Rebirth of the Nephilim

Syd spun, ripping herself free from the cold grasp that had taken her from behind. As she pivoted, she swung out with her sword staff in her right hand, slicing through the air at a blinding speed. She felt the resistance of flesh and bone as she struck, yet her weapon cut clean through to the other side as she landed a few feet away. Coming to a stop with her sword staff ready, Syd snarled with teeth bared at the Demon who had invaded Lyssandria’s temple and desecrated the belongings of Jadis’ loved ones. As furious as she was, she couldn’t help the widening of her eyes as she took in what lay before her.

Sybil’s face stared blankly up at her, an emotionless husk from which all blood had drained. Her eyes were clouded and glassy, and open wounds had split her forehead, cheeks, and jawline down to the bone. Sybil’s neck looked stretched out, like someone had grabbed her head and pulled up while forcing her collar bone down, giving her throat an unnatural length. From there, the horror only grew worse.

Below Sybil’s bare arms was another set of arms. And another. Then another. And then more. Pieces of spine, rib, and torso had been stitched together without thread or needle, giving her body a winding, serpentine length with over a dozen extra pairs of arms attached. At the end of the column of stolen flesh were Sybil’s legs, twisted around so that they faced the wrong way.

Syd’s sword had cut through the middle of the abomination, causing a mix of old blood and viscera to spill out onto the marble floor from the two severed halves. And yet, even in the second Jadis took to process what she was seeing, the Demon had already squished its open ends back together with a wet squelching sound. Two sets of hands grasped onto each other in a parody of mirrored coordination as the defiled body reattached its parts.

“Don’t run…”

“Run?” Syd shouted back. “You think I’m running from you? I’m going to fucking tear you to shreds you psycho bitch!”

“You will… Try…”

Syd lunged forward, not wanting to hear anything else the vile Demon Prince had to say. She wasn’t sure when Desire’s antipathy towards her had turned to obsession, but she planned to put an end to whatever was going on with the psychotic monster as quickly as she could. Jadis wasn’t certain if destroying the soul-linked object that was implanted inside of Sybil would kill Desire or not, but she figured doing so would be a good place to start.

As her sword staff whipped through the air, Desire did not try to flee or dodge Syd’s attack. Instead, the Demon moved forward, but only enough to ensure that the blade caught her full in the upper-middle of her elongated torso. Jadis’ confusion at the strange choice went away the moment her weapon made contact. Or rather, the second her blade struck nothing at all. Syd’s sword staff passed through Desire like she was no more than smoke and mirrors, which was exactly what the image standing before her was. An illusion.

Syd felt a spike of pain across her right ankle as something invisible struck her. She immediately counterattacked, slashing with her sword staff, and while Desire remained invisible, the woman’s hand that flopped bloodlessly to the ground did not.

“You won’t be able to kill me with tricks like that,” Syd growled as she slashed at a spot where she thought the Demon was hiding, hitting nothing but air. “You barely even scratched me.”

“Probably not…” Desire’s voice came from all directions.

As her voice echoed in the dark temple hall, Jadis’ other bodies stormed through opposite doors to join her Syd self. Invisibility was a nasty trick, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t overcome. With three of her bodies rushing through the hall, she’d collide with the Demon eventually. And that was just the simplest of brute-force methods she could think of to find the psycho. Even as she entered the unlit space, Jadis was already thinking of ways to bypass invisibility, such as using debris in the air or splashing water around. Maybe even throwing glass across the floor so she could hear where the Demon stepped. There were many ways of getting around a simple illusion.

And then the world turned upside down.

Jadis felt the bile in her stomachs rise as floor became the ceiling under her feet. She was falling, and sliding, and moving forward and backward at the same time. She could feel all of her balance leave her as all three of her bodies struggled to remain standing. For a moment, Jadis was reminded of the first enchantment that Sabina had ever made for her, which had sent her into a similar state of complete sensory confusion. It was a nearly identical experience, except for the horde of amalgamated people-centipedes that were crawling towards her.

