“Hold still, you’ve got a bad cut here.”
“Yes ma’am,” Syd groaned, wincing as Aila slathered more of the minty-smelling poultice on the back of her legs.
“You need helmets. I have no idea how you managed to avoid having one or more of your skulls split open with how you three get knocked about in that fight,” Aila mused as she tended to Syd’s wounds. “Frankly, it’s a miracle.”
“Not sure I didn’t put a bit of a crack in one,” Syd touched the back of her head gingerly.
Aila slapped her hand away from the lump there, admonishing her not to mess up the application of aid she’d already given.
Syd was lying face down on the grass of the valley, stripped of all armor and clothing except for her undergarments. All the wounds Jadis’ three selves had received over the course of the intense fight had been transferred onto her body so Aila could apply a healing salve while the other two of Jadis gathered the eyeball cores of the demons to turn in for bounties. The two also took the time to fully investigate the sea cove, looking for any signs of more danger or items of interest.
Aila worked diligently to soothe and mitigate what damage she could, fretting over Jadis’ injuries while doing her best to not look like she was fretting. Jadis smiled to herself, immensely relieved just to have Aila safe and mostly uninjured despite her fall from the cliff. She was content to let Aila say and do whatever she wanted in whatever way she wanted, so long as she was unharmed.
Seeing Aila drop off the edge had scared her more than any other moment in her fight against the gigantic sea bull monster. If she hadn’t been able to catch her in time, if Aila’s acrobatic enhancement from Dance of the D hadn’t given her the boost she needed to kick off from the cliff and into Dys’ arms, then Jadis wasn’t honestly sure she knew what she would have done. Ever since coming to Oros, Jadis had been dealing with near death experiences on almost a daily basis while fighting demons. The danger was real and she knew it was, but somehow, she handled it well, the fear and panic mostly staying in the back of her mind while the thrill of combat kept her focused. She didn’t feel invulnerable or anything, but she could accept the risks she was taking with her own life when she took bold action. She was putting in her best effort, so she didn’t fear the consequences of what could happen.
Aila’s life, though, wasn’t something she wanted to risk again.
Not that it was her choice. Aila wanted to be a mercenary. She wanted to cast battle magic and slay demons and be in the thick of combat. Jadis couldn’t tell her not to pursue what she wanted to do, not just because she herself was suddenly feeling nervous about her companion’s survivability in dangerous situations.
What she could do, though, was swear to herself that she wouldn’t let Aila come that close to death ever again.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Syd asked, glancing over her shoulder at Aila.
“I’m fine,” Aila said. “My health only went down by seventeen points. I’m very lucky you caught me.”
“Quick thinking, pushing off the cliff like that,” Syd said, trying to not sound overprotective. “Very smart. I’m glad you have such good reflexes.”
“Thank you,” Aila responded, eyes focused on her work. “And thank you again for saving me.”
“Of course, any time,” Syd said with a half grin. “Though not literally, please. I’d like to keep you around.”
“I’d like to keep around you, too,” Aila quipped, tone light, but with an undercurrent of some emotion Jadis thought might be bashfulness.
A shy silence fell over the two for a short time as Aila continued to apply treatment to Jadis’ injuries. Briefly lacking something to say, Jadis had the thought to check through her mental notifications. One notification prompted her to break the silence.
“Nice! I got level fourteen in my ritualist class,” she exclaimed happily before remembering to ask the most obvious question. “Oh, shit, did you check your notifications? Did you level?”
Aila looked up from her self-imposed task of tending Jadis’ injuries and blinked owlishly, a confused look washing over her face.
“Gods, I completely forgot to check. I just got so distracted by everything that happened…” she trailed off, a distant look enveloping her expression as she read something only she could see.
A second later pure elation beamed from her face as she excitedly cried out her news. At the same time, she pounced at Syd, wrapping her arms around her neck and hugging her ecstatically.
“I leveled! Level twenty!”
“Congratulations!” Syd said, rolling over with a wince as she tried to hug her companion back.
