Rebirth of the Nephilim

Chapter 382: Dead Heads

“I’m fine!” Bridget coughed out as Syd held her in her arms. “Behind you!”

When a person had three bodies, “behind you” was not a terribly useful piece of guidance. However, since Jadis was already oriented in three different directions, she was able to quickly spot what Bridget was warning her of.

Jay spun around with lightning speed and intercepted the flying object in mid-air. The soft and fleshy thing splattered blood against her front as she caught it in her hands. Since she was still disoriented by the change in what she could see and hear, it took a moment for her to realize what the object was. When she did, she dropped it in disgust.

It was a torso. Male, and probably human, it had all of its limbs and head torn off which made it hard to identify. The ruined clothing on the mutilated body looked like something a server would have been wearing, though it was hard to tell since there was so much blood. Looking in the direction the torso had been thrown from, Jay caught the tail end of some horrible creature as it crawled along the balcony rail of the second floor, disappearing into the chaos below. The little she had seen looked like some kind of fleshy centipede, with dozens of mismatched arms and legs attached to a long body that bulged in all the wrong places.

Jadis didn’t bother asking what the thing had been. Whether it was some common variety of Demon or a Greater Demon or even a Matriarch didn’t matter. The fiend was killing people and she needed to stop it.

Acting without any further delay, Jadis moved. Syd carried Bridget over towards the cluster of familiar faces that she had spotted, arriving next to Kerr and Vikwas so quickly that both of them almost swung at her with their makeshift weapons.

“Stay together in one group!” Syd commanded as she set Bridget down. “Where are Sabina and Alex?”

Aila, Eir, Kerr, Thea, Bridget, and Sorcha were all accounted for in the gathered group, as were Einer, Svana, Vikwas, and Senta. Jadis didn’t see Vraekae or Severina, but those two were skilled warriors and would no doubt be in the thick of things. They could handle themselves. Sabina, however, was not a fighter and Jadis needed to get her into a safe location as quickly as possible. Alex was powerful, so Jadis wasn’t worried about that aspect. What she was worried about was that as a Demon, she could get caught up in the fight and targeted by the guards and city defenders by mistake.

“I don’t know where Sabina is,” Aila started, but was cut off as Thea jumped in.

“B—bathroom!” Thea pointed towards the third floor. “That way!”

“I saw Alex a second ago,” Aila continued. “She was on the other side of you, but I lost track of her.”

“Shit,” Syd cursed. “Okay. Any idea on what the fuck is going on?”

“No,” Aila shook her head, her face cold and deadly serious. “But by the sounds of things outside, this isn’t the only location being attacked. The bells.”

Right. Jadis hadn’t been focused on it, but over the sound of combat and people screaming, she could hear a constant, omnipresent ringing sound. It was like the clocktowers throughout the city were all going off at once, filling the streets with a warning that not even a deaf woman could miss with how it vibrated in her chest.

“Stay with me,” Syd told Aila and the others. “Jay and Dys will get Sabina and Alex.”

With that, Syd turned around and looked for the nearest Demon. Spotting one of the grabby, handsy monsters attacking a guard who was struggling to keep it from strangling him, she dashed forward and took hold of the Demon’s arms, crushing them and then, a second later, the rest of the putrid thing.

“Thank you!” the man panted as wobbled to his feet, blood dripping from several wounds on his face. “I couldn’t get my arms free—”

“Go there!” Syd told the man, not having any time to waste on being polite or comforting. “The priestess there will heal you!”

With that, Syd moved on to the next person, pulling another “crawler” off of them.

While having multiple priority-one objectives would mean other people would have to make a hard choice about which to focus on first, Jadis didn’t have to worry about that particular problem. With three pressing concerns and three bodies, she was able to act on all of them simultaneously. So, while Syd stayed on the second floor where her companions and family were and worked to clear the area of threats, Jay and Dys moved to locate and retrieve her two missing lovers.

Dys went right, sprinting up the stairs to the third floor where even more chaos awaited her. She could see crawlers all over the place, attacking nobles, servers, and guards alike. Some of the nobles were faring well as they cast spells or used makeshift weapons to defend themselves, but others were obviously not combatants and had no skills they could use to fight off the Demons. There hadn’t been many guards stationed on this floor, but the few who were had rallied together and were trying to form a defensive circle around those who couldn’t fight.

Dashing forward with Knight’s Daring Charge, Dys practically materialized next to a guard who was fighting off two crawlers with his sword. She took hold of one Demon’s arm and forcefully swung it around, sending it flying at terminal velocity. Its body was splattered against the marble wall some fifty feet away, which Jadis only acknowledged by dismissing the notification that had appeared in her mind.

