Chapter 18: Chapter 18: Short Rest

The rest of the night was not a restful one for Jadis. At some point, when the dark was deepest and the forest was silent as the grave, a clacking of bone on bone could be heard outside her hut. Though she could see nothing, boarded up in her tiny shelter and the pitch-black absolute, she could hear creeping monsters prowling just outside the stone walls of where she hid.

She did not pray to D that she would go unnoticed. Jadis was certain that D wouldn’t answer a prayer like that from her considering the bargain they had made. She did, however, keep as quiet as she could so as not to attract any demonic attention.

Whether due to her own efforts or divine intervention, no more demons came knocking on her door that night. The morning light came, and with it came truth.

Jay was hurt. With all the adrenaline worn off, two bodies lying together in the dark for a whole night with little to distract her, Jadis was forced to face the plain facts. The blow she had suffered from the large bone thief falling on her had left her ribs bruised, some possibly fractured. The clawed hand of the demon had also dug deep into her shoulder. It was a flesh wound, but it was still a bloody one that was impairing the free movement of her left arm.

When she thought about it, Jadis had to admit that her health pool was telling her a dire story. She was at one hundred and thirty-seven out of two hundred and thirty, before Knight’s Rest. If she had been playing a game, she wouldn’t have been too concerned, seeing as she had a little more than half her health points to rely on. Jadis wasn’t playing a game, though, and when looked at as a true measure of her life, her health points were saying she was nearly half dead.

The thought shook her a little, though she wasn’t sure of the accuracy of her assessment. She wasn’t interested in dying again, not so soon. She might have gone into her deal with D with a fairly cavalier attitude as to her survival, but now that she had the body she’d always longed for, doubled in number no less, she didn’t want to lose it. Either of them.

Did that mean she should act more cautiously? She rolled the thought over in her head, weighing it carefully. It was only yesterday that she had resolved to act more aggressively to hunt down the demons that plagued the valley. Flushed with the idea of being armed and armored, and maybe just a bit enamored with her own strength, she had felt she had a good handle on combating the bone thieves. Now here she was, strongly considering going back to sneaking around the village like a mouse at a cat show.

Jadis didn’t like the idea. She wanted to be strong. She was strong. She loved the thrill of fighting and the panting exertion that came with it. Defeating demons, her enemies, made her feel accomplished in a way that nothing else had in her previous life.

Yes, that was it. She loved feeling like she had accomplished something. Jadis had never thought of herself as particularly violent or combative. She had never backed down from a fight before, but she hadn’t gone looking for any, either. The bone thief she had crushed that first afternoon on Oros, only a few days ago, was the first real physical fight she had ever been in. She had wondered, after having taken to killing demons so quickly, if maybe she was, unknown to her own mind, actually a bloodthirsty maniac.

No, she was not. That was a silly thought. She loved the thrill of combat, but she didn’t feel any craving to kill anyone when she examined the possibility in her mind’s eye. What she felt when she destroyed the demons was the feeling as though her actions mattered. Maybe not to anyone else in the whole world, but what she was doing mattered to her.

That was a feeling she’d not felt before her rebirth. Ever.

Soulful introspections aside, Jadis needed to make a decision about what she was going to do. Again, the idea of staying hidden shoved its way to the forefront of her mind and again it instantly annoyed her. Jadis didn’t want to hide. She didn’t want to do anything stupidly reckless, either.

With the sun most definitely up and both her bodies most certainly awake, Jadis checked her status menu.

Her health had gone up by sixteen points. That was five less than the previous night, to her memory. At least that served as proof that the amount recovered wasn’t some kind of percentage of her total max health, otherwise it would have been the same.

Both Jay and Dys sighed in unison. Her decision was made. Jadis needed time to heal.

She refused to think of it as hiding, though. She wasn’t cowering in fear like some lost puppy. She was taking a brief rest to regain some strength. Grudgingly, she applied some of her physiotherapy training she’d learned during her admittedly short time at college. Everyone needed a rest day.

Since Dys was the less injured of the two, she got up and went about the business of cleaning up the main room of the hut while Jay stayed put and acted the part of the convalescing patient.

Jadis knew from the description that Knight’s Rest would only heal her while she slept, but she saw no reason to aggravate Jay’s wounds. She had two bodies, so she might as well take advantage of the fact.

Amongst the wreckage of the main room, Dys found several pieces of armor she’d missed when moving into the cramped back room. Most of the rest of her supplies were fine as well, though she had a terrible time trying to find some of the needles that had been scattered across the floor, knocked loose from her pilfered sewing kit.

The real loss, though, were her jars of food preserves. Several had been broken, ruining the contents. There were only two jars left.

