God Rising: The Cult of Ainz

Written by: AtheistBasementDragon

Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots

Chapter 194: Warnings

...Nazarick...Ainz's Private Office...

"So they have fallen lower than I ever imagined possible." Ainz remarked as the report from Raymond and Solution came through. "They offend me greatly, and for that, there will be a terrible, terrible price." He said solemnly as Albedo set the document down.

"You intend to repeat Wenmark on Kami Miyako, My Lord?" Albedo asked with a proud and loving smile as she rolled the scroll up and moved it to one side and reached for the next one.

Ainz shook his head, "No. Much worse. They call for their gods to save them, they believe it will happen with such fervent hope that anything will do, in order to win the attention of those deities. They long for divine wrath so much? Very well, then I will 'create' gods to destroy them. I will allow Neia to do as she sees fit, with total command of the entire assembly, and whatever is left at the end, will speak for one hundred thousand years of the folly of defying my will. Those who live, if any do, will tremble from dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, that they might offend the agents of my will again. All my experiments have borne good fruit, and they will choke on it, before they themselves are cut down and thrown into the fire."

Albedo grabbed hold of the table as her body's pleasures rose in waves and crested in orgasmic bliss at the pronouncement of her Lord, which was accompanied by an unrestrained aura of darkness that caressed her like a lover's touch.

"My Lord... let me..." She began with wide golden eyes and trembling skin.

"Eight Edge Assassins! Albedo containment protocol one!" He shouted as he pushed himself back away from the table just before she leaped up from her seat, and his guards began to wrestle her to the floor for the thousandth time.

...Crossroads...

Enri stared blankly at the wall of her office with Lupusregina standing uncomfortably behind her at her left hand. "Something wrong?" Lupusregina asked as the silence stretched when the fourth person came and went with information updating her about the approach of the Army of the Northern Theocracy.

Enri looked up to Lupusregina and rested her elbows on the desk. She then brought her hands together at the fingertips with her palms apart. "What the fuck do you think?" She asked crudely, spawning a look of surprise from the werewolf beauty.

"Other than that, I mean. I know you still feel Sun's loss, but there's more to it than that, isn't there?" Lupusregina asked quietly.

Enri kept her stone beauty eyes up on those of her best friend, and stone shed water as she nodded. "I think... I understand her more, and I don't want to. Sun has been with me for years, and now he's gone without even a body to bury. I know something of what Neia endured, I thought I knew it when I lost my parents. But while they were parents, Sun was something else, a comrade, a war companion, a teacher, a leader, a guide, even a sage. And I can't even bury him. I feel lost without him. I'm afraid I'll make a mistake I wouldn't if I had his advice." She looked to her other side, where he should be standing, stroking his beard and saying something clever.

"I didn't realize you thought so little of yourself or his teachings." Lupusregina said distantly as she took her eyes away from her friend and folded her hands behind her back. She rocked herself back and forth innocently on the balls of her feet as Enri's expression became an angry glare.

"I mean he spent all that time hammering knowledge into your thick peasant skull, keeping you at his side through everything, making sure you learned everything you needed to so that you wouldn't need him. And you know, he was so proud of you, it's probably for the best that he died without knowing you didn't have any faith in his efforts." Lupusregina spoke casually and started to whistle innocently.

Enri shot to her feet and raised a finger, her mouth opened to let loose savage words, and she froze in the middle of it. "Thank you... Lupu. You may be as pervy, sadistic, and bizarre as they come... but I really couldn't ask for a better friend or a better guardian."

Lupusregina nodded smugly, "Damn right you couldn't. It still bothers me that they found a way around my senses but... even ants can be resourceful. Besides, you were never in any real danger with me around. But what did you mean by understanding 'her' and not wanting to?"

"Who else? Neia. I'm starting to understand how she could be... what she is. I think I preferred not to know. It would have made things easier for me, you know, later." She shook the thought aside and went on. "Did you reach out to Lakyus for me already? If I'm going to keep my word to Heikeren, it has to be done quickly." Enri asked with an uncomfortable shift in her otherwise comfortable cushioned seat.

