Syd wanted to tell Alex how much she loved her, but when she opened her mouth, she found she had no breath left to utter even a single word. That was fine, though. She knew Alex was a Demon, and they spoke through body language. A hug would convey her feelings better, anyway.
Except, Syd couldn’t hug Alex. In fact, she was having trouble moving her arms at all. Plus, she was holding onto her sword staff, and she didn’t want to poke Alex with the sharp weapon, even if she wasn’t having a hard time hugging at that moment. They had to protect their baby, after all. But why couldn’t she move her arms? What had she been doing in her armor, when it was so late at night that she couldn’t see anything except for her lover’s blue light?
“Jadis!”
Aila? What was she doing there? Wasn’t Alex the one hugging her? No, that wasn’t right. She had been hugging Aila. And it had been very important that she keep hugging her, just like it was important that she break free of the Demon who was also hugging her. Except, why would she want to break free of Alex? She loved being hugged by her beautiful tentacle monster. There was no reason to struggle out of her tender embrace, was there? Wasn’t there some danger she had been fighting against? Surely not. Not when she was being hugged by Aila and Alex.
“In Lyssandria’s name, let go of them!”
Ah. That was Eir. If her sweet little elf was there with them, then that meant all would be well. Eir was such a kind and gentle soul. There was no way there would be any danger nearby. Eir was a brave woman, but she wasn’t a fighter. So, she would be far away from any threats, and since she was near Jadis, that meant Jadis was far from any harm as well. All perfectly logical and reasonable. Everything was fine. Everything would be—
A sudden blast of concussive force rocked Jadis. For a moment, a pain that she had forgotten was there was lessened and one of her selves was able to take in a breath of air into burning lungs. It was a small thing, a brief touch of life-giving oxygen. But even that small, wheezing gasp when combined with the shock of being knocked around was enough to refresh Jadis’ memory.
She remembered where she was. She remembered where her selves were, and the danger she was in. More than that, she remembered the jeopardy that her lovers and unborn children were in. And most of all, she remembered that she had. To. Win.
A surge of adrenaline rushed through Jay as she strained against the damaged centipede Demon that had her in its clutches. The spike traps and whatever Eir had done to the Demon had weakened it, but the abomination still had its jaws around her shoulders and its claws around her neck. Calling upon every last ounce of strength she had within her, Jay stretched her arms and pushed back against the Demon’s stranglehold on her and Aila.
The sound of something snapping reached Jay’s ears. The familiar noise was followed shortly by another crack, then another. She felt several of the Demon’s arms fold like broken straws as the centipede’s stolen limbs were unable to contend with the physical strain they were being put under by trying to match Jadis’ sheer stat advantage. When the fifth bone snapped in half, it was like a weight had been lifted from Jay. With a mighty shove, she wrenched her arms free from the bear hug and, blindly groping for the arms that were clasped around her neck, she pulled.
Several arms tore away from the centipede with a squelching pop. Jay tossed the limbs aside and reached for more, prepared to rip and tear the Demon until it was nothing more than a pile of quivering gore. However, even as she grabbed hold of another couple of arms, her enemy abruptly released the hold it had on her with its jaws. With a sudden shove, it tried to put distance between itself and her, retreating from its impending doom.
That was a situation that Jadis could simply not allow to happen. Even as she gulped in a precious lungful of air, Jay turned and grabbed hold of the Demon that was trying to flee. She couldn’t allow this monster to get away a second time. Not when it had so nearly killed her again. Blinking the blood out of her scratched and damaged eyes, Jay tried to get her bearings while struggling with the squirming Demon.
“Jadis!”
Eir’s scream focused her attention. In a split second, she took in the situation and made a quick assessment as to what she needed to do.
The centipede Demon had ended up underneath her, more than half of its long body having pulled away from Jay. While many of its limbs had been badly damaged, the monster looked larger than the last time she had encountered it, clearly having put on some mass. They were struggling together near the southern edge of the roof, with the very back end of the Demon hanging over the edge. The front half of the Demon had apparently decided to switch targets, giving up on trying to kill Jadis and instead going for a weaker, more vulnerable objective.
Aila had rolled away from the fight once Jay had made enough room for her to slip out of the Demon’s grasp, and she was unsteadily rising to her feet. Beyond her, Eir was standing in front of the centipede Demon, holding Dys’ battleaxe in her hands of all things. The weapon was far too big and heavy for the small elf to wield, but there she was, jabbing the axe head directly in front of the snapping jaws of the Greater Demon. The effectiveness of her attempted attack was… well, it wasn’t really doing any damage at all. She wasn’t even close enough to hit the thing. However, Eir had done the job of grabbing the centipede’s attention. Not a position she wanted her elven lover to be in, but Jadis had to admit, the shift had provided her with an opening that she could use. Especially since she knew how the Demon liked to operate from past experiences.
With a snarling roar, Jay cast Crack the Glass on the middle of the centipede Demon’s back before rearing her right fist back and driving it into the magically created weak spot. With nothing to get in the way of her powerful, augmented punch, Jay’s clenched fist went right through the monster’s flesh like it was nothing more than rancid pudding. With her arm sinking up to her elbow into the vile foe, she grabbed hold of whatever bits of internal viscera that happened to be within reach of her long fingers, then tore the gore out of the hole she had made in a spray of black blood.
