Chapter 745: Halo

There were no illusions this time. No stolen body half-remade into a malformed likeness. No darkness to hide behind. No walls between them. Before her stood Demon Prince Desire, in all of her terrible malice and demonic glory.

And she was beautiful.

Her skin was a dark gray color, like slate stone in the rain. Her upper body, unadorned by clothing, armor, or jewelry, was Nephilim sized and voluptuous, with a thin waist and large, heavy breasts. Two pairs of arms extended from her shoulders, shapely and strong, while six white-feathered wings spread out from her back, creating an angelic aura that reflected the light of the magic pulsing in the cavern. Her long hair fell down past her waist, thick and straight and the color of early-morning mist, partially covering her face. Except, it wasn’t her face.

It was Jadis’ face.

There was no mistaking it. Jadis saw her own reflection nearly every moment of every day. She knew her own face better than any person the world could know, and Desire had copied her, completely. Her nose, her lips, her cheeks and her chin; all had been replicated down to the finest detail. All except for the eyes. Those were different, as Jadis did not have a third eye rising vertically in the center of her forehead, nor did her eyes have black sclera with bright blue irises. Those eyes belonged to Alex.

Desire’s mockery of Jadis and her lover ended where the Demon Prince’s waist began, as did her beauty. Instead of legs or tentacles or anything else that might come from a place of sanity, Desire had another pair of arms. And another. And another. And another.

Her body stretched down and down and further down still, a long and sinuous snake that went on for a hundred feet at least. Every foot or so was a new set of arms, identical in form to the four that she had extending from her shoulders. The Demon who had crawled across the ground on the arms and legs she had stolen from others was no more. This Desire made her body in the image of her choosing, uniform in its perfection and in its horror. For it was not only arms that ran the length of Desire’s body, but also a nightmare.

Two thick folds, starting where the legs should have begun, ran down the front of the Demon’s underside. Just between the first two pairs of arms, the folds parted, and from between them came… a face. A face that Jadis knew. Her eyes were closed, and her expression was the blankness of unbothered repose, but the face was unmistakably that of the Erinyes, the cultist who Jadis had killed and whose body she had thrown into the burning remains of her corrupted garden.

As the folds continued down, another face peeked from between. This one a handsome man with dark hair and a thin mustache and goatee. Then another woman, an elf, with blue skin. Then a human woman with curly red hair. Then another. And more. Countless faces lining Desire’s body, disappearing far beyond Jadis’ sight. All eyes closed as though they were only sleeping, instead of dwelling inside the belly of the vilest monster Jadis had ever encountered.

As horrible a sight as Demon Prince Desire was, it was what Jadis didn’t see that truly spread a chill through her hearts.

Where was Alex?

Jadis didn’t waste time on asking questions of someone whose answers couldn’t be trusted. Instead, she immediately activated her Cursed Reflection, draining her magic reserves down to a little below six hundred. Her presumption that Desire would not approach her without some kind of illusion activated proved accurate as immediately the Demon flinched, then dropped the spell. Unfortunately, while the false image that had been projected around Desire disappeared, it had been far more insidious than Jadis had expected. The Demon Prince had truly been in front of her, but her great, winding body had not stretched out down the tunnel behind her but instead had been arched and poised to strike at both Jay and Bridget. Which, unfortunately, turned Jay’s lunge forward into a complete miss. At least she was able to turn her shoulder in time to take the brunt of the multi-handed attack that came down on her from above.

Jay’s body bounced off the shattered stone floor as the force of Desire’s blow momentarily stunned her. She had always been physically strong as a Greater Demon, contesting Jadis’ Strength in direct, one on one combat, but whatever upgrades she had received upon becoming a Demon Prince had enhanced Desire to new heights. Thinking about Alex’s own first level skill from being a Demon Lord, Jadis could imagine the sorts of boosts that Desire had gained, especially if she had been gaining levels for weeks, or even months.

