Chapter 559: Any Berth in a Storm

The baby was coming. Imminently. Jadis wasn’t sure if she should laugh, cry, or scream.

“Bertha was… Correct…” Alex said, though Jay almost missed her words since she was so caught up in the panic of not knowing what to do. “Contractions… Hurt…”

“Shit, yeah, they do,” Jay’s tongue stumbled over itself as she rushed to respond. “Not that I would know from practical experience—are you sure it’s coming right now? How much time do you think we have?”

“Little time…” Alex answered in calm tones. “I have… Been contracting… Since I was… Taken…”

“Ah, fuck,” Jay cursed. “Okay, okay, no time. Shit. We’ve got to—I’ve got to—Fuckery fucking fuck!”

Jadis needed to calm down and think, which was proving to be a more difficult task than normal. She had been doing alright while she had a foe to fight, but the incoming birth was impacting her mental focus to a far greater degree than any life-threatening combat ever had. She had thought that she was ready to be a parent. Eager, even. But now that the moment was coming, she was fervently wishing she had a few more months, or maybe decades, to prepare. That feeling probably had more to do with the drastically inconvenient timing than anything else, but still…

Taking a deep breath, Jay forced herself to calm down. Yes, Alex said that the baby was coming, but that didn’t mean she was going to pop in the next minute or something ridiculous like that. Her contractions had started an hour ago, at most, which meant there should be hours left until the baby fully… emerged, she supposed. Jadis knew from basic high school sex ed that most births lasted from six to eighteen hours, some going even longer. A few women might go much faster, but even then, three hours was about the quickest labor could be. Even presuming that Alex was having an unusually fast progression, they should still have another couple of hours to go, which was more than enough time for them to fly back to Glanum where their baby could be delivered in safety and comfort.

Except, those timeframes were for human women. Alex wasn’t human. Considering how fast her pregnancy had gone, who was to say that labor couldn’t be equally as accelerated?

Mumbling an apology, Jay lifted and turned Alex so that she could get a look between her legs. She didn’t have much medical training from her life back on Earth, but she felt like she should be able to judge how far along Alex’s dilation was, which would help her gauge how much time they had before delivery. She remembered something about limes, cookies, and bagels for judging these things and—

“Oh my god…”

Bagel. Definitely bagel. And there was crowning. Was it crowning when something was visible? Was that crowning?

“Okay, okay, just keep breathing,” Jay muttered as she cradled Alex close against her chest. “Everything’s going to be okay. Breathe slow and steady. It’ll all be okay.”

“I do not… Need to breathe…”

“Do it anyway!”

Jay’s eyes scanned her surroundings with urgent desperation. Alex was right. They needed to find a place to land. There was no way they would make it back to Glanum at the current rate the Demon’s labor was progressing. She wasn’t sure they were going to have another ten minutes. They needed to get somewhere safe as fast as possible. But where?

The possibility of having Alex give birth while they hovered in the sky flitted through Jadis’ mind. She rejected the idea instantly, though, since it sounded almost as dangerous as landing where they were. Her Dys and Syd selves were running interference by killing anything capable of flight that was soaring into the skies after them, but there was no guarantee she’d be able to stop all of them. Especially not when ranged magical attacks were involved. Plus, the possessed, red-feathered Seraphim had disappeared and could be anywhere, waiting to strike. Considering how the bastard had appeared out of nowhere before, Jadis guessed that invisibility had been involved, which meant it could be invisible again. So could other dangers.

A midair delivery was out. But landing was an even worse prospect. The air close to the ground was a toxic cloud that would probably choke a newborn in seconds. There was no chance Jadis would let her baby be anywhere near that stuff. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the horde of hostile Demons that were pouring out of Kastoria and surging across the landscape. No, landing was out of the question.

So, if the air wasn’t an option, and the ground wasn’t either, what did that leave?

Gritting her teeth, Jay took off, flying with as much speed as she felt was safe under the circumstances. Her Dys and Syd selves followed behind, maintaining a small buffer between the two, just in case anything pursuing them was able to catch up to their slightly reduced speed. As she flew, Jay kept to the shoreline of the Siren Sea, following the curve of the placid waters as they led southeast. Keeping a careful eye out, she sped along the coast for close to five minutes before she spotted what she was looking for.

An island.

It wasn’t a large island. No more than a square mile of rocks and broken shells from what Jadis could see. But it was half a mile out onto the water and, more importantly, had no toxic cloud covering it. There was a decently strong wind coming off the sea, which was pushing the miasma of rot inland, so the open water was clear of airborne toxins. Giving birth directly in the water wasn’t a good option either, not when there was no way of knowing what might be swimming in those inky depths, but an island on the water would do.

