Chapter 488: Push Back

A bolt of lightning struck Jay in her chest with a crack of thunder and a blinding flash that lit up the dark, Demon-swarmed road. Purple tendrils of hissing electricity arced across her body, dancing between the joints of her armor and winding up the length of her steel maul. She gritted her teeth through the pain of the spell and kept swinging her weapon, smashing her hammer into mire hounds that themselves sparked from contact with her electrified body. She could feel her nerves and muscles trembling, nearly succumbing to the paralytic effects of the lightning. Jay pushed past the sensation, forcing herself to keep moving.

No more than a second later and three spheres of spectral energy rocketed over Jay’s head. An instant after that they struck the dead head Demon that had been channeling the lightning arc spell, crashing through its ethereal shield and tearing half of its headless human body into pieces.

The spellcasting Demon didn’t die from the tri-bolt, though. What was left of its tattered torso struggled to stand on two skinny legs while its remaining tentacles drew arcane symbols in the air in an effort to cast another spell. The dead head didn’t get a chance to finish its attempt. A large arrow pierced through the remains of the Demon’s chest, ending its spell as well as its life.

“Kerr is going to give Aila so much shit for not killing that Demon in one hit,” Jay muttered under her breath as she shook off the lingering effects of the lightning attack.

Not that Jadis thought that Kerr could kill a dead head in one blow, either. Maybe with her empowered Lustful Arrow, but that would be a bit of a waste since Kerr only had the one piece of climax-boosted ammunition. As bad as dead heads and their powerful elemental magic could be on the battlefield, Jadis was sure they would have to contend with more troublesome foes before the night was over. Already, things were getting worse, as the mire hounds who had been assaulting their position in an endless wave were being reinforced by stronger Demons.

Jay checked her health between swatting a few more lesser monstrosities away from her knees. The lightning bolt had done around three hundred points of damage to her health. Not an insignificant amount, though Jadis could handle it. Certainly, she didn’t need to seek out healing right away. She had given Eir the order to not heal her at a distance unless she saw her health drop lower than fifty percent in order to conserve her magic reserves. Her skill, Oracle’s Emblem, meant she was always aware of the health and status of everyone in their group, so she didn’t need to constantly check on Jadis to make sure she was alright, at least. Still, she had a limited supply of magic power since she didn’t have a skill like Aila had that would allow her to quickly replenish her reserves. She did have a few alchemy potions that would help, but she had a finite amount of those, too. Eir had to be conservative with her healing, especially with so many defenders who were depending on her to heal their wounds.

Since Jadis was still at two thousand two hundred and ten health points out of two thousand six hundred and forty, she didn’t bother rushing one of her selves over to the southwest corner building to get Eir to top her off. She was busy dealing with the horde, so unnecessary healing could wait.

Dys slammed her axe into the chest of a stone monstrosity, forcing the creature to stumble back. The Demon punched at her with an oversized fist, catching her shoulder with a glancing blow. The force of the Demon’s attack still made Dys’ teeth rattle in her head, even though it wasn’t a direct hit. Seeing that her own strike hadn’t been damaging enough, Dys pulled back as the rocky abomination swung at her with its left and ducked under the wild haymaker. Using the pommel of her battleaxe, she knocked the ugly creature in the torso and forced it back another step so she had more space to swing.

Before the Demon could recover, Syd appeared from behind Dys and speared the creature in its right shoulder. Her blade left a big hole in its boulder of a body, though more importantly, it gave Dys the boost she needed. Her next attack, another overhead chop, hit the Demon with the added power of Jadis’ Mirrored Strikes. Her blow sunk deep into the creature’s torso, nearly splitting it in half, though even her empowered attack was stopped before reaching the Demon’s legs. When its almost bifurcated form fell to the ground, inadvertently crushing a mire hound that had run up behind it, Dys took a second to check her most recent notification so she could see what the new variety of Demon was called.

While Jadis had spotted a few of the bulky Demons stomping their way through the crowded streets, this was the first one that had actually made it all the way to one of her bodies. Aila and Kerr had been picking the huge stone foes off at a distance with their long-ranged attacks; even the therion archers on the southeastern building had been targeting the large Demon’s before they could reach the intersection. The stone-bodied creatures moved slow enough that the archers could pin cushion the ungainly simulacrum multiple times before they came within Jadis’ melee range. However, with the number of larger Demons increasing, including the dead heads, it was only inevitable that Jadis would get a closer look at the creatures.

