Rebirth of the Nephilim

“Okay, that’s the last of it,” Syd said as she tossed the final bag of blankets and pillows that she had collected from Lyssandria’s temple into the pile waiting to be checked. “Everything we came here with is out of the temple.”

“Thank you,” Eir said as she carefully examined one of Hope’s undamaged stuffed dolls. “We may be at this for quite some time yet.”

“Want some help?”

“Please,” her elven lover said as she set the doll aside and moved on to another. “I don’t think any of us will feel at ease until we’ve finished checking everything.”

Syd nodded in agreement as she took a seat on the floor near Eir before picking up one of her daughter’s little dresses. She began to carefully examine the cloth for any sign of tampering or anything unwholesome that might have been left behind, though not before she tossed a grateful smile towards the third woman in the room.

“Thank you again for helping us,” Syd said to the Oracle. “It means a lot.”

“Thanks are unnecessary,” Jocelyn smiled back at her as she set a pillow into a growing pile of items that had been given the all-clear. “Frankly, I think I am the one who should be apologizing to you. I failed to notice the possession that had taken that poor woman…”

“That’s absolutely not your fault,” Syd told the brunette in a firm tone. “No one saw this coming. I have a skill that literally lets me see magic auras and I couldn’t detect the soul-linked item inside of her.”

“I do not believe Sybil was possessed,” Eir added with a sad frown. “She was herself, after she was rescued and healed. My spell to detect possession would have noticed if she had been taken by Demon Prince Desire. She was… used, in a way that none of us could have predicted.”

The three grew silent after Eir’s statement, as there wasn’t much else to add. They all felt like they had failed, yet there wasn’t much they could have done to prevent what had happened. Possibly they could have locked Sybil up in a cell as a precaution, but there had not been any visible reason to take such an extreme action. The woman had been checked by four of the most preeminent Demon-detectors of the empire, if you counted Alex’s natural ability to taste her own kind, and Sybil had been cleared of all signs of possession. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that the Demons had come up with a new, never-before-seen method of smuggling a soul past all forms of detection.

That knowledge didn’t change the fact that they still all felt like they had failed.

Since the Demon Prince had managed to thoroughly invade Lyssandria’s temple and kill almost everyone who worked there, including the head priestess, Jadis and her lovers had packed up and moved out. Desire had been given an hour, at minimum, all to herself in the temple and she could have done just about anything to the premises along with Jadis’ and her companions’ belongings. There may have even been other cultists involved in the temple defilement, though they had yet to find any evidence of that presumption. Out of an abundance of caution, they had relocated to Ulya’s temple, whose priesthood had welcomed them with open arms. The hearth goddess’ temple was much larger than Lyssandria’s temple, had far more of the priesthood present, and was also practically right next to Charos’ temple, where the Hero and his party were staying. The security in Ulya’s temple would be much better, at least until Lyssandria’s house of worship had been thoroughly examined and cleansed.

Part of their precautions against harm involved checking every single item that had been located in their rooms at the temple. Most of what had been there were clothes and blankets, but a large number of Hope’s toys and other items had also been left vulnerable to Desire’s unclean touch, so they were making sure that every single object was examined with rigorous detail. If anything looked even remotely suspicious, it was tossed into the discard pile to be burned.

“Has there been any word on the Fetch?” Jocelyn asked after some time had passed.

“Nothing new,” Syd said as she continued to check through some of Sorcha’s clothes. “Noll and Lucia are on his trail, but last time they checked in they said he probably already fled the city. He was headed for the western wall.”

“Do you think he was truly serving Samleos?” Eir asked Syd, looking up from her careful examination of one of Kerr’s boots. “Having someone so powerful join the side of corruption…”

“He might have just been in it for the laughs,” she answered with a frustrated sigh. “That’s the problem with chaos. It just does whatever it wants, whenever it wants. He might have just been too deep into the role of being a cultist. Lost his sense of self. Or maybe he really does want to bring about as much destruction as possible. Who knows.”