Two more shouts and whoops of congratulations also echoed in the cove from where Jadis’ other two selves joined in on the excitement.
“Thank you, thank you!” Aila said between a flurry of little kisses applied to Syd’s cheeks and lips. “I owe you so much!”
“No you don’t,” Syd assured, turning one of Aila’s little kisses into a deeper one. “I wanted to help you. You don’t need to give anything back.”
Aila broke away from Jadis’ kiss and gave her a determined look that told her that Aila wouldn't be okay with just accepting her good will without giving something back. She didn’t push the matter, though. Aila had her own moral code, one that Jadis quite liked. If she felt she needed to show her appreciation, that was fine, so long as she knew Jadis wasn’t requiring anything in return for what she had done freely.
“Alright, lie back down and let me finish bandaging you up,” Aila said while pushing Syd back into position on the ground.
“Are you going to tell me what class options you got?”
“Yes, definitely,” she nodded. “Let me review for a second and I’ll go over them with you. I’d like to discuss what might synergize best with you without crippling my own versatility. Hopefully the gods gave me several options of mage classes.”
Syd raised an eyebrow curiously. “Did you get more than three options? I only ever got three for primary and secondary.”
“No, just three. I’ve heard of some people getting more or less, but that’s unusual. I’ve heard some say the Hero gets dozens of different hero related classes to choose from, but I don’t know if that’s true.”
As Aila explained, Jadis started to bring her other two bodies back up from the shore. She wanted all her selves to be present while Aila’s new class was decided. She was also just about done with her investigation of the sea cove, more or less.
“Hey, before you start, it looks like there was some kind of fight here before we showed up,” Syd remarked, interrupting Aila’s commentary on class mechanics to give her the information her other selves were coming across.
“What do you mean?” Aila asked, looking up from where she was gently applying more salve to the bad wound on Syd’s calf that had happened from the sea bull’s water jet spell.
“Jay and Dys are finding more bodies along the shore, west side of the cove,” Syd pointed without looking. “Has to be a dozen twisted wretches at least so far.”
Aila looked in the direction of the two distant giants picking along the shoreline.
“That makes sense, actually,” she said. “I would bet a gold coin what we stumbled on here was the tail end of a demon possession of that sea bull. The twisted wretches must have subdued the sea bull somehow and brought the arcane corruptor to possess it.”
“How’s that work, anyway?” Syd asked, sitting up on her elbows to look back at where Aila was still tending to her leg. “Looking at my notifications just now, the message that came from you sticking that fucker with your knife said we killed an ‘Arcane Corruptor of Flesh’. I thought you said it was called a sea bull?”
“The magic beast was a sea bull,” Aila explained. “But the demon, the arcane corruptor, had possessed it. It killed the sea bull’s mind but kept the body for its own. Corruptor demons can do that, it’s what makes them so much more dangerous than more regular varieties of demon.”
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“It possessed the sea bull’s body and that gave it control over its skills and spells, too?” Syd guessed with her brow furrowed in thought. “Does that mean magic beasts have skills and spells, and a class system the way we do?”
Aila looked up and met Syd’s violet eyes. Her normally neutral mask was softened with a tinge of obvious concern.
“Did no one in your village explain these kinds of things to you? About magic beasts and demons and the like?”
“No,” Syd shook her head. “I’ve never had any of this taught to me before. It just didn’t come up, I guess,” she said while shrugging one shoulder lamely.
“I don’t know how it is you can come across as both educated and ignorant at the same time, Jadis,” Aila grumbled before shifting forward and pushing Syd to lay back down again. “You’ve had a peculiar upbringing.”
“I guess so,” Syd agreed, feeling a bit uncomfortable with how she wasn’t quite being truthful with Aila on why she didn’t know anything about demons and magic.
“Well, to put it simply, magic beasts have spells and skills, but they don’t have classes. Any other sea bulls you might come across would have those same spells that one was casting, only difference might be in how powerful the spells are or how much magic they have to keep casting or what have you. You won’t find a sea bull that casts earth magic because it chose a different spell path or anything like that.”
