Rebirth of the Nephilim

Something was very wrong.

The push into the city was going well. At the risk of eating her sausage before the pan was hot, Ammy felt as though the Voltonians were on the path to victory. Yes, casualties were mounting, but with both Jocelyn and Eir on their side, two of the most talented healers of the past few centuries, anyone who wasn’t outright killed by the Demons was getting right back up and back into the fight. Waves of Demons were being crushed by the line of soldiers pushing deeper into Kastoria’s streets, and the strongest foes were being destroyed one after another by Jadis, Wilhelm, and all the rest of the blessedly, insanely powerful warriors who had gathered around them. The skies had been dominated, and the seas were well on their way to being completely in their control as well thanks to the arrival of the sea-faring Dryads Eutychia had promised would arrive. Yes, if Ammy had been a general instead of a witch, she would have been ecstatic with how things were going.

But Ammy wasn’t a general. She wasn’t even a particularly good fighter. Her skills lay in supporting those who were good fighters, which was how she generally applied herself in such chaotic times. That meant that, despite her carefree nature, she was always quite tuned into the beat of the deadly dance that was a battle. She could recognize the ups and downs, the changes in tempos, and when participants entered or left the floor. And right at that moment, Ammy didn’t like the music she was hearing.

“Ma’am?” the soldier standing before her tried to get her attention.

“Here,” Ammy shoved the handful of potion vials that she had been sorting through into his arms. “Take them all and give them to the worst affected!”

For the disease protection he had been asking for, that assortment of healing tonics was probably too much. A few of those had been for superior grade diseases, and if the wounded soldiers he was seeking help for had been infected by illnesses of that strength, then they were all pretty well fucked. It was a waste to expend potions of that quality on a sickness that was of the greater grade or less, but Ammy didn’t particularly care about costs at that moment.

Turning her head in the direction of her left ear, Ammy focused in on the familiar voices speaking in panicked tones that had tickled her hearing for the past few minutes. She quickly spotted Eir and Sorcha, talking close together and clearly upset, while Jocelyn was healing more soldiers nearby with a worried expression on her face. Leaping off of her Ketty, Ammy ignored everyone else as she rushed over to her friends to find out what exactly had prompted the bad feeling that had managed to yank on her tail.

Embarrassingly, Ammy very nearly dropped to all fours when she started to sprint. She had not meant to, as running in her newly transformed figure didn’t do well when tried to move as a Lares did. But her instincts were deeply ingrained, so she turned the far too deep lean forward into a sort of scramble as she tore across the distance between herself and the others.

“What’s wrong, what happened?” she demanded as she came skidding to a rough stop against Eir’s side.

“Alex left the mages and went into the Opaline Palace to chase after Demon Prince Desire all by herself!” Sorcha answered in a rush before Eir could speak. “Severina went after them, and so did Maeve and I think Meli and Thea and Aila, and Jadis definitely got involved, and—”

“I am monitoring their health,” Eir broke in, her voice calmer yet cracking under what had to have been an immense amount of strain. “Severina was near death a moment ago, but she is healing now. Alex’s health keeps fluctuating up and down, I think she is in an active fight. Jadis’ health just dropped by nearly a thousand points, and she’s been infected by a superior grade disease that is inflicting her with serious debilitations. I don’t—I don’t know what to do.”

“Do? What can we do?” Sorcha twisted her hands around a wooden wand. “We can’t do anything back here at all!”

“Not back here,” Ammy agreed. “Watch my Ketty for me!”

“Where are you going!?”

Ammy didn’t answer as she spun and ran from the two women. She heard Jocy’s familiar shout calling for her to return, but she ignored her, too. Instead, she stopped at the side of her cauldron for just a moment and pulled several potion vials from out of one of its many compartments before mentally ordering the often-stubborn construct to go wait by Sorcha and the others. Ketty was too slow to follow where she was going.

