Chapter 419: Progenitor

“So, how does it feel to have your tertiary class unlocked?”

“Exciting,” Jay grinned at Kerr from across the kitchen table.

“And a little disappointing,” Dys grimaced as she held her hand out before her and waggled it back and forth.

“But, like, in an okay kind of way?” Syd added as she made a face that was halfway between her other two selves’ expressions. “It’s kind of what I expected, but kind of not? You know?”

“No,” Kerr glanced between the three conflicted Nephilim before her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you saying you don’t

like the Progenitor class now that you have it? After all this wait and all the trouble and the fact that you told Valtar Himself he could suck a hard one, you’re picking what you want. And now you’re getting buyer’s remorse?”

The rest of her lovers in the kitchen all gave Jadis a look like she had just stepped into a giant puddle of chunky diarrhea and had announced she wasn’t going to wipe her feet. Quickly holding up her hands in surrender, Jadis shook her heads and denied the accusation.

“No! Definitely no buyer’s remorse!” Jay hastily got out before any of the various foodstuffs being cooked could be flung in her direction. “I’m just so used to having skills that either directly power me up or power you all up that it’s kind of weird to have a skill that doesn’t do either.”

“In fact, I can’t even use the skill right now,” Dys frowned, her nose scrunching up in frustration. “That’s literally never happened to me before. I didn’t even know you could get a skill you can’t immediately use.”

“You mean your first skill in the class?” Aila asked. “What are the details?”

“Here, I’ll read it out,” Jay said while she focused on the inner menu screen that only she could see.

“See what I mean?” Syd waved at the invisible screen that the others couldn’t see. “It costs five hundred magic. I don’t have enough in my reserves to cast the spell. Isn’t that kind of fucked up?”

“That is strange,” Aila murmured as she wiped her hands clean of the vegetables she had been putting into the soup pot. “I don’t think it’s unheard of, but it is unusual.”

“That is not all that is unusual,” Eir said as she slid the balls of risen dough she had been working on into the stone oven so that they could begin their transformation into dinner rolls. “I’ve never heard of a skill or spell that could affect the starting attributes of someone who has not yet unlocked their first class before. I did not think that was possible.”

“Apparently it is,” Kerr shrugged as she pulled an unhappy face at the glass of citrus water that Thea set down in front of her. “Lucky little bastards. They’re going to be getting a big leg up in the world just for being your sons.”

Kerr’s words were accompanied by her patting her still flat stomach. She had already undergone the ritual with Bertha to pause her pregnancy, but she was faithfully sticking to her promise not to drink. That didn’t stop her from complaining about the sacrifice, though.

“That would be, what, a twenty-point increase to their starting numbers right now?” Aila tilted her head as she did the math.

“T—twenty-one,” Thea corrected as she continued to down glasses at the other seats around the table.

“Not that big of an increase,” Dys grumbled a bit. “I mean, point-zero-five? Why so low?”

“Well, like Una told you, this is a class for the future,” Aila put on her lecturing face, the image only enhanced by the wooden spoon she held in her hand. “Twenty-one points is actually quite significant at level one. And you’re only CLR sixty-two right now. What is that bonus going to look like in fifty more levels? Or a hundred?”

“Also, you don’t have to use it right away,” Sorcha spoke up from where she stood on a stool, working on some kind of herb salad. “At least, not for Kerr’s twin beasts. Whether they take more after you or her, they still won’t be unlocking their primary classes until they are at least seventeen. Might not have as much time for the Succubus baby.”

Syd turned her gaze onto the Demon in the room. Alex was on the far side of the kitchen, slowly but thoroughly peeling multiple potatoes at the same time and placing the scraps into a bucket for the compost heap.

“What do you think? Will our girl be born ready to rumble right out of the egg like you? Or do you think she’ll need a few years to grow?”

Alex used one of her monster hands to mimic Syd’s earlier hand wiggle.

“Maybe… She will

… Be halfway…”

“What, like, she’ll be full grown in ten years?”

“My bet is less,” Sorcha interjected. “Five years, tops.”

“No way,” Kerr waved her hands dismissively at the goblin. “I think she’s going to pull some kind of weird switch on us and she’ll take like thirty years to grow up. Some kind of delayed development or something weird like that.”

“I hope not,” Dys frowned at the therion. “I’m good with babies, but I wouldn’t want one to stay an infant for three times as long as normal.”

“Well, too bad, because that’s basically what you’re getting,” Kerr jeered with a twinkle in her eye. “Knocking us all up on the regular means you’re going to be up to your elbows in diapers for years to come.”

“I don’t know what you’re laughing about,” Dys snorted as she pushed Kerr’s leering face away. “You’re going to be right here with the rest of us, dealing with the diapers too.”

“Merde, you’re right…”

“Right about what?”

Bridget stomped her boots as she entered the kitchen, letting in a gust of the cold night air behind her. Her question was accompanied by another from Sabina who forced her way through the door and past the orc while carrying a load of what looked like tools and pieces of wood and metal in her arms.

“Where are we eating?”

“Kerr forgot that she has to deal with baby diapers too,” Syd told Bridget as she got to her feet and helped the cold orc out of her heavy winter coat.

“We’re eating right here,” Jay answered Sabina as she reached out to the smith, taking some of the items to lessen her burden. “In the kitchen. What are you doing with all this?”

“I have an idea for that motor thing you told me about and I’m this close to a solution I think will work to make the eleria connections stable enough to keep the main shaft running without causing a break or a feedback explosion! It might work I think but it’s also possible it might just cause it to fly off the main assembly but I don’t think it will but I’m not sure but anyway, I need to pair these bits together and draw out the lines and I don’t want to lose the inspiration so I brought the work in with me.”

