Chapter 454: Burning Heart

Just as Jadis had observed from a distance, the forest was on fire.

The winter had been a wet and snowy one, and while it had been clear skies and sunny days for the past week, the ground was still soaked from the winter melt. Combined with the fresh spring growth and the lack of wind, the fires that had been set in the forest south of Cold Brook weren’t catching as quickly as they would have in a dryer season. While the flames posed as something of a barrier, they truly acted as a trail that made it easy to follow the cultists and Demons who had chased after Tegwyn and Thea when they had fled into the woods.

Jay, Dys, and Syd ran in pursuit of the enemy force, moving fast but not rushing heedlessly in case another trap had been set. While Thea rode on Syd’s back, Meli ran slightly ahead of Jadis’ three bodies, leading the way as she maneuvered effortlessly through the dense clusters of trees and around the slowly expanding fires. Far overhead, Severina circled in the sky, keeping an eye on the villagers as well as making sure that no cultists or Demons doubled back towards Cold Brook.

It was hard to tell how many Demons were on Teg’s trail. Jadis was no tracker and she didn’t have Kerr with her to interpret the prints in the mud. But she could guess that at least one cinderman was in the enemy pack based on all of the fire. She also knew there had to be at least eight cultists and a few possessed animals like horses and aurochs based off of the account she had been told by Meli and the surviving villagers. The number of other Demons was unknown, but ultimately unimportant in Jadis’ mind. No matter how many enemies there were, she’d take them all down for having the gall to attack her lover’s family.

Of course, she’d have to first find the enemy before she could kill them.

Jadis wasn’t sure how far they travelled; it could have been miles with the speed they were moving at. The trail zigged and zagged across the land, but since they could see the fires burning further south, they didn’t follow the track down every branching path and instead stuck to a more direct route. The forest around them quickly grew too dense and wild for Jadis to have any good idea of where they were in relation to the village. The sun was lowering below the horizon and visibility was diminishing with every passing second. Tegwyn had fled deep into the heart of the forest, where the trees grew tallest and the foliage was thickest.  In that sense, the fires were proving to be something of a boon beyond the obvious trail they made. Without the fires lit by the Demons, Jadis would have had trouble seeing anything at all, much less the trail.

Above the sound of her own thundering footsteps and the roar of the burning trees, Jadis caught the hint of a primal howl of rage in the distance.

“Do you hear that?” Jay called out as she increased her pace to run side by side to Meli.

“Yes,” the Dryad said breathlessly without slowing her speed. “My grove is near. “My friends—my friends are fighting.”

Any questions Jadis might have had about what Meli had meant by that answer were erased as she followed her through a dense thicket that had been set alight by wicked flames. Beyond the wall of trees was a wide-open meadow. The gentle valley had a stream running through the center of it, with sloped fields that were covered in an array of wildflowers that practically sparkled with many colors, even in the dying light of the sun’s last rays. It would have been an idyllic scene, if it weren’t for all the Demons and blood.

At a glance, Jadis saw that her estimations of the enemy forces had been correct. There were eight cultists on horseback and a nineth one riding on the back of an auroch. The cultists riding on horses were all wearing the kind of armor common to guards, consisting of steel breastplates and padded hauberks. They wielded a mix of spears, swords, and shields, and at least two of them had crossbows in their hands. The nineth cultist, the woman riding on the auroch, was wearing a simple traveler’s cloak and looked no different from any average worker Jadis might have seen on the street. However, as she held up a hand over her head, an ominous red glow suffused the air around her.

Aside from the cultists and their likely possessed mounts, Jadis counted ten to fifteen strangling crawlers, four or five wights, at least six of her old friends the bone thieves, and a single cinderman.

It wasn’t anywhere near the largest force of enemies Jadis had fought before. She had slain dozens, even hundreds of Demons at a time back in Weigrun. However, the addition of nine cultists, each one possessing who knew what kinds of spells and skills, changed the dynamic. There was a reason why crime was low on Oros. Anyone could have a high level with powerful and deadly skills, and there was no way of knowing what a person could do just by looking at them.

The cultists and their demonic allies were somewhat spread out across the flower-strewn valley, which was half of why Jadis had a hard time getting an accurate count on their numbers. The other half of the reason was because they were fighting.

Wild beasts were attacking the Demons and cultists. A pack of bristle-backed boars, several of which looked like they weighed six to seven hundred pounds, were squealing and shrieking as they charged into the Demons, goring them with their yellow tusks. A flock of crows, their black feathers making them hard to see in the twilight sky, were swooping down and pecking at the heads of the cultists. Three huge bears with dark bluish pelts and silver backs roared, bit, and clawed at every Demon in range. Jadis even saw what appeared to be a herd of deer charging across the meadow.

And at the head of the herd was a giant ram made out of vines and wood.

“I d—don’t see her,” Thea said as she clutched an arm tightly around Syd’s neck.

Jadis didn’t need to ask to know who Thea was referring to. She didn’t see Vera either. Hopefully, that was a good thing. Since a battle had begun and Vera was the very definition of a non-combatant, Tegwyn had likely hidden her somewhere nearby so that he could turn to fight the enemy without worrying about actively protecting her. Wherever Vera was, Jadis prayed it was a good hiding spot.

