“Are you Tacitus?”
Syd’s guess wasn’t based off anything so concrete as a nametag, just the gut feeling that the big Seraphim wielding a massive halberd seemed more like a Tacitus than a Noct. When the man didn’t immediately respond, she thought that maybe she’d gotten it wrong and had somehow offended the winged warrior. Then the big guy slowly nodded his helmeted head, and she realized that he was probably just coming to grips with the fact that he was speaking with an eighteen-foot-tall giant. She imagined it had to be a strange sight for anyone to adjust to, presuming they weren’t used to Jadis-based shenanigans.
While Tacitus took a moment to look Syd over, she did the same to the Seraphim. He was, without question, the largest Seraphim she had ever met. Her perception was a little skewed due to her spell-augmented height, however, Jadis estimated Tacitus to be at least seven feet tall. He wasn’t just tall, though, but wide. His frame was broad shouldered and bulky in a way that Jadis rarely saw on anyone but orcs and Valbjorn. Rather than a bodybuilder, he looked more like a strongman competitor, with a boulder-sized waist and tree trunk limbs. He was so large that, even though Jadis knew that Seraphim flight was based on magic, she was surprised that the man could get off the ground.
That bulkiness was only enhanced by the armor the Seraphim was wearing. Equipped with heavy plate and a great helm, Tacitus had the appearance of a literal tank. With all that steel on him, Jadis figured he could probably smash directly through a stone wall without stopping, just from the sheer weight and momentum of his armored frame, no skills needed. Everything about the warrior’s equipment was large and heavy, including his halberd. The axe-like head of his weapon looked more like a thick slab of steel than a proper bardiche or glaive, and Jadis imagined the massive weapon would be better at smashing than cutting through enemies.
The other notable aspect of Tacitus’ appearance was his pair of brilliant blue wings. They were a shining, bright blue with white tips and black stripes mixed into the feathers. It took Jadis a moment of thought, but she quickly realized that his wings looked almost exactly the same as those found on bluejays back on Earth. Tacitus’ feathers were a brighter shade of blue and had fewer dark stripes mixed into their pattern, but otherwise, combined with his blue tabard, he looked very much like a giant, armored bluejay.
“Bridget,” Tacitus stated, more than asked, in a surprisingly quiet voice.
His question was accompanied by a heavily armored hand reaching out towards the two of them with calm assurance.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Bridget responded from where she was hanging off Syd’s shoulder. As she spoke, she instinctively reached out with her own hand towards the huge Seraphim. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to—”
The warrior’s question was cut off as Tacitus took Bridget’s hand and easily lifted her away from Syd. With one arm wrapped around her waist, Tacitus took to the sky, not waiting around to discuss the battleplans. Jadis supposed there really wasn’t much to talk about, anyway, since the job was straightforward enough. He just needed to make sure that Bridget got her chance to hit the Demon Prince. So long as he could make sure that happened, then he really didn’t need any further details.
While Syd was passing Bridget off to Tacitus’ care, Dys had her own interaction with the other Seraphim, whom she presumed to be named Noct.
Noct was, in some ways, more what Jadis was used to, and in other ways less. Tall, slender, and possessing a far more feminine frame than the blue-winged Seraphim Syd was dealing with, the woman was similar to Severina and the others of Valtar’s Avatars Jadis had met in the past. While the rest of her was obstructed by her armor, Jadis could see that her wings were broad and black, with tiny brown and gray specks scattered across the feathers. They reminded her of the wings of some owls she had seen in the past, which was somewhat unusual since most Seraphim had more brightly colored wings. That wasn’t what was strange about Noct, though. What was truly strange was her armor. Or rather, what was layered over it.
The woman’s body was covered in belts. Belts, leather straps, chains, and even a few loops of what looked to be rope were wrapped across her arms, legs, and torso. There were no loose or dangling bits; every piece of metal and leather was cinched tight against the Seraphim, so that even though she wasn’t showing an inch of skin her athletic form was still very visible.
