Chapter 456: Chapter 453: Desperate Search

The Seraphim’s new wing was made of some kind of dark and shiny metal that reminded Jadis of graphite. It wasn’t the black of wrought iron or cold flame steel, but it was too dark to be plain steel or anything so bright as silver or tin. The wing was jointed and matched the size and shape of Severina’s true wing, and it moved with the same ease and range of motion. The design looked half-finished, however, like it had been put together in a hurry. There were metallic feathers all over the wing, but it was missing about a third of them along the inner side that was closest to Severina’s body. Each feather had a small, faintly glowing rune set into it that shone with the same golden light that exuded from the paladin herself as she hovered in the air a few feet above the ground. By the number of runes alone, Jadis could tell that the prosthetic had to cost a fortune, and that was without even saying how complex and expensive the effects on each rune were.

“I really want to ask about where the flying fuck Sabina got that wing from,” Syd called out, “but we’re kind of in the middle of something here so we’ll have to chat about it later.”

“Later,” Severina agreed as she flapped her wings and rose higher into the sky. “I see no movement elsewhere in the village.”

Severina didn’t need to say how little that observation meant. Demons could absolutely still be waiting in ambush. Plus, the cultist who had been casting the dark shields was still unaccounted for. He still needed to be tracked down, even if there were no other attackers around. He could be fleeing for his life, or he could be running for backup. Either way, he needed to be found.

Not wanting to waste any more time, Dys jogged up to the burning building and made a small leap up in order to smash her axe into the window. The magic barrier shattered from the blow, giving her the room to pull herself up by one hand to check inside.

The room beyond the window was on fire, but not as badly as Jadis would have suspected based on the rest of the house. There was no sign of the cultist, however. Since the doorway was open, Jadis figured the elf had fled, no doubt using his barriers or some other magical mechanism to avoid burning in the flames. Thea’s spear was lying on the ground, though, still burning from where she had stabbed the cinderman in the back.

Dys snatched up the weapon before falling back to the ground. She tossed the spear to her Jay self, who was still washing the last of the burning bile off of her body in the brook. Fortunately, the substance could be put out if it was completely submerged in water, so Jadis was able to get the burning hot crap off of herself before she was burnt even more than she already was. Thea’s spear had also been specially crafted by the Dryads of Weigrun, so it was immune to flames and was unharmed by the fire. A quick dunk in the water would see it as good as new.

“Are you alright?” Meli asked as she stared at Jay with a look of wonder. “I’ve never seen anyone take that kind of damage before and just… shrug it off.”

“I’ve been better,” Jay coughed as she plunged Thea’s spear into the water. “But I’ve been worse, too. Go help me and Thea with the safe house, please.”

“Huh? Oh,” Meli looked confused by Jay’s meaning for a moment, before she saw Syd and Thea by the bunker. “That… yes. I’ll help.”

As the Dryad dashed off to help Syd and Thea, Jadis took a moment to double check her status sheet.

Jadis internally winced. She had gone through almost two thousand health points in mere minutes. The cultists and Demons had played their hand beautifully with the exploding trap. It really was only due to her immense health pool and extraordinarily thick armor that she had survived. She didn’t think there was much she could have done differently under the circumstances, but the fact that she had been so badly caught made her grind her teeth. The cultists had already ambushed her once before, now they had done it again. Even if their assassination attempts had been failures, they’d still managed to ambush her. Twice. There wasn’t going to be a third time.

While Jay popped open the crate of medical supplies and poured a healing potion directly onto her aching eyes, Dys and Severina searched the backside of the burning building and beyond, looking for the cultist as well as for signs of any villagers who might have fled or survived the initial attack. At the same time, Syd, Thea, and Meli searched the badly damaged safe house.

“Maybe you shouldn’t look in here,” Syd told Thea as she stuck her head inside the building.

“I’m fine,” Thea replied quietly with her shield raised and a dagger in her other hand.

“I’m not going in there until the fire is out,” Meli said as she eyed the structure.

