The Trial: Journey's End
Written by: AtheistBasementDragon
Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots
Chapter 16: Allies to Enemies
...Menowa...
Neia felt her heart start to race in her chest as her former ally exited the area. But she gave no outward sign that it was important. 'Is it really betrayal, when she never liked me much in the first place?' Neia wondered, and wondered further, that she felt no anger, only a sense of... sadness, not deep or broad, but present, and all the more strange to her that she could not identify the source for it. She stroked the back of her hand slowly, as if caressing a wound, and waited for the next who would strive to hammer nails into her coffin.
The lumbering steps told her who it was even before the witness was called, such was the careful orchestration of her opponents. 'This is Vanysa's doing. She knows me well enough to know what order to call them in. Oh god, no... who will they call after Gagaran... please don't let it be her?' She stilled the thought before it could claim a firm footing on her heart. 'No. Do not panic yet. If she were coming, she'd have told me... unless she were forbidden. Or would she?' Neia wondered, and then pinched her own thigh sharply, letting the brief little pain distract her from the thought as Gagaran's name was finally uttered and the woman went to the podium.
"You are Gagaran, the Adamantite ranked adventurer, aren't you?" Demiurge asked rhetorically.
"I am." She replied easily, Neia could hear the pride in the woman's voice.
"You've faced all manner of threats, dangers, and terrors, haven't you?" Demiurge asked, again rhetorically, but again Gagaran answered.
"That's how you get to be Adamantite ranked, so yes. Yes I have." She still held the pride in her voice that was the due of the pinnacle of human potential.
"You served under General Neia Baraja, is that right?" Demiurge asked as he slowly began to build momentum.
"I did." Gagaran said, turning her glare on the Black Paladin as if her stare alone could strike Neia down.
"And what was your impression of her?" Demiurge asked, his casual gesture out to her being at once inviting and expectant.
"How far back do you want me to go?" Gagaran asked sardonically, "The answer doesn't change... much."
"All stories begin at the beginning, so start there." gave a polite smile and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
"I first met her when she was a nobody of a squire, just some girl from a failing nation who was in desperate need of help. But I knew immediately that she was trouble, you get an instinct for these things when you're in my position. It isn't that she was powerful, she wasn't. But it was her eyes, the way they looked. It wasn't just the fearlessness, many warriors who survive dire things develop that kind of courage, whether they're an adventurer or a regular in an army." Gagaran paused and took a drink of water and gulped it down, hard.
"Then what was it?" Demiurge pushed, the first bead of sweat appeared on Gagaran's forehead.
"It was the obsession, the zealotry. I saw recklessness in the extreme, and that made her dangerous, not just to her enemies, but to her allies. She had a death wish, and would drag a lot of people down with her along the way... and I was right." Gagaran's voice was at once hollow, horrified, and admiring as she glared not at Demiurge who spoke to her, but at the Black Paladin of whom she spoke.
"I heard how she offered her head to the Sorcerer King if she offended him by begging for him to send help even one year earlier, even if it hurt his kingdom? Who does that?! Who just says, 'Please do this even if it hurts your country, but if I've offended you, here have this head from my shoulders to make up for it.' It's crazy, isn't it? In a way... I admit I admired her for that story, that kind of devotion to her people is what heroes are made of but... it's also madness! Heroes aren't supposed to throw their lives away! Death may happen, but I felt for sure that she almost longed for it! And once someone treats their own life that way, well what does anyone else's matter!" Gagaran was shouting her answers by then, but shouting them at Neia herself as the giant of a woman clenched her fists in frustration.
Demiurge however, remained utterly at ease, "Did your opinion ever change?" He prompted, and for a moment Gagaran could only grind her teeth.
"Not noticeably. She was dangerous then, she's dangerous now. When she started getting stronger, and the things she... manifested, well how do I say this?" She took a deep breath and the minotaur official nearby approached and refilled her cup with water. She drank deeply and set the cup down on the podium again.
"I believe in His Majesty, that he can and 'will' make a paradise out of his empire, I have seen enough to be convinced of that. But her?" Gagaran knocked the cup aside and sent it clattering loudly to the floor and she jabbed her finger at the Pope, "She'll create a desert and call it peace! She only grew more and more violent as the war went on, she became unhinged!" Her voice began to rise with excitement and frustration.
"I saw her play with terror like children with their toys! No wonder they coined the word 'terroreyes' for her. Fear is her weapon and to use that weapon she creates oceans of blood to drown her enemies. All that though, all of it... is nothing compared to what happened in Wheaton."
