CHAPTER 534: AS LONG AS IT TAKES

“What do you mean, talk?” Dia asked, her expression perplexed as she addressed Alex. “That egg isn’t hatched. None of them are.”

Alex held the softball-sized egg with one long tentacle, keeping it suspended several feet away from herself. Inside the transparent shell, Dia could see the dark green eye shift as the unborn Demon squirmed around, its many small tentacles flexing as it wrapped around itself. Alex motioned towards the egg with her human-sized right hand while he many other tentacles twisted in the air around her, talking with her body as much as her voice.

“She is… Awake… She sees… She understands…”

“You mean that Demon can understand what we’re saying? I mean, she understands what you’re saying—ah, fuck, what I mean is, you’re saying that she’s conscious? How? She hasn’t hatched yet!”

Alex’s tentacles contorted into an expression of concentration as she struggled to find the words she needed to explain what had to be a difficult concept. Dia waited patiently, only once exchanging a confused glance with Severina who was watching the exchange with interest. Alex took her time, so when she did speak, it was carefully formulated to convey her intent.

“This one… Has been waiting… A long time… She has seen much… Communication is… Imperfect… Yet she sees… She hears… She speaks… She is ready… If she chooses

…”

Jadis was ready to tell Alex that she didn’t understand what she was getting at. However, her lover wasn’t just speaking with her mouth. Her tentacles were moving as well, and even her scent was changing as she spoke, conveying far more meaning that Jadis would have been able to glean just by speech alone. Processing what Alex was trying to explain as best she could, Dia eventually asked a clarifying question that she hoped would solidify her own understanding.

“Alex, do you have any idea how long Demon eggs gestate for before they hatch?”

“Quick to be ready… Ready when they choose…”

 “Oh… Well shit.”

“What does that mean?” Severina asked, looking to Dia for a translation. “I fail to understand what Alex means.”

“It means Demons develop quickly in their eggs,” Dia said, looking to Alex as she spoke for confirmation. “They are ready to go within, what, two months? Does that shape mean—Yeah, about two months. But they don’t have to hatch as soon as they’re physically developed. They can just stay inside their eggs, waiting until they’re ready. Conscious, aware, but not yet fully ‘adult’ because they haven’t hatched yet.”

It was another piece to the puzzle of Demon biology. Demons were all female, except for potentially the Demon Lord. Demons had no vocal means of communication but instead spoke via body language and scent. Demons did not eat, nor sleep, nor even breathe, which brought up questions of exactly how they sustained themselves. When leveling, Demons could take classes that drastically altered their bodies, though whether that was a feature of their unique biology or a result of system classes only available to Demons was anyone’s guess. Demons had no apparent limit on their age, existing perpetually, and were physically adults from the moment they hatched. Now Alex had revealed that Demons weren’t unaware of their surroundings while unhatched and could seemingly delay their “births” for an unspecified period of time. Potentially indefinitely.

The more the picture was revealed, the more Jadis grew confused. What had been Samleos’ goal in designing a species that worked in such an inexplicable way? It was beyond bizarre. Jadis had caught on to the design of most other avatars, especially after Maeve had revealed herself to her. Seraphim were winged messengers, spreading Valtar’s words quickly across the world. Valbjorn were natural fighters, with big claws and tough bodies that pushed them towards combat roles. Lares were quite literally warm and toasty cats, which made them the perfect representatives for family comfort and care. Fetch were chaos incarnate, not just externally, but internally as well.

Demons were… Well, they were death machines, yet at the same time, they weren’t at all. Any Demon right out of the egg was nothing more than a starfish with a big eye in the middle. They didn’t have any natural means of inflicting harm or destruction. No one was in danger of being killed by a classless Demon in their base form, unless that person happened to be a paraplegic squirrel. Any danger that a Demon represented came from the classes that they chose. Without at least one level in an appropriate class, Demons couldn’t truly hurt anyone.

“How long were you inside your egg?”

Dia’s question came almost unbidden, out of her mouth as soon as the words had slotted together in her head.

Alex paused for a long few seconds, then performed a very human gesture that she had learned well how to use. She shrugged.

“I do not know… But I saw… Many others… Leave before me…”

An unknown span of time. Likely, there would never be any way to know. Alex could have been carried around inside of the Bone Thief Matriarch for months, years, or even decades. There was simply no way of knowing for sure.

It was a life bred to be alone. The imperfect communication, the lack of a humanoid or otherwise relatable body, even the fact that they didn’t need any of the basic fundamentals that all other life on Oros required to live like food and water; it was all a design choice that pushed Demons towards solitude. They didn’t have needs, so they didn’t have wants. No connections to anyone or anything. Not even each other. Which was exactly what made them perfect death machines. Creatures that would throw themselves at their enemies with no regard for whether they lived or died.

