Jadis snarled, her temper flaring to even greater heights. Her three bodies dropped into combat stances, ready to attack the taunting Fetch. There were dozens of fake Jadis’ on the clifftop now, but only one was the real Jack. She could sweep her weapons through the illusions in a coordinated pattern, eliminate the possibilities while cornering the infuriating asshole—
She halted her thoughts before she could finish her battleplan. What in D’s name was she doing? Why was she trying to fight Jack? Yes, she—or was it he? — was a mocking jackass, but why did that matter? Jack was clearly trying to provoke her. But what was the point? Weren’t they on the same side? Wasn’t she a member of an avatar race, just like she had been searching for? Why was she trying to throw down with the jackass when what she should be doing was talking to her?
“Fine, one hit, for now.” Jay finally said, her chest heaving as her anger simmered. In an attempt at making a truce, she tried asking her a simple question. “So what the fuck are you doing here? What do you want?”
“Ah, now you ask,” the dozens of false Nephilim replied, all speaking in a sing-song chorus. “So far, all I’ve heard from you are ‘me this’ and ‘my that’. So self-centered, really. But what more can be expected from someone who earned the Mirror Knight class, hm? Who could have guessed that a Nephilim would be narcissistic.”
Jadis’ anger flared again, but she ruthlessly squashed it, keeping her temper in check. She wasn’t going to let Jack goad her into any more stupid distractions. Instead of answering, she waited silently for a proper response. She even made a show of deliberately putting the butts of her weapons onto the ground, holding them in a non-combative way.
After a couple of drawn-out seconds, the many illusions all clicked their tongues before abruptly disappearing. Only one remained, a version of Jadis holding a large glaive that was standing only a few paces away from Jay. She set the butt of her glaive down in a mirror of Jadis’ stance, then raised her visor to expose her mildly disappointed expression.
“C’mon now, don’t be boring. Throw another tantrum! We can have an epic duel, you and me, right here on the top of this dangerous and scenic cliff. Sister against sister in a struggle for honor and survival! Doesn’t that sound fun in an overly melodramatic way?”
“No,” Jadis said flatly, answering with all three of her selves. “If that’s the reason why you’re here, then you’re out of luck. I don’t have time to play around with a jackass right now.”
“Tsk. So serious,” Jack replied in a mocking tone. “Where’s that childlike wonder I remember you having not too long ago?”
“I’m saving it for situations that don’t involve you.”
“Meanie.”
“Prick.”
Jack rolled her eyes, her body language relaxing as she stretched her shoulders. She looked away from Jadis, almost like she wasn’t as interested in her anymore, her violet eyes drifting across the snow-shrouded landscape below them.
“Okay, well, I guess it’s been fun catching up,” she said. “Nice seeing you and all that. But it’s getting kind of cold up here, so—”
“Hold on,” Jadis interrupted, huffing a big breath as she rethought her next words. Talking to Jack really made her feel like she was talking to D, only less terrifying and more annoying. “That was you, back on top of that other ridge, right? I saw D’s statue on top of that ridge and it led me to be at the right place and time to see that Willa and her troops were under attack.”
“Yeah, that was me,” Jack replied nonchalantly. “What of it?”
“Why’d you do that?” Jadis asked, some of the desperate confusion she felt bleeding into her voice. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious you don’t want anything to do with me. So why were you there? Why grab my attention like that and help me when you clearly don’t want to be helpful?”
Jack frowned, her brow furrowing in a way that Jadis was intimately familiar with. She’d seen that look on her own faces many times when she was frustrated with something, often times herself. Was the perfect imitation of her facial patterns a purposeful mockery, or was there something about how the Fetch copied people that meant she acted the same way as her targets did instinctually?
“He got me that time,” Jack murmured quietly, barely audible over the wind. She heaved a sigh before staring at Jay crossly. “I didn’t know I was heading there for you. Not until I was already there. Then, since I was already there, I figured I might as well go along with it and see what would happen. Could have been interesting. It actually kind of was, so I guess I don’t regret it. Sort of.”
“What do you mean, got you?” Jadis asked. “Who got you?”
“D, of course,” Jack answered as though Jadis were being a complete idiot. “Dear old daddy Destarious. He led me there, gave me the motivation. Same as he drew you to that place, too, I suppose.”