The guard, for his part, used the opportunity to deliver a powerful strike with his sword that cut the Demon’s central ring-like body, killing it by splitting it in half.

“Head towards the stairs,” Dys told the man. “Make your way to the second floor!”

“Yes ma’am!” The guard didn’t hesitate for a moment as he followed her orders. “Everyone, move! Move! Second floor, now!”

Dys didn’t see Sabina among the circle of defenders, nor did she spot her among those were still fighting on their own, or those who had fallen. She wanted to go help those who were struggling against Demons and were cut off from the guards, but she couldn’t spare the time. A fourth task was too much for her three bodies.

Making a note to send Syd up to help as soon as the second floor was cleared out, Dys sprinted for the opening to the back halls she saw on the far side of the third floor. That was where the bathrooms would be, as well as the stairs that led to the floors above them.

At the same time as Dys was running across the third floor, Jay was looking for Alex.

Aila had said that Alex had been right next to her a moment before, but looking around, she couldn’t spot her. Considering she was a figure who stood out in just about any crowd, Jadis wasn’t sure how she could be missing her. Deciding that something must have drawn her away, Jay headed for the stairs that led down to the first floor in search of her. As soon as she got to the stairs, she found Alex amidst a sea of carnage.

Dozens of strangling crawlers were scattered across the steps, some of them in broken, twisted pieces while others had been crushed and flattened like roadkill. All of them were dead, slain and left strewn in a circle around Alex. The demonic paladin hovered near the center of the stairs, a constantly moving mass of arms and tentacles that seized any Demon that came in range and thrashed it to pieces. One crawler leapt at Alex from the stair railing and was instantly snatched out of the air by one of her three large tentacles. The lesser Demon was quickly constricted and summarily crushed, its bones cracking like chopsticks before being tossed aside.

As much damage as Alex was doing to the crawlers, she wasn’t herself going unscathed. The many grasping, clawing hands of the foul Demons tore at Alex every time she took hold of one and she didn’t have anywhere near the level of Fortitude that Jadis had. Black blood was welling up from a multitude of wounds across Alex’s body, the worst of them found on her larger tentacles.

Those flesh wounds weren’t what concerned Jadis, though. Well, that wasn’t true. Any harm being done to her lover concerned her. But the two things that caught Jadis’ immediate attention were the two horrifying Demons that were attacking Alex from lower on the stairs.

There was a great deal of smoke in the air on the first floor, some of it from a fire that had been started, but a lot of it a noxious gas that had no doubt been created by the attacking Demons to sap people’s strength, hurt their vision, and eat away at their health. The gas cloud made it difficult to see, but what she could see of the two Demons further down the stairs was nothing good.

The bodies were human. Almost completely unaltered, it was easy to see that the one on the left had been a human male somewhere in his fifties or sixties while the one on the right had been a woman in her thirties. Both had on clothing, but the garments were ragged and dirty, with great rips and tears that exposed the pallid, bloodless flesh underneath. The true horror was what had been done to their heads. Or rather, their lack of heads.

Where the man and woman’s heads should have been were just gaping holes, like they had been plucked from their necks like flowers from a stem. From out of the raw, torn stumps grew nine tentacles, each one at least six feet long and around two or three inches thick. Unlike most Demons, these tentacles weren’t a dark, purple-black color but were instead bright. The one on the left had varying shades of flaming red while the Demon on the right had tentacles in different shades of brown. In both cases, the tentacles were twisting and curling in almost mesmerizing patterns as arcane symbols were drawn in the air before them.

As Jay leapt down the stairs, she saw the demon on the left finish casting its spell. The arcane sigil floating in the air transformed into a gout of flame that poured out like dragon’s breath before the Demon. The spread on the attack was large, but Jadis knew Alex was fast and could easily dodge out of the way. To Jadis’ shock, instead of avoiding the flame, Alex rushed into it, purposefully throwing her body into the spell. The flames engulfed her, creating a terrible smell as her flesh was burned, but the fire was almost completely halted in its tracks from progressing up the stairs.

The reason for the self-sacrificing move became at least partially evident as Jay spotted a figure huddling in the middle of the stairs where Alex had been. She was a young elven woman, purple-skinned and dressed in the clothing of server, and she was crouched low with her arms over her head. Clearly, Alex had been protecting the elf, though why she had rushed away from everyone else to protect this one person on the stairs Jadis wasn’t sure.

With how fast Jadis could move, she was down the stairs and on top of Alex and the other Demons in a second. Reaching her lover’s side, Jay lunged forward and slammed her fist into the fire-spewing Demon’s chest. As her fist flew, Jay felt resistance as an arcane barrier appeared between her and her target. The fiery shield manifested instantaneously as a nine-pointed star that burned as hot as a forge. As Jay’s fist connected, the shield burned her skin with intense heat. Jadis was sure the burning shield was capable of scorching almost any attacker with even brief contact.

