LRAB Chapter 422: Blessed
Chapter 422: Blessed
Chapter 422: Blessed
Jadis was lost in thought as she entered through the front door to Fortune’s Favored headquarters. Her mind was distracted by the information Sholto had given her on Fetches that might be willing to have children with her. It was a weird situation, basically being given a matchmaking list of women with compatible personalities by her patron god. Weird enough that she was considering asking Eir if she would be willing to perform an oracle ritual so she could talk to the mischievous deity directly. They were overdue for their next ritual by a week since they had been saving it in case of another emergency situation, but now Jadis was seriously contemplating using the spell to see if D was trying to screw with her or if he was actually trying to help. Her connection to Lyssandria, however, seemed to indicate the list was legitimate. At least, the familiar yet alien gut feeling she got when she focused on the suggested names was positive.
Being so distracted, Jadis nearly missed it when several long black tentacles wrapped around her Syd self in a surprise ambush.
“Welcome... Back...”
“Hey Alex,” Syd laughed as the Demon gently dropped onto her from above the doorway and wrapped her up in a multitude of limbs. “How was your day?”
“I baked... Cookies...”
“Nice!” Syd exclaimed before giving her demonic lover a loving kiss. “Your last batch was pretty good. Hardly any eggshells. I’m sure these will taste great.”
“They are... Sweet...”
“Just like you,” Syd agreed before placing a hand on Alex’s round belly. “And our little Succubus. How is she? Feel anything moving today?”
“Yes...” Alex nodded as she placed one of her hands next to Syd’s. “She kicked... Kerr’s head...”
“That’s our girl,” Syd laughed as she pressed a kiss to Alex’s belly.
As Syd happily piled attention onto her favorite Demon and their unborn child, Jay headed towards the back of the main hall while Dys stopped at the reception desk that had been set up for Gunnar. The large, three-story hall of the building had been left as an open space, but they had set up a desk as well as a nice half wall and some comfortable chairs in the area right in front of the main door so that there was somewhere for visitors to be greeted in an orderly fashion.
Gunnar was, as always, behind his desk, busily scratching away at papers with a feathered quill. Jadis honestly wasn’t sure what the elf worked on when it came to paperwork, but Aila generally handled all of more practical, business-type assignments that were handed out, so she didn’t ask or interfere. She trusted that Aila had given him an appropriate task and that the man knew what he was doing.
“Hey Gunny! Anything I need to know about?”
“You have three letters,” the serious elf answered as he passed the unopened documents to her with his magically powered false arm. “One is from Lady Brunholt and the other two are both from Sir Wilhelm.”
Dys smiled at the two letters that had come from the Hero. Ever since they had met during the disastrous Demon attack on Eldingholt, she and the Hero had been writing letters to each other. They were mostly for the sake of keeping track of important events that their parties had been involved with, but they were also partly because she and her companions got along reasonably well with Wilhelm and his own companions. They were good people, and Jadis liked hearing about how they were doing.
The letter from Lady Brunholt was unexpected. While Jadis had developed a sort of truce with Elodie Brunholt, she wasn’t exactly friends with the woman. Plus, Jadis still hated her father’s guts, and she was pretty sure that General Egilhard felt the same way. All that was to say, Jadis wasn’t exactly social with the Brunholt family, so the fact that the lady had sent her a letter caused some suspicion to rise in Jadis’ hearts.
“We also received the package of goods you ordered for Sabina just an hour ago,” Gunnar informed her. “I believe she has already absconded with them to her workshop.”
“Naturally,” Dys smirked. “Well, let me know if anything crazy happens.”
“Of course,” the elf nodded once before calmly returning to his paperwork.
While Dys had been talking with Gunnar, Jay had been making her way through the large hall to the kitchen. Ducking her head low as she entered the warm workspace, she was greeted by the delicious smell of Hans’ cooking.
A dozen meat pies had been piled high, ready to be carried out to the main hall so that the whole mercenary company could be fed. Even as Jay watched, the mustachioed man was pulling out even more of his savory pastries from one of the several ovens they had installed in the large kitchen. Other than the meat pies waiting to be served, Jadis noticed the cookies that were laid out on one of the tables that Alex had told her she had baked.
All one thousand of them.
At least, that was Jadis’ best guess at the numbers. The pile of cookies was massive, and there had to be enough there to feed an army barracks. Way more than Jadis thought her company could reasonably eat, even considering her own extra-large appetite.
“Hans,” Jay nodded at the man as she passed through the kitchen to reach the back door.
The man grunted and nodded at her, though he never took his eyes off of his work. Hans truly was a perfectionist when it came to his pies.
Back outside, Jay crossed the large storage yard to reach the forge and workshop that had been built for her half-elf lover. Even before she reached the large doors of the building, she could hear the sound of a hammer striking metal, indicating that Sabina and her assistants were hard at work.
Inside, Jay found what she expected. Sabina was hammering away at some piece of red-hot metal while her young assistant, Chace, held the piece in place with a pair of iron tongs. The orc boy had shown a talent for metalworking early on in his employment and had become a sort of smithing apprentice to the excitable enchanter. They weren’t the only ones in the workshop, though.
Dexter and Lon, the young twin boys, were busily pumping the huge bellows that kept the furnace roaring. The pully and bellows system was so big that the pair took turns jumping on and off the two sides of the device, using their weight to power the apparatus.
