Rebirth of the Nephilim

Chapter 688: Better

The agony of being pierced by three malediction lances of golden light was matched only by the searing pain of pulling herself free from the impalement.

Leaping backwards with a flap of her Succubus wings, Dys cursed loudly as the malign energy slid through her armor and flesh, damaging her health without directly harming her body. Her rapid withdraw was fast, but each micro-instant the black-streaked golden spikes remained inside of her felt like a burning hot spiked rod was being dragged through an open wound. The pain was so intense it was hard to think of anything other than the need to get away from the source, to make it stop by any means possible.

As fast as she was, before Dys had even fully backed away from the divine spikes impaling her, an explosion of blue flame crashed into her, blinding her for a second time in as many seconds. As the heat washed over her armor, Dys finished extracting herself and fell back a few feet, levitating into the air to give herself more room. When the flames cleared, she was able to see the source on the muddy ground before her, all signs of the golden lances gone.

Bridget stood with her shoulders heaving, great gusts of steaming breath exiting her helmet as the blue fire of her spell roared around her body. The lantern head of her flail burned brightly where it had struck the exact spot Jadis had seen the Demon’s eye peeking out from a small hole in the ground. Only, instead of a small hole, there was a moderately sized crater of rapid-fired clay that was quickly being re-soaked by the pouring rain.

 Dys immediately flew back down, swinging her axe hard as Bridget pulled away. The steel spike on the back of her axe head drove deep into the ground, burying itself several feet with the muted thump of heavy weight striking earth. There was no squeal of pain or cry of anger; not that Jadis would expect any to come from a Demon. There was no real resistance either, though, which was something Jadis had anticipated. Instead, as she withdrew her steel spike from the point of impact, she found nothing but a translucent, colorless slime mixed with dark mud dripping from the metal tip.

Not trusting her eyes alone, Jadis quickly scanned through the death notifications that filled her internal vision. There were many, too many to properly read as her other selves had been busy slaying as many lesser Demons as possible before they could reach the pit, but among the most recent there was no sign of any Greater Demon being slain.

“There’s nothing there!” Bridget shouted over the chaos and rain. “I didn’t get a kill notice for a Greater Demon!”

“It must have dug down!” Dys shouted back with the only explanation she could think of. “Back away in case it comes back up!”

Jadis did not want Bridget to be hit by the spikes that had pierced her. In fact, she was on the cusp of reaching out and grabbing hold of her orcish lover and taking her up and away from the slaughter pit when a flash of blue light and an inhuman roar reminded her that Bridget was not the only one of her loved ones stuck in the deadly morass. With a leap into the air, Dys saw that the strange snake-like creature and Alex were still engaged in a chaotic fight of slithering bodies and flailing limbs.

Lifting slightly higher in preparation for a charge, Dys’ rise in height gave her the unintentional perfect view to see the flash of a black and gold bolt of energy being cast from inside the broken farmhouse on the north side of the collapsed farmland. Which was to say, a spell cast by the skull blob mere seconds after it had been under the ground at her feet, and only moments more after it had shot at Tiernan from somewhere far to the south side of the battlefield.

It didn’t make any sense. No one could move that fast, not without causing some serious disruption to the world around themselves. Jadis felt like she was likely the preeminent expert on Oros on that account. And yet, somehow, the skull-shaped Demon had shot at her or others from three different locations that were hundreds of yards, if not miles apart from each other. Unless teleportation had just been discovered as a new type of magic, which she highly doubted, Jadis couldn’t comprehend how the Demon was crossing those distances so quickly.

“Get to Alex!” Dys shouted at Bridget before rocketing forward.

As her speed increased to nearly supersonic levels, the world around Dys seemed to slow down while her brain accelerated to catch up with how fast her body was moving. Flying only ten or so feet above the ground, she angled herself to pass over the few soldiers who were struggling to form a circle to protect themselves against the mire hounds that were launching at them with claw and fang outstretched. As she flew by overhead, she let the head of her axe fall slightly, catching one demonic hound in the torso as it leapt, bisecting it cleanly before it could land on top of a soldier who had lost her shield in all the mess. It was the most Dys could do for the small group, but she hoped that having one less enemy pouncing on their flank would be enough to shift the tide to their favor.

As Dys neared Alex, her demonic paladin struck at her foe with a tentacle tipped with a metal spike, causing a flash of neon blue to engulf the snake-like Demon as her divine smite burned its health directly. The light outlined the foe completely, giving Dys a lit-up view of the strange beast she had not had before. In the scant instant she had on approach, Dys evaluated the possessed monstrosity that sought to attack her lover.

Snake-like was not the best description, but it was close enough for purpose. Jadis had never seen anything like it and couldn’t begin to guess if the beast had a mythological counterpart on Earth or if it was a completely original creation born from one of Villthyrial’s mad dreams. The creature was something like an elongated crocodile with no back legs, its length stretching to thirty feet at the tip. The body was thick and covered in rough green scales across the top and sides, but the underbelly was smooth and paler in color. The beast did possess front legs that were superficially similar to a crocodile’s limbs, but they were strange with how skinny and long they were, giving them a mismatched look when compared to the thick body of the beast.

