Chapter 233: Conspiracy

As bad as Jay looked, the overall damage to her health wasn’t too terrible.

The damage Jadis had taken was a little over three hundred health points, only a third of her total. More than enough to kill Kerr twice over, but still not anywhere near as damaging as when she’d been latched onto the Burning Rancor. It still felt terrible.

Jay got to her feet, breathing hard through her teeth. Every step felt like she was walking on hot coals and the coolness of the cave wasn’t doing much to help.

“Valtar on high, you look like shit,” Landry said, awestruck.

“Thanks,” Jay gritted out.

All of the equipment they had left behind was still there waiting for them. Collectively shaking off the shock of what Jay had just tanked, everyone started grabbing up their gear so they could get moving. Kerr made sure to hold onto the captive, the man looking far more subdued after the burning tunnel experience.

“Do you think they’re going to follow?” Syd asked as she motioned towards the crevice entrance.

“I doubt it,” Willa shook her head. “They’d have to realize that any attack through such a narrow passage would be doomed. We could pick them off one by one, or even just block them in. Maybe if they had a wizard that could widen it with magic, but that’s not an easy task even for powerful mages.”

“Well I’m not sticking around to find out if they do have a super powerful earth mage on the backline,” Dys said as she gathered up both her gear and Jay’s. “Let’s get going now before something worse happens.”

No one protested the plan, so Jadis started moving out. Since Jay was so injured, Syd picked her up in her arms, carrying her injured other self who in turn carried more of their gear in hers. Kerr passed the captive over to Jaxton and let the three soldiers take the lead while she hung back with Jadis’ three selves.

“Hey, uh, don’t worry,” Kerr said in a low voice. “I checked when you crawled out. Everything’s still intact down there, if a little crispy.”

“…Appreciate it,” Jay moaned, wincing as her burns rubbed against Syd’s arms. “Thank Lyssandria Eir has magic to fix this.”

“Yeah,” Kerr nodded. “Thank D your big D didn’t get burned off. Eir can fix most things, but she can’t regrow missing pieces.”

All of Jadis’ selves shivered at the thought.

“Yeah, thank D.”

The rest of the trip back was quick and uneventful. They rushed through the mines with as much speed as was prudent, making sure to periodically check behind them for any sign of pursuit. There was none, at least no indication they could detect. There were always possibilities, especially with magic involved, but when the light of the cave entrance became visible ahead, Jadis breathed a sigh of relief. She never, ever wanted to go underground again. Nothing good ever came of it.

The one orgy had been nice, but still.

When their group reunited with the main bulk of their force, there was a great deal of excitement and more than a bit of concern, particularly regarding Jay’s condition. The camp was enveloped in a whirlwind of activity as many started talking and acting at once. Before she knew it, Jadis found her Jay self surrounded by her lovers inside of the Behemoth. Aila, Eir, Thea, and Sabina were all asking questions, more than she could answer coming from so many directions at once.

“Stop!” Eir finally said, raising her voice high enough to be heard over the din. “All of you, out! I need to heal her. Talk to Dys and Syd!”

The other three seemed to collectively realize that they didn’t actually need to talk to Jay to get the story of what had happened down in the tunnels. Leaving Jay to Eir’s gentle ministrations, everyone else gathered around Syd who quickly brought them all up to speed. Kerr and Bridget added their own details as well, painting a clear picture of all that had gone on during their investigative delve.

While Syd and the others talked, Dys stayed with Willa and the soldiers. Not that they were far apart due to the closeness of the camp they’d made inside the tunnel. Jadis simply wanted to keep tabs on the prisoner, interested in seeing what might come of any interrogation. To Jadis’ surprise, Willa didn’t begin any immediate interrogations. Instead she focused on informing her troops of what had happened down below as well as gathering their reports on what had occurred in the base camp. Not much it seemed, besides a few demons that had wandered close.

The captive soldier was left tied up and gagged on the ground, with Lutz assigned as guard over him. At some point his helmet had been removed and Jadis could see he was a young man, likely no older than she was, relatively speaking. He had a wild-eyed look as he stared around at the soldiers. When his gaze met Dys’, his expression became even more terrified and he quickly looked away.

“So,” a voice spoke up next to Dys’ knee. “Rough trip, huh?”

Dys looked down to see Nora standing next to her, arms folded in a similar stance to her own. She wasn’t looking at Dys, instead she faced ahead towards the prisoner.

“If it isn’t buildings falling on your head it’s arcane casters roasting you like a chicken.”

“Yeah, so it seems to go for us…” Dys replied in a drawl.

“You three Nephilim have to have simultaneously both the worst and best luck of anyone I’ve ever met,” Nora told her matter-of-factly.

“It sure feels like it.”

There was a brief pause between them as they both watched the activity going on around them.

“Speaking of getting lucky, that’s one hell of a big dick Jay has there.”

“For real?” Dys exclaimed incredulously as she looked down at the gnome.

“I mean, kind of charred and all that, but still. Wow.”

“Nora, I don’t want to talk about Jay’s charred dick right now.”

“Fair enough. But you all are triplets, right? Identical in every way?”