As Aila talked, she pulled some cloth bandages out from her pack lying on the ground at her side. The blue eye of the demon hatchling that they had brought with her watched unblinkingly as she wrapped Syd’s skinned leg with the bandages. Aila had taken the jarred demon out of her backpack and set it on the ground nearby so she could get to her supplies underneath.
Jadis idly wondered what the demon thought about being tossed around inside of the pack, if it had any conception of what had been happening at all.
“People like you and me have more options with our classes. Even if by some strange joke of the gods I was given the option to be a Mirror Knight like you, I wouldn’t necessarily have the same options as you. Depending on the skills I chose to take and focus on, I could end up being wildly different from you functionally, even if some of our base abilities were the same.”
Jadis had already figured as much. Since whenever she reached an odd numbered level she was given two different choices for skills or spells, and those choices offered were dependent on her activities prior to leveling, she could easily imagine a lot of variety between individuals who had the same named class.
“Magical beasts don’t have any options like we do. They’re only going to have what all of their kind have, just with varying levels of proficiency.”
“Interesting,” Syd hummed. “And corruptor demons? How do they work?”
“Most demons are like those wretches,” Aila motioned to the bodies further up the slope. “They twist and warp flesh and bone, or create bodies from things like stone—”
“Like the grundwyrm,” Syd interrupted.
“Yes, like grundwyrms,” Aila agreed. “The malformed bodies they create relate to the spells and skills they use, but a wretch won’t get any skills or spells from the dead they stole their bodies from, not even if they’re from an intelligent race.
“Corruptor demons, though, when they take possession of a body, they keep the abilities of the creature or person they’ve corrupted. They also don’t change the bodies much, not the way a wretch would for example. Some corruptors you can’t even tell that the body has been possessed.”
“So, demons can do to people what they did to that magic beast back there?” Syd asked.
“Some can, yes,” Aila confirmed. “Some even have skills that let them blend in, using the memories of their ‘host’ to make them seem normal.”
“…that sounds like fairly intelligent behavior to me, Blue.” Syd pointed out, thinking about how Aila had said she doubted demons were any more intelligent than animals.
“Maybe,” Aila allowed, “but they’re using skills to mimic actions and words, not thinking for themselves. From what I’ve heard, they can be spotted easily once you get into any kind of real conversation with them. Gerwas told me he knew a man that encountered one once. Looked just like any other human, but when it spoke it just kept repeating the same greetings and nonsense phrases until it was confronted and it started attacking.”
That was some interesting nuance to the demon situation Aila had provided. Demons could possess a person and mimic their actions and words. That had to mean they were smart, at least more intelligent than Aila and those who had instructed her were giving the demons credit for, did it not? Jadis didn’t think an animal could pretend to be a person for any length of time, whether they looked like one or not.
Except, she couldn’t know how much skills would affect something like behavior. Maybe the demons that possessed humans or other races and managed to infiltrate communities really had no idea what they were saying or doing and were just using the lingering memories of their victims to duplicate actions. How could she test the facts, one way or the other?
Turning her head to look at the demon hatchling, Syd narrowed her eyes. She didn’t think there was any circumstance that would convince her it was okay to let her little pet demonling do to a person what that arcane corruptor had done to the sea bull. She wanted to know more about demons and see just how much agency they actually had in the war between gods, but she wasn’t going to sacrifice a person to a fate as horrible as what had been done to the giant seal monster.
As she considered the little demon, its glowing blue eye turned to meet hers.
Odd.
“Well, thanks for the lesson on beasts and demons,” Jay said, catching Aila’s attention as she returned from the seashore. “But how about we get up and head back to the city and you tell us all about the amazing new spell casting class you’ve received.
“We found eighteen dead wretches in total along the west side of the cove,” Dys added, hefting a bundle of scavenged weapons over her shoulder.
