Chapter 387: Dread

Keep moving. That was the word.

Jay dodged to the side as a tentacle as wide around as her waist swiped diagonally through the fumes, nearly bisecting her from shoulder to hip. She was fast enough to get out of the way, but her reactions had to be hyper focused due to limited visibility, as well as the other dangers lurking in the fog. All around her were crawlers, wights, dead heads, and those disgusting skin-mat things. Turning one way meant encountering a scythe-clawed wight. Turning another meant getting her ankle grabbed by a crawler. There was no dodging one thing without running into another. It wouldn’t have been such a problem if she had her armor on, but without it she was taking small amounts of damage constantly. The injuries were stacking up, even with her high Fortitude.

“Shit!” Jay cursed as a wight she hadn’t seen sliced at her calf, cutting the flesh deep.

She immediately transferred the wound to Dys while whipping around and grabbing the Wight. It wasn’t easy, since the slippery fuckers moved fast and erratically, their human-like limbs bending their joints in ways that didn’t make physiological sense. She still managed to get a hold of the Wight, though, and as it struck wildly at her arm, she tossed it into the air towards Ludger.

The Demon was splattered to pieces as the huge, bladed tentacle slammed against Ludger’s sturdy shield, catching the wight between them. The Hero’s Bulwark didn’t budge an inch from the blow, but he did let out a grunt of disgust as the smaller wight’s entrails managed to drip onto his helmet. He didn’t complain, though. Just like Jadis, he had bigger things to worry about.

The Greater Wight Demon was a twelve-foot tall, vaguely humanoid figure with translucent flesh just like its smaller counterparts. Other than its size, the big differences between it and the other wights were its head and its arms. The head of the monstrosity wasn’t human at all, but instead had an elongated neck and the sphincter-like maw of a lamprey or a leech. Its left arm was thick and long and had a ten-fingered hand with far too many joints. The right arm was just one massive tentacle that had to be thirty or forty feet in length, with serrated, knife-like spikes running down opposite sides of the limb. Of final note were the eyes. Multiple deep-purple eyes floated around inside of the transparent flesh of the Greater Demon, watching in all directions and making it impossible to sneak up on. Put all together, it was an imposing demonic entity and Jadis wasn’t at all surprised that Vraekae was having so much trouble with it.

“Duck!” Jay shouted as she ran by the Magistrate, dodging low herself as she avoided a blazing spell whizzing by her head that had come from somewhere in the fog.

Vraekae leaned back, showing a surprising amount of core strength as she bent over backwards without shifting her feet. The scything tentacle whipped by, barely brushing past a strand of her red hair as it followed along after Jay. As it cleared her, Vraekae instantly righted herself and shot a hand out, pointing at the tentacle. A burst of red energy erupted from the tip of her finger, swirling in a corkscrew pattern as it tracked the limb. Before the beam of concentrated magic struck the limb, an asymmetrical shield made of pulsing water appeared and blocked the attack, preventing any damage from being done.

The Magistrate’s ordinarily immaculate uniform was a torn-up mess, with blood and other fluids splattered across her front and left side. Some of that blood was definitely hers, as there was a foot-long piece of a wight claw sticking out of her left upper arm, like it had been broken off in a scuffle. While still obviously in control of her emotions, Vraekae’s face was an angry mask of intense concentration as she focused on the Greater Wight, as well as the person it carried in its ten-fingered hand.

The woman was a gnome and she was wearing the torn robes of a priestly scholar. Jadis had seen the same robes worn by the many scholars who she had met when she visited the High Temple of Metethys. Her dead eyes stared lifelessly ahead of her as her hands moved almost mechanically in the patterns of a wizard casting spells. From what Jay could see of her partially exposed torso through the ragged robes, the squirming mass of a Demon had invaded her body and was controlling her through possession. How the scholar had gotten to Trummelton’s when it was so far from either the temple or the academy, Jadis didn’t know. But it was clear that the Greater Demon was using the possessed caster as some kind of personal defense system as it carried the gnome around in its hand like a doll.

“I need you to neutralize that caster!” Vraekae told Jay as she passed by the Magistrate again. “I cannot finish this Demon so long as it is so well defended!”

As she spoke, Vraekae’s red orb sliced through the air and struck at the Wight, crashing against another barrier that appeared in the air to block her attack. Her spinning orb rebounded, then rocketed off into the mist as it was directed away.