Rebounding from the Demon’s attack, Jay turned her bounce into a roll forward. She heard Bridget let out a grunt of pain as the orc was knocked away from Desire and ricocheted off the hex shield that the robot had made, but she couldn’t focus on her at that moment. Instead, Jay used the momentum of her somersault to swing her hammer down hard against Desire’s side, somewhere in the middle of her great length. Two arms were crushed under the weight of the impact, spraying black blood across the floor as bones splintered and broke through the Demon’s skin. Pivoting on one knee, Jay rose to her feet as she spun almost fully around to her left so that her maul connected with the wall of arms coming at her from the right. More bones shattered, but Desire’s counterstrike hit her just as hard and sent Jay flying back several yards.

At the same time as Jay was attacking, Noct was swiping her polearm through the last of the chains that had bound Syd to the floor. Before the final link could be broken, Desire lunged at her like a snake, arms connecting with the Valravn and knocking her down the dark tunnel whose opening yawned behind them. With a roar, Syd rose up to meet the Demon Prince, sword staff in hand. Her upward thrust pierced deep, running all the way through Desire’s torso. What would have been a grievous wound on most any other creature did nothing to stop the deranged monster from rapidly wrapping her length around Syd like the coils of a snake. The power of a titanic constrictor soon squeezed around Syd, with the added twist of dozens of strong arms and clawed hands grabbing and squeezing her arms, her legs, and any other part of her armored body that could be grasped.

As she struggled against the crushing force of the arms and coils enveloping her, Syd’s head was yanked back by a violent pull that ripped her helmet off, exposing her face to the stale air of the dark cavern. Hands grasped hold of her hair, holding her head in place, as her own stolen visage came into view before her.

“Strong One… Jadis…” Desire purred. “Why… Fight me…? You… Are… Mine…”

Jadis wasn’t exactly feeling up to the task of a verbal debate with a psychopathic Demon who seemed intent on either fucking her or eating her, possibly both at the same time, but she let her instincts fly with the one response she could think of.

“The only people I belong to are the people I love. And trust me, bitch, you are not one of them.”

Azure fire surged across Desire’s body as Bridget’s flail struck her on the side. In the next moment, the Demon was slammed against the cavern wall as Jay’s flight-boosted charge crashed into her. As the Demon Prince began to squeeze down harder on Syd, the baleful howl of Noct’s fury echoed in the tunnel and the Valravn, bereft of her catch pole, leapt onto Desire’s back and began tearing and clawing at her wings and spine. When the Demon reared back and tried to grab hold of her, the many straps and chains that covered Noct’s body snapped around Desire’s upper torso, pinning her two pairs of upper arms against her sides. Several of the leather belts even wrapped around Desire’s head, blinding her.

As Jay smashed her hammer against the Demon’s long body, she was startled by the faces lining Desire’s underside suddenly opening both their eyes and their mouths. The hellacious screech of hundreds of voices screaming in rage pierced Jadis’ ears as the many faces gaped at her, their angry eyes all glowing an unnatural blue. Lashing out, Jay struck one of the screaming visages, nearly flattening it with the force of her blow. That didn’t stop the noise, but it at least made her feel a little better. That was until all the faces that were wrapped around Syd started trying to bite her through her armor.

The fight turned into a wild, thrashing melee, with Syd caught in the coils of Desire while Jay, Bridget, and Noct wailed on the Demon from three sides. Black blood flew as Jay activated Crack the Glass and began to actively pummel Desire’s side, breaking bones and tearing flesh, spraying black blood far and wide. Jadis knew from experience that Desire had incredible tenacity and was harder to kill than a cockroach. Tearing off body parts wasn’t going to finish the fiend off, which was why Jadis wasn’t going to stop tearing until there was nothing of the Demon left.

As her other selves fought viciously against the Demon Prince with the aid of her two lovers, Jadis’ Dys self struggled up onto her feet with shaky legs. The blow from Desire slapping her across the cavern had been bad, but that wasn’t what had kept her from rocketing back over to join the fight. No, it was by Jadis’ own choice, as she had used her Shifting Reflection to transfer all of the physical damage that her other two bodies had taken onto Dys alone. The disease eating away at Jadis’ lungs could not be moved out of her other selves, but the damage done to the tissue could, along with many of the other physical effects. The shift enabled Jay and Syd to keep fighting in top form, though it left Dys feeling like she was about to crumble into a puddle of blood and goo.

