“If you scream, I’m going to break your arms. If you spit on me, I’ll knock out all of your teeth. If you lie to me, I’m going fold you in half and leave you out in the cold to choke on your own shit for a few hours. We clear?”
“Jay!” Willa shouted from off to the side. “You are interfering in an official imperial investigation! You cannot do anything you just threat—”
“Shut up!” Dys snapped as her temper flared. “Vraekae never seems to have any problem interfering in our business! The only reason we’re even in this situation is because she keeps fucking interfering. She’s just going to have to deal with a little interference on our end.”
“If you don’t stop right now—”
“You’ll what?” Dys growled, turning to look down on Willa. “You’ll do what?”
Jadis couldn’t have made the threat clearer. Willa and her diminished squad had no equipment except that which they had scavenged from the dead bandits Jadis and her team had killed. Dys and Syd stood tall, their black armor shining in the firelight and their weapons gleaming. Even without her armor, Jay loomed over everyone, the signs of the wounds that would have killed practically anyone else in the gathering still obvious on her.
“Jay, Dys, please,” Aila spoke up softly from behind her. “Your anger is justified, but Willa doesn’t deserve your ire.”
“No, no she doesn’t,” Dys agreed after a moment, though her eyes stayed locked onto the captain. “We have no intention of hurting anyone. Except for this piece of shit,” she reached back and slapped the dangling man’s side with the back of her hand. “But we won’t kill him. Eir will see to that.”
“Just think of this as us helping with your investigation,” Syd added with a tilt of her head. “You don’t have to tell Vraekae or anyone else about how you got this information.”
“Are you asking me to lie?” Willa spoke quietly.
“I’m telling you we’re going to get the information we want out of this pissant and if there’s anything we do you think will look bad on your report, you can omit it. Or don’t. We don’t care.”
Willa, give her credit, maintained a strict attitude of professionalism. She didn’t shout, she didn’t curse. She simply stared at the trio of Nephilim, her disapproval glaring yet ultimately, impotent. Out in the wilds, there wasn’t a whole lot she could do to stop Jadis, and they both knew it.
With no sign of further obstruction from the onlookers, Jay resumed her so far one-sided conversations with the captive man. She’d never stopped staring at him, her violet eyes locked on with fervent intensity.
“Are you paying attention? Better be. My girl Eir there will heal you if you’re hurt. I promise you, you won’t die. You might wish you were dead if you lie to us, but that’s a different story. First things first. What’s your name, scum stain?”
With those words, Jay none too gently ripped the gag from the man’s mouth.
“Jonas,” the word tumbled from the captive’s lips as soon as they were free, with more to quickly follow. “Jonas of Lautenberg, from Eighth Squad in Redhawk’s Company! I’ll tell you anything you want! Anything! Just ask, I swear it!”
Jay tilted her head to one side, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Just like that?”
“Yes! Anything!” Jonas hurried to assure her as he tried to nod his head but found the movement difficult with Jay’s fingers around his neck. “Nothing they’ve paid me is worth losing my arms or teeth! Besides, Carnell blasted his fire in that tunnel after us knowing it would have cooked me, too. So fuck that lot, I’ll tell you anything you want to know!”
Jadis considered herself to be good at reading people, better than most were. Jonas’ desperation was obvious, but there was a blatant, frantic honesty to his words as well. How truthful the man was going to be was still unknown, but she suspected he was going to be too concerned with keeping his bones intact to put much thought into lying.
“Who do you work for?” Jay asked bluntly.
“Captain Hakon,” Jonas answered immediately.
“That’s not what I asked and you know it,” Jay pressed as her grip squeezed Jonas’ neck a little tighter. “Who’s in charge of this operation? Who’s running it overall?”
“I’m not sure!” the soldier rushed, his voice cracking from the stress. “Captain Hakon is the highest-ranking officer I’ve seen directly involved! I-I’ve heard Major Kreszentia oversees above Hakon but I’ve never seen her in the caves or around the shipments! Hakon’s the highest I personally know of!”
“What about Egilhard?” Jay focused on the person she most wanted to know about. “What’s his involvement?”
“None so far as I know,” Jonas replied, fearfully looking between Jadis’ three faces crowded around him. “I mean, if he is involved, I’ve never seen it. I swear!”
As frustrating as Jonas’ answer was, Jadis could easily believe it. The man clearly wasn’t high in the chain of command. His knowledge of the operation would naturally be limited and if Egilhard had half a brain, he’d be delegating as much responsibility to subordinates as possible to put lots of distance and plausible deniability between him and the criminal activity.
