God Rising: The Cult of Ainz
Written by: AtheistBasementDragon
Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots
Chapter 198: Because When it is, None Call it Treason
...Kami Miyako...
Dominic felt his muscles straining as he fled the area, as soon as he was out of sight, he dove into a nearby house from which no sound could be heard. He looked around, breathing deep and hard as he tried to catch his breath. A simple house, barely above that of the average peasant. He shuffled over to a crude dresser, "Ha... ha... ha..." he started to laugh with his breathing. "Too clever, far too clever for your own good, Yvon. You forgot who you were dealing with. The gods favor me, not you, never you." He uttered as he pulled out a simple peasant tunic that was roughly his size, simple brown pants and a crude black shirt patched in places to keep it usable.
"OK, no cloak, but I can deal with the cold, that slave did. Oh. That one, I suppose she's been caught, if she hasn't been killed. What was the name?" He pondered briefly as he threw on the garment and snatched up a pair of worn work boots to top off the crude ensemble.
"Screw it, doesn't matter, if she's dead then I can't do anything, if she's alive, she probably won't be for long. Still, she did warn me and it nearly killed her. The gods obviously ensured she would survive to warn me, I guess that earns a chance to be reborn as a human in the next life but... until then? Well, if she's alive I guess I'll give her as a present to Raymond, assuming he hasn't turned traitor to me too. He's gentle on his slaves, I suppose she's earned that much at least." Dominic busied himself with the pointless chatter to the empty room as he tried to focus on what he needed to do. He wiped the sweat from his brow and rummaged through the dresser further, looking for what, he wasn't sure, not until he found it.
His hand found purchase on the handle of a crude iron dagger, simplest of simple tools, cheapest of cheap weapons other than a club, or a rock picked up out of a stream. He sighed heavily, 'This is going to be unpleasant but... oh well. Yarvin will have to keep back his laughter as best he can when he see this.' Dominic thought to himself and brought the knife up to his head, and he began to shave his head. "I should have studied illusion magic..." He said in annoyance as scraps of hair began to fall away, bit by bit until his head was shaved smooth and the once full head of hair was cut away to nothingness, leaving only a pale dome of skull in its place.
"That'll have to do." He muttered under his breath, and he put the knife back in the drawer. From the pouch he kept at his side, he took out a gold coin, and placed it atop the dresser. "For your trouble." He remarked to the absent peasant, and went out the window the way he'd come in. The armor, he carried to a small well behind the home, and lifting the grate over it, he tossed the pieces down to disappear into the darkness and the water below.
They landed with a series of small splashes, and he closed the grate as it had been before. Then he took to the main street and began to walk. The winter winds weren't howling as they had been the night before, a dry cold had settled over the capital. People were out en masse trying to get by while chaos erupted only a few miles away and slowly spread like thick stew spilled onto the floor.
He held his stomach at the thought of stew, then with a snarl he pushed the hungry feeling aside and kept to his purpose. 'OK, how long do I have before Yvon finds out I'm not dead?' Dominic began to think to himself as he stamped through the thin layer of snow, 'If Yarvin is alive, I might actually have longer than if they killed him. He's stubborn, strong, he'll hold out under torture if they even suspect I'm not dead. But at the very least, I've got a few hours. Enough time to get a little rest before I reach out to my people. That will be plenty, that will be all I need, and then Yvon, I'll make you pay.'
...Feron...
"Any bodies left?" Aalon asked from the head of the table in the large open meeting room.
"None." Tula answered with ample satisfaction. "We've burned up most of the human filth, they're just ashes now, we're mixing it with shit to make fertilizer for the fields, with all this material, the harvests here will surpass what used to be Wheaton at its best for the next twenty years." She flashed a fangy vampire smile and her long dark hair swayed behind her as she laughed pleasantly in satisfaction.
Aalon's claws extended from his hand, "Very good, daughter, very good indeed. Did any humans choose to remain behind at all?"
The shapely, slender vampire shook her head, "None, this place is empty except for us, and I don't expect to see any of them ever again here. Too cold, too long of a trip, not enough supplies, they probably turned on each other before they got halfway to Kami Miyako. And of course we now know that the city isn't letting new people in sooo..." She spread her hands open in front of her, and her father imitated the gesture.
"Yes, Feron is probably even more dead than Wheaton. I think I'll appeal to His Majesty to turn this mountain range into a province all its own, when all is said and done, and to let me make Feron the new capital... but... I think I'll change the name." Aalon said thoughtfully.
"To what, my love?" Elpida asked as she entered the room and went to wrap her arms around his front from behind.
"Elf'eron." He said, "Kind of a reference to what it used to be, and what it is now, iron of the elves. What do you think?" He asked.