Wheezing through choking gasps, Dys watched the fight from a distance. She could still see well enough, even if her vision was starting to blur from the fever and the blood leaking out of her eyes. Aside from her two other selves, Noct, and Bridget beating the tar out of Desire, she could see the walking butt plug puttering around inside of its shield-protected polyhedron. It didn’t seem to be actively involving itself in the battle anymore; instead, it was doing something with the control panel it had strapped to its left arm that seemed to be having an effect on the magic that was pouring up through the tunnel that was in the ceiling of the huge cavern. From what it had said, Jadis guessed that it was trying to find some way of escaping the situation, but she didn’t know how it was going to accomplish that. She couldn’t do anything about it fleeing, either. Not until Twisted Desire was dead, at any rate.

Another step towards that end goal was reached as, with a roar of bloody triumph, Jay ripped Desire in half, sending the lower length of her many-armed body flopping to the side. In an unsurprising and revolting turn of events, the faces on the lower half continued to scream as the arms clawed at Jay, still trying to kill her despite having no connection to the Demon Prince any longer. Taking hold of the tip of the sword staff that Syd had stuck through Desire’s torso, Jay yanked hard, ripping the weapon all the way through. Then with a grunt of effort, she slammed the sword down through the top of the disembodied lower half of Desire, pinning it in place against the stone floor.

She wasn’t going to let her slip away again.

The energy of the fight turned as the loathsome centipede went on the defensive. Syd no longer tried to escape from Desire’s coils, but instead grappled onto her, holding her in place as the many arms that had once tried clawing at her had been broken and folded onto themselves. From above, Noct’s claws continued to shred flesh and crush bone, while on the floor below Bridget continued to beat on Desire with her flail, covering her body in blue fire. Jay kicked, punched, and slammed her maul into the Demon, ripping into her with all the fury she felt for the monster who had been stalking her since Eldingholt.

And then Dys heard the prayer.

“My Lord Samleos, I beg of you, give me the peace of promised oblivion! Forgive me for the sins of my flesh and take me into Your Halls as I forsake this false world for the truth of the Abyss!”

Dys heaved in a shaky breath as she turned to her left, noticing for the first time a figure lying in a broken heap on the floor next to one of the many tunnel entrances. He was a fat man, human, with the kind of clothes Jadis expected to see on a duke or a king in a bad fantasy movie; all velvet and silk and way too much gold. His arms and legs were obviously broken, but he held a chain over his face with a trembling hand, from which dangled a silver sphere the size of a plumb.

“Accept my body, my Lord,” the man uttered in a hoarse gasp before opening his mouth and letting the orb drop in.

Dys didn’t know what the fuck that was about, but she didn’t like it. Willing her morphic weapon to transform the tip into a long spearhead, she used her wings to float closer to the curled-up man. She wasn’t about to let him cast a spell or activate a magic bomb or some shit right as she was about to finally kill Twisted Desire. With a quick lunge, she pierced the man’s head from the side, splitting his skull with a single stroke. When she pulled her weapon back, he let out a small, dying gasp, the silver chain dangling from between his slack lips.

A booming, cracking sound thundered in the cavernous space, causing Dys to think for a moment that the man had succeeded in casting some sort of spell. Instead, when she turned her bleary eyes on the hexagonal sphere with the robot, she saw that the stone where the tunnel led above was cracking and coming apart. From that tunnel floated a metal platform, on top of which was an old woman sitting in a chair. She had dark purple skin and yellow eyes, and she was possibly the oldest elf Jadis had ever seen. Even older than Emperor Somerulf, and that man was positively ancient. Her face looked like a raisin with how many wrinkles she had, an image magnified by her hair being covered completely by a tight, woven shawl that draped over her thin shoulders.

As Dys watched, the platform lowered down from the cracked ceiling, entering into the hex sphere to float to a rest next to the altar platform. The magic that had been flowing upwards from the obelisk into the tunnel began to slow, the stream faltering. As it did, a new stream appeared, this one flowing downwards. It took Dys a second to realize that the new stream was not some form of magic, but water, leaking from above.

“Who the fuck is that,” Dys croaked as her eyes flicked down from the water to stare at the old elf. “And what are they doing?”

