Chapter 295: A Disparate Gathering

“Alex, no!”

“Aila, stop!”

Jay and Syd spoke simultaneously, their words intended for two different targets. Words came with action as Syd reached out for Alex, putting a hand on the demon’s monstrous shoulder while also positioning herself to partially block her from Aila. The body blocking was necessary since Aila had immediately thrown up her new staff in clear preparation to blast Alex with a force spell.

Jay grasped hold of Aila’s wrist, having moved to stand in front of her with inhuman speed. Carefully holding onto her fragile lover’s hand, she forced Aila to look into her eyes by bending low to put their heads level with each other.

“Just hold on, okay? It’s Alex! She’s not hostile! Remember, she sort of helped save your life and definitely saved Sabina’s life. Don’t blast her, alright?”

Aila’s expression was wide-eyed and pale. Her gaze kept shifting away from Jay’s face to stare at Alex, a slight tremor in her limbs.

“We need explanations, Jadis,” Aila strained to say calmly. “I need explanations. Now.”

“Yes, we do,” Jay agreed, nodding her head placatingly. “So that means no force ball explosions, yeah?”

“…Yes.”

While Jay handled Aila’s decidedly hostile reaction, Syd took stock of everyone else’s. Fortunately, no one else had tried to attack Alex. Not yet, anyway.

Eir had not fainted. Jadis had half expected that the priestess would have gone under at the surprise. However, despite her often times meek nature, Eir was made of sterner stuff. What she had done instead was kneel down into the snow and start a prayer, the words tumbling off of her lips in a constant stream of anxious worry. Jadis was fairly certain the prayer was one of protection against evil, though with everything else going on it was hard to keep track.

Thea and Bridget had both readied their weapons. Neither were speaking nor were they advancing to attack, but they’d taken up a defensive posture around Eir, a fact that Jadis could appreciate. Thea’s face was a mask of nervous apprehension while Bridget’s lip was curled in an oddly confused snarl. Neither of the women looked happy about the surprise situation, but at least they weren’t immediately trying to kill Alex, which was about as good as Jadis felt she could hope for, all things considered.

 Kerr and Sabina had unusually similar reactions. Kerr had been the only one with any forewarning of what the meeting was about, but even so Jadis hadn’t told her what Alex looked like post-transformation. She was staring at the demon intently, one hand on her chin while she was bent sideways at the waist. The archer’s eyes ran up and down the demon’s form, examining Alex with riveted focus.

Sabina, like Kerr, was also staring curiously at Alex, though she’d taken things one step further. Literally. Moving forward by several steps, Sabina was only a few feet away from the demon, examining her up close and in such a deeply intense way that Jadis wasn’t even sure the smith was aware that Aila had been preparing to blast Alex with a spell.

“So… Was that some kind of proposition?” Kerr finally asked, drawing the attention of the others. “Because, correct me if I’m wrong here, but I’m pretty sure Alex just asked us if we wanted to fuck.”

“Fuck

… Yes…” Alex intoned in seeming agreement with Kerr’s words. Though two of her three eyes were staring intently at Aila and her stance had shifted to a stiff and unreadable one.

“I think Alex might have picked up on some of our more… lewd habits,” Syd shrugged while keeping one hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I mean, Jack did imply that when he temporarily modified my empowerment ritual, Alex had been a participant because of ‘interest’ in what we were doing.”

“So now Alex is some kind of sex obsessed demon? D’s fucking balls, Jadis, your influence is just too much sometimes.”

Syd gave Kerr a dry look while the therion shook her head in amused amazement. It wasn’t as though she could deny the accusation, though. Clearly Jadis had influenced Alex in a similar way to how she’d had an effect on pretty much everyone else’s classes.

“How much can it understand?” Aila asked while pulling her wrist free from Jay’s grip to take a step closer to Alex. “What has it said so far?”

“She.”

“What?”

“Alex is a she, Aila. Not an it.”

Aila opened her mouth, likely to argue, but after a second’s hesitation seemed to think better of it and shook her head instead.

“Fine. She. What has she said and how much can she understand us?”

