The sun shone brightly overhead, its gentle heat contrasting nicely with the chill breeze that swept across the hilltop. The sound of snow melting from the tree branches overhead paired well with the chirps and warbles of birds foraging for their meals. The snowmelt hadn’t quite gotten to the point where the ground had turned muddy and so the countryside still looked clean, but already some trees were showing signs of budding leaves as the white blanket of winter was drawn away by the warmth of spring.
Jadis breathed deeply, relishing the crisp, fresh air. Her three selves stood tall among the trees crowning the hilltop, enjoying the view it afforded. While the hill was no mountain, she could see clear all the way to Eldingholt from the vantage point. The empire’s capital city was barely a dot on the horizon with how many miles she had travelled that morning, and she was fairly certain that the enhanced perception skill she had replicated from her goblin lover was the only reason she could see the distant location, but still. The view was nice on the hill. There wasn’t too much she could think of that could spoil the experience.
“Hands up! Surrender your weapons and your coin!”
All three of Jadis sighed in resignation. Of course. Her luck, as always, was convenient. Not necessarily for her, but still. Convenient.
Checking the other side of the hill, Jadis spotted the road she had been following for the past couple of hours. The well-maintained road wound around the base of the hill as it headed northward on its way towards the next town. A small caravan was heading south along the road, no doubt carrying goods to sell in the capital. Not a lot of farming to do in the winter, but there were other raw materials that the local communities would ship to the city to trade for coin or provisions. This caravan looked like it was bringing a few loads of lumber to market. Probably for processing into arrows, Jadis guessed by the type of wood she was seeing.
Another wagon, this one a small, covered sort with only a single scrawny donkey pulling it, had been coming up the road heading north. Jadis had been keeping an eye on its progress, finding the lone transport suspicious. Not many wagons travelled alone, not while the demonic invasion was going on. Not even in the central lands where things were relatively safe and Demon attacks were rare. Now she saw that her suspicions had been correct.
Six men had leapt out of the back of the wagon, all of them carrying bows. Combined with the two who had been riding in front, that made for eight bandits. A paltry number, honestly, especially since the wagon caravan they were attacking had at least ten men, four of which looked like trained guards. Number of men didn’t mean everything, though. There was no telling what level those men were. If they were several levels higher and had actual combat classes, then it didn’t matter if there were fewer of them. They would win. Clearly, the caravan guards knew that as well as anyone, since they didn’t immediately fight back. Instead, the two forces faced off as their wagons came to a stop. While the bandits shouted orders, the guards shouted their own, and soon a tense standoff had formed as the two sides decided who was going to make the first move.
It was a good thing for them that Jadis was there to make that move for them.
The orc bandit closest to the base of the hill noticed her coming first. Not that she was being stealthy about her approach. She was just moving so fast that the average person didn’t have the reaction time to act before she was on top of them. The orc must have had a higher-than-normal Agility attribute to have the ability to react to respond to her approach. He just didn’t have the time to do much else but turn his head.
“Go—gah!”
Jay cut off the orc’s no doubt blasphemous explicative before it could even start. With a gauntleted hand wrapped firmly around his throat, she picked the tall man up and tossed him with significantly reduced force at the side of the wagon he had been hiding in a moment before. She was careful to moderate her Strength. She didn’t want to kill any of the bandits if she didn’t have to.
Still, she might not have moderated enough as the man went through the wooden side of the wagon and came out the other side in a cascade of splinters, leaving behind a nicely orc-shaped hole in his wake.
As the rest of the bandits let out shouts of surprise and anger, one of them released his bowstring. The arrow he had been pointing at the man driving the lead wagon shot forward, aiming straight for the innocent villager’s chest. Jadis didn’t know if the driver had any kind of protection or the levels to tank that shot, but she wasn’t going to risk it.
Dys appeared in a blur of black armor as she stepped in front of the arrow. She didn’t try anything fancy like catching the arrow midair. She might have been able to, but that would have been a bit of pointless showboating that Noll would have kicked her ass over if he caught her doing anything like it. Instead, she let the arrow bounce harmlessly off of her plate armor and instead used the war axe in her hands to sweep the legs out from under three of the bandits in one go. She used the backside of the axe, letting the spike act like a hook to catch ankles. Nothing that would kill. Maybe break some bones, but they’d live.
Syd landed heavily on the other side of the wagon, the weight of her armor making it so that she was physically incapable of landing lightly. Pointing her cold flame steel sword staff at the nearest bandit, she used the tip of the blade to slice through the wood of the man’s bow, cutting it in half. She grinned at the bandit as he fumbled with the two pieces before letting the ruined weapon drop to the ground. Not that he could see her grin from under the helmet she wore. She knew from experience that all these hapless idiots could see was the intimidating visage of her black armor.
