Rebirth of the Nephilim

There were shouts of alarm and sounds of panicked commotion around her, but Jadis paid no attention to anything else but the Demon before her. Alex had once been a tiny little ball of tentacles, small enough to fit in a jar, before she had killed a psychotic murderer and merged with her body to become a Greater Demon. Jadis hadn’t seen what went into that process, as it had occurred during a battle and she had not even known that it was happening at the time. She had only seen her beautiful and loving Demon after the fact. This time, Jadis saw Alex’s transformation in its entirety. It looked agonizing.

And there was nothing Jadis could do about it.

Alex’s inky flesh rippled and warped as her bones cracked and expanded. No part of her was unaffected. From her toes to her face, everything shifted and moved, swelling outwards in a grotesque parody of Jadis’ own Mirror Magnification spell. As Alex’s body grew in size, so too did her tentacles, which twisted and writhed in pain as they lengthened and changed. Even the tentacles on her head grew in length, stretching further and further as they traveled past Alex’s shaking shoulders.

Jay did not break her hold on Alex’s hands as her love transformed. Nor did she turn her eyes away, having locked them onto the unblinking gaze of her lover’s trio of neon-blue eyes. She had said she would love and support Alex no matter what, through anything and everything. Jadis wasn’t going to turn away now. All Jay cared to see was the love in Alex’s eyes, an unchanging feature among a chaotic storm, shining bright regardless of the agony the transformation had to cause.

But the rest of Jadis was free to observe the changes.

Alex’s back had always been dominated by a sort of lump of flesh bone that supported two large, monstrous arms that were well more than double the size of Alex’s normal, human arms. Three huge tentacles extended from the base of the back hump, and it was these three tentacles that Alex used to slide around on rather than walking on her feet, for the most part. Aside from the third eye, tentacle hair, and ink-black paired with neon-blue skin coloration, the monster arms and huge tentacles were the most easily identifiable feature that signified Alex’s demonic nature. No one could mistake Alex for anything else when she had those clawed arms and python-sized tentacles growing out of her.

As Dys and Syd watched from either side, Alex’s monster arms grew. Not just in size, but in length. Even more specifically, the fingers lengthened, rapidly growing beyond what was practical for a humanoid hand, soon reaching a point of absurdity where each digit was several feet long. Nor did the growth of her fingers stop there. As Alex’s monster hands continued to grow, thick black webbing appeared between the neon-blue fingers, filling the space between them so that by the time thirty seconds had passed, Alex didn’t have a second pair of arms on her back. She had a pair of gigantic, bat-like wings.

Or dragon-like, a part of Jadis absently corrected herself, since bats weren’t a thing on Oros.

The three ambulatory tentacles grew in size as well, though they did not change much in shape. However, the many smaller, retractable tentacles that grew from Alex’s back increased not just in size, but in number. A veritable snake’s nest of tentacles wriggled and split out from around Alex’s back, creating a writhing aura of black and glowing blue that seemed like more than should have been physically possible for the Demon’s body to support. At least, more than the old Alex would have been able to support. As Jadis watched and Alex grew in size, she wasn’t so sure that assessment’s accuracy would hold out.

As Jay continued to gaze into her lover’s eyes, a bright glow caused her to squint slightly. She still didn’t look away, but her other bodies looked for the source for her, and the shock of what she found almost made Jay flinch away in surprise.

A halo was floating over Alex’s head.

A literal halo.

The halo wasn’t made of light, so far as Jadis could tell. The thick, flat ring had the appearance of glass, or some sort of opaque crystal, and had three points that stuck out from the outer edge equidistant to each other. The halo, which floated at an angle so that it was more behind Alex’s head rather than over it, was slowly rotating in place, spinning continuously so that no point was at the top for more than ten or twelve seconds.

The appearance of the strange, floating ring that glowed above Alex’s head was so distracting that Jadis almost didn’t notice when a second pair of arms, identical to the first pair, abruptly sprouted from just under the Demon’s armpits. The moment the neon-blue fingertips had finished forming, Dys and Syd reached out and took either hand, holding on tightly as Alex gripped her hard, nails digging into her flesh. Whatever pain her lover might inflict on Jadis was nothing. All that mattered was being there, to hold on to her, to be the person she could rely on through what had to be the most painful experience of her life.

