Rebirth of the Nephilim

Don’t panic.

Jadis slammed down on her instantaneous emotional response. She wanted to scream. She wanted to charge straight ahead and tear the spiked knight limb from limb. She wanted to grab hold of Noll and carry him away to Eir. She wanted to cry.

She did none of those things.

Knee jerk reactions would not help her. She needed to remain calm, think logically, and attack the problem not just with her muscles, but also her brain. Both the Erinyes and this spiked knight had proven to be far more powerful than any of them had expected. The reasons why were important, but not something she could spend time uncovering at that moment. What mattered was neutralizing the threat and getting out of the Demon-infested city alive. No one would be coming in after them to save them. There was no backup. It was her, Noll, and Maeve.

So, what was her next step?

Jadis recognized that she needed to get her selves back together. She wasn’t as effective as she could be when divided, and the same went for her allies. Killing the spiked knight was a secondary concern; getting her Syd self and Noll reconnected with her other selves and Maeve was more important.

Noll was pinned to the ground, her sword staff buried in his chest with the cultist bearing down on him. Was Noll still alive? Yes. Syd had no doubt that he was, at least for the moment. The knight wouldn’t still be struggling with him if Noll’s inherent threat had been neutralized. The skill that was sapping her stats was still in effect, as was the second skill that was draining all of their speed. The effect wasn’t just on her, but on Noll and the knight, based on the relative slowness of their movements. What did that mean for her goal of reconnecting them all?

Getting Noll away from the spiked knight was going to be a challenge.

What about her other selves?

Her two bodies were still fighting against the Erinyes with Maeve’s assistance. Maeve’s boosting skill had massively increased her Agility, so she was actually moving faster than the fetid cultist. However, Maeve wasn’t much of a combatant. Stab a person in the back by surprise? Well within her capabilities. Fight an experienced combatant with all sorts of unknown spells and abilities? Not her forte. Certainly, it did not help that the environment around them was getting continually worse and worse, with the Erinyes filling the air with more and more spores, toxins, and who knew what else. With her speed suppressed, Jay and Dys could barely get involved in the fight at all.

But others were.

A golden bolt of energy wreathed in inky black tendrils struck Jay in the side. She held back her scream of pain as she felt the malign energies rip into her, tearing a couple hundred health points in one go. She didn’t need to see the source to know where the bolt had come from. The skull blob sniper had spotted her. That, or one of the minion scythe wights who were entrusted with its extra eyes had taken a shot at her. Either way meant bad news.

Most of the Demons in the city were streaming towards the north where the thunderous bolts of lightning and other sounds of a furious battle were coming from, but those who were close to the Erinyes’ garden were starting to take notice of the fight on the roof. Lesser Demons were already starting to converge, and Jadis had no doubt that the skull blob would not be the only Greater Demon to notice her presence as well.

So, either Jadis needed to find a way to end the fight with the Erinyes immediately so she and Maeve could link up with herself and Noll, or she needed to get Noll and herself away from the spiked knight so that she and Maeve could finish off the Erinyes.

All of these thoughts ran through Jadis’ mind in the brief moment that it took for her to recognize that Noll had been impaled by the enemy therion. There was truly no time for long deliberations. She had to act. She had to remain calm and make her decisions count, but she had to act. Choice made, Syd pulled her backpack around and withdrew one of the remaining metal plates that Sabina had enchanted for the mission. With one final thought, she activated the enchantment in the plate, then activated the one skill that she had only once before used against an enemy: Cursed Reflection.

The effects were immediate and pronounced, though they were not what Jadis had hoped for. Her head cleared, an ache in her eyes and her lungs lessened, and she overall felt better, like a weight of congestion had been lifted. However, she could tell her Agility was still being suppressed and her stats were overall weakened. The spiked knight’s aura, whatever it was, wasn’t counting as a spell effect, or had some other modifier to it that was interfering with her Cursed Reflection.

At least the spell was fucking with the Erinyes.

Maeve’s malediction blade sliced through the cultist’s arms as she tried to blindly ward off the Fetch’s attacks. Whatever effects she had been putting into the air had clearly affected Jadis, but now they were working their magic on the Erinyes. With Demons starting to climb the walls of the structure, Jay and Dys ran towards the two fighting women as Jadis cast her Wings of the Succubi spell.

With a flare of white light, translucent tendrils of power spread out around Syd. Pushing off the wall with all of her strength, she rocketed towards the knight who had pinned Noll to the ground at a speed that caused shockwaves to vibrate around her. In the microsecond it took Syd to reach the therion and tackle him in her arms, Jadis realized a fact that she should have recognized sooner. Her physical stats were being suppressed, not her magic ones. And Wings of the Succubi was dependent on her Eldritch Attribute, not her Agility.

