Chapter 36: Chapter 36: Heading South

Jadis was not able to start her journey south and out of the village the next morning. As it turned out, she’d neglected to consider what preparations she needed to do before leaving. Fortunately, her method of putting honey on her worst injuries to fight infection and inflammation seemed to have worked and she regained thirty-five health overnight. After switching her Eldritch Overlay to Vitality and bring her current health even higher, she had three sets of hands to work on getting everything set.

First and foremost, Jadis addressed her weapons and armor. With three bodies now, she didn’t have enough for all of her selves to be fully equipped. She was also out of most of her leather materials, so her options were limited. In the end, her solution was to use one of the three blankets she’d found and turn it into a sort of poncho, using a length of rope to make a belt to keep it from being too loose. Dressing Syd up in the poncho, she used what little scraps of leather and cloth she had left to make a rough skirt for her as well.

To tackle the lack of weapons, Jadis decided to go a different route for equipping Syd. Since that third of her self was basically without armor, she wanted to keep her away from the frontline of action, at least a little. Using the hatchet and knives she’d scavenged, she cut down one of the tall but young pine trees and removed the bark, carving it smooth and making it easy to handle. On one end, Jadis cut a notch into the wood, then used some string and the last bits of leather to wrap the longer one of the daggers she possessed into place, making a spear.

The spear was as long as Jadis was tall, giving Syd quite a bit of reach. She wasn’t certain how useful the spear would be at first, at least against bone thieves, but with the coming of the new dawn, there were several more around to test the new weapon on.

While not as devastating as her mauls, Jadis was able to slam the spear into any bone thief that approached with massive force, easily holding the demon back or even pinning it to the ground if she angled the attack the right way. With her increased strength, Jadis was fairly certain that if the spear had been made of stronger materials, she’d probably be able to simply pierce right through the shell and out the other side. As it was, the spear could only go as deep as the blade.

Definitely a weapon tree Jadis was interested in exploring further, should she find someone who could make or sell her some new armaments.

Equipping Syd resolved to the best of her ability, Jadis spent the rest of the day coming up with a means of transporting the supplies that she wanted to bring with her on her trek southward. She had no backpacks or enough materials to try and make some, at least not without destroying the two blankets and the fur rug she had left and that wasn’t something she wanted to do.

Taking stock of what she wanted to bring with her, Jadis had crates of hardtack and jars of honey for her rations that she absolutely had to take as much of as she could. There was also the iron cauldron, the hatchet, the knife, the sewing kit, and the small sack of coins and jewelry she had. Then there was her tinderbox, the fishing net she’d had no luck in using, and the holy book of D she’d recovered from the temple and was unable to read. While most of her supplies were small enough to carry by hand fairly easily, the real challenge was carting around all the hardtack and honey. Not that the crates were too heavy for her. In fact, with her current strength, Jadis found that she could toss the crates around like they weighed next to nothing. The issue was handling them. While she could easily carry the weight, actually carrying seven crates of supplies, even between three bodies, was awkward and unwieldly.

It took some time and experimentation, but eventually Jadis hit upon a solution. Using the net and the rope she had left, she made a kind of hammock, attaching the ends to either end of one long log she retrieved from the supply of cut logs that would have been used as support beams in the cave. Stacking the crates inside the hammock, she could lift them all up at once, carrying the load on the shoulders of two of her selves walking in single file.

Jadis put the smaller items she had with her into the hardtack crate she’d already been eating from, including the sewing kit, tinderbox, and book of D. The cauldron was too big to fit in a crate, but that she just left hanging by its handle on the log.

“I think I’ll keep this on me, just in case the spear breaks,” Syd commented, putting the steel hatchet in her rope belt.

“Are we forgetting anything?” Jay asked, checking to make sure the rope and net hammock was secured. “Other than stuff we can’t take with us, like walls and a roof?”

“This little guy,” Dys answered, holding up the clay jar with a baby demon inside. “Still hasn’t hatched yet.”

With a shrug, Jadis added the jar to the crates with her other small things, making sure to wedge it into a tight position so the lid wouldn’t easily come off.

“Then, I think we’re good to go, at least, we’re good to go in the morning.”

By that time, it was already late afternoon and Jadis saw no reason to leave so late in the day. She’d only make it a few hours at most before she’d have to stop for the night.