The leather coat that Jadis had bought for her had rapidly become one of Ammy’s favorite possessions. Not just because Jadis had given it to her, but because of how useful it was. As a Lares, Ammy had always disdained the thought of wearing clothing. But with her miniaturized-Nephilim form, she not only had good reason to wear clothing, mainly to stop strangers from pointing and staring at her butthole, but also because the clothing was big enough to be useful. The coat Jadis had given her had all kinds of pockets on the inside, which meant that Ammy could store lots of different vials and bottles directly on her person, rather than relying solely on Ketty to carry everything for her.

Several of the potions that Ammy had pulled from her cauldron went straight into some of those emptied pockets, while two of them were uncorked and gulped down as she ran through the stream of soldiers marching to and from the frontline of fighting. The first potion spread warmth through her limbs, similar to poking a dying fire to stir up the embers. The boost to her stamina was large, big enough that drinking another one of those potions within a period of thirty days would have a terrible cost on her health, which was why that particular potion was reserved for emergencies only. The second potion she downed caused her speed to pick up drastically, boosting her Agility by over two hundred points. The effect would only last for a short while, though her Lover’s Bond to Jadis had increased that timeframe by quite a bit. More than enough for Ammy to get all the way to where Wilhelm was.

Dodging and weaving through the humans, Ammy passed by the wagon where Alex should have been and saw that there were quite a few panicked-looking mages still gathered on and around the vehicle. No Tiernan, though, so she kept on going.

Reaching the edge of the city wall, Ammy went up and over, again ignoring the calls of any soldiers who saw her and tried to stop her. Her increased Agility was such that none of them were fast enough to catch her, though the one Seraphim who had been on the ridge of the wall itself for whatever reason had come close. Entering into the city, Ammy let out a cough as the miasma that had largely been dissipated by both the sea breeze and her efforts outside by the camp hit her with full force. She pushed through, though, potions she had taken earlier to inoculate herself against the worst effects still flowing through her veins.

Inside the city wall was chaos. Men and women shouting and screaming. Clanging and banging weapons and armor. Stones breaking. Spells exploding. Demons and mortals alike dying. The sounds, the smells, the grit in the air… Ammy had seen it all before. She hated it. Hated that she and Willy and Jocy and even her big idiot Ludger had to be in places like this, had been to so many places just like this for years now. But she could stand it. And because she was experienced, she knew where to go, she knew where to look.

Always the front, where the most danger was found.

Sprinting past General Ovinius, who sounded like he was rallying a group of soldiers for a push down a side-alley held by a wall of Demons, Ammy headed for where she knew Wilhelm would be. He was always at the front, unless there was some greater danger off to the side somewhere, which from how the battle sounded, didn’t seem to be the case. The explosion of an ice spell that tore through the bodies of several soldiers just ahead of her caused Ammy to skitter to the side, heart beating wildly at the sudden violence. But the explosion also told her that yes, she was in the right place. Wilhelm would be nearby.

She didn’t spot him first, though. Instead of Willy’s Divine sword shining with holy light, Ammy caught sight of the eternal beast, Halvor. His tattoos were glowing jagged red and while she couldn’t see his face, he had a wild look to the way he moved. Leaping through the air, the Barbarian landed on a rooftop and leapt again, quickly disappearing from sight as he ran to the east across Demon-infested territory, far beyond the front line of soldiers. A moment later, Ammy saw Rein follow Halvor, the taciturn elf’s spear trailing a banner of crackling lightning as he ran just as quickly.

Seeing where the two had just departed from, Ammy ran for the heavily grouped soldiers and dodged between the press of bodies. As she pushed through to the center, she found Ludger, Lucia, Tiernan, and Wilhelm gathered together, with a small man nearby who was clearly holding one of Sabby’s communication enchantments. He was concentrated on the device, clearly communicating something, while her friends were turning away from him. Ludger was pushing back to the front, while Tiernan had started forming a rune circle in the air, constructing what looked like one of his custom ice spells. Lucia, though, at just that moment leapt up to a nearby rooftop, and it looked like Wilhelm was about to follow.

