Chapter 39: Voices

Jadis counted for one. At least, as far as Lascivious Empowerment was concerned, she was only a single participant in the ritual. She supposed she should just have been glad that the ritual could be done with only one active contributor, but it was still a little disappointing to not see her numbers go up as much as she hoped they would.

As she had thought would be the case, the focal stat of the ritual, in this case eldritch, went up from seventy to seventy-seven, confirming a single participant was worth a ten percent increase. The relatively small increase of seven points meant none of her stats affected by Minor Fractional Spread changed, but her vitality was boosted by the same seven points as eldritch was thanks to Eldritch Overlay, so Jadis couldn’t truly be all that unhappy with the results. Besides which, now that Jadis knew what the ritual was capable of, she had a lot of hope for what she could accomplish with it if she found a sufficient number of willing partners.

During the night, as Jadis’ pleasantly exhausted bodies cuddled together, two bone thieves came across her camp and interrupted her sleep. Not that they caught her off guard since at least one of her selves was always awake and on watch, but it was annoying to have to get up from her comfortable pile on the fur rug to deal with the bony pests.

As a consolation, the second bone thief gave enough experience to push Jadis’ secondary class up another level, rounding it out to ten. Without hesitation Jadis put the single free attribute point she gained from the even-numbered level into eldritch, bringing the stat’s total up to seventy-eight.

With the dawn, Jadis rose, made breakfast, and cleaned up the camp. She was eager to make her way onward for many reasons, not the least of which being the thought of possibly finding someone who she could do the Lascivious Empowerment ritual with in order to increase the gains she got from it. But before Jadis could truly entertain the idea of inviting anyone to join her in a lewd and debauched ritual, she needed to find people first.

Getting back on the road, Jadis’ good morning mood was slightly dampened by a shower of rain overhead. The bad weather was hardly a torrential downpour, just a light summer rain really, but it was enough to turn the road she was following into a muddy creek. On several occasions, either Jay’s or Dys’ makeshift sandals slipped off her feet, getting caught in the mud. In a bout of frustration after having lost one sandal again to the mire the road had become, Jadis simply took the remaining sandals off her feet and threw them away. Syd didn’t have any foot protection anyway and was doing well enough, so Jadis figured her other two selves could make do without.

Jadis imagined the lack of discomfort she experienced walking barefoot in the woods had something to do with her fortitude attribute toughening her skin. She knew she didn’t have the calluses to prevent damage, her skin was still as unnaturally smooth and perfect as it had been when she first spawned on Oros. She hoped she could keep her skin as it was, a thought that had her seriously considering overlaying fortitude once she had her base health back to a reasonable state.

As Jadis considered her options, talking things out amongst her selves, Jadis kept plodding along, heading south down the winding road. The omnipresent pine trees surrounding her changed little, their huge trunks towering around her a constant and easily ignorable scenery. The pines were so ubiquitous to her surroundings, when Jadis actually did come across something that wasn’t just more conifers, it shocked her into silence.

There, in the overcast light of a rainy midmorning, was a fort.

Syd waited for Jay and Dys to catch up, having been walking a hundred or so paces ahead and slightly off the road. Instinctively, Syd crouched low behind a tree, observing the gray structure for any signs of movement or life.

From what Jadis could see, a stone wall with crenelations on the top that was about twice her height, more or less, was curved in a large circle inside a clearing that had been cut out of the forest. The dirt road she had been following led right up to the wall, going in through an arched gate that stood open. Right where the road entered the gate, Jadis could see that the dirt was replaced with cobblestone, just like back in the dwarven mining village.

A stone tower, rounded and with stone tiles making a pointed roof, loomed from the center of the clearing, located in the middle of the defensive wall. Jadis could tell the walled off area of the clearing was large enough to hold the main part of the abandoned village she’d come from, if the houses were squeezed together. The clearing the fort stood in was double that size, making it impossible to approach without being seen by anyone who might be watching from the walls or tower.