“You said you aren’t an oracle, though,” Jadis shook her heads slowly in confusion. “How’d he tell you to be at the split-peaked mountain?”
“He didn’t—” Jack started, then paused. A look of dawning recognition flitted across her face, followed by a wide, amused grin. “Oh, I get it now. You still don’t know how it works, do you? It’s been months, Jady-Poo, and you still haven’t figured out what it means to be an avatar of the gods, have you?”
That brought Jadis up short. Whether by accident or intention, the conversation had shifted to where she most needed it to go. Jadis’ whole reason for this damned expedition had been to find a friendly member of an avatar race that could tell her how to communicate with Lyssandria and Destarious. She was supposed to be able to call on them for guidance, she’d been promised as much by the deities themselves. Or rather, Lyssandria had said so. Jadis assumed that would probably be true for D as well, though she didn’t know for sure.
This windswept cliff face wasn’t the place where two streams met before spilling over into five waterfalls like she had been told to look for during her meeting with Destarious, but Jack was in fact a member of an avatar race. If she knew something about how she should be able to call on either deity, then Jadis would take the information, even if the source was irritating.
“No, I don’t know how to receive guidance from D,” Jadis admitted candidly, biting back her annoyance with the frustrating Jack. “Not without the help of an oracle. I’ve been trying to figure this shit out for a while now and I could actually really use some help from someone who knows what they’re doing. Look, you can make fun of me all you want if it’ll make you happy, but can you please tell me what I should be doing to receive D’s or Lyssandria’s guidance?”
Jack snorted, stifling a fit of giggles with the back of one gauntleted hand. As her laughter died away, though not her wide grin, she reached down and tapped three times against her stomach with a metallic clank.
“It’s all right here, my silly little gosling. Everything you need to talk with dear old dad or that big-breasted bimbo has been inside you all along.”
“Will you please stop—” Jadis began, her frustration with Jack’s half-answers reaching her limit.
“Gods above!” Jack threw up both her hands. “I forgot how vexingly dense you can be! Your guts, you rot brain! I’m talking about your guts!”
“My… guts?” Jadis responded slowly, a certain suspicion growing inside her.
“Yes! Haven’t you ever had a gut instinct?” Jack asked, taking a few steps closer to Jay while giving her a hard, piercing look. “A hunch? A thought or a feeling that just seemed to come out of nowhere? That’s what you’ve been looking for. That’s what the gods do. They give you that nagging little nudge in one direction or another, tickling your brain into thinking that maybe you should do something, or maybe you shouldn’t do something, or maybe whatever the fuck it is they want. That’s it! No messages written in the sky, no words whispered in your ears, no visions explaining everything in black and white while you sleep. Just. Gut. Instinct.”
“But… that’s nothing,” Jadis murmured. “People get hunches all the time. I get hunches all the time! How would I even tell the difference between my own instinct and…?”
“Exactly!” Jack hissed, having come to a stop only a foot away from Jay. With deliberate casualness, she reached up with one hand and raised Jay’s visor, revealing her confused, troubled expression. “How does one tell the difference between an idea that came from their own gut instincts versus a notion that a God like D has planted in your subconscious for his own personal agenda?”
Hovering her face mere inches away from Jay’s, Jack’s grin split wide open, revealing all of her teeth as her violet eyes bore unblinkingly into her own.
“The thought is enough to drive a person mad.”
Jay stumbled back from Jack, her mind whirling as her heart beat so loudly in her ears she couldn’t even hear the wind anymore. How many times had she relied on her gut to guide her in the past few months? How often did she rely on her instincts to make a decision? Were they her instincts, or were they D’s? Or was Lyssandria sending her intrusive instinctual hunches in order to control what she did? Fuck, she could have two different deities with different motivations sending her subtle mental directions at any time, maybe all of the time, and she had no way of knowing which one they were coming from or if they were just her normal human instincts.
Had any motivation she’d had since coming to Oros been her own?
A sharp, cold pain pulled Jadis from her spinning thoughts. Blinking and shaking her heads, she came to the sudden realization that Jack had removed one of her gauntlets and had… shoved a finger up Jay’s nose?
“What the fuck are you doing!?” All three of Jadis shouted as Jay slapped Jack’s hand away.
“Sorry,” Jack replied without a hint of remorse. “You were getting kind of lost in your head there, so, you know.”