After a moment of thought, Syd shook her head and raised her gaze to meet her lover’s eyes.

“We’ll find him. Even if we need to use a visit to D to get us some direction, we will track that piece of shit down.”

“I pray that using a question for him will not be necessary,” Eir replied, her smile still less bright than Jadis would have liked. “I fear we will need as many questions as possible for the coming conflict against Desire.”

That was a statement Jadis had to agree with. She would love to use one of the oracle questions on tracking down the Fetch; she saw his actions as inexcusable, and she was in a mood for revenge. Still, the focus had to be on Desire, and Jadis didn’t think they could afford to hold back when it came to the Demon Prince. They would need every resource at their disposal to defeat an enemy that had managed to create so many dangerous innovations in such a short amount of time.

“Ah, Sabina is about ready to start opening the sphere,” Syd announced abruptly. “We’ve got all of the defensive contingencies in place.”

“Perhaps I should be in attendance, in case healing is needed?” Eir asked.

“Or I could do so?” Jocelyn added from her seat across from the elf.

“No, stay here,” Syd said with a wave of one hand. “We’ve got emergency healers in place, including Cora and Alex, as well as potions from Amarantha. If either of you are needed, I can get one of you to the workshop fast enough.”

Workshop was a somewhat generous term for what amounted to a windowless stone chamber in the basement of Charos’ temple that usually served as a storeroom for sacramental wines. In the hours since the raid on the cultists and Desire’s surprise counterattack, all of the wine casks had been removed, along with every piece of furniture and shelving except for a couple of wooden tables. Inside, Jay had placed the soul-linked sphere, while Sabina and Tiernan had set about preparing for a dissection of the metallic object.

At the moment, there was no sign of the magic aura that Jadis had seen with her Succubus eyes when she had first examined the steel orb. The churning azure cloud that reminded Jadis uncomfortably of Alex’s own aura had disappeared around twenty minutes after the orb had been removed from Sybil’s corpse. It was possible that Desire’s soul, or whatever the magic aura constituted, would come back or was just in hiding, so they were continuing to treat the sphere like it was capable of causing harm. That said, Jadis was all but certain that the Demon’s connection to the item had ended. The cultists had not been able to perform their dark ritual; if the escaped Fetch was right, the enchantment needed to be recharged daily, so by interrupting the ritual the object had likely run out of power. If Desire had been somehow forewarned that the ritual would not be completed, then that would explain why she had chosen that day to attack rather than continue to watch and observe, undetected. There was no way of knowing, of course. It was possible that Desire had been warned, just as it was possible that the Demon had simply seen an opportunity with all of Jadis’ companions out of the temple and had taken it. Whatever the case was, it seemed that the little metal sphere had lost its power and become inert. So, with Jay and Tiernan in attendance, Sabina was going to open the orb up and see how it worked.

“Do you need more light?” Tiernan asked as he made a few small adjustments to the array of magnifying glasses that he had set up around the sphere.

“No thank you,” Sabina chirped, though she had an uncharacteristically serious expression on her face as she focused on the metal object behind the convex glass lens. “I would like to know where you got these magnifying lenses later, though. These would be very helpful for some of my enchanting work.”

“I will get you in touch with the craftsman I ordered them from,” the gnome murmured. “Now, I have the shield in place. Begin when you are ready.”

“Starting,” Sabina announced as she picked up a small tool with an incredibly fine point. “I think the star-head fitted with my rake tool should do the trick…”

Jay watched from a distance, able to see Sabina’s actions well enough thanks to the large magnifying glasses that had been set up on adjustable stands. While she would be no help in the actual examination of the orb, Jadis was present just in case there was some kind of magical booby trap set to go off when the sphere was opened. The Arch Mage was there for mostly the same reason; he was an expert on wizardry and arcane magic, but Sabina was the better enchanter and thus would handle the actual inspection of the sphere. Tiernan had a variety of magic shields in place that would theoretically stop most explosions from injuring Sabina, but Jay would be able to grab the smith and remove her from harm’s way faster than anyone, if a quick retreat was needed.

