Rebirth of the Nephilim

“That was my fault. Jeg beklager feilen min. Sorry.”

Jay sighed though her nose, her mouth drawn into a thin line as she regarded Halvor. The man looked genuinely remorseful, his failure obviously eating at his pride. However, Jadis wasn’t sure that it was right to lay the blame on him. Most of what had gone wrong during their stealth attack mission wasn’t because the distraction had started early.

The Hero’s party was meant to stir up trouble in the north after the fires started, specifically to pull the attention of any powerful cultists away from those burning locations. There was no knowing if the enemy had any mages that could put the fires out, so creating a distraction with a target like Wilhelm had been to help ensure Jadis’ targets were destroyed or at least put to the flame for as long as possible. The fact that the distraction started early meant that the structure where all the flying Demons had been roosting had been emptied out before the timers went off on the magical napalm bombs that Sabina and Tiernan had crafted. Maybe some had remained inside and had been caught in the blaze, but from what those on the distraction team had seen, it seemed that most had been out and in the sky before the fires started. Other than that, the failure of the distraction had not affected too much.

No, the real failure landed on others.

“You don’t need to apologize,” Jay told Halvor. “Nothing that happened is your fault.”

“Yes, it is,” the bearded man insisted. “Jeg var en tåpe. I walked blindly too close to the Demons and their damned domes! I should have stayed back.”

“I told you,” Ludger whispered under his breath, which prompted Wilhelm to glare at his friend. “What? I did tell him!”

“There is a time and a place,” Lucia scolded from the man’s other side.

“But I did!”

“He did tell me,” Halvor scowled, though not in anger at the Bulwark. “And I ignored. It was my fault. I should have—”

“You’re fine,” Noll grumped at the barbarian, cutting all further conversation off with the growl in his voice. “I got caught. That’s my fault.”

If she were inclined to be brutally honest, which was generally her stance on the truth, Jadis had to agree. The point at which the mission had really gone off the rails had not been when the distraction started early, but when Noll had been chased by the spiked knight, Roul. Or really, things had reached a point of being truly fucked up beyond all recognition once she had engaged Roul in a fight. So, when she thought about it, the blame lay solely on her shoulders.

“You didn’t get caught,” Jay said, turning to face the man she called her teacher and friend. “You were getting away just fine. I’m the one who chased after you when you didn’t need my help. Looking back on it, you ran right by us. If you had wanted me to join you in a fight against that Roul guy, you wouldn’t have done that, right?”

Yellow eyes regarded Jay over the rim of a mug of something strong that Halvor had dug out from his personal stash. Swallowing a mouthful, the veteran lowered the mug and nodded, just once.

“That wasn’t a good fight to take. I ran. I meant to lead him away. It’s not fair to expect you to know my mind. That wasn’t your fault. You did the right thing, trying to defend your ally. But yes, I didn’t want you to fight him. I was running from him.”

“You were fleeing?” Halvor exclaimed, his shock evident on his face as he stared at Noll the Savage. “You?”

“Stop that,” Wilhelm admonished the Berserker, then pointed a finger at Ludger. “You stop as well. If Noll fled from an opponent, it was for good reason. I would not want to fight a powerful enemy when surrounded by a city full of Demons, either.”

Wilhelm’s logic was perfectly reasonable. She and Maeve had gone in to fight the Erinyes with the intent of a quick assassination and a faster escape. No drawn-out fight; no fight at all, ideally, though that was not how things had played out. However, as she looked at her mentor, she saw that there was more to the story. He hadn’t avoided the fight because the location had been disadvantageous to him. He had avoided Roul, specifically.

“What happened?” Jay asked the old wolf. “Who is Roul?”

The camp around them was quiet. The sky’s darkness was just starting to lighten in the east, and the sun would soon be cresting the horizon and the army would stir. But for the moment, the crackle of the campfire was all the noise in the world. Dys and Syd had taken Maeve to the Leviathan, to clean up and debrief with the others. But Jay and Noll sat with Wilhelm, Ludger, Halvor, Lucia, and Tiernan, as they had been the distraction party. Anything spoken would be between them and no one else.

Letting out a sigh that rumbled from deep in his soul, Noll glared at the fire’s embers.

“Roul was my brother in arms in the Bastoc army. He was a soldier who fought by my side in the war against Thassia, and against the Empire. He was my friend."

Finishing off the last of his drink, Noll looked up into Jay’s eyes.

“And he’s stronger than me.”

“Stronger than you?” Jay asked in disbelief. “Well, he was pretty strong back there, but he was probably just being empowered by some enchanted armor or demonic rituals or some shit like that.”

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“No,” Noll shook his head, then went quiet.

“No? What do you mean, no?” Halvor jumped in. “How do you know what strength he has?”

“The last time I saw Roul was twenty years ago. He was a higher CLR than me back then, by ten levels. He was always stronger than me, more motivated than me. He would only grow stronger with time.”

“He’s a crazed cultist,” Ludger said with a frown. “You were comrades with a follower of Samleos?”

“He was not a cultist then,” Noll gave the blond man a disparaging look.

“Yeah, I don’t think he is following Samleos,” Jay said as she considered what Noll had told them. “It seems more like he’s siding with the Demons because he wants to take down Hraustrekr and the empire, not because he wants Samleos to win.”

“No cost is too high for his revenge,” Noll agreed. “I am not surprised that he is here, helping the enemy of the empire.”

