“Did it work?”

“Did it work?” Kerr echoed tiredly, one hand resting on her swollen belly. “I’d say it fucking worked. The whole ‘build up’ thing these collars do is insane…”

Jadis had to agree. She knew from previous experience with the collar that not only would her inevitable climax be delayed, but when it was finally unleashed after being pent up for so long, it would be an explosive finish. Jadis had no idea how much cum she had poured into Kerr, Eir, and Sabina when she’d climaxed, the three who she had happened to have been deep inside when the collars’ effects had finally expired, but all three women looked overstuffed.

“I think Sorcha is asking about the end result of our ritual,” Aila commented from where she lay on top of Dys, panting and sweating like she’d just run ten miles. “Which, just looking at my status sheet, does indicate that it was… successful…”

Aila’s voice trailed off, her tone shifting from tired to confused. Jadis stirred, all three of her selves sitting up from where she had variously collapsed amongst her exhausted lovers to look at her redhaired girlfriend.

“What? What’s wrong?” Jay asked as the others slowly came out of their post-orgasm stupors around her. “Did you not gain the effects?”

“No, I did,” Aila answered, a frown creasing her brow. “But… the numbers don’t add up. I’ve gained too much.”

“Too much?” Bridget repeated. “What do you… wait. You’re right, my attribute looks higher than I thought it would be?”

“Mine d—does too,” Thea said as well. “This increase is, ah, more than Aila had c—calculated. A lot more.”

“Gods,” Eir breathed out, her eyes wide. “That is, I believe, a thirty-two-point increase!”

Jadis’ own eyes widened as she looked over the changes to her status sheet. The already huge numbers she’d grown used to seeing had exploded. Where on Earth or Oros had they come from?

“Two hundred and fifty-four!?” Jay, Dys, and Syd all cried out in unison. “How? That’s forty more points than it should be!”

“Two hundred and fifty-four what?” Sorcha asked from her seat on the wagon, a look of utter disbelief on her expressive face. “You’re not talking about attributes, are you?”

“Thirty-nine points more, actually,” Aila murmured distractedly, clearly thinking hard.

“You did all that fucking and your stats went up by thirty-nine points!?” Sorcha exclaimed. “Spread out over what? Or, you mean on one single attribute?”

“That’s just one stat increase,” Jay answered Sorcha’s panicked question, though her focus wasn’t on the little goblin witch. She got to her feet, hands on hips as she stared into nothing, thinking about the math. “Taking Stoke the Ardent Flame into account, that means my Eldritch stat fully doubled from this ritual. That’s a multiplication of two.”

“And the increase should have gone from one point five to one point seven,” Aila cut in, clearly having come to the same conclusions as Jadis. “The ritual is acting as though three more people were involved than actually were.”

Sorcha continued to call out her shock and confusion at the numbers Jadis and Aila were throwing around, but Jadis wasn’t paying the witch any attention anymore. Something had caused her ritual to act differently from how it had in the past and how it was expected to this time around. What had changed? The spell wasn’t any different so far as she could see, and she hadn’t taken any new skills that would alter the ritual in her past few level ups. None of her companions could have affected how the ritual worked, either. So far as she knew, it was impossible to change the outcome of a ritual, anyway.

Or was it? Jadis’ thoughts paused. She already had one skill that let her reduce the time it took for a ritual to be cast. Also, Aila’s whole arcanist class was based around altering and modifying her base spells. Those weren’t rituals, but they were still spells. However, in both cases, she and Aila were altering their own spells, which made some sense. It wasn’t possible to make changes to someone else’s spells, was it?

At the thought, Jadis glanced at Sorcha. The confused, blushing goblin kept having to tear her big eyes away from Jay’s body and was clearly struggling between her surprise at the situation and her fascination with Jadis’ form. Jadis didn’t think the goblin was faking the confusion. Plus, she hadn’t displayed any strong ability so far, not without her wands. Definitely not someone who would have the ability to change her ritual. Jadis doubted altering someone else’s spells would have been easy, or low level for that—

Jadis briefly froze, then her two other bodies quickly rose to their feet to join Jay as she started searching the tent.

“Jack,” she hissed. “I know you’re fucking in here! Where are you? What did you fucking do!?”

There was a small, chiming laugh, then a slight shimmer in the corner of the wagon to Sorcha’s right. From nothing appeared an elven woman wearing a simple white nightgown. She was light purple in color, with black hair and bright silver eyes. She sat leaning on one hip, her frankly voluptuous body barely concealed by the sheer material of her white gown.

Sorcha nearly fell off the wagon at the woman’s sudden appearance.

“Just giving you a present,” Jack whispered sweetly in a voice that oozed sex. “You were so angry with me earlier, so I thought I’d do something to make up for my earlier perceived mistreatment of the three of you.”

Around her, Jadis’ girls scrambled to cover themselves with blankets or their discarded clothes, but she didn’t bother. Taking a few big steps, all three of her selves stood glowering down at the shapeshifting troublemaker. Jack didn’t seem the least bit bothered by her frowns, only looking up at the three Nephilim while batting her long eyelashes innocently.

“You’re supposed to be talking with Noll,” Dys growled, keeping her voice low so the sounds of their argument didn’t carry beyond the tent.

“I am talking with Noll,” Jack replied adjusting how her gown rested on her hip. “I can do multiple things at once, you know. Some people can be very good at multitasking, especially if they have skills for it.”

