Rebirth of the Nephilim

The next morning, when Jadis sought Sabina out to continue her power leveling, she found the smith standing naked in her improvised workshop, bent over a crafting table which held dozens of small, delicate instruments intended for the crafting of enchantments. When asked, Sabina distractedly explained that she had experienced sudden inspiration for a new enchantment which simply could not wait. It was always difficult to get a complete and understandable description of what Sabina was working on when she was focused so intently on a project, so Jadis didn’t press further and simply left the eccentric half-elf to her labor.

Since Sabina was unavailable for the day, Jadis instead approached both Noct and Maeve. The two also needed help getting level sixty as quickly as possible, so it was no great disruption to the plan for focus to shift to one of them. Everyone having their tertiary classes unlocked was the goal; the order in which it happened was irrelevant.

After the… exciting night she had went through, Noct was unsurprisingly feeling a little bashful. She expressed no regret, but whenever she tried to look Jadis in the eyes, her face burned crimson and her leather bindings creaked under sudden pressure. For her sake, they decided to give her a short rest away from Jadis, so she could cool off and get her mind back in order. The last thing Jadis wanted to do was inadvertently push Noct away by coming on too strongly, which felt like an odd thing to say considering the night of passion they had experienced, but Noct had a unique personality. Taking things at the pace that suited her best was what was most important in developing their relationship.

With Sabina busy and Noct out of the race for the moment, Maeve was the only candidate left. The Fetch accepted her offer without a moment’s hesitation, and in rapid order the two were out of the camp and on the hunt for the enemy and experience alike. While her initial thought was to carry Maeve along for some flyby fights, the shapeshifting spy soon made it clear that she had other ideas for how to best earn her levels. Always willing to let her lovers take the lead, Jadis followed along with Maeve’s plan.

It didn’t take long for her to regret that decision.

The three of Jadis clutched her weapons tightly, the tension in her bodies causing her muscles to audibly creak under the strain. With all eyes pointed to the west, her multi-faceted attention darted to every small movement barely visible along the distant shoreline. The sea breeze was cool, and its constant flow kept the worst of the noxious fog away, but the miasma never fully dissipated thanks to its demonic origins. No perfectly clear sightline could be found, though Jadis had no trouble seeing the towers of Kastoria’s walls looming over the crumbled jetty of the city’s harbor.

Kastoria was close. Closer than Jadis had ever dared to go thus far. No sound came from the Demons who dwelled within. They did not speak, or growl, or even breathe. Where any other people would have filled the air with shouted orders or inane chatter, the Demons brought nothing but silence. Except, she could hear the sounds of their movements. The skitter of mire hounds. The thump of relentless simulacrum. The gurgle of belgramathr. The slosh of something… else. There were too many little sounds to identify them all, but the fact that Jadis could hear them was a feat unto itself. It had been a long time since she had been so close to so many hostile Demons without being caught up in a fight. She had no illusions that the peace would last long.

Kastoria jutted out into the Siren Sea, its breakwaters creating a large and placid harbor designed for a booming sea trade. Thanks to the invasion of the Demons, the only ships visible in those waters were half sunk wrecks, their broken masts creating a leafless forest that matched the somber desolation of the blighted orchards surrounding the city. The pale sands of the shore ended abruptly at the foundations of thick stone walls, cutting off the view of where the harbor met the land, but the palatial towers that rose above those walls marked the location of the Opaline Palace, the ancient seat of long-dead royalty where hundreds, if not thousands, of humans were being held hostage by the Demons for the purpose of fueling their cruel rituals.

And of course, that was where Maeve was.

“This was a bad idea,” Dys muttered under her breath, the sand under her knee shifting as she peered around the edge of the rocky outcrop. “A very, very bad idea.”

“You could have told her so,” Syd said in a slightly higher pitch as she crouched over her other self. “You could have said this was a dumb fucking idea.”

“She’s way more powerful now thanks to our bond,” Jay reassured herself as she leaned over Syd to look over her shoulder. “If she runs into any trouble, she can get out, fast. She’s not fighting. She’s spying.”

“She’s relying on information that could be decades out of date.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s bad info.”

“It does mean it’s unreliable, and it definitely doesn’t guarantee that the Demons haven’t found the tunnel.”

“She’s fine, Eir would know if she was hurt and we’d be buzzed if she was in trouble.”

“I fucking hate waiting like this.”

“I should have gone with her.”

“Way too much noise. I’m not built for stealth.”

“I fucking hate waiting like this.”

“Having a good conversation?”

All three of Jadis jumped, whirling to face the source of the unexpected voice. Naturally, she was met with the smiling face of her mischievous lover. Sort of.

“Don’t fucking do that,” Jadis hissed in unison. “And don’t sneak up on me when you look like that. I could have hurt you.”

“Yeah, but I knew you wouldn’t,” Maeve replied.