Gagaran's voice went from outraged and loud, to so small and weak that it was only the amplification magic and the quality construction of the pavilion that allowed her to be heard from where she stood.
"I... heard her in my head that day. Whatever it was, whatever happened, whatever she did, I heard her in my head and all I felt was a lust for blood! Like a newborn crying for the breast, or a child for their toy... all I could think of was my desire to kill and kill and kill! There wasn't any reason, I was like a mad dog and she did it to me!" She screamed the last sentence and jammed her finger, shaking and trembling, at the still statue-like Black Paladin.
"I still don't remember everything, but what I do..." Gagaran clutched her head and the fearless adventurer, the woman of legend, could not keep her body from shaking at the memories she still had, "what I do is the cause of nightmares that never stop, and I can still hear her! I can still hear that seductive invitation to butcher and slaughter! I'm cursed, and she cursed me! We were on the same side and she cursed me to this hell! Me and who knows how many others! When we were ourselves again after it was over... most of the city was dead or burning... and she made that happen."
"Damn it all, she almost killed my sister at Prart, when that thing she does began, Lakyus could have been shredded like so much paper, she executed her own people, prisoners, just to show that taking hostages was pointless, and she did it with an expression that one might use when trimming a garden's stray branches or cutting off a stray hair from her own head... like it was nothing. How does anyone just kill their own like that?!"
Gagaran's face was a twisted mask of pain and she grabbed the podium hard enough to crack the sturdy, thick wood, "Maybe... look I really... I really don't hate her, but the voice, and the things she made us do? Nobody can walk away from that! And I'll feel a whole lot better and safer with 'it' safely locked away or... or something." Gagaran cut herself off from uttering the word 'dead' and forced herself to finish.
"So you wanted my opinion, there it is, she was a rampage waiting to happen, she was unleashed, and so a rampage happened. As long as she's alive, if you put allies around her, they'll either die or be warped, if there are innocent people in her way, then I don't think they'll be there for very long." Gagaran tried, and largely failed, to appear decisive and resolute, as she folded her arms in front of her body, but she did at least sound truthful, that much she was sure of when her lips pursed with finality.
Trapped within her hood, the darkness was her world, but Neia remained still and unmoving through the entire tirade, a statue except of course, for the pulsing redness in her night dominated eyes. Of course, even with those red points, she could not see through the thick leather hood, but despite it keeping out the light and obstructing her view, she heard every word, and for the first time since her ordeal began, she was grateful for the gag in her mouth.
Albedo stood as Demiurge expressed his thanks and seated himself. A dozen questions stampeded through her head, but as she looked at the 'prey' at the podium, she felt a minor twinge of frustration. 'Damn, she looks so vulnerable up there, to attack her testimony would only lend her sympathy and make Neia appear to be a villain. Bothersome insect. Well there are better witnesses I can use to counter her. But this one thing I can do.' She thought, and struck home with her question.
"Just a few questions for you, Gagaran of Blue Rose, and then you may go." Albedo said with a matronly smile and the sort of affectionate voice she used when encouraging someone to do what she wanted.
"Do your sisters agree with your opinion? Any of them?" Albedo asked with a voice as gentle as a mother asking a child whose face was covered with chocolate, if they'd gotten into the chocolate cake. It wasn't asked to find the truth, but to allow the child to confess to what the mother already knew.
"No... No they don't. Tia and Tina are... unique. They take a very indifferent view on the means as long as they get to the ends they want. And as for Lakyus and Evileye... they're not really speaking to me at the moment." Gagaran answered, somewhat shamefaced.
"I see, and are they feeling 'cursed' themselves, or is it just you?" Albedo asked gently, as if one were asking a child if an injury hurt or not, knowing it did and that they wouldn't want to admit it.
"If they are, they haven't said anything." Gagaran responded reluctantly.
"So not everybody had the same results as you, so then isn't it fair to say that it is something about 'you' rather than about 'her' that has you thinking the way you are now?" Albedo asked with the teasing, leading question, and Gagaran hung her head.
"It may be... but I know the sound of my own voice, versus hers. And I hear her still, and I don't know if I ever won't." Gagaran uttered in a hushed and troubled tone.
From where she sat, Neia felt her heart all but break, and so she took up a quill that was near to hand and scrawled something on the back of her hand, then put her hand on the table, flat, beneath the eyes of Pandora's Actor.
She felt him squeeze her shoulder reassuringly, and she relaxed a little.
"That will be all." Albedo remarked, and Gagaran left the podium, and Neia faced her, even behind the hood, thanks to the heavy steps, Gagaran's position was obvious to her as if she could be seen.