The island had even less going on for it than it had seemed from a distance. There were no trees; the land was far too rocky and barren to support roots. But there were signs that people had used the island as a place to dock boats in the past. Some of the larger, flatter boulders that jutted out into the sea had metal stakes driven into them, and there were ropes, fishing nets, and old baskets scattered around. It was next to one of those natural jetties that Jay spotted a small cave.

Cave might have been an overly generous description. Really, it was more like two huge rocks had leaned against each other at some point in primordial history and created a small shelter against the rain and wind. The people who had once used the island for fishing had used the natural shelter as a place to store baskets and crates of supplies. Jadis was no fisherwoman, so she couldn’t guess what half the things in the cave would have been used for. The former purpose wasn’t relevant, though. For the moment, the nets and old sails served as a bed for her pregnant demonic lover to give birth to their child on.

“Are you okay? Are you feeling alright? What can I do?” Jay asked. She sensed that she was probably starting to blabber from panic, so she tried to restrain her words. Tried to, anyway. “Do you need water? Boiling water? Or more blankets? What about—

“I need… Time…” Alex interrupted Jay’s rambling. “Give me… A little time…”

Alex had chosen to sit upright, with her large tentacles and monster arms supporting her. Her smaller tentacles were covering her lower half like a tangle of eels, to the point where Jay couldn’t even see what was going on between the Demon’s legs anymore. Alex had closed her eyes as well, and Jay could see every time a contraction rippled through her body as the woman shuddered in concentrated effort.

“You’re going to have all the time you need,” Jay said, her tone and mind both gaining resolution. “I’ll protect you.”

“Yes…” Alex answered with the confidence of one who knew their words were as true as the sun. “You will…”

While her Jay self had been attending to Alex, her Dys and Syd bodies had scoured the rest of the island, making sure that there were no unwelcome surprises waiting for them. She had found no signs of Demons or any other life except for small crabs and a few angry seagull-looking birds with weird, greenish-blue head feathers that didn’t like being woken up in the middle of the night. As her Dys self made another pass around the perimeter, Syd hovered just above the shore facing the mainland, watching for pursuers.

With the dark of the night, Jadis hadn’t noticed that there was actually a small village on the shore opposite the island she had picked out. The buildings had blended into the rocky terrain since none had any light burning within. A clear sign of a place that had been abandoned, which only made sense considering the demonic invasion of the surrounding area. The village should be empty and as still as the grave.

Except it wasn’t.

“Okay, those have got to be more Demons,” Syd murmured as she watched dark figures slip in and out of the moonlight on the distant shore. “No idea if they can swim, but I’m sure they’re headed this way in whatever way they can.”

“Not just them,” Dys answered her own self’s observations. “The flyers have caught up.”

Several winged creatures were visible in the sky. Jadis knew that some of them were possessed giant birds, but others weren’t, from what she had seen while they had been closer to Kastoria. She had some hope that the Demons would keep flying southeast as they chased after the direction she had flown off towards, but it became apparent after only a few seconds that they were headed towards her island.

“Fuck, I forgot about my gods damned wings…”

Dys cursed as she watched Syd’s plasma tendrils float in the air like a giant glowing halo around her. The white streamers of magic energy stood out like a beacon in the dark, and they were made that much more noticeable by her doubled size. Jadis briefly considered cancelling both her wings and size increase but disregarded the thought. It was too late to try and hide. Better to keep the advantages that she had. In fact, she was probably nearing the point that she needed to refresh her wings or risk losing them at an inopportune moment.

Refreshing the duration of her Wings of the Succubi spell brought Jadis’ attention to her status sheet. Reviewing it briefly, she frowned at what she saw. Her fight against the Demon Dragon and the rest of the vanguard defending Kastoria’s skies had cost her a great deal of her health and magic reserves.

Her health was down to half of its max, and her magic had been almost entirely depleted. She needed a boost to both, but the only other person on the island who might be able to give her some of either resource was more than a little preoccupied at that moment.

Her health was something she could fix on her own, at least. Jadis had remembered to perform her Ceremony of Licentious Regeneration earlier in the week. While it wasn’t at full charge, she calculated that she had enough to push her health back up to full immediately. An argument could be made for saving the burst of healing for later, just in case her health dropped even lower, but she figured it was more important to be at full health going into the coming confrontation, rather than entering the fight at an already reduced capacity. Jadis mentally triggered the skill and watched as her health shot back up to full in an instant.

Just in time, too, as the first wave of demonic pursuers had come into her range.