After all, what was the point of living, if you had nothing to live for?

For once, Jadis didn’t immediately voice her realization. She didn’t actually have any proof, just conjecture based on the few facts she had about the biology of Demons. That wasn’t her real reason for not speaking up, though. Looking at Alex and thinking about what could have been was… painful in a way she was struggling to come to terms with. She needed time to process. Time to think through the potential consequences of what being a Demon really meant.

“How long is talking to her going to take?” was what Dia chose to ask instead.

“As long… As it takes

…”

There wasn’t anything else to be said. While Alex began making slow, careful motions towards the green-eyed Demon still inside of its shell, Dia and Severina took a step back to let the woman work. They couldn’t talk to the unhatched Demon, nor could they understand what the demonling was saying, though now that she was looking for it, Jadis could see that the shifting undulations of the small Demon’s tentacles were far more purposeful than she had previously understood them to be. With nothing else to do, Jadis was content to sit and wait. However, Severina had a different agenda.

“May I speak to you about a few ideas I have had?” the Seraphim whispered so as not to distract Alex.

“Of course,” Dia said immediately. “Is it about all of… this?”

“Mostly,” Sev agreed as she looked towards the table laden with eggs. “But also about the coming voyage to Eldingholt. I know we discussed some… provisions already, but I had a few more ideas I wanted to voice.”

“Go for it,” Dia nodded, glad to have something else to focus on for a few minutes. “What’s on your mind?”

“Well…”

As Severina began to lay out her plans, the greater consciousness that was Jadis as a whole took stock of where her bodies were and what they were doing. All were her, and there was no true separation between her selves, and yet having five of her bodies active at once for an extended period of time helped drive home for Jadis just how strange it was to be multiple identities at once. She never thought about it much when she had just three of her selves, since she was used to that state of affairs. But five bodies doing five very different things in entirely different locations was an almost indescribable feeling of unity and division.

Ida was still gathering potential wand components with Sorcha. Syd had made it to Vinea’s corpse with Sabina, Thea, and Bridget, and they were currently talking with the local commander in charge of the cleanup about next steps. Jay was with Aila and Kerr in the administration building, discussing the trip details with Magistrate Lodovico. And Dys was…

“I don’t know how tall I want to be!”

Dys was with Maeve, and they had hit a bit of a wall.

“You don’t need to think so hard about it. Just let the answer come to you.”

“There is no answer!” Maeve threw her hands into the air out of frustration. “There are too many answers! I don’t know! I want to be tall, because tall people stand out more and are usually seen with more respect and are also seen as more confident and attractive. I want to be short because short girls are cute and I like short girls because they’re fun to tease and I like being teased, too. But I want to be tall so I can tease short girls but then I won’t be teased! I’d have to be short, which I won’t be if I’m tall! I want to be average in height because then I can pass by unnoticed which makes my spy jobs easier, except that being average is boring and who wants to be average when you can be tall or short or one extreme or another! Fuck!”

As it turned out, building a body from scratch was easier said than done. Especially when the person who the body was meant to be for had a lot of conflicting emotions when it came to what they did and did not want their body to look like. Honestly, Jadis was surprised that they had got as far as they did, all things considered. Maeve still looked unfinished, like a clay statue that had been halfway molded. But the parts of her body that she felt the strongest about had been finalized. It was the aspects of her form that she had never expressed and previous preferences for where they had hit trouble.

“Okay, let’s take a break,” Dys sighed as he stretched her legs out before her. “There’s no rush. As Alex would say, it’ll take as long as it takes.”

Maeve let out a noise that was somewhere between a fart and groan, which was an impressive feat considering she had none of the organs normally required for those particular sounds.

“We should just forget it,” the Fetch moaned as she collapsed onto her folded legs. “This is pointless.”

“Hey, none of that,” Dys poked the other woman’s squishy body with a stern finger. “We’re making progress. Most journeys aren’t over after a single step, you know.”

Whether in response to her words or her poke, Jadis wasn’t sure, but Maeve melted like an overheated popsicle. Her partly constructed body that they had spent putting together for the past couple of hours transforming into a gelatinous goop. This shape wasn’t the chaotic mess of Maeve’s “true” Fetch body, not since it was smooth and unform, and maintained its orangish color, but it did sort of schlump all over the table and onto Dys’ lap before melting halfway across the floor.

“Hey! You better remember where all your parts go,” Dys chided the blobby soup that had spilled across her lap.

“I remember,” Maeve voice came from the orange slime. “I have a skill for that. Helps me with the accuracy of my transformations. I’d be all over the place without it.”

