Time froze as Jadis processed what was before Dys’ eyes. It was the middle of the night and she’d only recently come off of her own watch so far as she was aware. She’d fallen asleep in her shared tent with the rest of Fortune’s Favored, all of her lovers clustered in a pile with her own three bodies surrounding them in a protective circle. She’d been woken by the feel of hands caressing her body and had assumed that Kerr or one of her other lovers was teasing her in preparation for some late-night fun. The unknown lover had just kissed her, and she’d opened her eyes to see who it was. What she saw now, though, had taken all of her assumptions and beaten them to death with rusty hammer.
There was a demon hovering over her face.
How had the demon gotten past Noll and the others who should have been on watch? Was everyone else alright? Had there been a battle going on and she hadn’t been woken somehow? Had she just caught the demon in the act of trying to possess her? Why had it kissed her?
Why the fuck did it have a hand on her cock!?
Dys moved. Not with the careful restraint that she exerted during her day-to-day activities, but with the full force of her two hundred and sixty-six Agility and her three hundred and twenty-six Strength. Dys’ arms snapped up and grabbed hold of the demon in a steel grip before forcefully rolling over so that the creature was under her and away from the vulnerable grouping of her sleeping lovers.
In the same moment, Jadis’ other bodies moved with their full speed. Rolling away from their respective sides of the pile, they threw themselves across the floor and reached either side of Dys and the demon, prepared to slam her fists down onto the abomination and end it before it could harm any of her lovers. However, as she drew her fists back to strike, a movement from the demon caused her to hesitate.
It was dark in the tent, the light from the bonfire made it so that the interior was barely visible. The demon below her was a mostly formless black shape with vague appendages she could more feel than see. What she could see, though, were those three brightly glowing neon-blue eyes. A unique shade of unnatural blue that shed a small amount of light, just enough for Jadis to see a single black tentacle raised before the demon’s face. That tentacle moved, wiggling up and down in a familiar pattern.
It was waving at her.
“…Alex?” Dys hissed, her strained and confused emotions causing her voice to crack. “Is that you?”
“Jadis…”
The demon’s words shook her. The strange, multi-tonal vocalization reverberated both in her ears and in her brain, making Jadis’ mind buzz with confusion and discomfort that was both physical and mental. This… thing that had climbed on top of her in the night was her missing demonling, Alex. What the fuck had happened? What had Alex been doing?
“Jadis?”
Eir’s sleepy voice startled Jadis from her stunned moment of inaction. Glancing over, she could see the silhouette of her elven lover stirring from one side of the pile, the noise and motion having no doubt woken her.
Shit. Jadis still wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on, but she did not think Eir was going to react well to whatever it was. Her gentle priestess was kind and understanding, but having a demon unexpectedly show up inside their tent was not something she was likely to respond to without some amount of screaming.
Taking a risk, Syd quickly shifted away from Alex and her other selves. She lay down next to Eir, putting her hand around the back of her head and drawing her in for a comforting kiss while also pulling her back to the blanketed ground.
“Everything’s fine,” she shushed the sleepy elf. “Go back to sleep, okay?”
“Okay,” Eir muttered, her purple eyes fluttering closed.
At the same time, Dys held a finger to her lips, hoping desperately that Alex would understand the motion.
Two thin tentacles moved up and wrapped around the finger, stroking it up and down in an oddly sexual way.
Okay. So there was definitely still a communication barrier between them. But at least it seemed like Alex hadn’t returned to her as some kind of hostile monster.
A large, strong hand found Jay’s leg and moved up it, fingers squeezing her thigh suggestively before cupping her ass.
Definitely not hostile.
“Stop that,” Jay whispered insistently. “Just… stop! Follow me! We need to talk!”
She still wasn’t sure Alex was understanding everything that she was saying, but when Jay and Dys pulled on the demon, it followed without any resistance.
Being careful to move as quietly as she could, Jay and Dys crawled under the wagon, lifting the tarp that they used to seal the tent area off so that both of her bodies could slide underneath with the demon in tow. As soon as she was out of the tent, Jadis was struck with the freezing cold of the winter night. There was still a foot of snow on the ground and a chilly wind rocking the pine trees surrounding the clearing that they had chosen to make camp in. The large bonfire that they kept going all night in the middle of the camp was on the other side of the wagon, so none of its heat or light reached the back where Jay, Dys, and Alex hunkered down. There wasn’t much moonlight to see by, either, so Jadis was still having a hard time seeing Alex, though from what she could make out the once little demonling couldn’t be referred to as such anymore.
She needed to put some distance between them and the camp so she could try and talk with Alex. She needed to better understand what had happened and she didn’t want Noll or anyone else overhearing. However, Jadis had no idea how she was going to sneak away without the watchful high-level mercenary noticing.
“Wait. Here.” Jay told Alex, pointing first at the inky black demon, then at the ground. An idea had struck her, the only one that made any sense. “Wait.”
Jay got up and walked around to the front of the wagon. Thankfully, Alex didn’t try to follow and simply waited with Dys, unmoving as a dark lump in the night. At least Alex seemed to remember Jadis’ lessons on basic commands.
Rounding the wagon, Jay walked towards the bonfire where she saw Noll and two of the soldiers, Jaxton and Landry, sitting and talking quietly. She approached, making no attempt to hide her presence. Noll’s bright yellow eyes reflected the fire as they tracked her approach.
“Something wrong?” Jaxton called out once he noticed Jay.
“Need something?” Landry said at the same time as Jaxton.
