Chapter 109: Chapter 109: Routed

Being able to see herself caught in an explosion was absolutely terrifying. Seeing the aftermath of her same self caught in an explosion was another level of horror.

All the demon corpses around the wharfs had exploded, bursting like gore-filled bubbles and sending flesh and bone shrapnel through the air. Most of the dead demons had been on the ground outside the shield formation the guards had made, but not all. Even then, the force of dozens of bodies exploding was powerful enough to cause serious damage to their defensive line. The worst of the damage for them came from Mounce when his lifeless body, still held in the arms of Otwin, also exploded.

For Jadis, there was too much to focus on. Dys and Syd had received minor injuries from the explosions, but Aila and the others had fared worse. Eir had been close to the blast, rushing to Otwin and Mounce when the dead mercenary had detonated. Now she lay on the ground, still breathing, but not moving otherwise. Aila was on her feet, but blood was pouring from between the fingers she had clutched to her side. Jadis was torn between her need to check on her companions and her third self.

Jay couldn’t hear anything. She couldn’t see anything. But she could feel. And what she felt was pain. From her other selves’ perspectives, she could see herself somehow still standing in the field of death, a mist of blood and guts partially obscuring her. Bone shards were sticking out of practically every bit of unarmored space across her body. Her upper arms, upper legs and hips, her hands, and even her booted feet had been struck with the biological shrapnel from the insane attack. Almost in slow motion Jay sunk to one knee, even that small movement causing blood to pour from around the many pieces of bone peppering her body.

Still somewhat stunned and frozen in momentary indecision, Jadis reflexively checked her status sheet to see her current health.

Jadis had been near full health before the explosion, having barely taken any hits from the demons. The one attack had done over four hundred damage to her. That revelation was enough to snap Jadis out of her daze. Pushing through the pain, she got her mind to move.

The one saving grace of the demoniac explosion was it had not differentiated friend from foe. Any demons that had been in melee with the guards and mercenaries had also been caught up in the blast, seriously injuring if not outright killing them. That gave Jadis at least a few seconds of breathing room as she took stock of the new situation, then rushed forward to her different goals.

The guards were still alive, but the blast had injured them and at least one had been crippled and was leaning heavily on Ealdread, the guard’s knee pointing the wrong direction. Kerr was getting to her feet, having been knocked back, but she looked like she was able to shake off whatever damage she had taken. Otwin had been holding Mounce in his arms when the explosion had gone off; consequently there wasn’t much left of either of them. Jana was crouching low behind a pylon, reloading her crossbow. Douglas was still further down the dock, tossing some kind of crab-monster off into the water. The ship—

The ship was slowly pulling away from the dock. In another minute or two, it would be past the wooden pier and out into open water, too far out for any of them to get aboard.

With no time to spare, Dys rushed to check on Eir. Kneeling next to the priestess she found that she was still alive and breathing, just knocked senseless.

“C’mon, wake up! You need to get up!” Dys yelled in the elf’s face, slapping her cheek lightly.

The priestess groaned pitifully, but started to stir, arms and legs moving feebly as Dys refused to let her lie unconscious.

While Dys roused Eir, Syd checked on Aila.

“I’ll be fine, go help Jay!” the redhead brushed off Syd’s concern, already stuffing a bandage into the tear in her leather armor.

Syd didn’t waste time. She sprinted forward, running to reach Jay’s side.

Jay, meanwhile, tried to stand and stumble forward, every attempted movement blooming fresh points of pain through her arms and legs. Her vitals had been protected by the armor she wore, but the attack had been devastating, nonetheless.

Thinking on whatever the hell the attack was, Jadis searched with Syd’s eyes for where she suspected the source of the corpse explosion spell had come from.

The mother wretch was coming around the bend further up the road, a noxious cloud of green gas flowing around it as it came. She could see its arms were bent at the elbows, palms raised upwards, as two expanding orbs of noxious light formed above them.

Jadis didn’t know what that was about and she was certain she didn’t want to find out.

“Get down you pale fuck!”

Kerr’s shouted words combined with Syd’s viewpoint were enough forewarning for Jay to drop to the ground, crying out in pain as the move shoved more of the shrapnel deeper into her flesh. Still, that was infinitely preferable to the piercing jab of the giant spider attacking her from behind.

