Jay charged past an unrelenting simulacrum that took a swing at her, ignoring the Demon completely. While physically powerful, the huge clay golems were too slow to keep up with her. Since she needed to focus on getting to the karkinos, she didn’t bother attacking something that wasn’t an immediate threat. The army coming up behind her would have to deal with that threat.
The dead head that was charging up what looked like a water or ice spell of some kind, though, wasn’t a foe she could so easily dismiss. As she ran by the spellcasting Demon’s left side, she swung her hammer at it and broke through its arcane shield. Her blow glanced off of the dead head’s arm, causing it to spin in place, though it stayed upright. That was fine, since in the same instant Dys struck the Demon from its right side, hacking its body into two pieces as she sprinted past it on the opposite side of the road from Jay.
| Congratulations! Dead Head Defeated. Bonus Experience Points Awarded for Defeating a Demon Spawn of Samleos. |
Jadis only bothered checking the notification because she wanted to make sure the dangerous spell caster was dead before she fully moved past it. She didn’t want to be struck by a spell from behind while she was dealing with the giant crab monster, if she could help it.
Satisfied that the Demon was dealt with, she dismissed the notification while ignoring the literal hundreds of other alerts that were popping up in the corner of her vision. The notices concerning the Demons she was involved in killing were unobtrusive and weren’t actively distracting her, but the sheer volume was, in its own way, concerning. It was absolutely insane to Jadis that so many Demons were willfully throwing their lives away in such a stupid battle. When she had been uncertain as to their intelligence, she had thought it was bad but at least understandable from the perspective of the Demons being mindless minions of Samleos. Now that she knew without doubt that each one was a thinking, feeling, sapient being, it was hard for Jadis to comprehend how so many could choose to sacrifice themselves.
First Alex, and then more recently Oats, gave Jadis solid proof that not all Demons were monsters. They didn’t have to be killers. They could choose. And yet, so many chose death. Even with Samleos whispering in their non-existent ears right from the beginning, it was truly incomprehensible to her.
Jadis shook her heads. Thoughts concerning Demon philosophy were for another time. At that moment, she needed to focus on the fight. Because while she was willing to give Demons a chance to redeem themselves if they wanted to take it, she wasn’t going to stop and ask each one about their thoughts while the horde was actively trying to destroy an entire city and all the people within it. There were limits to Jadis’ mercy.
There were, however, no limits to what the Demons would do in their quest to follow the will of Samleos.
A ball of acid that had to weigh as much as a full grown man struck the ground with a wide splash directly in front of Dys. The highly corrosive green slime made an audible sizzling sound as it burned and melted half a dozen mire hounds that had been unfortunate enough to be in the way of the possessed karkinos’ aim. The life of a Demon was just as expendable to each other, as they were to themselves.
Dys was forced to put her full strength into her next step, turning it into a leap to avoid running directly into the wave of acid that was exploding through the air directly in her path. Having been caught by some of the burning liquid already, she knew that her cold flame armor wouldn’t be melted by the acid, but the corrosive fluid could still seep through the cracks to get at her flesh beneath if she was soaked in it. Jadis didn’t want to take any damage she could avoid. She was basically an armored tank on the battlefield, but she had learned her lesson from past experiences. She wouldn’t throw her health away unnecessarily. Who knew how much the next hit might cost her.
Dys’ leap was big enough that she avoided the worst of the acid splash, barely getting any on her boots as she sailed through the sky high enough that she was above the roofline of the three-story buildings lining the main road she was rushing down. Since she was temporarily airborne, Dys took the opportunity to scan the city around her.
The massive karkinos, more than twenty feet in height, was directly ahead. It had reached a point that put it at about one-third of the distance between the intersection she had helped fortify and the market square by the city docks. She could better see, now that she was closer, that the west side of the open square was being defended by hundreds of soldiers and support mages. There were a few groupings that wore different colors than the standard imperial army uniform, so Jadis guessed those were probably mercenaries, but the majority looked like regulars to her. In some spots she could see that there were individuals standing out from the rest, scything their way through the waves of Demons coming at them from the east, which meant the army had its own elites on the field. There weren’t many of those, however, which wasn’t ideal, but at least it looked like the western defenders were holding their position.
