Rebirth of the Nephilim

Jadis wrinkled her noses as she fought back the instinct to wretch at the noxious foulness filling the air. Every breath contained a mix of decay and corruption, tainted further with the acrid scent of hostile Demons. The toxic air was so putrid that Jadis was certain that anyone with lower defenses than her own would be physically harmed just by being immersed in the environment, never mind breathing the fumes in. The fact that Maeve was handling the rotten, stagnant murk so well had to stem from her Fetch biology. And having a fucking massive health pool. While she worried over her lover’s well-being, she set those thoughts aside while they were on a mission. Maeve would let her know if she needed help.

That Noll was doing just fine didn’t surprise Jadis at all.

The veteran warrior crept along behind Maeve, his every step carefully chosen to displace as little of the tainted water pooling along the floor of the tunnel as possible. He had Sorcha’s translucency spell cast upon him, along with her scent erasure and sound dampening spells, yet Jadis was confident that the old wolf didn’t need any of them. As powerful a figure as Noll was on the battlefield, he was also a master of stealth. Why charge recklessly into the enemy’s front where he is most defended when you could sneak up on their flank and take them by surprise? Noll was no fool, and he was a faithful adherent to the doctrine of hitting your foe in their weak spot when they least expected it. Jadis knew that she drifted towards head-on confrontations, but she did see the advantages in sneak attacks and was always doing her best to learn from her experienced mentor.

Unfortunately, she knew she didn’t have anywhere near Noll’s level of stealth.

Sorcha’s recently crafted wand of targeted sound dampening was absolutely needed to keep her from making a racket while sneaking through the smuggler’s tunnel. Even if she wasn’t wearing her full set of heavy plate armor, Jadis just didn’t have the skills that Noll had, system sourced or otherwise. If it weren’t for Sorcha’s progress on her many new wands, Jadis never would have been able to go on an infiltration mission that took their small group directly into the heart of the enemy’s fortress.

One wand for partial invisibility. Another to erase their scent. A third, newly crafted and improved over the previous model, that severely dampened all sound that the target made. Sorcha’s spells were definitely coming in handy for their stealth mission. Jadis just needed to make sure she got her goblin lover to craft a wand that made it so she couldn’t smell her environment, next.

The tunnel that Maeve was leading them through was completely devoid of light. No torches to light the way, no openings to let in the natural light of the outside. Even if it wasn’t the middle of the night, the sun would not have found any cracks to shine through to where they treaded deep below Kastoria’s streets. Fortunately, Bridget had them covered when it came to vision. Her Light the Way spell made it so that they could see as though her arcane light was illuminating the world around them. The only downside of the spell was that it made the target’s eyes glow faintly, but that was a minor issue that could be resolved when necessary by simply closing one’s eyes.

Maeve raised her fist, a motion barely visible as she had shifted her color scheme to match the dark grays of the smuggler’s tunnel. Halting at her command, Noll and Jadis watched as the Fetch carefully extended her arm to an unnatural length, letting a single finger peak around the edge of a curved corner in the tunnel. Jadis noticed that Maeve had reached up high, so that the extended part of her was at ceiling level. Sensible, she realized, since most people probably wouldn’t be looking anywhere other than head height. She wasn’t sure that the logic would work against Demons, but it still seemed like a smart thing to do.

Pulling her stretched limb back in, Maeve motioned for them to proceed. Following after her and Noll, Jadis saw that around the curve was a split in the tunnel, a Y intersection where the left fork ended abruptly in an obvious collapse about forty feet further in.

“That’s where the Singing Serpent was,” Maeve whispered, her voice as soft as a feather. “Another hundred feet further. It’s right on the water, in the harbor.”

“No way through?” Noll asked, his growling words no more audible than Maeve’s.

“Not for you,” she shook her head. “Me, maybe.”

Jadis didn’t need to ask for clarification. The Fetch’s lack of bones would certainly make the difference when it came to squeezing through small spaces.