With the ballista bolt still stuck in its face, the demon-possessed giant spider monster had come down off the building and was advancing on the group of them, its spiked legs digging into the ground as it made to impale Jay first before moving on to the rest of them.

Not that Jadis would let that happen.

Already sprinting forward, Syd shouted a wordless war cry and launched herself into the air, landing on the thick black shell of the spider’s thorax. With a single powerful thrust, she speared her steel lance down into the body of the beast, digging it down several feet into the creature. It reacted to the attack by bucking violently, trying to throw the giant off of its back but she held on to the lance, keeping her grip as she was flung about by the massive spider’s wild movements.

Jadis couldn’t kill the monster with just one of her, though. She needed all three of her if she was going to get the job done, and they needed to kill the spider, fast, or there was no way they’d make it down the docks before it overran them.

Fortunately, she wasn’t alone. Letting out war cries of their own, seven of the guards rushed forward, slamming into the side of the giant spider, their spears digging into its shell and cracking the black chitin. A force bolt from Aila also struck one of the spider’s legs at a joint, the power of the magic attack causing the leg to bend the wrong way as the joint was compromised.

Leaping on top of one of the pylons, Kerr loosed arrow after arrow into the face of the spider, blinding its eyes and filling its mouth with barbed shafts. As she made her ranged attacks, she also made her opinion of the dark monstrosity well known.

“Fuck you, you overgrown piece of vermin shit! Go back to whatever scum-stained outhouse hole you crawled out of!”

As the spider whirled and struck back against its attackers, another large form charged past everyone to leap onto the demon’s back.

Douglas landed near Syd with a meaty thump, his oversized cleaver cutting deep into the demon’s shell. One hand grasped onto her lance, he pounded the back of the spider like he was chopping up meat, breaking off chunks of the thick black shell and revealing the corrupted flesh beneath.

Syd followed up Douglas’ attacks with what she could. Lacking any other option, she buried her fist into the monster’s exposed organs, ripping and tearing anything she could get her fingers around.

Despite their collective efforts, the spider was still going. Even more importantly, the matriarch was closing in and the ship was pulling away. Time was running out.

“Eir, I need you to heal me,” Dys told the disoriented priestess as she came to her senses.

“What? Where--?” the elf asked groggily, then started as she caught sight of the battle happening around her. “Gods! Wait, your sister—Jay is—I need to get to her! She’s bleeding badly!”

“I know,” Dys told her, grabbing Eir’s shoulders. “That’s why you need to heal me.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense. I need to—”

“You need to heal me!” Dys cut the priestess off. “Just trust me and give me everything you’ve got! Now!”

Jadis could see the war on Eir’s face, though it resolved in seconds.

“I trust you,” she said, placing her hands on Dys’s arms. “By Lyssandria’s will, I give you everything I have.”

Healing power suffused Dys and, by extension, Jadis as a whole.

Pieces of shattered bone fell away from Jay as she got to her feet, her health regenerated enough that she was no longer in critical condition, though she was far from peak health. Some of the larger pieces were still stuck in her flesh, but she could ignore them. She had to. She had a demon to slay.

Jay charged into the melee with the rest of her allies, slamming her mallet into one of the legs of the spider. Combined with Syd’s attacks from above, her Mirrored Strikes skill was triggered. The results were devastating. The blow shattered the leg, sending a third of it skittering across the ground as it snapped free of the rest.

The demon twisted around, swiping several of its long legs in wide arcs, crashing through shields and knocking the guards back, but by then it was too late for the spider. Dys had leapt into the fight as well.

With all three of her bodies attacking at once, Mirrored Strikes was triggered over and over again in a matter of mere seconds, striking the corrupted giant spider with crushing blows that broke it down into crushed paste. Jadis didn’t stop until a message appeared in her mental vision, letting her know the possessed beast was dead.