Sybil’s dead face swarmed towards her as dozens of arms carried long bodies across the marble floor. There were twenty or more of the centipedal monstrosities, many of which appeared to be different sizes. Some were tiny, no more than a few feet in length, while others were more than forty feet long. The skittering, crawling, surging mass of murdered flesh only threw Jadis’ perceptions into further confusion as she lashed out at the things that approached her. It felt impossible to judge how close or far any of the Demons were, and her weapons missed her marks by wide margins.

“Effective…”

The myriad faces of Sybil did not show any emotion, yet the remark was painted with demonic satisfaction. Desire had shown that she had illusion magic powerful enough that it could overcome Jadis’ one hundred and fifteen points in Resilience. As troubling as that feat was, Jadis was more concerned about the implication of the Demon having so much Eldritch power when she had shown no magical talent in previous encounters.

Such thoughts were for later, though, when she had time to discuss the situation with her lovers. Instead, Jadis bared her teeth at the illusions that swarmed the shadows surrounding her three bodies. She had her own ace in the hole for status-altering attacks made against her person. While she had not had an opportunity to use it in previous battles, she had a feeling that this exact sort of spell was what it was made for.

Jadis gave no warning as she cast Cursed Reflection. But as the assault against her senses continued, she saw one of the demonic centipedes that was crawling near her Jay self abruptly stumble as her many arms went out from under her and the Demon collapsed onto the floor.

“How…?”

“You aren’t the only one with tricks,” Jay said before swinging her hammer over her head to crash down onto Desire.

The attack was a bad one. Jay was unbalanced by the mind-assaulting spell that Desire was still hitting her with, so when her hammer went forward, so did her whole body. Jay fell forward, hitting the ground almost as hard as her weapon did, causing marble to shatter and splinter from the impact. Desire was still struck, but it wasn’t the solid blow that Jadis would have ordinarily been able to leverage. An arm and a bit of ribcage was left behind under the head of Jay’s hammer as the Demon scrambled away, rapidly disappearing into the shadows.

Suddenly, all the vertigo Jadis was feeling ended, which almost caused as much of a lurch in her stomachs as being initially hit by the spell had done to her. She quickly got to her feet or righted her self, as needed, while Desire’s voice rang out around her once more.

“Try… Again…”

Jadis’ vision was suddenly filled with painful flashes of multi-colored waves and swirls of abstract shapes. Non-existent visions of kaleidoscopic mayhem wrapped around her bodies from all sides, obscuring her sight completely. In seconds Jadis’ heads began to throb from the obnoxious bombardment of bright colors, and she was forced to close her eyes to seek relief.

The moment her eyes closed, Dys felt a force strike at her from behind, digging into the back of her left knee. She lashed out immediately, her blind swing impacting something, causing the attack on her leg to cease. A second later, she felt another prodding strike, this time against her right leg, and she struck back again, hitting something fleshy with her back hand.

In the same instant, Syd lunged with her sword staff towards her Dys self, aiming for the spot just behind her other body. The tip of her blade hit something, and she blindly slashed around, trying to cause as much damage as possible while her Dys self did the same. A few of her wild attacks made contact, but more struck against something hard, like stone. After a few more seconds Jadis realized that she had lost track of the Demon again, so she went still, waiting and listening for her opponent.

“Ineffective…”

“Having trouble seeing?” Jay shouted, slowly turning on her heels. “You won’t be able to do shit to me without doing it to yourself.”

“More… Options…”

“The only option you have is to run,” Dys called out. “Because I will never stop hunting you until you are dead!”

“Try… Again…”

Another wave of illusions struck Jadis, this time entirely auditory. Piercingly painful screeches filled her ears, making it nearly impossible to hear her own thoughts. As she winced at the static assaulting her, she found that she was able to open her eyes and see again. Either Desire couldn’t do the visual attack at the same time as the auditory one, or the Demon couldn’t handle being hit with both spells at the same time herself. Looking around, all three of Jadis searched for the Demon, trying to find it through the cacophony of painful sounds that were twisting inside her ears.

As she had suspected from her blind attacks a moment before, her Dys self was near a marble column, which was one of many that lined the temple hall. On instinct, she looked up, following the stone pillar with her eyes all the way to the ceiling. She saw no Demon, but her spell-enhanced vision caught sight of a few dark smudges that stained the otherwise pristine marble surface. With one powerful flex of her legs, Dys shot into the air and swung her axe at the area where she saw the blood stains.