“Working on it!” Jay shouted back as she dodged another flying crawler. “But this isn’t fucking easy!”

It really wasn’t. Every time Jay tried to get close to the Greater Demon, it would whip its tentacle at her and she was forced to dodge. If she had been armored, she would have risked catching it. But unarmored, and considering how hard the regular wights could hit, Jay wasn’t going to chance getting cut in half. There were limits to what Eir could heal.

“Get behind me!” Ludger called out his own command to Jay as she neared him. “I’m going in!”

The man’s shield had proved to be able to handle the Demon’s bladed tentacle, so Jay chose to put her trust in Ludger’s skill. Even if he’d made a wildly incorrect assumption on first sight, he was still on the same team as her and was probably even more experienced than her with killing Demons. Just as the frightened server had said earlier, they all needed to work together to win this fight.

Ludger charged forward, his speed accelerating to such a degree that Jadis knew a skill had to be involved. She activated her own Knight’s Daring Charge and followed right behind as he sprinted at the Greater Demon.

Naturally, it saw them coming and brought its tentacle around to swipe at them. The attack came in low, only inches above the ground, with the clear intent to cut their feet out from under them. Abruptly halting his charge, Ludger slammed the edge of his heavy shield down into the ground and caught the Demon’s tentacle, keeping it from moving forward. Whatever feeling of success might have gone through Ludger’s head was cut off as the tentacle wrapped around his legs. With a powerful yank, the Greater Wight pulled Ludger off of his feet and hurled him away into the toxic fog where, a second later, Jadis heard the sound of something heavy impacting the wall.

Whatever that attack might have done to Ludger, he had given Jadis the opportunity she needed.

Sprinting in, Jay aimed at the possessed gnome with the heavy rock she had been carrying with her. Now only a few yards away, she knew she had a sure hit on the target. With all of her might, she launched the hundred-pound stone at the caster.

A hexagonal barrier of arcane energy formed in the air before the mage as the Greater Wight held the possessed figure out in front of it like a shield. Jay’s projectile was caught by the barrier as it rippled like water. For a scant moment, Jay felt her heart drop into her stomach as she realized what was about to happen but had no way to stop the coming counterattack.

The rock hurtled back towards her in a spray of pressurized water that shattered the stone to pieces, turning it into an almost pointblank shotgun blast. Ducking her head, Jay managed to avoid getting shot in the face. Mostly. A good deal of the stone debris hit her right arm, shoulder, and side, while some of it struck the side of her head and face. The blast was strong enough that her forward momentum was completely reversed and she was sent back the way she had come, tumbling heels over head.

There was a ringing sound in Jay’s ears as she struggled to recover from the counterspell, and she was only faintly aware of the fact that the liquid running down her face and side wasn’t just water. Coughing as she raised her head to look around, she saw nothing but dead Demons littering the floor and the broken surface of a wall a few feet away.

How far had she been thrown? Jay wasn’t entirely sure. She didn’t think she’d been so near to the edge of the room.

The inconsequential thought was a sign of her being stunned, Jadis recognized as her other selves were physically unhindered by what might have been a concussion. Still, that didn’t stop her Jay self from being out of it; functionally, it was no different from when one of her selves went to sleep while the others stayed awake.

Before Jadis could even begin to make the choice of who to switch the damage to, she felt a gust of air on her back and the ring of a bell just above her. Rolling onto her side, she looked up to see Severina standing over her, her sword raised and a light shining from her as she blocked the follow up attack that came from the Greater Demon.

“On your feet!” Severina shouted at her. “You will not die here!”

In response to the Seraphim’s orders, Jadis transferred part of the damage on Jay to Dys. Dys was carrying Sabina out of the building at that moment and if she put everything onto that part of her, Jadis was certain that Dys would collapse and be unable to keep moving. Even with Eir’s healing, Jadis’ physical damage was immense and her health pool had dropped below one third.

Getting to her feet and wiping the blood out of her eyes, Jay charged back into the fray. Severina flapped her wings and rose above her, blocking a spell that had been shot in their direction. The paladin didn’t charge in after her, instead staying behind to protect the people who were trapped in the musician’s alcove. But Jadis could feel a bolstering Divine spell suffuse Jay’s body as Severina passed a hand over her.