Looking to the left and right, Dys couldn’t see as many Demons crawling through the side streets as she would have expected. Maybe they were just grouping together to make sure their numbers advantage wasn’t wasted, or maybe they actually knew that the city neighborhoods were partitioned to make it difficult for invaders to move through them without passing through the main roads. Either way, most of the enemy was on the big street she was on, or in the market square. Still, Jadis hoped that the soldiers making their way north behind her were smart enough to put shield walls on the entrances to the side streets to prevent Demons from flanking them and getting into their back ranks. Then Jadis remembered that Thea was effectively leading those soldiers, and she dismissed the concern. Her observant lover wouldn’t overlook a weakness like that.
As Dys started coming down from the leap she had made, she noticed one figure she had been looking for earlier sprinting across a roof to her right. She wasn’t sure she’d be heard, but she called out and pointed at the karkinos with her axe, hoping that his keen ears and keener mind would pick up on what she wanted.
“Noll!”
A glimpse of the therion’s shining yellow eyes before she dropped below the roof line told Dys that Noll had seen her. That would have to be enough, since she wasn’t going to leap up again. Her jump had put her behind her Jay self, who was now almost at the giant crab. Dys needed to focus on catching up, since she didn’t want one of her bodies to fight against the enemy alone.
Not that being alone was going to stop her from attacking the big purple fucker.
Jay gritted her teeth as she rushed at the karkinos. Her speed rose to even greater heights as she used her Knight’s Daring Charge to help close the distance between her and the possessed monster. Meli had told her that she needed to avoid getting hit by the crab’s claws, and she could already tell that the beast would be able to hit far faster than it was moving just by the way it flicked the balls of acid it grew on its back. She took that warning to heart, so she was moving to get by the karkinos as quickly as possible. She couldn’t go around, however, because she needed the monster to follow her back towards the city square. The closer it was to the far end of the road, the better. That meant she needed to keep the possessed creature focused on her, which in turn meant charging straight ahead.
Well. She didn’t have to charge stupidly straight ahead. Just mostly. As Jay neared the magic beast, she made an abrupt dodge to her right, using the momentum of her great speed to throw herself several feet diagonally to the side as she twisted in midair. It was an anticipatory dodge, as she hadn’t seen anything coming, but she figured the Demon wouldn’t let her get so close without preparing a counterattack of some kind. So, she ducked to the right, trusting her instincts that she was moving out of the way of a blow and not into the path of one.
There was a blur of incomprehensible motion, a hint of something moving so fast that even Jadis’ enhanced reaction speed and perception of time barely registered. Then, the world to the left of Jay exploded.
Dys was far enough back to see what had happened. The karkinos’ left claw had blurred, shooting out from its body with explosive speed. It struck the cobblestone road to Jay’s left, barely missing her as it left a literal impact crater in its wake. Not just a crater, but a shockwave that not only threw Jay off of her feet but caused all of the lesser Demons that had been scurrying within ten feet of that spot to splatter across the road like wet paste.
“Villthyrial, you jackass, you made a giant fucking mantis shrimp!? With acid!?”
Dys’ shout of frustration wasn’t met by a defiant roar, even though she felt as though it would have been appropriate to the situation. Demons didn’t usually make any noise, and the giant monster crab was still just a crab. It probably didn’t have any vocal cords. Still, Jadis kind of wished it did, since it would have been a nice counterpoint to her own shout.
Instead of roaring or anything suitably dramatic like that, the Demon possessed karkinos just turned its stalk eyes towards Jay and tried to hit her again.
Jay was already up and moving, though, so the next shockwave-generating punch of the crab’s claw did nothing but smash the side of a building.
Smash was an understatement. A hole appeared where there had once been a solid stone wall, ten feet in diameter. The material of said wall was beyond crushed, but instead pulverized into bits that exploded outward from the center of impact. Dys could actually see the shockwave in the air created by the karkinos’ punch as it pushed a cloud of dust outward.
“Yeah, well, I can hit pretty fucking hard, too,” Jay growled as she dashed under the crab to get behind it.
The cluster of long legs crunched the road under sharp claws, leaving holes wherever the giant arthropod stepped. Jay dodged around the legs, easily reaching the other side of the crab without getting stomped on. Wielding her huge steel maul, she swung it around in a full body spin, aiming the head at one of the karkinos’ back legs with the intention of crushing the limb in one blow.
