“Alex?”
“Jadis…”
“Do you understand me?”
“Jadis…”
Jay and Dys both blinked, their brows puckering in a frown. Clearly this new version of Alex had a grasp on who she was, but they were still encountering some communication issues. She decided to try again.
“Can you say anything other than my name?”
Alex tilted its head slightly to one side, its three eyes focused on Jay. Its inhumanly blank expression on an all too human face sent a chill down Jadis’ spines.
“…Yes.”
“Yes? Yes!” Jay grinned, some excitement thrilling through her for a moment. She quickly moderated the volume of her voice, though, since she didn’t want Noll or the others on watch to overhear. “So you can speak?”
“Yes…” Alex repeated, its strange multi-tonal voice also lowered to a volume that mimicked Jay’s. When the demon saw the grin on Jay’s face, its expression morphed into a warm, pleased smile that warred with Alex’s unearthly appearance. “Yes…”
“Okay!” Jay nodded, focusing intently on the transformed demon before her. “You remember the lessons I gave you from before? With the letter blocks?”
“Yes…”
Jay smiled at the response and waited for more. When the silence stretched on with Alex just staring at her and she realized nothing else was forthcoming, her smile dropped and she put a hand on her hip. A new suspicion formed, one which unfortunately made a lot of sense.
“Are you just saying, ‘yes’ to everything I say because you don’t really understand me and are just trying to please me?”
“Yes…” Alex repeated with a blithe smile.
“Great. Perfect,” Jay sighed, a pained look crossing her face.
Of course Alex wouldn’t just instantly know English or whatever fucking language was commonly spoken by everyone on Oros. Jadis had hoped it would be so, since Alex had grasped the meaning of the letter blocks as well as basic commands like “sit” and “stay”. Then there was the fact that demons like the green-eyed shit who had possessed Jana and the wind mage had some level of understanding of speech. Enough to make taunts, anyway.
Or rather, what had Aila once told her about people who were possessed by demons? They could put on a charade, but as soon as any kind of meaningful communication took place, people would immediately know something was wrong. A superficial veneer of understanding, which came more from the demon piloting a stolen body than the demon’s own thoughts.
Looking at Alex now, Jadis wasn’t sure this could be considered possession. The little demonling hadn’t infested Eike like the green-eyed demon and the wind mage, or like the other demon had tried to do with the dragon Vetregin. This new Alex was a transformation that involved the melding of Eike’s body into an inhuman one. While not anywhere near as disturbing, the demons that Jadis was most reminded of were the Burning Rancor and the Wailing Grudge greater demons. Was that Alex now? Had the once small squiggle of a demon somehow transformed into a greater demon?
Looking over Alex again, Jadis noticed with a start that its expression had turned upset. The demon looked… sad. Anxious, even. Definitely displeased. The body language wasn’t right, not at all, but the facial expression was an almost exaggerated mirror of… well, her own unhappiness.
That was right. Alex wasn’t stupid. Jadis had known for a long time now that the demon was capable of only a basic understanding of words, but more pointedly Alex seemed to understand action and emotion better. Alex had known when she was upset and had done what it thought would please her. It had seen Aila injured and had tried to help her. It had known Sabina was under attack, so it had defended her. Alex probably didn’t understand the words or the context, but the demon did at least have some grasp of the emotions and the intent.
Hadn’t the newly changed demon just groped her in the dark tent in a very explicitly sexual way? Clearly, Alex had some idea that Jadis plus Tent equaled Sex.
No, Alex wasn’t without comprehension. They just weren’t speaking the same language yet, not completely.
“Alex,” Jay pointed at the demon, making her intent as clear as she could through tone, body language, and her vocal inflection. “Alex.”
Alex’s expression went vacant, all body language gone as its three eyes ran up and down Jay’s body. Jadis noticed that the extra eye in the demon’s forehead did not move in the same way as the other two and acted independently. After a few seconds of blank observation, Alex grinned and pointed at its chest with both one regular hand and one huge, oversized demonic hand.
“Alex… Yes…”
Jay grinned at the response, making it clear that the demon’s words pleased her. Then, pointing at herself, she stated her own name. Just to be certain they were on the same page with at least that much.
“Jadis… Yes…” Alex said while giving Jay a stunningly bright smile.
Jadis had never seen Eike smile. Or rather, the only expressions she’d ever noted on the crazed bitch’s face were deranged sneers and bloodthirsty grins. When Alex smiled, though, Jadis could see that she had a very pretty smile.