"Yes, she'll approach Neia today, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have the Cardinal she knows, present. Or the 'good' general if it could be managed. If you want to get any kind of concession out of her, she'll need to see that there are a few she shouldn't kill. If she doesn't give ground, well..." Lupusregina licked her lips, "fine by me, I would love to rampage through that whole city."

...Outside of Crossroads...

"So this is happening, not what I imagined when I set out from Kami Miyako." General Heikeren remarked as he rode his horse at the head of the army.

"Me neither, me neither. But try not to think of this as a total failure on your part, and just focus on the fact that it may be the only reason anybody in Kami Miyako still lives after this." Vice Commander Ira remarked.

Heikeren took one hand off the reins of the horse and put it over his face. "I 'wasn't' thinking of it as a total failure on my part, thank you very much for that."

"Oh." She said succinctly with a goading smile on her face that she didn't really try to hide. "Well good, because you shouldn't. We didn't even have to kill many of our own to make good on the deal. What? A hundred men across the whole army?" She asked as the goading smile faded and a serious look took form.

"About that, yes, and jokes aside, knowing that this is the only way to save any of them, is the only comfort doing it brings to me." He said as the walls grew closer and a virtual wall of carts with people standing beside them, slowly came into view.

"If it helps, assuming we get through all this, I'll make sure I insist till my dying day, that we had no other choice that would have been anything more than a waste." She said tentatively.

"That actually does help. Thank you." Heikeren responded and went quiet as the army came close. A single figure with a lean body, thick black armor, short blonde hair, and piercing narrow eyes, stepped away from the carts and waited patiently. Heikeren raised his fist level with his head at his left side, and the order to halt blew somewhere behind him.

He and Ira dismounted, approached, and knelt to the young, pale skinned man. "I am General Heikeren of the Army of the Northern Theocracy, here to surrender my weapons, my armor, and my freedom, for myself and my army, to General Enri of the Sorcerous Kingdom."

Nimble bowed slightly forward and touched his hand to his armored chest "I am her proxy, General Nimble, I will be taking command over the region of the Northern Theocracy, I accept your surrender in her name while she prepares for... certain things, I understand you agreed upon."

"General Enri moves quickly." Ira remarked, "Not that I am surprised, not at this point." She said with sardonic praise.

"Agreed. Now, have your soldiers file forward and deposit their armor into the carts, starting from the one at the back, and moving toward the front cart where they will be able to draw an issue of warm clothing and be assigned to quarters. Officers go last as they must be briefed on their responsibilities as prisoners controlling the activities of their soldiers. This city is now a prison, but it is a prison in which they may move freely, for the most part... as long as they obey certain strictures." Nimble remarked with calm resolve. "And of course, understand that there will be little mercy for those who break those strictures."

"They will require little explanation of that, I can promise you." Heikeren remarked as he removed his sword, laid it flat in his palms, and held it up above his head as he lowered his gaze.

"Enri said you could keep it, something about appreciating something you two did, you can surrender them privately to avoid any public disgrace." Nimble shrugged indifferently. "The rest though, that doesn't apply to. Go ahead, get started, this'll take quite some time and I'd rather not waste even an hour." Nimble said without a hint of mirth. "Go on, get it over with."

Heikeren and Ira stood, "It will be done, General." He replied, and went to perform his final duty as a free commander of arms.

...Ruins of Wheaton...

General Oma remained close at hand to Queen Draudillon as they made their way down the street back to the late governor's manor. Her scythe rested straight back on her shoulder, ready to sweep down and harvest any life that came too close for her liking. Their steps were slow and heavy as they crunched their way through the snow that continued to pile up beneath them.

"Just a moment, majesty, I need to take a look around." General Oma remarked, and took her head off her neck with her free hand, and tossed it a good thirty feet into the air. The Queen froze at the unexpected action.

When the General caught her head and neatly put it back onto her neck, she looked over at her Queen. "Is everything alright, My Queen?" She asked at the mystified expression.

