“You think so?”
It was a struggle not to kill the gloating cultist immediately. The man had all but proclaimed that he was the mastermind behind the attack on Eldingholt, as well as the one who had ordered the attack on Thea’s home village. Just by those sins alone Jadis was ready to tear the fucker limb from limb. Yet, she held back. She wanted to get as much information out of the demented asshole as she could. After all, she didn’t think for a moment that he was actually stupid enough to put himself in a position where he could be caught and killed by her so easily. He had to have some kind of escape plan, otherwise he never would have come so close to her. She just needed to keep him talking before he either tried to escape, or launched whatever part two of this little face to face encounter was planned to be.
“I know so,” the man posing as Fabio nodded. “The things I’ll be able to accomplish with a ship that can fly anywhere… it’ll be a whole new story! One penned in fire and blood. Sends shivers through me just imagining it. Oh, but I’m sure that’s not what you meant.”
Fabio adjusted himself, casually putting one hand on Jay’s forearm as he twisted around slightly. The man didn’t seem to care in the slightest that his neck was caught in the vice grip of Jay’s giant fist.
“You were talking about my plans to board your airship and kill your companions. Now, I freely admit, I had to pen that scene with some haste, so it doesn’t have my usual level of finesse. After all, your consistent interference has forced me to alter the main plot threads of my current and future acts, but I managed to put together a special treat for your lovers on that airship. It wasn’t intended for any of you, but I suppose that little priestess of yours will have to do.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t intended for us?” Jay asked, not bothering to hide the seething hatred in her tone. “What the fuck are you even talking about? Why the fuck are you even doing any of this!? How many people died here for no gods be damned reason—”
“You weren’t supposed to be here!”
Fabio’s enraged shout came out of him so abruptly that Jay’s mouth snapped shut. The smug grin on the man’s face was gone, replaced with a twisted mask of inhuman fury. He didn’t even look like a living thing anymore, instead appearing as a wrathful effigy carved from pure insanity. His voice no longer held even a trace of the playful mad teasing it had contained before. Nothing but white-hot hatred burned its way past Fabio’s twisted tongue.
“I laid the trail! I set up the scene! I carefully crafted every clue, every witness, every crumb that he and his companions had used to track me for months, all leading to here! Do you have any idea how hard it was to teach that idiotic bitch Vinea how to vomit out its mudfucking spawn? Do you!? Do you!? The work, the effort, the preparation! All wasted because instead of the Hero arriving as planned, you show up instead!”
Spittle flew from the man’s mouth as he lost all semblance of control. His screams drew the attention of those both inside the bar, and the therions in the hotel across the street. Most just stared in confusion, not sure of what they were seeing. Even Rufus, the supposed Fabio’s friend, lay on the ground where he had been shoved aside, staring with abject horror at the raging man dangling from Jay’s left hand.
“Wilhelm was supposed to fight Vinea, not you!” Fabio wailed with frustrated fury. “The battle would have been legendary! A story to be retold for ages to come! A tragedy to darken the hearts of countless generations, all the way until the inevitable end! Twisted Desire would have served its role and sown the chaos I needed, and then my sweet little Divine Possessor would have taken Jocelyn as its host! How perfect! How glorious it would have been! Wilhelm would have been forced to slay the love of his life, or else allow the power of the most potent healer in the world to serve the forces of Samleos! And now, because of you, all of that planning and preparation is wasted, and I am forced to use my Divine Possessor on Eir, the mere understudy oracle.”
Fabio’s whole demeanor abruptly switched, changing from pure rage to exhausted disappointment.
“Don’t you see how much of a weaker plot point that is for the story?”
Jadis’ stomachs churned with the fury she felt for Fabio. How he could dare to even think of treating other people’s lives like pawns in a game, a story that he wanted to tell in a particular way. His casual disregard for life was disgusting, but even more so, his vile intentions towards Jadis’ lovers was unforgivable. She would never allow such a creature as this Playwright to exist in the same world as her family. He may have had different plans for his story, but Jadis was ending that story on her terms. Not his.
