“You are… A sweet bun… A treat done… in honey…”
Alex’s out of tune warbling drifted through the quiet cabin. It was a silly song, sung poorly; Jadis had no idea where the Demon had heard it before or if she even had all the words right. However, Hope giggled with delight as her mother crooned to the little Succubus. There was no orchestra in the world that could have entertained the baby more than Alex’s terrible singing.
“I want a baby…”
Dys blinked as she looked up from her book. Turning her head to stare at Bridget, she saw that the orc was fully turned around in her seat, arms folded across the back rest, as she watched Alex and Hope, who were a few spots further away.
“You’re already pregnant, you know,” Dys pointed out after a moment.
“Yeah, but that’s not the same as having the actual babe in my arms, now is it?” Bridget countered as she stared longingly at the domestic scene.
“Do you want to unpause your pregnancy?” Dys asked, fully setting the book on Voltonian history down. “Because if you do—”
“No, no,” the warrior shook her head, causing her braid to loosen. “I don’t want that. There’s no way I’m running around the battlefield with a belly full of baby. I just… Nngh! Look at them! It’s adorable!”
Jadis couldn’t help but agree. Alex and Hope were excruciatingly adorable. In fact, that was why she had her Jay self sitting next to her lover and daughter; so she could get a front row seat to the endearing show. Looking around, Dys saw that several others in the airship were having the same reaction. Eir, Thea, Jocelyn, and Amarantha were all leaning out of or over their seats, watching the giggling baby with various levels of adoration on their faces. Even Ludger was watching, and while Jadis wasn’t a mind reader, she had the sneaking suspicion that the enraptured man might be having visions of a scene where it was Elodie singing to a little blonde baby instead of Alex and Hope.
The serene moment was a welcome one on a long and mostly boring flight, especially for Jadis. Not because she was herself bored, but because having something pleasant to distract herself with was practically necessary. That was to say, the seat her Syd self was sitting in had grown uncomfortable indeed.
The sun was near setting, and they had not yet flown half the distance they needed to travel to get to Volto’s capital city, Thracina. The northwestern nation was smaller than the empire by a significant degree, but that didn’t mean the nation was small. Going from the country’s eastern border to the capital, which was located on the western side of the nation, took a long time. Travel was further delayed by the necessity of going around both Demon controlled territory and bad weather. In the first case, flying over Kastoria or other areas corrupted by Demons was a bad idea, since the Leviathan was relatively vulnerable in the air. They weren’t defenseless, of course, but an aerial battle wouldn’t be ideal, and they didn’t want to risk damaging their main form of transport. In the second case, a bad storm had rolled across the sea to the south of Volto. It would have been quicker to fly straight west over the water, then north to Thracina, but the storm winds would have made that a dangerous flight. Instead, they had gone north before turning west, which added time but removed them from the worst dangers.
The time lost was annoying, but in a way the delay had a silver lining. Going slow meant that Kerr had more time to talk things over with her estranged family. Unfortunately, that silver lining had a different dark cloud attached to it. Namely, Kerr was talking things over with her estranged family.
“Ty zaper menya v podvale.”
“Net, ya etogo ne delal. Ya prosto prislonilsya spinoy k dveri.”
Syd wasn’t sure what was being said between Kerr and Vadim, but it sounded a lot like the kind of snippy comments that she and her brother used to make at each other when they were obnoxious teenagers. The language being spoken was the native tongue of therions who lived in the Verdant Sea, and Jadis wasn’t getting a word of it. For all she knew, the two could be telling each other to go sodomize themselves with burning pikes, but she didn’t think the conversation tone was that dire.
A few of the tidbits that Jadis had gleaned from the times where either Kerr, Vadim, or the mostly quiet Timur, spoke up were interesting. Vadim was older than Kerr by almost seven years, while Timur was almost exactly the same age since he had been born the same year. They had different mothers, of course, but that was normal considering Nox va Ratosh, their father, had fifteen wives.