Jay’s teeth shook in her head as she fell back several steps, momentarily stunned. The experience was so alien to her, that she almost didn’t recognize what had happened. Her massive war hammer, a weapon capable of crushing a man just by falling, never mind the power Jadis could put behind it with her Strength, had rebounded off the crab’s leg.
A layer of what looked like red smoke had appeared over the karkinos’ shell. It flowed and moved, but stayed close to the creature’s body, no more than three inches thick. After a second or two, the red mist faded out of sight, though Jadis could tell that the magical effect was still there, even if the visual indication was gone. The scarlet barrier wasn’t something that the acid crab was capable of doing on its own. This was the power of the Demon possessing it protecting its host.
A purple crab leg lashed out at Jay, clipping her side as she recovered from the unexpected ineffectiveness of her attack. Moving with the impact, she let herself spin halfway around before putting the power into her legs and sprinting away to the north. It was a good decision, as a second later the deadly crustacean punched at the space where she had been with one of its huge claws, leaving another impact crater in the much abused cobblestone street.
In the same instant, Dys reached the crab and swung her axe into another one of the creature’s legs. Her attack was met with a similar result. Despite the fact that she was within the timeframe necessary to trigger Mirrored Strikes, her axe head bounced off of the red mist shield with no damage done to the karkinos. Rather than stumble like her other self had, Dys rolled with it, having half expected the outcome. She continued forward, ducking between the beast’s legs and charging after her Jay self, leading the crab back towards the market square.
It was worrying to think that this possession Demon was capable of generating a shield strong enough that it could fully block her attacks. However, Jadis wasn’t ready to start panicking over the new development. Even if the Demon could cast the powerful spell, she doubted it could keep it up indefinitely. Something that strong had to be costly, far more costly than just the basic melee blows Jadis could deliver all night and day. And those simple attacks weren’t the extent of her plan to begin with.
For the next few seconds, Jay and Dys traded places, coming in close to the karkinos, just barely within range of its melee attacks. She didn’t stand her ground and fight, but instead kept retreating back, and back, and back some more. Her dodging tactics lured the possessed crab back several blocks as it put all of its focus on her. Other Demons attacked Jadis’ two selves, getting in the way, but none managed to trip her up enough to cause any fatal errors. With how powerful the karkinos’ blows were, and how much damage they did in wide areas, its attacks were actually providing a useful service to Jadis. Dozens upon dozens of lesser Demons were being incidentally killed by the beast’s attacks. That was a definite bonus, since it reduced the number of enemies attacking the soldiers who had to push their way up the street behind Jadis and the giant crab.
It was about the point where the crab was maybe fifty feet away from the end of the road when Jadis fucked up.
A dead head that was channeling some kind of ice spell was on the west side of the street. Since she was closest to that side at that moment, Jay pivoted towards the caster and attacked it with her maul. The Demon had a blue-colored shield in place, of course, but her blow smashed through the barrier and crushed the headless abomination with the weight of her weapon as much as her strength. As the Demon’s body was crushed to the ground, one of its long, black tentacles lashed out at her.
Jay blocked the thick tentacle’s blow with her left arm, catching it on her vambrace. The oily limb wrapped around her arm with surprising force, and stranger yet, detached itself from the dead head’s body. A split second later, Jay realized that it wasn’t a tentacle that had latched onto her, but an essence leech that had been disguising itself as one of the other Demon’s limbs.
“You tricky little shit,” Jay snarled as she leapt away from the still squirming dead head.
She knew that getting the leech off of her arm would be difficult, and it would be easier if she used her other self to cut at the Demon’s flesh. Turning to head over to Dys, Jay didn’t see the dead head’s spell coming until after the wall of ice rose up around her.
“Fuck!”
It was a strong spell. Not strong enough to do any real damage to her, as it was more of a pinning effect than an attack. Ice appeared around Jay, holding her limbs in place for a second. Just a second, since she was able to break through the icy barriers with relatively little effort. But she was still stationary for that one second. And that was enough for the karkinos.
Jay’s vision went black as a massive claw struck her armored body with enough force to pulverize stone to dust.
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