“The Seeing One… And the Dead One… It seems that they are fleeing…”

The cold chill that ran down Dys’ spine had nothing to do with the disease ravaging her insides. Rounding on the body that she had left dead on the floor, she thrust her spear at the man she was certain that she had killed. As her arm carried her deadly weapon forward with all of her might, all movement abruptly ceased. She froze, unable to move, barely able to breathe, her body locked into position, the point of her crystal spear mere inches from the palm of a raised hand.

Dys glared in confusion, frustration, then mounting horror as the dead human slowly rose not to his feet but instead floated into the air. With each passing moment, his short, obese body was stretched, the tendons snapping as bones parted, flesh popping as clothing and skin alike tore. Soon, the figure was no longer small and round, but tall and thin, elongated to a height that the man’s body had no capacity to reach. As with his body, his face stretched, flesh falling away to reveal the bloodied skull beneath, with a silver sphere locked behind yellowed teeth.

The eyes… the eyes did not melt away. The eyes glowed bright silver, the same silver as moonlight on water. The same silver as the ring that appeared over the floating corpse’s head. A ring that was broken, with shattered pieces trailing the greater part, circling overhead in a slow spiral. A ring that was overflowing with magic power, disrupting the aether around it, causing the hidden reality that existed beyond normal sight to bend and warp under the strain.

It was not a ring.

It was a halo.

Jadis’ attention shifted entirely, all focus leaving Demon Prince Desire as her other two bodies turned to face the man she could only assume was a far, far greater threat. The silver sphere, the corrupted body… it was a mirror to what Desire had done in Lyssandria’s temple. Only this time, it was not a mere prince of Demons projecting their soul onto another. This time, it was the Lord of Demons himself.

Dys’ body was abruptly flung to the ceiling, then the floor, then the ceiling again with violent force. It was not only her affected, but every loose object for a hundred feet around the Demon Lord, including any of the poor, tortured souls who still lived in the pit at the center of the cavern. It was as though gravity itself was reversing, throwing them all up and then down and then up again, tossing their bodies around with accelerating speed before all collapsed to the floor like discarded toys.

Charging forward, Jay and Syd left the weakly struggling form of Desire on the floor. Before either of her selves could fly more than a few feet forward, a wave of invisible force pushed them back, sending everything in its path crashing against the far wall. Bridget’s cry of pain and Noct’s howl of rage filled Jadis’ ears as they all slammed hard against the cavern edges, then were pulled forward by another irresistible force that had them tumbling across the floor. At one point, Jay became tangled up in Desire’s coils, the two rolling together into the pit of death and decay. The relentless Demon still tried to claw at her, grabbing on tightly, but Jay shrugged Desire away. She wanted to kill the Demon Prince, but she couldn’t do so, not when the actual fuckingDemon Lord was throwing his magic at her.

Spreading her tendril wings wide, Jay pushed off the ground and launched herself up at the elongated figure that was floating across the stone chamber. Rearing back with her maul over her right shoulder, Jay prepared to swing the Demon bone hammer straight into the Demon Lord’s face.

Again, mere feet from making contact, Jay was frozen in place, unable to move forward. Hovering in midair, controlled by a force that she could not resist, the Demon Lord regarded her with dispassionate silver eyes.

“You are the Nephilim…” he spoke, his voice echoing yet his speech clear and precise. “I have been told of you…”

While the force holding Jay in place would not let her move a muscle, whatever spell the Demon was using had no continued effect on the rest of Jadis. Rocketing at him from a different angle, Syd flew at him with arms spread wide open for a tackle. However, before she could reach, Jay’s body was rapidly interposed between them and, with even greater force than Desire had struck her, Jay was flung into Syd and the two of Jadis’ bodies were sent crashing against the far wall yet again.

Dys pulled the visor of her helmet open as she hacked blood and phlegm onto the ground, barely able to breathe. She heard more than saw Noct fly at the Demon Lord as well, and her Syd self felt the impact of her winged lover slamming against her body as she was tossed aside just as easily. Bridget she did not hear, but her other selves did, as the orc of blue flame gasped and choked, the toxins in her system finally catching up to her as she lay on the floor, shaking uncontrollably.

“You are strong… But you are not the Hero…”

A rumble shook the floor and a crack echoed from above. Looking up, Jay flinched at the sight of the ceiling cracking apart, with what looked like thousands of gallons of water floating above, suspended in the air by the silver aura that orbited around the Demon Lord like the rings of Saturn.