And then it was done.

No more shifting. No more movement. Alex’s flesh and bones were done. The change had been made, and there was no way to go back. Jay stared into the eyes of her Demon Lord and asked the only question she could think to ask.

“Are you okay?”

“I feel… Better… Now…”

Jadis let out a mental sigh of relief. Not just to hear that Alex was unharmed, but also because her voice had not changed. A small part of her had been worried that Alex’s way of speaking, and possibly her mannerisms in general, might have been affected by the transformation. However, that fear was unfounded and Jadis was happy to have it squashed before it grew. Alex was the same. At least, mostly.

Who was she kidding. Alex looked like a whole new Demon.

“What the fuck, Alex,” Kerr said as she walked up to the newly changed woman’s right side. “I’m all for acting on impulse, but damn. You just took that to the next level. Do you feel… different?”

“Somewhat…” Alex replied as she picked at the ruined shirt and skirt she had been wearing. Both garments had been torn apart by the transformation, and their remains soon fell to the ground as the Demon discarded them. “This is… Different…”

“I bet,” Bridget said as she poked a finger against the webbing of one of Alex’s huge, draconic wings. “You grew wings. Wings! Bloody shit in a basket, you’re so fucking big now!”

Indeed, that was a detail that had not gone unnoticed by Jadis. Alex’s body had not just changed to have wings and a new set of regular-sized arms, but it had also increased in size overall. While her generally lithe frame had stayed the same, she was much taller than she had been before, to the point that Jadis estimated that if Alex was standing on her feet, she would be nearly the same height as Jadis, perhaps only shorter by an inch or two. However, since Alex was lifted from the ground by her large tentacles, Jadis found that she was actually looking up at the Demon rather than the usual down.

Maybe it wasn’t the right moment for it, but Jadis couldn’t help the sudden surge of attraction she felt towards her beautiful lover. The double pair of arms was doing things for Jadis that she probably needed to examine more closely at some point, and the sudden nudity wasn’t doing anything to help. She had to yet again be grateful to have three different brains to work with, since otherwise she’d never get anything done with her one-track mind.

 “Well, that is that, then,” Severina threw her hands into the air as she slumped heavily into a seat. “We’re done.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dys turned to look at the Seraphim.

“I mean that it’s over!” Sev gestured at Alex, a wild look in her eyes. “Even with those relic pantaloons, there’s no hiding that Alex has changed! Just look at her!”

“Oh, I am looking,” Kerr muttered as she walked around the Demon, eying her up and down in a meaningful way. “I am definitely looking.”

“Oh, shut up,” Severina moaned as she covered her face with her hands. “Can’t you think with anything other than your libido for five minutes?”

“Oh, cork it, pigeon butt,” the therion waved Severina off. “Just because Alex went through some physical changes doesn’t mean people will assume she’s become a Demon Lord. Who would jump to that conclusion? There’s already a Demon Lord and there’s only ever one at a time. No one’s going to just assume Alex has somehow broken all the rules everyone knows the world works by.”

“That is a good point,” Aila cleared her throat as she got up to stand next to Kerr. “I am not sure that there is necessarily anything about Alex’s… new appearance… that signifies she is a Demon Lord.”

“But it does signify that she has to have taken some kind of Demon-based class,” Severina pressed. “Most people won’t know what that means, but with the revelations concerning how Demons and their classes work spreading throughout the scholarly world, it won’t take long for suspicions to be raised.”

“Alright, so people will know that Alex’s tertiary class isn’t something like justicar or saint,” Syd said as she turned her eyes onto Sev. “So what? Alex is a Demon. She was offered Demon-based classes, and she took the best one available to her. That’s not even a lie.”

“No, it’s not,” Severina admitted with a frown. “But what are we going to pretend Alex has as her tertiary class? Demon Prince? That’s better than Demon Lord, but the questions even that class will create will be a problem, especially once Alex starts gaining levels and comparisons are made between her and Demons like Vinea.”

“Then Alex won’t pretend to be a Demon Prince,” Jay said as she squeezed Alex’s hands in her own. “We can make up whatever class we want. We could make up a class called ‘Demon Queen’ that has all kinds of skills and spells and there wouldn’t be anyone in the world who could call Alex out on it as being impossible. You can be whatever you want, right Alex?”

