Chapter 181: Not Alone

The problem with Eir’s Speak to the D ritual was also what made it so enjoyable. It required a specific intimate act that under most circumstances Jadis enjoyed. She had still enjoyed it this time, of course. However, after her experience bumbling into Samleos, she felt more than a bit awkward when she came back to consciousness midway through climax with Eir wrapped around her.

Once she was finished, Jadis gently disentangled herself from the elven priestess and took a moment to sit back and contemplate. The mental whiplash of going from sex to staring Death in the face to talking with D to coming back to sex was rough to deal with. Around her, her companions patiently waited for her to gather her thoughts. A lot of that patience probably stemmed from the fact that they’d been going at it hot and heavy for a while and it was late in the night. They were all exhausted and sleep was ready to claim them. Sleep sounded so attractive at that moment that Jadis actually considered waiting until morning to tell them about what she’d experienced.

The look on Eir’s face convinced Jadis not to wait. The hopeful expression she carried told her that she expected Lyssandria to have been there with D, not the nightmare that had actually been lurking behind the living room door.

“Lyssandria wasn’t there,” Jay announced with a heavy sigh. “Sorry, Eir.”

Hope crumpled into disappointment, followed by resolute acceptance.

“Well, I suppose that’s to be expected. The ritual is to speak with Destarious, after all,” Eir said with false cheer. “How did it go? Were you able to learn much?”

“Not as well as I hoped it would,” Dys answered dryly as she lay down on her side. “Lyssandria wasn’t there, but another god was. Samleos was hanging around.”

“What!?”

The reaction from everyone was instant. All sat up from their previously prone positions, all signs of exhaustion wiped away as they focused intently on which Jadis was closest to them.

“Are you alright?”

“Did he speak to you?”

“D—Did he c—curse you?”

“Why the fuck was he

there?”

The questions came all at once, too rapidly for even Jadis to answer all at the same time. She held up her hands for quiet, eventually getting some as they calmed enough to let her speak.

“I’ll start from the beginning,” Jay said slowly. “Let me get through it and then I’ll answer all of your questions, okay?”

With nods of confirmation, Jadis took a few minutes to recount her encounter with Samleos and D. She spared no details, doing her best to give them as much accurate information as possible. No one interrupted her as she talked, letting her fully explain her story, though Jadis could tell by the expressions on their faces that each of them had a lot to say about what she was telling them. Once she’d told them everything she could remember, the questions started.

“Are you an idiot?”

She supposed she deserved that one.

“How could you possibly think that wandering through a God’s domain without permission is a good idea?” Aila continued, her face a thundercloud. “Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation?”

“In my defense, he never said I couldn’t snoop,” Jay answered quietly.

“That’s not the kind of thing one usually needs to be explicit about, Jadis.”

“Actually,” Eir hummed with a thoughtful look on her face, “in this case, you might be right. Destarious is the god of secrets, both hiding them and revealing them. If he never specifically commanded you to not ‘snoop’ then he might have been expecting you to.”

“See?” Syd pointed at the priestess. “If our resident religious authority says I didn’t do anything wrong, then I am absolved of sin. That’s how that works, right?”

Aila did not look impressed.

“Just because he expected you to go poking around doesn’t mean you should have. Destarious is the god of mischief, madness, and forbidden knowledge. What you did was dangerous. Very, very dangerous! Samleos is destruction incarnate. What if he had used that opportunity to destroy your soul? Or he could have cursed you, corrupting your very being with his foul touch. If D hadn’t closed that door, you could have been lost in Samleos’ void completely!”

“Maybe he wanted you to see Samleos?”

Everyone turned to look at Kerr. The woman was leaning back on a mound of pillows, chewing on one of her sharp claw-like nails while her eyes stared into nothing. When she eventually noticed the whole group had turned to stare at her, she took her finger from her mouth and furrowed her brow.

“What? It’s possible. D’s a troublemaker. He likes to fuck with people. He could have tempted her on purpose so she’d run into Samleos.”

“I had considered that,” Jadis added. “He could have orchestrated that just so I would use up one of my questions. He’s definitely the kind of asshole that would do that.”

“I’m not talking about that,” Kerr waved her hand dismissively. “It wouldn’t take a visit from the God of Death to trick you out of a question, big stuff. What if he did it for another reason? Maybe he wanted Samleos to see you?”

“W—why would he want that?” Thea squeaked out. “Why g—give away information on Jadis to him like that?”

“I don’t know,” Kerr shrugged with a sigh. “To mess with him? Rub it in the fucker’s face that he has a champion of his own in play that can totally throw off his plans? Maybe he was making some kind of point? Non lo so.”

“Parsing the intentions of the gods is no small task,” Eir said quietly. “And predicting what Destarious plans to do is even more of an impossibility. But I agree with Kerr. Even if I am uncertain of the why, I don’t think that encounter was chance.”

Would D throw her in Samleos’ face just to show off? Jadis felt like that was a distinct possibility. But would that be his only reason? That she felt less certain of. From her interactions with the insane entity, Jadis got the impression that D was a schemer. He no doubt had plans within plans and then backups for those plans. Having her run into Samleos could absolutely be a part of multiple different schemes that the tricky god had going on at the same time. But just like Eir, she was at a loss as to what those schemes were. She really had no idea why D would want her to meet Samleos face to giant eyeball, but the more she thought about it the more she agreed with Kerr. It wasn’t an accident.

