“I am… Done…”
Alex’s announcement was a welcome one, signaling the end of her prayer and the start of her Focal Shift. As Noll passed Hope back into the Demon’s open arms, she quickly placed a tentacle against Jay and transferred the magic she needed to cast Wings of the Succubi.
Jadis had hoped that Alex would only need to use her Focal Shift once, but that proved not to be the case thanks to their voracious little girl. Hope had drained Jadis of her magic faster than her recovery rate, which had even been doubled thanks to the unique nature of Alex’s prayer skill. Jadis had been recovering magic at a rate of seventy Will, rather than thirty-five, and her total magic had still gone down at a slow but steady rate while their baby fed on her. Jadis kept track, both out of curiosity and to keep her mind occupied, and over the course of five minutes Hope had eaten thirty of her magic points before Alex had taken the newborn back.
The other item Jadis had used to keep herself from going mad with worry was analyzing her level up notifications. Unfortunately, there weren’t many. Only three, in fact, which was mildly annoying. Considering all the fighting she had done that day, Jadis had expected more levels. She supposed she shouldn’t be too shocked, though. She was CLR one hundred; all of her classes were finally beyond the early stages where leveling could be considered “easy”, relatively speaking.
Mirror Knight had gone up by one level, from forty-three to forty-four, which translated to three free attribute points. Not an explosive difference, but it was progress. Perverted Ritualist of D had not gained any levels, but Progenitor of the Succubi had gained two levels. Jadis speculated that Hope’s birth might have had something to do with that jump, but she couldn’t be sure. The leap from twenty-one to twenty-two meant two more free points, which added up to five in total. As she always did, Jadis put all five points into Eldritch, so that both she and her lovers could experience the benefits of the increase.
It wasn’t until after she had confirmed the choice that Jadis realized she could have put those points into Focus and gained fifty magic immediately.
Actively choosing not to let her mind linger on a thoughtless mistake, Jadis reviewed the two new options she had available for her Progenitor class. While both were interesting, neither had any immediate value to the situation at hand. Unsurprising, considering the class wasn’t intended for combat.
| Welfare Check Active Spell. Gain an immediate sense of the health and wellbeing of the target. Aside from direct health issues such as injury and sickness, you will also gain information on aspects such as nutrition and mental stress. Target must be under the age at which they unlock their primary class. Cost – 35 magic. Range – touch. |
| Grime Repulsion Active Spell. Use a burst of magic to push all dirt and filth away from your skin and vestments. Repulses most diseases as well. Any detritus will fall to the ground at your feet. Can only be cast on self. Cost – 20 magic. Duration – Instantaneous. |
Welfare Check would be a nice way to make sure her baby was healthy, but it also felt unnecessary. Eir already had a spell to check for health issues. Sure, Welfare Check gave more info that would be helpful, but Jadis would be willing to bet her non-existent balls that her Oracle lover would be getting more status-checking spells in the future that would be far, far better than the one she was being offered.
Grime Repulsion looked like it would be useful even outside of childcare. Being able to rid herself of all the grit and grime of a day out in the field in an instant would be amazingly convenient. However, it was also a somewhat selfish spell, since it couldn’t be cast on anyone but herself. Maybe better versions would become available if she took this one, but Jadis didn’t feel that the possibility of being able to magically clean other people in the future was worth more than Eyes of the Succubi, the other spell she had been offered at level twenty-one of her Progenitor class.
| Eyes of the Succubi Active Spell. Gain the eyes of a Succubus, allowing you to see the flow of magic in the aether around you. The flow cannot be obscured by typical means. Your normal vision is not otherwise enhanced. Cost – 200 magic. Duration – 15 minutes. |
After only a few moments of consideration, Jadis selected Eyes of the Succubi to fill her new open skill slot. It was just too interesting of a spell to pass up. She wasn’t sure how useful it would prove to be in battle, but if nothing else, she felt it would help her better understand her newborn daughter. After all, there had to be something weird going on with those scintillating eyes of hers.