“If you knew that there was such a powerful individual moving against the empire, why have you not told anyone before?”

Lucia’s cold question was met with a beat of uncomfortable silence. Wilhelm looked almost embarrassed by his companion’s accusatory attitude, but the others looked more curious than anything. Jadis had to admit, she was curious herself. Though, she felt she had a decent idea as to the reason why Noll wouldn’t be warning Hraustrekr about an enemy hunting him from the shadows.

“I have sworn no oaths to the empire,” Noll growled at his fellow therion. “I would shed no tears at its grave.”

Jay noticed the way Noll’s hand drifted to his chest, an unconscious movement towards the wound that Roul had given him.

“I thought he was dead.”

“Why would you think that?” Jay questioned him softly.

“Because,” Noll said as he rose from his seat and turned away. “I thought I killed him.”

After Noll had left, Jay and Wilhelm turned to discussing the results of the surprise attack on Kastoria, both known and expected. It was, of course, difficult to determine the full extent of the damage done to the demonic forces holding the city, but there were some things they knew for sure, and other things they could confidently assume. There were also obvious failures and missed opportunities, as well as some things that they had simply not been able to deal with. But even in those circumstances, they had walked away with information that could be used against their enemies in the future.

Even though Halvor had mistakenly started the distraction early by blundering into a nest of hidden Demons and thus attracted the attention of the domes by his fighting, the battle waged by Wilhelm and his companions had not been fruitless. They had managed to kill hundreds of the Demons that had come out from behind the walls to pursue them, including several possessed wyverns and another possessed ophiotaurus.

The ophiotaurus, as Jadis was informed, was the proper name for the strange alligator-like creature with horns, extremely long front legs, and no back legs. They were an uncommon magic beast native to the Siren Sea and were known for their ability to swim through land by turning the dirt into mud with their natural water magics. Sand was just as easy for them to move through as well, though rocky ground was impossible for them.

Since the impenetrable domes had attacked, Wilhelm and his team had also managed to get a good idea of the improved range of their spells, as well as a new variety of lightning that came in the form of slow-moving spheres that constantly spit out rays of electricity that struck anything nearby. That meant Demons were just as in danger of being hit as anyone else, but the spheres lasted for a long time, so the Demons could fill the skies with the lightning orbs to make it difficult for anyone to fly close.

“I believe I will be able to come up with a counter to their lightning spheres,” Tiernan had said as tiredly scrubbed his closed eyes. “However, nothing wide-reaching. The airships will need to either stay far back, or far in the sky, to keep out of range of those spheres.”

Jadis thought that maybe Sabina would be able to come up with something, but she wasn’t going to rely on the assumption. Her clever smith was a miracle worker, but even she had her limits.

As far as Jadis’ assault mission went, she was happy to say that the planted steel plates had burned the Erinyes and her garden to a crisp. The cultist had been dead even before the fires had started, but Jadis had no doubt that the flames had incinerated the body as well, which meant that no Demons would be possessing her corpse.

The rest of the fires had gone off as well, burning up the different buildings that Maeve and Noll had placed their payloads into and around. Other than the demonic roost, the only other building that had not gone up in flames had been the five-sided temple to Charos. It was at that tower that Noll had been spotted by Roul, and he had fled before being able to place more than one of the plates.

While they shied away from discussing the spiked knight further for the time being, Jadis privately ruminated on the problem the therion presented. She did not believe him to be dead; there was no way to know if a person had been slain via the system since only Demons prompted kill notifications. She had not seen his corpse, and she had not felt his aura leave her until she had been a distance away from where she thought he had been knocked to by the jet of fire. Just as Noll had said, she was going to presume he was still alive until proven otherwise. Which meant she was going to need to come up with some way of dealing with Roul’s aura before the next time they encountered each other.

“What are the chances of using the tunnels under Kastoria again?” Wilhelm asked as he stifled a yawn. “Could we make another attempt in a day or two?”

“Maybe,” Jay shrugged. “It’s hard to say. I don’t think they would have put together how we got inside the city, we were careful to cover the entrance we used, but who knows what kinds of abilities the Demons and cultists have that could make tracking our movements easier.”

“I would operate under the assumption that the tunnels are being watched, perhaps even trapped,” Tiernan advised. “Perhaps we can come up with a way to use them during the actual assault on the city, but I would not bet my coin on that dice.”

“It sounds like we should make many more of those steel plates, though,” Ludger said while standing and stretching. “I bet we could use them to fry the insides of those domes.”

“So long as we can get close enough,” Jay nodded in agreement.

“I’ll work on it with Sabina,” Tiernan said. “So long as she agrees to my company. However, I must get some sleep, first. I cannot perform such precise crafting with weary eyes and fingers. I’ll end up setting everyone on fire.”

“The day dawns,” Halvor slapped the gnome on the back, causing him to stumble half out of his seat. “We can sleep when we are dead. Unless you have some magic to let you sleep while marching.”

“Actually,” Jay said as she rose to her feet, “if you all want, you’re all welcome to get some sleep in the Leviathan. I have a ritual spell inside the cabin that makes it so you can get double the sleep in half the time, basically. I know I’m going to get some rest, and so is Maeve. Come join us.”

The Hero and his four companions stared at Jay blankly for a few moments. Letting out a huff, she crossed her arms and rolled her eyes.

“We’re not having sex. Just sleep.”

“Alright then,” Wilhelm said after another moment of suspicious silence. “I’ll check with the others and see who else could use some rest.”