Metal struck flesh as Dys caught something invisible with her blow. As she fell back to the ground, she could tell that Desire was falling with her, having caught the Demon on the spike of her axe head. Her other two selves were waiting, and before Dys had even landed both Jay and Syd swung and stabbed at the empty air, trying to land hits on her invisible foe.

Syd struck something that sent a splatter of dark blood across the floor, but Jay’s hammer found no purchase. Before Jadis could properly attack again, her vision was once again stolen from her. Only this time, everything went ink black. She still swung her weapons, hoping to hit the Demon, but Desire pulled away, once more falling back.

“Try… Again…”

As the three of Jadis circled up to prevent attacks from coming at her backs, her senses were assaulted by vertigo again, then blackness, then auditory mayhem. Like a rhythmless pattern, she was thrown into a cycle of pure chaos that made it impossible to chase after her enemy, much less properly defend herself. She knew that what Desire was doing had to be affecting her just as badly, so she didn’t think the Demon could go after her, but it was still a horrible position to be in. If there had been any other enemies nearby, she would have been completely open to their attacks.

“Effective…”

Tests. Jadis lurched forward, angered by the sudden realization of what the deranged Demon was doing. Desire was testing her spells against her, seeing what worked and what didn’t. The fact that her enemy felt she was in a position to calmly play around with her, experimenting with different tactics, was infuriating. Even more enraging was the fact that Desire was right. On her own, Jadis couldn’t do anything to the Demon, not while she still had magic to cast spells. Sure, Desire wasn’t able to do any real damage to her, either, but the stalemate was beyond aggravating.

“Try… Again…”

Suddenly, Jadis vision and sense of direction cleared as the rapid cycling of spells ended. Instead, she found a new hellscape waiting for her. Illusions of gory horror coated the temple, transforming the beautiful place of worship into a blood-soaked nightmare. Structures of bone and sinew rose up around her, changing the terrain. It wasn’t just a disgusting display of malicious viscera: the illusion was a confusing mess of texture and perspective, making it difficult for Jadis to judge where solid objects truly were.

All three of Jadis moved together as one, trying to reposition so she could make a counterattack against the Demon tormenting her. However, as she pushed through illusory gore, Jay’s shoulder struck against something hard, causing her to stumble.

“Effect—”

Desire’s declaration on the effectiveness of her latest spell was abruptly interrupted. Her voice was cut off, followed by several slashing sounds that echoed loudly through the temple hall. A moment later, the horrific landscape of flesh and bone was gone, returning the temple to what it had been before. With her vision cleared, all of Jadis moved at once, taking advantage of her momentary freedom from Eldritch attacks. It took her only a moment to find her enemy, and at the same time, her savior.

A struggling mass of bloodless flesh lay tangled together amidst a nest of angry black tentacles on the temple floor near the altar. A blue-tinged Divine light flashed in rapid succession as attack after attack was made. Lifeless limbs were tossed aside as tentacles tore arms from the elongated torso, ripping and squeezing at the same time. Even as Jadis’ bodies dashed over to help, she saw Sybil’s severed head roll across the floor, discarded like nothing more than useless scrap.

Even without a head, Desire’s ravaged body continued to struggle. However, she could go nowhere, as she was completely wrapped up by Alex’s arms and tentacles. When Jadis reached the two embattled Demons, there was very little of Desire left beyond a bloodied torso that wriggled like a worm in Alex’s grasp. As Jay reached down to aid her lover, there was a sudden ripping sound as the Demon Prince’s stolen body was torn open like wet bread. Blue-tipped tentacles surged inside of the ruined torso, heedless of the gore and filth. In the next second, one tentacle resurfaced, holding a small metal sphere the size of a plum. As soon as the sphere was removed from the body, the Demon’s form fell still as a corpse.

Alex raised the metal sphere up to her face, the expression of pure hate on her face so intense that it took Jadis’ breath away.

“Jadis… Is… Mine…”