Jadis could feel the Demons clawing at her skin.
Hundreds of Demons. Thousands of them. All scratching and scraping and grabbing and tugging on every part of her. Her arms and legs, her hands and feet, even her fingers and toes were immobilized by the crushing weight of so many Demons crawling all over her. Her massive strength, her increased size, even her multiple bodies meant nothing in the face of so many blindly vicious enemies that wanted her dead. All her might and power stood for nothing in the face of so much hate.
Even her face was paralyzed by the overwhelming mass of Demons that were crawling all over her. She couldn’t open her eyes to see or her mouth to breathe. Jadis wanted to scream, yet she couldn’t even utter a gasp as so much death weighed down on top of her. She struggled to drag in just one more lungful of air, one more breath, to live for a few seconds longer. Even if it meant sucking in that horrid stench of decay and gore that the Demons carried with them wherever they brought their perverse brand of destruction, Jadis fought for that one more breath. She had to live. She had to.
Unable to open her mouth, Jadis inhaled deeply through her nose, bracing herself for the horrid stench that would make her choke and gag as it poisoned her lungs and blood with its airborne filth.
Instead of toxic gore, however, what Jadis smelled was… home.
The storming sea of Jadis’ mind calmed as she drew the lovely scent deep into herself. It was a mix of salty and sweet, not quite floral but in some way similar that she couldn’t quite put a finger on. The smell soothed her soul while simultaneously speeding up her heartbeat, blood pumping to needed places as desire replaced fear.
Pushing away the cloudy haze of unseen enemies clawing at her edges, Jadis slowly opened her eyes.
It took a few seconds for her vision to come into focus, and another minute for her brain to catch up, but Jay soon realized that the dark, smooth expanse that she was staring at was actually the flat plane of Aila’s pale stomach. The lighting was dark, so they were cast into shadows, and her face was so close that her nose was pressed up against the other woman’s skin, but now that she was awake, Jadis couldn’t mistake the beautiful sight, nor the intoxicating aroma of her first lover.
Not that she was by any means complaining, but Jadis had to ask herself, why the fuck was she hugging Aila’s naked belly to her face?
As true wakefulness came to Jadis’ exhausted mind, the events of the previous night came back to her in waves. Arriving in Glanum while Demons were invading. Jumping off the airship and onto the tower. Leading her companions into the battle while rallying the city’s defenses. Fighting the karkinos, then the Dead Head Matriarch. Being buried under the avalanche of mire hounds and fighting her way out of it with Alex’s vital help. The centipede Demon’s ambush, and subsequent escape. Fighting their way to the Demon Prince and, ultimately, killing Vinea.
As Jadis’ mind processed the memories, Jay’s eyes lovingly traced every soft line and curve of Aila’s stomach. Heat rose up inside her the longer she stared, though she was too tired and content to be in her lover’s embrace than to act on that growing heat. At least for the moment. A small thought reminded her that inside of that beautiful belly was another life, one that the two of them had created together, and a different kind of heat blossomed inside of her, one that was warmer and more giddy than needful.
All memory of the cloying nightmare that had twisted her dreams moments ago was wiped away as she basked in the glow of her lover.
Unable to help herself, Jay placed a kiss on Aila’s stomach, which prompted a faint sigh to emanate from the sleeping woman. As much as Jadis wanted to continue, she also didn’t want to wake her lover up, so she held back. The soft exhalation was loud enough to tickle at Jadis’ ears, though, and it helped her tired brains orient her selves to each other.
Dys opened her eyes to stare up at an unfamiliar ceiling. She was lying on the ground, from what she could tell, angled away from her Jay self by about forty-five degrees, though the feet of her two selves were touching. While they were definitely on the floor of the unknown room, piles of blankets had been laid out under them, so she was comfortable enough, even if it wasn’t as soft a cushion as their bed back in Eldingholt. When Syd followed suit a moment later, her vision was obscured by a mane of purple hair, broken only by a pointed red ear sticking out from the silken tresses.
While Syd hugged Eir a little tighter against her chest, Dys tilted her head up a bit to see that both Thea and Bridget were curled up together on top of her torso. The two were just as out of it as Aila and Eir seemed to be, so she did what she could not to disturb their slumber as she turned her gaze around the room. She was still mentally catching up to her current situation, and while most of the remainder of the night was coming together in her memory, she wasn’t certain about where they were all currently sleeping.
