The Trial: Journey's End

Written by: AtheistBasementDragon

Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots

Chapter 17: Revenge

...Menowa...

Neia sat as tranquil as the dawn under the instruction of her legal representatives as Lakyus answered the call to the stands, 'Thanks be to god that they didn't call my wife up.' Neia thought to herself with a sigh of relief.

Her relief died when she felt it as Lakyus took the stand. A telltale smile. Demiurge, Albedo, and Pandora's Actor could keep themselves in perfect control, but the demoness of vengeance could not, and friend or not, she knew all too well that Vanysa was more demoness than human, and savored suffering in those she deemed in some way guilty.

It was the feeling of someone smiling at her.

Anger began a slow burn in Neia's breast.

"You are Lakyus of Blue Rose, are you not?" Pandora's Actor took the lead, his dramatic poses and gestures seemed to warm Lakyus to him immediately.

"I am she, wielder of the cursed sword, Kilineiram." Lakyus replied loudly and boldly, Neia felt the gag restrain her groan, even if it could not restrain the rolling of her eyes as her friend could not resist the chance at grandstanding just a little.

"Tell the court, you heard the testimony here, from your companion, Gagaran. Do you agree with her?" Pandora's Actor made a dramatic and inviting bow and swept his arm out at the crowd.

It seemed as if he was tailor made to draw out the best performance possible from the noble Lakyus, "I saw a wounded hero! That is all I've ever known of her! When we met, I saw the self sacrifice that makes ordinary people into heroes of legend! When we met one another again, I saw a hero bloom in Kedyn as she relentlessly protected the innocent from those who sought to slaughter them all! Yes, it is true!" She flung her arms out in a gesture of embrace.

"She went far beyond the mean in her zeal... but who among us would wish for half a hero?! I saw her at Prart, where she let her body be torn apart and nearly died to protect her city from an army! Yes... she put down hostages... but... wait, I cannot say more." Lakyus hesitated, and shut her mouth tight.

"Why not?" Pandora's Actor replied, disappointment clear in his voice as he eagerly looked for more from her, like two hams on a stage, but her silence was genuine.

"I know more but... I know it in the capacity as a former priestess of water, before I converted, but the seal of council between the priestess and one in her spiritual care is a bond I cannot break. Not without Neia's permission." Lakyus's expression was stern, all business, the ham was gone for the moment.

Neia took a deep breath, it brought the taste of her gag to her tongue all over again. She nodded. Though inwardly she groaned at Lakyus's overly dramatic behavior.

"Nobody wept over those hostages more than she! Yes, in public, she wore the face of horror, monster, terror, she wore the mask of rage set to burn the whole world down if it defied her will but that was for the public! It wasn't all she was! How many times I held her as she cried tears enough to create a lake of salt water. She hated it all, she did it to spare them pain, to keep them from being tools! You have to understand... Remedios and Suchala, they were real monsters, they burned people alive! They wanted to torture people in front of the walls to weaken the resolve of those set to defend the people behind the stone! She did not kill a single one of her soldiers with glee, she did it because it was the only way to save them and... and to show the other side what resolve... really meant!" Lakyus pounded her fist on the podium.

"Terror, Gagaran said she used terror as a weapon, and about that she's right! But she was facing people who wanted to do the same thing! The war in the west and in the south was like nothing I've ever seen, burnings, inquisitions, the followers of the old gods would cast the elderly and even children naked into the snow to freeze to death. Neia taught those lunatics what 'terror' really meant, and because of that, she neutralized their best weapon! The Theocracy sought to use terror to impose submission, but they did not know what they were facing. She did not ask for that!" Lakyus held the eyes of those around her in her heroic gaze, imposing as if by force of will, an understanding of what she meant to her very core.

"Did you not call her 'lost' when you saw her severing the hands of overseers like the recent witness?" Pandora's Actor seemed to ask, but in fact, he was 'prompting' her to preempt the counterstrike of his opponents.

"I did. Because she was, I prayed so hard for her that day... because she's my friend, because she took risks for us... she did that, and everything, and nobody else, because she didn't want anyone else to have to. Queen Calca once referred to her as a human sacrifice, the one who had to do the worst and be the worst so that we didn't have to... I humored her at the time, but as I stand here now, and see the nations that condemn her, as I see her friends, her allies, come to speak against her, I believe the Queen spoke the truth!" She stabbed her hand out and her finger pointed solidly at the Black Paladin.