The Fetch still looked exactly as Jadis had last seen her. Which was to say, she looked like a mire hound. Maeve had taken the form of one of the many lesser Demons, mimicking both the appearance and the mannerisms. Even her scent was a perfect copy of one of the Demons, or so Alex had confirmed. Jadis didn’t have the same attuned sense of smell, so she couldn’t say for herself if there were any inconsistencies, but she certainly agreed that Maeve smelled like a mix between a bog and a dead horse, so that seemed accurate enough to her.

Having spent years traveling through the seedy underbelly of Volto’s society, Maeve had many questionable contacts and even more useful tidbits of information on many of the disreputable facets of the local society. Part of that vast store of knowledge included information on how certain individuals liked to move both goods and people in and out of Kastoria without nosy guards or bothersome officials being aware. While Maeve had expressed no doubts in her ability to find said means of ingress, the only question had been whether any of the Demons had discovered the secret tunnels in and out of the city or not.

By the way Maeve was grinning, Jadis guessed not.

“Step back from the edge a bit,” the shapeshifter motioned at Jadis as she transformed into her usual orange self. “Even with Sorcha’s spell, you kind of stick out.”

“Right,” Jadis moved her selves away from the edge of the beach and further into the sea cave. “Did you have any trouble getting in?”

“Not at all,” the Fetch explained as she slipped into the pants and shirt that she had left behind while transformed. “The tunnel is undamaged and unguarded, except for one side route that was collapsed by the building above breaking down. That part is a loss, but it’s fully blocked by the rubble, so the Demons didn’t find their way into the tunnel from there. The way forward from here is completely clear.”

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The shoreline to either side of Kastoria had rocky escarpments, with outcroppings and sea caves lining the weathered stone for miles. Most of the caves didn’t go more than a few yards deep into the rocks, and the one that Jadis and Maeve had occupied was no different. Except, along the back wall of the hollow was a hidden alcove, inside which one could find a hidden lever, if one knew where to look, which when pulled would release a well-disguised hatch that led to a tunnel carved not by nature, but by human hands.

“What were you able to see?” Jay asked as she crouched down next to where Maeve sat on a rock, pulling her boots on. “Did you get inside the palace?”

“I couldn’t get inside,” Maeve shook her head. “The mire hounds aren’t going in there at all. I only saw scythe wights and a few possessed humans going in and out of there. I couldn’t get close without drawing attention to myself.”

“Possessed humans? Not cultists?”

“Definitely possessed. The way they moved and interacted with the other Demons around them wasn’t natural. Had to be hosts for Demons.”

Pausing before slipping her other boot on, Maeve sighed and let her shoulders slump. lifting her gaze to meet Jay’s eyes, her expression turned serious.

“I did see one cultist, though. I saw the Erinyes. And her garden.”

The Erinyes.

Jadis felt her brows furrow at the mention of the title. Or was that the wrong word? Erinyes was the name of a hybrid race, the product of a Dryad and a Valbjorn. Jadis would have used a different name, if she had one, but Erinyes was all the name she had for the one who had attacked Meli’s ancestral grove. The woman had led a nighttime raid against Soteria and her people, destroying much of their cultivated wilderness grove, and even killing Meli’s brother in the process.

“What did she look like?” Jay asked with steel in her voice.

“Oh, about what you would expect,” Maeve shrugged. “Matched the paintings I’ve seen pretty well. Tall. Big claws. Weird face. Eyes that’ll make you shit your heart out of your panties. Tan skin, sort of dusky, darker than Sabina. She was wearing robes that were covered in scroll seals. Not priestly robes, by the way. They looked foreign, like something from Tiaga across the ocean. Oh, and she was dripping in blood. Face, hands, the hem of her clothes. Blood everywhere.”

“Do I want to know where the blood came from?” Syd eyed Maeve with caution.

“No, but I’m telling you anyway.”

Leaning forward, Maeve drew a quick sketch in the damp sand, outlining the walls of Kastoria, then the Opaline Palace within. Drawing a small circle on the west side of the palace, she tapped the spot firmly with her finger.

“Right there. She took over what used to be one of the fancier restaurants in the city. Nice place, had good fish. She gutted the building, tore open the walls, filled it with dirt. She’s got—she has corpses there, Jadis. Hundreds of them. Some of them stacked like firewood, some hanging from the rafters, just all over the place. A lot of them look fresh. She’s growing plants out of the bodies, all kinds of things. If it weren’t for the fertilizer, I’m sure Meli and Ammy would be interested. Sorcha too. They looked rare. But that building… Jadis, it has to go.”

