The first time Jadis had slain a grundwyrm, it had been a long, drawn-out affair of beating the demented boulder-beast down in an open field, aided by the efforts of a few more experienced mercenaries. The second time she had had no support and had instead kited the demon while wearing it down. Faced with a third time, Jadis knew she didn’t have the luxury of her previous tactics. There could be no kiting the stony lizard. The soldiers behind her had to focus on the rest of the demon army raging around them, otherwise they would be overwhelmed by their numbers. No, this third time had to be different. The grundwyrm needed a quick death. And Jadis had to be the one to deliver it.
Jay and Dys moved in tandem, rushing towards the oncoming threat with a unity of form and motion that only she was capable of. Her two sets of booted feet crushed dead and fallen demons beneath them as they reached the grundwyrm at the same time. With a reversed grip, Jay swung her mallet from the left while Dys swung her maul from the right, their two weapons meeting the wyrm’s head in the middle.
An explosion of stone blasted outward from the devastating impact of their weapons, the demon’s head completely obliterated in an instant. Shrapnel flew everywhere, striking against their breastplates and helmets, cutting at the unarmored parts of her arms and legs. But so too were the unfortunate wretches and bone thieves that were close enough to the blast to be caught in it. Their flesh and bone were shredded and broken by the flying pieces of stone, knocking a dozen down if not outright killing them.
Still, the grundwyrm did not die with the loss of its head. Until the squirming mass of foul tentacles hidden somewhere inside its stone husk was destroyed, it would continue to fight.
Syd didn’t have the right weapon for stone, but that was fine. She fell back, giving room for her other two selves to handle the massive boulder beast. Moving back, she quickly checked on the man who had been struck by the demon’s tossed stone. A glance told her that while he somehow still lived, his legs were clearly crushed. If he didn’t get healing soon, he’d be dead.
Skewering a thrashing wretch with her spear and tossing it back into the sea of demons like a flicked bug, Syd shouted over the oppressive noise to Thea and the mercenaries still defending her back and sides.
“Watch over him! I’ll do what I can!”
Without waiting for an answer, Syd crouched down and lifted the boulder that had to weigh a ton, struggling to shift it up and away from the partially crushed man. As she did so, a bramble fiend leapt from out of the demonic mass, thorny vines whipping as it tried to use her distraction to entangle her.
Thea’s makeshift shield was there in an instant, giant bug carapace and hydra bone blocking the sneaky demon mid-air. Thea’s thrusting shield bashed the demon aside like a pinball, knocking it into a twisted wretch where it wrapped around its malicious compatriot and the two fell to the ground in a tangled mess that was quickly trampled over by the other demons around them.
At the same time, Jay and Dys were upon the grundwyrm, their blunt weapons raining blow after stone-shattering blow onto its rapidly diminishing body. Twice the demon had struck either Jay or Dys with its rocky appendages, knocking them away with its own blows that would have no doubt shattered other mercenaries her level, but Jadis didn’t falter. She had almost nine hundred health points to spare now. She could take a hit.
Checking her health, Jadis realized that in actuality, she was now down to five hundred health points, from both the grundwyrm and the many smaller cuts she had taken in the short time she’d joined the battle.
How long had it been, actually? Seconds? Minutes? An hour? She wasn’t sure and since there was nothing she could do to check, she put it out of her mind and concentrated on the task at hand.
Having pulled the boulder off the mercenary’s leg, Syd hauled the man up under one arm, his crushed legs dangling like bloody noodles. Jadis tried not to think too hard about that as she turned and leapt back over the shield wall, taking the man to Eir so he could be saved, as well as to top off her own health.
“Found you!” Jay cheered, her teeth bared in a snarl as she broke open a section of the grundwyrm’s back, revealing a pocket filled with dark tentacles and a shining yellow eye.
Ignoring the wretch that had stabbed into her leg from behind to let Dys deal with it, Jay slammed her mallet down onto the exposed demonic core, crushing it and causing the rest of the boulder-based monster to fall to pieces like a puppet with its strings cut.
“We both need healing,” Syd told Eir as she set the moaning man down behind the wagon barrier Jadis had set up to protect her vulnerable back line fighters. “I’m dropping below half.”
“Just a moment,” Eir said, one hand on the mercenary.
Syd could see the healing light suffuse him as Eir closed up his wounds and stabilized him, but his legs had been encased in armor when they were crushed, the warped and twisted metal preventing Eir from healing them fully. The man would need further treatment to save his legs, but at least his life was no longer in immediate danger. Relatively speaking.