Jadis said a silent thanks to the literal angel as she ran towards the deadly wight. She definitely owed her a debt after that, and provided they both lived through the night, she would be sure to repay her in whatever way she wanted.

A bestial, almost inhuman roar came from somewhere to Jay’s right as she ran forward. Reaching the Demon, she found that it had come from Ludger, who had recovered from being tossed away like a tissue and was charging back at the same time. He looked like he was in far worse shape than a moment before, as his armor was badly dented and one pauldron had been partially sheered off and was flapping with his every step. His helmet had caved in on one side and Jay could see the blood coming out from the holes and gaps along the bottom edge. With his mace raised, he roared like a lion and renewed his attack on the Greater Wight, seemingly unbothered by the damage done to him.

Reaching the Demon at the same time, Jay grabbed the tentacles of a slain dead head that was missing its lower half and swung it around like a flail. As the gigantic wight turned to face Ludger, she hurled the dead head at it, letting the grisly projectile fly at the center mass of the Demon. In the same moment, Jay could see the glowing red orb of Vraekae’s spell coming at the Greater Wight from the opposite side. Even if the Demon could see all attacks coming, it couldn’t block them all at the same time.

With a dexterity that matched the ability of the lesser wights surrounding it, the Greater Wight twisted its body around like a contortionist. It leapt into the air as it swiped its huge tentacle at Ludger, slamming it against his shield and forcing him back with the power of the blow. In the same moment, it twisted its other arm around and used the possessed mage to cast a spell that blocked her orb of doom before it could drill through its body. Simultaneously, it kicked out one leg towards Jay, catching the corpse she’d hurled at it with the edge of its shin, causing the broken body to splatter from the force of Jay’s ranged attack.

It was a glancing blow, but it was still a blow. And as Jadis had learned ever since she’d first unlocked Mirrored Strikes, that was all she needed to proc the skill.

Syd charged out of the fog, coming in from an angle that the Greater Demon couldn’t use its remaining leg to defend from, even with its disjointed anatomy. As the massive wight flipped overhead, blocking every other attack, Syd unleashed all of her strength into the most powerful uppercut that she could manage.

Her blow struck the center mass of the Demon. The creature’s form was solid, and while Jadis was certain that if she’d hit a lesser wight with such a perfect, dead-on hit, it would have been liquidized by the force of her Mirrored Strike. Instead, the Greater Demon, which was already airborne, was sent tumbling skywards by the impact. The Demon cleared the gas cloud, then kept going as the blow sent it up. It didn’t quite reach the ceiling high above, but it got high enough that it could have landed on the third floor, if it had been closer to that edge of the large, open room.

Jay leapt into the air after the Demon, also clearing the cloud as she followed after it. She didn’t want to lose track of the wight, since the toxic gas obscured her vision. As she made it above the cloud, she saw the tumbling Demon strike out with its massive tentacle, spearing it into the ceiling and using that as an anchor point to stop its uncontrolled movement. In the brief instant that it righted itself, Jay could see the spot where Syd had struck. Its translucent body had deformed around the impact, almost like a crater, and she could see that several of the eyeballs floating around inside of the Demon had burst like grapes as the force had rippled through its flesh.

Angling its arm towards Jay, it pointed the gnome at her. Jay could see the possessed figure already weaving another arcane spell. But what she could also see on the other side of the greater Demon, was the top of the stairs that led down to the first floor. And Aila.

A ball of ghostly arcane energy floated almost gently up behind the wight. As it reached the dangling Demon, it detonated in a transparent explosion that allowed Jay to see all the damage being done.

It was like watching gelatine being scrambled in a blender. The Greater Demon’s giant tentacle arm was shredded to pieces along a ten-foot expanse, cutting it completely from its body. Its shoulder and head were deformed into a rippling, flattened state as chunks were ripped off by the blast. Whatever spell the gnome had been casting was interrupted as the explosion knocked the Greater Demon’s arm around and sent the whole beast back down into the mist faster than it could fall.

As soon as the disabled wight was back in range, Syd grabbed hold of the Demon’s arm and used it as a fulcrum to swing the huge creature around and down onto the ground with even more force than its accelerated fall would have managed. The impact shook the floor, sending a spiderweb of cracks out as the marble cracked from the force. A second later, Jay landed feet first, her double-fisted hands slamming into the point where the Demon’s remaining arm met its body. The creature’s boneless limb was crushed into paste, allowing Syd to tear the arm still holding the possessed mage away.