Tula and Elpida traded thoughtful looks, the long blonde haired radiant elven woman seemed to find common ground. "Yes, that works, I like it." Tula said first, followed quickly by Elpida.
"Agreed." Elpida added. "Now are we going to send our elves east to Kami Miyako to join with Neia and the rest?"
"No, we're going to secure all the human towns and villages, capture all the priests, and free any remaining slaves held in isolated estates and facilities. When it comes time to take Kami Miyako, I'll have a few thousand of us and we'll use that magnificent [Gate] to get there. But until then, we have our own work to do to ensure we win the peace after we've won the war. Forgive me for this Elpida, but I must say it." Aalon remarked calmly as his lover looked at him with expectant eyes.
"Nua is well and thoroughly avenged." He said with satisfaction as he looked out the window where he could see the almost total ruination of the small mining city.
"Even if she hadn't been by now... well another week or so, and that'll be enough." Tula grinned, "All those years of planning and preparation, it makes me wonder what I'll do with myself after it's all over."
"Whatever you want." Elpida remarked, "It's like I said to Tika before I left Kami Miyako, 'that's what it means to be free'. I want nothing more than to be by Dolorem... or Aalon, whichever name you use, for the rest of my life. But maybe you should think about adventuring."
Tula bit her lip as she thought about that, "That's actually appealing, but I was thinking I would join the priesthood of His Majesty's religion, or one of their military orders, it seems like I could do more good that way."
"Whatever choice you make, my precious daughter, I'll be proud of you, and it will be your choice to make, now and forever after." Aalon said enthusiastically as he raised his hand and clutched the wrist of his elven lover as she leaned over behind him.
...Ruins of Wenmark...
They followed her through the streets as they left the husk of the nightmare of stone behind. She kicked the bodies carelessly out of her way, or stepped on them, rather than over them. Her crisp steps decisive and martial, and around her whorled a blacker aura than Raymond had ever seen. He flinched every time he looked at her marching back.
Boabdil was faring no better beside him. They held the corners of each other's eyes as they tried and failed again and again to focus ahead of them. Nua at once shuddered with horror and wanted to dance for joy. "This is what descends on my persecutors... yes... oh yes oh yes... let her come, let her come for the overseers, the breakers, the barkers, the masters and the mistresses. Let her come for the cities and towns, let her come for the trade caravans and the temples and the priests...' She thought, but as she continued to add to the list of those whose deaths she had begun to pray for, a vision of what it would look like passed across her mind. Endless fire and blood turning the green grass red and drowning it in a flood.
She kept herself from swallowing hard, but she clutched at Raymond's arm for security as she walked beside him. He made no objection.
"Where are we going, exactly?" Enri asked as she cast her eyes uneasily about the ghostly city. Somewhere in the distance, something fell with a crash.
"To negotiate, of course, just as I promised." Neia replied with false sweetness in her voice.
"I understand what you said, and why you have no inclination to spare any of us." Boabdil said tentatively as they followed her.
"Do you?" Neia asked coldly.
"Yes." He answered with discomfort.
"What I've told you before, is why I will find it... 'satisfying' even if I take no real pleasure in it. True, I want your entire country to cease to exist, and I would happily see it done, but even with all that has come about, that is secondary. My goal was and is always the same. The supremacy of my god. And you all are in his way. Even if you submit, we all know your temples won't change, it's not in their nature, am I wrong?" Neia asked as she casually kicked a helmeted head away from its owner and bouncing down the street with an ominous tink, thunk, tink, noise that grew louder, then faded away to nothing as it vanished far, far away.
No answer was forthcoming.
"That's why I'll kill you all. You deserve no mercy for what you've done, and I might even be able to make myself 'enjoy' it all for once. But the truest reason for why I will do it is because your ways cannot be allowed to continue. I tried again and again to warn you of the need to change, by showing you the punishments and retribution I would mete out to those who violated the will of my justice. But despite all of that, you just wouldn't listen. Father has given your city to me, and I see no reason to leave any of it standing."
She casually kicked a gate off its hinges and sent it bouncing out of the way as they entered the courtyard of a large building. "Far better to destroy the whole place and let the grass grow for the horses of the plains." As she said this, she led them into what was obviously an administrative building, down a blackened hallway that had cracked from the heat of the fires against the stone. She led them all the way to a pair of enormous double doors, the carvings on the door showed images of human supremacy and the suffering and subjugation of all other beings.
[Unliving Strength] [Lesser Strength] [Death Grip] She uttered, and smashed the doors to pieces, sending the fragments flying into the interior.