Turning down the right side of the intersection, Maeve continued to lead them to their intended destination. The smuggler’s tunnel had a few more forks, offshoots that led to hidden entrances in key parts of the city’s infrastructure. None were easily accessible and were hidden behind enchantments, which was why the Demons had never found them, but none of the offshoot entrances were useful to Jadis and her companions, either. The buildings they attached to were either too damaged for them to easily move through, or too occupied for them to enter without notice. But the last exit to the tunnel, the one at the furthest point in the gently sprawling underground vine, was ideal for their situation for two reasons: it was easy for them to access the building without being seen, and several important targets were within close proximity to the building.

Including the Erinyes’ garden.

Maeve paused before a wall in the tunnel, her hand resting against a carved section of stone that looked no different from any of the rest of the uneven surface that stretched beyond sight in either direction. With her hand at about the height of her waist, she ran her fingertips along a slightly raised ridge for a few moments before one finger abruptly sank into the wall. There wasn’t even a click or whir of gears. Just a slow, soundless shifting of the solid rock to the side, revealing a four-foot-wide alcove with a metal ladder within that led upwards.

“Let me go first,” Jay said as Maeve moved to climb the ladder. “Just in case.”

“The enchantments held,” the shapeshifter insisted, but moved out of the way to let Jay pass. “Nothing will be able to see you once you’re in the top room. Just make sure you stay inside that room.”

Jay nodded as she moved in front of Maeve and Noll, quickly climbing the long ladder.

As her other self disappeared from sight, Dys tilted her helmeted head at the way Noll was watching her go.

“What?”

“Just strange,” he shook his head as he crouched down to wait.

“What is?”

“To see you so small.”

“You’re telling me,” Dys replied wryly. “But it’s the only way I’d fit.”

Indeed, Jadis’ Mirror Minification spell was the only way she could have fit inside the tunnels under Kastoria without crawling on her hands and knees. They had been designed for stealth, not comfort, and a six-foot-tall ceiling just wasn’t going to work for a nine-foot-tall person. Plus, with the load she had packed onto her backs, maneuvering through the tunnel would have been a pain, to say the least. As much fun as Minification had in her sex life, the spell had practical purposes too, which she was happy to make use of.

Reaching the top of the ladder, Jay carefully pressed her finger against the enchanted release catch, just as Maeve had instructed her. With the lightest of popping noises, the hatch over her head opened up, and she slowly pushed the hidden cover set into the floor open. Hearing nothing, she peeked over the edge, confirming that the small room was empty. With the coast clear, she exited the hatchway and moved to stand just to the side of the lone window in the room.

The building that the smugglers tunnel led to was the family mansion of one of the older noble houses that had been around since the founding of the kingdom that existed before Volto had become a nation, back when Kastoria was a capital in its own right. The building had undergone a few renovations over the years, with the most recent being the addition of a fifth floor about eighty years back. During the construction process, certain individuals had paid certain other individuals to make changes to the servant’s quarters, the fireplace, and a few other rooms, so that a small chute led up from the tunnel beneath the building, all the way to a cubbyhole of a room on the fifth floor that did not exist on any drawn plans.

Naturally, the owners of the building had not been involved in the process.

Of course, a tiny room on the top floor of a building owned by people who had no idea the room was even there wasn’t useful for smuggling goods. What it was useful for was giving the smugglers a direct route into the home of the city mayor, which then gave their sneakier members access to various important documents that would have otherwise been inaccessible and potentially inconvenient to the criminal element of the city.

Peering around the edge of the window, Jay studied the view below her. She could see the movements of various Demons on the ruined streets, but none appeared to give her any notice. According to Maeve, even if the Demons had been inclined to look up at the top floor of the mayor’s manor, they would not have seen anything but a blank wall. The window she was gazing out of was enchanted with an illusion; see through on one side, a stucco wall on the other.

Waving her hand in front of the window, Jay saw no reaction from any of the Demons. Just as Maeve had said, the enchantments had held.

“We’re good,” Dys motioned towards Maeve and Noll. “Go on up.”

As her companions quickly scaled the ladder, Jay took the time to study their primary target with her own eyes. During the hours that it had taken for Sabina and Tiernan to put together their special package, Maeve had gone over what she had seen and the current layout of the city in great detail. Most importantly, she had described the location of the Erinyes’ garden. The restaurant that the cultist had taken over for her house of human corpses was not far from the mayor’s home. With how Kastoria sloped towards the sea, Jadis had a clear overview of the building from her vantage point on the slight hill to the north. Just as Maeve had described, the building was three stories tall, rectangular in shape, with a wide courtyard in the middle that displayed a marble fountain of two lovers kissing. From her position, Jay could just barely see the heads of the statues, defaced and scarred by deep claw marks.