But most people didn’t have Jadis’ two hundred and nine Fortitude.

Jay’s punch shattered the Demon’s conjured shield like glass, the burning flame no worse than putting her hand on a hot pan for a half second. When her fist struck the Demon, its chest crumpled inward like a soda can before it was hurled away from Alex, its flame-spewing spell broken.

As Jay caught her balance from the lunging jab, she felt the other Demon on the right strike her with its own spells. Fleshy tentacles hit her body on her arms, shoulders, head and torso. Everywhere the Demon struck, a thick coating of hard stone appeared, wrapping Jay in a binding layer of rock that was no doubt designed to constrict her movements.

Flexing her muscles as she spun in place, Jay broke free of the conjured stone. It took a moment to shed the binding, but only a moment. Reaching out, she grasped hold of four or five tentacles in one hand while her other hand held onto the shoulder of the human body that had been usurped by the vile Demon. Yanking with all her might, Jay pulled on the tentacles.

The twisted, malformed insides of the Demon squelched out of the human husk with a sickening pop. The bulbous sack of ink-black organs dripping with ichor had a single purple eye that blinked in the light.

“Get the fuck away from my Demon!” Jay shouted in rage as she swung the abomination down hard onto the marble steps.

The sack of twisted flesh exploded like a ballon filled with slime, splattering across Jay’s shoes and the poor elf who was still cowering behind her and Alex.

“Alex, are you alright?” Jay turned to check on her.

“I am… Well…” Alex said in her usual tone as she unfurled the mass of tentacles she had thrown up in front of her face and torso. “Are you… Seeing… Better…?”

Alex didn’t look great. A lot of her limbs had been charred by the blast of fire and she was still bleeding from many cuts and gashes in her sides and back. Her head and body were still in good condition, though, so Jadis had some hope that her health pool was still at a decent level.

“Seeing better? Ah, yes, I am,” Jay quickly realized what she had meant. “I was confused by an illusion. But I’m better now.”

“Are you… Certain…?” Alex asked as she motioned towards the server who was only just starting to look up at them with wide eyes. “You are… Still… Crying…”

“What? No I’m—that’s not… Alex, how many of me do you see here right now?”

“Two… Of Jadis…” Alex answered with absolute certainty.

“No, that’s not me,” Jay hastily told her lover. “Touch her! Someone’s casting an illusion on you, too. That’s someone else!”

Alex acted without hesitation, reaching out one of her large arms to take hold of the woman. The server rocked back, likely afraid of Alex, but she was on the ground and nowhere near fast enough to dodge away. Alex’s hand brushed against the elf’s arm and instantly Jadis saw the confusion as Alex’s demeanor shifted to confusion.

“This tastes… Like Jadis… But does not… Feel like Jadis…”

“Because it isn’t me,” Jay told her. “Look, let’s get you back upstairs so Eir can heal you.”

Alex didn’t protest as Jay directed her back up the stairs, though she could tell that her Demon companion was still confused. Jadis didn’t think Alex had anything on her that was cursed like those pendants had been, so that meant there likely was someone in the building who was casting illusions.

Wait. The pendants Jadis had been give had been checked by Eir and a High Priest of Lyssandria. There hadn’t been anything wrong with them. Had something been missed? Or had someone tampered with them after the fact? Whatever the case, Jadis would have to look into it after the immediate crisis was over. It wasn’t like she could start interrogating people in the middle of a battle.

The fact that Jadis had only received one notification of dead head death had not gone unnoticed. The Demon with fire spells was still alive, and from what little Jadis could see through the noxious cloud on the first floor, there were a lot more Demons in the mix. Still, she wasn’t going to go charging into disadvantageous terrain with just one of her unarmored, unarmed bodies. Jadis was bold, not suicidal.

“Come on,” Jay helped the elf to her feet. “Let’s get you somewhere safe.”

“Thank you,” the woman sobbed as Jay escorted her up the stairs. “Thank you!”

“Don’t worry, everything’s going to be—”

Jadis’ words of comfort were cut off as a set of massive jaws lunged out of the cloud of foul smoke. Reacting with lightning speed, Jay caught either side of the jaws that were split vertically, rather than horizontally, before they could snap around her or the elf. Looking inside the huge jaws, Jay could see a human-like face in the middle where the throat should be. The face was hairless and strangely chubby, almost like a child’s face except that it was far too big. Where its two eye sockets should have been nests of small, wriggling tentacles. A single, large, dark blue eye the size of a grapefruit rested inside of the child-like face’s mouth.

The elf woman screamed. Jadis was tempted to scream along with her.