If Dys had been drinking anything, she would have done a spit take. As it was, all she could do was choke on her own tongue for a moment before whirling on the outrageous smith.
“Sabina!” Dys hissed, making sure none of the apprentices were nearby. “Why are you even asking that? I’m talking with her right now!”
“No you’re not, you’re talking with—oh, I get it, Jay is talking with her while you two unload those crates. Okay, I guess I can see how that would be kind of awkward. We can talk about this later if you want.”
Dys and Sabina were at the far end of the workshop, placing the crates of supplies where the smith wanted them. The apprentices were all occupied with the forge, which was loud enough that anything that she and Sabina might say would be easily drowned out. Still, Jadis didn’t think the back of the workshop was a great place to have conversation about fucking one of their employees.
“Why would you even ask that?” Dys questioned the half-elf. “Don’t you think I have enough sex with enough people as is?”
Sabina looked away from the boxes she was adjusting to give Dys a look that told her that the smith thought she was being silly.
“It’s not about your sexual gratification,” Sabina smiled as she reached out a hand and gave Dys’ butt an affectionate squeeze. “I know we satisfy you more than well enough, especially with how insatiable Kerr and Alex and Eir are, and also, you’re having sex with Severina now, too, so that’s a lot of lovers. But like I said, it’s not about you. It’s about Violetta. Her birthday is only a couple of weeks away. She’ll be unlocking her primary class soon, and when that happens, it’d be nice for her to have the best chance possible at getting some strong options to choose from.”
Dys tilted her head in consideration. Sabina made a fair point. Just being around Jadis for a decent amount of time was enough to influence the class options a person got. All of her lovers, barring Severina, had gained a powerful class just thanks to being around Jadis, or having relations with her. Considering how much potential most Jadis-influenced classes had, it was understandable that Violetta would want one as well.
“Okay, but I don’t have to have sex with her to influence her class options,” Dys pointed out after a few moments of thought. “You got a class just from being around me. Alex got two classes related to me before we ever had sex. There’s no reason why Violetta should have to have sex with me just to get a class. In fact, I’m not sure I like that idea at all. It feels kind of… I don’t know. Transactional.”
“You didn’t think that way with any of us, though, right?” Sabina asked as she blinked curiously up at Dys. “You were more than happy to help Aila or me or Bridget get nice classes.”
“Yeah, but I was interested in all of you in a romantic way from the start,” Dys freely admitted. “Helping you get strong classes is just something nice that I’m glad I was able to do for you. If you didn’t gain a class related to me, I’d still want you as my lover.”
“Aw, thank you,” Sabina grinned and held up her arms towards Dys.
Taking the cue, Dys lifted her half-elf mate up so that she could give her a loving kiss. Sabina planted several wet kisses on Dys’ cheeks and nose before wriggling to be let down again.
“Anyway, nice feelings aside, I still think it might be worth having sex with Violetta from an experimental standpoint.”
“How’s that?” Dys sighed at Sabina’s persistence.
“Well, having your Lewd Lover’s Bond on her before she unlocks her primary class could make a massive difference in what classes are made available to her. Though, I’m not sure you can even use your stat boosting ritual on her right now because she hasn’t unlocked the system yet. We probably want to check the records on that? I’m sure someone else has tried stat boosting people before unlocking their primary class before. Anyway, I just wanted to bring it up while I was thinking about it and also because Violetta said she was excited about unlocking her first class soon. She’s hoping to get an enchantment related class, and I hope she gets one like that, too. She hasn’t had a lot of time practicing, but she’s got a good talent for it so far. I think she’d do well as an enchanter of some kind.”
“Well, I’ll think about it,” Dys shook her head at Sabina’s usual rambling thought process. “At least, I won’t dismiss it out of hand. I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of having sex with someone who is, uh… barely legal? Feels kind of sketchy on the face of it. Anyway, I’ll see if the boost would even be possible and I’ll also ask Violetta what she wants. That’s kind of a big factor here, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Of course,” Sabina agreed easily before turning to head back towards the roaring forge. “But who wouldn’t want to have sex with you? You’re so good at it!”
Jadis wished she could say that was the strangest conversation she had ever had, but it honestly didn’t even rate in the top ten. Probably not even in the top ten for just Sabina conversations. Her new life had truly come with a plethora of unusual situations.