“And for the record,” Syd interjected, “what exactly are you all doing down there?”
Jonas blinked clearly thrown off by the question. After a couple of seconds, his brain seemed to catch up and he quickly answered.
“Mining! We’re mining eleria, down in those tunnels. We’re taking it back to Alawar and shipping it back to the mainland.”
So Aila had been right. Dys glanced back at her redheaded girlfriend, briefly meeting her eyes. She didn’t exactly look happy to have her theory proven true, but that was at least partially due to her having her cool façade in place.
“How long have you been at it? And how did you figure out the tunnels?” Jay questioned Jonas, keeping the momentum going.
“More than a month, closer to two,” the soldier replied. “I’m not sure exactly. All I know is that captain Hakon said he had maps from before the demonic invasion, maps from the miners that showed several long, straight tunnels that run from north to south deep under the mountains. He said they hadn’t been explored much before the invasion happened, but when he heard about the unnatural straight tunnel from, er, well, when you three were down there, he thought it was more than coincidence. He said he found a connection point during the initial survey and covered it up in the reports. He, uh, recruited men he said he could trust. Got us to clear a way through to the parts he had maps for, then had us start mining as much as we could.”
“And how much are you getting paid for doing this?” Jay demanded. “Don’t try to tell me you volunteered out of some sense of selfless generosity towards captain Hakon.”
Jonas hesitated, his expression turned momentarily shamefaced. He swallowed loudly, his eyes no longer meeting Jay’s.
“A cut of the profits once the eleria sold back on the mainland. Fifty eagles upfront. For our discretion.”
“And?”
“I don’t—”
“Cut the bullshit,” Syd hissed, one hand moving to the man’s shoulder and squeezing tight enough to make his armor creak. “I can tell you’re holding back.”
“Promotion!” Jonas winced. “Promotions for all of us! We’d all go up a rank at least, maybe more! I was told I’d be made a lieutenant!”
“You?” Willa scoffed, speaking up for the first time since Jadis started her interrogation. “What rank are you, soldier? Are you even a sergeant?”
“Corporal,” he replied miserably. “Second class.”
Jadis wasn’t too familiar with military ranks, but she knew enough to know that the leap from corporal to lieutenant was a big one, with several ranks between skipped.
“Promotions like that for everyone?” Jay asked. At Jonas’ nod, she continued. “How many of you are involved? That you know for sure.”
“Seventy, I think,” Jonas answered after he thought for a moment. “I would say seventy. Or maybe a little less? I don’t know how many of the men back at the docks really know what’s going on or are just being paid to look the other way when the boxes are delivered.”
That was a lot of people. A lot of promotions, too. More than Jadis would think feasible considering the rigidness of most military structures. From Willa’s expression, Jadis could tell her assumption was spot on. That many big promotions wouldn’t make any sense. Not unless there were vacancies to fill, of course…
“Here,” Jay commanded as she sat Jonas down on the ground in front of captain Willa. “Tell her every name you know from your merry band of smugglers along with anything else she wants to know. Don’t leave a single detail out, and don’t make me come back over here. If I have to lay another hand on you, I promise you won’t enjoy it.”
Jonas nodded vigorously as he collapsed onto the cave floor in front of Willa. Relief flooded his face as his whole body sagged once Jadis released him. Then Willa took a step closer to him and started barking her own commands.
“Stand up maggot!” she ordered harshly. “At attention! You’ll be lucky if you aren’t hanged after your court martial once we get back to Far Felsen. Keep talking and maybe you’ll save your miserable neck from being stretched.”
Jadis left the prisoner and any further interrogation to Willa. She’d gotten everything she wanted to know from the man and didn’t care to be around him or the soldiers any longer. She strode away from the gathering, putting some distance between her selves and the activity. What she really wanted to do was crawl into a warm bed far, far away from anyone who’d ever muttered the names Egilhard or Vraekae even in passing and sleep for a month or two. That dream didn’t seem likely to become real, though.
Jadis’ companions moved in to be near to her, though not too close. They all gave Jadis’ selves some space and it was easy to guess why. She hadn’t exactly been subtle with her anger. For D’s sake, she’d threatened violence against Willa, or at least heavily implied it. Even after walking away, her expression was still thunderous, something she could see thanks to her multiple expressions.
Gods, her burned face really was awful.