Syd and the spiked knight crashed through the opposite wall of the warehouse, across a street packed full of Demons, causing untold carnage in the process, and into another building on the far side. As dust and stone clouded her vision, she tumbled over unknown obstacles and debris before rolling to a stop in a dark and soundless place. Breathing hard, Syd tried to shift her position but found that she couldn’t properly move. Her right arm was twisted around behind her back while her face was being pushed down hard against a stone floor. Struggling to get her knees under her, she felt strong legs kick at her sides, fighting against her movements while a great pressure pushed down on the upper part of her back.

A cry of pain leapt unbidden from her as sharp, jagged metal pierced her back through her armor, breaking holes in the thick steel like it was no more than paper.

“Stupid fool,” the therion growled as his spiked armor dug against her spine. “If you served a better master, you would not be dying here this night.”

“You consider a monster like Samleos to be a good master?” Syd spat her response as the fingers of her left hand found the charged steel plate under her body.

“To the Abyss with Samleos,” the man ground his spikes into Syd, forcing her to feel the metal scratch against her vertebra. “And the empire can go with him. You will not live to regret giving your allegiance to the bastard prince Hraustrekr.”

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Despite the situation, Syd had a ridiculous impulse to argue with the crazed therion that she fucking hated Hraustrekr and that she absolutely did not serve him. Of course, there wasn’t really much time for a debate, and she doubted than a man who had thrown his lot in with Samleos and his demonic horde because of some apparent grudge against Hraustrekr and the empire would be reasonable anyway. Besides, the piece of shit had stabbed Noll. He deserved what came next.

“Go eat your own dick,” Syd snarled before holding the enchanted steel plate up so that it was facing the spiked knight’s side.

Syd poured as much magic as she could into the already overcharged runes. Like pushing too much water into a tank, the container ruptured and did so with explosive force. The runes that Sabina had carved blazed into life, then burned red, then flared into white hot light. Before the therion could react, a column of flame fifty feet long burst forth from the plate, burning with the intensity of a hundred forges.

Syd screamed as the heat washed over her, blazing mere inches over her back as her arm struggled to keep the plate in place. It was like holding onto a jet engine while standing right underneath its exhaust. After a few seconds, Syd’s grasp faltered and the burning metal flew out of her hand, shooting fire in every direction as it tumbled away from her.

Getting to her feet, Syd searched the burning room for the spiked knight, finding only a large hole in the far wall, through which she could see an ocean of flames consuming whatever lay beyond. Of the man, she saw nothing.

“There, I even cooked it for you,” Syd glared, then ducked her head as a torrent of flames passed over her head from the still wildly tumbling enchanted steel square.

Flying back out the hole she had come through, Syd headed for the warehouse where Noll had been left behind. As soon as she passed beyond the walls of the building and into the open street, she felt a surge of power flow through her body. All of her repressed stats were back to what they had been, returned to their correct and powerful state. Whether that was because the spiked knight had died or she had moved out of the range of his aura, Jadis wasn’t sure. Either way, she hoped it was a sign that Noll’s power had also been returned to him and that he would already be standing amidst the wreckage of the warehouse, waiting for her with sword staff in hand.

Instead, as she burst through the ragged opening, she was greeted with the sight of dozens of Demons swarming her mentor’s fallen body.

“Fuck!” Jay and Dys both shouted as they jetted forward with weapons raised.

The Demons were swarming the building, crawling up the sides and leaping from nearby rooftops. Not just dozens, but hundreds of them, with thousands more on the way. As her Dys self swept away those who led the charge, her Jay self dodged deadly spells. More golden bolts either struck her glancing blows or barely missed, and Jadis knew that the skull blob sniper had found her for certain. If it had, then that meant that more elite Demons would be on them soon, too. With her power surging back into her arms and legs, she knew there was no more time, in more ways than one.

Maeve’s dagger slashed through the Erinyes’ chest, causing her to fall to one knee just as Jay reached the Fetch’s back. A last scroll seal burned away on the cultist’s body as she gasped for breath, her mood-like eyes open starring wildly up at them. When her mouth opened, Jay saw the blood pour out around beastly teeth and a crazed smile. When she spoke, it was with a rough voice in a language that Jadis did not recognize.

“Satazalu hadiqati hiatan; sayakhtaniq al'ahya' bithimariha, wstughdhdhy juthathahum judhuraha.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jay said before kicking the Erinyes off the roof.

