Chương 407: 12.4

Gem and her sister selves walked through the camp and men parted around them like the meat of a pig did to the point of one of Dariusz' knives. Soldiers moved aside at their passing despite their stature, the height of the twins now easily two heads over Gem. The lean musculature that either of her now larger selves prominent even under the cloth of what had once been their child's shifts and now had needed to take on the role of a proper shirt far too quickly.

Half a year and her sister selves practically towered over her! Making her appear to be the younger as they strode between the sea of tents, breathing in the scent of sweat from men and beast. All three of them careful to avoid the deeper muck so as to preserve the hem of their clothes. The skirts had required a short trip to the camp followers to procure the garments, even the adjustments to help match the flexibility Gem had with her own dresses.

If Gem didn't share with them the distinct memory of just how painful it had been so far to grow so quickly she'd have wished she could share her sister selves' rapid gains in size. But the agony and the near constant painful clenching hunger in their stomachs disabused her of any jealousy there.

The sound of crackling bread under teeth however reminded her of what she did envy about her sister selves, for what she was intensely jealous of was that both of them appeared to not share her intolerance for foods other than meat! She also absolutely knew that they were having a bit of sport with their current separate memories at her expense right this moment!" MmMmm!" On her right one twin groaned in extremely exaggerated joy over the Hewer of Wheat's latest batch of fresh, flaky bread!

Flakes of the buttery brown crust falling from her lips as she took another incredibly loud bite out of the crisp rind. That was another thing to be envious of, their size gave both twins an absolutely bottomless pit of a stomach. Jewel's stomach gurgled in desire despite how full she still was from breakfast! The heady smell of the Weird's bread was a sorcery all its own!

Even more so for how clearly she could recall that besides that needed to grow, mill and shape it the farming Weird practiced no commands whatsoever to the dough itself when making it!" mmHmm!" On Gem's left the other twin rumbled agreement and chewed with relish. Spilling even more flakes that just barely avoided getting onto Gem's dress! Ugh it was so frustrating to know the mind of her sister selves so clearly! To know and not be them in the moment!

They absolutely were threatening to sprinkle her garments in flaky crumbs! A dire intention to forestall any attempt to even start to reprimand them! How was this her life!? How was it that all three of them could literally be herself and yet she was being teased like this?! Well obviously she already knew, she could remember from the last time they were all together with their 'mother-self'.

Somehow remembering how adorable and hilarious her 'elder' self (that was her current-self) could be when agitated like she now felt didn't in fact make it feel any better to be teased in a way only someone that remembered being her could manage! Gem breathed heavily, but not loudly enough anyone else would be able to tell, still the slightest huff and slight click in the throat of an aborted chuckle on either side of her was enough to know that they knew what she was agitated about and found it hilarious.

The biggest consolation of her suffering was she (and the twins) knew for a fact she would get to remember how delicious and flaky and wonderful and satisfying that perfect round of pale white and golden rinded treat was going to have tasted and- She had to spit the growing slobber building in her mouth to the side as her two twin selves finally openly chortled to a degree that others might notice. Yeah, laugh it up you over-grown beansprouts! They knew they would be right where she was next time, well maybe?

Probably? The Distinction was getting so much fuzzier and worse now that every time she split from her Wyrm self it went four different ways instead of two! Still it did make the interplay of the three of them hidden. All anyone else would see was Gem spitting and her sisters chortling as they ate their snack, no sign of disharmony, no break in their family bond.

She was so thankful no one in the army camp could recognize how Gem was bickering almost constantly with herself, Gwenn would have been able to spot it and also been in on the jokes, but even Smithson was unable to catch the nuance of what could pass between Gem and her sister-selves without words. Which was important!

To the eyes of the soldiers they were united, striding as a compact and competent formation with all the grace of trained martial ladies despite the three of them combined not passing a second decade in age! With the majority of those years coming from the smallest of their number! Most of these levy had never met Gem before the muster, many whispered and gossiped how she was the youngest and her 'elder sisters' were her guardians. And seeing them marching competently had its uses.

Their movements among the camp were familiar to the soldiers. Any mutterings or complaints about 'children and ladies' on the campaign long since stilled by selective challenges of the offenders to spars with any one of them. Always only one on one. No one dared fight all three of her selves anymore. Even the greenest soldiers had learned to never accept a challenge of all of 'The Countess' Terrors' together, even if she let them match their numbers.

Which was something she welcomed about the new arrangement of her sister-selves. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. It was amazing how well one could fight when their sisters-in-battle were practically the same person as them! When every motion could be intuited and understood by any other of the three. And it just got better as they practiced!

Gem, to further her training, had ordered (as her wyrm-self) for bouts to see how many footmen it took to overwhelm their advantage to a draw. So far it took five properly skilled footmen to match her three selves together and eight levy to reliably secure a win against them but she had hopes with further practice she could double that!

Still there were few opportunities for extra training to be had so far, but Gem's tour of the camp was full of good signs, cheerful voices, smiles, an ease in the posture of the soldiers, signs that many had purchased extra luxurious or treats from the camp followers. A solid indication of a strong fighting spirit! The men were in high moods, better than they had any right to be, the battle had been some of the harshest losses they had suffered in the entire campaign.