However, from what Jadis could see, there was no one watching. No guards patrolled the top of the wall, no faces looked out from the tower windows. There were no flags flying from the top of the fort, nor was there any sound or sign of movement coming from the wide open gate.

“Another abandoned place?” Jay asked as she and Dys put their supply sling down.

“Probably,” Syd answered, not taking her eyes off the structure. “It’s a rainy day, people might be holed up inside their homes, but I’m not seeing any smoke from fires.”

Dys pointed to the left. “Look, there’s a road heading east.”

“West, too,” Jay nodded, looking to the other side. “This has to be some kind of hub spot or something.”

“If a fort on a three way intersection is empty…” Dys trailed off, leaving the thought unspoken. Jadis didn’t want to jinx herself. There still might be people around.

Not seeing much choice other than to just move forward, Jadis left her supplies in a pile behind a few bushes before striding forth into the open clearing. As the three of her walked out, Jadis half expected some sound of alarm or cry of ‘who goes there?’ to challenge her presence.

Nothing of the sort occurred.

Jadis walked all the way to the open north gate of the fort without anyone taking any action to stop her. When she reached the gate, she peered through the open iron-banded doors and saw what she had feared to find. The fort was dead and empty.

Doors and windows stood open, some of the doors broken and collapsed on the ground. Several buildings had the signs of old fires having been put out long ago, soot and char marring them. The tower in the center of the stronghold had a hole in one side that a bone behemoth probably could have squeezed through, not leaving much doubt in Jadis’ mind as to the fate of the people who might have once inhabited the fort.

There was no sense crying over it. Jadis had dearly hoped she’d be meeting people when Syd’s eyes had spotted the clearing, but it wasn’t to be. Heaving a heavy sigh, Jadis went and retrieved her supplies, just to make sure she didn’t lose track of them, then entered the fort to search it for anything useful.

Amongst the various abandoned structures, Jadis found that the fortification had been set up with a smithy, a stable, a tailor, two separate barracks, a large inn, three different shops that Jadis wasn’t entirely certain of what they had once sold, and several private residences, all of which were sized for dwarves, same as the mining village. Searching the awkwardly small buildings, Jadis found little of use, the place having been picked clean by scavengers from what she could tell.

What she did

find were several more bone thieves hiding amongst the ruins, the lot of which Jadis dispatched with prejudice.

The tower was a daunting challenge to search, and Jadis spent as little time in it as she could. With the giant hole in the side, she wasn’t convinced the structure was sound. Worse, since it was both scaled for dwarves and meant to withstand an enemy assault, the small doorways, tight corners, and narrow halls were difficult for her to maneuver through. Jadis didn’t linger on it, especially when the signs were obvious that anything of true value had likely already been taken from the place.

When she thought about it, Jadis felt as though the fact the fortress has been scavenged already was a good sign. If everyone everywhere for miles around were dead, there wouldn’t be anyone to loot the place. Clearly the demons weren’t using the stuff left behind by people who were either fled or dead. The abandoned fort wasn’t a great sign, but Jadis chose to look at the bright side. There had to be some people around somewhere.

The few items that Jadis did find that she decide she could make some use of she found in the remains of the large inn. There were blankets in some of the rooms that were still in decent shape, plus a few dented mugs and plates made from copper. She took the metal dishware, seeing no harm in having them, and used her sewing kit and some of the extra blankets to refine Syd’s poncho into more of a padded tunic. It wasn’t great. In fact, Jadis was fairly certain it looked like shit, but it was marginally better than the poncho. The two blankets she had left over she added to her stock.

By the time Jadis had made a thorough search of the fort and killed off all the bone thieves infesting it, it was already mid-afternoon. Since the rain was still persisting, Jadis decided to simply call it a day and stayed in the fort for the night. She didn’t relish the idea of camping in the rain and the inn’s roof didn’t leak. It had beds, too, though they were too small for even one of her, much less three. To overcome the minor inconvenience, Jadis carried the beds out of their rooms and pushed five of them together in the main space of the inn, making herself one large bed to lie across.