While both Hope and the new levels proved to be a great distraction, a part of Jadis was still anxiously chewing on her lip as she worried over Severina’s safety. The battle between her and Vitus had not slackened in all the time it took Alex to regenerate her magic. If anything, it had grown more aggressive and bombastic as the seconds ticked by. From where Syd stood on the shore of the island, she couldn’t see all the details. But she could see the explosions of dark red fire and golden light as the two opposed Seraphim struck each other. After the first three minutes, Jadis had hope that Vitus was retreating as his light fell back in the direction of Kastoria, but that thought was dashed upon the rocks as powerful blasts of magic lanced up from the ground at Severina’s almost indiscernible form. Demonic reinforcements had reached the site of the aerial battle, at least on ground level, and were doing what they could to strike at the golden Seraphim. Whenever the justicar tried to push forward or pull back, Vitus would fly back into the fight, hemming Severina in. Jadis was certain that Sev would have retreated by that point under any other circumstances, but she hadn’t since she was still trying to get to Jadis. That realization had twisted her insides up into all sorts of knots.
At least now she would finally be able to do something.
“Up we go,” Jay murmured as she picked both Alex and Hope up and cradled them in her arms. “You better hold onto her tight, Alex, because I’m going to be flying fast.”
“She will be… Safe…” the Demon mother replied confidently as several of her tentacles wrapped around the squirming baby, turning her into a cocoon. “We will… Protect her…”
Jay couldn’t agree more. She was particularly glad that she had maintained her enhanced size, since she was able to easily hold Alex in one arm and protectively cover her with the other. She felt like she was holding her lover like a football, but she wasn’t going to complain about things that worked.
“Alright, you’re with me,” Dys said as she held out a hand to Noll.
“I can swim,” the old wolf grumped as he eyed her hand.
“Yeah, you can, but you can’t fly, can you?”
Noll made an unhappy, grumbling noise, but he took Dys’ hand a moment later. Throwing him over her shoulder, the old therion turned into an angry, fuzzy, incredibly deadly backpack.
Not wanting to wait another second, Jadis used the magic that Alex had transferred to her and cast Wings of the Succubi, causing the tendrils of magic energy to burst out of her backs. As all three of her selves rose up into the air, Jay heard a delighted giggling noise come from within the protective bundle of Alex’s tentacles. The sound made Jadis’ hearts quiver, but she took several deep breaths and steeled herself. As much as she wanted to listen to nothing but that sound for the rest of the week, she had an angel to rescue, and she needed her mind to be completely focused.
“Jadis… Our child… Is laughing…”
“I know, I know,” Jay moaned as she flew higher into the sky. “I can hear her!”
“I love… Her laugh…”
“I do too…”
Staying focused was going to be harder than she thought.
Once she and her passengers were in the air, Jadis sped along as quickly as she could towards the ongoing fight. Well, not quite as quickly as she knew she was capable of. Her Eldritch stat had just gone from eight hundred and eighty-two to nine hundred and four, which was phenomenal. Her insane flight speed was even higher. Except, she was carrying a newborn baby. Her newborn baby. Max flight speed just felt… a lot more dangerous at that moment then it had an hour ago.
Regardless of reduced speeds, Jadis was still flying fast enough to cover the distance between the island and where Severina was combating Vitus in no time at all. Considering the wild barrage of spells being shot up from the surface at the two, never mind the sky-rending smites being cast, Jadis made sure that her Jay self flew as high above the chaos as she could manage without pushing her too close to her Mirrored Body range limit. She needed to give herself room for evasive maneuvers, but at the same time, she didn’t want to bring Hope anywhere near the fighting.
Noll was a different matter entirely.
“Take me in on the left,” he shouted into Dys’ ear. “Sword spear goes right!”
Following the old wolf’s direction, Dys soared into the maelstrom at an angle while her other self mirrored her coming from the right. As she flew, she felt Noll get into a crouching position on top of her back, sword drawn. As they neared the red and gold bursts of divine light, both of her selves finally got a good look at the fight up close.
Severina was shining, her brilliance lighting up the night sky as she swung a sword blazing with holy power. There were cracks and dents in her armor, even some blood staining her left arm to a concerning degree, but her righteous fury was undiminished.
Vitus, or rather, the body of Vitus who had been possessed by a Demon, looked far rougher. The Seraphim had his legs back, Jadis noticed, but not the armor that had once covered them. There was a myriad of wounds visible on the portions of his body that were exposed, but none of them seemed to be slowing him down. An unholy dark light was surging across the man’s injuries, knitting the flesh together, or even sealing up cuts and holes like it was some kind of ethereal putty. A portion of the Seraphim’s right wingtip had been sliced off, yet that same black fire had expanded past the point of severance and had formed into a facsimile of feathers to make up for the loss.