Syd threw the rock she had been carrying in one hand ever since she had made her dive down to the ground earlier in the fight. While the stone was small in her hand, relatively speaking, it was still the size of a pumpkin. Her aim continued to hold true, a circumstance she attributed to her highly boosted Dexterity stat, and the stymphalia in the lead was struck in the chest despite being still a quarter of a mile away. The possessed bird exploded into a cloud of feathers that fell to the sea below, but Jadis wasted no time on watching the corpse tumble from the sky. Her Syd self was already in the air, rushing to meet the rest of the flying monstrosities, and Dys was right behind her.

Jay stood on guard at the entrance to the rocky alcove that hid Alex from sight. She wanted to be inside, helping her lover through the painful experience, but she couldn’t afford to. Her third set of eyes stayed on watch, looking for sneak attacks and any sign that enemies were making it to the island, by air or sea. She had gathered up a pile of smooth stones that she planned on using as more projectiles as well, but she held back on throwing them since the initial melee between her other selves and the stymphalia was so close. She didn’t want to risk hitting her own bodies.

Besides, other targets were coming within range.

The large wings of several creatures that had no feathers flapped their way through the moonlight towards the island. They weren’t as fast as the giant birds, but they were half again as large and had long, whiplike tails. Jadis didn’t think they were dragons; they were too small even compared to the Demon Dragon she had just torn to pieces. However, Jadis remembered the wyvern from Weigrun, and decided that these things were about the same in terms of general shape. She had no idea what the beasts would be capable of, but she figured that it would be better if they all attacked her Dys and Syd selves, rather than her Jay self, so she held back from tossing any stones to see what they would do.

Four of the seven monsters curved their course and dove towards the melee in the sky. The other three kept on the same heading as before, aiming for the island. Growling at the situation, Jay reached for the pile of rocks and began throwing them for all she was worth.

The first two rocks missed, likely due to the great distance involved, but the third hit its mark. Unfortunately, a dark green shield flared into life in front of the wyvern just before the stone hit, deflecting the attack. Jay cursed but didn’t relent. Nor did she try to use her Break the Bulwark skill. While it didn’t cost magic, the skill did consume her stamina every time she used it, and she didn’t have Bridget or Sorcha around to help her recover that dwindling resource. Instead, Jay just kept hurling stone after stone with full force, as fast as she could, lobbing the projectiles at the flying enemies.

Two more rocks hit the same shield to no effect, but the fourth shattered the magic defense and struck the wyvern. The beast tumbled through the air, but it didn’t seem to die, either, since she didn’t notice a new notification pop up in her side vision. The spinning wyvern was too erratic to hit at range, so Jay switched to the next target and kept throwing, doing everything she could to keep the creatures from reaching the island.

It was at the same moment that she knocked the second wyvern out of the sky and her eyes were drawn downward for a moment that Jay noticed a surging wave of water rushing towards her from the distant shore. Her body tensed at the sight, confusion washing over her. She had no idea what kind of Demon could cross the water in such a rapid manner, but it was small and fast, and it was making a beeline for her Jay self. The thing had to be a Greater Demon, which meant Jay would have to fight the undoubtedly powerful opponent alone. Her Dys and Syd selves were tangled in the aerial battle, which had only gotten worse with the arrival of the wyverns. Jay was on her own.

Taking careful aim, Jay hurled a sizable rock that probably weighed around a hundred pounds at the target who was surging across the surface of the sea like some kind of demonic speedboat. Her stone hit the enemy, and she saw the creature slow for a moment as no magic shield appeared to protect it, but in the next moment it resumed its charge forward. Not forgetting about the third wyvern still coming her way, Jay hurled a rock at that target, then switched back to the one on the sea and threw again.

The second shot against the surface enemy missed, as it dove under the water to avoid her attack. Losing sight of the creature for a moment, Jay readied another stone. Then, as the enemy surfaced and leapt through the air, Jay barely managed to abort her powerful throw before hurling the watermelon-sized rock into the face of her mentor.

“Noll!?” Jay shouted as the therion finished crossing the distance between them and dashed up onto the rocky shore of the island. “What the fuck are you doing here!?”

“Hunting Twisted Desire,” the old wolf snapped as he shook the water from his fur. “Better question. What are you doing here, and why were you attacking Kastoria alone?”

“I wasn’t attacking Kastoria, Alex was kidnapped, and I—”

Before Jay could finish her hasty explanation, the third wyvern that had been heading for her and the island dove out of the sky, a trail of lightning sparking from its long tail. Jay whipped around and threw the stone she held in hand at the beast, breaking through the barrier it generated and cracking its skull. As the beast slammed into the ground a few yards away, Noll charged up to it with even more speed than she had last seen the man display and used his long, curved sword to cut through the creature’s neck three times in the span of a second.

As a notification appeared in the corner of Jadis’ eyes letting her know that an enemy Demon had been felled, her mentor turned back to face her.

“We’ll talk later,” he grumped while shaking more water from his dripping ears.

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