Rebirth of the Nephilim-Chapter 648: True Lies

Navigating through solid earth was an almost trivial feat when one had a powerful Arch Wizard to do the digging. Dirt and stone could be compacted and shifted away with only a relatively small amount of magic, so long as the right spell was utilized. If one needed to, say, dig a tunnel that was large enough to allow a fighting force to pass from one basement to another, the construction could be completed with speed and efficiency. The only issue was not knowing precisely what one was digging into.

That was where having multiple bodies became key.

Maeve’s spying had revealed the location of the basement where the cultists were performing their rituals, but she didn’t have any information on what that basement looked like. The cellar under the boatwright’s workshop wasn’t supposed to exist; it was generally poor practice to build underground structures directly next to a river. Since they had no idea what the basement’s dimensions were, how deep down it went, or if it was even directly under the workshop or tunneled further away, digging their way into the space wasn’t an option. At least, it wouldn’t have been one, except for the fact that once one of Jadis’ bodies was inside the cellar, her other bodies knew exactly which direction they needed to go to reunite with her self.

With eyes on the inside, Jadis was even able to direct Tiernan to tunnel in the best possible spot to take the cultists off guard. Namely, directly behind them.

As the more-powerful mage writhed in agony from having his arm cut off by Dys’ axe, one of the Divine casters who had been thrown to the ground by the wall explosion struggled to her feet, pointing a staff at Dys’ back. Before she could cast anything, a lance of ghostly arcane energy pierced her shoulder, pinning her to the ground while causing her staff to fall from her limp arm. Before any of the remaining conscious mages could meet the same fate at Aila’s hands, the earth around them rose up, encasing them in stony prisons that locked them in place.

As always, it was wonderful to have mages on her side.

Just as Jadis had the amused thought, another figure darted out from the shadows of the tunnel. Noll’s wolfish visage appeared behind the two skilled cultists who were still dueling with Wilhelm. With a single swipe of his sword, he cut the hand off of the left-most man, disarming him in a quite literal sense. Taking immediate advantage of the opportunity, the Hero pierced the other man’s side, puncturing a lung before knocking the cursed dagger out of his hand and throwing him to the ground.

Even as they finished dealing with the two melee cultists, Lucia and Halvor were moving further into the room beyond them. With Thea and Bridget flanking them, the four worked together to subdue and secure the cultists who remained, many of whom had the look of cornered rats. They were certainly snarling in unrestrained fury at their foes, but they were no more effective against the tigers who had hunted them than a true rat would have been.

Despite all the commotion going on around her, Jay’s eyes never strayed from the Fetch who had transformed into the body of some chimeric beast. With hammer in hand, she stalked towards the mad shapeshifter. She wasn’t sure what the weak spot of a creature without bones or internal organs would be, but she was certain that enough hits with a hammer would do the job, regardless. Even as her Jay self prepared to attack, her Dys self put a heavy boot onto the chest of the mage she had incapacitated, putting a stop to his whimpers and squirming.

“What was that about a watery grave?” Jay asked with a growl as she approached the retreating Fetch.

Before any answer could be given, the mage under Dys’ boot made a sudden move with his left hand. Dys instantly moved to chop the limb off; she wanted the man alive for questioning, but he didn’t need his arms to talk. However, her reaction proved to be unnecessary. With his hand pointed at his head, the man had uttered a single word. In the same instant, a spear of ice shot forward from his palm, splitting his skull and spilling his brains all over the stone floor.

Somewhat annoyed by the outcome, Dys kicked the limp body aside and joined her other self in stalking towards the Fetch. While human death often bothered Jadis, having seen the things these cultists had done had left her with little pity or concern for the well being of monsters like the dead mage. She would have preferred to question him for info what the Playwright was up to, but his death was inevitable.

With weapons at the ready, the two of Jadis cornered the bestial shapeshifter against the far wall of the circular room.

“I surrender.”

“What?”