Running forward with all of her boosted speed, Ammy threw herself at Wilhelm’s back just as he jumped up, slamming into his armored form. It was not at all the graceful leap and landing that she could have done in her natural form, but she wasn’t trying for style. With arms and legs wrapped around an already midair Wilhelm, he had no choice but to carry her all the way up to the rooftop where Lucia waited for them.

“What are you doing, Ammy!?” Wilhelm demanded as he landed on top of the building.

“I’m going with you!”

“You don’t—”

“You’re going after Jadis and Alex in the palace, right!? I’m going too, Willy! Don’t you dare try to stop me, because of you shrug me off I’ll run there myself if I have to! So you might as well just carry me there with you and save me the trouble of being attacked by a million Demons in the streets!”

“Ammy—”

“We don’t have time to argue,” Lucia did the unthinkable and cut the Hero she worshipped off. “Bring her.”

Wilhelm hesitated for only a moment, then reached around and pulled Ammy off of his back. She thought that he was going to throw her down to the soldiers below, maybe with an order to hold her there. He was too strong for her to resist; if he wanted to throw her down, she’d just have to worm her way out of the soldiers and run through the streets, which she would absolutely do if she had to. Instead of tossing her, he moved her around so that he was holding her with one arm under her rump, so that her arms naturally went around his neck.

“Hold on tight!”

With that warning, Wilhelm ran.

Ammy thought that she had been moving fast with her potion before. Willy reminded her in that moment exactly how real speed felt. Maybe it wasn’t as fast as Jadis could fly, but there was something wholly different about being carried by a running, jumping, dodging mortal that was so very different from flying high through the sky where you had only distant landmarks for context. All Ammy could do was squeeze herself tight against her oldest friend and pray to Ulya that her flames didn’t blow out.

Demons rose up to meet them, but they were only brief images that were gone as soon as they appeared. Magic also tried to block their advance, but a sudden surge of icy frost that caused a wave of spikes to burst out of the buildings around them seemed to put an end to those attempts. Ammy didn’t know how much magic and how many cooldowns Tiernan had just blown to cast a spell that reached as far as that frost had, but she didn’t think he’d be casting another like it anytime soon. Running on the edge of the wave of frost, Wilhelm and Lucia soon reached the front of the palace where Jadis, Alex, Severina, and possibly more of the people Ammy had come to love were embattled against some of the strongest of the demonic forces arrayed against them.

The fact that the doors stood wide open and unguarded did not bode well.

While the front doors had not been barred, there were still a large number of Demons waiting for their trio inside. Ammy slipped from Willy’s grasp without asking, having been in many similar situations before. While he and Lucia went to work against the many lesser Demons that populated the ruined front hall, Ammy pulled one of her cleansing potions from a pocket and used one of her aerosolization skills to quickly spread it through the air. Without Ketty, the concoction couldn’t be fine-tuned to counter the specific poisons and contagions that were fouling the environment, but she had made the specific formula based off the worst stuff she had been seeing in Kastoria thus far, so it would likely handle most, if not all, of the worst stuff that they might breathe in.

As her anti-corruption fumigation spread, Ammy could see the air visibly clear. The walls and floors also lightened as the disgusting mold and fungal growths that thrived in the decay of a Demon infestation withered under the effects of her potion. With the power of her skill, the aerosolized blend of powerful reagents would spread through the palace and cover most of the rooms and halls. Perhaps not all, but enough that hopefully any other allies who were inside would benefit from the cleansing.

Soon enough Willy and Lucia had slain all of the immediate threats and moved forward, further into the depths of the demonic den. Ammy followed after them, spraying more potions into the air that would boost their physical and magical defenses, improve their perceptions, and one that would make it so that they could hold their breath for up to thirty minutes, just in case. There was no sense in being stingy with her mixtures at that point.

With that thought, Ammy pulled out a few more vials that held concoctions that would cause debilitating effects on those that they were used on. She didn’t have many of those sorts of potions, as her skills were intended to enhance others, not hurt them. But she had managed through very careful experimentation to make a few potions that would have an overall negative impact on the target. Combat wasn’t what she was good at. But she still had claws, and she could still defend herself.