“I don’t think Samleos would have been able to do anything to you, in any case,” Eir continued after a brief moment of thought. “The ritual was for you to talk with Destarious. Samleos might have been there to observe uninvited, or he might have been there because Destarious allowed it, but either way he was not meant to interact with you per the nature of the ritual. Cultists who worship Samleos have to do so actively to have him corrupt their souls. I don’t think he can do so otherwise per the tenants of the Covenant.”

“Fine then,” Aila sighed. With an almost petulant expression, a look that was practically alien on the redhead’s face, she lay down against Jay’s side and purposefully wrapped Jay’s arm around her body. “I don’t like you putting yourself at risk like that. But what’s done is done. Now, what are we going to do about the answers to your other two questions?”

There was silence in the room to that question until Syd slipped off of the bed and walked over to the crates piled in one corner. From the top of one of the crates she picked up the glass jar containing the demon hatchling with the neon blue eye. She held the jar to her face. As her eyes connected with the single lidless eye of the demonling, an involuntary shiver ran through her body as a flash of the void appeared in her mind. With effort and a steadying breath, she shook that memory out of her head.

“According to D, this little guy is friendly to me,” she said. “What do we do with that?”

“I’m not sure if we should do anything with it,” Aila answered. “Even if it is ‘friendly’ to you, that doesn’t mean that couldn’t easily change. Nor does it mean it’s safe. A wolf might be friendly to the farmer that feeds him, but that doesn’t mean the wolf won’t eat his sheep if he gets the chance.”

Jadis couldn’t really argue against that point. Even if the demonling was more akin to a wild animal than an inherently evil spiritual entity, that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. But she wasn’t content to leave it at that. She’d proven that the little demon had enough intelligence to understand simple commands like stop and go and fetch. She also now had direct confirmation from D that it wasn’t hostile to her, a fact supported by how it acted towards her. She also had evidence that it might not even be hostile towards her companions since it had actively tried to help Aila when she was injured. That action indicated the hatchling was capable of altruism.

So where did she go from there?

“Can you find me a book for teaching letters?” Jay asked aloud to the room in general.

“Why? Still struggling to read?” Kerr asked with a smirk.

She was, but Jadis wasn’t about to admit that to the teasing therion.

“No, but I want to use it. I want to see if I can find some way of communicating with this little thing on a higher level.”

“You’re going to try and teach a demon letters?” Aila asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Syd answered succinctly.

“I’m not sure why I’m surprised. Of course you’d try to do something like that…”

Syd sat back down on the bed, scooting in close next to where Thea was sitting. The guardswoman looked at the little squiggling tentacle monster with apprehension, but not fear. Looking at the others, their faces told of misgivings, but not outright rejection. That was good. Jadis didn’t know where this little experiment of hers was going to go, but she wanted to find out and an open mind was important for continuing down the path of the unknown. She’d do it alone if she had to, but she’d much rather have her companions with her for the ride.

“I’m not going to do anything that puts any of you or anyone else at risk,” Dys assured them all as Syd contemplated the jarred demonling. “But I do want to see what’s possible. If things start to look like any of you are in danger because of this experiment, you can be certain that I’ll put an end to this demon myself.”

At those words, everyone looked much more reassured. However, since Syd was looking directly at the demonling, she saw the way its tentacle curled inwards at Dys’ statement. Had it understood the implicit threat? How much of what they were saying was it truly capable of understanding?

She didn’t point out the reaction to the others. There would be time to investigate and discuss later. Instead, Syd just held the jar close to her chest, like she would have with a cat, and watched as the demonling slowly unfurled itself from its stiffened posture.

“I think the next step for us overall,” Jay spoke with her voice slightly raised to get everyone’s attention, “is to go see this ‘second closest’ friendly avatar. Any ideas on where D meant with that description?”

“I would suspect a mountain in Kalters Wall,” Aila said after a second of thought. “But I don’t know this ‘split peak’ he told you of.”

“I think I do?” Kerr said with uncertainty. “There’s a mountain to the northwest that has sort of a two-peak thing going on. That might be it?”

Thea settled in close to Syd’s side and tapped a finger on the demonling’s jar as Aila and Kerr talked over their thoughts on where the mountain D had referenced might be.

“We c—could look at a map,” she murmured as she stared at the now more actively squirming hatchling. “There might be a m—mountain with that, ah, name.”

“A good idea,” Eir smiled at Thea from Syd’s other side as she snuggled close under her arm. “I know the High Priest has a map, and my cousin has a very detailed one as well. I could ask one or both if they’d let us take a look.”

As they discussed their next steps and the details of how they were going to move forward, Jadis pulled her companions in tighter around her. Her look into the void had shaken her, maybe more than she wanted to admit, but having her lovers gathered around her soothed her soul like a warm bath. She sighed in contentment to have the people she cared about tucked in around her. No matter where she was going next, she was glad she wasn’t going alone.

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