But the dead and wounded on Viznove's side were nothing compared to what the Magarskan's had lost. Just over three thousand men died on Viznove's side, perhaps a few hundred more lost to cowardice and flight from the battle. But the enemy had suffered what the latest reports suggested was twenty thousand in losses at least. Counting it was difficult and some of the men good heartedly complained that the Countess' wroth left little of bodies or gear to loot.

Still none of them were unbloodied or green enough to complain that their enemies were reduced to ash instead of given the opportunity to stab them in the gut or cut them down. The complaints were all in good humor and endearment to their lady. There were also quite a number of the army humor's preference in songs about Gem, her mother self, the Magarskans and as had come to be a custom the ever exaggerated tales of one Robin Hood and his 'exploits' with her.

Gem held back a sigh and felt her twins struggling as well. Those tales had so far failed to die out despite the absurdity they had taken on, all of her selves had even heard the story in the mouths of the foreign levies before they parted ways! So embarrassing! But it was sung in good spirits and drunken joy, which according to her General and captains was preferable to spreading sorrow.

So Gem was glad finally making the Magarskans properly bleed in an engagement made a festival air in the camp, even among the wounded. A proper victory with ruinous losses on the enemy's side had made the evening meal and the hours after all the more boisterous and celebratory, a double ration of beer was brought out to boost the atmosphere further, a soothing balm in the night before the sombreness of the coming dawn.

Gem, that is her mother-self, would have to see to the ceremony honoring their dead in the morning. The Pyres for them would not be insubstantial, and the ashes after would be 'tilled and turned over' by The Hewer of Wheat to fill their stores before they resumed the march. A solid day of rest tomorrow for the army. So tonight they could afford to celebrate, it was a victory for Viznove and they were for the most part all men (and a few women) of Viznove.

The majority of the footmen were from the Kaeketeh city guard itself, nearly all of the levy were from one barony or another. Gem heard with her own two ears and was sure she would remember with the other four later the familiar accents of places she had visited in her tour. The Ogien lilt was quite present in this section of the camp, neighboring the far smaller cluster of tents that housed the men from the towns surrounding Zapadvah.

There was a bit of keen attention on them but with Gem waving exuberantly and congratulating the soldiers in the tone she used when she wanted to avoid confusing the younger children in Valasect it mostly fell away from the firelit faces around her. Even among her army Gem still was still looked on as a child, despite that she had bested a good number of them in single combat! Yet her far younger sisters got a very different sort of consideration.

She could hear it in some of the more discrete or inattentive singing, and that was another confusion of her now four-fold self! The twins had barely spent a quarter of a year appearing as anything like children, by the time they were marching on the campaign both of them could have passed for girls exiting their youth and seeming if not for their beast natures appropriate to start courting some young men.

Their gains in height (and the terrible ache that accompanied it) had begun to finally slow in the last few days but both of their appetites so far remained just as ravenous. Where they were no longer pained by stretching aches in the bones the muscles continued to burn both in their waking hours and when they tried to settle in for sleep. They could already match the strength of the weakest levy without pulling on their own store of Wyrm flame.

And every day their physical prowess improved, along with the apparent age of the twins! Before their first winter Gem's sister-selves might very well appear to be fully grown women older than she herself was! The stories of how numerous and dangerous Lair Spawn could be had seemed like exaggeration considering Gem's experience, but what if the next time she, that is Jewel laid a clutch it was four spawn eggs instead of two? What if it was six?! And if every batch could mature as rapidly as the twins had?

If the number of her sisterhood grew every year? The stories of the Tyrant War and its armies suddenly seemed significantly more likely then Gem had ever considered. What would it be like if she and her sister selves could have stood side by side with the army in such numbers? Just three of them together could fight better than any group of men Jewel had faced so far, what would it be like if there were hundreds of Gem and her sisters in formation?

Even the regimented and unbreakable postures of the Magarskans would look clumsy and at odds with one another compared to such a force, and would there even need to be any kind of training for them to elevate Jewel's spawn to the equivalent of a Footman or a Knight? Gem's sisters knew all that she knew, besides needing to work out how their bodies moved differently as they grew, it was hardly any time at all before they matched her skill!

And if the next clutch was the same size and proportions would there even be that much delay? Looking around at the encampment and the men, contemplating all the tumult and chaos. It would not be perfect, the way her sister-selves teased her mercilessly for the joy of it despite knowing how it stung to be mocked so intimately? There would still be chaos and a kind of disharmony among their number. But at the same time they never even intimated anything harsher than a jovial foolery.

So what would a camp full of wyrmspawn be like—or an army of her sister-selves, even? Gem stopped and the twins settled although they briefly seemed puzzled before she glanced back at them over her shoulder and all three shared a look. Gem saw when they understood what she had realized, each nodding severely, all jokes and teasing had fallen away from their faces, they swallowed down the last of their bread, foregoing the theater of chewing.

The seriousness of this thought having found its way into her sister-selves minds now assured to her Gem turned back to contemplate the forces of Viznove. Would an army of wyrmspawn even need captains? Could every one of them act and know and move without banner or signal horns? Magarska had managed to direct dozens of Gryphon Riders and send wheeling flocks of tens of thousands of their lesser Striker Gryphons to intercept and harass Jewel in the air with mere sound.

What could an army where every soldier knew her fellows as well as herself accomplish? As one all three of the wyrmspawn considered the army around them, not a word needed between them.