“I am… What I want…” Alex stated as she grinned in a way that made Jadis’ hearts flutter. “I am… Your Alex…”

“As adorable as that sentiment is,” Sorcha interjected with a blush on her cheeks, “I think we still need to figure this all out, practically speaking. Looking at your, um, new form, Alex… are there are any other changes that you’ve noticed?”

At Sorcha’s question, Alex let go of Jadis’ hands and proceeded to look herself over. The process definitely drew the eyes of everyone else in the cabin, and Jadis noticed that she wasn’t the only one who was reacting to Alex’s transformed appearance. While it was true that overall, the Demon had not truly changed that much other than her size, the wings, additional limbs, and the strange halo floating over her head, there was something about the new Alex that drew the eye and stirred something in the pits of Jadis’ stomachs. It was a hard thing to nail down, a difference in aura or presentation, Jadis supposed, but the effect was undeniable.

When Alex held her top pair of arms up over her head so that she could get a better look at the bottom pair, there were quite a few sets of eyes glued to the way the Demon’s pert breasts rose and swayed with the movement.

“Perhaps there are changes that have come with your new form that are within, rather than on the surface?” Eir asked as she moved to stand by Jay’s side. “Do you feel any different on the inside?”

Pausing in her examination, Alex nodded after a few moments.

“I sense… Two changes…”

With a familiar motion, four tentacles extended from Alex’s back, reaching out to hang in the air before Eir’s face, causing the elf to let out a small squeak of surprise. Jadis was able to immediately identify all four tentacles as being the reproductive sort, thanks to their decidedly phallic tips.

“Oh, you have four of those now?” Jay raised an eyebrow as she poked one of the penis tentacles with a finger, prompting a shiver from Alex. “That’s different.”

“They are… Mine…” Alex tilted her head to one side as she, too regarded the blue-tipped limbs. “I cannot… Dismiss them…”

“So, the Demon Lord class really did give you cocks?” Ammy exclaimed from where she had climbed up Dys’ side to get a better look at Alex. “Old Samleos the Destructor is a bit of a freak, huh?”

While others murmured either their interest or agreement with the catgirl’s statement, Aila was busily pulling her journal out to take notes. Holding up her pen to get Alex’s attention, she leaned over Eir and asked a clarifying question.

“Does that count for both of the changes you sensed? Or is there one more?”

“One more…” the newly transformed Demon Lord replied.

Retracting her penis tentacles first, then all of her medium-sized tentacles a second after, Alex gently lowered her feet to the floor, inadvertently confirming Jadis’ assessment that the Demon’s new height was only an inch or two shorter than her own. After a few moments, Alex’s wings tucked in against her back and her large tentacles curled in on themselves. Then, like it was some kind of rotor being activated, the Demon’s halo began to spin at an increased speed. As the speed increased, so did the brightness, soon reaching an almost blinding level of neon-blue light in a matter of seconds. Before Jadis could ask Alex what was happening, the Divine flames that appeared when Alex used her smite spell burst forth from her body, covering her in a blanket of cold fire that released no heat nor smoke. A second later, the flames dissipated, and only Alex remained behind.

Only the Alex left behind was different again.

There were no wings. No tentacles. No backpack-like hump sprouting from her back. Even her usual medusa-esque tentacle hair had been replaced with normal-looking black hair with neon-blue tip highlights. The second set of arms were still present, she still had a third eye, and her increased height was unchanged, but otherwise, Alex suddenly and inexplicably looked very much like a normal human.

…Well, normal human was a big stretch, Jadis mentally corrected herself. Alex couldn’t pass for human with three eyes and four arms, much less when she was nine-feet tall, had ink-black skin with neon-blue gradients on her hands and feet, and still had a shining halo floating over her head. Still, she looked a lot closer to the average humanoid than she had a moment before. Plus, she looked like she might actually fit through doorways.

“Holy shit…” was the general sentiment carried around the cabin as Jadis and her lovers stared at the Demon’s second transformation of the night.

“Was that a skill!?” Maeve cried out as she closed in on Alex’s back and began poking her skin, as though she were checking to make sure that the change wasn’t an illusion. “Did you get a spell that lets you change shape!?”