“Not a lot,” Jay answered with a sigh. “Alex seems to understand basic words and concepts, but she hasn’t spoken in complete sentences and struggles when we use lots of words. Or big ones. Body language and simple phrases seem to work best.”

“We didn’t have much time to talk, either,” Syd continued. “Alex basically confirmed that she killed Eike to protect Sabina and then used Eike’s body to, uh, evolve, I guess. Maybe. Again, we’re pretty limited on the words so its kind of hard to get a clear explanation.”

“Thank you for saving me and Sorcha from the crazy smuggler woman who was trying to kill us,” Sabina suddenly started to ramble while continuing to examine Alex. “That woman probably would have murdered us if it wasn’t for your help so I really mean it when I say thank you, and also I think Sorcha would say the same too if she were here right now but then again she might just be freaked out because you are a demon and pretty disturbing which I guess isn’t your fault except maybe it kind of is since you seem to have subsumed that woman’s body for yourself which I assume was a purposeful decision on your part. Unless it wasn’t on purpose and was some kind of accident. Was it an accident?”

Sabina finally took a breath, having spilled her words all in one go. She stared at Alex intently for a moment, before glancing around and noticing that everyone else was staring at her. Even Eir had gone silent.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Syd slightly shook her head. “I just haven’t heard you go on like that in a while.”

“Oh. Well, I’m nervous. I’ve never spoken to a demon before.”

“Right. Speaking of,” Kerr said with a twitch of her long ears. “I don’t think our tentacle-limbed friend here got any of that.”

Indeed, from what Jadis could see Alex had not understood Sabina’s verbal vomit. Her attention had shifted to the smith, a blank expression on her three-eyed face. It was hard to tell what the demon was thinking, but the lack of any physical or verbal response seemed to indicate a definite lack of comprehension.

“Like I was saying,” Syd patted the demon’s shoulder. “Small words. Body language. That works best.”

Almost as if to illustrate her point, Alex raised one of her monstrous arms up and patted Syd on the shoulder in a copy of the same move.

“Jadis, what are we supposed to do?” Aila asked. “What—what is the goal? Of this gathering? Of her?” She motioned with her hand at Alex. “I understand you were trying to satisfy your curiosity about demons, but I’m struggling to see any good reason to let this continue. Alex has clearly become some kind of greater demon abomination and has done so by subverting Eike’s body. Whether by accident or intent, that shows a clear capability of doing harm.”

“So?”

“So?” Aila echoed Jay’s single word, her voice going up in pitch. “What do you mean, ‘So?’ When you were toting around a demon in a jar, that was dangerous enough! Now, now look at her! This is a dangerous and unpredictable entity that could hurt or kill others! Do you not see the danger having this demon in our camp presents?”

Jay frowned, her brows furrowed as she considered Aila’s words. Honestly, they were about what she expected to hear, which was why she had both feared Aila’s response but had also sought it out. Aila always spoke sense, her ability to reason one of her best skills. However, as much as Jadis respected Aila’s thoughts and opinions, she wasn’t blind to the bias she presented in her words. That, to Jadis, was the goal of the gathering. To determine what was good sense, and what was justified but deeply seated prejudice getting in the way of change.

“Let me be more specific,” Jay elaborated. She made sure to keep her tone calm and her stance open. She didn’t want to turn a discussion into a fight. “One of your points was that Alex is capable of harm. Why does that mean she’s no longer safe to be around? I myself am capable of inflicting catastrophic levels of harm on not only everyone in this expedition, but the whole city of Far Felsen if I put my mind to it. Does that mean I am a danger to others?”

“You are not a demon,” Aila said, her voice returning to its usual cool tone. “I would argue that the track record between you and demon kind is significantly different.”

“And I would argue that it is Alex’s track record that matters, not all of demon kind. Alex has never displayed a hint of aggression, not before attacking Eike, and that was clearly in the defense of one of our own. If anything, I would count that as a point in her favor. Killing that blood bitch was the right thing to do in that situation.”

“Even if I agree to that,” Aila spoke through thin lips, “that doesn’t change the fact that Alex has clearly possessed Eike’s body. That cannot be ignored.”