"Let. Her. Go! Has she not endured enough?! If you want to say she went too far, fine, but it was a war where everything and everyone was too far gone! Let her go! Let HER GO! LET HER GO!" Lakyus shouted passionately, and from city to city throughout the lands of the elves, from Crescent Lake to Forton, and throughout the Northern Holy Kingdom, from Hoburns and Kedyn, even as far east as Commonton, and among the many who knew her in the northern parts of the Empire, the call was taken up so loudly that it seemed as if one voice was shouting down the conquered Theocracy remainder with the cry.

"Yes, I heard her voice in my head at Wheaton! But I am my own woman, there was no curse! Whatever she did, only played to a part of ourselves that we were somewhat inclined to give in to anyway! I wield a cursed blade that is always calling for me to work horror, but I do not, because I rule me, no other voice but my king can give me orders!" She shouted loudly and looked squarely at a now distressed Gagaran who sat shifting uncomfortably in the back, near the entrance.

"Now Let! Her! Go!" Lakyus demanded again, slamming her fist hard enough on the podium that a chunk of it broke off.

"Let! Her! Go!" Was on millions of lips, and it did not die down in the cities, for a full hour after Lakyus was dismissed without questions from the prosecutors.

Neia however, felt her blood going up as the memories Lakyus recited came to mind again.

"We call Keeno Fasris Inberun to the stand." Albedo said as Pandora's Actor seated himself. Neia felt a warm glow within when Lakyus stopped by her table, and embraced her lightly from behind as she left.

Keeno descended easily on light feet, her vampiric eyes clearly visible.

"Tell me, what are you?" Albedo asked the unexpected question with a straight face and quite directly, but Keeno did not miss a beat.

"I am a vampire. I used to be a princess too, but the land I was born in is no more, so it is enough to say I am a vampire adventurer and a defender of the just." She said in her childlike voice.

"I see, you were not always known as a vampire?" Albedo asked, ignoring the rumbles among the minotaurs who found themselves discomfited by a vampire in the midst, a few, too put off by that to tolerate it, discreetly but hastily abandoned their seats and evacuated the pavilion.

"I was not, I wore a mask to hide my face so my eyes were not visible, and from behind it, I could protect humanity without being hunted by them." She explained with a childishly happy voice.

"And tell me, have you ever been frightened of Neia? Did her voice not touch you and command you to commit atrocity?"

"No. I was never frightened of her. Also, I am undead, I am resistant to mind control, but I heard her anyway, that means it wasn't mind control." Keeno declared with her arms folded with finality in front of her. "I won't tell you she was right to do that, but I don't think she was all there either. I saw her during the fight, she'd clearly lost all reason. Someone tried to challenge her to single combat, she never gave them a chance, she never heard them, she only charged and hacked until the poor fool fell over dead, she took a sword through her arm that should have crippled the use of it, but from where I stood I clearly saw that she was using it as if it were in perfectly good condition. She wasn't herself, I know that for a fact. If I had any doubts during the fight, I didn't at the end." Keeno explained patiently.

Where Lakyus had been dramatic, Keeno had been easy and professional, clinical in her voice and matter of fact, no dramatic gestures, no performative tone. Just dry and flat and truthful.

"Explain what you mean by that." Albedo said in a professional voice that mirrored her witness.

"Happy to, the last fight of the battle was between her and a soldier in the center of the city, but not only did she kill him in a few seconds, but she did it by beating him to death, and when he was dead, she kept beating his skull until what was left of his head was mush, and every finger on her hands was completely broken, several times in several places. Then when she came back to herself, she ordered that prisoners be secured and treated... and promptly fell unconscious for several hours even after being healed. All that tells me is whatever she saw in there... broke something inside her. That explains a lot, really." Keeno said thoughtfully and tapped her cheek with one thoughtful finger.

It was the twitch of the prosecuting demoness's eyebrow that told Keeno that she'd made some kind of mistake.

Vanysa tapped Demiurge's arm, it drew his attention, and she whispered to him, a sadistic smile came over his face.

Keeno held back the urge to swallow as Albedo smiled and said , "I'm finished with this one."

"Just a few questions." Demiurge said and stood up.

"Keeno, tell me what you meant by 'it explains a lot'." The demon genius said knowingly.

'Shit.' Keeno thought.

"B-Before the battle began, I was put to security, to protect Skana, so I was closer than anyone, In case they broke a truce again and tried to kill our leadership. Vice Commander Skana begged... begged them to surrender the city, she offered incredibly generous terms, she was pleading desperately for the city to submit, I'd never heard her like that before, or since." Keeno replied and then closed her mouth tight, Neia's head snapped instinctively to where Keeno stood as the new information came to her ears.