Jay paused, her hammer half raised to strike.

“I surrender,” one of the chimeric monster’s heads repeated in a calm, masculine voice. “You win.”

A moment later, the beast shifted, flowing in shape like rippling water. Mere seconds later, an elvish man with red skin and white hair stood before her, arms raised. His expression was oddly remote, like he was observing events from a distance. He looked vaguely disappointed but not truly upset, almost like he was displeased that his fudge brownie had been sprinkled with walnuts instead of caramel.

“Just like that?” Dys demanded.

“Just like that,” the Fetch nodded. “What would be the point in fighting further? I clearly can’t defeat all of you. Maybe if I had a chance of killing one of you, it would be worth it, but with Kaldellis dead,” he motioned at the mage who had chosen suicide, “I may as well admit defeat.”

Jadis didn’t trust the word of the unnamed Fetch for one moment. He had sided with the Cult of Samleos. She had no doubts that he was simply looking for an opportunity to strike out, like a cornered viper. Jadis would not give him the chance.

“Turn transparent.”

“Pardon?” the shapeshifter asked, still smiling with his arms spread out to his sides.

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“Turn transparent, right now,” Jay demanded. “I know what Fetch can do, so don’t pretend. Do it. Now. Or you’re paste.”

The Fetch’s expression did not change as he stood there for a few seconds. Right when Jadis was about to start swinging, the elven body turned translucent, clothes and all. She had to turn off her Succubus vision to take a proper look; the usually ignorable magic auras that people possessed was too chaotic on the Fetch to overlook. But once she had, Jadis smiled thinly as at least one of her suspicions was confirmed.

Inside of the Fetch floated a sword, along with three daggers, several potion bottles, a small pouch, and what looked suspiciously like a garrote wire.

“Dump them,” Dys ordered with a motion of her axe. “Kick them over.”

The Fetch did as instructed, letting all of the secreted items fall out of his translucent form before gently kicking them towards Dys. She quickly gathered the items up while Jay kept her full attention on the shape changer. Jadis didn’t focus too much on the items beyond making sure nothing looked like it was liable to explode, though with magic she could never be completely certain. Everything confiscated from the cultists would be analyzed later; Sabina and Amarantha were both waiting at the other end of the tunnel to start doing just that as soon as the all clear was given. First, though, the ritual room needed to be completely secured.

Wilhelm and the others were already doing just that. As Jadis had been focused on the high-CLR Fetch, the remaining living cultists had been tied up securely. In some cases, gagged and hogtied to keep them from casting spells. Jadis wasn’t entirely sure how many they had managed to take alive. The noble-looking mage had not been the only one to choose death over capture, and several bodies lay to one side of the room that bore no injury beyond what their own daggers had wrought. However, she guessed that they had secured more than half of the cultists, which was honestly better than she had hoped for. Noll’s plan of having all their strongest fighters blitz into the room to overwhelm the enemy had been the right call. The danger of an underground explosion had been real, but as the veteran had argued, so long as they hit as fast and hard as possible, the enemy wouldn’t have the time to think about bringing the earth down around them.

Noll had been mostly right, though they had cut things a little close at the end.

Even as Dys gathered up the Fetch’s obviously enchanted weapons, the living cultists were being carried out of the basement. The planned victim of the ritual had already been removed and taken down the tunnel to where Eir and Jocelyn were so that he could be checked for injuries and healed as needed, while the prisoners were being checked in a different way. Alex was positioned at the entry to Tiernan’s tunnel, just behind Aila, and was touching each person they pulled out so that she could check to see if they were possessed by a Demon, or possibly wearing someone else's skin, like the Playwright and his allies had done in the past. The other cultists who had been secured inside the workshop would also need to be checked, but things were progressing in an orderly fashion.