"Oh, ah, yes. I just... it- well perhaps it is a silly reaction, given that I put your head back on your body and all that, but it didn't occur to me that you could do something like this." The Queen said with a faint blush of embarrassment on her pale cheeks.

Oma laughed lightly, "I actually hadn't tried it yet. I wasn't sure it would work, myself. Now that I know it does though, it's very useful."

"OK then... see anything?" Queen Draudillon asked hopefully.

"Nothing, we've got a clear walk back to the palace, a few people are out, but none on our direct line back, we should be safe. The only ill omen is that I don't see the rest of your escort, something is very, very wrong there." Oma said in a clipped and professional tone.

"Then we'd best be back quickly, I think I'm safe, if they wanted me, then I'd likely already have been attacked. There are only a few worth really coming after in this city, and if we exclude me, well I seem to recall seeing a mention of some kind of plot to target General Baraja." The Queen said as her eyes narrowed, "The Sorcerer King saved my kingdom from destruction," she folded her arms in front of her as she began to grow angry and her jaw tensed, "his pope has pledged her help to rebuild my country. I would be a poor vassal or governor if I allowed this to go unremarked upon or if I was slow in reporting a potential problem."

"Agreed, and you are not a poor ruler." General Oma remarked with conviction. [Summon Mount] The General said, and Ichabod rose from below.

"Get behind me, My Queen, I didn't want to do this, because it will hurt the living, but please, bear with the pain." General Oma said as she flung herself into the saddle.

The fact that Queen Draudillon did not even hesitate at the warning, would never leave the memory of General Oma, she simply took the hand offered to her, and climbed onto death's mount, and though she began to howl in pain as the undead horse began to suck the life from her, she wrapped her arms around her General and held tight as the deadly behemoth of a horse charged through the streets, all the way back to the palace.

Oma ran Ichabod like a boulder rolling down a mountain, leaning into the wind to buy even a fraction of a second more of speed as she felt her Queen's shaking in agony behind her.

No sooner than she'd reared the horse back on his hind legs as she pulled him to a stop, than she leaped off and pulled the pain racked Queen with her to the painless ground below.

The Queen fell to all fours as soon as Oma let go, breathing hard as life began to return to her body. She coughed and spat into the snow, as her General crouched beside her.

Draudillon coughed, and hacked and spat into the snow, but she managed to shake off the touch of the undead General. "Go!" She urged and pointed to the manor, "I'll be fine here, it'll just take me a moment to get my bearings and my strength back, please! Go! We don't know how many there are or what they're planning but any moment lost is a moment to their advantage! GO! I order you! GO!" Draudillon snapped, and Oma straightened up and took off at a run.

The guards at the top of the stairs of the manor tensed, and remained unmoving as the undead general came barrelling up the steps, "One of you, help her! I need to see General Baraja!" The General said sharply as she threw open the door and charged into the building.

Reaching the audience chamber did not take long, and predictably, there were a number of mighty names present even at a glance. Inta and his sister, Hilda, famous for their service with Gustav in the Southern Holy Kingdom. Cenna and his remaining Black Scripture under Zesshi, the vampire twins, Thirg and Tefl, Queen Zesshi, General Musan, Lakyus and her Roses, CZ, and Skana standing beside the empty throne. There was ample conversation going on, and Oma cut through it all. "I need to speak with General Baraja, where is she?" She said loudly.

"Here." A firm voice answered as conversation died and the green armored Black Paladin entered from the opposite side of the room and approached the throne and took the seat of the late governor as her own.

The conversations of the room did not pick up as General Oma removed her helmet and approached. She stood squarely in front of Neia and bowed her head politely. "Pope Neia, I have urgent news."

"Go on." Neia said as she leaned forward.

Oma went on to relate everything, what little there was, of what she and her Queen had observed. Silence so great that even the impact of a pin on the floor could have been heard from one corner of the hall to another.

Finally, Neia spoke up. "I see, well that settles it, there are Agante in the city."

Murmurs began to go about the room, and Neia leaned back in the stone seat.

"Well, what will you do?" General Oma asked, and began to regret the question as it left her lips.