Of course Jack had a skill like Jadis’ Refracted Mind. The Fetch was able to create a multitude of lifelike illusions and have them move and act independently of each other at the same time. It made sense that she would need a lot of control to do something like that. But more to the point…

“What do you mean ‘present’? What did you do?” Jay demanded. “Did you modify my ritual somehow?”

“Guilty,” Jack answered with a smile. “Just a small change, a little addition to help boost you along. I mean, you are doing me a favor by helping me save the dragon after all. I wouldn’t want you to think I wasn’t grateful. And, considering the nature of my gift, it made sense to give it to you now, rather than after.”

“What did you do?” Aila asked as she walked up next to Jadis, having pulled her shirt and some underclothes on. “And how? The ritual still seemed to work the way it was supposed to. Did you change the values somehow, to how much our participation was worth?”

“No, not the values,” Jack shook her head, long black hair spilling over her shoulders in a no-doubt purposefully alluring display. “I can’t do anything about those numbers, not like that, anyway. But I can make other kinds of changes.”

Jack’s smile faded as she took in the expressions on Jadis’ faces, as well as Aila and the rest of the women who were starting to gather around. She sighed, her lips drawn thin as she waggled her fingers in their direction.

“Why such long faces? I boosted your ritual quite a bit. Shouldn’t I be getting a ‘thank you’ of some sort?”

“You spied on us having sex without our permission,” Dys intoned. “And somehow made a change to my ritual without consulting me or anyone else. How can you not see that as a major invasion of privacy that would have just about anyone upset?”

“Ugh, whatever,” Jack’s shoulders lowered. In the next instant, her clothes swirled and melted, changing into a plain, dowdy dress that covered up her body from neck to ankle. “Doesn’t matter how long I’m around your kind. Your reactions never make any sense.”

With that, Jack slipped off of the wagon and weaved her way between the gathered women, brushing past them without touching or being touched. Jadis was tempted to take hold of her, but she rejected the impulse. Even with her new boost in stats, Jack was still two hundred levels higher than her and no doubt more than capable of shrugging off any attempt to stop her.

Wait. Was that impulse from her? Or had it come from D or Lyssandria? Jadis’ frown deepened at the thought, but she mentally shook the question away. It wasn’t something to focus on at the moment.

“I made an addition,” Jack quietly called out as she reached the edge of the tent. “Nothing to your detriment. The ritual worked for participants as well as interested witnesses. Don’t ask for a do-over, though. I already did as much as I could for you with the power I have. I’ll let you all figure out who the interested witnesses were.”

With those parting words, Jack slipped out of the tent, her head held up high.

“Interested witnesses? What’s that supposed to mean?” Bridget asked as she glanced between the other women. “Does that mean Jack wanted to… you know? Uh, join in?”

“I wouldn’t think too hard about that,” Syd shook her head. “I’m certain that the only reason Jack would want to join us would be for the purpose of messing with us. Interested can mean a lot of different things.”

“So. Jack has some kind of ability to fuck with other people’s spells. That’s comforting,” Kerr said with a high amount of sarcasm. “Not at all terrifying to think about what he or she or it might do if they were around while we were doing a ritual and they were pissed off at us.”

“There have to be limitations,” Aila pointed out. “Even if it’s a skill that comes from a class reaching the one hundred level mark. It still wouldn’t be able to completely alter the whole purpose of a spell.”

“I suppose,” Jay shrugged. “I just wonder if she did anything else to mess with the ritual. Let’s check over our stats, make sure there aren’t any other unexpected changes.”

As they all started to quietly discuss their status sheets, going over their attributes as well as their skills to be certain that nothing else had been altered, Jadis thought about what Jack had said about witnesses. By the math, that meant there were three individuals who had “witnessed” the ritual and had been “interested” in it. The wording was vague, likely intentional on Jack’s part, but Jadis couldn’t imagine that interest being anything other than sexual. Her rituals were inherently lewd by the nature of her class. She doubted that Jack could make them not lewd. Clearly, she could add conditions or tack on other ways of completing the ritual, but from what had been done and how Jack had talked, it didn’t seem like she was able to change them completely.

Well, presuming that Jack was witness number one, Jadis had no trouble guessing who witness number two was. Sorcha was still having trouble not staring at Jadis’ naked bodies, something that Jadis could completely understand. She was fucking sexy. Maybe it was narcissistic to say, but it was true, too. The goblin had said she wanted to watch the ritual because it would be hot, anyway. So then, who was the third?

Naturally, Jadis’ thoughts went to Noll. He had admitted to spying on them and by this point, she was certain he could have snuck into the tent somehow and watched the whole time without them noticing. The old dog was a lot stealthier than he looked. A moment later, Jadis dismissed the thought. Noll had made it clear he had little to no interest in the sexual escapades of her and her companions. That was something Jadis had no trouble believing.

Other possibilities flitted through Jadis’ mind. Willa, Nora, and the other soldiers were all contemplated and discarded. She even briefly considered the idea that one of the Reavers had somehow managed to spy on them. Besides the fact that she was fairly certain that none of them could accomplish such a feat with the guard that had been placed on them, she was also sure that none would have been all that interested in her and the others sexually, not after the beating they’d gotten and animosity between them. At least, she hoped not.

That left only one possibility. Syd quietly took a few steps to the side while her other selves and her companions continued to talk and go over their status sheets. Taking the glass container down from where it hung, she held the little blue-eyed demon up to her face, staring at the squirming tentacle monster.

“Okay Alex,” she whispered. “As soon as you can start writing sentences with your blocks, we are going to have to have a talk about your ‘interest’ in me.”