Resting another night and recovering another twenty-eight health, Jadis woke to a sunny day and gathered her prepared things after a quick breakfast. There were a few more bone thieves skulking around the piles of bones left outside, but Jadis dispatched them easily enough. She no longer even attempted to hide the bones in the water, especially since she was leaving. Some of the bone thieves had gotten quite large, feasting on the bounty of bones overnight, but increased size was no great challenge to Jadis. Not with three of her to attack in unison.

“That’s a nice way to start the day,” Jay said, grinning at her other selves.

“I wonder what weirdness we’ll get for a skill this time,” Dys murmured, pulling open the selections available.

“Does this count as a robe?” Syd asked, tugging at the makeshift smock she was wearing.

Jay shrugged. “No clue. Probably?”

“Don’t care, either,” Dys finished. “Definitely not taking that one. We want armor, D damnit all!”

“Does that count as taking his name in vain?”

“Also don’t care,” Dys waved the question off. “If he cared about stuff like that, he probably would have cared more about us fucking in his temple.”

With all of her selves murmuring in agreement, Jadis checked the second skill.

“Okay…” Syd drew out the word, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “That’s certainly an interesting and useful skill, completely unrelated to anything deviant or sexual.”

“Oh yeah,” Dys echoed, “Totally innocent and not at all intended to make it easier to throat fuck myself—”

“Let’s not get started on that right now,” Jay interrupted her mirrored self. “We need to stop delaying and get a move on. It’s taken us long enough already and daylight is wasting.”

“Fine,” Dys agreed. “I say we forget these two skills and take the Lascivious Empowerment skill we got as an option before. That one’ll give us an attribute boost.”

Syd nodded her head in agreement. “Yeah, that sounds way better than these options. Besides, we all know we like the little gagging sounds we make when we—”

“Getting off track again!”

“Right. Choice made, let’s see what the ritual requires,” Syd said holding her hands up in surrender.

Mock argument done, Jadis selected her new skill and shivered a bit as the artificial memories of what she needed to do to perform the ritual filtered into her mind. She couldn’t help but let out a groan as the knowledge of how long the spell would take to cast revealed itself to her.

“Fuck, it’s a two-hour deal,” Dys cursed.

“No time for that,” Jay sighed. “We’ll save it for when we camp tonight.”

A lascivious smile spread across Syd’s face as Jadis focused more on the details of how the ritual was to be performed. “Looks like fun though.”

“Later,” Jay admonished her triplet. “We’re on a schedule here.”

“Yup. But tonight, we’re going to have a real good time,” Dys said with a sly tone. Punctuating her next statement with a squeeze of Jay’s ass, she whispered, “And it’s your turn to be on the receiving end.”

“Still the same person,” Jay pointed out as she moved to pick up the front end of the log cradle.

“Yeah, but it’s fun to pretend,” Dys said as she picked up the back end of the log.

“God, I’m lonely,” Syd groaned, moving out ahead of the other two, leading the way down the path away from the mining compound and towards the village center.

Jadis probably had spent far too much time by herself. If she didn’t have multiple bodies to speak out of, holding full conversations with herself, she’d probably look like a complete loon to anyone else. Which meant she was an actual complete and utter loon, but at least only she and D were privy to that fact. Jadis felt certain that D would keep her secret.

Reaching the main road of the village, Jadis took one final look at the stone temple and it’s tower, the sight of which had been the whole reason she’d come to the village in the first place.

“Thanks for the fun and the perverted class,” Jadis said in unison, giving a little wave to the abandoned structure.

With nothing more to say, Jadis headed south, following the cobblestone road out of the village. After only a few minutes of walking, Jadis was beyond all sight of the village, the buildings completely obscured by the tall pines surrounding her.

Somehow, without the now familiar dilapidated houses nearby, Jadis felt far more alone than she did moments ago.

“Ah, fuck the depressing thoughts,” Syd called out, shaking the unnerving feelings off. “We’re finally getting on the road and starting our real adventure!”

“D didn’t make a deal with us to just sit around in an abandoned warehouse, sucking our own dicks all day,” Dys added.

“True,” Jay agreed. “Time to see what’s going on in the wider world. Maybe meet a few people, kill a few demons…”

“And shake things up!”

Jadis couldn’t help but smile at the thought of finally getting out of the little valley she’d spawned in and getting out into the rest of Oros to mix things up. She really had fallen into a rut, something she’d made a deal with a god to avoid doing. She felt more than a bit dumb for letting that happen.

Well, she wasn’t going to do that again. She was here for adventure!

…Raunchy sex, too, but still.

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