An instant after she dismissed the notification from her mind, a bright flash of sickly green light zipped past her vision. A sizzling orb made of malign magic impacted the docks where the structure began stretching out over the true deep water, detonating in a spray of caustic slime that immediately began eating away at the wooden structure. A second orb struck the largest grouping of the guards as they were still regrouping from the spider’s wild swings, splattering across them and drawing out the tortured screams of dying men. In seconds at least three of the guards collapsed motionless to the ground.

“Get up!” Jay shouted, tossing an injured Ealdread to his feet. “Get up and get to the ship! Let’s go!”

“It’s too fucking late for that!” Kerr cursed, drawing Jadis’ attention to the docks.

The wooden docks were falling apart, the power from the matriarch’s acidic spell destroying the structure. As more and more of the dock crumbled into the dark waters, Jadis could see there was no getting out that way. Not for all of them, at least. Not when the ship was already past the end of the pier, the distance growing with every second.

Yes, she could make the jumps. The destroyed gap had to be a forty-foot distance at least and the ship was even further, but she could make that kind of leap if she pushed herself. The others, however, couldn’t. She could leap back and forth, ferrying them across the gap, but even then, the ship was already at the edge of where they alone could make their way on. The captain didn’t care if they made it on board or not. He had his own crew and interests to protect.

Of course, Jadis could leave the rest behind. She could grab Aila, but with Jay injured, one of her other selves would have to carry Jay. But she could sweep her companion up and they could go. They could go and leave the rest to be overrun by the horrifying demon mother that was bearing down on them all, its toxic fumes already encroaching on the edge of the wharf.

Jadis couldn’t do it. She couldn’t. How the hell was she supposed to live with herself if she just abandoned these people to die truly horrible deaths? How could she abandon Eir? Jadis knew she wasn’t some shining paragon of a hero, but she wasn’t the kind of cowardly prick that would leave people to die, either. She had to try.

“Change of plans!” Dys shouted as she swept Eir up into her arms and tossed the elf over her shoulder. “We’re running out of here! Follow me!”

Gathering up those who were still alive but couldn't run, Dys took not only Eir on her shoulder, but also Aila on her back. Jay picked up two guards who were too wounded to walk but were still obviously alive. Syd ran point, sprinting ahead. The rest would just have to keep up.

Aiming to get to the switchback road that led out of Alawar’s sea cove, Syd rushed off to the left, guiding them all to go around the far side of the village. Jadis didn’t know the layout of the village, but she knew that the road out was on the left and even if the main road was blocked by the twisted wretch matriarch, there had to be other ways up. Even if they had to jump and climb, they were getting out of the damned death trap of a village Alawar had become.

Whisps of foul green mist wrapped around the open doors and windows of the vacant buildings, the demon’s deadly toxins spreading pervasively around it, but Jadis went wide, leading everyone to the far end of the wharf. Finding a side trail, the group ran up and around, desperately trying to find a path that wasn’t saturated in toxic gas.

Rushing past Syd, Kerr sprinted up an alleyway.

“This way!” she shouted, revealing a route that took them through a half-constructed building.

Climbing the cut stone blocks like stairs, they made their way up to the next terrace of the village, breaking through a small patch of the foul mist that had them all coughing and tearing up. But then the way was clear and they were running up the road, past the level where the workshop had been.

“I can feel my force traps going off,” Aila spoke into Dys’ ear. “It must have just passed over them.”

Jadis didn’t have the breath to spare to reply back to Aila, but she nodded in acknowledgement. After so much fighting and getting literally blown up, she was running out of energy, her muscles and lungs aching from more than just attacks and poison fumes. Still, if the mother wretch was still down by the docks, then they had put a lot of space between them. They had a good chance of getting up and out of the cove. Of course, they’d still have the problem of trekking dozens upon dozens of miles back to Far Felsen, but that was a future problem. One step at a—

A crash of stone on stone resounded across the village as a boulder the size of a car slammed into the side of a building, crushing it in a cacophony of destruction. Jarred out of her thoughts, Jadis looked up the road that they were jogging to see one of the worst possible things she could imagine. Not one, not two, but three grundwyrms were stomping their way down from the top of the cliff, completely blocking the road out.

“You’ve got to be fucking me right now!” Syd shouted, stopping at the corner of a building to stare at the barrier to their only exit.

“We’ll have to push past them,” Ealdread panted as he came to a stop near Syd. “There’s no other way.”

