Chapter 17: Rude Interuption

Jadis scrambled to her feet in a tangle of limbs as the barricaded door shook again from a powerful impact. From the sound of things, at least one bone thief was attempting to batter its way into her appropriated home. Naked and sticky, Jay and Dys lurched forward and threw their weight against the door, holding it’s abused timbers in place against another resounding smash.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now,” Jadis grunted through two sets of gritted teeth. The armor she had spent two days putting together lay in little piles on the floor, utterly useless to her in the moment. White hot fury blazed in Jadis’ eyes at the injustice and inconvenience the damned bone thief had inflicted on her.

Not only had it chosen to spring a fight on her right at a moment when she couldn’t make use of her armor, the demon had managed to blue ball one of her bodies in the process.

“I am going to slaughter this donkey fucker and every other shit-eating bone thief in the goddamned valley!” Jay screamed, grabbing her two stone clubs and tossing one to Dys.

Waiting for another bone-jarring thud against the door to strike, Jadis threw the barricade off to one side immediately after, removing all resistance. Taking a couple of steps back, she readied both her selves to strike, Dys on the left and Jay to the right of the door, careful not to let her clubs get caught in the rafters overhead.

A moment later, the door crashed open as a horrendous amalgamation of bones charged through, practically taking the door off its hinges.

The skeletal demon was bulky, a prominent ridge of bones acting as a battering ram on its front with half a dozen skulls nestled on either side of the keel-like structure. It had six legs with many-fingered hands for feet, almost like a beetle in general placement on the bulbous torso.

All these details Jadis took in during the brief instant the abomination charged through the door with an overcommitment of force thanks to Jadis’ removal of the improvised barricade. Unable to slow its momentum, the monster slammed into the stone partition wall at the back of the room, bones cracking with the power of the impact.

Jay and Dys brought their clubs down on the bone thief in unison, striking at the demon’s protective shell while it flailed for a moment, trying to recover from its battering ram charge. Much to Jadis’ dismay, however, her stone clubs bounced off the hard skeletal shell of the demon, not even putting a dent in it, much less cracking it open.

“Fuck!” Dys roared, quickly reeling back and taking aim at one of the creature’s limbs to try and disable it.

Before she could attack again, the demon lashed out with one of many arms, striking her naked and unprotected side. Jadis could not help but double Dys up from the pain, the blow having hit her hard and knocking some of the breath from her as she stumbled back.

Jay, however, was still able to act. Swinging low, her club struck the joint of where a middle leg attached to the egg-shaped body of the demon, snapping it off like a dried twig.

Instantly, the enraged bone thief launched itself at Jay, knocking her down to the ground as it tried to ram its hard keel ridge against her skull. Jadis had no doubt the strength of such a blow could cave her skull in. The only thing that saved her in that moment was awkwardness of the demon’s large body trying to fight inside the cramped quarters of a dwarven hut.

The demon’s limbs floundered for purchase as it scrambled against the walls, the broken furniture Jadis used as barricades knocked around and crashing against the combatants in the raucous confusion. It tried to attack Jay, slamming its ram forward but hitting the stone wall instead.

As it tried to maneuver to strike again, Jadis was not idle. Jay grabbed hold of one of its arms on the left side where she had managed to sever one already and yanked hard, throwing it off balance. As it tilted and attempted to keep itself upright, limbs stretching out for handholds, Dys attacked.

Stone met bone as Dys brought her club down on the rearmost leg on the already damaged left side of the monster. The large femur shattered, sending bone splinters in a cascade around the room.

The demon tried to whirl around and retaliate, but Jay wouldn’t let it. Holding firmly onto the remaining arm on that side of their assailant, she rolled and pulled, dragging the lopsided creature to its weak side, trying to overturn it.

While the demon did lose balance and crash to its side, it did not do so without inflicting further damage to Jadis. The partial bulk of the bone thief crashed down onto Jay while one of its grasping right arms caught hold of her, tearing at the flesh of her shoulder with bony fingers.

“Get the fuck off me!” Dys shouted while battering the ram-demon with her club, raining blows down on the toppled monster’s side.

Broken bones flew about the dark stone room, the dimness briefly illuminated by the appearance of dark blue arcane symbols appearing in the air around the demon as it cast a spell to reattach shattered bone to its central mass.

Jay and Dys did not let up the attack or give the demon time to recover. Jay grabbed hold of flailing skeletal limbs, pulling them taught and holding them in place while Dys broke them with precise, brutal blows. All the while a string of profane curses erupted from both of Jadis’ lips, the anger boiling inside her overwhelming any fear or pain. Jadis would not stop fighting until the rage fueling her ran dry.

The demon ran out of limbs before Jadis ran out of fury, so it turned out. Even with two more casts of the bone-attaching spell, the abomination either ran out of usable bone or the magic power that fueled its spells. Either way, Jay and Dys were left bruised and bleeding, but victorious, standing tall over the skeletal shell that contained the wriggling demon within.

