Rebirth of the Nephilim

Chapter 33: Skills and Names

“So, what are we calling me?”

With the ritual completed, Jadis now had three of her identical selves to work with. Jay and Dys were both resting after all the hard work they’d just put in while the new extension of Jadis’ existence was pulling Dys’ gear on, since Dys wasn’t likely to need it until she healed up.

“Good question,” Jay mused between gulps of water. “Jadis is a two-syllable name. Kind of hard to split it up into three.”

“Does it matter? We’ll probably switch to a different skill once I get up and running and our third wheel won’t exist anymore,” Dys said from her place on the rug. She was still lying in roughly the same spot as during the ritual, just in a more comfortable position.

“That’s… almost a scary thought,” the third Jadis said while all three paused for a moment, considering the ramifications.

Jadis had mostly just been thinking about how useful it would be to have an extra third pair of hands to replace Dys while that part of her recovered. She hadn’t thought about how odd it might feel to have a part of her disappear, even if she’d only just added that part to her. It would probably be even stranger if she personified that part of her and then… de-summoned it, or whatever.

“Do we even want to use the ritual on a different skill later? I mean, out of everything we could duplicate, is there anything that’d be better than having me?” Third Jadis voiced what Jadis was pondering. “Is there any other skill worth it?”

“It’s not like we have to think that hard about it, it’s not permanent. We can change the skill out any time we want,” Jay reasoned.

“Well, considering the ritual takes three hours to complete, we can’t do anything else while we’re doing it, and it’s a literal pain in the ass? We can’t just switch all the time,” Dys pointed out, rubbing a hand over her sore backside. “So it should be something strong and useful all the time.”

“Probably should have thought this through before doing the ritual,” Third Jadis lamented with a sigh and shake of her head.

“Knight’s Tenacity and Knight’s resolve both give an additional ten attribute points,” Jay started listing options on her fingers. “Minor Strength Improvement II gives six. Those would be okay to duplicate, but if we’re talking raw stats, Mirror Knight’s Might gives us that fifty percent boost to any stat we choose. We could double our strength, or put it towards a different stat.”

“Plus there’s Mirrored Strikes. It could hit twice as hard if we double it,” Dys chimed in.

Finished adjusting her armor, Third Jadis tilted her head while pointing a finger at Dys. “It might hit twice as hard. For all we know, since the description of the skill is ‘Physical attacks made against a target in tandem with your mirrored body will deal increased damage,’ that might mean duplicating the skill won’t do anything at all. It’s already doing what it says it’ll do. No hard numbers to duplicate like with Mirror Knight’s Might.”

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“Eh,” Jay said, holding her hand out flat and wobbling it back and forth. “I doubt it’s that limited. I mean, Mirrored Body worked and that doesn’t talk about any hard numbers.”

“Wait, double checking that,” Third Jadis said.

A moment later, all three made a collective humming noise.

“It does say ‘two beings at once.’ That’s a hard number.”

“We have no idea if numbers actually matter though,” Dys pointed out.

“Fuck, okay, take a step back,” Jay said while passing a water jar to Dys. “Let’s just assume for now that all our skills are fair game and will be duplicated if we use the ritual.”

“Then, assuming that’s the case,” Dys said after drinking her fill of the water, “we could probably use Knight’s Rest so we can heal up twice as fast.”

“Yeah, but that’s of no use during the day when we’re not sleeping,” Third Jadis said with a shake of her head. “It’d be a waste all day long since you can’t really sleep while one, or now two, of us still walk around doing stuff.

Jadis had experimented early on after getting her Refracted Mind skill with having one self sleep while the other self went about normal activities. It only sort of worked, unfortunately. While one self could sleep while the other stayed awake and was far more lucid when compared to before she got the skill and had done the same thing, she still couldn't be too active or her sleeping self would be roused to full wakefulness. It seemed her mind, while compartmentalized, wasn’t completely partitioned off.

“Then Mirror Knight’s Might is probably the best alternative to Mirrored Body,” Jay reiterated. “We know what it’ll do and we know it’ll make us a lot stronger. It’d be useful in most any circumstance.”

“Except, aren’t we kind of already doubling multiple stats with Mirrored Body? Tripling them right now, actually?” Third Jadis said, running a hand through her hair.

“The skill says it doesn’t duplicate our attributes…” Dys said, trailing off.

“But I don’t feel any weaker right now,” Third Jadis said while she picked up one of the mauls, swinging it around with ease.

“I don’t either,” Jay agreed, flexing her arms. “Our health pool is the same, clearly that’s not being doubled, but I don’t think the skill is splitting our strength score between us.”

Jadis’ different selves looked at each other in silence for a short while, considering the implications.

“If it’s not splitting our strength attribute, then that means when we doubled ourselves the first time, we doubled our effective strength, too,” Jay finally said, brow furrowed as she followed the logic train. “And right now, with this ritual, it seems like we basically tripled it.”

Third Jadis motioned at the empty air as Jadis’ menu screen filled her mind. “And I bet our collective tits that other attributes aren’t being split between us, like dexterity and agility. Even if we don’t know what they’re doing, if they aren’t being split, we’re getting way more by having a third me than if we duplicated Mirror Knight’s Might.”