“I will lose this nest… But you will die…” The Demon Lord intoned, as though he were considering a bargain at a market stall. “An expensive trade… But worth the cost…”

Syd’s arm flung out, tossing Eir’s reliquary to Jay, who had landed far closer to where Bridget was choking on her own flames. Catching the object, Jay pressed the reliquary against the orc, forcing health into her, enough to hopefully save her from dying immediately to the toxins that had filled her system. At the same time, Syd and Noct both lunged forward, scrambling together to strike at the Demon floating closer to the hex sphere containing the Seeing One and the Dead One, whoever they were.

A shard of bone, a piece of one of Desire’s arms, was lifted from the ground and sent flying at them at hypersonic speeds. Syd tried to block it, protectively putting her gauntleted right hand out around Noct, who was in front of her. The bone pierced through the cold flame steel, digging through her hand and out the other side, went through Noct’s chest, with the point finally stopping as it pierced Syd’s bare right cheek, pinning Noct against her.

Jay was already moving forward as Syd fell back, having left the reliquary with Bridget. Using up almost the entirety of her remaining magic reserves, she activated Mirror Magnification as she flew at the Demon Lord. With the sudden increase in reach, she swung her hammer at the stretched figure, aiming low. The force that had frozen her before nearly stopped her again, but this time, with the added strength of her increased size, Jay pushed through, and her maul struck the Demon on the left hip.

Bone shattered and flesh burst as the attack not only broke the body, but ripped the legs of the elongated Demon off completely. The limbs fell to the ground far below with a wet splatter, but nothing else followed. As Jay carried on with her momentum, the force against her redoubled, slowing her down and holding her in place once again. Despite having no face, the Demon Lord gave her a look that Jadis could only describe as surprised.

“Stronger than I believed…”

Jay screamed in pain, the noise violently forced out of her as her right arm was twisted to the side, bending steel and breaking her elbow. Against her will, the maul in her hand was brought close to the Demon Lord’s face. He reached out, running fingers over the smooth white surface.

“Vinea…”

Then Jay’s arm was torn off her body completely.

The pain was… not something more than Jadis could handle. She had broken bones many times before. She had been impaled. Crushed. Burned. Drowned in mud. There were so many ways she had experienced pain that having an arm ripped off at the elbow was, frankly, nothing new. So, while it did hurt, and she did scream, and she did feel very much like throwing up, Jay didn’t let those things stop her from immediately twisting around and throwing a punch with her left hand directly into the Demon Lord’s face.

The blow knocked the Demon back and his grasp on her hammer and disembodied arm faltered. Snatching her weapon out of the air and letting her arm fall to the side, Jay slammed the butt of her maul into the Demon Lord’s chest, crushing the bone and creating a crater with the force. Before she could continue the momentum of her assault, the force of gravity was suddenly reversed and she was sent hurtling upwards, where she splashed into the cold saltwater filling the ceiling space above.

As water and darkness surrounded her, Jay closed her eyes and tried not to think about the blood pouring out of the stump of her right elbow. Instead, she focused on what she could do. She focused on how she was going to win this fight. She focused on protecting the women she loved, and the warmth that she felt for them. She focused… on the familiar blue aura that she could see surrounding her, even with her eyes closed.

“Do not… Touch… My… Jadis…”

The cold fury in Alex’s voice brought smiles to Jadis’ faces, if only for a moment.

Tearing through one of the tunnel openings, Alex flew into the cavern, her shining halo on full display. Her forward momentum halted altogether as her swirling blue aura slammed into the silver orbit of her rival. For a split second, there was utter stillness. Then the war between Demon Lords began.

Power surged like waves in a storm as the auras of the two Demon Lords flowed against each other. Wild ripples in the aether rolled across the room, splitting stone and sundering the walls, floor, and ceiling. Everything around them began to crack and crumble as a contest of wills spilled over from the realm of magic into the physical world.

And as Jadis watched, she saw that the Demon Lord was more powerful than her Alex. He was older. Stronger. More Experienced. Whatever spells he possessed were tearing Alex’s body apart, ripping off tentacles and crushing limbs. But despite his power, the Demon Lord could not subjugate Alex’s aura. Her soul burned brightly, roiling against his will, bending his magic back against him as he tried and failed to subsume her completely. It wasn’t a state that could last. Not for long. Alex was hurling scythes of her own blood at her enemy, shredding what remained of his body, but that body was only a proxy, not the real thing. Eventually, she would be killed, her body turned to mulch by the gravitational forces of the Demon Lord.