"Isn't it obvious?" Neia said coldly, "Destroy the rest of the city. The Agante love fire after all, it is what they did to your body, so... I'll give them all the fire they could ever wish for."

...Kami Miyako...

The sweating never stopped. Boabdil's twenty rushed from place to place, hoofing it through the snow on foot, trading the speed of horses for the power to blend in as they moved about the city under Enlaith's direction. Back within the manor, Boabdil and Illal sat at the ornate dining room table across from the elf prostitute with an expression stern enough that were she differently dressed, and human, he might have thought the elf to be an instructor.

Illal shifted uncomfortably and beneath the table, her hand found that of her husband. She occasionally stole a glance his way as Enlaith spoke. "Truth time." Enlaith said melodically as her hands folded in front of her on the table.

"I have no idea who will win between Dominic and Yvon. Maybe we'd get lucky and they'll kill each other. But I don't think so. Nobody but Dominic himself knows how many Agante are in the city, and nobody but Yvon knows how many units have joined himself. I've privately spoken with a few who have made it this way who work in the... upper levels of the interior. As far as ourselves, the fight between the two may be a net good. But we still have the same problem. Where to hide them." Enlaith acknowledged with lip biting annoyance.

"I think the artisan district would be the best choice, it isn't strategically important to either party, it's mainly used for work, it's back against a far corner of the city, and the warehouses are all but empty since no new materials are coming in to the city." Raymond added as he walked in wearing the garb of a cardinal and held out his hand to Enlaith.

The elf woman, to the surprise of Boabdil and his wife, stood and faced him, and shook his hand respectfully. Solution was at his back, and could always be counted upon, "It doesn't hurt that a lot of the artisans themselves are dead." She giggled, "The danger of having a skill nobody needs in a city under siege, and being used to speaking your mind since your skills used to be valuable." She was still chuckling when she sat down.

"What does she mean, husband?" Illal asked uncomfortably as she felt a concept fly over her head.

"Purges." Boabdil remarked tensely. "Yours was not a unique case, dear. Dominic... I refuse to call him Cardinal... he's gotten rid of people opposed to him. Artisans, master jewelers and goldsmiths, they were all well connected, wealthy, outspoken..."

"And useless to Dominic. But I've put down a fair number myself for being too vocal the other way." Raymond admitted candidly.

Illal paled and her hand shot up and covered her mouth. "Are you... monsters? All of you?" She looked around the table, and Raymond thumbed in the direction of the inhuman smile of Solution.

"Just that one. Though we've had some minor discussions about that. Lady Illal, I am sorry... but this is how things are. I didn't create this conflict, I just have to get as many through it as possible. If I'm not absolutely ruthless about removing obstacles, or threats before they can become obstacles, then everything I've tried to do will be for nothing. I simply can't have that. I won't let them get Nua, or Enlaith, or any of the others, human or elf, that I want to protect. So, if it comes to it, I'll kill everything and everyone between myself and that goal. Your husband is a soldier, ask him to explain it if you can't understand that." Raymond folded his arms in front of his chest and sat straight in his chair, his once flourishing brown beard was graying from the stress of the last year, yet his expression was anvil hard.

"Dear... go to our room, please. You don't need to worry about these things..." Boabdil said, letting his hand fall to her thigh and squeeze gently.

Illal stood slowly and looked from one to the other, a few times it seemed she might speak, before but barely a squeak came out before she rushed out of the room and back to her quarters.

Boabdil sighed and looked in the direction she'd rushed off in. "I'm sorry, I guess it was a bit much to expect her to sit in on this. She's a good woman, but not well suited to the barbarism we find ourselves surrounded by."

"It's fine, probably doesn't help that she had to talk to an elf like I'm a person." Enlaith remarked with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Boabdil shook his head, "Believe it or not, that would be the least of her problems, her teachers were all elves, she was practically raised by them, and believe it or not, hatred for your kind is not an inborn trait. As she put it to me once, 'Though she was long of ear, she was always here. Though he was of elven skin, still I grew up with him.'" He looked slightly embarrassed, "Don't be too critical, she was young, writing terrible poetry is a trait of many of the young."