“Okay, okay,” Dys said, holding up her hands in surrender. “I think I’m all in agreement. Third me is worth keeping around.”

“We might still want to test other skills out later,” Jay shrugged her shoulders, “But I think we made the right choice here.”

“So,” Third Jadis said, looking between the two of her selves, “What are we naming me?”

Jadis’ multiple selves were silent as she thought the self-imposed question over. She’d never had any nicknames growing up, only occasionally was ever called Jay by a few people in passing, the moniker not sticking. The names Jay and Dys were the extent of her creative powers when it came to renaming herself.

“We could use our last name?” Jay said hesitantly, a question in her tone.

Third Jay shook her head a moment later. “People who do that have cool last names like Ward or Shepherd.”

“Or Van Halen,” Dys chimed in.

“Not lame Swedish names like Ahlstrom,” Third Jadis finished. “Plus, we’ve got a one syllable thing going here.”

“Ahl?” Jay suggested, followed by a scrunching of the nose that was mirrored on the other two Jadis’ in the warehouse. “Nah, not Ahl.”

“Well if we’re going to be so picky about it, we might as well start calling her Mini Me,” Dys grumbled in irritation.

“What about Jadis backwards?” Third Jadis countered, raising an eyebrow. “Sidaj? Sid, maybe?”

“Syd,” all three said in unison as Jadis finally came to a decision.

“Though if we ever somehow make a fourth one of us, good luck trying to make a backwards name out of Jay,” Dys pronounced before settling further down on the rug to rest.

Name assigned and all such considerations resolved, Jadis double checked her armor on Jay and Syd, then had them head back outside to deal with the aftermath of the bone behemoth attack. For as much as Jadis had done in the day so far, from slaying a giant demon to creating a third clone of herself via a three hour long buggery ritual, the sun had not yet reached it’s zenith. From what she could tell, it was probably still an hour before noon.

Stepping outside, Jay and Syd looked around the immediate area, checking to see if any bone thieves were getting close to the warehouse. Nothing was nearby, so far as she could see, but her strong suspicion was that if there were any more bone thieves in the area, they’d probably have one exceptionally large distraction to keep their attention.

As soon as Jadis’ two selves walked to the edge of the mining compound and took a look down the hill towards the village, she saw that her hunch had proven true.

What looked to be a dozen bone thieves of various shapes and sizes were crawling across the remains of their matriarch. Even as Jadis watched, one of them flashed dark blue as magic surged around them, bones adding onto their skeletal frame.

“That’s a lot to take on at once,” Syd commented, resting her maul across her shoulders as she observed the demons as they, what, feasted? She wasn’t sure if what they were doing counted as eating.

Jay shook her head, motioning with one hand. “We can’t let them keep that up, though. They’ve already had hours to consume bones freely from that pile and they’ll only get stronger. We’ve got to cut them down now before they get even bigger and stronger.”

“If they see us, though, they’ll all just charge. That’s too many to take all at once, even for these guns,” Syd said with a lopsided grin while she flexed her biceps. “Maybe if all three of us were up and we had our full health—”

“Actually,” Jay said, cutting Syd off, “I think I have an idea.”

A smile spread across all three pairs of Jadis’ lips as Dys’ half-slitted eyes rested on the iron cauldron that they had moved into the warehouse with the rest of their supplies.

In only a few minutes, Jadis’ plan was set up. Iron cauldron hanging from an exposed wood beam on the broken side of the smithy, Jay had her maul raised and ready. From her position partially hidden behind one of the crafting buildings, Syd watching the swarming demons. Ready to run and lead the demons away from the compound if things didn’t go as planned, Jay began striking the cauldron, an obnoxious clanging sound reverberating through the clear valley air.

All of the bone thieves reacted to the sound, clearly agitated and looking around for the source, but as Jadis had hoped, only a few of them left the tempting pile of bones to chase down the source of the noise. Four demons loped up the hill on various numbers of legs, following the bait as Syd retreated behind the wall of the building so she wasn’t seen too soon.

“Time to put this new body through it’s paces,” Syd growled, lifting her maul to an overhead position as Jay moved up next to her, her own maul raised and ready to crush skulls.

When the first and fastest of the approaching bone thieves reached the top of the hill and moved in among the buildings, Jay and Syd attacked as one, the power of the Mirrored Strikes smashing the skeletal monster to bits in an instant. With that auspicious beginning, Jay and Syd proceeded to tear through the other three demons, crushing and splintering their bones with each coordinated swing of their weapons.

In less than a couple minutes, the first wave of her foes were dead, a small cut on Syd’s arm the only injury sustained.

“We really are getting good at this, aren’t we?” Jay said, grinning as she knocked the remains of a dead bone thief to the side.

“I can’t wait to see how we do with all three of us,” Syd said with equal zeal.

As Jadis had expected, the sounds of her fight had caught the attention of more of the bone thieves, the sounds of skeletal bodies racing up the hill reaching her ears. She wasn’t worried. Confidently squaring her shoulders, Jadis faced both of her selves towards the oncoming enemies that were unknowingly sprinting towards their doom.

“We’ve got this.”