“No, no I do not know!”
Jack examined her finger, made a face, then reached out and wiped the offending digit against Jay’s armored shoulder. Jay promptly slapped the hand away again.
“Look, I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Jack rolled her eyes. “You’re an avatar, not a construct. You have free will, just the same as all the little worshipers scurrying around. Not every thought you have is influenced by D or the Lady or anyone else. Just some occasional nudges in certain directions.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to tell the difference, though?” Jadis asked, her voice more scared than angry. “How am I supposed to know which thought is mine and which one isn’t?”
Jack shrugged.
“I dunno.”
The Fetch paused a moment later, seeing the look on Jadis’ faces. She sighed, her chest heaving in a dramatic display of self-sacrifice.
“Look, kid, I get it. I really do. Four months ago, I got a sudden desire to visit an old, abandoned village that held one of D’s temples. I liked that place, lots of followers who knew how to have a good time used to live there. Hard workers, those people, but they could throw a party. I knew it was a dead village though, had been ever since the demonic invasion had started again. Still, I felt like it would be a good idea to go visit the place. Was that D telling me to go there because he wanted me to be around to help you out? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I’m just an old fart and I get nostalgic sometimes and like to visit places where I made good memories, and maybe D took advantage of that and plopped you down somewhere he knew I was going to be because it was convenient. Hard to say. Point is, don’t think too hard about it or you really will drive yourself insane.”
“That’s… but I—” Jadis started, then stopped. She really didn’t know what to say to Jack’s revelation and subsequent advice. “I’m just supposed to not think about it? Just like that?”
How was she supposed to ignore what Jack had told her now that she knew that at least some of her gut instincts were not her own. The answer was, she couldn’t. She couldn’t put that thought out of her mind, not easily. Which might have been the whole point of why Jack had said it in the first place. The Fetch was, without any doubt, a troublemaker. She had openly admitted to not helping Jadis when she was low level and all alone because she thought it would be funny to watch her struggle. Jack had been messing with her from the very start, both from Jadis’ literal day one on Oros, and from the start of their very first true interaction. How could she trust what Jack was saying? The Fetch could be lying to her about there not being a way to tell the difference.
She could be lying to her about the whole thing.
Jadis focused, her mind gaining resolve. She wasn’t going to let this Jackass screw with her head. She wasn’t going to let anyone manipulate her like that. She did have free will, her own wants and desires, and she wasn’t going to let them become secondary to anyone else’s. Maybe Jack was being honest, or considering she was an avatar of a literal god of madness, secrets, and lies, maybe she was continuing the trend.
“How do I know you’re telling me the truth?” Jadis finally said, her backs straightening as she started to regain her equilibrium. “How do I know you aren’t making all this shit up just to fuck with me?”
“Hm,” Jack mused, one finger going to her chin. “I guess you don’t know, do you? I suppose you could ask someone else, though. If you knew any other avatars… Oh! Like a Dryad, perhaps?”
“Dryad,” Jadis murmured, then remembered what Jack had said earlier.
There were Dryads in the valley, or so Jack had claimed. Dryads that were in danger of being destroyed by the dragon, once it was possessed. Jadis didn’t know much about Dryads, no more than any other avatar race, but surely the Dryads had to be a more reliable resource for information than a Fetch. The jury was still out on Jack, but Jadis had been promised a friendly member of an avatar race if she came all the way out here. Dryads sounded friendly to her.
Jay turned to look back out across the snow-covered valley. She still couldn’t see much due to the heavy snow fall, but she remembered where the massive ice dragon had landed on the far side of the valley. Dys and Syd didn’t take their eyes off of Jack, but Jay searched the snowy landscape, looking for the clearing where she’d last seen the gigantic beast.
“Yup, Dryad,” Jack nodded, stepping up to stand next to Jay. “There’s a whole bunch of them down there, actually. Or there were, last time I checked. All those demons attacking their grove might have changed that by now, but there’s always a chance.”
Dys and Syd moved up to flank Jay and Jack as Jay turned her head to glare at the Fetch. Jack gave her an innocent look back, blinking slowly.
“Let me take a wild guess,” Jay said, her voice sharp as steel. “You’ve seen a place with five waterfalls down in that grove.”
Jack smiled.
“I might remember something like that.”
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