“You know what I see?” Jay snarled in a low growl as she brought the suddenly placid Playwright closer to her face. “What I see is a crazy little asshole that has a lot less time left in his life than he thinks he does. I see a stupid fucker who put himself within arm’s reach of a Nephilim who wants him dead. I see a disappointment of a man who’s convoluted plots have failed at every turn because he’s nowhere near as smart as he likes to think he is.”
Tilting her head back, Jay glanced up at the dark evening sky. Her movement caused the cultist to look upwards as well. Above, they saw a shining light, a spell created by Aelius, brightening the city.
“And most importantly, I see the signal letting me know that we’ve now got this whole place surrounded.”
There had been no way to know for sure where cultists who specialized in illusions and deception might be hiding in a city as big as Glanum. So, instead of wasting time and resources trying to root them out when such attempts would probably just send the bastards running, Jadis had decided the best thing to do would be to let them attack. Carrying on like business as usual had been difficult, especially knowing that her lovers were being put in danger. But they had all discussed it together and had accepted the risks. They had also done everything they could to prepare for whatever the cultists might throw at them. The airship had been the obvious target, and Jadis wasn’t the least bit surprised that her enemies had gone after those who had split away from her, which is why she’d made sure that her own secret agent had been on board the flight. She’d have to check later and see if Maeve was right about which passengers from the list she had picked out as likely assassins. After all, there was no doubt in her mind at all that her lovers, assisted by Maeve, Tegwyn, Noct, and Tacitus, would be successful.
The harder part had been setting things up with Aelius and General Voss. Getting a dozen of the army’s highest CLR fighters to be on constant standby to respond to a cultist attack had been a challenge, especially since it was so hard to verify who could be trusted and who might be compromised. Eir’s spell to see if someone was possessed didn’t do anything for illusions, and even Aelius’ ability to see status sheets couldn’t be wholly trusted. As Maeve had pointed out, there were ways around those sorts of spells. So, Aila had passed a secret message along to the general when they had met. Aelius secretly met with each high CLR person that he could, confirming who they were by having them use skills or spells that only they would have been capable of performing. After which, he had kept them on standby, ready to surround wherever Jadis might be at a moment’s notice. Voss had to be kept in the loop so that he could give those individuals assignments that wouldn’t arouse suspicion in anyone who might be watching but still put them in good positions for rapid response. Further, once the signal had been lit by Aelius, the general would send in additional back up to help secure the area, as well as ready the army for any distraction attacks that might be attempted by the Demons at the same time.
It had been a nerve-racking plan, but worth the effort to finally capture the asshole who had been behind the attacks on Jadis’ loved ones.
Bringing her gaze back down to the Playwright, Jay watched the man’s face go chillingly blank, to the point that he looked like a lifeless statue. Seeing the moment for what it was, her right hand went to the hand axe that she still had on her belt from the excursion outside the city walls. She would have liked to have her giant maul, but the weapon still hadn’t been recovered. Besides which, the smaller hand axe was better for the close quarters job ahead of her. She knew the Playwright was about to try and escape. She wasn’t going to let that happen.
“I see…” the man once called Fabio said in an emotionless tone. “It seems you’ve thought of everything. Except, I see one thing that you have overlooked completely.”
Jay didn’t hesitate. Pulling out her axe at lightning speeds, she used the sharp edge to cut through both of the Playwright’s legs before he had even fully finished his taunt. He wasn’t going to be running anywhere with her hand around his neck, but the removal of his legs would make doubly certain of that. She was inclined to just kill him right then and there, but since he was the leader of the cultists, capture made more tactical sense if it could be accomplished. Getting the names and locations of however many cultist cells might exist inside the empire could save a lot of lives. Though, when it came down to it, Jadis was more than happy to end the wretched madman’s life rather than let him escape.
Fabio’s reaction to having his legs cut off mid-sentence was… nothing. If he even felt the loss, he showed no sign on his face. As the two limbs flopped to the ground and the sound of blood pouring onto stone filled the air, the Playwright simply continued on with his thought as though nothing had happened.
“I see a dullard who thinks she has a monopoly on having more than one body.”