“No…” Alex shook her head as she partially turned to face the Fetch. “This is… How my… Body… Works…”

“Well, if that wasn’t a skill,” Aila blinked in confusion as Maeve stared at Alex with mouth agape, “then what is the first skill of your tertiary class?”

Thinking for a moment, Alex read the description aloud, causing an ever-increasing stir with each word uttered, to the point that her full status sheet had to be read aloud as well.

Mark of the Demon Lord

Passive Skill. You are the Demon Lord. All Demons will know you by your aura, your taste, and your Mark. Your aura can be suppressed at will. Your form is altered to better match your deeds and desires, and to enable procreation with your kin. All of your attributes are increased by 100 points.

Demon Lord Alex

Race: Demon

Primary Class: Paladin of Jadis (36)

Secondary Class: Bonded Alex (24)

Tertiary Class: Demon Lord Alex

Combined Level Rating: 61

Health: 3400/3400

Magic: 1610/1610

Attributes

Strength: 182

Dexterity: 160

Agility: 214

Vitality: 205

Fortitude: 152

Endurance: 167

Arcane: 100

Divine: 220

Eldritch: 100

Focus: 161

Resilience: 175

Will: 1179

   “Whaaaat the fuuuuck,” Bridget drew her vowels out as she gaped at Alex. “That’s twelve hundred attribute points from one skill! Your base skill! That’s so unfair…”

“No wonder Demon Lords are so strong if twelve hundred attribute points are an afterthought to the main point of a passive skill,” Sorcha muttered.

“Demons will know you by your aura?” Meli tilted her head to one side. “And by your Mark? What does that mean?”

Alex shrugged in reply to the Dryad’s question.

“I do… Not know…”

“Well, you don’t smell different to me,” Kerr said as she sniffed Alex’s body. Then, giving her flat stomach a lick, she smacked her lips in thought. “You don’t taste different, either.”

“Agreed,” Ammy said as she leaned over Dys’ shoulder, sniffing the air. “Your scent hasn’t changed, Alex. Maybe it’s a little stronger, but that might just be because you’re, well, bigger now.”

“So, it’s not a shapeshifting skill specifically, but it gave you a body that is capable of shapeshifting?” Aila’s pen scratched away at her journal as she spoke. “And now you are somehow recognizable to other Demons as a Demon Lord? But you can suppress the ability to do so. Or just the Mark, whatever that is. How does that work? What would other Demons even be sensing?”

As Syd listened to the others talk, she felt a finger poke at her side. Looking down, her eyes made contact with Noct, who was staring up at her expectantly.

“What?”

“Eyes,” Noct said while tapping her cheek just under her own red orbs.

“Huh? Oh, right! Duh!”

With a quick exertion of her magic, Jadis switched her Eyes of the Succubus spell on.

“Woah!”

The surprised exclamation came from all three of Jadis, as she couldn’t help the reaction. Alex’s body was not the only part of the Demon to have changed after accepting the Demon Lord class. Her aura, which was normally a bubbling, swirling mass of frothing neon magic, was now being pulled up into her three-pointed halo while simultaneously being projected from the halo in a strangely non-Euclidean way. The effect reminded Jadis of the event horizon of a black hole, or at least the artistic depictions she had seen of them, only far more intense and mind-bending. When Jadis stared at the mass for more than a few seconds, she could feel her brain start to itch.

“Okay, Alex’s aura is definitely different,” Jay said as she explained what she was seeing to the best of her ability. “Alex, can you try to, uh, turn it down?”

At Jadis’ request, Alex visibly concentrated. After a second or two, her aura dimmed significantly. Then, to everyone’s surprise, the halo over her head vanished. In the same instant, Jadis saw Alex’s aura return to its normal state, the black hole effect disappearing completely.

“I think we can make an assumption about what the skill description means by ‘Mark,’ don’t you agree?” Jay murmured as she switched her aura-seeing vision off. “That halo is definitely related.”

“That’s good then, isn’t it?” Sabina chirped excitedly. “That means that the main thing that signifies Alex as a Demon Lord can be turned on and off at her will, which means that no one will know that she’s a Demon Lord, even other Demons, unless she wants them to know! At least, that’s the case so long as no one who can see status sheets examines her. But we have the magical panties now, so she’ll be protected even from that!”