Had fifteen wives being the operable word. Wife number thirteen, Kerr’s mother, Ksyusha, had passed away at some point in the past, though the details were still unexplained to Jadis. The comment had been fleeting, and all three parties looked uncomfortable when the topic had come up. Since it seemed like both brothers and sister were quick to move on from the subject of Kerr’s mother, Syd didn’t press for answers to the questions she had, and instead filed them away for later.
Speaking of sisters, Raya, the therion woman who Jadis had met once in Glanum, also visited Kerr at her seat briefly. The dark haired mercenary was younger than Kerr by a few years, and it had been clear to Jadis from the start that there was a bit of hero worship going on from the way Raya looked and spoke to her older sibling. The entire conversation between the two women had been in the foreign tongue of the Verdant Sea, so Syd hadn’t understood anything, but the tone of Kerr’s words had been a lot less snide than when she spoke with her two brothers. Jadis got the sense that Kerr didn’t hold many hard feelings for Raya, if any at all, which she took as a good sign. Even if her horned lover didn’t want to reconcile with her father, the possibility of reconnecting with the rest of her clan seemed brighter.
“Even with… Skies gray… My whole day… Turns sunny…”
Jadis couldn’t help but hum along to Alex’s off-key tune. The song, even badly sung, was catchy enough that she was humming it not just as Jay, but with her other bodies as well. Jadis didn’t even notice that she was doing so until Kerr shot her Syd self a look.
“Are you bored or something?” the archer frowned at her, though it was more exasperation than anger.
“No,” Syd shook her head, even though she was starting to feel a little antsy. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Keep talking.”
“A change in subject is not unwelcome,” Vadim interjected as he leaned his bulky frame back in his chair. “We have been… what is word? Spinning.”
“Going in circles,” Kerr corrected with a sigh. “Fine. I need something to eat anyway.”
Before she could get up, Syd put out a hand to stop Kerr.
“Don’t worry, Maeve’s coming around with some snacks from the storage cabin. She’ll be here in a minute.”
Kerr settled back in her seat, a tired look on her face, which was better than anger at least. Honestly, even though the conversation was in another language, Jadis didn’t think it had gone badly thus far. All the arguments had at least been quiet ones.
“Kak stranno…” Timur said, half turning to look further up the aisle.
“What’s strange?” Kerr sighed distractedly, her eyes closed while leaning her head against her propped-up hand.
“She is a Demon. Yet she is a mother. Very strange.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kerr growled, her eyes snapping open to regard Timur. “Alex is a damned good mother and if you talk shit about her, I’ll—”
“I don’t think Timur meant anything insulting by his comment,” Syd cut in while giving the foxlike therion a look. “Did you?”
“Net, no, of course not,” the man hastily held up his hands in surrender. “I meant to say, it is only strange because she is a Demon. That is… I mean to say that Demons are not known for kindness, da? Your harem sister seems… very much a mother.”
Kerr settled back, her eyes flicking from Alex to Timur, then Vadim and back again. Her expression softened after a moment, and her next words lacked the tension of those from before.
“Yeah, she’s a good one. She’s probably a much better mother than I’ll ever be.”
“I don’t know about that,” Syd commented as she took Kerr’s hand in her own to squeeze it gently. “I feel like you’ll be a great mother, once you get your chance.”
“Maybe,” Kerr grumbled. “Provided the boys don’t end up anything like Vadim. He was such an asshole when we were kids.”
“I was responsible,” Vadim growled while stiffening his spine. “Not a feckless puppy like you two.”
“I was not feckless,” Timur complained. “I never destroyed anything.”
“Not what that means, Timur,” Kerr rolled her eyes.
“Hold on,” Vadim narrowed his eyes at his sister. “What boys are you worried about being like me?”
Kerr’s expression shifted, her eyes going wide for just an instant before she attempted to put on an air of innocence.
“I just meant, you know, boys in general. Assuming I have boys one day. Since, you know. It’s even odds. Or, well, more like a one in three chance I guess considering Nephilim. Yeah. Just boys in general.”
Vadim continued to stare, his gaze growing stern as steel.