Before Jadis could turn either of her bodies on the still squirming Greater Wight, Vraekae’s red orb of doom struck. It hit the Demon right in its eel-like head, drilling through the transparent flesh and pushing deep into its body. The red spell spun with demonical speed as it penetrated the wight’s body, ripping and tearing everything inside to pieces in a gruesome and all-too visible display.

Jadis let the notification pop up into her vision for just an instant, confirming the death of the powerful Demon. The monstrous wight had put up a bigger fight than Jadis would have thought possible against so many skilled combatants, but that was in part due to the ambush, and also due to the possessed mage it had been using as a tool. Speaking of, Jadis dealt with the possessing Demon before it could do any further damage.

Syd took hold of the gnome and ripped it from the clenched fingers of the severed arm. It was immediately clear that the mage was beyond saving. Ignoring the feeling of revulsion that came from what she was doing, Syd reached into the gaping wound in the side of the gnome and grabbed the squirming mass of the Demon and pulled it out. She could have just crushed the two, but she didn’t want to do any more damage to the corpse of the woman than she had to. Jadis had no doubt that she had family in the city who would want to bury their dead.

With the wriggling mass of the many-tentacled Demon in hand, Syd almost dropped it to the ground and crushed it underfoot. However, Jadis had a sudden thought. Instead of killing it, Syd made sure to catch all of its slippery limbs in one fist and carried it with her. She didn’t know how intelligent this particular Demon was, but she knew for a fact that Demons were far more intelligent than they seemed. And with Alex, she now had a way to effectively interrogate one.

Outside, Dys nearly collapsed with each step as she moved with Eir and the many injured civilians towards the safe building where she could see Alex, Elodie, and several guards waiting for them. Jadis had been shunting all the damage she’d been taking during the fight onto Dys and she was a walking mess of wounds. The poison was still wreaking havoc on her health, and she was down to only a little over four hundred health points. Eir was healing her, but her own reserves were starting to run low as she switched between Dys and Sabina, as well as healing others who were in critical condition.

A bolt of holy energy flashed in the dark sky above, signaling that the fighting was far from over, but it felt like a turning point had been made. As both nobles and regular people entered the building, Dys could see even more soldiers coming from further down the street. It seemed like all of the city’s defenders had been mobilized, which Jadis was sure was no small number. She also knew the Hero and the rest of his party had to be in the city since Ludger was, which inspired confidence that the attack would soon be settled.

Back inside the restaurant, Jay and Syd rejoined the line of soldiers that had been safeguarding the survivors escaping from the second floor. Bridget and Thea were there with them, as were Aila and Kerr, coming down the stairs last. Seeing her lovers coming out of the mess safely was all Jadis wanted at that moment, but she knew her job wasn’t done. Roy and Severina were still inside, protecting all of the other people who were trapped by the Demons. With the Greater Wight dead, getting them all out seemed like a far easier prospect, even with the many lesser Demons still running around.

“Form up and take your men that way,” Vraekae commanded the soldiers as she took charge. “Keep aware of your footing, there are belgramathr everywhere.”

The direction Vraekae was taking the soldiers was towards Roy and the people trapped there. Pointing off to the left, Jay shouted down at the elf as she and Syd started moving.

“Severina and more survivors are over there! I’ll clear the way and let them know to get ready to move!”

“Understood,” Vraekae said with a nod. “Once everyone is evacuated, I need you by the doors leading to the kitchen. That’s the main entry point for the attack.”

Moving quickly, Jay and Syd headed off into the obscuring noxious fog to find Severina. The cloud was starting to disperse thanks to all of the broken windows and the hole in the wall, helping with visibility somewhat, but it was still difficult to navigate the utterly destroyed ballroom. As Jay and Syd neared where she was certain she’d last seen the Seraphim and all of the survivors she had been protecting, all three of Jadis froze in shock as the world around them went wrong.

All around her, the men and women who were with Dys in the bakery had suddenly transformed into various versions of her mother, father, brother, and the rest of her family. They still sounded as they should; Jadis’ hearing had not been altered, nor had her sense of smell. But her vision had once more been obscured by a powerful illusion.

Jay and Syd couldn’t help but recoil as the bodies of the many dead Demons all around her transformed into the mutilated corpses of her family. It was a horrific sight that made her stomach lurch. Looking down at her hand, Syd could see her brother hanging there, his arms and legs broken as he silently screamed in pain.