"Why did she beg so hard?" Demiurge asked seductively.

"B-Because Skana told him that if the commander found out that the city held a breaker academy, she would wipe it out. Skana... she knew what went on there, she kept it back from her wife, her commander, to protect her." Keeno lowered her gaze.

She couldn't even meet the stare of Neia, with a hood between them, she could feel the sense of betrayal beneath the leather barrier over the Pope's head.

"Why did she need protecting?" Demiurge pushed.

Keeno shifted a foot before forcing herself to be still and clutching the podium for support.

"Because... because she'd grown more and more violent and barbaric, and she didn't want her wife to get worse! Because she was trying to save people..." Keeno added as if the words were dragged from her by wild horses.

"Save people... innocent people... from Neia Baraja, isn't that right?" Demiurge's voice became hard, demanding, his crystalline stare was inescapable.

"Y-Yes." Keeno said weakly.

"As if she were a monster... a butcher... and the sort that should be hanged or put down. Isn't that so?!" Demiurge demanded further.

"Objection!" Albedo and Pandora's Actor shouted.

Neia's head was reeling. 'She knew! My wife knew! She knew! She knew what was happening there and she didn't tell me?!' Rage continued to build in her breast.

"Withdrawn." Demiurge said benignly, "I'm done with this one." he waved his hand dismissively and winked at Albedo.

Keeno trudged out like she'd lost a major battle, not approaching nor speaking to Neia, and not meeting Gagaran's or Lakyus's eyes as she exited the pavilion.

"I have another witness I'd like to call." The demon said pleasantly, "I'd like to call Dasis of Wheaton to the stand."

A shockingly good looking man came up and approached the now heavily cracked and damaged podium. The demon casually tapped Vanysa's hand, and her wings folded into her body, and again she was a beautiful, buxom blonde girl with the most innocent and kind air about her... till one looked into the cold, storm gray eyes and held them for too long.

She approached the man with a slow, easy, seductive swaying of her hips, as if she found the square jaw and piercing blue eyes of the man with his hard body and thick muscles to be supremely attractive. Vanysa however, took in his scent and saw something very different. 'He might be so beautiful to some in... in that way... if'n I didn't have my Demi. As it is... oh what a scent... so much guilt on him... I could play with him for a hundred years and not get bored... but this will do, this will break her.' Vanysa thought to herself and felt a pang of guilt as she strove to hurt Neia as much she could, despite treasuring her as she did.

"You taught at the Breaker Academy... didncha?" She asked in a folksy way that immediately set him at ease as the scent of a lustful woman drew closer to him.

"I did." Dasis answered with a grin that would have been the face of terror if he had understood that her lust was not to rut with him, but to tear him apart.

"So... how does one make a pliant slave?" Vanysa asked as if curious, and on a professional level, she was, 'I wonder if they have any original ideas I might use?' She pondered briefly and then dismissed it. 'I have my standards after all.' She brushed off the thought, and let him speak as he breathed in the scent of a beautiful woman, he'd been without one for a long time, that was clear, and his brain was addled by desire, so he did not even hesitate to boast of his expertise.

The response was immediate, not from the witness, but from the table where Neia sat. She began to shift in her seat, a low and muffled moan came from within her hood, her chains snapped taut and had they been less than orichalcum, Pandora's Actor was convinced they might have snapped.

"Well, the goal is always to break them down to the point where they won't think of rebelling, degradation is really good that way, I mean fear is useful too, but if you really want to make a pliant slave... humiliation is much better. See fear gets even base beasts angry, but if they're brought lower than the dust, so that they can't even look at themselves with any sense of self respect anymore, well then you've got em. That's where the term 'breakers' comes from, because when Justicar got it started, it was either fawn breaking or buck breaking. You can fuck the soul right out of any elf if you do it enough times. Watch that light in their eyes go out... and then you got nothin to worry about from em anymore. Physical pain is little more than goading them in the right way after that."

He gave a large, shit eating grin. "Humiliate them, make them fear you, then repeat until there's nothin left. Eventually they'll beg to obey."

Vanysa had her back to the defendant, a flash of regret ran through her mind, 'Neia... I'm sorry.' She thought, and asked the last question.

"Why are you still alive, weren't you to be hanged?" Vanysa asked as if she didn't know.

"I was promised that I wouldn't be hanged if I told what I knew. That I would get to leave prison and never go back." He said smugly.