“Kerr… What are you hiding from?”
“I’m not hiding anything. And even if I was, I wouldn’t have to tell you.”
“Kerr!”
Before either Kerr, Syd, or Timur could respond to Vadim’s exclamation, the door leading to the exterior of the airship opened, letting in a burst of cold air. A moment after, the figure with dark wings rushed inside.
Syd turned to see Noct, the apparently not-a-Seraphim, standing there with her man catcher in one hand, feathers ruffled. The red-eyed woman looked around, her grim expression barely visible beneath her helmet. Noct and her brother, Tacitus, had met the Leviathan in Glanum and the two had been flying in shifts with Severina and Wilhelm, acting as scouts. It wasn’t yet time for the winged woman to return to the ship for a break, so Jadis’ danger sense was immediately on high alert.
“What’s wrong?” Syd asked, catching Noct’s attention.
Pointing to the north, which was roughly back through the door she had just come through, Noct answered with one word.
“Dragon.”
No one panicked. Nor did anyone sit idly in reaction to the announcement. In moments, all of Jadis’ companions except for Aila, who was still piloting the Leviathan, were on the starboard deck. So, too, were the Hero and his companions. Crowding together along the rails, they all searched the skies for the creature Noct had brought warning of. It was Thea who spotted the beast first.
“There,” she pointed with her spear. “I see it.”
Following the shieldmaiden’s direction, it took Syd a moment to find the distant figure.
The airship was passing over a sparse forest that was lined with streams and dotted with small villages and farmsteads. The land below did not have the corruption of Demons poisoning it, as it fell within the defended lines of the Voltonian military. To the north was a tall mountain range, with white peaks that reminded Jadis of the towering heights of Kaltars wall, though they were not so numerous. Near one of those peaks, barely visible in the waning light of the evening sky, was a huge winged figure. Jadis couldn’t make much out other than its general shape and that it was a darker color, but she could tell that the beast was massive, just by comparison to the mountain peak it was circling.
“Has it noticed us?” Wilhelm asked aloud, though Jadis wasn’t sure who the question was for.
“Possibly,” Rein, the gray-skinned elf answered. Jadis rarely heard the quiet man speak, but his voice was strong, with a clipped accent. “It is agitated.”
“How can you tell?” Syd asked.
“The way it is flying is a display of aggression,” the Lancer answered without taking his eyes off the distant dragon. “It may be warning us away, or it may be putting on a display for another dragon.”
“I don’t see any other dragons,” Bridget murmured, her expression full of concern.
“Or anything else to make a dragon mad but us,” Amarantha chimed in with her high-pitched voice.
“I’ve told Aila to steer us more westward,” Syd told the group even as the Leviathan made a slow shift in direction. “This ship isn’t designed to just turn around on a d—coin. We’ll have to hope the dragon doesn’t mind us passing by.”
“That’s assuming it’s still a dragon,” Tiernan pointed out. “Demons can possess just about anything, including dragons.”
“Trust me, I know…” Syd murmured.
A tense silence passed as the airship continued on its course, carrying them further west. The wind was not in their favor, so the going was slow, but after a few minutes of watching the dragon simply circle its peak without coming closer, Jadis began to think that they had managed to avoid conflict.
She should have known her fortune wasn’t that kind.
A sound of dismay rolled across the gathered fighters as they saw the dragon make a final turn, its great wings flapping as it began to fly towards them. A moment later, an even louder exclamation resounded as a second winged figure rose up from behind the mountain peak, chasing after the first.
“Two fucking dragons!?” Kerr shouted. “You’ve got to be shitting me!”
“Apparently not,” Syd grinned with resignation. “Could this day get any worse?”
“Don’t say that,” Wilhem turned and smiled up at her. “Or next we’ll see a third dragon.”
“Mother fucker!” Maeve cried out, pointing with one orange finger towards another mountain.
“What, really!?” Both Syd and Wilhelm exclaimed while they all turned to look at the Fetch.
Dropping her hand and shrugging, Maeve grinned.
“Just joking.”
206