She did not have a clear view of the interior of the building, but Maeve had been right that the structure had been gutted, with whole walls torn out and the windows all removed. Jay could make out piles of rotting filth spilling over into the open, with a tangle of strange plants crawling up the sides of the remaining walls and columns. Some looked relatively innocuous, but the huge red blooms with glowing yellow spores floating out of their trumpet-like stems did not look healthy or wholesome. Nor did the fungal growths that she could just barely see glowing blue and green within.

As Maeve and Noll came up out of the hatch behind her, movement along the street that led from the Opaline Palace caught her eye. Two simulacrums, each carrying a limp body, led by what looked like a naked man. Immediately, Jadis presumed that the man was possessed. He walked without any care for what was under his bare feet, stepping through muddy water and piles of fetid filth without a second of hesitation. All the Demons that they passed ignored the trio, except for a scythe wight that moved to block their path once they drew near the Erinyes’ garden.

Jadis’ suspicions were confirmed when the naked man opened his mouth wide and several tentacles emerged. Moving in a pattern that Jadis recognized, the possession Demon told the wight to get out of the way. There was more to the communication than the simple command, Jadis was sure, but she only understood a little of the Demon’s unvocalized language. Besides, without scent, context was missing.

Regardless of Jadis’ ability to understand, the scythe wight understood, stepping aside and allowing the trio forward. They continued straight up to the front of the building, pausing just outside. With the way the front entrance was angled to the east, Jay’s view meant that she couldn’t quite see everything that was happening. But as the possessed man stepped out of sight, she saw one of the simulacrums follow him into the former restaurant, while the other stayed in place and held the limp form of a woman up at arm’s length.

She looked like a corpse. Painfully skinny, covered in dirt, and with nothing but a tattered bit of cloth to cover her body, Jadis thought the woman had been dead for a while. But when the woman feebly stirred in the Demon’s grip, Jay very nearly leapt through the window to save her.

“No,” Noll said, putting his hand on her shoulder.

“But she—”

“She’s already dead,” the old wolf’s words rumbled in her ear. “There’s nothing you can do.”

Jay watched, her teeth gritted, as the clawed hand of a shadowy figure that was just barely out of her sight grabbed the woman by her throat and took her from the unmoving Demon. It was only a moment, but Jadis saw the blood-stained hand clearly enough. Maeve had been very detailed in her vivid description. She knew who the hand belonged to.

“The Erinyes is home,” Jay growled. “Good.”

Stepping in front of a plain door with no sign of hinges or a handle, Maeve looked over her shoulder at Jay.

“I’ll focus on planting the rune plates in and around the bitch’s garden. I’ll check the other target sights, first, though. Hopefully nothing’s changed.”

“We don’t have much time,” Noll said as he moved to join Maeve by the door. “I’ll clear the house.”

“Go for it,” Maeve said as she pressed against the door, causing it to slide to the side and reveal what looked like a plain, unadorned hallway. “Just don’t blow our cover.”

“Let me know when we’re in the clear,” Dys told Noll as Maeve disappeared down the hallway, already transformed to look like a scythe wight. “I’ll wait here until then.”

Jay kept her eyes on the garden while Maeve and Noll went about their part of the plan. For the moment, her only role was as transportation for the enchanted steel plates that she carried on her backs. Divided evenly into three ways between her selves, her load was a heavy one. Each square plate was twelve inches wide on its sides and was half an inch thick. The runes that had been crafted on each one would have taken any normal enchanter a month to inscribe properly, if they had been capable of such powerful runes at all. And yet such was the power of Sabina and Tiernan that they had finished all forty-five in a matter of hours. That said, they weren’t designed to last. A single use was all they would get out of them, and they needed to be activated sooner rather than later to prevent misfires from happening thanks to their hasty construction. But those limitations didn’t matter. What mattered was the power held inside of the runes, pumped to the max with Alex’s help.