Better to keep Wilhelm and Lucia boosted to their max, though.

Moving through the open halls of the Opaline Palace, they encountered more Demons, though not as many as Ammy would have expected. When they passed through a room that was littered with the corpses of wights and mire hounds that had been torn to pieces, she figured that the cause probably had something to do with Alex and or Jadis being in the structure with them. However, as the three of them came to a flight of large, spiraling stairs, the question had to be asked.

“Up or down?”

The room they had found was a huge, round hall with a domed ceiling that had glass windows carved into the stone, filling the area with natural light. There were arched doorways positioned in every cardinal direction and half-direction between, giving access to every wing of the palace. An opulent set of marble staircases led up to a balcony of sorts that was raised a full twenty feet above the main floor, circling around the central column in the middle. Ammy could imagine pompous aristocrats sipping wine while standing atop the balcony, looking down at the expensive statues and paintings that lined the walls of the main floor. Most of those decorations were trashed, but Ammy guessed that the view would still be impressive, just for other reasons.

“I’m not sure,” Wilhelm replied to the Paladin’s question as he eyed the central column. “I can hear fighting coming from both directions. Perhaps we should split up and—”

Before Willy could finish his sentence, an oppressive aura crushed down on top of them with palpable force. Ammy hadn’t ever felt anything like it before, but she recognized it all the same from the description that Jadis had given her some number of nights ago. With how her physical strength was sapped, she knew that the spiked knight Roul had to be nearby. Swords already at the ready, Wilhelm and Lucia backed away from the spiral staircase, ready to do battle with the man when he appeared. Ammy scrambled back as well, not wanting to get anywhere near a melee fight with the powerful opponent. It was because she had turned to hide behind one of the still standing marble statues lining the round room that she spotted the dark form oozing through one of the doorways behind them.

“Watch out!”

Ammy’s warning came too late as a bolt of gold and black Divine magic struck Lucia in the back. The therion cried out in pain as a sphere of malign energy engulfed her, racking her body with terrible damage. She managed to roll out of the sphere’s area of effect, but as she did, Ammy could see the trail of blood staining the marble floor coming from her white armor.

Wilhelm reacted quickly, spinning in the same moment and charging the skull-shaped blob of a Demon. His movements were slowed, though. Much slower than normal, and he was instantly pushed back by lances of golden might that burst out of the Demon’s body. Ammy didn’t see his next move, instead choosing to focus on Lucia. The Paladin could heal herself, but Ammy’s potions could help heal her faster, so she ran towards the woman who was just struggling to her feet, giving the fight a wide birth. Before she could reach her, though, another shadow moved from overhead, and Ammy instinctively ducked under the raised balcony.

The spiked knight landed next to Lucia, swinging a flanged mace at her head. She blocked the blow with the crossguard of her greatsword, then punched the man’s armored stomach with her left fist, an impact that blazed with a Divine smite. The blow didn’t seem to do much, but soon the two were locked in a furious duel, their weapons crashing against each other with a rapidity that didn’t seem possible considering the drain on their attributes. When Lucia shoulder-checked Roul and sent him stumbling back, Ammy saw that the blow put the spiked knight in range of Wilhelm, who turned to cut the man with a horizontal slash at waist level. A spike of black and gold light appeared at the same moment, blocking the blow and, with unexpected agility, Roul used the Demon’s spell to rebound off and slam his head into Lucia’s, knocking to the ground and forcing her to roll away.

As Ammy moved through the shadows under the balcony, partially hiding behind a broken table and partially rifling through her pockets for a potion that could help, she spotted something that made her freeze in utter confusion. Tilting her head to one side and blinking, she looked at the sight and tried her best to make sense of it. There, on the other side of the room, standing in an open archway, was a man.