Not everything Noct wore was a strap of some kind, of course. In fact, it looked like she had on some kind of light leather armor similar to what Kerr wore under all the belts and chains. Still, the woman’s highly unusual equipment gave Jadis the distinctly inappropriate impression that Noct was wearing what was, essentially, bondage gear. She truly doubted that was what Noct was going for, and Jadis figured her own perverted mind was filling in implications that didn’t exist, nevertheless, the Seraphim’s armor was highly distracting.
Tearing her eyes away from the tight straps and chains wrapped around Noct’s body, Dys focused on the strange polearm the flying woman wielded. The sight of the odd weapon triggered Jadis’ memory, and she realized that this was the same armament she had seen rip a stymphalia off of the Leviathan earlier that night. She had thought that it was a ring on the end of pole, but now that she had a better look at it, she saw that wasn’t a complete or accurate description. The head of the polearm split into two curved arms, like a bident, where the two half-circles of steel almost met again after making a circle, leaving a small space between them. While the metal arms of the almost-circle were thick and sturdy, both the inner and outer edges of the steel had sharp edges, and the ends of the arms had extended points to them. Jadis had no doubt that the polearm could be used like a halberd or axe. Otherwise, the intent of the weapon was clear; it was designed to catch the limbs or even the heads of enemies in the open ring, giving Noct control over her foes.
“Spear.”
Dys almost didn’t hear the Seraphim’s single sharp word. Her helmet completely covered her face, and when she spoke, her quiet voice sounded more like an echoing whisper than the commanding tones of a paladin.
“Here,” Thea quietly replied, holding out her serrated spear to the woman. “T—take it.”
Noct hovered close, taking the venomous weapon from Thea’s outstretched hand. She took a moment to check the heft of the spear, then nodded to herself when it seemed to meet her approval. After that, it looked like Noct was about to take off without another word, but hesitated. With barely perceptible reluctance, Noct passed her own strange weapon to Thea.
“Safekeep.”
“I will,” Thea agreed as she took the Seraphim’s polearm. “I p—promise.”
Noct nodded once, then flapped her black wings and took off into the night sky.
“Hey,” Dys whispered, turning her head to look at Thea, who was still hanging onto her armored shoulder. “Was it just me, or was what she was wearing kind of…”
“Yes,” Thea bobbed her head up and down in a fast nod. “Very.”
“Okay, good. Not just me.”
As distracting as the interaction between her and the two Seraphim had been, Jadis shook the moment off and focused on her surroundings. She was still in the middle of a major battle and more lives than her own were very much on the line. With Bridget liable to make a strike against the Demon Prince at any moment, she needed to get her selves into position, not just Kerr.
Lunging around the stone columns she had taken momentary cover behind, Dys and Syd charged forward, ignoring the lesser Demons that fell under her feet as her two selves made her way to the open space that surrounded the breach in the city wall. In the process, Dys and Syd switched sides, exchanging positions so that Syd was on the north side of the street while Dys was on the south, as she was still carrying Thea on her shoulder and would need to make a detour. Noll was already ahead of her, yet the old wolf had slowed his pace, not quite pushing past the magically created barriers. Once he saw her charging in, he leapt ahead and cleared the way to make room for her charge. Steeling herself for what was bound to be a devastating confrontation, Jadis rushed into the Demon-choked street that was crowned by the massive head of Demon Prince Vinea.
The wyrm truly was gigantic. Jadis had seen as much both from a distance while riding on the airship, and more recently when the Demon had poured a literal mountain of bodies on top of her in a bizarre attempt to slay her. Still, seeing the monster up close again, Jadis couldn’t help but marvel at its abhorrent majesty. The only thing that came close to Vinea in size was Vetregin, the ancient and powerful ice dragon who Jadis had saved from demonic possession at the start of winter. Even then, Vetregin was like a flying iguana paired next to an anaconda when compared to Vinea. The Demon truly was of deific proportions.