“I’m not saying it should be,” Jay raised both hands in a placating gesture. “But looking at the way Alex is now, does this really seem like the kind of transformation that’s going to be easily transferred from one body to another?”

“I have no idea what capabilities a demon like Alex might possess,” Aila quickly said.

“And that’s why we should find out, don’t you think?” Jay shot back just as quickly. “I mean, you just called Alex a greater demon a second ago. How do you know that’s true? What if she isn’t? What if she’s something else? Doesn’t this deserve further investigation?”

With her last question, Jay swept her gaze across the others, motioning with one hand towards them in an open invitation to add their thoughts to the discussion. She wanted Aila’s opinion, but she wanted the others as well.

“Investigation I can maybe understand,” Bridget spoke into the open silence. “But we’re talking about a demon here. Seeing you teach one of those little tentacle blobs how to pick out letters was weird enough. Now it—er, she

is talking and shit? What are we supposed to do with that?”

“I dunno,” Kerr said with a shrug. “Maybe we should fuck her and see what happens?”

At Bridget’s shocked expression, Kerr threw up her arms and gesticulated wildly in Alex’s direction.

“What? It’s a talking demon that doesn’t want to kill me! I get the caution but seriously, aren’t you all at least a little curious about what’s going on with her? Yeah, yeah, I get the risk,” she held up a finger to forestall Aila’s words. “This whole thing could be some elaborate plan to get us to let our guards down so we can be more easily killed or some shit like that. But seriously, think about that. Actually think about it. If a demon has enough forethought to spend months enacting a plan of deceit and betrayal that involves luring us into trusting it because it purposefully avoided multiple opportunities to do us harm, doesn’t that prove Jadis’ point that demons have more intelligence than they let on? So doesn’t that mean we need to pursue this further?

“And if this isn’t some kind of mastermind plan to betray us further down the line, doesn’t that mean that Jadis is also in the right because she just showed us a demon that is capable of higher-level reasoning and made the choice to not be an evil piece of shit? Isn’t that also worth pursuit?”

A silence hovered over the group as Kerr’s words settled over them. Jadis was, frankly, impressed by the fervor with which her therion lover had argued in defense of Alex. The logic was sound, too. Whether Alex was doing something good or something evil, either way the demon was displaying definite intelligence that proved Jadis’ theories on demons, at least partially. No matter what, that meant summarily killing Alex was the wrong decision. She had to be researched further.

“So that’s why at least one of us should fuck her.”

“Kerr…” Syd let out a heavy sigh.

“Kerr, please,” Aila said at the same time, her expression pained.

“Look, I’m serious!” Kerr said as she waved a hand at Alex. “Jadis just said Alex is all about body language, and Alex just said she wants to fuck. Maybe this is some kind of communication thing! We might understand each other better if we bump groins for a while or something.”

“Fuck… Yes…” Alex spoke up, waving her tentacles in Kerr’s direction.

“Yeah, see? Clearly, she understands that word pretty well.”

“Let’s put the sex part of this discussion to the side for now,” Jay grimaced, thinking back to how Alex had woken her the night before. “I think the main argument that I’m making and that Kerr is supporting is that Alex isn’t a threat. She’s still friendly towards me and the rest of us. I think she deserves the continued benefit of the doubt.”

“Where I’m from, we have a saying,” Syd added. “A person is innocent until proven guilty. I don’t think Alex has done anything truly wrong so far. Does anyone claim differently?”

The question Jadis put to everyone forced them all into a silent moment of thought. Jadis took that to be a good sign, since it showed that they weren’t just casually dismissing all possibility of Alex being what she appeared to be; that being a genuinely friendly individual. Weird as fuck and kind of creepy, but friendly.

After a few seconds, Eir rose from her kneeling position, a look of deep concern on her beautiful face. With hands still clasped before her, she regarded Alex with wary eyes.

“I am not sure. I feel wholly inadequate to the task of making such a judgement. However, I would like to seek guidance from a greater authority.”

Eir’s gaze shifted from Alex to Syd.

“I would like your help speaking to D. We have the ability to ask three questions. I think, for this situation, we need to exercise that capability.”

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