Even with her fur rug on top of it the straw mattresses smelled of mildew, but once she got the fire going and the doors and windows barricaded, the building was warm and dry and made for a pleasant enough place to spend a night. At least Jadis had good company to keep herself entertained.

The fort was, as it turned out, actually on a five-way intersection of roads. There were four gates, each leading in a cardinal direction, but out of the south gate the road there split in two, a cobblestone road heading true south while a worn dirt road headed southeast. Since the road heading south looked far more finished than the rest, and it was the direction Jadis had been heading so far anyway, Jadis chose to continue south the next morning.

Leaving the fort behind, Jadis followed the wet cobblestones through the pines, a light mist persisting for much of the morning until the sun came out around noon and burned it away. Unlike when she had left the village, the path leading south from the fort did not revert to bare earth and stayed made of stone. As Jadis trekked down the path, she found more signs of people having once inhabiting the forest, though nothing recent.

An old campsite had been made a few hours away from the fort, a small clearing in the trees with several rings of stones for firepits. The ashes in the stone circles were wet and cold and small plants were already growing in the clearing, so Jadis doubted anyone had been there for a long time, but she was no good judge of such things.

Further down the road she found that the brook that came from all the way back in her starting valley merged into what could truly be called a river, the cobblestone road bridging the water with a solid stone arch. Next to the bridge was a log cabin, similar in construction to the wooden barracks she’d seen in the mining compound. There was nothing inside the building but old worn furniture a size too small for Jadis, but since the building looked otherwise undamaged, Jadis hoped that meant she was nearing some point of safety. There was still some daylight left, but since the cabin was there and available, Jadis stopped at that point and stayed by the riverside overnight.

With another night’s rest, Jadis decided her health was likely recovered enough that she could switch her overlay to something other than vitality. Sleeping indoors and on beds seemed to increase the effectiveness of Knight’s Rest and her health had gone up a fair amount. Since Jadis wanted to make up for some of the time she’d lost by searching the fort the day previous, Jadis overlayed her eldritch stat onto agility to increase her speed.

The boost to her movement was intense and it took a few minutes for Jadis to get used to the change. Having her selves run and jump around to acclimate herself to the increased speed and maneuverability, Jadis discovered that she now had the stats to easily leap onto the roof of the cabin, and probably a fair bit higher. With a run, she could actually jump straight across the river, something she did multiple times since it was so fun.

Once she felt accustomed to her stat changes, Jadis got back on the road, jogging along at a good clip. Without the boosted vitality, Dys’ leg and side were still sore so she didn’t push herself as hard as she could, but the distance she could travel was still massively increased.

More signs of civilization passed by as Jadis made her way, though she only briefly stopped to check them. Another campsite, this one with a wooden palisade. An old stone building at a crossroads that was missing its roof, likely due to a fire. The broken down remains of a wagon, pushed off to one side of the road.

As the day progressed, the towering pine trees seemed to shrink in size somewhat, their trunks not quite as wide, their density decreased, giving the forest a more open feel. Jadis also saw less and less bone thieves, going hours between sightings and only having to stop to kill a few.

By the time the sun was approaching the western horizon, its warm light filtering through the trees, Jadis felt extremely satisfied with her progress. She had no idea how many miles she’d travelled, but the mountains where she had started were no longer visible over the tops of the trees around her. With her increased agility, she had to have covered dozens of miles on that day alone.

Since night was imminent, Jadis had Syd keep an eye out for another place to rest. Camping at old camp sites or waypoints was far preferable to making her own spot from scratch. As Syd ran ahead, she almost missed the faint, unusual sounds being carried along on the gentle evening breeze. The odd sounds were something Jadis hadn’t heard in well over a month, so utterly unfamiliar and unexpected they nearly made her drop everything her selves were carrying.

Jadis heard the sound of voices. Voices that weren’t her own.

She could hear men talking.

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