"So back to normal life for you?" Vanysa clapped her hands lightly together as if excited for him and smiled broadly.

"Yup, if that's all? I'd like to go, got a life to get to, and freedom to enjoy." He said with clear happiness and a broad smile mimicking Vanysa's spread over his face.

"Just one more thing, tell us a bit of how all that worked, maybe some examples?" Vanysa came close, the excitement in her voice as if she were getting off to his story, with the pheremones she exuded, he couldn't resist.

He started telling stories.

Neia stroked her hand and tried to think of other things, but on and on his words went as he was questioned and his stories were expanded with ever more details that tore at the sanity of the pope.

Within three minutes, that was all it took.

Neia was shaking in her chair, her heart was racing. 'No! No! I don't want to hear! I Please, please I don't want to hear this I can't bear it I can't I can't I can't! I don't want to know what they did to her... bad enough to see what the things I saw back then! I can't relive it! I can't!' She screamed inside her head as the Demoness of vengeance played her game with the witness, teasing out details of the way to humiliate an elven man or woman and tear away their sense of self worth, to mutilate their inner selves, or as he put it, 'fuck the soul out of them'.

A gurgling wail went up from where Neia sat and she thrashed like mad, unable to keep the words of the witness from her ears, unable even to make the noise to drown them out, unable to escape or break her chains, she began slamming her head down on the table, as muffled cries escaped despite the securing of her tongue, anything she could do to stop the words from reaching her ears, she did. The table shattered on the third blow, and she tried to leap from her chair before Pandora's Actor forced her back down and shouted for a recess.

'They did that to Illyana, to all of them! I'll kill them! I'll kill them! I'll kill them all! I'll tear their wretched cocks off their screaming bodies! I'll hunt them to the ends of the world and the depths of the sea! They will break! They will die! They must all die! DIE! DIE!' Neia screamed inside her head, and a terrible pressure ripped out of nowhere and crashed down like a mountain, a wave of unbridled rage came over her as without the ability to control herself, it first hit the entire pavillion, forcing powerful warriors to their knees.

Vanysa felt her knees crack from the pressure when she hit the floor, and yowled in sudden pain before Neia, without hesitation or any hint of mercy, brought that focus of pressure slowly to a single point.

She tore the hood from her head as the pressure of her divine lord began to tear her flesh away, strips peeled away and burned up and the eyes of terror were black as night within a cave, save for glowing red points.

Dasis of Wheaton tried to scream as his jaw was slowly torn away, "I was supposed to live!" He cried once, and then it became a mangled yowl as she focused every bit of the pressure onto his body... and turned Dasis of Wheaton, who tried to escape despite his shattered knees, into a puddle of mush.

One instant he was there, and then, he had become one red stain on the stone, a lump of flesh and broken, shattered bones and blood, and the podium a crumpled heap, while pools of blood began to form at Neia's feet as blood seeped out where flesh had been ripped away.

"Stop." Demiurge ordered her, using his command mantra on the Black Paladin. And she did, cutting it off instantly. "A recess is acceptable... to clean up what is left of the body of the witness that the defendant just killed."

As the witness was turned the paste and Demiurge suggested a recess to clean up, those with sensitive ears heard a very slight 'crack' followed by another, and the sound of swallowing. The demons stared at Neia unable to accept what they instantly concluded she must have just done. Blood was soaking through the hood and staining the floor where it lay after she'd cast it off, her chains were pulled tight at the wrists and she held her head and screamed in terrible pain.

"It hurts! It hurts..." Neia called out, and her voice was not her own again as she spoke. Her horrific reverberating voice slammed into the souls of all the minotaurs present, like a boulder being dropped on a soap bubble..

Her hands went out and were held close together, closer than the chains needed to be, as if offering something out to them adjudicator, "You are all dead. There will be wailing and the gnashing of teeth, happy will be those who bash the brains of your infants upon the rocks, unless you bend to the will of my god, you will be beasts of the field and rise no more. Wenmark and Wheaton, you will envy, and when wrath comes to devour you, only wrath will be your salvation. Bend to the black in the west, or it will come from the east and cover you like the earth over a grave, forever."

Her voice went silent, and she crashed to her knees clutching her head and wailing in pain, cracking her head against the stone floor and shaking until unconsciousness claimed her.

Demiurge, Vanysa, Pandora's Actor, and Albedo exchanged looks of mutual confusion and dismay. Their expressions all read the same, 'This was not part of the plan. What the hell was that?'

While around the empire, in city after city to see the broadcast, silence dominated like death in the tomb.