The unrelenting simulacrums were humanoid in shape, though they lacked any distinguishing features. Made out of stone, they stood around as tall as Jadis, though there was variety in their height which meant some were shorter while others were bigger. They were all thick-bodied with broad, heavy shoulders and legs as big around as tree trunks. While they did look the most like a person out of any Demon Jadis had seen thus far, one aspect of humanoid biology the simulacrums lacked were heads. The spot between the wide shoulders where the neck should have been was completely smooth. Instead of a head, the simulacrums had large, gaping holes in the middle of their chests. Rows of sharp stone teeth lined the gapping chest holes, though rather than acting like jaws, their jagged teeth rotated around the edge of their mouths, almost like some kind of paleolithic blender.

Keeping the huge stone simulacrums away from the wall of soldiers defending the intersection had become a main priority for Jadis. She was sure the army defending Glanum had some means of dealing with the bulky Demons, but she doubted the common soldier who probably wasn’t above CLR forty could handle such powerful opponents.

Having gotten rid of the one unrelenting simulacrum, Dys eyed the position of the next and decided she didn’t need to worry about it just yet. Instead, she focused on culling the numbers of the smaller mire hounds that were surging up the street from the north.

Over the past few minutes, most of the Demons had been charging down the east road. However, as time passed, more and more of the invaders were coming from the road that led to the north, in the direction of the market square by the dock gates. Jadis had seen that the army over there had been trying to form a defense to contain the Demons who were attacking from the east, and while she doubted they had been completely overwhelmed, it was clear that they couldn’t occupy the full attention of the invaders. As time passed, more and more of the attackers were shifting away from assaulting those entrenched positions and were swarming up the road to get at more available targets.

Like her.

With the addition of another vector to defend against, Jadis had changed up where her three selves were positioned. Jay was still standing at the east side of the intersection, while Dys had moved to the north road so she could attack the Demons coming from that direction. Her Syd self was running between the two sides of the square, triggering mirrored strikes where needed and helping whichever of her other selves was more overwhelmed at any given moment. That change in tactics meant she had less time to spare for clearing the Demons away from the shield walls. However, she hoped that with more and more reinforcements coming up from the tower to the south, she wouldn’t be as needed for that role.

As Syd cut down a mire hound that leapt at her chest, she stumbled because her left foot went out from under her. The dead bodies of the stick and mud Demons littering the ground were seriously interfering with her balance, so slipping was no big surprise. However, when she tried to right herself, Syd was met with unexpected resistance. Looking down, she saw that a long, black tentacle had wrapped around her leg all the way up past her knee. When she reached down with her left hand to tear the thing off of her, the tip of the tentacle reared back to reveal a mouth like a lamprey, except with a single yellow eye nestled in the middle of the ring of rasping teeth.

“What the fuck are you?” Syd growled as she swiped at the demonic leech with her gauntleted hand.

The Demon didn’t dodge out of the way of her backhand and took the hit head on. To Jadis’ shock, it barely reacted to the hit, absorbing the blow with no visible damage. Instead of trying to escape her, it tightened its grip around her leg and pressed its rasping mouth against her upper thigh.

“I’m wearing armor you stupid—ah! Shit! Fucking dammit!”

A malicious dark purple glow emanated from the Demon’s mouth as a terrible, familiar pain radiated from Syd’s left leg. It felt like a drill was boring its way through her flesh all the way to the bone. The sensation was agonizing, and immediately recognizable to Jadis. It was the same pain she had felt when she had been stabbed by a malediction dagger by Legs, the piece of shit bandit she’d killed back in Weigrun.

Syd grabbed hold of the Demon’s snake-like body and yanked hard, trying to separate the evil eel from her leg. Despite all of her strength, it held on to her, part of its body only pulling away from her thigh slightly as its ugly head remained latched in place. While it was awkward, Syd shoved the tip of her sword staff’s blade between the Demon and her leg and began sawing the leech off of herself. It was slow going, though, as the creature was far more resistant to her attempts than Jadis expected.

A mire hound leapt onto Syd’s back, causing her to fumble her attempt to cut the demonic leech in half. She had to stop what she was doing to toss the dog-taur away from herself, then stop again when another mire hound latched onto her right arm. Then another grabbed onto her right leg, and a fourth jumped onto her back again. Only a few seconds had passed and Syd could feel that she was being dragged down into the mud, mired by overwhelming numbers of weaker opponents that threw themselves at her without regard to their own lives. Every second she took to deal with the hounds who were dog piling her, the leech was eating away directly at her health pool.

Jadis couldn’t be sure, but she was almost certain that the mire hounds had some kind of collaborative skill at work. She shouldn’t have had that much trouble with only eight or nine of the creatures grabbing onto her. She was far stronger than them individually, and she could carry far greater weights without issue, even with just one of her selves. However, she could feel her Syd self straining to handle the mass of mire hounds that were pouncing onto her and scraping their claws uselessly against her armor. Maybe the leech was weakening her, though if it was, she would have expected her other selves to feel weakened as well. Since that wasn’t the case, she guessed that mire hounds had some effect that was increasing their weight, or enfeebling her, or something else of a similar nature. Having been piled onto, Syd needed one of her other selves to come and clear the mess away. However, her other selves were bogged down in their own fights against troublesome foes and couldn’t pull back to Syd’s position immediately.