As Jadis stood there for a few moments in silence, breathing slow and hard through her nose, she caught sight of movement in the corner of one of her eyes. Hanging from its spot on the front of the wagon, she saw Alex inside its glass cage, wiggling and moving around in an excited manner. When she met eyes with the little demonling, it started moving even more, practically tossing itself at the glass in an attempt to move towards her.
With a sigh, Jay took the cage down from the wagon and opened it up, letting the little hatchling out. It immediately wriggled its way up her arm and to her shoulder, then to Jadis’ surprise, it climbed onto her hairless head and began moving its many tentacles across her skin, almost like it was… petting her?
“Well that’s not creepy as fuck or anything,” Kerr muttered as she watched the demon stroke Jay’s head.
The comment, combined with the visual which her other bodies were well able to see, made Jadis chuckle. The brief guffaw quickly escalated into an all-out belly laugh as both the absurdity of the situation and the stress of the past couple of days got to her. The others just stared as Jadis got her almost manic laughter under control, wiping away a few tears that managed to leak out of her eyes.
At some point, as she got her emotions under control, she realized that someone had moved closer to her. Eir had come up to Jay’s side and was holding onto her hand in a comforting gesture. Once she realized, Jay squeezed the elf’s hand back.
“Sorry,” Syd muttered. “I’m—we’re all a little stressed out. We’re better now. Thanks.”
“You need a drink,” Kerr told her, no tease in her voice. "And maybe a good hot meal.”
“You need sleep,” Aila said as well. “All of you. You’ve been running yourself ragged trying to do everything. You’ve got to rest.”
They were, of course, right. She needed to rest. She just wasn’t sure how she was going to be able to get any proper rest out in the field when there were so many dangers everywhere. She was the strongest, she was the one that had been sent by a god to Oros on a mission. She had to make sure everyone was safe. She—
She was being a fucking twat. Even as she thought it out, she knew she was. Sure, she was physically the strongest, but her companions were all powerful in their own right. In fact, she wasn’t certain she could beat Aila or Kerr in a straight fight. Aila’s magic damage was huge and more than capable of both locking her down and hitting multiple targets at once, plus it was a damage type she had virtually no defense against. Kerr’s single-target damage was massive now, especially with her upgraded enchanted bow. She didn’t know for sure how much damage she could do with one shot, but she knew it would fucking hurt if it hit her. The archer was literally capable of slaying drakes solo.
All of that was to say that Jadis needed to let go and trust her companions. She did, implicitly, of course. But her protective instincts were getting in the way. She needed to take a break. She just wasn’t certain this was the time to do it.
“Yes, you’re right,” Dys said.
“You’re both right,” Syd continued the thought. “We really need to sleep, and Jay needs some care, too.”
“Sorry,” Jay added with a sigh. “I lost my cool there for a bit.”
“Hey, if that’s losing your cool, it’s not all bad then,” Bridget chimed in after a brief pause. “I mean, you didn’t actually hurt anyone yeah?”
“Well, no, but—”
“That asshole deserved to have the piss scared out of him,” Kerr asserted with a sharp gesture. “And Willa’s an idiot for getting mad about it. You just saved her a night’s messy work, at a minimum. She’ll get over it.”
“She’s n—not that upset,” Thea spoke up in her quiet way. “If she w—was, she’d have, ah, stopped you. She w—wanted him to t—talk.”
Jadis privately wasn’t so sure, especially since she didn’t know how the captain would have been able to, but she trusted Thea’s judgement. She knew Willa better than her, that was for sure.
“My cousin is… difficult to handle at times,” Eir murmured as she squeezed Jay’s hand, sending a pulse of healing magic through her. “And her actions can come across as rather… unilateral. However, I don’t believe her intentions are malicious, not regarding you or us. And, if I may say, I am at least thankful for some parts of her interference, since it was because of her interference we were brought together. The same can be said for more than just me, I think.”
“Yeah, there is that,” Jay smiled down at Eir. “I hate to admit it, but she did match us up, didn’t she?”
Unexpectedly, Eir started giggling, a response Jadis hadn’t expected to her admission. She quickly realized why, though, as the others around her let out a few giggles and laughs as well. Alex had positioned itself directly on top of Jay’s head, its tentacles acting as a sort of wig. It was even curling up the tips into an odd but definitely purposeful stylized pose.
“Okay, thank you Alex,” Syd laughed as she took the little demon off of Jay’s head to hold in her hands.
“Okay, all the mushy stuff aside,” Dys announced as she got everyone’s attention. “And yes, I plan on getting some kind of real rest, but considering everything we just learned: what’s the plan?”
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