“Bring the wounded in here,” Cora ordered a pair of soldiers who were supporting a third man between them. “If you can walk, move to the left and stay within range of my regeneration aura. Any who can’t walk under their own power, bring to the right.”
Jay watched for a few seconds as the normally coquettish priestess took firm control of the battlefield medical station. Some soldiers had started using one of the buildings a couple of doors back from the market square as a place to move their wounded comrades who were waiting for stretcher-bearers to take them to the healers. As soon as Jadis had brought her companions to the front, Cora had jumped right in, directing Eir to quickly heal those who looked the worst while she began her own ritual chant for regenerative healing. Jadis didn’t even think about interfering with Cora’s commands. The woman was in her element, and Jadis knew she would only get in the way if she tried to help.
Both Sabina and Alex had assumed positions inside the new building as Cora’s bodyguards. While Eir would be coming with the assault party to provide healing, Cora, Sabina, and Alex would be staying behind at the karkinos fortification where they would be safe while also offering some support to the nearby frontline. Sabina was happy enough to take on the duty, however, Alex had taken some convincing. The Demon was unhappy with being left behind, and had argued strongly, in her own way, that she should stay close to Jadis and aid in the coming assault against the Demon Prince.
As much as Jadis wanted to bring her demonic lover with her in the coming battle, a far larger part of her did not. Alex was powerful, easily on the level of an elite despite being a relatively low CLR, but she was also heavily pregnant. She didn’t belong anywhere near where swords and spells would be put to grim and earnest use. Commander Odilia’s reaction to her presence had also been a reminder to Jadis that even though the emperor had pardoned Alex, that didn’t mean everyone in the empire would accept the Demon. A chaotic battlefield was too risky a place for someone who could be easily mistaken for the enemy. Especially when there were people who weren’t interested in making the distinction between Alex and the rest of her kin.
While Alex was more than willing to risk her own life for Jadis’ sake, it was when Jadis pointed out that their unborn child’s life would also be at risk that she relented. If there was anything in the world that Alex loved as much as Jadis, it was their child. With that argument made, the Demon agreed to remain close to Sabina and Cora, where she would be safe.
All her other companions would be coming with her, deeper into the fray, as they would all be needed to help take down the Demon Prince. All except for one other. The one who was, even at the moment, looking like she was trying to slip away.
“Maeve,” Jay caught onto the Fetch’s shoulder before she could sneak out of the building. “Where are you going?”
Maeve paused, looking up at her. She was still in the guise of a young runner, unchanged from when she had used the disguise to trick the hostile Valbjorn commander. Her dark eyes stared up blankly, expressionless.
“I need to find some clothes.”
“What?”
The answer surprised Jay, and she let go of the Fetch’s shoulder while giving the shapeshifter a once over.
“Why? Can’t you just stay in those clothes?”
“These aren’t clothes,” Maeve plucked at the collar of her uniform. “This is me. I couldn’t find a uniform fast enough so I got rid of the robes and changed my body to look like this.”
“Oh,” Jay blinked at the explanation. The idea that Maeve was actually completely naked at that moment, despite looking like a fully clothed eighteen-year-old human boy, was weird. “No, uh, illusion magic?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Ah. Well. I guess I can understand wanting to find some pants under the circumstances.”
When Maeve once more started to move away, Jay stopped her a second time.
“Look, can I count on you?” she asked, staring deep into the Fetch’s eyes.
The disguised woman’s face shifted between multiple emotions, almost too fast for Jadis to recognize them. Confusion. Hope. Guilt. Worry. The expression she settled on before speaking was guarded.
“For what?”
“To watch over them.”
Jay motioned her hand towards Sabina and Alex. Cora was included in her encompassing wave, even if she wasn’t one of Jadis’ lovers. She was still a friend, and she wanted her just as protected as any of her lovers.
“Can I count on you to do that?”
Maeve opened her mouth, a slight hesitation that spoke volumes about how seriously she took the request. After a flicker of some unreadable emotion flitted across her borrowed face, she nodded.
“I’ll make sure nothing happens to them. I swear it on my soul.”
“Thank you,” Jay nodded, accepting the oath for what it was. “Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.”
When Maeve stepped away again, Jay didn’t stop her. However, before she could walk even three feet away, the Fetch turned back to face her.