As Dys and Syd swooped in from either side of Possessed Vitus, Jadis could see that Severina had noticed her approach. She didn’t take her focus off of her opponent; she was too well-trained to make a mistake like that. However, her cross-shaped eyes did flicker to the side, acknowledging her presence. She wasn’t the only one to notice the incoming Nephilim, though.
Before Dys and Syd could fully close in on their target, Vitus’ wings flared with red light. The Seraphim abruptly shot forward at incredible speed towards Severina. The justicar reacted swiftly, parrying the incoming blow with her own sword and shielding her side with her metal wing as Vitus’ attack turned into a blazing explosion. Still, the move was sudden enough that Jadis had no time to adjust the course of her two selves as she whipped by, missing the possessed paladin by a distance of thirty feet at the closest.
Not that such a paltry gap could stop Noll the Savage.
Jay witnessed the veteran mercenary leap from Dys’ back to attack the red Seraphim. His blade was barely visible even to her enhanced senses as he aimed for the possessed man’s helmeted head. An instant later, dark flames erupted from Vitus, pushing both Severina and Noll back with the power of the explosion.
“Shit biscuits,” Syd cursed as she whirled around and flew after the falling therion.
Gritting her teeth, Dys followed right behind, keeping her eyes trained on Severina. Her lover looked like she was still whole and she was managing to right her flight, but more blasts of lightning, fire, and other magics were shooting up from the ground below and Jadis wasn’t sure if Sev would be able to avoid the attacks in her current state.
Jadis’ prediction proved true as a stream of superheated water blasted into the justicar. Having been knocked back by powerful magic twice over, Severina struggled to regain her balance as she tumbled through the air for several crucial seconds. Right up until Dys got her arms around her.
“Gotcha,” Dys shouted over the wind as she pulled Sev close against her chest.
“Is Alex alright?” Severina called out the moment she had regained her breath.
“Yes, she’s fine,” Dys replied, more than a little touched that Severina had so much concern for the Demon. “What about you? Are you okay?”
“Better now,” Sev said shortly, her holy magic washing over them both as she began blasting healing spells, one after another.
“Ah, fuck,” Dys cursed in the next second, drawing Severina’s sharp attention.
“What is it?”
“Vitus is still alive.”
That knowledge came from Syd as she looped an arm around Noll before he could fall any further towards the ground. As she pulled out of her dive, she caught sight of the possessed paladin flailing as he plummeted to the Demon-infested land below. Her eyes caught sight of his head, bronze helmet now gone, where she could see that Noll’s blade had cut off the front half of the man’s face, rather than severing his neck. Whether that was because of the black fire explosion or what, Jadis wasn’t sure, but the gruesome visage of Vitus’ bisected face fell out of sight as he disappeared into the miasma of toxins covering the muddy ground.
Syd almost dove after the demonic Seraphim, but the view she had of the landscape where he had landed dissuaded her from that notion. There were hundreds of Demons swarming under the cover of fog, many of them charging up various forms of arcane spells. Flying within range of that mess was a bad idea under the circumstances. Jadis wanted to kill the Demon who had been attacking them, but getting Hope to safety was eminently more important.
“We’re getting out of here!” Syd shouted as she helped Noll latch onto her back.
“No objections!” her mentor shouted back.
With her family held close against her three bodies, Jadis converged together high over the skies of Volto and surged southward, back towards Glanum. As the blast of foul magic faded behind her, she let out a triplicated sigh of relief. She had won. Her lovers and child were safe. She’d even walked out of the fight with her mentor in tow. The Playwright’s plans had failed, utterly. All she had to do was fly back to the city where Thea, Bridget, Sabina, and Sorcha were waiting for her. They might even have some good news about how exactly the Playwright had managed to get past their preparations and defenses so thoroughly. And the look that would be on their faces when they saw Hope… Jadis couldn’t wait.
Nothing more could go wrong that night.
Nothing at all.
“…fuck me if that’s not the biggest red flag of my life.”
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