Er, Eike had once had a pretty smile. The demon, Alex, now had a pretty smile because Eike had—fuck. The whole body snatching thing was really fucking with Jadis’ perceptions. She didn’t exactly feel sorry for the mad woman; she’d been a terrible person and the world was better without her in it. But Alex taking her body was… disturbing on several levels.
Pushing those thoughts aside for the moment, Jadis focused on trying to communicate the most important to answer questions she had for Alex. She knew her time was limited since she could only pretend to be occupied at the latrine for so long before arousing suspicion. Dys was keeping a wary eye in the direction of the bonfire, but if one or more of the night watch came over to investigate, Jadis didn’t know if she’d be able to hide the now large demon.
“Alex. Where?” Jay asked, making her confusion plain on her face. “Where?”
Alex stared blankly at Jay once more, the only change to her stance being the slight tilt of her head. Pushing to make her question both simple and clear, Jay looked around her in an exaggerated fashion, even pretending to look under branches and bushes with a mystified expression on her face. She repeated the question multiple times, keeping away from using long sentences and instead just using the most basic of words.
Eventually, Alex pointed at itself in the same fashion as before, indicating itself with two hands and even a few of its head tentacles as well.
“Alex… Here…” the demon said.
Here. Alex had used a new word, one that Jadis hadn’t prompted. That gave credence to the idea that the demon did have some basic vocabulary. Though the question Jadis was trying to ask hadn’t gotten through.
Jadis wanted to know where Alex had been since the battle at the grove. Had the demon been following them this whole time? Why hadn’t it revealed itself to her earlier? Had it gone somewhere else first for some reason? Had it gotten lost and just found them, or had it been stalking them and waiting for some opportunity to approach? Jadis knew that with the limited communication abilities in the demon’s possession, there was no way it would be able to understand much less answer all those questions. So, she was trying to keep it simple. Where had Alex been?
“Where Alex?” Jay asked again, still pantomiming her confusion and search. “Where? Where before? Where Alex before?”
Jadis was no linguistics expert, but she knew that “before” was a big concept to tackle. She wasn’t sure if Alex would understand, but she hoped the demonling—or rather, big demon, would get it eventually.
There was no dawning look of recognition or realization on Alex’s face, but abruptly the demon moved in response to Jay’s question. Coiling its long leg-tentacles together, Alex hunkered down and wrapped itself into a tight ball, the human half of the demon practically disappearing into the coils of the tentacles and the monstrous oversized arms. No, Jadis realized after a second, not a ball. Alex had shaped herself into the outline of a box. A long, rectangular box.
“Alex… Here…” the demon’s muffled voice came from the simulated box of dark flesh.
A box. A crate? Alex had been inside of a crate. But… that didn’t make any sense. How could Alex have followed them if it had been inside of a crate? Where had the demon even found a crate?
Realization struck her. Gingerly releasing Eir, Syd sat up from her spot with the others inside of the tent and crept over to the open side of the large wagon. Inside, she could see Sorcha’s nest of blankets that the diminutive goblin had claimed as her own. But more than the witch, she could see crates. Dozens of them, some of them definitely large enough to contain the full bulk of the demon, though Alex would have been crammed in like a sardine in a tin can. How had the demon gotten into the wagon, though? The wagon had been inside the grove since the night of the battle against the demon horde. They’d only just left the grove that morning and there had been no opportunity for Alex to sneak into the wagon, not without Jadis or any of her companions or anyone else on the expedition noticing. There was no chance Alex had gotten into the grove, either, not with how well guarded it was against intrusion. So then how…?
Jadis’ selves froze. When she and Kerr and later Tegwyn had tracked Alex and Eike’s trail from the wagon to the clearing where the tracks ended, none of them had even considered the possibility of Alex doubling back. The trail had been messy, no better than a furrow through the snow. Alex’s and Eike’s scents had been all over her wagon. The battle and the cleanup after hadn’t lasted too long, but long enough for a demon to sneak back into the wagon and disappear inside of an inconspicuous crate.
Fucking balls, had Alex really been with them the whole time?
Kneeling down, Jay tapped on Alex’s thick tentacle to get the demon’s attention. Immediately Alex uncoiled itself, taking a strangely demure sitting position that reminded Jadis strongly of Eir. Was the demon mimicking the priestess’ mannerisms? Very possible, Jadis decided. Imitation seemed to be Alex’s primary method of interaction with the world.
