The sight of three identical giant women walking down the main street of Far Felsen had become something of a regular occurrence over the past few weeks. Thanks in part to their disappearance causing Magistrate Vraekae to put out a major search effort for them combined with their dramatic and highly noticeable return, the Nephilim were known by everyone in town. With a well-earned reputation for being the powerhouses who had slain the greater demon known as Burning Rancor and thus turning the tide of the recent battle, most people who saw the three sisters greeted them with a warm smile and wave at least.
Jadis noticed the warm greetings weren’t quite so forthcoming on this outing, however.
With all three of her bodies suited up in her newly fashioned armor, Jadis’ selves formed a moving wall of dark steel as they walked down the cobblestone street. Their height, already just over nine feet, was increased by several more inches just by the nature of their helmets and boots; their strong and broad shoulders made even broader by the solid pauldrons. Each step one of her bodies took was accompanied by the dense thump of a massive weight, and that sound was then tripled. A loose stone brick left on the ground was trampled under one of Jadis’ feet, shattering the rock into bits.
Intimidation was the word of the day, she decided. Even though people knew the only three people who could possibly be under all that Cold Flame Steel armor were the Nephilim triplets, foot traffic on the streets still scampered out of the way like scared mice. Only a scant few worked up the courage to wave as Jadis’ selves passed them by, which Jadis was sure to wave back in polite response. She wasn’t intentionally trying to scare anyone, after all. The imposing visage her three armored bodies presented was just an unintentional byproduct, was all.
Other than her armor, Jadis carried her newly acquired weapons, which probably only added to the intimidation factor. Other than Syd’s reliable lance, Jadis had needed replacements for her broken mallet and woefully outdated makeshift maul. The maul had been retired to a wall in the main room of the company hall, hung up before it could meet a wood-shattering fate. So that meant new armaments, which were hard to come by in her size.
For a while, Jadis had been using axes and spears meant for more normal-sized mercenaries. A two-handed battle axe was more like a hatchet in her hands, but it was still a deadly implement. Jadis had ended up keeping an axe on each of her bodies’ belts just for the sake of having a back-up weapon, copying Kerr in that regard. But to get something in her size, Jadis had paid a weaponsmith to make something quick and cheap, since she planned on having Sabina make her more permanent weapons later.
For Jay, she’d commissioned an iron-banded club. Club didn’t really do the massive weapon justice, though. Almost as tall as she was and as thick around as Aila’s waist at the end, the club was more like a tree that had been carved thin enough on one end to fit in Jadis’ hand. The six studded iron bands wrapped around it added to the significant weight of weapon, but also made it sturdier and deadlier, too. Jadis saw it as an improvement to her mallet, though the request she’d made of Sabina was something she hoped would make the big club seem like a toy in comparison.
For Dys, she’d gone with the only other thing else that could be made on short notice. A giant-sized axe, crudely fashioned from a block of iron. It wasn’t pretty, nor was it the kind of weapon that would last, even Jadis could tell. Its edge would dull in no time and the haft would need to be replaced sooner rather than later, but the weapon was at least in the right weight category for a Nephilim. Jadis had no doubt that she’d be able to bisect wretches with no problem using the brutal axe. Fuck, a grundwyrm probably couldn’t take many hits from the vicious-looking thing.
All that was to say, a fully armed and armored trio of Jadis looked like they meant business.
Behind the steel wall of giants, the rest of Fortune’s Favored kept pace. Kerr and Thea were the most martial looking of the bunch, their armor and weapons showing they were more than capable all on their own. Kerr’s black leather armor with its snarling-wolf faceplate matched up with Jadis’ dark armor nicely, and the giant enchanted bow slung over her shoulder made her look even more impressive. Thea, in contrast, had a far more orderly look to her newly altered armor. She’d had to swap out her imperial surcoat for something more generic and unbranded, but she’d been able to buy her armor back from the city since it had been fitted to her and would have needed alterations to be useful for anyone else. With a basic but reliable spear and, for some reason, the makeshift shield Jadis had crafted her, Thea looked more like a mercenary than an imperial soldier. Though she still marched like one.
Eir had traded in her white temple robes for something with a little more protection. “Battle robes” she had called them, a kind of cloth and leather armor that was typically worn by mages and healers who were regularly out in the field. They still looked like robes to Jadis, but the inner layer was apparently far sturdier and overall the set looked more fitted. Eir clearly had pants and boots on under the robes as well, plus protective pauldrons on her shoulders.
Aila had commissioned a similar set of light armor to what Eir had, though Jadis knew for a fact her full set was meant to just have leather pants, not the blue dress the redhead was sporting now. Still, the leather chest piece and shoulder guards looked good on the mage, as did the hooded helmet that she wore.
Jadis had suggested the hood and helmet combo, and it had turned out to look just as amazing on Aila as she had hoped.
The one person who stood out like a sore thumb among the martial-looking group was Sabina. Yes, she was tall for a woman, not as tall as Aila or Kerr but certainly taller than Thea and Eir. Yes, she was on the muscular side, with well-muscled arms and strong shoulders. And yes, she carried a hammer and a shield and was thus armed appropriately. However, despite being an armor smith, Sabina didn’t have any armor. She had never made any for herself. Thus, all she wore as she walked side by side with her experienced guildmates were her normal work clothes, including a smith’s apron.