“We’ll ask Tegwyn where she is,” Syd said as she started running into the fray. “We just have to kill all these fucking bastards first.”

Even as Syd spoke, her other two selves were already charging forward, as was Meli. At the same time, some of the cultists had noticed her approach and were turning to face her. A few of the Demons were turning on her as well, though Jadis saw that many were still focused on the animals. The fight was a chaotic mess with no real battleline; the demons and beasts were all mixed in together with each other. That lack of coordination was a vulnerability that Jadis aimed to take advantage of.

Tegwyn was galloping across the far right side of the field with something like a dozen deer following along at his hooves. Four of the cultists were chasing after him on horseback, two with spears, one with a sword, and the last with a crossbow. The deer were running interference for the Dryad, body checking the cultists’ demonically possessed mounts and slowing them down. Their numbers were quickly being thinned, though, as the cultists pierced and slashed at the beasts with their weapons. The deer, while acting in a coordinated effort to protect Tegwyn, were only simple animals and had no special powers to protect themselves from harm.

“Tegwyn!” Syd shouted at the transformed Dryad. “Incoming!”

The cultist in the lead leaned backwards just in time to avoid Syd’s sweeping attack as she joined the chase. His mount, however, was not so fortunate. Syd’s sword staff cleaved through the horse’s lower neck, severing the beast’s head cleanly from its body. A mass of squirming tentacles, several of which were cut and bleeding, could be seen inside the bloody stump for the briefest of moments before the possessed beast’s body crashed to the ground in a heap, carrying its rider along with it.

“Jadis!” Tegwyn’s voice rang out clearly despite his beastly form. “I had thought Meli would alert a local militia! But I’m glad she found you!”

“Me too,” Syd shouted back before picking Thea off of her back and transferring her to the Dryad. “But we can talk about how grateful we are to Meli later!”

“Yes, we can!” Tegwyn agreed as he slightly altered his course. “For now, we have Demons to slay!”

As Syd, Thea, and Tegwyn convened mid-sprint, Jay and Dys rushed at the five cultists who were gathered roughly in the center of the meadow. Those five were the ones who were dealing with the attacking animals, and unfortunately, they were doing a good job of it, too.

Even before either of her two selves could cross the distance, Jadis saw one of the large silver bears collapse to the ground as gouts of blood poured from a huge wound in the side of its neck. The bone thieves and wights had swarmed the beast, and with that one down the other two were being overwhelmed as well. The wild boar1s were doing their best to attack the cultists, but strangler demons were tripping up their legs and locking them down. Three of the shaggy pigs were engulfed in a stream of fire as the lone cinderman spewed out its liquid fire onto them, filling the air with the awful smell of burning hair and flesh.

With a wordless war cry, Dys slammed her axe into the side of one of the bone thieves that was between her and the assembled cultists. The steel head split right through the malformed skeletal body, passing all the way through and carrying on to the unfortunate wight who had been moving behind the boney Demon. Despite the fact that the bone thief had been cut into two uneven pieces and the wight had lost its right arm and part of its torso, neither Demon died. Instead, both of the mortally wounded creatures leapt at Dys, throwing themselves at her without any care for pain or personal safety.

“The Interloper!” a woman’s voice screeched. “Kill her! Kill her in the name of our lord!”

Jadis saw the screaming woman stand on the back of the auroch, one hand raised high over her head while the other hand pointed at Jay. Her hood was down, revealing a middle-aged woman with wide, dark eyes and straw-color hair. Her expression was crazed, lit by the fire of insanity as she shouted so loudly her body shook with the effort. The red glow that had suffused the air around her pulsed once, then again, growing in size and strength. The same red aura dripped from the Demons facing Jay and Dys, wrapping them like a cloak of malicious protection.

“Kill the interloper!” the cultists on horseback echoed her screams. “For Samleos! For the Demon Lord!”

“Go fuck yourselves!” Jay shouted back at them as she picked up a strangler that had been skittering towards her and threw it with all her might at the closest cultist.

Jay hadn’t been able to recover her hand axes from the safehouse. Either they had been destroyed by the explosion, burnt up in the fire, or buried under all the dirt Jadis had used to smother the demonic flames. Possibly all three. Whatever the case, she had come to the fight in the Dryad’s grove without any weapons in her hands. Unfortunately for her enemies, lacking weapons had never stopped Jadis from killing Demons in the past, and the lack wasn’t going to stop her this time, either.

The strangler Jay hurled at the cultist exploded in a shower of dark gore when it collided with the man’s shield. The cultist was knocked off of his horse, though the animal didn’t seem to notice as it charged headlong at her with murder in its equine eyes. As soon as the possessed beast was close enough, Jay grabbed hold of the horse’s head and used its momentum to help her swing it around in a wide circle that knocked several bone thieves and another cultist and his mount to the ground. When she had fully rotated around, she let go of the horse’s neck and let the creature fly. Jay’s aim looked true as the beast hurtled through the air on a collision course with the female cultist who was empowering the Demons.

Before the flailing horse could connect with the woman, one of the other cultists leapt into the air to meet the improvised missile. The longsword in his hand flashed with an unsettling light as he sliced the horse in half. The two pieces blew apart from each other, landing harmlessly on either side of the cultist.

“Don’t worry, Nephilim,” the man said in a dangerously calm tone. “I’ll be fucking your corpse before the night is through.”

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