Moments after the cultists body slammed against the statue of the lovers in the courtyard before flopping limply to the corpse-ridden ground below, the blaze began. It started around the edges, five points pointing inwards. By the time a second heartbeat had passed, the fire had spread inside, washing over the Erinyes’ garden like water over the shore. Flames licked up the mutated vines and smoke poured into the night sky as the structure was turned from a den of malignant flora into a furnace.

Before the flames could even touch her boots, Jay and Dys were in the air, with Maeve protectively cradled against Dys’ front.

“Where’s the rest of you!?” Maeve shouted over the wind and noise of thunderous battle. “And Noll!?”

“We’ve got to get to him, now!” Dys shouted back as she and her other self flew towards the city’s harbor.

Syd grunted as she threw mire hounds aside, kicking and punching them away as she cleared them from the pile they had made. She knew Noll was under the mass of Demon flesh, she could see the handle of her sword staff sticking up in the middle of the mess. Keeping a tight hold of the panic that threatened to drive away her rational thoughts, she tore two of the flailing hounds away from the spot she thought Noll’s head would be.

“Noll!”

The nightmare sight of his dark fur matted with blood made her hearts stop. Then one yellow eye opened and she felt her head go light with relief.

“Behind you, pup.”

Spinning, Syd slapped the scythe wight that had tried to sneak up on her with enough force to send its corpse splattering across the distant stone wall. Turning back to her fallen friend, she continued to throw Demons both dead and alive away from his form. Only a few more seconds passed before her other two selves came crashing down through the roof, squashing several Demons along the way. As Jay rushed the opening in the wall to block those that were still trying to get in, Dys moved to Noll’s side with Maeve in tow.

“Damn, you look like shit,” the Fetch said as she slipped to the floor.

“Shut up and heal me,” the old wolf growled weakly. “And pull this thing out of me.”

Waiting until Maeve was in place, Syd yanked the sword staff out of the floor and Noll’s chest all at once, causing a burst of red blood to coat the area. However, before any more could leak out of the huge wound in the veteran’s chest, Maeve’s orange hand glowed as divine light flared from the small piece of jewelry she held.

The simple gold chain and sapphire pendant had not been chosen for Eir’s Lesser Reliquary for any special reason. The necklace didn’t have any special meaning to her or anyone else. It was just a piece of jewelry, no more or less important than any other of similar quality. No, the chain had been chosen because it was gold, which meant it wouldn’t rust or corrode over time, and because it was small, which meant any of Jadis’ lovers could wear it without drawing attention to the reliquary. Looking impressive didn’t matter. Not when the necklace held over six thousand health points.

Noll struggled to his feet as the reliquary healed him, not waiting for the full effect. Maeve kept beside him, pressing the pendant against his body while frowning at the old wolf’s stubborn refusal to wait and stay still while he was healed.

“My sword,” he called out after hacking a glob of blood onto the floor.

“Got it,” Dys said as she pulled the curved blade from underneath a dead mire hound.

Nodding in thanks, he took the sword in hand while glancing around ruined warehouse.

“Did you kill Roul?”

“Roul?” frowned in question at the given name. “The spiked shit head? I’m not sure. Blasted him with fire and haven’t seen him since. You know him?”

“Yes,” Noll answered in his usual blunt way. “Later. Assume he’s alive. We need to go.”

“Now we can,” Syd called out as she put down the last of the four steel plates she had charged under a pile of broken timbers.

Jadis didn’t try to overcharge the enchanted metal squares. Frankly, she had been fortunate with the one she had used against Roul. It had been just as likely for the runes to explode with that much power being forced into them, or to fizzle out with no effect at all. Just as she had told the man, she was lucky in all kinds of ways.

Picking up Noll, Syd headed for the back of the warehouse as Syd followed suit with Maeve. Jay waited a few more seconds, slamming aside several Demons that fruitlessly threw themselves at her before backing up and letting them into the building. She wanted as many inside the place as possible, so that the structure would be swarming with angry Demons hunting for her blood. Maybe some would leave after a while when they didn’t find her, but enough would be piled inside so that she was sure that her parting gifts would burn a good number of them in fifteen minutes’ time.

“Sorry,” Dys told Maeve as Dys smashed a hole in the back of the building. “Things didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped.”

“Do they ever?” the Fetch said as she melted against Syd’s armor, turning herself into a streamlined lump of goo. “We’re alive, we killed the Erinyes, and we even got your sword staff back.”

Flying out the Nephilim-sized hole, Syd asked the important question.

“But did you level?”

“I’ll tell you after the rest of the traps I planted go off.”