No, that wasn’t entirely true. Jadis did have an idea, now that she was thinking straighter. She just didn’t have specifics.
After Demon Prince Vinea had been defeated, the battle for the city had continued for several more hours. Sure, the most dangerous player the enemy had on their team had been slain, but that didn’t mean the fight had gone out of the remaining Demons. The Spawn of Samleos weren’t known for retreating. Even when faced with impossible odds, they tended to fight to the death, showing no fear of meeting an untimely end. Thanks to the massive amount of destruction caused by Vinea and the other powerful Demons who had breached the city, there really was no reason for the horde of mire hounds and other lesser Demons to flee. They were there to kill as many mortals as they possibly could, and they had continued in that terrible effort for many hours after their leader had fallen.
Jadis and her companions had continued the fight, using their great size and strength to slay countless more Demons. Even as the battle turned into more of a mop-up operation, she kept fighting. Jadis didn’t want to risk any more deaths if she could do something to stop them, so she’d pushed her body to its limits. Unfortunately, even her stamina was finite in nature, and by the time the sun had started to lighten the eastern horizon, she had been utterly exhausted.
Honestly, she didn’t remember too much of what had happened after she’d finally listened to Eir’s insistent pleas to take a rest. She did remember making sure to gather all of her lovers and companions together, doing a head check to be certain that everyone was alive and accounted for. Even Noll had been counted, though the old wolf had looked mildly offended that she had felt the need to include him in her count. Once she had gathered and assured herself that everyone was alive and accounted for, even Maeve, Jadis had allowed others to take charge. She remembered being led up the hill, to the second tier of the city, by Severina. After some talk with important-looking people that Jadis’ foggy memory couldn’t quite visualize at that moment, they had been taken to a large building with a fancy appearance. Other than a few fleeting recollections of either bathing or being bathed by others, Jadis had no idea what had happened after that.
She could guess well enough that she and the others had been taken somewhere safe to clean up and get some rest. The fact that everyone was sleeping off the nightmare of a battle that they had just gone through told Jadis that they were in a secure location. There was no way Aila would have gone to sleep otherwise. Though, considering the arcanist had drained her magic reserves multiple times over the course of the battle, she had probably been just as exhausted as Jadis. She knew from experience that using up all of one’s magic left one feeling wrung out.
Everyone had to have been exhausted after the night-long battle, regardless of how much physical or magical activity they might have done. It was no surprise that they had collectively found somewhere to bunker down and get some rest.
Shifting slightly, Dys caught sight of her Syd self, who was lying on her side sort of perpendicular to her other selves, closer to Jay and Dys’ feet. Eir was, indeed, wrapped up in her arms, and she could see that Sorcha was draped across her side and hip, sleeping with her green arms and legs dangling like a lazy cat. When she turned to look at her Jay self, Dys saw that Aila was sleeping with Jay’s head buried against her curled up body, while Kerr was behind her, face snuggled up against her back.
Having counted everyone in the room, Dys frowned in consternation. While most of her lovers were accounted for, not all of them were. Sabina wasn’t anywhere to be seen, nor was Severina. Neither were too much of a surprise, since Sabina didn’t sleep much and tended to get up early before everyone else, while Severina was the type to avoid overt displays of affection when in a public setting. Jadis had no idea if the Seraphim had slept with them last night or not, she couldn’t remember, but she wouldn’t be at all surprised if she had gone to a separate room to avoid any impropriety.
The true shock was that Alex wasn’t present. Her demonic lover had been inseparable from her ever since she had rescued Jadis from the smothering pit of Demons. While Alex had no need for sleep, she always stuck with them in bed, even on normal nights, and just quietly read a book or meditated on her own thoughts. The fact that Alex wasn’t in the room with Jadis at that moment was beyond surprising; it was downright concerning.
Jadis had no desire to wake the others up. They all needed their rest just as much as she did, and her anxiety over Alex not being in the room was likely baseless. The Demon was probably with either Sabina or Severina, or all three were together. Maybe they were preparing the group some food, which would make sense. Alex was a decently good cook since she followed recipes to the letter, and Sabina’s food was… edible. Jadis had no idea if Severina possessed any culinary skills, as the paladin had never shown any inclination to even help in the kitchen. In any case, thinking about food reminded Jadis that she was starving, a situation that she had barely realized was the case since she had been so tired. Jadis didn’t know how long they had been asleep for, but she thought it was a fair assumption to presume that they had missed breakfast.