"I'll take your word on that one." Enlaith said with a thin eyebrow dubiously raised. "But fine, it doesn't matter anyway, if you're being truthful with me and she lives out the end, the new world after this one will be easier for her to accept. I like Raymond's idea of the artisan district, the warehouses can be quietly bought up, and quickly."

Raymond slapped the table with an enormous smile on his face. "I've got it!" He said as he shot to his feet.

Mute looks of shock formed as he did so, "No time to explain, I've got to go before the opportunity passes. Solution, I leave the evacuation of the camps to you, but please also ask for the evacuation of my household... including Nua. I'll be back soon. Enlaith, please fill the General in on everything else."

"So... I didn't see that coming." Solution remarked, "But I am supposed to guard him, and as per usual, he forgets that as long as I'm following my master's orders, I can do whatever I want. I'm going to keep an eye on him. Enlaith, finish briefing the newbie, if some incredible beauty shows up in a maid outfit, refer them to Nua, she'll know what to do."

Enlaith, stunned to silence by the confounding occurrence, could only accept what the monster with the beautiful face said to her, and gave little hesitant nods that showed the first little break in her long held stance of bravado, and it didn't recover until she was left alone with the General Boabdil to say the only thing she could think of. "That was strange."

"Very much so, but, what else do I need to know?" He asked, tearing his gaze away from the direction of the front entrance.

"A lot, so let's get down to business." Enlaith said without even bothering to disguise her gratitude at a return to relative normalcy.

...C'Teon...

"Forward! March!" General Zaryusu shouted as he and Zanac spurred their horses forward.

"That was ugly." Zanac remarked after an hour of nothing but the sound of drums setting the pace and the sound of horses and stamping feet behind them.

"Yes, it was." Zaryusu remarked mutely. "I've heard of the human institution of slavery, but never seen its fruits up close like that."

Zanac nodded along, "Still, this one was relatively small, C'Teon seemed to be mainly a manufacturing and storage city, other than that one little facility of discipline, it was fairly small. Given its evident relationship to Kami Miyako, I thought we'd find more."

Shalltear gave her sweet, enigmatic smile to them both, "Of course you wouldn't, think about it, Kami Miyako has the wealthy and powerful humans, Feron had all the mining, Wheaton most of the farming. Making things is hard, the few slaves that worked here would be specialized and expensive. Mistreating them would be like..." She scratched her head in frustration, "like something... I don't know..." She grumbled as she tried to come up with an analogy.

"Like killing the cow instead of milking it." Zanac suggested tentatively.

"Yes!" She said enthusiastically and pointed at him. "That!"

"I believe Lady Shalltear is correct, it's a kind of waystation and manufacturing center, while the discipline facility was ugly, it's not the same thing to abuse a master craftsman as it is to beat an easily replaced miner or field hand." Zaryusu added in turn.

"How long until we get to Kami Miyako?" Shalltear asked, a bored expression already forming on her face as she looked over the stark landscape of the road in front of her, leafless trees and an open white plain on either side, but for their army, the sun shone bright with spring due to the magic scroll they'd chosen to use.

"Not long." Aureole Omega remarked as she and Leinas rode up to the front, side by side.

"Good." Chindai said as he approached from the rear on the other side of the long formation, his wives only a pace behind him. "Just because dark elves 'can' handle the cold, doesn't mean we wouldn't 'prefer' warm furs and warm alcohol in this time of year. He suggested pointedly.

"We know what you really want those furs for, husband." Ryla said archly, "And it isn't just for napping."

Chindai looked sheepishly pleased with himself, "Your night singing tells me you do not object."

She looked smug, "I didn't say I do, I only tell the truth, now and in the darkness, for all to hear."

"They're a blunt, open faced people." Leinas remarked to her companions. "Charming in its way, but if you're not a bit ribald, they can be a bit much." She winked at the trio of elves, and they grinned like cats who had found unguarded canaries.