As Syd struggled to throw the dozen or more Demons who had pounced onto her away, a pair of clawed hands ripped apart the head of a mire hound that had latched onto her chest. She almost struck at the owner of those clawed hands, until she realized who was behind them.

“Keep moving!” Meli shouted at her as she ripped into the back of another mire hound. “You can’t let them pile on like this!”

“Working on it!” Syd shouted back as she resumed her efforts to detach the leech from her leg. “This thing has my leg!”

Meli swiped at the leech with her claws but was then forced to dodge back as a mire hound leapt at her. The Dryad was much faster than the lesser Demons, and much lighter than Jadis. Rather than sinking into the muck created by all the dead mud monsters, Meli sprinted across the top layer like it was solid ground. As Syd set about cutting the Demon off her leg, the speedy Dryad ran around her, slicing through mire hounds with her claws and distracting the Demons from latching onto Syd.

“Gah… fucking piece of shit—there!” Syd growled as she finally finished sawing the leech in half. “Now get the fuck—oh you have got to be kidding me.”

As most of the dark, tentacle-like body of the Demon flopped off of Syd’s legs with a few tugs, the head of the leech was still attached to her thigh and, more importantly, she could still feel its horrible malediction magic eating away at her.

Sticking the blade of her staff into the muck next to her, Syd grabbed hold of the two or so feet of Demon leech still attached to her and yanked on it with all her strength.

“Get. Off. Me!”

On the third tug, she felt the Demon’s hold give way. Sort of. As Syd pulled with all her might, the Demon’s head ripped into pieces like shredded pork, leaving behind a ring of bloody teeth and unidentifiable gore still pasted to her armor. Holding the dangling piece of ragged Demon flesh up to her face, Syd saw that the yellow eye of the awful creature was exposed, and still staring at her as, somehow, the leech was still alive.

“You fucking suck,” Syd said to the Demon before slapping it with her free hand.

The slap didn’t kill it either, but the subsequent toss to Jay, who turned and batted the leech with her hammer, thus triggering mirrored strikes, did.

“Huh. I kind of got that name right.”

“What are you talking about?” Meli asked, pausing for just a moment in front of Syd.

“Never mind,” Syd shook her head before spearing a mire hound that was charging up behind the Dryad. “Thanks for the assist.”

“You are welcome,” Meli replied seriously. “Now watch out because I think those mages are about to cast.”

As Meli dashed away to get out of the middle of the road, Syd leapt across the intersection to land near the southwest building where her lovers and teammates were located. She had to split her already spread attention for a moment, so she wanted to be where others could more easily watch her back. With a thought, Syd checked her status sheet.

Her health had gone down by two hundred and eighteen points since the last time she had checked. That was not an insignificant amount, though she was still far from her halfway point of thirteen hundred. Jadis wasn’t sure how much damage had been done by the essence leech, but she guessed most of it could be attributed to the foul creature.

Scanning the battlefield, Syd checked to see if anyone else was dealing with the sneaky serpent-like monsters. It didn’t look like it, as far as she could tell, but she made a mental note to keep an eye out for the deadly attackers. With how hard it had been for her to get the one off of her leg, she doubted anyone else would be able to do so as quickly; certainly not before the leech sucked their health points dry. Seeing the essence leeches coming would be a challenge, though. With how the ground was covered in a foot-deep layer of mud and Demon blood, it was hard to tell what could be hiding in the muck. Especially since huge piles of the dead mire hounds were being built up on either side of the north and east streets, from where Jay and Dys were cutting the Demons down in droves. It was beginning to look like the giant snow drifts Jadis had experienced in Eldingholt over the winter, except instead of snow the drifts were made of Demon corpses and refuse.

The conditions of the battlefield were bad, but they couldn’t be anything new. Not to the soldiers who had been fighting on this line for who knew how long. Jadis figured they had to have some kind of countermeasure to deal with the issues being created by the mounds of dead mire hounds. And from what she could see, her supposition was correct.

Three mages had taken up positions behind the reinforced shield wall on the south side of the intersection. All three wielded staves and were likely some kind of wizard class, since they were all slowly casting by forming glowing runes that floated in the air above them. Jadis hadn’t been able to focus on the trio much, not since she had her own fights to focus on, but now that Syd could take a moment to glance their way, she could tell that whatever they were casting was a joint effort, as the runic patterns forming in the air were linking together and creating a wide, pill-like shape.