Sliding Thea and Bridget off of her chest, Dys set the two sleeping women so that they were cuddled up together next to her Jay self. Neither of them stirred more than a few twitches, showing just how tired they were. Getting to her feet, Dys carefully stepped around her other selves and the sleeping forms of her lovers to get to the door on the other side of the room.
Doing so, Jadis noticed two things. First, she was clothed. She hadn’t really registered the garments on her body since her mind had been occupied with other matters, but now that she was up and moving, she realized that she wasn’t naked. Normally she didn’t wear clothes to bed, since doing so got in the way of important recreational activities, but it seemed that either she had been convinced to do so when she’d been barely conscious, or someone had dressed her after she had passed out. The clothes she was wearing were her own, though. Which meant that someone, at some point, had retrieved her luggage from the Leviathan. She took that to be a good sign.
The other thing she noticed was the room’s furnishings. There was a bed in the room, along with cushioned lounge chairs and a couple of polished dressers, but all the furniture had been pushed to one side to make room for their sleeping pile. Heavy curtains had been drawn across the windows lining one wall, and while hardly any light was coming through them, Jadis could tell that the sun was bright on the other side of those bolts of cloth. There were familiar packs and bags strewn around the sides of the room, which Jadis recognized as some of their traveling gear that had been left on the airship. However, there was no sign of any of their armor or weapons. Jadis hoped that meant they were just in another nearby room, perhaps waiting to be cleaned since everyone’s gear had been a bloody mess last she could recall.
Quietly opening the door, Dys ducked out of the room without making a sound. Outside, she saw that the building they were in had a wide, spacious hallway that was well-lit and decorated with finely crafted pottery. There was no sign of anyone in the hall other than her, though.
More good signs, Jadis decided. If they had been put somewhere that was in danger of Demons attacking, she was sure there would have been a guard on duty by their door, at least. And all the nice, expensive-looking decorations wouldn’t have been left out in the open where they would be in danger of becoming collateral damage in a fight.
The decision of which direction she should start searching in was taken away from Dys when she heard a distant but distinctly familiar voice coming from her right. Following the sound, she passed by several more doors before reaching a corner that turned out to lead to a large, open space with three people occupying it.
The room had no wall on the far side, and instead had Greek-style columns that opened up to a verdant garden with a beautiful, multi-tiered fountain in the center. While still technically inside, a table with several chairs had been arranged near the edge of the flowering courtyard, where they were shaded from the sun’s light but were still basically in the open. Three figures were seated around the table, and a simple tea set was gently steaming between them.
Alex and Severina were sitting near each other, while a man Jadis only sort of recognized sat across from them. Despite not knowing his face, she had no trouble guessing that he was likely Aelius, just going by the pair of white wings he had folded behind his back.
“Fascinating,” the Seraphim was saying, an earnest expression on his bearded face. “Truly. I’m shocked to find your status sheet so easy to read. Yet, this is not how it started, correct?”
Before any answer could be given to the man’s question, Alex’s tentacles twitched and her eyes turned their gaze upon Dys.
“Jadis…” the Demon spoke softly, a happy smile on her face. “Good morning…”
“Good, you’re awake,” Severina said, her smile warm though her eyes told the story that the Seraphim hadn’t gotten much sleep. “I hope you’re feeling better?”
“Good morning,” Dys greeted the trio as she approached the table. “If it is morning, that is.”
“An hour past noon, actually,” the male Seraphim said as he politely rose from his seat as Dys neared them. “My name is Aelius. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, officially.”
“Hi,” Dys answered the man’s greeting somewhat lamely. She smiled politely at the Seraphim, but the mundanity of the introduction, as well as the apparent serenity of the little tea party she had interrupted, was throwing her for a loop. “Nice to meet you too. So, uh, everything alright?”
The question wasn’t directed towards anyone in particular, but Dys’ eyes were drawn towards Severina. Meeting her gaze, the paladin smiled warmly before nodding her head in a placating gesture.
“Yes, Jadis. Everything is as well as can be expected. The attack on Glanum has been successfully repelled. You can rest at ease now.”
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