"Ahem, ah, as she was saying, not long, it's about a five day march, given the time needed to make camp." Leinas clarified for Aureole Omega and coughed uncomfortably.

"Sounds about right, but I wouldn't be surprised if a few small numbers found their courage and chose to try to strike us in the dark, so we'll need a firm watch and to work in shifts. Losing a soldier is one thing, losing one to our own ineptitude or underestimating the last holdouts of the Theocracy is another." Zaryusu added, "Nobody wants to be the last casualty in a war whose end is already decided."

Nobody was inclined to argue with that.

...Ruins of Wheaton...

"You'll destroy the remainder of the city? Just to get a few assassins?" General Oma looked at Neia as if she'd grown a second head.

Neia looked right back at her. "This city doesn't deserve to exist in the first place. Before you ask, I'll evacuate what remains of the people who live here, I'm sure the Agante are in hiding, they'll refuse to attend a great assembly of the population, once we've moved the rest out, the place can be destroyed. I can't leave a sword free that will eventually be raised against His Majesty. If I do that, what do you think they'll do with their blades? No. I have no intention of leaving a scrap of resistance alive to come and fight another day. Retreat is not defeat, so allowing them to run away, just like at Prart, is allowing them to come again. I will not do that." She said with conviction.

"Isn't that a little much?" Skana asked reluctantly as she laid her hand on her wife's shoulder from behind her.

Neia's face went from stern to blushingly cute as she looked up and over her shoulder at the emerald green of her wife's good eye. "You are my better half in every way, but this is, if anything, something of a mercy as well. I am sparing the survivors after all, and what do you think 'His Majesty' will do if I am, by some slender chance, killed by the Agante? I am not afraid to die, and I doubt very much they will succeed even if everything up to the moment went off perfectly. But if they did, well, look what happened when she was killed." Neia remarked, gesturing to the undead General Oma.

"That... is a fair point actually." Lakyus interjected reluctantly as she approached the throne.

"Just out of curiosity, aren't you at least wondering a little, what kind of Undead you would become with magic shaped to your nature?" General Oma said as she took off her head and tucked it under her arm, as if making a point.

Neia put her thumb and forefinger close together in front of her. "Just a little." She admitted. "But don't tell Lord Demiurge I said that, he'll take it as an invitation for experimentation." She chuckled a bit, but nobody else did, and she rolled her eyes at the lack of humor others exhibited.

'Father is right, nobody gets jokes around here.' She thought with annoyance. "The point being, the city is already a ruin, I will simply make it cease to be, down to its foundations. We don't need it anymore, we're marching out tomorrow for Kami Miyako, let it remain a ruin of bloodstained stone and ash, all broken and worthless, with no one behind to mourn it, or the handful of Agante corpses charred and twisted in the ruins." Without even meaning to, her eyes became dark, and her voice chilled even the coldest of present souls to hear it.

Lakyus approached as silence answered Neia's words, "I need some time from you, soon, I've received a message from General Enri, and your promise to hear her out in advance, no matter how much you don't want to."

For a moment Neia almost gave in to her impulse to immediately refuse, but her empty dark eyes found a glimmer, a shimmer, a reflection of her own face in the green eyes of her friend, lowered her own face in acquiescence. "Alright, ask her when, and where. If she's going through you, it must be a delicate matter."

"It is." Lakyus said, and leaned forward to whisper into Neia's ear. "The Army of the Northern Theocracy has surrendered, and a chance to ask for your mercy was a condition."

Neia's fist clenched tight, her teeth gritted and ground against one another, a pressure began to build around her, only to slowly fade as she got ahold of her temper. "I owe her one. Fine. But if 'that' is what she wants… then it will be at the location of my choosing rather than her own."

"I'll pass that along. Thank you, Neia." Lakyus said, and put her hand on Neia's shoulder and squeezed with adamantite strength, not with an intent to harm her, but rather with the ferocity of affection from one concerned friend to another.

"Thank me tomorrow morning, when I'll meet with them, but tonight, I've got a city to burn." Neia said calmly.

"Again." CZ corrected indifferently.

"Yes. Again." Neia acknowledged.