At least the leather apron made her look cute, Jadis mused.
While thinking about just how cute Sabina would look wearing that leather apron and nothing else, Jadis led her small group past the open gates of the city and out into the burnt and battle-scared land surrounding Far Felsen. The guards at the gate made no attempt to stop her or send an escort with her as they had in the past. Vraekae had remained true to her word, cancelling her orders to keep a constant vigil on the Nephilim. She hadn’t lied either when she’d said that she hadn’t had the numbers to keep up a watch on her. There were a lot less guards stationed at the city gate; not because security was laxer, but because more men were needed out in the fields and hills to deal with the demonic threat.
Just outside the gates were “The Kilns”. Jadis wasn’t sure who had named them that, but it was an appropriately ominous title in her opinion. Giant stone ovens with tall chimneys had been crafted from the rock and stone of the hills by laborers and mages with the appropriate set of spells. Even now, three weeks later, black smoke still billowed from those awful chimneys as the thousands of bodies of the slain demons were burned en masse.
They couldn’t be buried, Aila had explained to her. The flesh and bones could still be used by other demons, especially bone thieves since they could always be dug up. Even worse, the decaying bodies were vectors for all kinds of foul diseases, even worse than normal corpses normally were. Burning them all was the only viable solution to the risk so many demon carcasses presented.
The same fate had also been dealt to the bodies of the more than two thousand soldiers and mercenaries that had died during the attacks on the border forts and the battle outside the city walls. Not in the same ovens as the demons, of course. Those brave soldiers had been given ceremonial cremations by the temple, their ashes stored in urns to be sent back to their next of kin along with their possessions and final wages. Since demons could possess the corpses of loved ones, cremation was the most common way of handling the dearly departed, though some did bury their dead in mausoleums according to Eir. That was the privilege of the stupidly rich, Kerr had pointed out, which had naturally sparked a debate between her and Eir on what counted as stupidly rich, but that was nothing Jadis was in a position to weigh in on.
Seeing a group of men tossing the badly decayed bodies of the few remaining demon corpses into the fiery mouth of one of the giant kilns made Jadis think about the final member of their little group.
Jadis’ bodies weren’t carrying any packs on their backs for this short trip out into the Broken Hills, but Aila was wearing hers. Nestled on the side of that pack was a stiff leather and steel canteen with an extra-wide mouth. Inside that container lay Jadis’ little demon hatchling.
She still wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the demonling, with its neon-blue eye and oddly obedient behavior. She still hadn’t found anyone who she felt she could talk to about the demon. No authority on demonic psychology and biology made a home in the southernmost colony of Weigrun, unsurprisingly. She still hoped to find someone eventually but had contented herself with her own observations. Mostly those observations involved letting the demon crawl around on the floor while she ordered it to perform simple commands like she would a dog. The hatchling took to those commands shockingly well, though so far it hadn’t been able to comprehend anything more complicated than fetch.
Eir’s reaction to watching a demon wriggling across the floor while dragging a little wooden ball behind it had been priceless.
Jadis didn’t need to bring the demon with her anymore, she supposed. She had her own established home in the city now. She could leave the tiny demon locked up in their room. But something about the idea of just locking the hatchling away in a vault for days on end felt wrong to Jadis. If the demon was as intelligent as a dog, which Jadis was certain of that much at least by then, then confining it to a tiny prison all alone for days on end made her feel like a bad pet owner. She acknowledged that was a stupid and ridiculous thought since the demon was a demon and not a pet, but still. Keeping the demonling with the group eased her conscience.
“How far are we going?” Kerr asked, stretching out her arms as she surveyed the hills.
A cold wind off the sea was blowing the smoke inland, but the day was otherwise cloudless and fair. The last remnants of the battle were busily being wiped away by hard-working men and women and the way ahead was clear.
“Let’s head northwest,” Jay pointed in the direction, her helmet making her voice echo. “That’s where one of the tunnel entrances is. We might have a better chance there of running into some demons.”
“And if that area is clear,” Dys continued, “we can sprint up to the border and look for enemies along the way.”
“The border?” Sabina chirped in puzzlement. “You mean the border of the Great Southern Forest? But the border is at least six hours away and its maybe an hour before noon now and if we’re out that long then it’ll be way past dark and the gates will be closed when we get back to the city and I’m not prepared to sleep outside the city walls after dark because I didn’t bring my toothbrush and I thought you said this would be a short outing just to check out your new armor and—”
“Listen up quick tongue,” Kerr said while putting a firm hand on Sabina’s shoulder. “First thing you’ve got to learn is to expect the unexpected when you’re going on any kind of outing with us.”
“Okay?” Sabina nodded, her confusion only growing more pronounced.
“The second thing is, since you aren’t wearing a helmet, keep your mouth shut while we’re riding otherwise you will swallow a fucking bug.”
“Riding? But we don’t have any horses—”
“All aboard!” Kerr shouted, then leapt into Syd’s arms. “I call ‘princess carry’ this time!”
Sorry this chapter came out a little late, had the opportunity to visit with some relatives I haven't seen in a long time and more time passed than I realized.
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