He was fat. Not the fattest human Ammy had ever seen, but he was round around the waist and had a thick, pudgy neck, giving him an unhealthy appearance. His head was bald and flushed on top, but he had a ring of stringy hair that went around the sides. He wore no beard or mustache, but he had patches of stubble, like he had been in the middle of shaving that morning and had not gotten the chance to finish. He was wearing dark velvet clothing, gilded gold on the edges, and the purple cloak around his shoulders was lined with red silk on the inside. He had an absurd number of rings on his fingers, and the gold chain around his neck was hung heavy with a silver orb that was about the size of a plumb. The man looked like one of worser examples of extravagant nobility that Ammy had seen over the years traveling the empire, and he looked absolutely terrified by what was going on in front of him.

Somehow, despite the distance between them, the human met her gaze and the two of them exchanged a look of shared confusion.

Before either could react, something massive burst up out of the floor almost directly between them, sending pieces of marble and a cloud of dust into the air. Ammy couldn’t help the yowl of shock that leapt from her lips as she scrambled back from the explosion. She saw a huge form, barely discernable in the dust cloud, raise all the way up to the domed ceiling and crash through it, causing chunks of stone to come tumbling down. Moving with terrible speed, the shape raced by; a long, seemingly unending snake that eventually disappeared into the opening above. A moment later, a dark figure that glowed with neon-blue highlights flew up out of the hole and chased after the titanic snake, disappearing through the ceiling just as quickly as its prey. Then, oddly, a second winged figure followed, this one much smaller, with black feathered wings and red eyes that flashed in the dark. This figure was carrying someone of the same size, who held an azure-blaze on the end of a pole. The two disappeared just as quickly as the other two, gone into the open ceiling above.

“What the fuck is even happening?” Ammy cursed under her breath as she tried to see through the cloud of dust filling the room.

More crashes, more sounds of fighting and spells. Going by the flashes of divine light, Ammy circled around the hole, trying to get a view of her allies and enemies alike. The fat human was gone, to where exactly she didn’t have a clue, but Ammy suspected that he might have fallen into the hole, considering how close it was to the archway he had been standing in. Moving closer to the edge, she peered over to see that the darkness went down for a long way, with at least four or five stories made visible to what had to be the basement of the palace structure.

A sudden cry of pain and scramble of boots disturbingly near her caused Ammy to fall down and press herself flat against the ground. Something kicked against her side and she rolled away from the force of the blow, wincing at what had to be cracked ribs. Coming to a stop and looking up, she saw Roul and Lucia standing near the edge of the pit, their weapons locked together as they wrestled with one another. Suddenly, the spiked knight twisted to one side and Lucia used her sword pommel to bash against his upper thigh, right above the knee. The blow cracked hard against his armor and knocked the leg out from under him, but as he twisted about in the fall, he got an arm around Lucia’s shoulder. A familiar orange blade stabbed into her back, ripping another scream of pain from the woman. Spinning about together in the fall, Lucia landed so that she was on top of the knight, though he had one leg pulled up between with. Shoving hard with that leg, the knight sent the Paladin flying through the air. With a shriek, Lucia fell down the open hole in the floor, disappearing from sight.

Rolling back onto his feet, mace in his right hand and dagger in his left, Roul stood and looked directly at Ammy. A chill went all the way down to the tip of her flaming tail as he raised his arm and pointed the orange dagger at her face.

Then a Seraphim on black and white wings flew up and out of the hole in the floor and with a single stroke of a long, curved sword, cut Roul’s left hand off at the wrist.

The scream of anger that accompanied the dismembering blow was met with a shout of pain as the spiked knight spun around and smashed the mace into Severina’s right side. The blow sent her flying over Ammy’s head and she winced at the crash of armor against stone. She didn’t look behind her, though, as she was too focused on the man howling for death standing before her. That, and the hand gripping a deadly dagger on the ground in front of her.

Getting to her knees, Ammy reared one arm back and hurled the vial she had been gripping at the spiked knight. She couldn’t remember what exactly that particular potion was supposed to do, but it had to have done something bad as the moment it burst across Roul’s chest, he recoiled back from the cloud of yellow fumes that tried to engulf him. Something else happened then, though Ammy only caught glimpses. A glowing, spectral shield slammed weaved in and out of the dust. Did she see a giant spider crawling on the ceiling? Spells flew around, some of them black and gold, others pale and translucent. She definitely heard what sounded like Wilhelm shouting about striking the head of the Demon, though who he was talking to Ammy didn’t have a clue. She couldn’t keep track of it all; there was too much to see and hear, too much to distract her. But she did see that hand, and she did see that dagger.