“Huh,” Dys made a noise as she leaned back on her arms, just letting the Fetch do what she was going to do. “That’s handy.”

“Yeah. I just need a minute to not be anything, I think.”

Dys considered the ooze, her expression contemplative.

“You could just be like this, you know. All the time, I mean. If you feel more comfortable being sort of a blob, then that’s fine. The whole point of this is to find what you that you want to be.”

“Absolutely not,” Maeve spoke firmly. Unlike earlier, she didn’t have a wild swing of emotion in her response, which Jadis took as a good sign. “For one thing, I want to have a body. For another, I don’t want anyone else to ever see me in this shape. Ever. As a matter of fact, you have to promise me you aren’t going to tell anyone else about what I look like when I’m not transformed.”

“Not even my lovers?” Dys asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No one!” Maeve insisted. “I mean it, Jadis. No one’s supposed to know what we Fetch look like. It ruins the mystery. It’s our one big secret. If everyone knew, then we’d have to find some other secret to care about and the last thing you want is a bunch of Fetch who no longer have their most basic secret running around.”

“Fair enough,” Dys sighed in agreement. “It’s your secret anyway. You choose who you share it with, not me. But maybe in the future you can show them this form? When you’re more comfortable, I mean.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because it kind of seems like you’re more relaxed in this blobby form. I want you to feel comfortable around all of us, not just me. If being a blob helps, that’s a good thing in my book.”

Maeve’s orange surface rippled slightly for a second. A sign of deep thought or many different emotions moving through her at once, Jadis had realized.

“It’s a trick Madoc taught me a long time ago. Taking on shapes that aren’t really shapes at all. Sort of like the way you fleshbags stretch your muscles or whatever. It feels nice. Different. The piece of eye crust always gave good advice, even if he hid it behind mountains of bullshit.”

Madoc was the name the Dryad Yorath had called Jack back at the grove in Weigrun. Jadis had no idea how common a name like Madoc was among Fetch, but she suspected it wasn’t coincidental that Maeve also knew an older, more experienced shapeshifter by that name. The fact that Maeve didn’t seem to like her Madoc very much further cemented Jadis’ opinion that they had to be the same person. Jack was a total jackass, after all.

“Is Madoc a Fetch you know from Weigrun?”

“Yeah, he is,” Maeve admitted, her body rippling again. “Don’t tell me you know him.”

“I do,” Dys said with a nod. “Presuming there aren’t two super high-level Fetch running around with that name. Friends with Yorath? Acts like a prick?”

“That’s him,” the puddle burbled as she shifted around into a something more like a lump, though she stuck to being in Dys’ lap. “There’s only one Madoc. Thank Destarious for that.”

“What did he do to make you hate him so much?”

Maeve sighed, and her orange color changed in time with the noise. Orange turned to a mix of reds and blues that swirled together in a constantly shifting mix that was beautiful to watch.

“I don’t hate him. I mean, I do. But he helped me a lot, so I don’t really hate him. But he also killed my father, so can’t help but hate him.”

“What the fuck?” Dys startled at the admission, causing her to sit up straighter. “He killed your father!?”

“It was the right thing to do,” Maeve explained as she shifted further, taking on the more mannequin-like form she had been in before. “After my mother was murdered, he lost his anchor. Or rather, he found a new one. Killing people. He was doing some terrible shit. Really. I don’t even know how many people he killed by the end. Maybe forty? Probably a lot more. Madoc tracked him down and did the right thing. I don’t blame him for that. But at the same time, I do blame him. I can’t help it. He killed my father. When I think about it at all, my mind just goes down that path no matter what.”

“That… is a lot to unpack,” Dys took a deep breath. “Do you want to talk about any of it?”

“Not really,” the Fetch shrugged. “It all happened a long time ago. This past month has been the most I’ve thought about Madoc in decades. Besides, he’s all the way down in Weigrun. It’s not like I see my grandfather every day.”

“Fucking what!?”

“What?”

Syd’s gaze shot over to Bridget. The orc was looking at her with a confused expression in her eyes. Blinking, Syd realized that the shock of Maeve’s familial bonds had thrown her off so hard that she had lost track of which of her bodies was where for a moment.

“Uh, nothing,” Syd told Bridget while shifting her grip on the massive piece of bone she was holding up with her left hand. “I was talking with someone else and I kind of got confused for a second there.”

“Not hard to guess who would get that strong a reaction out of you,” the warrior quipped as she walked towards Sabina. “Still talking to Maeve, eh?”

“Yes, still talking to Maeve.”