“About earlier, on the airship… I didn’t—”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Jay stopped her from saying anything more. “Now isn’t the time for explanations.”
Maeve nodded once, a strange look in her eyes.
“Yes. I’m just… Sorry.”
Jay opened her mouth, then closed it again a second later. She wanted to accept the apology, but if she was honest with herself, which she always tried to be, she really wasn’t quite ready to forgive Maeve just yet. They needed a talk. A continuation of earlier discussions, perhaps. Jadis still wasn’t sure how she felt about the Fetch, or how Maeve felt about her. Forgiveness might come. Or it might not. The outcome depended largely on Maeve, not her. However, even though she wasn’t in the mindset to forgive, she still appreciated that the Fetch was trying to make things right.
“Apology accepted,” Jay finally settled on saying. “Now, let’s get this shit done.”
“Good luck,” Maeve said before rushing off to pilfer some clothing from somewhere Jadis probably didn’t want to think about.
Outside, all three of Jadis’ selves gathered with everyone who would be coming with her on the assault against the Demon Prince and the enemy host who guarded it. Aila, Eir, Kerr, Thea, Bridget, Sorcha, Severina, Meli, and Noll joined her in a circle off to one side of the road, out of the way of the many soldiers who were reinforcing the barricade. The soldiers were increasing in number despite their growing casualties. Aside from the less organized rush of men running back into battle from the healers, Jadis could already see the promised reinforcements marching towards the market square from the south, so she didn’t waste time mincing words.
“Does everyone know their part?”
A chorus of voices answered in the affirmative.
“Sev, do we have the other Seraphim coming?”
“Yes,” Severina answered in clipped tones. “They will meet us at the intersection. General Voss has also ordered several elites to begin a counterattack from the east, which will hopefully act as the anvil to our hammer.”
“Or at least serve as a distraction,” Aila added.
“Good,” Jay said as all three of her selves nodded. “Remember. We hit the Dead Head Matriarch first. If any Greater Demons appear, treat them as targets of opportunity. Otherwise, once the Matriarch is down, we go straight for Prince Vinea. You all know your parts. Any questions?”
Sorcha tentatively raised her hand.
“What do we do if everything goes to shit?”
“You mean when it goes to shit,” Noll growled at the goblin.
“We do what we have to do to make sure everyone comes out alive,” Dys answered the question seriously. “Stay together, communicate, and keep your eyes open. We are all walking away from this fight together.”
When no one else had any further questions, Jay nodded her head.
“Alright. Let’s do this.”
There was no cheer from her companions. This wasn’t a game, and they weren’t about to go out and try their best. They were going to kill, or they were going to be killed. That was the simple truth of the matter. Jadis knew it was the case from the very first time she had used a rock to slay a bone thief. A fight, a true fight, was life or death. While her mind was calm and centered, fully accepting of the reality of her situation in that moment, just the same as she had known the simple truth almost a year ago, she also knew in her soul that the stakes had never been higher. She had people who depended on her, lovers who needed her, unborn children who counted on her to be there for them in the future. She had a child inside of her womb to protect.
The simple truth was, there were no other options: she had to win.
Jay let Kerr hop onto her back while Aila and Eir settled into the crooks of her left and right arms. Dys took both Thea and Bridget on her back, the two women wrapping their arms around her neck. Syd didn’t carry anyone, instead carrying Jay’s hammer in addition to her own weapon. At the same time, Severina picked up Sorcha and took off into the sky with the brave goblin. Jadis could only imagine that the witch was regretting her decision to do that since her stomach didn’t do well with flying and the Seraphim wasn’t likely to take it easy for her. Meli and Noll ran alongside Jadis as their group leapt up to the nearby rooftop and headed for the intersection where the Dead Head Matriarch was located.
They didn’t have far to go. The southern entrance to the market square was close enough to the intersection the Matriarch was holding that Jadis had been hearing the sounds of its magic being cast, even if she hadn’t known for sure what the sounds were at the time. They moved quickly, running and jumping across rooftops to avoid the Demon-infested streets and alleyways below, and were at the intersection in mere seconds. If they had gone by the main road, it would have taken far longer, but the straight course directly over the blocks of buildings and partition walls took no time at all.