The two friendly orcs glared at each other when they realized they had spoken at the same time, which was fairly typical of the two. It looked like they were about to start snapping at each other, but their eyes darted to the old, powerful mercenary sitting nearby and they seemed to think better of it.
“No, everything’s fine,” Jay said, addressing the two as well as Noll. “Just realized we, or I guess just me, needs to answer nature’s call and didn’t want to alarm anyone on watch.”
Noll grunted in acknowledgement, the taciturn therion making no further comment. Jaxton and Landry, however, couldn’t seem to resist a question.
“That’s got to be bloody strange, right?” Jaxton said, his curious gaze on Jay. “Three bodies and all that. Got to worry about all the little details at the same time, bodily instincts and what not.”
“Can’t imagine,” Landry shook his head. “Some mornings I forget which leg goes in which boot. Dealing with six legs has got to be confusing.”
“It’s not as bad as you might think,” Jay grinned at the two. “Just takes some getting used to.”
Jadis didn’t bother trying to explain to the two soldiers that she had a skill that helped compartmentalize her three different bodies and the sensations they experienced. She was glad that so far, the unintended revelation of her multi-bodied nature hadn’t caused too much trouble for her among the rest of the expedition, but she wasn’t about to reveal any more secrets concerning her class. She trusted captain Willa and all of her soldiers, but the less people knew about any of the particulars of her strange Mirror Knight class, the better. Not everyone on Oros was friendly towards her.
Parting from the trio, Jay made her way back towards Dys and Alex, both of whom were already starting to move towards the far side of the roped off area where the horses and goats were penned for the night. Syd stayed inside the tent, keeping an eye on her sleeping lovers. Keeping Syd tucked away helped explain the noise of three figures moving in the direction of the latrine, or at least Jadis hoped so.
Alex didn’t exactly walk.
By the time Jay and Dys had made their way with the wayward demon to the secluded spot on the far side of the camp, the light of the moon had started to come out from behind the dark clouds that had covered the sky since that evening. Hurrying Alex along for the last few feet, Jay and Dys pushed the strangely shaped demon behind the stand of trees that were meant to give anyone using the latrine a bit of privacy. With the light of the moon shining down unobstructed on them, Jadis got her first good look at Alex.
The demon hatchling had certainly changed since the last time Jadis had seen it only a few days ago.
There were two disparate parts to the demon, one human and the other not, melded together into a single creature. The human part was obviously female, a fact highlighted by its nudity. Tall and thin but corded with wiry muscle, the feminine body was pitch black except for the hands and feet. The fingers and toes were bright blue, almost glowing, and matched the color of the demon’s three eyes. The blue coloration slowly merged into the black of the rest of the body as it moved up the limbs in a gradient pattern, the color gone completely by the time it reached the elbows and knees. The only other spots of color could be found on the demon’s head, where the brightly glowing eyes called for attention. Two were exactly where they should be on a human face, while the third was positioned in the middle of the forehead. They weren’t the only bits of neon blue on the demon’s head, though. A veritable mane of finger-thick tentacles grew from the otherwise human head, replacing what should have been hair. The tips of the tentacles were also possessed of that gradient blue coloration, the same as the other limbs of the demon. Third eye and tentacles aside, Alex’s face was entirely human.
For some reason, the face looked familiar to Jadis, though she couldn’t immediately place where she’d seen it before. In any case, the rest of Alex was a major distraction that drew Jadis’ gaze.
A second set of arms grew from the demon’s back. They were roughly even with the shoulders of Alex’s human form, but the second set was much, much larger and longer, each arm reaching down at least a foot further than her feet. The pair of arms seemed to grow out of an almost backpack-like protrusion of dark flesh, making Alex seem like a second creature had been grafted onto the back of a human. From below the second set of shoulders and arms grew three huge tentacles, each one as thick around as Jadis’ thigh and probably fifteen feet long at least, if not twenty. They slid across the ground in powerful snake-like motions, keeping the human part of Alex high above the snow. Jadis couldn’t help but note that both the monstrous second set of arms and the large leg-tentacles also had the same blue to black gradient coloration.
When Jay and Dys’ eyes moved back to Alex’s face, she saw that the demon was grinning at her with an expression of deep focus. The demon’s neon gaze was unblinking and somewhat disturbing in its intensity.
Actually, Jadis realized, it wasn’t the focus that was disturbing her. It was the fact that she’d seen that grin before. She did know the face, though the last time she’d seen it had been under very different circumstances.
The face that Alex now wore had once belonged to Eike, the blood bitch of the Roiling Reavers, who had tried to kill Jadis and her companions on multiple occasions. She, too, had gone missing during the battle at the Dryad grove. Specifically, Eike had escaped her bondage and tried to murder Gunnar, Sabina, and Sorcha, her vicious attack only stopped because Alex had broken free of its own glass container and stopped her, dragging her off into the woods where both had disappeared. At least, that was how Sabina had described the encounter, as the half-elf smith had been the only witness to the act.
Staring at Eike’s now ink black skin and three glowing blue eyes, Jadis did not doubt at all that Alex had done exactly what Sabina had said the demonling had done. All previous concerns about Alex’s safety and the possible escape of Eike had been dispelled. Clearly, whatever had happened between the two once they’d stumbled out of Sabina’s sight, Alex had come out on top. While the demon’s reappearance had answered at least two questions, Alex’s return and new appearance had engendered hundreds more questions, creating a sea of confusion, curiosity, and tentative hope.
The main question Jadis had now was: what the fuck was she supposed to ask first?
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