As Eir placed her hands on her, Syd took the moment to look around and take in the battlefield. Kerr still stood on the top of the wagon’s side, firing arrow after arrow into the horde, sniping down likely targets from her vantage. She had several empty quivers tossed down around her, more full ones piled by her feet as she let loose as many as she could as quickly as possible. Aila could not use her traps, not effectively with so many allies that could fall afoul of them nearby, so she had instead taken up position near Eir, helping her with the injured soldiers and directing them either back into the fray or to the triage tents behind them. As she watched, Aila threw up a hand and a bolt of force shot out, blasting off the head of some corrupted beast as it rose up over the shield wall nearby. Clearly, Aila was judicious in the use of her magic, but she was using it.
Looking at the battle in a broader sense, Jadis didn’t feel like it was going to end soon. Since she’d arrived, she had no doubt that she had killed dozens of the demons by her own hand, hundreds more slain by the soldiers around her. And yet the demons still came. She had just slain one of the largest and most powerful of their kind that could be found in Weigrun, and still the demons came. Their bodies were piled high against the walls, their blood had turned the ground to mud, and their forces were being butchered in droves. And even then, the demons still came.
Jadis realized in that moment why the soldiers of the Empire, or the people of Oros overall, had so much trouble with the demons. It wasn’t because of their ability to corrupt or their powerful strength or their locust-like numbers. The reason demons were so hard to deal with was that they had no morale to break. They didn’t care how many of their own kind died, or if their strongest warriors were taken down, or if the odds were clearly not in their favor. Demons were prepared to literally die to the last one of them if it meant harming just one more person. The mercenaries out here couldn’t hope for the demons to break and run as their numbers dwindled, because the demons wouldn’t run. They’d keep fighting, always.
“Shit,” Syd cursed, blinking the salty sweat out of her eyes as she rose back to her feet. “We’re in this for long haul, aren’t we?”
Kerr didn’t look back as she answered, firing another arrow into the horde.
“No fucking shit.”
As Syd prepared to jump back into the melee to help her other selves who were already swinging away at the demons around them, a burning heat came from overhead, dimming the late afternoon shadows that were stretched out around her. Looking up and expecting to see the Flame Wolf wizard on his burning disk, Syd instead froze in horror as a tentacled inferno fell from above, aiming straight for the wagon.
Shouts and screams reverberated around her as Syd let her lance slip from her fingers. With as much speed as she could muster, she turned and grabbed Eir and Aila into her arms to protect them, reaching for Kerr who was only then turning to look over her shoulder at the descending death. Syd had just gotten a hand on Kerr’s waist as the inferno struck the ground in a true explosion of fire.
The force of the shockwave sent Syd flying, her vision gone as smoke and flame and the chaos of being tossed head over heels robbed her of her sight. But Jadis’ other two selves could still see, even if she didn’t want to.
Long, sinewy tentacles tipped with curved blades of white bone radiated out in dozens of directions from the singular mass of the greater demon. Each tentacle was easily twenty feet long, their sharp ends whipping through the air in a burning frenzy. Some had thin membranes stretched between them, creating horrible, asymmetrical wings that flapped at odd angles. In the center of the wriggling mass was something like a man, in only the vaguest comparison. There were no legs, only a thick, maggot-like body from which the tentacles grew, but from there came a toothy torso with oversized arms and ten-fingered hands. The head that rose up from between its shoulders was pear-shaped and just as flame red as the rest of the demon, its vertically slit mouth open wide in a gaping, toothy maw from which more fire spilled like burning oil. Aside from the red flesh and white bone, the only spots of color different were the bright green eyes that ringed the top of the abomination’s head like an ocular crown. Lidless, they stared in all directions, radiating as much malice as it did heat.
“Get up!” Jadis heard someone scream, but she didn’t have the wherewithal to know who it was who had.
But it was enough to shake her out of her momentary stupor. Jay and Dys moved, leaping back over the line to face the demon as Thea and the mercenaries with her fell back as well, the shield wall opening to let them in.
The greater demon was already moving, though, and as Syd gathered herself, rising up from where she had fallen, she felt something hot wrap around her leg. Suddenly she was pulled up into the air, hanging upside down as the demon’s long arm grasped her and whipped her up into the air then slammed her down onto the ground with enough force that she bounced. Gasping for breath with all of the wind knocked out of her, Syd struggled to recover as the demon’s other huge hand struck down at her, ten curved claws aiming to rip her open like wrapping paper.
