Chapter 13: Chapter 13: No Bones About It

The bones were gone.

Standing in the small clearing where she had dumped the bone thieves from the day before, Jadis searched with growing dismay. At first, she thought she had the wrong spot; the forest was large and she was no tracker. She could have gone off course and missed the place where she had left the dead demons. But, no, the demons themselves were still present, at least what was left of the deflated, fleshy tentacles. Their ruined, rotting corpses were stinking up the area, their smell unmistakable.

It was just the bones that served as the demons’ shell and form that were gone.

“Fuck!” She cursed in unison, holding the remains of her most recent kill between her two bodies. She’d planned on disposing of the remains with the rest, leaving them far from her hut. Now, though, she had a feeling that her plans had to change.

“The other bone thieves must have found them, taken the bones for themselves,” she said, voicing her concerns. “I bet this bean pole here got a bunch of its bones from the bodies here.”

“Maybe that’s why it was searching the hut? Looking for whoever killed the two here?”

“Probably,” she answered herself. “But there has to be more. This guy doesn’t have enough bones to account for all the ones that were here.”

“Damn…” Jadis shook her head, tempted to toss the bones she carried down in frustration, but held back. It had been tedious enough the first time gathering the broken pieces from the ground. She didn’t want to do so a second time.

“What do we do now,” she asked, watching the trees around her carefully, checking to make sure she herself was not being watched by any skeletal entities.

“Well, I think we should—” she paused mid thought, tripping over her words. “Er, I think I should bring the bones somewhere the demons aren’t as likely to just stumble across. Maybe that basement we, ah fuck, I, found the preserves in?”

“I think I need to figure out this whole pronoun thing,” she looked at herself with a worried frown. “If I’m getting this confused when I’m alone with myself, what’s going to happen when I have to talk with actual other people?”

The frown was mirrored on both faces, but she shook her head. “I do need to figure it out, but first things first. Bones and demons.”

Priorities established, Jadis acted quickly. If there were more bone thieves in the vicinity, she didn’t want to be caught off guard. The smell of the dead demons already permeated the area so she dumped out the cracked shell of her current load, spilling more purple-fleshed remains out on the forest floor.

The bones she took back with her, heading for the stone house with the first cellar she’d explored. She kept her heads on swivels as she walked, constantly checking for any sign that more bone thieves were about but couldn’t help but wonder about the demons and their behavior.

The gangly demon had searched her out, coming right up to her stone hut. It had, at the very least, the ability to recognize her hut as different from the others scattered around the village outskirts. Maybe it had stumbled on her home base by luck, maybe just by general proximity, or maybe there was some other factor she didn’t know of. Jadis could only prepare against what she could anticipate. At a minimum, she had to assume the demons were capable of finding her home, if not already aware of its location. More could simply be stalking the forest right now, looking for her since she hadn’t been home all morning.

Another aspect of the demons she was curious and confused about was their power level. Not that she knew what level the demons were, or if they even had levels the way people did on Oros, but she assumed there had to be some method of rating their overall strength. How else would the system know how much experience to award her upon the slaying of a demon?

After the last kill, she’d gotten another message informing her she’d slain a demon of Samleos, but no level up notification. She’d gone up three levels after beating the last two, but nothing after the gangly demon.

Was it because the demons were of different power levels? Or was it because she’d struggled so much in the two-on-two fight. Maybe the system took effort into account. Or, now that she thought about it, the difference was in her levels. The cost of going up in levels usually increased the higher levels went in most RPGs. Jadis felt safe in assuming the same was the case on Oros.

The gangly demon had been easier to fight than the gorilla one or the antlered dog one, that she was certain of. She’d barely taken any damage at all, having only lost ten points of health. Was that because she was stronger, or because it had been weaker than the other demons? Maybe both?

No matter the answers to her questions, Jadis desperately wished she could tell the difference in levels between her and the bone thieves. Any kind of system that hinted at how much of a danger the enemy would be before she engaged would have been extremely valuable. No method of identifying foes had presented itself to her so far, though.

Jadis’ thoughts were interrupted by a movement in the trees to her right, a faded white thing moving silently low to the ground. She froze, her dual bodies mirroring the action of the stalking monstrosity.

The skeletal demon had been walking a path that would cross her own at an angle. It stood a few dozen yards away on four legs, the stolen skulls of two sharp-toothed carnivores swaying back and forth in the fore. It too had a dog-like appearance, similar to the antlered one Jadis had slain, but Jadis had been more interested in human anatomy while studying and didn’t trust herself to know the difference between a wolf skeleton and a big cat. Not that such things mattered anyway with the bone thieves. They seemed to just do whatever they wanted with limbs, regardless of anatomical accuracy.

From what Jadis could tell, the monster had no extra arms and only the two heads. It did have two long tails which were probably as long again as the whole of the demon’s body. However, all in all, this was the most normal looking of all the skeletal abominations she’d seen so far.