Stooping low to pick up the pantaloons that had fallen to the ground, forgotten in all of the excitement, Sabina held the underwear out for Alex to take.

“Here! Try these on and let’s see if it works!”

“How are we going to see if it works?” Jay asked as Alex took the holy underpants from the grinning smith. “None of us have a way to examine other people’s status sheets.”

“Oh, right,” Sabina faltered, but then cheered up in the next instant. “Well, we know it’ll work because Sholto said he tested it on Noct’s dad, and he’s the best at examining status sheets out of anyone in the empire! I’m sure it’ll work just fine! But if we need to run some tests, I’m sure we can—”

As Sabina continued to chatter, Aila, Eir, and Severina grabbed hold of Jay’s attention, dragging her focus onto them as her Dys self continued to listen to the half-elf and her Syd self answered questions about what she had seen of Alex’s aura.

“We should tell Wilhelm and Jocelyn about this development right away,” Severina said. “Tonight, as soon as possible.”

“Don’t you think we should maybe ease the two of them into this whole situation?” Jay asked with a hesitant expression. “This is some heavy stuff to drop on them out of the blue.”

“No, Severina is right,” Eir placed a hand on the Seraphim’s arm. “Wilhelm and Jocelyn should be informed immediately. The longer we wait, the greater the chance they will feel as though we have been trying to hide Alex’s situation from them, which could cause damage to the relationship we have established with them.”

“We actually have been hiding all this from them for like a week,” Jay mumbled.

“Yes, and we should come clean about that, too,” Aila said firmly. “With Alex becoming a Demon Lord, we cannot assume that she will be able to keep that information from the world at large forever. We need Wilhelm on our side. If he were to take umbrage with Alex, or with us for hiding things from him, we might not have any chance at all of convincing the world to not try and hunt Alex down in the future.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Jay nodded seriously after a moment. “We need Wilhelm to stay on our side on this. Hiding things from him isn’t right, not if he’s supposed to be our ally. I’ll go talk to him and Jocy and see if we can have a private sit-down meeting.”

“Wake him up if you have to,” Aila insisted. “We can’t put this off for tomorrow. Everyone is going to know Alex has changed the moment she sets foot out of the Leviathan, regardless of which form she takes. Wilhelm and Jocelyn should be on board with us before that.”

“The rest of his companions as well, if we can manage it,” Severina added. “Though that will bear some discussion.”

Again, Jadis nodded in agreement. Her lovers were right. They needed to get Wilhelm and the others on their side regarding Alex as quickly as possible. She didn’t want to think about the ways in which things could go wrong if they didn’t have the Hero on their side.

“Oh merde, Alex,” Kerr cursed, causing Jay to look in her direction. “Where did you come up with those?”

Confused by Kerr’s comment, Jadis looked away from her three ongoing conversations to glance at Alex, then did a triple double-take. The Demon had equipped the magical pantaloons, and apparently, she had not been satisfied with the base appearance.

The undergarments had transformed into something similar to the lacy garter belt that Jadis had unintentionally manifested when she had first experimented with the relic-tier pantaloons, only the underwear was wrapped around Alex’s slim waist rather than just her arm as Jay had done. There was no lace to the Demon’s design, and the belt was part of a pair of silky, thong-like panties that perfectly encased Alex’s hips and core, creating a tantalizing level of almost-visible naughty bits. The garters of the garment did not hang loose but instead stretched down the sides of the Demon’s smooth thighs to meet a pair of wide bands that wrapped around said thighs, hugging them just tightly enough to give even Alex’s lithe frame a slight, cushiony indent. The way the beautifully crafted undergarments were colored to offset Alex’s inky black skin with a gradient mix of blues, greens, and purples really drew the eyes to the area, as well as to the expanses of delicate dark skin that were framed by the almost sheer material.

“Do I… Look… Sexy…?”

Alex’s question was accompanied by a pose that made Jadis’ teeth clench and her blood surge into places she had been trying to ignore ever since her lover had stripped her tattered clothes off.

“Okay, can we maybe tell Wilhelm about Alex in an hour? Thirty minutes? Twenty? At least give me twenty… C’mon…”