Jay opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say a word, the bandit who was still standing on the front of the wagon raised his hands high into the air and let out a terrified shout.
“We surrender! Mercy!”
Jay sighed before setting the massive steel maul she held head down on the ground. Stepping forward, she approached the cowering man. He was on the wagon’s driver’s seat, which gave him an extra couple of feet in height. Just enough that he was almost on eye level with her. He was a human, middle-aged, with gray showing in his ragged beard. He cringed back from her as she drew up close, fear obvious in his brown eyes.
“You mean the same mercy you were going to show them?” Jay spoke coolly as she motioned towards the caravan.
“I—we—we wouldn’t have really hurt them!” the bandit said in obvious desperation. “We’re not murderers!”
“Please! We had no choice!” the woman who was standing next to the man said. She was about the same age as the man and had the same look of well-worn misery. “We have no food! We’re just trying to survive!”
Jadis doubted that statement, but she also figured it wasn’t that far off from the truth, either. None of these bandits looked healthy. Their equipment was ragtag at best, and even the single mule they had pulling their wagon looked to be about a week away from starvation. These people were impoverished, Jadis could see that much. There were always other options beyond banditry, though. The temples were extremely generous with supplies when it came to those who were in need of basic necessities like food and shelter. That was a big reason why there were practically no homeless people in the capital. Of course the smaller towns and villages would have less to spare and couldn’t support as many people in need, but Jadis had spoken recently with the priests in the town nearest to this part of the road north. The local temple was not so burdened that they couldn’t have helped these people.
“Sit down,” Jay commanded with strict authority.
The man and woman both sat instantly, thumping onto the wagon seat in unison.
“Toss the bows,” Dys ordered the bandits who still had their weapons in hand. “You won’t need them.”
The bows were crap, anyway. Half of them looked like they had been made a decade ago and not been maintained while the other half had probably been crafted from inferior materials that would have made Sabina go on an hour-long rant out of pure indignation. There was no point in keeping the wretched weapons.
“Hey dude, you going to live?” Syd asked as she poked at the orc who had gone through the side of the wagon with her booted toe. “Dude?”
“Ugh…” the man groaned pitifully.
“Yeah, you’ll live.”
While her Jay and Syd selves ordered the bandits back onto their wagon, her Dys self turned to speak with the caravan that had been held up.
It was a small caravan, with only three wagons. There was still a man in charge, though, and he was apparently the guy driving the lead wagon. The driver looked older, his hair having turned all gray, and he had a bit of a paunch and a long beard so he had a kind of Santa Claus thing going on.
Jadis internally shook her heads. Why did she always think of Santa Claus when she saw old men with beards? She really needed to start coming up with different examples.
“Thank you for saving us,” the old cart Viking said nervously to Dys. “I never would have thought we’d be rescued by the Nephilim sisters.”
“No problem,” Dys didn’t bother correcting the man. A lot of the people further out from the capital knew of her, but didn’t know that the three of her was a skill and that she wasn’t a trio of sisters. “I’m just glad we happened to be in the area. Are you heading to Bramble Brook?”
“Yes, ma’am, we are,” the man nodded. “But going all the way to the capital, in the end. Ma’am.”
“That makes sense,” she nodded. “Call me Dys, by the way. I’m probably young enough to be your granddaughter. You don’t need to call me ma’am.”
“Yes, ma’am—ah, Lady Dys.”
“What’s your name?” Dys asked as she shook her head in amused exasperation.
“Hans, Lady Dys.”
“Oh? I know a Hans. He makes great meat pies.”
“Ah? Well, ah, that’s…”
“Come on,” Dys told the man, brushing past her own silly commentary so that the poor guy didn’t have to struggle to find a polite response. “Let’s get you going again. I’m sure you want to make it to your next camp before nightfall.”
It took only a few minutes and the lumber caravan was on its way, once more trundling down the road to the town of Bramble Crossing. They’d probably get there in the next hour or so at the speed they were going. Jadis could have been there in minutes with how fast she could move, so the thought of going that slow kind of made her feet itch. But that wasn’t her problem. The problem she had to deal with was far stickier.
Flipping the visor on her helmet up to reveal her pale face, Jay folded her arms and met the frightened gazes of the couple sitting at the front of the wagon. The two both stifled little gasps at seeing her for the first time. She was used to that. There weren’t many out there who could match her ethereal beauty, so the contrast between intimidating black knight and stunning avatar of beauty tended to cause some mental whiplash for people who weren’t prepared.
“So. Where’s your camp?”
The two were silent for a moment, until the woman came to her senses first and elbowed the man in his side.
“We—we don’t have one,” the man stuttered out. “It’s just us, on the wagon.”