“Are you fucked in the head?” Kerr snarled at the guard, “How in the gods’ names are we supposed to get past three verdammte grundwyrms on a narrow road like that? It’s a death sentence!”

“So is staying here!” Ealdread shouted back. “We’ve a better chance against those rock demons than that abomination back there!” he motioned with one hand back down the road. “At least some of us might make it past them. Those are better odds than if we fight that matriarch!”

While Kerr and Ealdread argued, Jadis closed her eyes and tried to focus. There had to be another way. Could they run back down to the shore and try to swim out? No, that wouldn’t work, there was no way the guards could swim in their armor and she couldn’t swim while carrying the wounded. Could they climb out? Unlikely. She might be able to clamber up the steep cliffs, but not while carrying the wounded. Besides, the grundwyrms would be free to bombard her with their boulder attacks. Could she fight the three grundwyrms and kill them all? Possibly, but not while she was already wounded and worn out, and definitely not before the twisted wretch matriarch made it up to them.

There had to be something else, some other way out she was missing. Jadis hadn’t come this far to die in a shitty little village on the coast. There had to be another way…

“The spider,” Jay said, interrupting Kerr and Ealdread’s argument. “The spider!”

“What about it?” Aila asked, nonplussed by the exclamation.

“That thing was the same type of giant spider that was back at the battle with the Flame Wolves. Same place as the tunnel entrance.”

Kerr’s voice was filled with disbelief as she responded to Jay’s statement.

“You can’t be suggesting what I think you are. That’s fucking insane!”

“We’re fucked from both directions as is!” Syd thundered, waving her lance to one side and then to the other. “Death that way and death the other way! With the tunnel we at least have a chance of finding another exit before those demons catch up to us or we run into something worse! If you’ve got another plan, I’m all ears! Otherwise, fucking shut up and let’s move before we get crushed or melted!”

‘That’s, that is—” Kerr angrily shouted back, her words catching in her throat.

“Fine. Where?” Douglas cut Kerr off, stepping forward.

“It’s got to be somewhere we haven’t been,” Jay motioned to the east side of the village. “Probably in the side of the cliffs where we couldn’t see it from the shore.”

“No time to waste then,” Aila nodded, squeezing her arm around Dys’ neck. “If we’re doing this, let’s go.”

With no further objections, they rushed off the main road, dodging behind buildings and through alleyways to avoid direct line of sight with the looming rock demons. Following along the side of the cliff, they searched for any sign of a hidden tunnel entrance, sometimes stopping to run their hands along the stone in places that seemed like they could be the right spot but revealed nothing. As the minutes passed, Jadis felt more and more like a rat trapped in a cage, especially as she caught sight of the festering green mist of the mother wretch rising up through the buildings on the tier below them.

“Here!” one of the guards, Thea, called out. “This here! I can feel the air coming through!”

Dashing over to a spot on the cliff wall behind a large house that boasted a spacious backyard, Syd examined what Thea had discovered. A barely visible crack in the wall, the opening blended in so well even staring straight at it she had trouble making it out, but it was there. The curve was a dead giveaway for an unnatural origin.

Setting down her injured passengers, Jadis put all three of her selves to the task of prying the tunnel door open. It wasn’t easy, the stone edifice solid and heavy and the door opened on a hinge at the top, so she had to put all of her considerable strength into prying the false wall open, but open it did, revealing a silk-walled tunnel that disappeared into pitch-black darkness.

While Jadis pulled the door open, Aila retrieved several candles from her pack, passing them out to others around her. Both Eir and Ealdread rejected the offered lights, with Ealdread motioning to his eyes.

“I can see just fine in the dark without those, keep them for the rest of you.”

With candles lit, they made their way into the cliff side, Ealdread taking the lead. Jadis held the tunnel door open for those who could walk to carry the wounded. All that was left of their expedition was Ealdread, four guards in varying states of injury, Aila, Eir, Kerr, and Douglas. Where Jana had disappeared to, Jadis didn’t know, having not seen the woman since the docks. With all others dead, Jadis lowered the tunnel door shut, sealing them all inside the oppressive darkness of the demon-made tunnel.

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