Tegwyn and his team had remained on the streets above and, under Maeve’s direction, they had been on the lookout for any other cultists who might have been on lookout further away from the workshop. From her Syd self’s perspective, Jadis had already been sent the signal telling her that at least one more cultist had been captured on the surface, potentially more. There was a strong likelihood that their raid had just managed to capture every cultist in Thracina in one fell swoop. Overall, the operation had been a resounding success.

Which was possibly why Jadis was still on edge. Things had gone almost too easy. She didn’t like it. Not one bit.

“I don’t think I need to ask why you were helping the Cult of Samleos,” Jay said as she took a step towards the Fetch. “Chaos doesn’t care who wins, does it?”

“Perhaps I was simply convinced by their rhetoric,” the Fetch said in a voice that was oddly inhuman. “Some of these cultist types can be quite charismatic.”

“What I want to know is,” Jay continued as she set the head of her hammer hard against the wall, just above the Fetch’s right shoulder, “what was this ritual used for? They’ve been doing the same one for days. What was the goal?”

“Of course,” the still transparent Fetch said with the ingratiating grin of a merchant. “Straight to business. I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

Again, Jadis didn’t trust the Fetch, nor did she expect to get the truth out of him. But she did want to hear what he had to say, since he would likely hide half-truths in his lies that could be useful when they interrogated the other prisoners.

“You don’t want to bargain for freedom, or something like that?” Dys asked, her focus now fully back on the shapeshifter.

“Why? Are you offering to let me go if I talk?”

“No,” both of Jadis answered firmly.

“Didn’t think so.”

The Fetch shifted slightly, moving slowly as he waved with one hand towards the column in the middle of the room.

“It’s a ritual Ilmarinen developed. No idea how it works. I know nothing about enchantments or that sort of thing. All I know when it comes to the ritual is that it requires a mortal soul to keep a nearby spell effect going. Strong stuff, souls. Makes things that shouldn’t be possible, possible.”

Jadis logged the name Ilmarinen as a person of interest to ask about later. For the moment, she kept her attention on the ritual itself.

“And what exactly is that spell effect?”

“It connects one person’s soul to an object, giving them a link that lasts for a day. This side of the ritual must be performed within a certain radius of the prepared object, but otherwise, the person and the item can be hundreds, or even thousands, of miles apart. Fascinating enchantment, really.”

“Why would you want to connect a person’s soul to an object at any distance?” Jay asked, unable to help herself. “I don’t see the point.”

“Because it is your soul that your status sheet and all of your system-granted skills and abilities are attached to. Not your body. Thus, if you were to, say, be soul-linked to a small object, such as a metal sphere, that sphere could do all the spells and things that only you would ordinarily be able to do. That small sphere could then be inserted inside of a box, or a larger object, or even the body of another person. In the case of the person, for example, the host would be unaltered, and anyone using any kind of, let’s say identification-type spells on them, would just see the original person. Your soul would go undetected, so long as your linked object remained inside of the body of said other person. But the sphere would contain all of your power and will. So, if you had spells that you could use with just a thought, you wouldn’t just be a tiny little sphere inside of a person’s body. You would be a potentially lethal force, watching and listening, biding your time, waiting for the right moment to do something that would cause maximum harm to your enemies.

“Then again, what do I know about other people’s motivations? I’m just speculating on that point. Certainly, I know that if I had managed to sneak a soul-linked object inside of a person who was then taken into the heart of my enemy’s camp, without them even putting that person under guard no less, I would probably try to hurt my enemy in as vicious a way as possible, even if it doesn’t do any true damage, just to destroy their morale. After all, flesh and bone infants are such vulnerable little things…”

The Fetch paused, looking up at the frozen pair of Jadis, his translucent grin growing wider. His tone had never changed from conversational, even as he leaned slightly closer to Jay, looking up at her with his head tilted to one side.

“Oh, sorry. Forget I said that, please. Sometimes I ramble. One of my bad habits, I’m told. Anyway, you wouldn’t happen to know anyone who might have been in a position to have a soul-linked object inserted into their body by cultists, do you?”