But Alex’s power was enough for Jadis to act.

Throwing herself down and out of the cold water, Jay fell like a sword from on high, hammer outstretched and aimed for the Demon Lord’s skull. Before she could reach him, she was frozen in place by his power.

As was Dys, who had charged forward at the exact same time as Jay.

“That will not work…” the Demon Lord stated as both hammer and spear hung suspended in the air a mere foot away from his head.

“Yeah, but this will,” Dys spat through gritted teeth.

With a tiny dredge of the remaining magic within her, Dys commanded her morphic weapon to change form, growing the crystal outward. In an instant, a spray of dark, opaline shards pierced the Demon Lord’s head, shattering the bone and sending the small, silver orb flying out of the corpse’s mouth, and into the waiting tentacle of Alex.

“Go fuck yourself…” Demon Lord Alex decreed before crushing the soul sphere.

The change was immediate. The Demon Lord’s aura disappeared, and the effects of his magic went with it. All at once the water that had been hanging above them came crashing down. The stone ceiling shook and thundered, great rents and fissures opening up and allowing more water to pour into the underground chamber. A great flood began, washing over everything in a deluge that Jadis had no hope of stopping.

In order to give her Dys self the strength to attack the Demon Lord, Jadis had transferred all of her wounds from that body onto her Syd self. With the damage and pain of disease eating away at her, Syd leaned heavily against Noct, who was holding onto her with her strong arms. Not that the Valravn was doing much better with a spike of bone sticking through her lung, but she was somehow still breathing easier than Syd was. As the waters poured down from above, Jay took hold of Alex with her good arm and flew towards Noct and her Syd self while Dys darted over to Bridget, who had managed to get to her feet, reliquary in hand. With her three lovers clutched tightly against her selves, Jadis searched her surroundings, looking for a way out, and one other problem that she had not yet resolved.

Uncaring of her need for time, more and more water came rushing down from above, filling the pit and drowning anyone who might have still been alive below. The polyhedron which contained the two cultists sat in the middle, impervious to the water that flowed around it. For an instant, Jay locked eyes with the ancient elf who sat on her chair within, but her line of sight was broken as the water continued to gush in, and against all expectations, the sphere slowly began to rise upwards to the ceiling.

“We need to get out of here!” Bridget coughed as she tugged on Dys’ arm.

“I didn’t get a kill notification on Desire!” she shouted back, eyes searching through the swirling waters of the rapidly flooding cavern. There were bodies everywhere, refuse and muck and the light from the hex sphere fading, turning everything into shadows. “Dammit, I didn’t fucking finish her!”

“We’re finished if we stay!”

Jadis cursed, the agony of not putting an end to Desire when she had the chance hurting her almost as much as the arm she was missing. Roaring with frustration, she turned and began flying away from the deluge.

“Left…” Alex called out, directing her to the tunnel that she had come flying out of moments earlier.

Jadis wasn’t sure where the tunnel would lead them; it wasn’t the one she had flown down to get to the underground pit. But she trusted Alex would know where to take them to get to safety and followed her directions as she guided them through the tunnel and its many branching forks. Dead Demons lay to the wayside as they flew as fast as Jadis could go, her stamina and health both flagging from the tremendous strain she had been put through. Soon, Jadis felt a great pressure build up behind her, and a roar filled her ears. She didn’t need to look back to know that the ceiling of the cavern had finally broken completely and the true rush of millions of gallons of water had flooded into the tunnels.

“Left… right…!” Alex continued to lead her down progressively smaller tunnels.

Soon, Jadis had to dismiss her Mirror Magnification, then fly in a single file line to keep from getting stuck between the walls closing in around them. The roar of white water grew to deafening levels, so that Jadis could not even hear Alex anymore, but she felt her lover’s hand on her, directing her still to a tunnel that opened up above them. Forcing her way through the space that was far too tight for her bulk, she found herself in a cramped tunnel that looked oddly familiar to her.