“Syd!”

Thea’s voice caught Jadis’ attention. Moving to where her lover was in the corner of the shield wall, she tossed away several attacking mire hounds as well as some of the piled up bodies to give herself room to stand with her back to the smaller woman.

“I’m here,” Syd called back, acting as point in the center of the formation.

“B—brace your other selves!” Thea told her with barely a stutter. “They’re going to flush the field!”

Jadis didn’t need to guess what that meant, since the warning came only seconds before the event.

With a roar like a waterfall, a river of water jetted out of the oblong rune that the three wizards had formed. Thousands of gallons of magically generated liquid poured into the intersection, going over the heads of the southern shield wall. The soldiers, for their part, simply stood their ground, neither advancing nor retreating as the water washed the corpses and filth away.

Glancing to her left, Syd saw that two more mages she hadn’t paid attention to were behind the western shield wall. Those two had a different rune circle going, and they seemed to be directing the flow of water, rather than adding more to it. Barely any of the spell’s water touched the boots of the soldiers on that side at all.

Jay and Dys had a far different experience.

A wave of muck pushed along by a mage-created river flowed past Jay and Dys. Jay had it a little easier, as the direction of the water wasn’t as strong on her side, though Dys had mud and water flowing past her at hip height for a few moments. She staggered under the pressure, but both of her bodies held their ground.

The same could not be said of the Demons. The lesser mire hounds were pushed back by the wave of water, their stick and dirt frames overwhelmed by the power of the tri-wizard spell. They were caught up in the river of refuse that had been created and Jadis saw many were buried in the huge piles of goopy mud that were created further down the two streets. The unrelenting simulacrums were undeterred, however, and the dead heads that Jadis could see were too far back to be affected.

After a solid minute of rushing water, the spell abruptly cut off. The water that had been generated didn’t dry up but instead disappeared just as all magically generated elements faded once the spell was done. What was left was the sticky muck of the mire hounds, which had been reduced to no more than an inch layer of mud covering the cobblestones. The huge piles of dirt and Demon corpses that had been building up in front of the shield walls, as well as around Jay and Dys, had been washed away, pushed further down the two streets creating muddy barriers that were at least five feet tall and flowed further back for yards.

“Forward!” Thea commanded at the top of her lungs, shaking Syd out of her second of inaction. “Take the square! Right flank, hinge! Left flank, hinge!”

Thea’s shouts were taken up by the army captains sprinkled throughout the mass of soldiers. Moving forward in a unified push, the south wall marched in perfect formation, with the soldiers on the far right staying next to the southeastern building while those on the left, following Thea’s orders, swung out and around so that their shield wall was blocking the eastern road completely. Those soldiers who were on the western road shield wall did the same, swinging their formation out so that they ended up blocking the north road off.

“Push forward!” voices cried out. “Take the city back!”

Soldiers rushed up behind the shield walls, an outpouring of reinforcements coming down the hill from the second tier of the city. More soldiers came from the west, an entire battalion double-marching in formation, spears raised and shields at the ready. Even a few more mages appeared, some of them wielding staves, others carrying wands, all moving in to fill the cleared intersection.

“Fuck yeah,” Syd said as she pointed with her weapon towards the north. “Push forward! We’re smashing these shitheads to pieces! Keep it up—”

At that moment a huge ball of green slime smashed into the ground a few feet away from where Dys was standing. The beachball-sized orb exploded like a water balloon, coating her left side in a noxious substance that burned her nostrils.

Not just her nostrils, it turned out. The sticky liquid released foul fumes as it smoked and burned like acid, eating away at everything it touched. The soldiers on the left flank of the northern wall screamed in pain as the slime ate at whatever parts of their bodies it touched. Those who had only their shields splattered weren’t in much better condition, since their shields were quickly melting to pieces, forcing them to toss the broken armaments away and fall back, disrupting the integrity of the shield wall. While her cold flame armor was seemingly unaffected by the acidic attack, Dys was still harmed as the corrosive liquid got through the gaps in her armor and sizzled away at her flesh directly. Dys was forced to ignore the pain and attack the mire hounds who were already rushing forward to take advantage of the disruption, though. She had to buy the soldiers time to reform their lines.

Leaping into the air, Syd got up onto the northwestern building where Maeve had been observing the battle. She didn’t see the Fetch up there anymore, and Jadis realized that she had once more lost track of the spy. While she was frustrated with the woman, she still hoped that she hadn’t been hurt or worse, and she wondered where she had disappeared to. However, she couldn’t waste time searching for Maeve. Syd’s focus was on finding where the ball of acid had come from.

When she spotted the source, she couldn’t help the unthinking exclamation that came from her lips.

“Is that a giant enemy crab!?”

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