“I’m telling you, it was the eyes.”

Wilhelm gave Dys a skeptical look, brows furrowed in thought as he used a stained rag to wipe away the last of the gore still marring his helmet. Dys had her own helmet in hand and was using a small-for-her knife to pick pieces of stone and other debris that had gotten stuck in the visor free. The act of cleaning her armor was a little annoying at times, at least when she wanted to get to other, sexier activities, but it was nice to give her hands something to do while she was having a conversation around a campfire. It was nice to see that Wilhelm felt the same way.

“How would that work,” the Hero replied slowly as he considered the idea. “Each eye represents a protective spell? Or are they sacrifices for large amounts of health points?”

“I don’t know,” Dys shrugged, a frown tugging at her own mouth. “But I saw that the Demon had at least ten eyes when the fight started, and by the end she had maybe five. Not including the giant eye. I’m pretty sure they popped every time you or I or Noll landed a lethal blow.”

“Agreed,” Noll grumbled from his side of the fire. “The eyes were destroyed without being struck.”

“I don’t think that was coincidence,” Dys nodded at Noll as she spoke. “Look, Eir has a ritual spell that offers her protection that is similar in nature. Not to go into the details in public, but I don’t think a Demon having some kind of life-preserving skill or spell is all that weird of a thought.”

“No, you’re right,” Wilhelm hummed in agreement. “I have a comparable skill, as do Jocelyn and Halvor. A Demon having the same skill, especially one that is using Divine magic, is not impossible.”

Having finished cleaning his helmet of all remnants of the earlier battle, Wilhelm crumpled up the thoroughly dirtied rag and tossed it into the fire. With a sigh, he turned his gaze from the flame up to meet Dys’ eyes.

“But what you are implying would indicate a Demon who would need to be struck down nine or ten times before they are slain. That is an incredibly powerful skill or spell, and I do not like the thought of enemy Demons having gained classes that allow for such abilities. It does not bode well for our future.”

While Jadis hoped that the skull blob was a one-off encounter, she wasn’t enough of an optimist to believe as much. Ever since Glanum, Jadis had noticed an increase in the power and cleverness of the Demons she had been fighting. At first, she had assumed the change was thanks to the Playwright and his influence on the Cult of Samleos. However, after having encountered Desire in her… evolved form, Jadis suspected that the change was deeper. It was possible that the twisted Demon Prince was influencing the Demons around her, directing them down paths that they never would have gone on by themselves. But since the Demons were avatars, and thus directly linked to Samleos, wasn’t it even more likely that the God of Death was using his Urges to empower his Demons?

The cause ultimately didn’t matter, not for the immediate future, anyway. Jadis couldn’t do anything about it if Samleos was stacking the deck in his favor; policing the Covenant was not up to her. If big bad Sam did something that broke the rules, Jadis would have to trust that Valtar, Lyssandria, and the rest of the gods would step in to stop him. If the cause of the changed Demon behavior was Twisted Desire, then the only way to stop it would be for Jadis to put the Demon down herself. And before she could do that, she would need to get to the damn monster, which didn’t change her current plans.

A small part of her whispered in the back of her mind, telling her that technically, whether it was Samleos or Desire causing the problems, the real source was Jadis herself. She had been sent by D to shake things up on Oros, and she had certainly succeeded in that goal thus far. Still, Jadis pushed aside any thoughts that hinted that what she was doing was creating more problems than solutions. She was working towards ending the destructive cycle of Heroes and Demon Lords. Such an endeavor would inevitably bring about some pain.

As her father often said, if you wanted to make an omelet, you had to break a few eggs.

“I just spotted the airships,” Dys announced quietly, still a little lost in her thoughts.

“Where?” Wilhelm looked past the campfire, in the direction Dys was absently staring. “I don’t see—”

“That way,” Dys hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “North by northwest. My Syd self is over there.”

“Right,” Wilhelm quickly shook his confusion before getting up from his seat. “I’m going to take Taube up to meet them in the air. I’d like to escort them into the camp.”

“Can’t wait to see Jocelyn again, hmm?” Dys murmured while doing an adequate job of hiding her smile.