With aching arms, Jay searched the dark corners of the room for her supplies while Dys watched the door, checking to see no more bone thieves were on their way. Even in the low light Jadis could see that the fight had wrought a lot of damage. She had to carefully maneuver around the overturned and broken furniture, shards of scattered bone, as well as the shattered remains of clay jars.

Amongst the wreckage she found the steel hatchet she’d taken from the dwarven corpse. Grimly, while Dys kept eyes and ears on high alert for any movement in the moonlit forest, Jay hacked away at the thick shell of the incapacitated demon. This demon’s bone armor had been the first to withstand Jadis’ stone clubs. At least its limbs had been susceptible to her primitive weapons.

It took quite a few steady chops, but eventually Jadis managed to hack her way through to the demon’s core. Surprisingly, the ugly purple creature inside wasn’t any larger than the others she’d killed from what she could tell, it’s shell was just that much thicker, affording it greater protection.

A swift chop of the hand axe ended the demon’s life of bone thieving.

Much to Jadis’ disappointment, only the expected menu alert letting her know she’d slain a demon of Samleos popped into her vision. There was no follow up notification letting her know that she’d gained a new level.

“Fucking useless bitch,” Dys spat angrily. “Interrupts our fun, wrecks our shit, gets our bed dirty with mud, and we don’t even get a D forsaken level out of it?”

Jay wrinkled her nose. “And now we’re going to have to deal with this stench all night, too.”

Thinking about it for a minute, Jadis decided she would, at the least, not tolerate dead demon stink in her bedroom. Wordlessly, Jay and Dys carried the demon’s broken shell out of the hut, keeping a wary eye out for any sign of ambush. Moving around back, Jadis promptly dumped the limp remains of the foul monster into the deep hole of the outhouse.

Hurting from her wounds and her energy flagging, Jadis tossed the empty shell a few yards away from her hut and got back inside the stone building and blocked up the door again. Deciding she’d have to leave inventorying the damages for the morning when there was more light to work by, she gathered up all the armor pieces strewn about the room, shook out her fur and blankets, then dragged it all into the left back room of the hut.

Previously, she hadn’t tried sleeping in either of the bedrooms because of their size. The space was far too limited, not allowing her to fully stretch out when she laid down on the floor. Now, however, she was eager to put one more layer of protection between her and any curious bone thieves that might search out her little refuge, possibly drawn by the skeletal remains littering the place that she couldn’t do anything about.

Huddling into the cramped quarters made worse by two bodies, Jadis checked what the status menu said about her health.

“One hundred and thirty-seven!” Jay cried out in dismay. “That’s almost one hundred health points gone!”

Dys furrowed her brows, wrapping Jay’s still bleeding shoulder with the scrap remains of leather she had left. “What a fucking disaster…”

Jay sighed unhappily. “Could be a lot worse, I guess. Could have happened while we were sleeping.”

“Might have preferred that, actually,” Dys said ruefully. “Fighting for my life while covered in cum is awkward.”

“I’m the one with cum all over my back,” Jay corrected, swiping at the dirty remains of their earlier, more pleasant, activities. What was left felt cold and grimy against her skin.

“Right, I think I lost track for a minute there,” Dys said, shaking her head.

In truth, Jadis had briefly forgotten which of her bodies was which in all the confusion of the fight. Both felt like natural extensions of each other, so in the heat of battle she didn’t think of her two bodies as separate entities the way she did when she was pretending to have a conversation, talking to herself.

“I think I’ll stay awake for as much as possible tonight,” Dys said, sitting down and settling with her back against the door so it couldn’t be opened without shoving against her. “We share a health pool, but between us you’re more physically damaged.”

“I don’t know if that makes a difference,” Jay replied, wrapping her shoulders in a blanket before laying out on the fur rug. She chose to sleep curled up, cognizant of the lack of space. Using Dys’ thigh for a pillow did help make the tiny room more comfortable.

Despite how tired she was, it took a long while for Jadis to fall asleep. She was still angry that her evening had gone so wrong. With how well she’d handled the two-tailed skeleton dog, she’d hoped to change her dynamic with the demons to one where she was the hunter on the prowl and they the cautious and wary prey. It seemed fate or D or whatever had sent Jadis a reminder that she still needed to be respectful of the amount of damage a single bone thief could do to her, especially if she was caught of guard.

She wondered if D had actually been watching her exploits over the course of her first few days on Oros. If he had, he’d been getting a real eyeful of the lewd and kinky shit she’d been up to with her double. The idea of being spied on while she’d been erotically engaged with herself made her face flush a bit, but she shrugged the budding embarrassment away. She had no doubt that D had gained full knowledge of the depths of her licentious depravity when he’d been staring directly at her bared soul. Besides, it would be more than a little silly to get shy now, after she’d already put on a show.

A show was what D wanted of her, she told herself as her mind started to drift into the haze of slumber. Tomorrow, she vowed, she’d be putting on a good performance for the peeping god. A violent, bone shattering, demon slaying show.

With maybe an occasional break for illicit carnal pleasures.

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