The impact wasn’t as bad as the first time, though. Jadis knew without doubt that the horrible visions were just that, only visions. The fact that she could still hear and smell normally greatly helped keep the illusion from becoming overwhelming. Nevertheless, it was still disorienting, and Jadis needed to get rid of whoever or whatever had cast the spell on her again. It was difficult to know who was friend and who was foe with the illusion obscuring her sight, and even if she knew that a figure was an enemy, she couldn’t accurately see what their body was doing. That made it near impossible to fight, since all of her attacks were basically blind.

“Someone cast an illusion on me,” Dys said to a version of her grandmother that she knew had to be Eir. “I don’t know how they got through my Resilience again.”

“Check around you,” Eir said, her voice coming from her grandmother’s image. “Did someone put something on Jay or Syd?”

Not that she could see. Jadis had thought of that, too, and was checking both of her bodies as best as she could. It was hard to do a thorough check, though, since she was still in the middle of a battle with Demons attacking her. Since she could only see illusions of her family, she just grabbed everything that came close to her. If it felt or sounded like a Demon, she used her two selves to pummel it. At one point, though, as a figure of her grandfather came near and she grabbed it, she was greeted with an indignant grunt.

“What are you doing?” Ludger’s voice came from the mismatched illusion.

“I can’t see,” Jay shot back as she let the man go. “Someone cast an illusion on me.”

“Go that way,” Ludger shoved her to her left. “Lady Severina is over there!”

Following the man’s direction, Jay and Syd headed for the musician’s alcove. Ludger followed behind her, then veered off as another illusion charged out at them. To Jadis’ eyes, it only looked like her grandfather was talking with her cousin Lia, but from the sound, she could tell the man was fighting a wight. As the alcove came into view, she could see dozens of her duplicated family members milling about, as well as a version of her mother that was floating a few feet off the ground. That, Jadis realized, had to be Severina. Still struggling to find what had been put on her, Jay and Syd rushed towards the Seraphim, calling out to let her know that evacuation was coming.

Nearing Severina, Jadis noticed another figure, this one a copy of her brother again, only he was older than the younger version Syd was carrying in her hand. The fact that this older version had to be a Demon was evident, since he was hanging off the side of the wall above the alcove like he was a rock climber. There was only so much an illusion could do, Jadis supposed. Pointing, Syd shouted a word of warning to the floating paladin. As she called out, the image of her brother leapt from the wall, arms outstretched and a smile on his face, like he was only trying to hug their mother.

“Behind you!”

At the same time, Jay charged forward and jumped into the air to intercept the Demon. With her fist outstretched, she swung at the chest of her illusionary brother, trying to knock down the crawler or wight or whatever it was before it could pounce on top of Severina.

Jay’s arm passed through nothing, her attack striking only air. Instead, she felt something heavy strike her chest at the same moment as the image of her brother made contact with the image of her mother that was obscuring Severina. Both she and Severina were caught in what looked like a hug but felt like a many-limbed Demon digging its claws into her flesh.

“Jadis!” Severina let out a scream of pain as Jay felt hot blood splatter across her face and chest.

“No—!” Syd let out a broken shout as she rushed in after Jay, seeing the dual illusion of her brother and mother hit the ground.

Groping blindly, Jay punched and kicked at the Demon, grabbing hold of any part that she could and pummeling it into pieces in an effort to make the thing let go. She couldn’t see what had happened, but the sense of dread filling her was immense as she heard the terrible, familiar sound of flesh and bone being ripped apart as Severina screamed in agony.

“Jadis!” Sorcha called out by Dys’ side, her figure obscured by another image of her brother when he was young. “Your wrist! There’s a pendant on your wrist!”

Checking her arms, Dys saw that Sorcha was right; one of the flower pendants that she had torn off of her selves earlier was wrapped loosely around her left wrist. She hadn’t even felt it hanging there. Ripping it off, Jadis’ vision was instantly restored, though she almost wished it hadn’t been.

Severina lay on the ground on her back. Her right arm, shoulder, and wing were gone, with nothing but a bleeding, gaping mess of gore where they should have been. Above her was the centipede-like Greater Demon. From between its jaws Jadis could see feathers sticking out, as well as the tip of Severina’s sword.

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