“We took their demon eyes, too,” Jay held up a large burlap sack that was stained with black splotches soaking through the material. “Free money, I guess.”
Aila nodded in acknowledgement at Jay and Dys. Finished with binding Syd’s leg, she got to her feet and held up the jar of salve towards the two.
“Need me to apply any of this to either of you two?”
“No, Syd’s wearing all the damage right now.”
“Convenient,” Aila said before turning to repack her supplies.
“Not for me,” Syd groaned as Dys helped her to her feet. “My back is killing me right now. It sucks being the injury mule.”
“And this doubly fucking sucks,” Jay held up Syd’s leather pants-skirt, showing the torn material of the lower leg. “Just got these and already ruined.”
“I’m sure Klara can patch them,” Aila said, slinging her pack onto her back, supplies and hatchling tucked away.
Jay passed the leather pants-skirt to Syd so she could get them pulled on. “Nah. We can patch them. We’ve got a sewing needle and thread back at the inn.”
“You mean like how you patched your old leather armor?”
“Yeah,” Jay replied, picking up Syd’s shirt while Dys helped Syd hop into her pants.
“You should probably just let Klara do the patching.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Aila turned away and abruptly changed the subject.
“So, my new classes. Let’s see…”
Jadis eyed Aila suspiciously but decided to let the matter drop. She was more interested in finally learning about Aila’s new class options than she was in defending her admittedly poorly trained sewing ability.
Aila read her first secondary class option aloud for Jadis to hear while Syd got dressed and reequipped.
Supply-Line Strategist
You have an excellent grasp of strategy and logistics, particularly when it comes to the supplies necessary to keep a military organization running. Taking this class will aid you in better running and coordinating an efficient supply chain for any form of military campaign. Skills from this class are focused on support, but there are some options that will aid in personal defense.
“A quartermaster style class…” Aila said with barely hidden disdain. “I suppose that’s actually an extremely good upgrade from Cart Driver, if I was interested in that kind of career.”
“No magic though, I bet,” Jay commented with a frown. “So, skip it.”
“This next one has an odd name…”
Battle-Ready Cliff Diver
Surviving a lethal drop and then slaying the foe that threw you over the edge is a unique feat. This class will make you more capable of surviving deadly plunges without injury and will boost your attack power against enemies that wallow on the ground while you fall with style. This class’s skills can lead to powerful aerial attacks.
“What is this?” Aila exclaimed, her voice growing more and more shocked as she read the description. “I’ve never heard of any class as ridiculous as this! Who would take a class that’s focused on falling off of cliffs? Why would the gods even offer something so— so wrong!”
Jadis had paused while Aila had read out the odd class details. The description gave her an odd mental itch. Something told her it wasn’t gods in general dictating the classes Aila was being offered. Just one god in particular that was sticking his non-descript nose into her business.
“I swear D, if you screwed Aila out of a good magic class I’ll track you down and choke you with your own cookies,” Dys whispered under her breath so Aila couldn’t hear.
Aila was showing a lot of worry in her expression. “I guess there’s not a lot of options, huh?” She gave Jay a worried look. “But, it’s fine, as long as I get at least one magic class, it’ll be fine.”
With a deep, nervous breath, she read the last class option out loud.
Nephilim Powered Arcanist
You’ve gained great arcane power from lewd interactions with a lost race, the Nephilim. See just how far your power can grow from continued licentious involvement with Nephilim by taking this class. Skills from this class will allow you to cast unique force spells, their power and effects changing and scaling depending on skill modifications and the level of charge applied.
A gentle sea breeze was the only sound as Aila stared off into the distance. Jadis waited, all three of her stock still, anxiously watching the redhead.
Aila slowly turned and looked up at Jay, bewildered. “Did what I read out loud really just imply—"
“That your magic will be powered by fucking me?”
Aila flinched, then nodded her head. “Yes, that’s what I thought.”
There was another beat of silence before Jadis awkwardly gave an increasingly mortified Aila six thumbs up.
“Congratulations?’
“…Thanks.”