Jadis wanted to get clarification on exactly what had happened, but considering the demon’s lack of vocabulary, she resigned herself to keeping the questions simple and brief. Besides, she was already pushing the limits on how long she could believably be using the latrine.
“Sabina,” Jay said slowly and clearly. “Alex. Help. Sabina?”
At the demon’s utterly blank look, Jay did her best impression of the bubbly smith, pretending to tinker with invisible items and moving in an exaggeratedly animated way.
“Sabina…” Alex intoned, its pronunciation strained, as though it had never spoken the word before. Probably it hadn’t.
Alex then repeated Jay’s movements in a near perfect imitation. At the end, it motioned towards the wagon and smiled brightly.
That could be interpreted in a lot of different ways, but Jadis chose to see the demon’s movements as Alex recognizing who Sabina was and being happy or pleased that she was alive. Maybe that was pushing it, but she felt like she was going to have to go by faith and assumptions for a while when it came to Alex.
“Eike?” Jay then asked, pointing at Alex.
Putting on a show of making an angry, sneering face, she pretended to slash the air, then continued to point at the body she knew once belonged to the blood bitch.
“Eike?” Jay repeated, then pointed at the parts of the demon that were definitely not human. “Alex.”
She switched back and forth a few times, making a distinction between the two and putting as much question in her tone as she could.
Alex frowned, its brow furrowing in obvious displeasure. The demon tapped at its face with one finger, then against its chest. There was no outward sign of emotion after that, but the demon sat there with a blank expression that Jadis was beginning to understand was either its version of contemplation or consternation. Possibly both. Human body language seemed to be entirely performative on the part of the demon, a conscious effort that it otherwise did not follow when distracted.
After a long, silent pause, Alex tapped its chest again while staring intently at Jay.
“Death…”
Now what the fuck was that supposed to mean?
Was that a simple acknowledgement that Alex had killed Eike? Or was it a judgement that Eike had deserved to die for her actions? Or was it a reference to the fact that, as a demon, Alex was a literal avatar of the god of death, Samleos? Maybe it was something more indirect, such as, Eike was dead anyway, so why not use her body?
Jadis wanted to pick apart that single word, but there just wasn’t any more time. At the very least, she felt confident that Alex’s single syllable statement was not a pronouncement that it was death, come to visit wrath up her or any of her companions. As strange and disturbing as the demon was, so far it still hadn’t done anything explicitly or implicitly harmful towards Jadis or her lovers. She was going to give the demon lots of leeway.
However, Jadis couldn’t extend the interrogation any longer. She had to return to her tent before Noll and the others came looking for her and discovered the much-changed demon. She definitely wanted to have a conversation with Aila and the rest of her girls before involving anyone else in the extremely unusual situation. Then she wanted to introduce everyone to Alex and see how that went.
Jadis cringed internally at the thought of how that encounter might go down.
Realizing that she had just left Alex hanging, she put on a smile and reached one hand out to gently pat the demon on the head. At her touch, Alex leaned in towards Jay, her tentacles wrapping around her hand in a familiar and affectionate way.
“Okay. We’ll talk more later, Alex,” Jay said. “For now, we have to sleep.”
Quietly, she instructed the demon to follow her back to the wagon, keeping to outskirts and shadows as well as keeping her two bodies between the demon and the light. They fortunately made it back without confrontation or issue. Sneaking back inside the tent, Jay and Dys helped Alex back into the wagon. The whole time Jadis worried that one of her lovers or Sorcha would wake up, but the long day on the road was an advantage in her favor, as was her greatly increased Agility. No one stirred as Jay crept into the wagon interior.
The crate that Alex led her to was in the back, one of many surrounded by various supplies and Sabina’s crafting materials. Looking inside, Jadis saw that resting on the bottom of the crate were a few scraps of stained cloth that had once been Eike’s clothing, as well as the blood bitch’s scythe. The weapon was… unexpected, but not unwelcome. She wanted to give it to Sabina to analyze later. That would have to wait for the time being, though.
It didn’t take much convincing, just a simple order of “stay” and the demon slipped into the large empty crate at the back of the wagon, curling up inside. Alex even closed the lid with its own tentacles, silently hiding itself in a way that easily convinced Jadis that it was capable of sneaking into the wagon and staying hidden for days on end. Alex’s slithering tentacles made virtually no noise as it moved across the wooden surface.
“Stay,” Jay repeated, softly patting the top of the crate. “Good demon.”
Then, to herself, she shook her head in disbelief.
“How the fuck am I going to bring this up with the others?”
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