"Welcome to the center of the government for the dead city of Wenmark. She looked up at the seating, several charred corpses were still in place. "Oh, I wondered what happened to that lot." Neia said with grim satisfaction and a predatory smile. "Just shove their bodies out of the way, and go ahead, make your case, I might even change my mind." Neia said with a vicious denial in her tone that contradicted her words as she sat at the ruined table in the center of the room and gestured for the rest of her company to take the former seats of power, to beg for the lives of the people in the last Theocracy city.
...Kami Miyako...Yvon's Office...
The shouting reached the skinny older man long before the sight of its source did. When it did, he rose slowly from his desk and began to head for the exit of his manor, a slight measure of annoyance came and went when he had the impulse to call for one of his servants and remembered he didn't have his slaves anymore. "Oh well, you can't have your stew and eat it too." He chuckled at the joke and tended to himself, seeing to a brief bath and getting dressed on his own in preparation for the arrival of his newly victorious subordinates.
He finished just in time for the procession to reach him, the huge man on horseback dragging a corpse behind him that had clearly been torn apart by being dragged along the road. "It is done." The behemoth said as he shoved the unconscious elf off the side of his horse to fall in an unconscious heap into the snow with an audible thud.
"That one beloned to Dominic, we saw it... holding a sword, in the upper window, standing just behind the late Cardinal's shoulder. I thought you might like to deal with it personally, since it is too late for you to kill Dominic yourself." He said as he got down off of his horse with a graceful hop and then lowered himself to one knee and turned his gaze downward.
Yvon raised his hand over the man's head and spoke in a raspy voice, "I bless you in the name of the gods for your work in their divine name. Great work have you done, to put their true son in his proper place."
"Now, bring me his body, I want to see him for myself. Dominic, that is, I can't really be satisfied until I've held his head in my own hands." Yvon remarked savagely, and with a deferential bowing of his head, the behemoth straightened up and went over to where the corpse lay splayed out in the snow with its hands overhead, a long bloody streek stretching from where it now lay, back in the direction from which they'd come, and leading all the way to the home of Yvon himself.
The behemoth cut the rope with a clean slice and then taking the rope up, he dragged it over to where Yvon stood, rubbing his hands together eagerly in the cold. The dragging sound eased off when it moved over the dead grass and thick powder that had accumulated in front of Yvon's manor, but neither sound drew any reaction. Behind them, the cry 'No more Dominic! No more hunger!' was growing louder.
When he drew close, the armored behemoth went to the corpse, grabbed it by the hair, and tossed it head first to the feet of the new ruler. It fell face first, and Yvon went to the side, stuck his foot under the battered and broken shoulder, flipped it over on its back. His sinister eyes widened as he looked down at the charred and mutilated face. He crouched and peeled back the charred eyelids and peered into the blank, staring pupils.
"You... idiot." Yvon hissed.
"Cardinal?" The behemoth asked with a sudden shock of fear as the divine aura of Yvon's wrath sprang to life. The huge man stepped back in sudden fear, as did those behind him.
"Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!" Yvon snarled.
"Cardinal, what's wrong?!" The behemoth asked urgently.
Yvon put a foot onto the chest of the corpse. [Divine Push] [Divine Pull] He uttered, and reached down for the head again, he grabbed both sides of the head, and yanked, hard. A moment of resistance, and the head was torn off at the neck with a brutal and sickening sound of ripping. Part of the spine dangled free as Yvon carried the head over to the behemoth. He kept one hand on the hair of the dangling head, and then, holding it at eye level with the huge soldier, his other hand went to the eye and he pried the eyelid up with two fingers.
"What color is that?" Yvon asked with a deadly, sinister voice.
"Black." The soldier answered with growing foreboding.
"And if Dominic does not have black eyes?" Yvon asked like the man was stupid.
"Then... then that is not Cardinal Dominic." The soldier answered with a sick realization. "But... that doesn't mean he isn't dead, Cardinal! He could have died elsewhere in the manor trying to escape in disguise!" The soldier uttered urgently as he tried to salvage the situation and slow his increasingly rapid heartbeat.
"You'd best hope that is the case. For now, I'll bet that thing," he pointed to the limp body of the surviving elf, "can tell us one way or another. Pick it up and bring it into my home, I have a room for punishing animals that don't obey, we'll see how much we have to hurt this one to break it."
"Sir!" The behemoth uttered and he rushed to scoop up the crumpled, battered elf over one shoulder, and he followed Yvon toward the entrance to his house.
"Sir, what about the... the food?" He asked hopefully.
Yvon thought for just a second, "Keep the soldiers guarding out here for now, we need to know what happened to Dominic, if he turns out to be dead, we'll go lead the forces outside to take the camps, if faithless outsiders get in the way, put them down, if they don't, ignore them. But first we need information."
"Yessir!" He said urgently and barked orders over his shoulder as he rushed behind the cardinal and into his manor, and then shut the door behind the three of them.