listen to any argument they made for one or another class. Jadis was open to changing her mind. At least, she tried to stay open. She had taken the lesson of listening to others to heart. She thought that she had the right idea, but that didn’t mean that she was correct. So she listened and debated and stayed as open-minded as she could. However, nothing any of her lovers said changed her mind on the matter. If anything, their arguments reinforced the idea of selecting Progenitor as her tertiary class.
It was on the day Jadis finally resolved herself to make the decision and choose her class that she received a half-forgotten but expected visitor.
“Jay? You have a visitor,” Gunnar said as he knocked on the frame of the open door leading to the bedroom.
“Wrong again,” Syd answered without looking up. “I’m Syd.”
“Perhaps you should start wearing color-coded ribbons if you are going to insist on calling your various bodies different names,” the muscular elf replied dryly. Jadis could imagine his frustrated expression without even looking. “Or collars with name tags.”
“I didn’t think you were that kinky, Gunnar,” Syd chuckled as she slotted the two pieces of lumber together. “Who’s visiting?”
“Hello Jadis,” a familiar voice said timidly. “Is now a bad time?”
“Jocelyn?” Syd twisted around to look over her shoulder.
Indeed, there was the petite blonde Oracle, standing in the doorway next to Gunnar. She was dressed in a travelling cloak and heavy boots and looked like she had just come back from a long trip through cold weather. Which, Jadis supposed, the woman had.
“Yes,” the timid woman smiled and bowed her head in greeting. “I have returned to fulfill my promise. I presume you still wish to ask your two questions?”
“Uh, yeah!” Syd answered as she set the bedframe she’d been working on down. “I guess I lost track of time. I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon.”
“It has been six days,” Jocelyn stated mildly. “I admit, they passed by quickly for me.”
“Me too,” Syd agreed as she stood up from her spot on the bare floor while wiping her hands. “Let’s, uh, let’s find a better place to talk.”
“I will ask Hans to make some tea,” Gunnar said before excusing himself from the room.
“Thanks!” Syd called after the elf before focusing back onto the Oracle. “Come on upstairs. The rest of me are on the way.”
Jocelyn followed Jadis up the stairs of the Fortune’s Favored Eldingholt Headquarters to the third floor. While Jadis had been spending much of her time talking things over with her companions, that hadn’t been all they had done for the past week. Once the streets had settled and the immediate aftermath of the attack had been dealt with, Jadis and her lovers had returned to the new company building to resume work on setting things up. She had been pleased to find that nothing untoward had happened to the headquarters while she had been occupied elsewhere, partly thanks to Nevan and Orla who had stayed in the building and protected it from anyone who had attempted to intrude. Not that there had been many who had tried, but there were always the kinds of people around who saw tragedy as an opportunity to pillage and loot.
All of Jadis’ new employees, like Gunnar and Terrance, had survived the attack without issue. Violetta and the three boys Chace, Dexter, and Lon, had also come through unscathed. While the Demons had attacked the Undercity, they hadn’t come anywhere near their neighborhood.
With everything pretty much just as they had left it, Jadis and her crew had resumed their construction and remodeling of the building, spending most of their days working on getting the place into an operational state. For Jadis, a high priority was finishing the third floor of the headquarters, which they were converting into one giant bedroom for her and her lovers.
“Oh! That is… quite the bed,” Jocelyn said as she followed Syd into the large, open bedroom.
“Isn’t it?” Syd laughed as she grabbed a human-sized armchair from a corner of the room and brought it over to the petite woman. “When you’re as big as I am and have three bodies on a normal day, you need the room.”
The colossal bed took up half the room, which was a real feat since the room was basically the entire top floor of the building, not including the sizeable bathroom and the stairwell.
“I am certain,” Jocelyn said while a rosy flush painted her cheeks that spoke to her understanding that the bed’s size wasn’t just because Jadis was a giant. “Is everyone well?”
“Yeah, we’re doing fine,” Syd nodded as she sat down in a Nephilim-sized chair that she had commissioned. She only had the one so far, but more were being made. “Kerr’s pregnant.”
“Truly?” Jocelyn perked up. “My congratulations to both you and her! I will pray that your children will be born strong and healthy.”
“Thanks,” Syd grinned at the woman’s earnestness. “With someone like you putting in a good word, I’m sure they’re going to come out perfect. Well, they’ll probably be brats considering their mother, but definitely healthy brats.”
Syd and Jocelyn continued to chat for a while as Jadis’ other selves finished up what they were working on with Sabina in the workshop behind the building. Considering their plans, they had decided on expanding the roofed area of the workshop and were also setting up various pulleys and rigging to make their future construction projects easier. By the time Jay and Dys were able to reach a good stopping point and round up Aila and Eir, Syd had gotten a brief but complete recounting of what Wilhelm and his party had been up to for the previous six days.