Crawling a few feet forward to reach it, she took hold of the morbid object and pried the gauntleted fingers off the evil dagger’s grip. Tossing the dismembered hand aside, Ammy triumphantly held the enchanted weapon with a double-fisted grip, the blade pointing up for her to see its deadly edge. She knew that if that particular dagger was present, that meant Maeve was somewhere nearby, too. If she could get the dagger over to Maeve, the Fetch could use her sneak attack or whatever the fuck it was called on Roul, and that would kill the bastard. Of course, that plan failed to take into account how exactly Roul had ended up with the knife in the first place, but Ammy wasn’t going to let that depressing logic get in her way. As more fighting, shouting, and spells happened over her head, Ammy turned on her knees and started crawling away, not taking either hand off of the dagger in her grip as she made her way to where she hoped to find at least one of her allies.

Suddenly, the noise of battle came up close directly behind her. Picking up her speed as best she could, Ammy tried to get out of the way before feeling something heavy step hard on her tail. She let out a screech as the weight stumbled over her, then fell like a mountain of led on top of her. Pain lanced across her back, her legs, and her arms as she was flattened onto the ground and spikes dug into her flesh. Her head was spared the same impalement, but only just barely as she kept it buried between her arms and she felt sharp tips drag against her scalp. It was as though dozens of jagged nails had been hammered into her body all at once. The agony was terrible, and Ammy couldn’t help the tears that escaped down her cheeks as she sobbed with pain.

The heavy weight on her back shifted slightly, and Ammy held back a curse as she felt a large hand close around her own tight fists. She was still holding onto the dagger, though the much stronger person on top of her pulled it from her grasp, letting the blade clang against the floor. She felt the body on top of her shift again, some of the weight leaving her. A bloody stump pressed against the floor on her left, the crimson fluid staining her coat sleeves as the other hand brushed against her ears.

“Un maudit chat…”

Then Roul fell off to the side and stirred no more.

“Gods, is that you under there Ammy? What the fuck are you doing in here?”

Ammy clutched onto Maeve as the orange shapeshifter pulled her out from under the spiked knight’s corpse. She didn’t protest when she lifted her into her arms and carried her like some kind of kitten away from the yawning pit in the floor. The dust had cleared, mostly, and looking around, Ammy could see Willy and Thea standing on top of a huge, black, blobby skull on one side of the room. Well, it was more like they were standing in the skull than on it, as the sludge-like consistency of the dead Demon meant that there wasn’t much stability to be found on top of its form. Above, she could see Aila on Meli’s back, the two of them almost completely upside down on the ceiling. And, to the side, she saw Severina floating above the hole in the floor, looking down.

“Lucia! Can you hear me!” the Seraphim was shouting.

A small worry left Ammy’s heart as she heard a voice echo back in response to Sev’s shout, though she couldn’t quite make out the words. Instead of trying to crane her neck to hear, she just let Maeve carry her over to a clear spot by the central pillar while she fished an unbroken bottle from out of her coat pocket. More than a few of her potion vials had been cracked and shattered by the force of a huge therion in full plate armor falling on top of her, but not all of them had been lost. Popping the cork on one and gulping down the red liquid, she felt the relief of healing spread through her aching body as the many holes in her flesh began to knit closed.

Roul was dead. The skull Demon that could cast divine spells at range was dead. Severina and the others were safe. Lucia was alive, even if she was stuck in a pit for the moment. Alex was… chasing Twisted Desire? Was that what she had seen? Had Noct and Bridget been chasing after them? It certainly seemed so, from what Ammy could remember of the chaotic moment. If that was the case, then there was really only one question left unanswered at that moment.

Where the fuck was Jadis?