“Seriously?” Dys laughed, turning to face the woman who was quite literally a third of her size.

“Hey, just curious!” Nora held up her hands with an innocent expression. “Not every day you see a cock as big as your leg and it’s not even erect. Unless you’re a horse breeder I guess.”

Dys couldn’t help but laugh harder as Nora’s antics. Jadis was certain the gnome wasn’t actually coming on to her, she wasn’t interested in woman from what she’d gathered talking to her over the past couple of weeks and she doubted the revelation of Jadis’ packages would change that. Still, it was a good distraction from a stressful situation and she appreciated the thought.

Around that same time Syd and the rest of Fortune’s Favored had finished going over the details of the trip underground. There had been a few questions, but mostly everyone had just listened to what Syd had to say. Once they’d all had a moment to process, the analysis and speculation began.

“It has to be the same tunnel,” Aila announced with certainty. “It makes too much sense for it not to be.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Kerr said. “Just because it fits whatever scenario you’ve got going on in you head doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“Just listen,” Aila held up her hand to silence Kerr’s negativity. “Think it through with me. Imperials soldiers are making it all the way to Kalters Wall without anyone noticing, with large shipments of eleria in tow as well. There’s no easy way to hide that kind of movement, not from the Magistrate. In fact, Vraekae’s first sign that any smuggling was happening wasn’t until just recently, after our incident in Alawar and our return to the city. What did we find in Alawar?”

“A shit load of demons,” Kerr grumbled.

“A t—tunnel entrance,” Thea said a moment after.

“Exactly. A tunnel entrance that leads into a vast complex of caves, at least one of which connects to that underground pathway that shoots north in a large curve. And who is currently in control of Alawar right now?”

“…General Egilhard,” Syd answered darkly.

“Did the tunnel you entered connect to the pathway? Because from what I remember of what you told me about that awful journey in the caves it wasn’t easy to get to that underground pathway from where you entered the caves in Alawar,” Sabina asked with a pensive expression. “I mean, I think it’s a good theory but I can’t picture it myself since I wasn’t down there but if you think it’s possible, I guess it could be…”

“There’s no way they could have followed the same path as us,” Syd shook her head. “At one point we had to literally dive underwater to swim through an underground stream. There’s no way they could be transporting eleria or anything else via that route.”

“But they could have found other connecting passages,” Aila insisted. “That place was a maze of tunnels. There could absolutely be other tunnels that we never explored that connect to that pathway. Both soldiers and mercenaries have been exploring those tunnels for the past couple of months, rooting out demons. It isn’t impossible for them to have found a different connection in that time. It’s not even all that unlikely if you have the right people with the right skills and spells.”

Aila’s suppositions made more sense to Jadis the longer she thought about it. Egilhard had been at Alawar and it was a good place for him to set up a smuggling racket. If he’d found a way to connect the mines in and around Kalters Wall with Alawar, he’d have the perfect cover. Not that the caves didn’t have their own dangers, but he could afford to send a well-armed caravan on regular expeditions to the north if he didn’t have to worry about any of Vraekae’s loyal subordinates seeing the movement.

She still wasn’t sure it all fit into place, though, with the biggest question being how he had managed to find the eleria mines so fast. It felt like an awful big coincidence that his men had happened to stumble upon caves full of the precious crystal and had also set up an effective mining operation in less than two months.

“I still feel like we’re missing something here,” Syd said with a shake of her head. “I agree with you Aila, I think what you’re saying makes the most sense. But there are pieces to this puzzle that we’re missing.”

“Well, does it matter?”

Syd turned to look at Bridget. The woman was standing slightly off to the side, a worried expression on her face. She blinked, realizing everyone had turned to look at her. Shrinking back just a bit before straightening her shoulders, she made a show of shrugging and holding up her hands.

“I mean, it isn’t our job, right? We aren’t here to investigate this whole eleria theft thing, we’re here to find Jadi—er Jay, Dys, and Syd’s friend that they’re looking for, right? Do we really need to get any more involved than what we’ve already done?”

“No, I suppose not,” Aila answered after a moment. “We’ve helped Willa more than enough in her investigation already.”

 “True,” Syd nodded. “More than true. By rights we shouldn’t be involved in any of this shit at all. But now that we’ve been dragged into it, I’m curious. Maybe too curious for my own good, but now I feel like I need to know.”

As Syd spoke, her eyes turned towards the captive lying on the ground, guarded but otherwise ignored. With a huff of breath, she started moving towards the man. A moment later, Jay slipped out from the wagon, having received a decent amount of healing and a spare set of clothes. Eir hurried behind her, not having yet used her spell to fix the cosmetic damage done. In a few steps, Dys joined up with her and the three approached the prisoner together.

“What are you doing?” Willa called out in alarm as the three Nephilim came to a stop around the man.

Everyone in the camp was now focused on the three of her, both her companions and the soldiers, and most certainly the captive who was looking up at the towering figures with sheer terror in his eyes.

Ignoring Willa and any protests Lutz tried to make, Jay reached down and picked the man up by the scruff of his neck. Holding his face level with her own still slightly scorched one, she started with one calm simple statement.

“You and I are going to have a talk.”

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