Fabio’s skin abruptly turned a rancid yellow color. In less than a second, his flesh expanded, bloating outward as he grew in size like a water balloon being filled with cheese curds. Despite her surprise, Jadis was still able to react thanks to her extremely high Agility and honed battle senses. Jay tossed Fabio upwards with a wrist-flicking motion that would have accomplished nothing for most people but had far more power coming from her thanks to her high Strength. The Playwright’s body had gone several feet into the air and Jay had managed to spin most of the way around before the explosion detonated.
Fabio’s body was torn into chunky pieces as a noxious cloud of yellow gas spread out from where he had once been. The choking mist made her eyes and nose burn, which were both things that Jadis could handle, but far worse was the obscuring effect. Whatever substance the cloud was made from was thick and spread supernaturally quickly, making it so that she could barely see anything more than indistinct shadows.
The Playwright possessing more than one body was not something Jadis had suspected, and she would need to process the implications of the revelation later. What was more important was securing everyone else in the area, since any of them could also be the Playwright, or his accomplices. Everyone in the bar was a potential threat, since the man could illusion himself to look like anyone. He could be any of the soldiers and civilians. He could even be among Kerr’s clanmates.
“Get down on the fucking ground!” Jay shouted as loudly as she could, ignoring the discomfort of breathing in the yellow gas. “Don’t fucking move!”
Jay could hear both Thea and Bridget coughing, so she trusted that they could take care of themselves. The three therions who claimed to be Kerr’s siblings could be cultists in disguise, or they were innocents caught in the crossfire. There was no way for Jadis to fully know for sure until one or all of them tried something. The same was true for the myriad onlookers who had been in the bar or on the far side of the patio. However, there was one individual who Jadis suspected above all others, and who had been right in front of her.
Jay lunged forward, aiming for where she remembered Rufus had fallen to the ground. Her hands found nothing but cold stone. She tried to listen for running footsteps, but she couldn’t hear anything over the sounds of coughing and confusion coming from all around her. Rolling to her feet, Jay turned blindly towards the loudest sounds of commotion. A sudden surge of panicked voices mixed with breaking furniture told her that whatever the original surprise the Playwright had been planning for her had just been put into play.
“Something’s happening inside the bar,” Dys informed the water mage who was on the street near her. “Anyone comes running out of that fog, put them down. Non-lethal. There are a lot of people who are going to be trying to get away.”
“I understand,” the purplish elf responded, his hands already creating a rune circle in the air before him.
“This was a fucking terrible idea,” Odilia growled.
“I didn’t ask, shitbreath,” Syd growled back at the Valbjorn. They were on the opposite side of the block from where her Dys self and the mage were located. “Just fucking do it!”
“Eat goat cock,” Odilia shot back as she readied her sword.
Syd glanced up to see that Aelius, who had been circling overhead with his flaming sword, had just taken a dive towards a different section of the block. Jadis took that to mean that the first of those who were fleeing the cloud and chaos had come into view. She left that one to him, trusting that he and the other high CLR soldiers would be able to cover the other avenues of escape.
“Left!” Odilia called out, pointing with her sword.
Syd saw it at the same time as the bear woman. Two figures, shadowed by the cloud, running out for clear air. Dashing forward, Syd got to the pair before Odilia. One was a redheaded man who she immediately recognized as Rufus. The other was… also a redheaded man who looked identical to Rufus.
“Of course,” Syd muttered as she used the flat of her sword staff’s blade to sweep out the two men’s legs from under them. “Secure them!”
Even as she spoke, Syd saw that Odilia had knocked a third Rufus to the ground and was busily securing his arms behind his back.
“Why are you hurting me!?” a panicked woman’s voice came from one of the two Rufus’ that Syd had grabbed hold of.
“Yes! That’s my job!” the second Rufus shouted with glee before abruptly exploding into a shower of acid that made both the woman and Syd cry out in pain.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me!” Syd cursed as she quickly carried the possibly illusioned woman away from the growing puddle of melted man.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Dys sighed as she saw dozens more people come scrambling out of the noxious cloud, all of them identical copies of Rufus.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me…” Jay growled in an echo of her other self’s anger as a shadowy form at least as tall as she was shoved its way out of the bar in front of her.
Jadis internally shook her head. Nothing was ever easy. Not even stomping on a cockroach.
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