One of those unusual situations was the interrogation Syd was performing with Alex in the office.
“She wants… To kill you…”
“I figured that, yeah,” Syd sighed as she looked at the strangling crawler. “I have to admit, the feeling is mutual.”
The terrible Demon’s body was made out of fourteen different limbs, eight of which were either human or some similar race. Seeing those limbs was a constant and unignorable reminder that this Demon was a killer of innocents and had no compunction against taking any and all life. Even children.
“I’m honestly not inclined to give this one any chances. What about the red eye? What’s she saying now?”
The other demon was a possession Demon, one that had been hiding inside of a mundane cow, likely biding its time while waiting for a better target for possession to come along. It was the first possession Demon Jadis had seen since the water bull incident that had a red eye instead of green or purple. Not a bright red, more of a muted, maroon color, but still. Red. She wasn’t sure if that meant anything or not, but it was a minor curiosity. This possession Demon was also much larger than the rest of its kind Jadis had encountered. Most were about the size of a cantaloupe if you balled up all the tentacles together. This Demon was about twice that size.
“She also wants… To kill you…”
The two Demons that Teg’s Team had captured during their first unsupervised outing weren’t being particularly cooperative. Not that Jadis expected them to be. None of the Demons that they had interrogated over the past six weeks had been. The emperor had sent nearly twenty Demons that had been captured during the attack to their headquarters for Alex to question and the results had generally been unsatisfying. Most wouldn’t talk, and the few that did communicate had little information to provide. That hadn’t stopped Jadis and Alex from trying, though. They had even gone so far as to catch their own Demons to interrogate in the hopes of learning some valuable info that could help in either catching the cultists, or in the war effort in general.
The main problem was, there wasn’t much that Jadis could threaten the Demons with. She wasn’t willing to torture them, and even if she were, she wasn’t sure that torture would have been a reliable way to get info anyway. There wasn’t much to bargain with, either. The few Demons who talked just wanted to die and not be kept around as captives. The ones that didn’t were apparently willing to suffer continued life so long as they inconvenienced Jadis. The offer of returning to Samleos’ Abyss wasn’t enough to turn them. Those Demons Jadis had been sending back to the imperial academy for their own studies. She wasn’t sure that being a lab rat was a kinder fate.
“Give them both the same offer again,” Syd told Alex as she frowned at the two captive Demons. “A quick death for info on cultists or the Demon Lord’s plans.”
Syd grimaced as she watched Alex and the two interact. The strangling crawler and the possession Demon were locked up inside of separate metal cages, side by side. Neither were reacting positively to Alex’s offer. Jadis had come a long way in understanding how Demons communicated with each other thanks to Kerr’s borrowed language skill. She still couldn’t really speak it since it involved movements and scents that she couldn’t reproduce, and some meanings just weren't translatable due to their differences in perception, but she could understand a lot of what the Demons were saying. At least, she generally got the emotional gist of what they were communicating.
“Their stance… Is unchanged…” Alex advised after a moment.
Well, that was it then. Another pair of useless, hostile Demons. There just wasn’t much Jadis could do if they wouldn’t talk with her.
Heaving a heavy sigh, Syd’s head fell forward, chin on chest as she crossed her arms. Leaning against the wall, she closed her eyes in frustration.
“Why can’t more Demons be like you, Alex? Why do they all have to be so single-mindedly bent on killing?”
Jadis hadn’t actually expected an answer from her demonic lover, but she should have. Alex still hadn’t mastered the concept of rhetorical questions.
“I am… Single minded… In my love… For you…”
“True,” Syd smirked at the answer. “But I’m not the only thing you think about. You like other things. You like to read. You like to bake. You like to clean, too. I know you love that baby brewing in your belly.”
Alex tilted her head, all three eyes staring off into the distance for a moment before she slowly nodded her head.
“True…” Alex mimicked Syd’s words. “I have… Other interests…”
Other interests. A mild way to put it. If only the Demons had “other interests” the way Alex did.
Did they?
Syd paused as the thought struck her. Sure, she had been asking the Demons for information and offering them deals in exchange for said info, but those deals had generally been for quick deaths. She had asked them, through Alex, if the Demons wanted anything, but no Demon they had questioned had ever expressed any desire other than to either kill or be killed. Maybe their answers weren’t so uniform because the Demons had no other interests, but because Jadis had been asking questions the wrong way.