The three-way intersection was wide, with lots of space between the buildings on the south side and the city wall to the north. No structures had been built along the wall, which was no doubt a part of the defensive measures the city had in place. There was a statue, or the remains of one, in the center of the intersection, but it had fallen over at some point during the battle. There were two large buildings on either corner, with the eastern building partially collapsed. The street beyond that building had large stone pillars jutting up in a scattered pattern, each one forty feet tall and covered in a layer of jagged spikes. The stone pillars blocked sightlines to the Demon Prince Vinea, whose head was just barely visible sticking through the wall perhaps a hundred yards away further east. The horde of Mire Hounds and other Demons poured into the city through the breach, spreading out across the streets like muddied water. The flow of Demons spread everywhere, except for one bare circle roughly in the middle of the T intersection.
As Syd and Noll, who led the group, landed together on the half-crumbled roof of a building on the southwestern corner of the intersection that bordered the city wall, Jadis got her first good look at the Matriarch of the dead heads.
Heads. Dozens upon dozens of disembodied heads floated like macabre, rotting balloons that were tethered by black lines to a central figure. The mass of them was spread wide, covering an area of at least thirty feet in diameter. Most of the heads were gray from decomposition, with patches of yellow or sun-bleached bone sticking out from where the flesh had sloughed away like wet dough. Some of the heads were fresher, still pink with blood, while others were so old that they were practically nothing but skulls. However, the one thing that all the heads had in common were their eyes. Every head had glowing purple eyes, shining with unholy light.
The black lines that tethered the floating heads were, Jadis immediately realized, long tentacles that were coming from the central figure of the Matriarch’s body. And, as bad as the ghastly sight of the heads was, it held no comparison to the wretched state of the Demon’s body.
Where there had once been a matronly woman’s body was now a bloated, headless corpse. Where a head and neck should have been was a massive hole from which the dozens of long, black tentacles that attached to the floating heads exited the body. The effect was like that of an explosion, where flaps of flesh and skin dangled around the edges of the nest of tentacles, overstuffed and fraying from not being able to quite fit so many foul limbs. Every inch of gray flesh was on display since the Matriarch wore not a stitch of clothing, which allowed all to see the myriad of arcane runes carved across the creature’s remaining skin.
The worst was the Demon’s stomach. It was a perversion of life and motherhood made reality. The skin across the Matriarch’s abdomen had split open, revealing a fibrous net of tendon-like flesh that hung pendulously from the abomination’s body, almost reaching its knees. Inside that flesh netting were the familiar, frog-like eggs of Demons.
Syd reached the intersection first, spearheading the charge, and got to see the vile tableau of the repulsive Demon giving birth.
Lying on the ground at the Matriarch’s bloated feet were the bodies of multiple soldiers, all missing their heads. To Jadis morbid fascination, the Demon reached inside of its own flayed womb and pulled out an egg, shimmering with rancid slime. Clenching its rotted fist, the Matriarch crushed the translucent outer shell of the small, purple-eyed Demon. Then, with its other hand, it lifted a slain soldier from the ground and shoved the newborn Demon into the open hole of the body’s neck stump. In mere moments, the defiled corpse began to twitch as the long tentacles of a dead head extended from the horror’s new body.
As Jay landed on the rooftop next to Syd, Kerr immediately slipped from her back and, an arrow already notched to her bow, fired a preemptive shot at the Dead Head Matriarch. One of the Demon’s many heads instantly faced the oncoming arrow, its jaw hanging loose as purple eyes glowed with unnatural light. In the space of time that it took the arrow to fly towards its target, the head’s dead eyes flickered from purple to a frost-like blue.
A shield of arcane ice appeared in the air in front of the head a split second before Kerr’s arrow could land, blocking the missile from reaching its target. A second later, the ice shield crumbled out of existence while the eyes of the head that had cast the spell reverted to purple once more.
“Nasty fucking bitch,” Kerr growled as she nocked another arrow from her dwindling quiver. “This one isn’t going to go down easy.”
“Have any of them been easy?” Jay asked as she set Aila down.
“Well, no, but a girl can dream, right?”
“That’s not a dream, that’s a nightmare,” Bridget said as she and Thea slipped off of Dys and readied their weapons.
“Come on then,” Syd tightened her grip on her sword staff. “Let’s put this bitch to bed.”
Noll huffed and rolled his eyes.
“Pups…”
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