While the Hero had flown ahead with a squad of Seraphim to catch the vessel carrying the cultists, Jocelyn and the rest of the party had followed behind on a small but fast ship. Fortunately the river hadn’t frozen over despite all of the snow, but the waters were packed with broken ice and the skies had been clouded and dangerous with the fluctuating blizzard winds. Wilhelm and the Seraphim had managed to catch up to the ship first but were disappointed to find that the cultists who had been travelling disguised as merchants had disembarked from the ship in a small town further back up the river. Wilhelm and his group met up at the town and had searched the place thoroughly, making sure that none of the fleeing cultists were hiding among the local populace. Finding none, they had pursued the villains into the countryside. Unfortunately, the bad weather worked in the cultists’ favor, making it far more difficult for them to be tracked.
“On the fifth day, we found that the cultists had split into several smaller groups and gone in different directions,” Jocelyn explained as she sipped on the cup of tea that Hans had brought up for her. “We think that they are fleeing towards the border with the Rubaline Dominion, but they could also be heading for the south-western coast. Possibly both. We also split up and pursued each group, but at that point I knew that I needed to return. Wilhelm’s griffon, Taube, flies the fastest, so he brought me back to the capital himself.”
“Wilhelm is here?” Syd asked with a sly smile spreading across her face. “And he isn’t with you?”
“He is updating Prince Hraustrekr on the progress of our hunt,” Jocelyn replied, though her face started to flush again from the way Syd was looking at her. “He will come here to get me when he is done.”
“So… you got to have lots of alone time with him on the way here, huh?”
“I… I did, yes,” the blonde girl said with an almost panicked look in her eyes. “I’m not sure why you would ask about that?”
“Did you confess to him?”
“Confess?” Jocelyn squeaked, the pitch of her voice going up by an octave. “What would I confess to Wilhelm?”
“Oh, I dunno,” Syd shrugged casually. “Maybe about how you’re madly in love with him?”
“I—I—I—I am most certainly not!” Jocelyn stuttered out as she almost dropped her cup of tea. “I do not think of him that way at all! I certainly would not be surprised if anyone else were to think of him in such a way as Wilhelm is very handsome and kind and his voice is very gentle and he is sweet and caring while also very brave and heroic and… stop grinning at me like that!”
Syd shrugged her shoulders, not even trying to remove the knowing grin from her expression.
“Hey, who am I to judge? Maybe I got my ropes crossed and I misinterpreted the signals. I’m only an avatar of the Goddess of Love with eight women who adore me deeply. What do I know about signs of attraction?”
Jocelyn’s eyes were fixed firmly on her teacup, unwilling to meet Syd’s gaze as her face turned as red as a cherry.
“But…” Syd drawled, “if I were the type to lay bets on that sort of thing, my money would be on a certain heroic man having romantic feelings about a certain blondie. He just seems like the type who is too inexperienced with those kinds of things to know how to approach a lady he happens to be madly in love with. So, in this case, maybe the lady should be the one to take the initiative?”
“I… ah…”
“Anyway, just something to think about while you’re on the road. In the sky. Whatever. My other selves are almost here with Aila and Eir, so you might want to take a second to breathe and calm down.”
Jocelyn let out another squeak while once more almost dropping her teacup. Jadis took the mostly empty cup from the woman while she patted her face and smoothed out her clothing, managing to make herself look mostly presentable. A moment later, Jay walked in through the door, followed by Aila and Eir, with Dys in the rear.
“Syd, have you been teasing Lady Jocelyn?” Aila asked after taking one look at the Oracle’s mostly straight face.
“Yes.”
“Please don’t,” the redhead said before approaching Jocelyn. “I’m sorry about her. Please ignore anything she might have said to you, Jadis has moments of complete idiocy that she lets out through her Syd self at times.”
“Hey!”
“Don’t worry,” Eir said, ignoring Syd. “Jadis’ odder moments can be safely ignored.”
“I wasn’t being ‘odd,’ I was being helpful!” Syd grumbled as she got up out of the chair and petulantly threw herself onto the bed. “I gave actually good advice…”
“Putting my advice aside,” Jay said as she smoothly sat into the chair her other self had just vacated. “Why don’t you tell me about the ritual to speak with Valtar? What do we have to do to make this happen?”
“Well,” Jocelyn shook her head clear of any lingering thoughts of Wilhelm. “I suppose we should start with going over the questions we are going to ask.”
“We?”
“Yes,” the blonde priestess nodded her head. “You have two questions you will be asking, but there is a third question that I must ask that the emperor has requested of me. Since my ritual allows for three possibilities, namely for me to speak with Valtar myself, or allow someone else to, or allow both myself and the petitioner to speak with him directly, I think it would be best to take the third option. Unless you do not wish to speak with Valtar and want me to ask the questions for you?”
“No, that’s alright,” Jay nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve always been curious about D’s stepdad. I’d love to speak with him directly.”
“…Stepdad?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
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