“Hey, Alex,” Syd started slowly, still working through her thought process. “Can you ask the red eye if the cow was the only thing that she possessed?”
“It was… Not…” Alex said after a brief back and forth. “She possessed… An auroch…”
“Okay, two large livestock animals. Weird, but I guess it’s a strategy. Anyway, ask her which animal she would rather be in right now.”
Alex gave Syd a confused look but asked the question anyway. This time, it took longer for her and the red eyed Demon to talk.
“She does not… Understand the question…”
“Hm,” Syd ran her fingers through her hair as she tried to think of a different way to word what she was trying to get at. “Okay, try this. If she could possess any creature, right now, ask her what creature she would possess.”
“She would… Possess you… Because it would kill you… And she could… Kill more… With your… Strength…”
“Alright, should have expected that,” Syd grumbled. After a moment, she pushed away from the wall and motioned with one hand towards the Demon. “Ask her, if she had to choose between the two creatures she had possessed before, the cow and the auroch, which one would she choose to be? Not if she were here, but if she were back out in the fields. If she wasn’t captured by us, and she was out in a field somewhere alone, which body would she rather inhabit? The cow or the Auroch?”
Alex took a lot longer to phrase Jadis’ latest question, likely due to its specificity. Demon language didn’t seem to handle hypotheticals all that well, nor did it do great with highly specific details. Emotional conveyance was much easier to understand. Jadis wasn’t sure that Alex was going to be able to get an answer from the possession Demon considering the nature of the question. Honestly, she was surprised she’d gotten so many straightforward answers so far. Most conversations with captured Demons devolved into hostility and threats.
About halfway through the conversation between Alex and the red eye, Jadis noticed that the strangling crawler was getting agitated. Its stolen arms were flexing and twitching while the purplish black tentacles that had poked out of its ring-like body were moving in more and more erratic patterns. Jadis wasn’t sure of the specifics, but she could easily tell that the Demon was upset. Angry, even. Not unusual in and of itself, but strangely, Jadis note that the anger was directed towards the red eyed Demon as much as it was towards Alex.
“She would… Choose the cow…” Alex finally answered after the protracted conversation.
“The cow?” Syd blinked in mild surprise. “Why the cow? The auroch is bigger and stronger. It had horns that could be used to gore an enemy. A cow isn’t much of a threat, relatively speaking.”
“She preferred… The cow body…”
“Why?”
Alex made a few more motions towards the red eyed Demon, who then made motions back that Syd needed no translation to understand.
“She does not… Know why…”
“Is it that she doesn’t know, or is it that she doesn’t want to think about it? She’s already made a choice. There has to be a reason behind that choice. What made her choose the cow?”
The possession Demon’s movements became hesitant and confused as Alex continued to talk to her, relaying Syd’s questions. The more Alex spoke, the less certain the Demon became as it shrunk in on itself. Jadis could practically see the uncertainty swirling in the Demon’s mind as it grappled with the unfamiliar paths of thought that it was being forced down.
Suddenly, without warning, the strangling crawler lunged at the red eyed Demon. Ragged fingers grabbed at the bars, pulling their two cages together with a violent clang of metal. The crawler grabbed at the possession Demon, clawing at its dark flesh.
Immediately Alex whipped several tentacles at the crawler in a conjoined attack that burned with a bright, neon blue flame. The crawler’s body splattered across the tabletop in a gory mess as the red eyed Demon recoiled into a far side of its cage, unharmed.
“That was a little bit of an overreaction…” Syd drawled as she waved her hands at the mulched Demon. “What was that all about, anyway?”
“She did not like… How much… The other was talking…” Alex said as she picked the smaller Demon’s cage up and set it away from the ruined cage of the dead crawler.
“That, or Samleos was poking at her to do something,” Syd wondered out loud. “Okay, let’s give this red eyed Demon some time to think while we clean up this mess. I think I need a few minutes to think about this, anyway. I’ll be back with some buckets.”
“Oats…”
“What was that?” Syd stopped at the door and turned back to look at Alex.
“She liked… The oats…” Alex said as she motioned towards the red eyed Demon.
“Huh,” Syd mused as she stared at the Demon. “Oats. Well, that’s not killing or being killed. I guess that’s a start.”
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