Then there was Violetta. The short purple woman was off to one side, stirring a large clay crucible that was also being heated by the forge. Jadis wasn’t sure what that was for, but she was fairly certain that the cauldron’s contents had something to do with Sabina’s enchantments. Violetta had been far more interested in learning about enchanting than any other skill, so she was usually the one to act as Sabina’s primary assistant in that area.
“Dinner’s almost ready!” Jay shouted over the noise of the forge. “Find a stopping point!”
“Jay!” Sabina shouted back, somehow knowing which of Jadis’ bodies she was talking to with an accuracy that no one else could match. “We’re almost done, but can you help Aila with that cloth over there? Once we’re done with this piece and she’s done with that we can call it quits for the day!”
“They wha—were,” Thea nodded quietly as she poured some tea into a glass for the therion. “I, ah, saw them when I wa—was with B—Bridget. They were, ah, rough.”
“Sabina, no experiments at the table,” Aila scolded the half-elf. “Put it aside while we eat, please.”
“Here, I’ll take it for you,” Violetta quickly volunteered as she took the mess of steel from the pouting smith.
“But I think I figured out my mistake!” Sabina whined. “Can’t I just—”
“No,” Aila commanded with imperial power. “Also, Jay, you still need to remove your armor.”
“What, in front of Hans?” Jay teased.
“Jadis...”
“Going, going,” Jay laughed.
Her other selves had removed their armor already, so it was just her Jay self who still needed to get out of the heavy plate armor. Taking advantage of the large open space of the main hall, Jay used her strength to simply leap up to the third-floor balcony rather than take the stairs. Using her immense Agility attribute to her advantage, she stripped off her armor at an inhuman speed and placed it on one of the three custom-made armor stands inside the shared bedroom that took up the entirety of the top floor of the building. Walking back out to the balcony a few moments later, Jay smiled down at the scene below her.
Originally, Jadis had thought that the dining area of the main hall would just have a bunch of smaller tables in it where the various members of the company could sit and eat at their leisure. Separate tables so that different people could have some privacy, if they wanted it. As it turned out, no one wanted that privacy. All the tables had been shoved together after only a few days and now everyone sat together at one large, winding table that took up much of the space. It was an odd, mismatched kind of gathering, but Jadis liked it. The buzz of many different conversations going on at once filled her with a warm glow.
As Jay let herself drop from the third floor and moved to take her spot at the table amidst friends and family, a knock echoed at the front door.
“I’ll get it,” Jay told the others before anyone else could get up.
Approaching the door, Jadis felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Something about the experience was making her think that she had done something just like this in recent memory, though she wasn’t sure when. Throwing open the door, any thoughts of repeating experiences left Jadis as she saw the woman waiting on the other side.
“Hello Jadis,” Severina said with a small smile and tilt of her head.
“Hey Sev,” Jay grinned at the Seraphim, knowing full well that Severina hated the nickname Jadis had bestowed upon her. “Are you joining us for dinner again tonight?”
“I was hoping to, yes,” the paladin said while primly ignoring Jay’s attempt at teasing her. “I also have a small list of further candidates that I wanted to discuss with you. There have been a few Seraphim who have been pulled back from the front lines on a temporary leave and I thought—”
“Oh come on,” Jay sighed as she leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms. “Do we have to play matchmaker tonight? I already had Sholto shove a list of Fetch onto me, apparently given to him straight from D. I don’t need more talk like that right now.”
Jay noticed that Severina’s cross shaped pupils widened in surprise at the information, though the Seraphim otherwise did a good job of keeping her composure. It was only thanks to weeks of being around the woman that Jadis had gained the proficiency necessary to read the woman’s small and nearly imperceptible tells. Something about what Jay had just said had definitely bothered the paladin. Or had at least caused a spike of emotion in her.
“Besides,” Jay blithely continued, “Out of all the Seraphim you’ve tried to set me up with so far, the only one I have any interest in is standing right in front of me. When are we going to talk more about that possibility?”
“How about tonight, after dinner?” Severina answered evenly.
“Okay, come on—wait. What?”
“Let’s talk about us. Tonight,” Severina said, the calm of her voice doing nothing to stop Jadis’ own heartrates from speeding up. “Since you are, as you just said, interested.”
“Really? Jay asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice, or the grin from her lips. “Are you interested?”
Jadis had been teasing Severina for weeks now, but she had halfway assumed that teasing was as far as it would ever go. Now that Severina was suddenly expressing a willingness to openly engage, Jadis almost didn’t believe it.
“I... I am,” Severina said, the hesitation in her voice doing more to convince Jadis than the words themselves. “I—Well, I have never been opposed to that option. I have simply been... exploring all other possibilities.”
“Right,” Jay grinned widely as she leaned down slightly towards the smaller woman. “Exploring Possibilities sounds like good excuse to me, too. Definitely go with that if anyone like Eadgar or Kestil asks.”
“You are so maddeningly frustrating,” Severina scowled up at her.
“Thanks,” Jay winked. “I like you, too.”
“Hey!” Kerr shouted from the table, cutting off whatever response Severina was going to shoot back. “Whether you flirt or fuck, I don’t care! Just shut the damn door! It’s fucking cold!”
“Come on in,” Jay stepped aside to allow the now blushing Seraphim entrance. “And let’s talk.”
“Yes. Talk,” Severina said, though her eyes couldn’t quite meet Jay’s gaze. “Let’s... talk.”