“Then I hope you have a water spell of some kind,” Syd said as she cautiously stuck her head inside the ruined building.

The scene wasn’t pretty, but the interior of the safe house could honestly have been worse. The remains of the murdered villagers had been so thoroughly destroyed by the demonic explosion that most of it looked more like a burnt paste on the walls rather than scattered body parts. The only fires that still burned were the pools of flaming oil that the cinderman had spewed into the structure at Jay. Unfortunately, the burning bile blocked the entrance and had even gotten as far as the cellar door. The wooden hatch was still somehow miraculously intact, though Jadis doubted that state would last much longer with the fire eating away at the material.

“We need to smother this fire,” Syd said as she tried to think of what they could do. “There have to be survivors in there. Maybe even Teg and Vera. If there were more Demons inside, they would have come out already when I was vulnerable.”

“We have b—buckets,” Thea suggested as she started to move in one direction.

“No, water will just make the flames spread around,” Meli stopped Thea with a raised hand. “Short of total submersion, water won’t help. Dirt. Toss in dirt.”

“You sound experienced with this,” Syd commented as she scanned the surroundings for some kind of tool she could use to start digging up the ground.

“I am,” Meli scowled. “Cindermen attacked the forest and burnt my grove when the invasion first began.”

Since time was short, Jadis didn’t waste more than a few seconds looking around before she internally said, “fuck it” and started digging with her hands. It wasn’t the most elegant of solutions, but her hands were big and her strength great, so she was able to shovel a large amount of earth quickly by bending over and throwing it between her legs into the open doorway of the safehouse. It took a couple of minutes or so to fully extinguish the fires inside, which was time Jadis didn’t want to waste, but she was an expert at multitasking. She did the best she could with the time she had.

While Syd dug with Thea and Meli’s assistance, Jay dashed out of the village and checked Vera’s house for any signs of the woman or Tegwyn. The building was, much like many other homes in the village, on fire. However, the fire was somewhat contained to just the front entrance of the home where the door was burning; the flames hadn’t spread elsewhere thanks to the stone construction. The interior of the structure was still a wreck, though, with furniture tossed and broken as well as demonic blood on the floor and walls.

The sight infuriated Jadis. She had just spent a wonderful dinner in the lovely home a couple of nights ago, and now the same kitchen table Vera had sat at while flirting with Tegwyn was a ruined pile of splinters. The only silver lining Jadis could manage to focus on was the fact that she didn’t see any sign of human or Dryad blood anywhere. It didn’t look like Teg or Vera had been harmed, at least not inside of the house. Even if the cultists had been trying to capture them instead of killing the two, she knew Tegwyn never would have gone down without putting up a brutal and costly fight.

“Jadis! Southwest!”

Both Jay and Dys turned their gazes in the direction Severina called out. The Seraphim was flying in circles around the village, keeping on the watch for any sign of hostiles or survivors. Her keen eyes had spotted something, and it took only a moment for Dys to zero in on what she had seen.

A few hundred feet away from the village was a figure in a brown cloak. The person was slowly staggering away from the village, crossing the grazing meadows out in plain sight. Jadis was momentarily surprised she hadn’t spotted the figure before then, but she quickly realized that the cloak was the same design that the cultist in the window had been wearing. Likely the man had used some kind of illusion to mask his presence, but the magic had worn off.

Even as fast as Jadis was, Severina still arrived at the man a few seconds before either Jay or Dys. By the time her two bodies got there, the elf had collapsed onto the ground while the Seraphim stood over him with her blade pointed at his chest.

“You didn’t kill him, did you?” Jay asked as she skidded to a stop on the other side of the unmoving man from Severina. “I wanted to question him before stomping his double dicks into mush.”

“I did not,” Severina shook her head without taking her eyes off of the still form. “He fell on his own. I believe he may have taken his own life before being captured. That is not uncommon behavior for cultists.”

As Dys flipped over the lifeless elf’s body, his cloak fell open to reveal the ragged wound in his shoulder.