The Demon’s attempts to either get at Eir or get away from Jadis redoubled as its many remaining arms and legs flailed in what looked like genuine panic. Jay paid the response no mind, instead continuing to widen the hole she had created, while also creating new gaping wounds in the creature’s long torso. Her rapid punches created a sick sound of wet flesh being beaten and broken. Her violent action was almost automatic, her rage so great that she was operating on almost pure instinct.
Not entirely, though.
When Jay had broken free and managed to catch her breath, allowing at least one of Jadis’ brains to function properly, she had regained enough awareness in her gestalt being that she could focus and assess her status. Not just her Jay self, but her Dys and Syd selves, too. It was incredibly difficult for her to pay attention to her multiple surroundings when two of her selves were very near to being unconscious, but she could do it.
At some point in her hazy delirium brought on by a lack of oxygen, Syd had closed her eyes, so Jadis could no longer see Alex’s blue bioluminescence. While she couldn’t directly observe what was happening, it wasn’t hard to guess. Somehow, Alex had made her way to the site of the battle and, in stereotypical fashion, simply dove right into the danger, heedless of the harm that might fall on her. It was a distinct similarity between Jadis and her demonic lover that she both loved and hated. In that moment, Jadis could feel some empathy for how Eir felt every time she charged into a ridiculously dangerous battle.
However Alex had gotten there, the Demon was pulling her Syd self up out of the muck that she had been buried under. While she couldn’t see anything at that moment, she could sense the approximate locations of her separate bodies, and her Syd self was most certainly moving upward. Progress was slow, though, which made sense; even Alex would have trouble moving through that many Demons. Jadis just hoped that her demonic lover would be able to pull her body out quickly, and without harm to herself or their baby. Even putting aside her concerns for her loved ones, Jadis was very cognizant of the fact that her Dys self was still in the same basic position she had been for the past couple of minutes. If Jadis didn’t do something to get her third self out of the mire soon, she was going to find out exactly what happened when one of her bodies suffered catastrophic bodily failure. She highly doubted it would be good for her. Or survivable.
Jadis couldn’t do anything about her other selves. Not yet. First and foremost, she needed to deal with the immediate problem in front of her; namely, the centipede Demon. For the sake of Aila and Eir, the damn bitch needed to die before she could move on to saving her own skin.
Despite the fact that she had basically torn the Demon’s body apart mid-torso over the course of a few seconds, the centipede was still alive and kicking. Literally. The lower half of its long body had curled up on top of Jay and its many arms and legs were clawing and kicking at her in an ultimately fruitless effort to stop Jay’s barrage of punches. There was no chance Jay was going to stop, though, not until the Demon was dead, especially since the front half of the monster was still trying to claw its way over to Eir.
It really had only been seconds, which wasn’t much time at all, yet Jadis felt every micro-instant pass at an excruciatingly slow pace. Two of her selves were dying from asphyxiation and she could feel it all now that her Jay self’s head was clear. Every painful second reinforced how much she couldn’t afford to waste any more time killing the centipede Demon.
Jadis’ waning time wasn’t a detail that only she was aware of. Eir had given up her attempt to lend physical aid and had dropped Jadis’ axe to instead hold out her glowing hands, pumping her Divine healing magic into Jay from a distance. The ranged healing was far more expensive than her normal on-touch healing, yet she had no choice in the matter. She couldn’t risk coming any closer, not when the centipede was still alive and liable to pull her into its snapping jaws. As for Aila…
Jay saw her redheaded lover standing to one side, eyes tightly closed in concentration. At first, Jadis had no idea what she was doing. Aila wasn’t the type of person to panic or freeze up in a life-threatening situation, so the sight of the coolheaded arcanist just standing there with her eyes shut for several seconds was deeply confusing to Jadis. Then it hit her. Aila was out of magic reserves, and even with the magic replenishment potion she had just taken from Eir, it would take some minutes for her to get enough magic back that she could cast anything more than another spike trap. The only thing that could change that was the one thing that they had all been getting ever since they had joined the battle against the Demon invasion of Glanum: levels.
Aila’s blue eyes opened wide. Extending her staff before her, she pointed it at the head of the flailing centipede Demon. Without a word or further movement, a massive spike of spectral arcane energy shot out from her, lancing the Demon’s head. The spike, which had to be six inches thick at its largest, pierced straight through the monstrosity’s flesh and into the stone roof below, pinning the creature in place. When Aila moved her staff away, the lance of energy stayed in place, keeping the Demon’s head restrained to one spot as its struggling body quickly lost all energy, as though its strings had been abruptly cut.
Shrugging the lower body that had been trying to grapple her off her shoulders, Jay leapt up the length of the centipede. With her steel-shod foot, she crushed the head of the abomination, making sure that the Demon was dead.
“Jadis!” Eir cried out as she ran up to her, hands grasping hold as she provided more healing. “Your health! Your other bodies—”
“I know,” Jay cut her off, already picking up her battleaxe and moving towards the north side of the roof. “I’ve got to get down there and save myself.”
“Go,” Aila said, not wasting a moment on sentimental words that Jay knew she had to want to say but held back. “I’ll check on the others and keep Eir safe. Go!”
Jadis hated the idea of leaving Aila and Eir alone, especially after the centipede Demon’s ambush, but she had to go. She could feel her Syd self was almost at the surface, but her Dys self felt like it was getting even lower, sinking deeper under the mass of mire hounds. She had to trust that Aila and Eir could take care of themselves, and that her other lovers would handle themselves as well. Otherwise, there was no hope.
Without looking back, Jay leapt over the edge of the roof and into the pit below.
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