Rebirth of the Nephilim

Chapter 30: Aftermath

Jadis checked her health pool as Dys sprinted as fast as she was able to down the hill towards Jay’s prone form. She nearly tripped as she physically flinched upon seeing the numbers.

Sixty-two health out of three hundred. It was the lowest her health had been since arriving on Oros, less than a quarter of her max.

Jadis had a near gut-wrenching impulse to run away when she saw the state of her health pool. She wanted to flee, find a quiet and dark hole to hide in, and sleep for however many days it would take to get her health back up to full, then sleep another week on top of that to be safe. An errant flick of the behemoth’s tail would likely be enough to end her in her current condition. The instinct to escape screamed in Jadis’ mind.

She ignored the flight response, continuing her charge downhill to reunite her mirrored selves. If she didn’t kill the bone behemoth while it was temporarily disabled, and she had no doubt about the transient nature of its incapacitation, there was no guarantee she’d get another chance.

Reaching Jay moments after the crippled twin had grasped hold of her maul, Dys helped her to her feet. Wrapping arms around each other, they supported one another as they rushed towards the toppled and half buried giant demon as it struggled to pull itself free of the logs and stone house rubble.

Taking in the damage done, Jadis could see the behemoth had been badly broken by the collision. Several of its arms were broken and shattered, two of them completely sheared off the body. The body itself was partially crushed, large cracks crisscrossing the bone shell, with sections caved in from the impact. There was no sign of the dark purple flesh core she knew dwelled within though. She’d have to break her way in.

As Jadis neared the demon, indigo colored symbols appeared in asymmetrical patterns all around its body, glowing briefly as a spell Jadis had seen used several times before surrounded the behemoth. The various skeletal shards mixed into the heap of debris surrounding the demon began flying through the air, attaching onto the bone shell core, filling the cracks and fixing the caved in parts.

“Oh no you don’t,” Jadis said through two pairs of gritted teeth, stumbling through the jumbled mess of logs, stones, and bones.

 Dys was having trouble swinging her maul at full extension from the damage done to her side and back. Upon reaching the closest exposed side of the disabled behemoth, she swung with her right arm, slamming the sharp end of her weapon down into the dense barrier of bone, burying the tip into the shell.

Less than a second later, the blunt side of Jay’s maul impacted Dys’. Jay, too, was having trouble swinging her maul with one leg crippled, unable to plant her feet for proper leverage, but it didn’t matter. The timing was synchronized perfectly, triggering Mirrored Strikes.

Bone exploded like shrapnel from the force of the blow, a hole the size of a manhole cover broken through the demon’s protective shell.

From inside, Jadis saw dozens of glowing orange eyes surrounded by a sea of purple tentacles staring up at her.

Without hesitation, Jadis began jamming her mauls down into the foul mess, pulverizing the unprotected demon core. Gouts of dark blood and glowing ocular fluid began spraying up and out of the jagged hole as she pressed her attack, splattering her in the noxious fluids.

The repulsive smell and disgusting sight was almost enough to distract Jadis from the sudden sound and movement coming from the other side of the behemoth, but with two sets of eyes watching, she caught the motion just in time to react. Letting go of her mauls still partially stuck inside the fleshy mess of the demon core, they dove down.

With an ear-ringing crack, the behemoth ripped its tail out from under itself where it had been entangled, snapping off the end. The remaining length of tail whipped through the air, barely missing Jay and Dys as they dodged to the ground. Unfortunately for the bone behemoth, its tail continued straight into its side, colliding with the shafts sticking out of the hole in its shell.

The force of the blow thrust the mauls deep into the core of the demon, a fountain of black ichor spraying out from the mortal wound.

Jadis scrambled to get out of the way as the behemoth convulsed, its tail and remaining trapped limbs thrashing around in a chaotic seizure. Logs and stones shifted and rolled as the gigantic bone thief lashed out in a blind bid to kill what had already done the same to it. Even if she hadn’t been crippled, she would have found it impossible to escape the death throes of the demon unscathed. As it was, Jadis simply gritted her teeth and tried to stay out of the way as huge forces rolled and shifted under and around her, slamming into her wounds.

Both Jay and Dys bit back cries of pain as their abused bodies were further battered, but the behemoth’s struggles did not last for long. Eventually, the movement died down as the demon’s blood soaked the earth. With a final clatter of bones, the broken tail of the behemoth fell still, silence reigning absolute over the wreckage of Jadis and the demon’s battlefield for several minutes.

“I think I’m going to puke,” Jay said, breaking the silence.

They weren’t the triumphant words of victory Jadis would have wanted to say, should anyone have been around to hear and record her words for posterity, but they were the truth. The terrible injuries her bodies had sustained were hitting her hard, making her heads spin with pain induced nausea. The nasty smell of dead demon wasn’t helping.