All of these details she took in at a glance, scant seconds passing as she and her foe sized each other up.

“Let’s see if a second demon is enough to get me another level,” Jadis murmured, her eyes locked with the empty eye sockets of the enemy’s skulls.

As if reacting to her words as a challenge, the bone thief clattered its jaws together, crouched, then lunged forward, sprinting at her with startling speed. Reacting on instinct, Jadis hurled the bones she had been carrying at the rapidly approaching demon to obscure its vision, then rolled out of the way to either side.

With the remains of its fallen compatriot tossed in the way, the demon wasn’t able to turn its lunge in time and overshot both of Jadis’ forms. It rebounded quickly, though, whirling about and digging its claws into the dirt as is scrabbled to sprint at the Jadis on the left.

Left Jadis hefted her stone club, anticipating the attack. She didn’t move, waiting to see how quickly the demon would come at her. Her lack of movement did not mean Jadis was idle overall, however. The Jadis on the right repositioned, her club in hand and her powerful legs crouched and ready.

In a flash the demon launched itself at her, darting low, both of its snapping jaws aiming to hamstring the left Jadis. Acting as one, both of Jadis’ selves attacked at the same time, two stone heads coming down in unison on the creature.

The demon pulled its bite at the last second, dodging the blow from left-side Jadis but it couldn’t dodge two people at once. Right-side Jadis smashed her stone club into the back of the monster, shattering the spine of the creature with such force the front half went spinning through the air while the back half of the skeleton broke off and tumbled across the ground.

“Ha! You’re even more pathetic than the last one!” Jadis crowed, taunting the demon that was now crawling across the ground, half of its body now gone.

Jadis’ grin turned to a sour frown as a series of dark blue symbols flashed into existence around the demon and the bones that were scattered around it started rolling across the forest floor towards the core of the demon, smaller ones literally flying through the air and attaching themselves to the shell.

“Oh, fuck you!” Jadis growled as she pounced, bringing her dual power to bear against the reforming abomination.

The bone thief tried to dodge back, newly attached parts still forming but giving it some leverage, but Jadis was relentless. She smashed the demon’s extremities, breaking every bone that got in her way before eventually there was nothing left to stop her from cracking open the shell and pulping the demonic eye-tendril thing within.

The whole battle lasted a minute at most and left Jadis barely breathing hard, her heart beating fast more from excitement and bloodlust than any real exertion.

The double notification passed before Jadis’ eyes in quick succession as she dismissed one after another.

“Thanks for the free level, I guess,” she shrugged, looking down at the remains of her fallen foe.

“Ugh, now I have even more to carry though,” Jadis complained to herself, kicking the broken shell of the demon and wincing a bit at the minor pain.

The fight had gone remarkably smoothly. Jadis had not taken even a point of damage, her hair more ruffled by her own dodge than anything the demon had done. Jadis didn’t want to make any rash judgements, but she was starting to feel more and more confident that the skeletal demons, at least when encountered alone, were much less of a threat to her than she had originally estimated. In fact, Jadis suspected that if she had some actual armor, she’d probably be in relatively little danger.

Certainly, if multiple attacked her at once, she’d run the risk of being overwhelmed. However, Jadis was revising her previous assumptions. She’d thought it best to avoid the demons and only attack when she could ambush them. Now she was beginning to think maybe catching them off guard wasn’t absolutely necessary.

“I’m totally strong, aren’t I?” she asked herself while picking up as many bones as she could comfortably carry.

Jadis smiled at herself, knowing full well she was being more than a little egotistical. But hey, she just slaughtered two demons like a pro! Who else was going to sing her praises for her triumphant deeds if she didn’t?

“I’m absolutely awesome,” she agreed, grinning. “And I think we deserve a pat on the back.”

Walking over, Jadis did just as she suggested, patting her double’s back.

“I just said ‘we’ again,” she pointed out, handing over a good-sized armload of bones to herself.

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I.”

“I have got to figure this shit out,” she sighed, thinking of the weirdness of her physical and mental situation.

“Okay. Let’s dump these bones in the cellar and then get back home. No daydreaming though, I need to be on high alert.”

With a silly salute, Jadis acknowledged her own orders and collected as much of the rest of the bones that could be carried.

It took a bit of time to ferry all the bones to her chosen hiding spot, especially since she took the time to carry the shell of the most recently felled demon to the other pulped bodies and dumped the horror squid on the ground, figuring it was best to keep all of those disgusting flesh-snots in one spot far away from the skeleton cellar. It would have taken less time if she had split her selves apart, but she didn’t want to risk one of her selves getting caught by a demon alone. She was feeling a bit proud of her combat accomplishments, but she wasn’t quite that confident.

Arriving back at her hut, she thoroughly checked it for any signs of further demon intrusion. Finding nothing, Jadis closed herself off from the forest, barricading the door, and settled in to spend the rest of the afternoon doing something she’d never done before: crafting armor.

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