“Knew it. Hey, can you ask her if she took my hair ties? The red ones. I can’t find them, and I know I packed them before we—”

Bridget’s words were interrupted by the wet splatter sound of a huge lump of flesh landing against her chest. The orc yelped, then let out a gagging sound as the smell of the fetid meat hit her nostrils, even through the cloth she had tied around her nose and mouth.

“Bloody shit in a basket, Sabby! Warn a girl, would you?”

“Sorry!” Sabina said as she tossed another beachball sized lump of bio-gunk onto the ground near Bridget’s feet. “Just trying to get this done as fast as I can! It smells really bad in here!”

A major understatement, Jadis was sure.

Sabina was digging around in a portion of Vinea’s head where the jawbone connected to the Demon’s skull. Syd was using her strength to hold the jaw in a particular position so that Sabina could scrape away all of the connective tissue that held the two pieces of bone together. That meant Thea and Bridget were left with the unenviable task of carting the large lumps of flesh over to the river’s edge. At least the soldiers had given them a couple of wheelbarrows to help.

“How much longer is this going to take?” Bridget complained as she tossed the oozing chunks into her wheelbarrow. “I want to make sure I set aside at least three hours to wash up after all this is done tonight.”

“As long as it takes, I guess!” Sabina called back, making Syd’s mouth twitch into a smirk.

“Figured…”

While the task of stripping Vinea for material components was smelly and gross, there was a small bit of grace granted to them that made the job easier. Immolation was the typical method of body disposal in the empire, which led to huge clouds of noxious smoke. However, there was no need to cart the refuse all the way to furnaces where the flesh would be burned to ash. Instead, Jadis and her companions had been told to toss the rotting meat directly into the Haliax.

At first, Jadis had tried to protest. A river was not a proper method of disposal. The waters would be fouled with so much filth dumped into it; she couldn’t even imagine the ecological impact of literally thousands of tons of rotting flesh. However, as Sabina was quick to explain, the Haliax was special.

Centuries ago, before Glanum was a part of the empire, one of the previous Heroes had performed a greater ritual that had permanently affected the Haliax. Ever since, the water was naturally purified of all harmful rot and disease that was caused by Demons. In fact, Demons were harmed and weakened just by touching the waters, which explained why Vinea had been purposefully avoiding touching the river during the fight. All of the Demons that were swimming through the water to get to the shore were being damaged by the waters, which made them much easier for the soldiers to kill. If the Demon Prince had been soaked by the river water and thus weakened by the Haliax’s blessing, Jadis probably would have had an easier time slaying the huge foe.

“Oh! Syd! Can you come up here?”

Syd shifted her grip on the bone again as she angled herself to better hear the smith’s words.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Sabina replied, though her voice was muffled. “I found something interesting though and I think you should see it! I’d toss it down, but I’m not strong enough to lift any of these, though I guess I could try and—Oh, oh no. Poking it was a bad idea. Oh no. That’s going everywhere now.”

“I’m putting the bone down,” Syd shouted before setting the huge jaw onto the ground.

Moving as quickly as she could while also trying to not splash Demon ichor all over the place with her boots, Syd made her way inside of Vinea’s colossal head where Sabina was. She wasn’t worried about any surprise Demons hiding in the corpse; the army had already been over the body multiple times over the past two days, rooting out any and all hostiles that might be hiding within. What did concern her was the possibility of a collapse. She weighed a lot even without her armor on, and in it she was a tank. Last thing Jadis wanted was some part of the dead Demon’s body to break underfoot and then collapse onto them all.

“Look!” Sabina said as Syd drew near to her position. “I kind of broke this one, but there are more behind it, at least two more, probably a lot more, actually.”

Looking past Sabina to where she was pointing, Syd tilted her helmeted head in confusion. The strange piece of biology was just as alien to her as the rest of Vinea’s corpse, though there was something oddly familiar about it as well. They were inside of the Demon’s mouth and throat cavity, near the spot where the jaw they were trying to cut off was connected to the skull. Further back in the throat portion was a… sphere of some kind. More like a sack that was half full, though that seemed to be Sabina’s fault. The roundish organ was about the size of a beach umbrella in circumference, was also partly transparent, and was filled with a bluish liquid, half of which was pouring out from a hole that Sabina had poked in it.

Beyond the partly deflated sack were more fleshy sacks inside of the throat cavity, all protected by bone and cartilage. All of them were filled with the blue liquid, which was visibly glowing despite the light of the sun coming in from above.

“Fuck, this is just a weird ass day of revelations, isn’t it,” Syd muttered as she grimaced at sack.

“Huh? Why do you say that? What do you think they are?” Sabina chirped as she studied the strange scene.

“I think you found Vinea’s balls.”