As the monster twisted around to snap at Alex’s arm, Dys could see the beast’s head was more like an alligator than a crocodile, except that the rounded snout was much shorter than expected, giving the muzzle a stubby appearance. Most perplexingly of all, the creature had a pair of wide, curved horns sprouting from either side of its head, almost exactly like what Jadis would have expected to see on a bull. It was a bizarre, incongruous combination of animal features that Jadis did not understand the purpose of. Then again, the only thing she needed to know in that moment was how to kill the beast. Somehow, Jadis had the feeling the process would not be drastically different from any other monster she had slain.

Tilting her body slightly to the side to make sure she wouldn’t accidentally hit Alex, Dys flew past the two, her flight carrying her only a few feet above the possessed alligator monstrosity. With her axe held out to one side, she felt the bladed head dig into the back of the beast. The cut was likely shallower than she would have preferred; Dys could feel the resistance of tough scales and hard flesh dragging at her axe, but she kept going without looking back. In less than half a second, she had passed by, striking the snake-gator with a possibly glancing blow.

And yet, no matter how deep the cut, the cut was still a blow.

In the next instant, before one full second had passed, Syd fell like a bolt from heaven onto the back of the beast, her sword staff extended between her feet.

The crunch of bones coupled with a disgusting squelching sound filled the air as Syd landed full force on the snake-gator’s back. Having timed her dive to match with Dys’s flyby attack, the blow triggered Mirror Strikes, increasing the already insane damage of having a giant armored Nephilim landing like a ton of bricks to ridiculous levels. In retrospect, Jadis realized that leading with her sword staff was probably unnecessary. Just the sheer weight of her Syd self crashing onto the beast was enough to not only shatter the creature’s back, but the blow also caused the monster’s torso to rupture, sending a disgusting avalanche of putrid organs to splatter off to the side. Hence the unpleasant squelching sound.

Wincing from the jarring impact that had done no small amount of damage to her knees, Syd looked up from the mess around her boots to meet Alex’s helmeted gaze.

“Are you okay?”

Before answering, several of Alex’s steel-tipped tentacles whipped forward and wrapped around the head of the alligator-like beast. With a twisting, tearing motion, the monster’s head was ripped halfway off its scaled neck. With another tentacle, Syd saw Alex strike inside of the gapping wound, causing a mix of red and black blood to spill out onto the ground. It was only then that Jadis saw another flash of a notification appear in the corner of her eye.

“Better… Now…”

From above, Jay took a brief second to smile at Alex’s response. From her position high in the sky, she had a good view of the changing battlefield, though she had little time to process so many moving parts. Syd was with Alex, having taken care of whatever the possessed monstrosity had been, and Jay could see Bridget nearby. The burning warrior had stopped to help the growing clump of soldiers deal with the Demons who were harassing them, and more and more of the men and women who had fallen into the trap seemed to be gravitating towards her. Maybe it was the brightness of her blue light giving them a point of reference, or maybe it was the soothing effect of her Stamina Beacon calling to them; either way, the soldiers were drawn towards the orc, so Jadis was already adjusting her Syd self to bring Alex to them.

Her Dys body was rocketing towards the abandoned farmhouse and would be there in moments. Jadis wasn’t sure what she would find there; if the Demon had some form of teleportation or extreme speed, it was likely already gone. In fact, the farmhouse had been checked by scouts, so it should have been completely empty. And yet, she was certain that the golden shot fired at Wilhelm just a second or two before had come from one of the empty windows of the second floor. If there was any chance at putting a stop to the skill blob, she had to take it.

Sweeping her eyes over the mud-soaked landscape below her, Jay saw that Wilhelm was holding the middle by himself, striking down Demons left and right as they tried to swarm him. Even as hundreds of the enemy converged on his location, there were still several thousand more Demons who were rushing past the man, aiming for easier prey. Not as many as there had been before, though. Jadis had performed two sets of dive bomb attacks with her Jay and Syd selves, and that had reduced the horde’s numbers by a significant amount. More importantly, she and Wilhelm were no longer the only two fighters on the field that stretched between the collapse and the charging flow of Demons.

In one instant, Jay saw the fierce blur of Noll’s curved sword cutting down Demons like a scythe through wheat. In the next, Severina’s shining blade sliced a path through the flanks of the Demons, slaying a dozen in a single pass. The roar of Halvor’s rage could be heard even above the shouts and cries of the soldiers in the pit and without looking, Jay knew that Thea and Meli would already be at the front of the allied forces with Ludger, leading the charge to block the Demons with their shields. Glancing to the west, Jay saw the Leviathan coming in low over the pit with the Roc following right behind it. Surrounding the two airships were a dozen Seraphim circling like hawks, diving low in one moment only to bring an injured soldier up out of danger in the next.

As much as Jay saw in those three seconds she stole to assess the situation, there was far more that she could not see. The turmoil, miasma, rain, and failing light made it impossible for her to see everything, even if she had more than two eyes to spare. Regardless, having one body hang in the sky only watching was not a luxury she could afford. Scanning the area for one instant more, Jadis had to choose where her Jay self could best be used. Seeing no better option, Jay moved to dive after her Dys self, ready to double up her attack power presuming the skull-blob could be found in the building. Then, a flash of red fire amidst the chaos of the collapse caught her eye and she instinctively changed course, angling for the source.

Ammy was still unaccounted for, and the glimpse of twisting red flame sure looked like the tail of a Lares to her.