“I—that is…” the Hero tripped over his words for a few seconds before taking a calming breath. “I’ll be back soon.”

As Wilhelm jogged off towards where his griffon was stabled, Dys put her efforts back into cleaning her helmet. With only Noll for company, at least for the little while it would take for the airships to reach the staging site and anchor for disembarkation, she was essentially alone with her thoughts. Not a bad thing necessarily, but she couldn’t help but think about what she could have done better.

The skull blob had gotten away. Jadis knew she should have been able to kill the damned Demon, but she had fumbled. Using her Dys self as a living rocket had been a bad idea. Yes, it had been an incredibly powerful attack, but it had also required too much windup as well as too much recovery time. Maybe it would have been the right choice against a single target that required hit-and-run tactics, but the skull blob had not been that target. If her Dys self had been on the ground with her Jay self, then Jadis could have rained down an ungodly number of attacks on the Demon, powering through whatever defensive ability kept the thing from dying outright.

Her Syd self could have joined the fight as well, but Jadis wasn’t sure she should have. Wasn’t it a good thing to keep one body in the air acting as overwatch? The myrmidons and skull-thing could have been lures for another, even more deadly ambush. If that had come to pass, and Jadis hadn’t had her Syd self on the lookout above, she would have been kicking herself in the ass for the rest of month. But no second ambush had come, and instead the skull blob had gotten away. Not even several hours of searching the area for miles around had revealed any trace of the Demon. And so, Jadis felt like a fool for not using her Syd self when perhaps she should have.

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“Stop it.”

Dys glanced up from her helmet, eyes flicking to the man sitting across the campfire. Noll was glaring at her, his yellow eyes reflecting the firelight in that faintly eerie way that some animals sometimes did. His forearms were on his knees, a half-eaten loaf of bread forgotten in one hand. His gaze was hard, intimidating even. For a moment, Jadis was reminded that the man’s title was Noll the Savage, and with good reason.

“Stop what?”

“That,” Noll lifted a clawed finger to gesture at her. “Stop that.”

When Dys just frowned back at the old wolf, he grunted roughly before deigning to elaborate.

“Stop twisting yourself up. The day didn’t go the way you wanted. Happens. Move on.”

“…as always, thank you for your sage wisdom,” Dys replied dryly.

“Whelp,” Noll grumped before taking another bite from his bread.

Dys made a face at the old fart, but internally Jadis smiled. It was nice having someone older and wiser looking out for her, made her feel cared for in a very different way from how her lovers made her feel. The warmth that glowed inside her spilled out a little, and she couldn’t help but smile silently to herself.

“You are… Happy…?”

“Yes, I’m happy,” Syd replied to Alex’s question. “I’d be happier if we had killed that bitch who shot at us, and happier even more if I wasn’t stuck giving Salvius and Ovinius a report, but yeah. I’m happy.”

“Good…” Alex said as she embraced Syd from behind with at least seven different limbs. “I want you… To be happy…”

“You make me happy,” Syd turned her head enough to give her lover a kiss. “And we’ll have everyone here in a little bit, so that’ll really make me happy.”

“Not everyone…” Alex murmured, her tone and body language showing her disappointment.

“Well, that’s true,” Syd smiled reassuringly at the Demon on her shoulder. “But I promise, we’ll go visit Hope as soon as possible.”

“Yes…”

The two lapsed into silence as they watched the slowly approaching airships that carried their friends and lovers ever closer. The sun was basically set, so it was hard to see the black fuselages of the Roc and the Leviathan, but Alex had pointed them out to Syd and so she was able to keep track of their position well enough. They were standing together on the top of one of the dividing earthworks, only this time they were behind the cover of a watch tower. Jadis didn’t have any desire to give the golden-eyed Demon another chance at sniping her or her lover.

While her Dys self was sitting with Noll and her Jay self was briefing the generals on what they had seen and done while hunting for the Demon who had gotten away, Syd had spent a little time putting together the campsite Jadis and her lovers would be using that night. There wasn’t much for her to do, as it turned out, since all of the tents and fires had already been set up by the army for her, but she still made sure to inspect everything personally. There were more tents than Jadis and her companions would need, but that had more to do with the fact that there would be others occupying the area, such as the rest of the avatars whom she had yet to meet. With nothing else to do, she and Alex had gone to stand and wait for the airships.