The adamantite ranked adventurer returned the look, directly to the faceless hood, seeing the degraded state of the woman many regarded as a hero, the woman she fought beside and fought under, her heartbeat increased again.
As she passed, she glanced down at the table, where Neia's hand still rested, curious to see what she'd written and shown to Pandora's Actor, and her heart leaped into her throat. She read, 'Get her help. Please.' Scrawled crudely on the skin of the Black Paladin she'd testified against.
Gagaran could only trudge the rest of the way out of the trial, and felt every inch the traitor as she did so.
As she exited the area, she found an unexpected sight. Across the street, impossible to miss in a city full of minotaurs, were her sisters, Lakyus and Evileye. She waited as a pair of pull carts rushed over the stone, and then dashed across the street.
"Lakyus... Ev-Keeno! What are you doing here?!" Gagaran exclaimed in surprise, "Wait you're not here to... testify, are you?" She went pale, "Did you... hear everything?"
"Damn it, Gagaran... Damn it!" Keeno approached her with two quick steps and looked up with tears in her vampire blood red eyes, eyes she'd hidden for generations of human lifetimes that were naked and free to be shown to the world, stared angrily up at her. The side of Keeno's tiny fist pounded into Gagaran's heavy armored torso.
"How could you? How could you do that?" Keeno asked plaintively, "I know you don't like her, never did, but didn't you stop to think about what you were doing?"
Gagaran's face was stoney, "Did she? Did she ever stop to think about what she was doing? When she put arrows into the people who trusted her? When she told us all to kill and turned me into a berserker that could slaughter anyone and everyone no matter who or what they were?"
Keeno was close, and her fist pounded in frustration, but she didn't say anything else.
Lakyus however, did. "Do you think she really walked away from all that like it was nothing? I'm a priestess, and I was then too, and I spent many hours helping her cope with that nightmare, yes, she did. She hated every single bit of it. Why do you think she spent so long in that recovery house? The whole thing all but drove her mad! She's not a monster! She was never going to hurt me, no matter what you thought!" The blonde woman's voice was loud enough to draw glances from the minotaur population, even discounting the fact that there were humans in their city at all, who stared at them just over that.
"Maybe not... but not everything she did wrong was on purpose... and even if it wasn't, she's not the only one that war ruined! What about me?!" Gagaran slapped her own chest with agonized frustration. "I'm your sister too damn it! We walked together through fire and blood! You brought me back from the dead after Jaldabaoth killed me! But now here I am the walking dead and you're worried about what happens to her?! I haven't slept free of nightmares since that day! She's dangerous! She'll destroy you if she's left to roam free! I didn't do this because I hate her... I'm grateful to her..." Gagaran's lip trembled against her will and she crouched down, and touched Keeno's angry face.
"You get to show yourself, I can really see you, and she had a hand in that... but I won't let her put you all at risk again!" Gagaran's vision blurred, "Please... please understand... this had to be done, this had to happen... I don't feel good about it, so please... forgive me." She asked desperately as she held out her hands to them both.
There was a long silence, and neither took the hands Gagaran offered out.
"Wait for us." Lakyus said when it had already stretched too long, "We're actually going in, we're the next pair of witnesses."
Her beautiful blue eyes stared hard up into her long time sister, "Lady Albedo saw this coming from you, and we're being summoned to rebut this assertion that she laid some kind of terrible curse down on you or anybody else. Having a cursed sword, I'm something of an expert witness on the subject."
"And given that I'm an expert magic user and am familiar with all manner of curses, I'll be shoring up her testimony, and we can both speak about her state of mind. You made her out to be a monster, but that isn't right, and we've all seen enough monsters that you should have known better, Gagaran." Keeno said with a stinging rebuke that had Gagaran drop her arms in defeat, leaving her hands at her sides.
"Come back in, sit, watch, and see it all through our eyes, as you should have the whole time." Lakyus said with a more gentle tone than Keeno had used.
They didn't wait on her answer, they didn't need to, they knew her choice before she made it, and returned to the entry to take a seat at the back and finally hear her sisters out.
...Crescent Lake...
Bertra watched the testimony of Gagaran with rapt attention from the great square, elves and a few resident humans were staring up for so long that their necks ached as the drama unfolded in front of them.
It wasn't hard to tell the mood, it was sour. Confused, even disbelieving as one of the ones who had helped free the elves, testified against the one behind it. Angry rumblings were the order of the day, but from where Bertra sat, all she could feel was a dull ache as she thought of what must have happened that day. 'I hope... I hope... that this ends soon.' She managed to put the grim thought together, and watched as Lakyus was called to the podium in Gagaran's place.