Jay gave the two an unimpressed look. The lie couldn’t have been more obvious if the two had just held up a sign saying as much.
“Are you really going to force me to waste time running around looking? You know I’ll find it eventually, only if it’s three hours from now I’m just going to be a fouler mood than I already am with the lot of you.”
“…it’s about twenty minutes east of here,” the man admitted after a protracted bout of awkward silence. “But, please, don’t hurt them! They’re all innocent! They’ve done nothing wrong!”
“Well, as long as no one does anything stupid, no one else is getting hurt,” Jay told the two. “Now, both of you, get into the back of the wagon.”
Ushering the confused couple into the back with the rest of the would-be bandits, Jay hefted her massive maul from the ground and placed it on the floor between their feet. She didn’t have much worry that any of the captured criminals would be able to use the weapon against her. It was doubtful that any of them could even lift the thing. Once she was sure that they were all settled, Jay told them to hold on tightly and to be careful not to fall out.
“What do you—ah!”
The woman’s question was cut off by her scream as Jay and Dys lifted the wagon over their heads. With Jay in the back and Dys in the front, they started moving at a mild jog in the direction the man had indicated their camp was. The speed they were going at was mild for her but was still probably twice as fast as the wagon, much less the shocked people on board, had ever gone before.
“Settle down,” Syd told the struggling donkey she had picked up. “I’m not going to drop you.”
Leading the way with the complaining pack animal under one arm and her and Dys’ weapons in her other hand, Syd set off into the woods. She blazed the path to make sure the way was clear enough for her other selves and the wagon they carried. It didn’t take too long to find the trail that the would-be bandits had recently used. The recent tracks in the snow and mud made it clear they had just passed through the area. Jadis was glad that the bandits hadn’t lied to her a second time. She really didn’t want to have to be forceful with people who were clearly down on their luck.
By the sound of their accents and the style of their clothing, Jadis was fairly certain that the people weren’t locals. Far from it. Her guess was that they had to be from the nation of Volto. While they spoke the imperial language with perfect clarity, their accent had that same kind of Italian tint to it that Sabina had, only more pronounced. Sabina didn’t have much of an accent at all, really, since her father was from Volto but her mother had been from the empire. These people, though, had much stronger accents. Considering what Jadis knew of how hard the nation of Volto was being hit by the demonic invasion, that meant that these people were likely refugees fleeing the war.
Though how they had managed to come this far from the northwestern border was a serious question.
When Jadis found the bandit camp, it was about what she had expected it to be. Which was to say, it wasn’t much of a bandit camp at all. Huddling around a sputtering fire was a group of ten or twelve people. A few were elderly men and women, a few more were worn-looking middle-aged women with babies in their arms, and the rest were children. The group looked half-starved; Jadis could see the remains of what had likely been the other donkey that had once pulled the wagon. Nothing but cracked bones were left, all the marrow having been sucked out by hungry mouths. From what it looked like, the skin of the animal was being boiled in the cauldron bubbling over the fire to get every last bit of meat and fat off it.
There were tents, but they were woefully inadequate for the hard winter typical of the central lands of the empire. Several of the people didn’t have coats and looked like they were making do with threadbare blankets. The group was so cold and weak from starvation that when Syd stomped her way into the camp, they didn’t even try to flee. They all just huddled together, wide eyed and frightened to silence.
When Jay and Dys followed into the clearing a few moments later, Jadis set the wagon down. Jay leaned into the back of the wagon and addressed the two she had so far presumed were the leaders of the little camp.
“Alright, help me get the rest of them into the back of this thing. You’re going to have to squeeze in tight for everyone to fit, so leave behind everything you can’t fit in your pockets.”
“What are you going to do with us?” the man asked, his tone frightened but his concern for his people clear.
“Well, first I’m taking you to get some food,” Jay answered. “Then, we’re going to have a nice long talk about situational ethics.”
There was a long silence as the group just stared at Jadis three selves.
“Come on! Chop, chop! I’m not asking!” Dys clapped her hands loudly together. “Let’s go!”
Startled into action, the gathering quickly rushed for the back of the wagon as they all began loading in. As they sorted out who would sit where and how they were all going to fit, a small half-orc girl looked up at Jay with a sharp frown.
“You’re going to give us food?”
“Yes,” Jay answered the kid. “I know a place where you can all stay for a while until you get back on your feet.”
“Where?”
“The temples in Eldingholt.”
“They won’t feed us,” the girl said with a certainty that Jadis didn’t like. “Papa said they don’t help people like us.”
“Well, lucky for you, I know a few people at the temples.” Jay assured the child with confidence. “They’ll listen to me. And if they don’t, I’ll hit them until they do.”
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