Well, that wasn’t the only consideration that went into the making of the plates that Jadis had requested. Just as important as the power was the fact that the rune effect was delayed. Delayed, and activatable by very little magic. Little enough that even one with barely any reserves at all could set the trap.

Such as Maeve.

When Noll came back to give Jadis the all clear, she silently moved through the building, all the way down to the first floor. She paid no attention to the signs of death and decay around her; the city had been in the hands of Demons for a long while. Such terrible sights were to be expected. Instead, she positioned herself in the kitchen, by the back door of the manor, first plate in hand.

Maeve reappeared a short while later, still in the guise of a wight. Once inside cover, she shifted, transforming herself to look like a relentless simulacrum, if a little on the smaller size for one of their bulk. Jay passed five of the plates to the disguised Fetch, who promptly took them inside of her body, hiding them from view. When she left, she headed for the Erinyes’ garden, plodding along at a pace that was fast, but not so much that it would draw attention.

“Let me have five,” Noll grumbled as he held out a hand to Syd.

“Don’t get caught,” she whispered as she passed him the bundle while pushing enough of her magic into the devices to start their countdowns.

“I won’t,” he replied simply before disappearing into the night-shadowed alleyway behind the mayor’s house.

The garden was the primary target, since they knew that it had to be important for the cultists, but it was not the only place they planned to destroy. There was a building on the north side which seemed to be the primary roosting location for the possessed wyverns and stymphalia that guarded the skies of Kastoria. There were also several buildings where charybdis hid in deep cover, their great fleshy bodies protected from Jadis’ strafing runs.

If they could have, Jadis would have targeted the building which seemed to house the workshop of whoever it was that was responsible for creating the impenetrable shell domes. Unfortunately, the entrances to the smuggler’s tunnel were all too far away from the city center, and the area was the place with the highest level of Demon activity anyway. There wasn’t a good way to plant their enchanted plates in such a busy location unnoticed. However, there was one building not far from the mayor’s house that seemed to have an oddly large number of Demons coming in and out of it. That building was Noll’s first target.

The structure had been Charos’ Temple in Kastoria. It still was, Jadis supposed, though it had certainly seen better days. The single tall tower that rose high into the skyline of the seaside city was not the tallest structure, but it was noticeable for its uniquely pentagonal design. Maeve didn’t know why there were so many Demons coming and going from the tower, but she had noted that there was constant activity. Not as high as the construction area for the domes, but still quite busy for a place that should not have mattered much to Demons at all.

Well, if it was important enough that the Demons were attracted to it, then it was important enough for Jadis to burn it.

By the time Maeve had returned from her first trip, Noll had already come and gone twice, taking ten more steel plates with him. Jadis continued passing out bunches to her companions until all that was left were five that Syd still carried in the pack on her back. As Maeve walked up to the backdoor of the manor house to retrieve the final stack, a tremendous boom reminiscent of a thunderclap echoed in the sky above them.

“Shit, are they early?” Jay said as she looked to the north side of the city.

“Something must have happened,” Maeve’s voice came from the simulacrum’s visage. “They weren’t supposed to start the distraction until after the fires started.”

Indeed, Syd had the buzzer on her that would let her signal to Wilhelm that they were ready to go. If the attack had already begun, that meant that either the Demons had discovered the Hero lying in wait, or something else had occurred that prompted an early assault. Either way, by Jadis’ count, they still had three minutes before the first of the planted plates went off.

“We need to get ready for phase two,” Jay said as she motioned for Maeve to get inside the building.

“I’ll wait here for Noll,” Syd said as her other selves headed for the stairs. “He should be back any minute.”

Almost as though her words were a signal, a dark figure lightly bounced off the roof of the building across the alleyway, continuing past her overhead as it raced to the south. Syd had no trouble at all recognizing the shadowed form of her mentor. The second figure that chased after him, bouncing across the rooftop with nearly the same speed and ease, was not so readily identifiable. What she did recognize immediately, however, was the giant cold steel weapon that the unknown figure was holding at their side as they flew by.

“Motherfucker has my sword staff,” Syd cursed before leaping up to the roof and chasing after the two.