“Ugh, gotta get up,” Dys slurred, pulling herself free from under a log that had come close to collapsing on top of her. “There might be more regular-sized bone thieves around. We’ve gotta get somewhere safe.”

“Fuck, what’s our health at?” Jay hissed, looking at her knee. Her leg was already swelling up and turning purple.

Checking her status menu, Jadis ignored the list of notifications about the demons she’d killed, mentally pushing those aside while she inspected her remaining health pool.

“Fuuuuuuck,” both Jay and Dys moaned, physical pains momentarily forgotten as Jadis saw just how close to death she was. Her current health was barely above ten percent. As she watched, Jadis saw her health tick down another point to thirty-eight.

“Shit, I think that’s me,” Dys said, clutching at her side.

Indeed, Dys was still bleeding from the antler wounds on her side, blood soaking the leather armor. All other considerations put aside, Jadis immediately set about getting Jay and Dys to their feet and back to somewhere protected where she could take the time to attend to Dys’ injuries.

It was a struggle, but before Jadis could flee the scene for the safety of the compound, she had to pull her mauls from the fetid insides of the dead demon. Going elbows deep into the goopy flesh was more than enough to make both her bodies puke, though since they hadn’t yet had breakfast that morning there wasn’t much to come out of their empty stomachs. Eventually, weapons in hand, she managed to pull her selves together and stagger up the hill back to the smithy. Along the way, she let the mental notifications wash over her mind.

The expected announcement of her slaying of bone thieves popped up in her mind’s eye for each of the eight she’d killed during the fight. Jadis wasn’t sure if the newly spawned bone thieves would warrant a different notification from the system, but so far as she could tell there was no difference.

The notification that came after the bone thieves was a new one for Jadis, curiosity breaking through the aching pain at the sight.

“Matriarch? Demon Mother? What’s that about?” Jay asked through a grimace as she limped along, using her maul as a makeshift crutch.

“Well, I guess they’ve got to come from somewhere,” Dys shrugged, immediately regretting the action afterward. Her back felt like it was one large bruise, and her side was on fire. “It did look like it was spawning more demons at the pond.”

“Damnit, there better not be more waiting for us up here.”

More notifications were waiting for Jadis’ acknowledgement, but she shunted them to the back of her mind as her twin selves reached the mining compound. Unwilling to be distracted when she didn’t know if she’d be attacked by more bone thieves waiting in the wings, Jadis cautiously made her way between the buildings, checking around every corner before moving forward. She even poked her head through the smithy door first before entering, just in case there was another ambush waiting for her.

Jadis found no demons hiding within the walls of her makeshift home, just the low burning fire in the forge and a giant hole where a corner of the building used to be.

“Shit licking turd monkey,” Jay growled as she hobbled around the room, doing her best to gather up the most necessary supplies for transport to a different building. “Why did that fucking mother demon or whatever have to come here anyway?”

“Maybe some of its kids told on us,” Dys said, pulling her armor off with some difficulty.

“That looks bad,” Jay said, glancing over at Dys as she worked.

Her side was caked with blood, some still leaking out of three holes in her pale flesh. One looked much deeper than the other two.

Going silent as she concentrated, Jadis put all her attention on cleaning off and dressing Dys’ wounds. As long as she could apply enough pressure to stop the bleeding, she was fairly confident Knight’s Rest could heal her without need for stiches or any of the other normal medical treatments she was sure she’d need if she was back on Earth. Of course, she was less certain the skill would do much for infection, but Jadis would just have to cross that bridge when she got there.

Once she’d managed to reuse her chest wraps as bandages for Dys, Jadis took a few minutes to examine Jay. Her worst wound there was her knee, which had to be fractured if not worse from what she could tell. She could still move her toes, though, which was a good sign. Jadis’ passive healing skill didn’t mention broken bones, but it didn’t exclude them. Knight’s Rest only specified it wouldn’t regenerate lost limbs. Jadis double checked all her fingers and toes to make sure, but everything seemed to be where it should be.

Once the bleeding wounds were bandaged and the supplies gathered, Jadis relocated her selves to the warehouse. The warehouse also had a hole in one wall, put there by the bone behemoth demon mother thing, but stacking a few crates to plug that one much smaller hole was far less effort than trying to secure one of the other abandoned buildings in the compound. Jay arranged things while Dys rested, her wounds the worst of the pair.

“Maybe we leveled up after all that,” Jay said once she’d done all she could, gingerly laying back on the fur skin rug the two used as a bed. “If we got to level eighteen, we can put a free attribute point into our vitality. That’d put us just a little bit further back from death’s door, I think.”

“We D damned better have gotten a level after all that,” Dys said with a tired grunt.

“Yeah, let’s see what the menu says…” Jay trailed off as the remaining mental announcements overlayed her vision.

“Huh,” was all Jadis could think of to say as she stared at the notifications.