The metal sphere was, as Jadis had previously noted, actually two steel hemispheres that were held together with a series of extremely small screws. The head of the screws was an odd star shape that looked like it would be difficult to match, and Sabina had confirmed that the design was likely custom as it didn’t match any of the screws that she was familiar with. Not a surprise, she had explained, since the screws were also much smaller than any she had seen, either. Screws weren’t a complete unknown on Oros, but ones as small and fine as the screws used on the sphere were certainly exceedingly rare.

Sabina used two tools in conjunction to slowly and carefully remove the first screw. It took a nerve-wracking number of minutes to get the first one out, but once the small piece of metal fell out of the orb and onto the worktable and no explosion followed, Jadis let out an internal sigh of relief. She had half expected the device to be able to detect when it was being tampered with and to blow up. It still might blow up, actually, but Jadis felt like a hurdle had been passed.

The rest of the screws did not take as long as the first as Sabina found her rhythm. Eventually, the final screw holding the hemispheres together was set aside in a little dish with the rest of its kind and Sabina let out a small breath of pent-up tension.

“Okay, here goes,” the half-elf whispered before using a delicate set of long pliers to lift the top of the sphere away.

“Gods above,” Tiernan whispered as the steel shell was removed and the inside was slowly revealed. “What in Metethys’ name am I looking at?”

“I’m not sure,” Sabina gasped, her eyes wide as saucers. “But… it’s so beautiful…”

Jay took a step closer, her own eyes wide as she gazed at the internal structure of the sphere from over Sabina’s shoulder. She had her Succubus eyes activated, so she could say with certainty that what they were looking at was currently inert. There was no magic flowing through the device, not even as a regular enchantment. Still, the orb’s interior was a marvel to look upon, just with regular vision.

There were gears. Dozens upon dozens of gears, some of them no larger than the diameter of a pea, arranged in layers that completely filled the inside of the sphere. There were cogs, dials, connecting rods, tension springs, and all sorts of other parts that Jadis had no clue as to what they were called. Every centimeter of the golden metallic surfaces were covered in delicate runes that had been filled with melted eleria crystal. Even with the magnification at work, Jadis could barely make out many of the runes, which showed a level of precision that she could barely comprehend.

“It looks like—like a tiny version of our airship engine,” Jay said with wonder.

In fact, Jadis had been about to say that it looked like a more complicated version of the inside of a pocket watch. However, with Tiernan in the room, she didn’t want to reference Earth technology. The comparison to an airship engine wasn’t too far off, though, since both devices used gears and eleria enchantments. The orb’s internals were far more complex, though.

“Is that a quicksilver heart in the middle?” Tiernan asked, clearly in awe of the finely constructed device. “Inside of a glass sphere—”

“With a gold and eleria filigree surrounding it, yes,” Sabina confirmed as she carefully examined the inside while setting down the top metal hemisphere. “This is the finest enchanting I have ever seen. I mean, the only thing I can think of that is even close to this are the schematics of the ancient Nephilim illusion helmet that I’ve been studying from the Nephilim archive! This must have taken years to make! Or maybe faster, I don’t know, I guess it depends on Skills and tools and how many are working on it, but still! I can’t even imagine putting something like this together! It’s absolutely amazing!”

As Sabina used one of her small, finely pointed tools to delicately touch one of the gears, she let out a loud gasp while recoiling from the device. Jay was instantly at her side, hand on the half-elf’s shoulder in preparation to pull her away, while Tiernan had caused a shield of arcane energy to flare to life around them all.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” both Jay and the Arch Mage asked in a jumble of words.

Sabina turned her head to look up at Jay, her expression filled with disbelieving wonder. Blinking twice, she raised her shoulders in a helpless shrug.

“I leveled up. Jay, I leveled up just from touching it.”