Resigned to the fact, Dys cracked one of the jars open and shared the contents with Jay. The contents were some kind of tart green berry that made her stomachs hurt a little from the sourness, but she was in no position to complain. After drinking their fill of water, Jadis settled both of her bodies down to sleep the day away.

A full day and night passed with Jadis doing little more than sleeping. She had resolved to rest and rest she did. Periodically throughout the day and night, Jadis could hear the tell-tale clatter of bone thieves creeping around near her hut, but none of them stayed long and none attempted to enter. Whenever she did hear them come close, though, Jadis had both clubs to hand, ready to attack any skeletal intruders.

The fact that the bone thieves did not try to tear down her barricaded door said a lot about the creatures. Jadis had been curious for a while now about how smart the demons were. Considering the obvious evidence of her having killed one of their own in the vicinity, as well as the closed-up door and windows, she would have thought that they’d have drawn the obvious conclusion by now. As they refrained from sieging her abode, Jadis felt she had an answer to the question of demonic intelligence.

They were stupid.

On the morning of the next day, Jadis reviewed her status while sharing the last jar of preserves between her two selves. The fare was more of the sweet gold berries she’d eaten before. Those were her favorite out of everything she’d had so far, so at least the taste brought her a little cheer.

“One hundred and ninety-eight,” Dys said with relief in her voice. “We healed over forty points from all that sleep.”

“And my ribs and shoulder feel way better,” Jay said between mouthfuls of sweet berries.

“I guess that means as long as we can sleep, we can recover pretty damn quickly. Cracked ribs usually take something like a month to recover from, maybe longer. We just healed most of that damage up over the course of two nights.”

“Probably should have done this as soon as we got Knight’s Rest.” Jay mused. “If we weren’t out of food now, I’d say we should keep sleeping until we have full health.”

Dys nodded along. “Yeah, that’d be nice. I feel like we’ve been undereating as is, though. We’re both starting to look a little thinner. If we want to keep our pretty figures, we’ve got to find some more food.”

“Too much to ask for pizza delivery, isn’t it,” Jay said dryly, gazing upwards through the bare rafters to where D was presumably looking down on her with a bored expression on his faceless countenance.

Jadis had the night before made a promise to put on a show for D. So far, she’d failed to live up to that vow, having spend the whole day sleeping. She’d needed the rest, so she didn’t feel bad per se about not following through on her half-asleep pledge, but it did rankle her a bit.

Having no more food was an excuse. She knew enough about nutrition to know that it would take weeks to starve. She could fast for a day and sleep to full health and it’d not harm her in the least. If anything, it’d only help her, since having full health would be a major boon in any upcoming battles.

The truth was, Jadis didn’t want to wait. She was itching for a fight. She couldn’t stand the idea of spending another day in idleness when there were demons stalking around her home, acting like they owned the place.

Well, maybe they did own the place, since they’d probably killed all the villagers and taken the town as their den.

Ownership of property was beside the point. Jadis was the top dog in this village now that she was here. She was going to crush those despicable demons to shards. It was them that would be fleeing her, assuming they were smart enough to know fear.

Mind made up, Jadis finished her breakfast and morning ablutions, then armed herself for war.

Unlike all her previous walks through the forest, Jay and Dys did not skulk today. Before, she’d always walked slowly and carefully, hiding behind trees, keeping low and quiet. Now, she walked boldly. Jadis wasn’t going to be hiding on this day. She walked in the open, challenging any bone thief that might be nearby to come and meet her. She had two stone clubs she was eager to introduce them to.

Checking the trees behind her hut, Jadis found that the shell she’d tossed there was gone. No surprise, the other bone thieves had taken the skeletal remains for themselves. Other than a lack of bones, nothing else waited in that spot for Jadis, so she moved on.

Her next stop was the cellar where she’d hidden the remains of the other two bone demons she had killed. Quickly checking inside, she found that the bones were piled up in the corner she had left them in.

Good. She had been worried that the demons had some way of detecting loose bones and would find them regardless of where she hid them, but apparently that wasn’t a skill they possessed. She still worried the spot would be found, so she’d be on the lookout for a better spot, but that was a low priority. She wouldn’t need to hide any bones at all if she killed all the demons, after all.

From the skeleton filled cellar, Jadis worked her way south west and approached the village proper. The lichen-covered stone buildings looked as still and silent as they had been the last time she’d visited, but Jadis knew that there had to be enemies lurking about somewhere. Some were stalking the woods, she was sure, but other demons were likely haunting the deserted town, waiting in ambush.

Looking at the stone temple dominating the northern part of the dwarven village, Jay and Dys grinned. Demons weren’t the only ones who could set up an ambush.

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