A translucent circle made of force magic appeared between her and the demon’s claws, its hand rebounding off the shimmering shield.
Aila, on one knee and bleeding from a wound on her temple, had her hand raised, her force shield protecting Syd from evisceration. Next to her, Eir lay on the ground but was already healing Aila, a hand on her leg as holy light radiated from her. Behind them, Kerr was nocking another arrow, aiming at the demonic inferno.
The demon turned towards them, flames wreathing its head as more fire poured from its freakish mouth. A gout of heat and flame jetted from it in a long spray, aiming for the trio. Another force shield appeared at Aila’s behest, blocking the deadly fire for a few seconds. A few precious seconds that Jadis put to good use.
Dys landed on the demon’s side, her maul raised in an overhead strike as she brought the weapon down, intending to crush the blazing monster’s arm off. The arm moved and tentacles blocked her before the blow could land, knocking Dys back as she crashed onto the ground a few body-lengths away. Jay was there at the same moment, her mallet slamming into the writhing mass of tentacles on the back of the demon. Flames erupted when her weapon struck, bursting outward and singeing Jay as she was forced to back away, her wooden weapon now burning from the heat.
The demon turned towards her, several tentacles whipping around and slicing at her body. Their bladed tips scraped against the thick steel of her armor but cut into the exposed flesh of her thighs and upper arms. Moving quickly, Jay dodged back, avoiding more of the deadly appendages as she swung her charred weapon, trying to fight back but finding little success.
The greater demon let out a screeching howl as flames blossomed around it, the muddy ground flash-drying into dust as it swung on Jay, the air shimmering with heat. The haft of Jay’s mallet shattered as she tried to block the haymaker swing of the inferno and she was flung back, landing hard on top of several soldiers that were unable to get out of the way fast enough.
More soldiers were gathering around the demon, shields and spears up but unable to approach due to the flames. Jadis winced as an unlucky man who drew too close was struck by a tentacle, the blade slashing but the heat literally burning his flesh within his armor as he was practically cooked by the demon’s flames.
Having struggled to her feet, Syd looked around for a weapon to wield, her lance lost in the chaos. Seeing nothing, she let out a feral scream of rage, both releasing her frustration and psyching herself up for the utterly idiotic thing she was about to do.
But when had doing something stupid ever stopped her before?
Rushing forward, Syd charged the greater demon. It saw her coming, despite not facing her way, and tentacles whipped around at her to cut her down. Clenching her teeth, Syd took several of the whip-like tentacles head on, letting them slash her body, but grabbed hold of three of them. With monumental effort, she swung around with the tentacles in hand.
At the same time, Dys leapt forward and grabbed two more tentacles while Jay came at the demon from a third angle, grabbing still more of the wriggling appendages and yanking them in her direction. The demon was pulled at from three different directions as Jadis weathered the heat and the sharp tips of the slashing tentacles, hauling at the demon with all of her might.
With a sickening tearing and popping noise, the many tentacles that Jadis had grabbed tore free from the demon’s body, burning blood spurting out from the empty sockets of where its detached limbs used to be. The terrible screeching and howling of enraged demon pierced the cacophony of battle, overriding all as it bellowed its pain and fury. One long arm swept out and knocked down Jay and Syd as the demon spun, wheeling about like a dervish as fire whipped out around it, burning and cutting indiscriminately.
A bolt of force magic struck the demon on the head as it turned in place, a gift from Aila that rocked it back but did not kill it. Instead, the spell focused its attention and for a horrifying instant, Jadis saw the demon’s baleful green eyes latch onto her lover.
The greater demon surged forward, its twisted parody of wings lifting it off the ground as its long arms launched it along faster than a sprinter’s legs. One arm reached forward, its long, many-jointed fingers wrapping around Aila’s arm before she could dodge out of the way.
Sheer terror gripped Jadis as she saw Aila lifted into the air by the demon, her body carried along by the flying abomination’s forward momentum as it began to take to the skies.
Jadis didn’t think, she didn’t hesitate. She just moved.
Dys hurled herself in the path of the demon and with a scream of hate she wrapped her legs around the arm that had grabbed Aila, one arm reaching out to save her while the other clutched at the greater demon’s other arm, desperately trying to keep its claws from ripping Aila to pieces. Together, they were both lifted into the sky as the burning demon flew up and away.
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