Having come so close to the creature, Jadis noticed a few things about the Demon Prince she hadn’t had time to recognize before. Despite running forward at top speed, she had the time to appreciate the details of the Demon as her mind slowed time down from a combination of focus and pure adrenaline.
The first thing she saw were the Demon’s eyes.
Vinea’s mouth was split into five parts, opening wide like the petals on a flower or a five-pointed star, with the fifth point oriented so it was up in the air rather than on the ground. The outer layers of the roughly triangular jaws looked like they were some kind of scaly stone material, though that was hard to tell from Jadis’ viewpoints. What she could easily see, however, were the masses of wine-purple eyes dotting the inner layers of the jaws like glowing pustules. While large for the average Demon, the size of Vinea’s eyes were tiny for such a massive creature. Perhaps to make up for that deficiency, the Demon Prince had hundreds of the purple orbs lining its mouth, making for a bizarre vision of diseased-looking growths.
Aside from the uncountable number of eyeballs, the other noticeable things lining Vinea’s maw were tentacles. Hundreds of long, black tentacles squirmed inside of the Demon’s jaws, some writhing around in expectation while others coiled tightly together like waiting vipers. While the tentacles were, compared to the larger whole of the colossal wyrm, unimpressively small, Jadis estimated each limb to be around three times the length of Alex’s large ambulatory tentacles and just as thick. Getting caught by those lengths of squirming muscles would be a very bad situation to be in, Jadis had no doubt.
The last detail of Vinea’s appearance Jadis noticed was the Demon Prince’s body. Since they were coming at the wyrm from the side, she could see some of its great length through the breach in the wall it had created. Initially, she assumed the Demon had a scaly, rock-like hide due to the bumpy texture it appeared to have at a distance. Now that she had gotten a closer look, Jadis realized that what she had thought were just the low points between the many large bumps on its skin were actually holes. Rather than a solid exterior, Vinea’s body was perforated with gaps that shone clear through to the core of the wyrm’s being. In a moment of unexpected memory, Jadis made the connection that Vinea’s form was very much like that of a dried out cholla cactus from Earth. Even as she charged forward to do battle with the Demon Prince, Jadis could see the shadowy forms of the lesser Demons using Vinea as a bridge through the holes in its hide, showing that those gaps were easily big enough for mire hounds to crawl through them if they so chose to.
Jadis’ examination of the Demon Prince came to an abrupt end when Alex’s dual-tonal voice echoed in Jay’s ear.
“Dodge left…!”
Without a second of hesitation, Dys and Syd immediately pivoted to the left. Jay had not been facing Vinea and had instead been quietly maneuvering through a back alley with the others to the south of Vinea’s position. In that moment, however, Jadis knew that since Alex was riding on Jay’s back, she would have had a perfect view of Vinea. Jadis trusted her Demonic lover knew what she was doing, so she acted without reservation.
That quick reaction to Alex’s warning was key, as it saved Dys and Syd from getting blasted in her collective faces by spell-conjured shrapnel.
The explosion of rocks came from an amber-colored rune that had appeared in front of Vinea’s head. Either the wizardly rune had been cast with startling speed, or it had been invisibly waiting for Jadis to come within range. Whatever the case was, the mass of sharp stones that had blasted outward from the rune would have put both Jadis’ armor and Aila’s defensive spell to the test. When Syd glanced to her right, she saw that the building that had lined the street behind her had been shredded to pieces.
“How did you know?” Jay asked as she peeked around a corner to gauge their distance to the Demon Prince.
“Vinea… Warned… The other Demons… To Move…”
“Seriously?” Jay asked, surprised by the revelation.
“Yes…” Alex confirmed as shifted around Jay so that she could see the gigantic wyrm. “She speaks… She commands… She swears… She is… Talkative…”
An evil grin split across Jay’s face as she listened to Alex’s words.
“Then it’s a good thing you speak her language, huh?”
Alex’s responding smile was no less wicked.
“Yes…”
238