“Smugglers,” Jay breathed out through her teeth as the recognition hit her.

With the deafening roar right behind her, Jadis didn’t have the luxury of taking a moment to remember which direction she had once traveled down to get in and out of the tunnels that the smugglers had dug under the streets of Kastoria. With no guidance from Alex, she picked left, then flew as fast as she could down the halls, her armor scraping against the stone. Rounding a corner, Jadis cursed at what she saw.

The wood and stone of a building that had collapsed into the tunnel before her was blocking the way. With no gap to allow her by, Jadis turned her heads to see if there was any chance of going back the way she had come. The wall of water rushing in behind her dissuaded her from trying.

“Hold on!” Jadis shouted, then rammed forward with all of her might.

The rubble exploded in front of her as Jadis charged through, the force of her bulk breaking wooden beams and shattering bricks. As she pushed through the clot of debris that meant to keep her buried under the Demon infested city, for just a brief moment, a spot of light fell upon her from above. Then the force of the water rushing behind her drowned all sound and vision and she was sent rocketing upwards.

Jadis didn’t know what her tumbling exit of the tunnels looked like. She could only guess, being in the middle of the maelstrom herself. However, she imagined a great geyser rising into the sky, carrying her and her lovers high into the air, which was a conjured image made solid as she spread her wings wide and pulled out of the tumultuous stream of water into the fresh, clean air of daylight.

Well, not clean or fresh. But the sun was shining. As she blinked the seawater out of her eyes, Jadis could see that she was floating a hundred or so feet over the waterfront of Kastoria’s harbor, a slowly subsiding pillar of water flooding the destroyed streets below. Looking around, she could see Volto’s army pushing into the city from the west, and a smaller knot of fighting to the east. To the north, she saw both of her airships floating around the tower of the Opaline Palace, and to the south she could see several war ships as well as what looked like a—

“Is that a sea dragon?” Syd dumbly coughed out the question, her stunned condition making the unusual sight the most important thing to her at that particular moment.

“Yes,” Noct answered quietly, one hand on the healing reliquary that Bridget was holding out to her.

It was a sea dragon, a scaly, serpentine thing with a green body and bright red fins running down the back and sides of its long body. As it moved through the water, Jadis could see a man with seaweed for hair riding on the beast’s back, and she quickly deduced that the pair were part of the sea dwelling Dryad’s grove that had come to lend their aid to the siege.

Abruptly, a great bubbling appeared in the water of the harbor, causing the sea serpent to glide away from the disturbance while men on the ships shouted and pointed in alarm. Then a great sphere made of clear hexes rose to the surface, the light of a soul-stealing altar glowing visibly from within. After bobbing in place, the orb began rolling forwards while sinking back below the surface, beyond Jadis’ sight. The serpent and Dryad companion followed after it, both also disappearing under the waves as they headed out to open sea.

“Please…”

“Don’t worry,” Jay rasped around her sore throat, stopping Alex from speaking further. “I won’t try to follow. I think we all really need to see Eir first right now.”

“Yes…” all three women agreed.

As she slowly turned in the sky on drooping wings, Jadis spotted a beautiful sight. Severina, easily visible with her black and white wings, was flying through the sky towards her. She was still distant, coming from the direction where Eir and Jocelyn should have been, but Jadis could see the sun reflecting off of long red hair that extended from the figure held against the Seraphim’s chest. Aila was with her, which Jadis dearly hoped was an excellent sign indicating that all the rest of her lovers were somewhere safe, or at least not lost in the flooded Demon tunnels beneath Kastoria.

Choosing to take a moment to breathe in and let her hearts settle, Jadis chose to let Sev and Aila fly to her and simply floated in place, taking a moment of rest high above all the chaos that had ravaged her body for the past gods-only-knew how long. As she did so, she held Alex, Bridget, and Noct close against her chests, silently praying her thanks to anyone who was listening that they had all managed to make it out alive, if not unscathed.

As she did so, a small, moving thing on one of Alex’s slowly healing arms caught Jay’s attention.

“What… or who, is that?” she asked, seeing the small, dark blue eye of an unfamiliar Demon staring up at her from where it was wrapped tightly around her lover’s wrist.

“A Demon…” Alex answered simply. “With a choice…”