“She wouldn’t leave without it,” Bridget said defensively when Syd gave her a look. “You know how she gets when she’s all excited about mo-tors or whatever that enchantment stuff is.”

“No experiments on the kitchen table,” Aila threatened Sabina with her wooden spoon before she could set her armload down. “That’s for food only.”

“Aw, but I—”

“Don’t worry,” Jay cut off the smith before she could get worked up. “I’ll get a table from the other room and you can set it all down there and work on it until dinner is ready. We’ve still got maybe twenty or thirty minutes before everything is done.”

“In the meantime,” Syd told both Sabina and Bridget, “let’s catch you two up on my class info conversation.”

While her Syd and Dys selves explained her first spell in her new tertiary class, Progenitor of the Succubi, her Jay self left the kitchen and walked out into the large open space of the main floor of their new guild hall. Jay couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the three nearly twenty-foot-tall trees that Tegwyn had found and put into the large space. He was far from finished, having sworn that he would have the place properly festooned with living greenery by the end of the month, but it was a nice start.

That was how Jadis felt as she looked around the transforming building. They were off to a good start. They still had a long way to go, as a mercenary company, as heroes meant to end a destructive cycle, and as a family, but Jadis felt pride in her heart at the progress they had made so far. It was all a good start. She just had to make sure that the momentum kept going. With the help of her loved ones, Jadis was certain that she would succeed in that effort.

“Now where did we put those extra tables?”

Jay took a moment to think before remembering that Gunnar had moved the extra furniture to one of the finished bedrooms on the second floor. With a small flex of her immense strength, Jay easily leapt up to the second-floor balcony from the open area of the main hall. Entering through one of the doors, she quickly searched through the half-dozen rooms they had completed to find the pile of new furniture.

Gunnar had told Jadis that if they kept up the current pace, they would likely have all the living space in the company building completed by the end of the following week. That included all the fancy upgrades to the indoor plumbing Jadis wanted done, as well as the magically enhanced heating system. That was good news, since after the demonic attack on the city, more and more people had started showing up at their doorstep to see about joining Fortune’s Favored. Recruitment for both the army and mercenary companies in general was up in response to the attack orchestrated by the cultists, but it seemed that a great many rumors of Jadis and her companion’s deeds had spread throughout the city. Coupled with the official pardoning from Emperor Somerulf, Jadis’ popularity had grown significantly. She didn’t think she was going to have trouble finding recruits for her secondary squad or her support teams. In fact, it was going to be a bigger problem just sorting through all the applicants to make sure none were spies for the princes or any of the major noble families.

Jadis knew that she still had a lot to do in the city. She had a mercenary company to build, enchantments and technology to work on with Sabina, and all kinds of preparations to make for the big trip out to Demon-infested lands they would be making once the winter season ended. She also needed to work things out with Aila and Eir’s parents to make sure they were in positions of safety, as well as do the same of the rest of her in-laws that she hadn’t met yet. Then there was her promise to Villthyrial to say hello to his dragon, the grub the same god had given her, and all kinds of promises she had made to the various temples and high priests. To make sure all of her plans worked out, Jadis couldn’t just run off into the wilderness and ignore all the responsibilities and duties that came with the role of leadership she was assuming. That said, she was looking forward to finally getting out into the field again. Even if she didn’t range too far for the moment, she planned on getting out of the city for a while, maybe running around the countryside and just seeing what there was to see. She had people working for her now, after all. Gunnar could run things for a day or two while she and her lovers enjoyed a break from life in Eldingholt.

As she contemplated both her immediate and future plans, Jay carried the small table out into the main hall. Dropping down to the first floor with a light thump, she turned to reenter the kitchen when she heard a loud knock come from the front door of the company hall.

Jay sighed heavily before putting the table down. Gunnar had gone home for the night, as had everyone else in the company who wasn’t one of Jadis’ lovers. That meant she had to deal with whoever was calling on them so late herself. It was probably another hopeful applicant who wanted to join the company. Not that Jadis was unwilling to talk with those who wanted to embark on a life of mercenary adventure; she had a lot in common with people who loved the idea of being a fighter for hire. The problem was that far too many of those sorts of people had a bad habit of showing up at entirely inconvenient times. No such thing as business hours to would-be adventurers, she supposed.

Walking over to the door, Jadis prayed that the visitor was either someone she knew who had just stopped by for an unexpected visit or would at least be an applicant who would leave when she told them to bugger off until tomorrow. Maybe it was Jocelyn? The Oracle had left a little over an hour ago, so it was still possible she was in the city. Wilhelm might have had something to discuss with her and the others before leaving the city.

“Hello?” Jay called out as she pulled the door’s security bar to the side and opened the door to a blast of cold night air. “Who is it?”

“Good evening, Jadis,” a familiar voice greeted her. “May I come in?”

Standing just outside the open door was a one-winged angel in a fur-trimmed cloak. While her sword was belted at her waist, the Seraphim was unarmored and alone, looking no more martial than most any other well-dressed passerby on the street. The hood shielding her blonde hair from the harsh wind fell away as she tilted her head back to meet Jay’s eyes with her own.

“Hey there,” Jay grinned down at Severina. “You here for those dance lessons?”

“I am not, no,” the paladin shook her head slightly, her cheeks pink from the chill. Or from what she said in the next moment. “I came here to talk about making more Nephilim.”

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