“Ah,” Jay and Dys both exclaimed.

“I didn’t think her spear would be that effective,” Jay murmured.

“Spear?”

“Thea’s spear is toxic,” Jay briefly explained. “But never mind that. I’m getting the hatch open in the safehouse right now.”

“Good,” Severina nodded before taking off into the air once more. “Collect that body. It may have useful information on it.”

While her Jay and Dys selves took care of the dead elf, Syd pried open the damaged hatch that led to the safehouse cellar. As soon as she broke the lock and pulled it open, she was greeted by the wonderful sound of fearful voices. The fear wasn’t wonderful, of course, but the fact that there were any voices coming from the cellar at all was wonderful. Jadis had harbored the horrible suspicion that the bunker was going to be empty, a worry she hadn’t wanted to speak out loud. Fortunately, it looked like that fear had proven false as several different men and women called out too many different things for her to make sense of all the noise.

“It’s me!” Thea shouted down into the dark opening. “Thea! Come out!”

“The way is clear! Let’s get you all out of there!” Syd called after her. “We have healing supplies!”

It didn’t take much coaxing to get the frightened villagers to come up out of the dark cellar they had been hiding in for the past few hours. The people who came out were, for the most part, relatively unharmed. About two thirds of the villagers had made it into the bunker, fleeing for cover as soon as the alarm had been raised. The rest hadn’t been so lucky.

As Syd helped one villager after another out of the bunker, her heart sank further and further. There was no sign of Tegwyn or Vera in the crowd. While she worked to get everyone out, Thea spoke with the survivors while passing around healing supplies with Meli’s help. Jadis hoped that someone in the crowd knew what had happened to the Dryad and Thea’s mother.

“They attacked us,” Mayor Gereon gasped out in obvious pain. “Without warning… Gods… How did they get here?”

“Here, drink this,” Meli said kindly as she poured some of the healing liquid into the wounded old man’s mouth. “Don’t talk.”

“Do you know what happened to Tegwyn?” Syd asked as she helped the last few villagers out of the bunker. “The Dryad who came here with me.”

“Or m—my mother?” Thea asked as she helped pass healing salves and potions to those who needed them. “Has anyone seen Vera?”

“The Dryad saved us,” one of the old farmers replied with a helpless expression as he looked around at the wrecked village. “He attacked the wagons.”

“He distracted the demons!” a teenaged girl called out. “He attacked them, and they chased the Dryad! Gave us time to get to safety!”

“Did anyone see where he went?” Syd called out again. “Anyone?”

“I saw,” a small boy answered, his voice timid and scared.

“Joss,” Thea said to the boy as she knelt down in front of him. “What d—did you see?”

“I was in the loft,” the young kid said as he pointed at a building that had gone up in flames. “I saw the big wooden ram. He ran around the village. Then he went into the woods. To the south.”

“Was he, ah, alone?” Thea asked, trying to hide the desperation in her voice.

“A woman was riding on his back,” Joss said after a moment. “I couldn’t see who. The demons chased them.”

“He must have run to the forest to hide from the cultists,” Syd said as she glanced in that direction, though she couldn’t see the trees from behind the village walls. “That had to be Vera with him.”

“Let’s go,” Thea said after giving the boy a pat on the shoulder. She rose to her feet and moved to Syd’s side as she spoke. “If the D—Demons are after them, then we have to go.”

“Yes, we do,” Syd agreed as she helped Thea get onto her back in preparation for another sprint. “Meli, can you stay here to watch the villagers? Just in case?”

“I will not,” the Dryad said with a growl. “My grove is to the south! I have to go protect it!”

“Alright, we’ll figure it out,” Syd said as she glanced between the villagers and Severina who was circling overhead. “The village wasn’t their goal, anyway. I am. And if they can’t get to me directly, they want anyone close to me and my companions.”

“Well, they chose the wrong forest to hunt your family in,” Meli snarled as she extended her claws. “A Dryad lives here.”

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