Maeve had been right. Jadis had not wanted to know why the Erinyes was covered in blood. But she had needed to know, which took precedence. Whatever purpose the cultist had for the plants she was cultivating in that building, it could not be good for anyone. It was entirely possible that the woman’s depraved garden was the source of the foul blights that were plaguing Volto’s farmlands, or it could even be contributing to the toxic cloud that was cloaking the land. Certainly, some of the rare herbs and flowers that had been stolen from Soteria’s grove had found their way into the horrifying greenhouse. The Erinyes’ garden had to be destroyed as soon as possible, before whatever plants being grown within could be used against the army approaching the city.

Jadis knew what kind of power her own allies could gain from a little of Amarantha’s alchemy. She didn’t need to find out what the cultists could do.

“Did you see or pick up on anything else?” Jay asked as parts of her mind were already formulating a plan of action.

“Lots of things,” Maeve smiled again. “When we get back to the Leviathan, I’ll draw out a full map of what I saw and where different points of interest are. Definitely saw a few spots you need to try and hit with your rocks, if you can. Saw some colossal charybdis hiding spots, if nothing else.”

Rising to her feet, Maeve brushed the sand from her backside before letting out a more satisfied sigh. Expression lighting up, she grinned at Jay.

“I got to use my new skill, too.”

“You did?” Jay’s eyebrows rose. “Wait, you said you weren’t going to fight anything, Maeve! You weren’t supposed to take any big risks!”

“I didn’t fight,” the Fetch replied in a way that was entirely too similar to her god’s way of speaking. “And I didn’t take a big risk. I just eliminated a few scythe wights and a possessed human while they were isolated. I even hid the bodies. It was easy, with all the stats you boosted me with. My strike skill worked like a treat.”

Jadis had to admit, despite the inherent risk Maeve was taking by assassinating enemies within their stronghold, she was in a much better position to do so than she had been before they had performed their Lover’s Bond.

Zoi

Race: Fetch

Primary Class: Shapeshifting Spy (38)

Secondary Class: Penumbral Infiltrator (13)

Tertiary Class: None

Combined Level Rating: 51

Health: 6780/6780

Magic: 50/50

Attributes

Strength: 35

Dexterity: 18

Agility: 58

Vitality: 633

Fortitude: 33

Endurance: 46

Arcane: 0

Divine: 0

Eldritch: 0

Focus: 5

Resilience: 30

Will: 51

Out of all the attributes that she could have asked to have boosted by Lewd Lover’s Bond, Maeve had decided to go with Vitality. Not because she was a front line tank or had any plans to be, but because having an absolutely massive pool of health meant that if she were ever caught during one of her attempts at infiltration by an enemy, she would be a lot harder to kill. Plus, with her Penumbral Boost skill, Maeve could add her Vitality score, plus her next two highest stats, to the total of either her Strength, Dexterity, or Agility for five minutes at the cost of one hundred stamina. Basically, one of her relatively weak offensive stats could become insanely high at the flip of a switch, and she’d still have a health pool that was nearly double what Jadis’ max was. That huge temporary increase in power was where Maeve’s latest Penumbral Infiltrator skill came into play.

Infiltrator’s Strike

Active Skill. The first attack made against a target that is unaware of your presence has its damage increased by 0.5 of your base attack damage. This bonus damage is not affected by modifiers that come from other damage-boosting skills, but modifiers that come from the weapon you use are included in the calculation. Cost: 20 stamina.

A good skill for a quiet assassination turned into a devastating blow when paired with Maeve’s Penumbral Boost. Jadis had no doubt that her boosted stats were the source of the Fetch’s confidence when it came to eliminating a few Demons, even one like a possessed human with an unknown level of power.

“Okay, I get where you’re coming from,” Dys said with a shake of her head. “But you really should be more careful. If anything happened to you, you know I’d break down the walls myself to get at you.”

“I know,” Maeve answered, her eyes holding that familiar dark hunger she only showed for Jadis. “You really would.”

“I really would,” Dys agreed without hesitation.

Abruptly grinning widely, Maeve’s whole countenance lightened as she spun about on her heel.

“But like I said, it wasn’t that big of a risk! And if it makes you feel any better, I got a level out of it, too!”

“You did?” Jay tilted her head with attentive curiosity.

“Level fourteen in Penumbral Infiltrator. That’s CLR fifty-two, now. Only eight more levels to go! Oh, and remind me to tell Aila I put my free attribute point into Endurance, would you? Wouldn’t want her to mix up her numbers for her record keeping.”

Stepping close to Syd, Maeve held her arms out before her, giving her a particularly over-the-top smile.

“Even with that extra Endurance point, I’m still exhausted from spending so much stamina. Carry me?”

“Oh, I’ll carry you,” Syd said as she took the shapeshifter in her arms. “All the way to CLR sixty and beyond.”

“I can’t wait…” Maeve purred as she wrapped her arms around Syd’s neck.

“You won’t have to wait long,” Syd informed her as she moved towards the exit of the cave. “Because I have an idea for how to deal with that Erinyes’ garden. And you’ll be helping me.”