While she had said that she would be willing to meet with the various avatars who had joined the campaign, Jadis was starting to regret that decision. After the eventful afternoon she had had, part of her just wanted to curl up into a bed with her lovers to sleep off the adrenaline. She honestly wasn’t sure she would be very good company, especially not if any of the avatars were anything like Runar or Odilia. Her mood just wasn’t as bright as it usually was, despite the reassurances she had given to Alex.

Perhaps it wasn’t too late to let Salvius know that she was going to back out of the meeting?

“I assume you are Lady Jadis Ahlstrom?”

Unfortunately, Jadis internally grimaced, it seemed that she had missed the timing.

“Yes, that’s me,” Syd turned to greet the owner of the soft, monotone voice that had called out to her. “Who are… you?”

Syd faltered slightly, an unintended pause breaking up her question. The appearance of the person who had approached her caught her off guard, if only for a moment. She just hadn’t been expecting to see a centaur.

To be fair, the Golem who stood before her wasn’t a literal centaur; she was a Golem, a being made of stone. But the shape she had been carved into by her parents was that of a traditional centaur, with the lower body of a horse and the upper body of a woman. The material she had been made from looked like a mix of jasper and sunstone, which gave her a bright appearance except for her hair and eyes, which had been made from onyx. While her facial features were slightly inhuman, the Golem was nonetheless beautiful, and her overall look was a work of art that rivaled Techne with the level of detail that had gone into her construction.

“My name is Kalliope,” the Golem replied to Syd’s question with a slight bow of her head. “It is my honor to meet the Last of the Nephilim.”

As she spoke, Syd noted that the Golem was wearing a toga-like purple dress over her upper half, and she had some sort of harness strapped to her horse flanks that had several overstuffed saddlebags attached. Kalliope had no armor or weapons that Syd could see, but there was something strapped to her right equine side that Jadis at first mistook for some kind of a bow. After a second glance, she realized that the device was instead some sort of a harp, though the shape was different from the sort Jadis was used to seeing on Earth.

“And I presume you are Alex, the Demon who has broken away from Samleos?”

At Kalliope’s question, Alex slipped off of Syd and moved in front of the Golem. Holding out her hand, she waited expectantly for Kalliope to either take her offer or turn away.

The Golem pleased Jadis immensely by taking hold of Alex’s hand without a hint of hesitation and giving her a firm handshake.

“I am… Alex… Paladin of Jadis…” the Demon introduced herself, making her loyalties clear. “You are… Beautiful…”

“Thank you,” Kalliope accepted the compliment without even blinking. “My form was designed for aesthetic purposes. Are you interested in aesthetics?”

“Yes… Always…” Alex agreed with a wide grin. “I am bonded… To a Nephilim…”

“Sensible,” the Golem nodded once before turning her attention towards Syd. “As a Nephilim, I presume you are also invested in the arts?”

“I’m a fan,” Syd shrugged while feeling a little nonplused by the direction the conversation had gone. “I’m not a great artist myself, though. More of an appreciator than a participator, I suppose.”

“I understand,” the Golem nodded in a way that was both smooth and mechanical at the same time. “I would still like to present to you several songs that I have composed that are based off of the stories I have heard regarding your battlefield exploits and other achievements. Would you be willing to listen to them this evening?”

“Uh… yeah, that sounds good,” Syd replied as she wondered what the fuck kind of stories had made it to the odd centaur Golem. “Our airships are arriving in a few minutes, and it’ll take a while to get everyone settled in camp, but I’m sure we’ll find the time.”

“Excellent,” Kalliope once more nodded her head. “I will gather the rest of my troupe and meet you in the area designated for the avatars. We look forward to performing for you.”

“Troupe?” Syd tilted her head to one side while she tried not to laugh, nearly losing her cool thanks to the absurdity of the unexpected situation. “You mean… you have a group of musicians with you?”

“Yes,” the Golem confirmed. “There are four of us.”

“Really? All Golems?”

“Yes,” Kalliope confirmed again. “We call our troupe the Wandering Stones.”

Syd fucking lost it.