The Trial: Journey's End

Written by: AtheistBasementDragon

Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots

Chapter 21: The Price of Knowledge

...Kirakira Prison...

Raymond was sent straight out to the yard after he was processed in, and he drew immediate commentary, and it wasn't long before his presence was drawn to the attention of Mu'Ulm. The behemoth of a minotaur set aside his practice gear, and approached the new human visitor wearing prison attire.

"You. You're human." He said bluntly, towering over the placid Raymond who stood with his hands clasped loosely behind his lower back.

"Did the lack of horns give it away?" He asked the minotaur with a knowing little smile.

Mu'Ulm huffed, "Yes, that was it. So... human, you're connected to Kiril's Angel, aren't you?"

Raymond looked at him dumbly with his head cocked to one side. "What now?"

"The one who calls herself 'Neia'. I am the former king of the yard here, and now her second in command among the prisoners. You're one of her subordinates from the outside?" He asked expectantly.

Raymond's eyes widened imperceptibly. 'She took over the prison?!' He kept his shock to himself.

"Not... exactly. I was the last ruler of the country she destroyed." Raymond said with a sense of dry resignation, "Here to testify at her trial, but before I do that... the Sorcerer King, her master, wanted me to see what she's done here."

Raymond kept his eyes locked with those of the great behemoth, Mu'Ulm might as well have been carved out of stone, muscle rippled beneath the furr of his body, his eyes blazed like a combat veteran, and the way he moved spoke of one sure of foot.

He felt the tension in the behemoth, but Raymond was completely at ease, and decided to help ease tensions, "I'm testifying 'for' her." He clarified, and felt the tension start to ease as the minotaur warrior began to understand.

"She has a strange luck about her that way, it seems. I tried to kill her when we first met, she broke me with that thing of hers that she does, and then she treated me with respect. Come with me, and I will show you what's happening here." Mu'Ulm said with greater confidence, and gestured to the various places along the long walls.

"When she arrived, every minotaur here was illiterate, most of us can still read only a little, but they learn. And there." he drew his long muscled arm further down the wall where carpenters, metal workers, leather workers, and many others, were teaching the great industrial arts in various forms. Mu'Ulm's voice contained a note of pride as he spoke and led Raymond along the dusty ground.

"There," he pointed to a long table, "our food is distributed. When she arrived, some of us starved, others were made into pets and whores, and others became kings or queens of the yard, the food was piled and we acted like base animals, clawing and trampling each other for a dirty scrap. Just animals... even days seeing the difference... the years before in this place fill me with shame. How low we'd fallen." Mu'Ulm acknowledged regretfully.

"How long have you been here, Mu'Ulm?" Raymond asked curiously as he walked in long steps and craned his neck to look up at the enormous minotaur.

"Six years, since my bandits and I were all captured or killed. Horn Breakers, we called ourselves, only way to live was for us to steal, if we couldn't steal, we'd die, if we couldn't fight, we'd die. So we became the best at both. Burned up villages, even small towns. I thought we were supreme." He laughed the deep huffing laugh of a snorting bull as he threw back his head and clutched his gut.

"She got here, and I boasted about that, only for her to speak of breaking the will of kings and being the bane of cities. Tell me, how much of that is actually true?" Mu'Ulm asked, "It's common for warriors to exaggerate so..." He paused as Raymond's sense of sorrow swept over them both.

"Oh, no matter what she told you, it's all true. She burned cities, she drowned cities, she made the land itself destroy walls, and destroyed them herself. She made armies kneel through the same power that brought you down, those things and anything else you've heard rumor of, are all true. She has no need to exaggerate. That is why she's here and on trial, because her reputation is such that no jury in the west is trusted. She's loved by some, and feared by others. Backed by His Sorcerous Majesty, I believe she really will do what she promised. And give him the world, if she's unleashed on it again. She will raise armies where there are none..."

Mu'Ulm stopped him by placing his large, meaty hand on the Cardinal's shoulder. "She really wasn't just... dreaming, then, wasn't spouting nonsense."

"Whatever she's guilty of doing, spouting nonsense isn't one of them." Raymond said with conviction as he looked around. "It looks like she's decided to build an army here, or the start of one, with the massive wealth her temples have drawn from the rental of undead labor, she'll invest fortunes into your people, I expect. Have you all converted yet?"

Mu'Ulm shrugged. "I assume she is Kiril's Angel, I don't know her god, but I would assume he's just Kiril with a foreign name. I'll follow her, and when she gets back here, I am eager to see what she does next."

The next few hours were spent with Raymond meeting various minotaurs and instructors, from those who had starved themselves to keep their pride, to the instructors in various arts. He even got to speak with guards who gave their impressions of the rapid changes being imposed by the relentless discipline of the Black Paladin.

It was such an engrossing period of time that nobody even called them in from the yard, that when nobody made the prisoners come up, nobody noticed that Neia hadn't returned until the sun began to set.

Raymond looked overhead, "Is she normally this late?"

"No... no she isn't." Mu'Ulm said with an element of concern.

The two traded a look of mutual uncertainty when at last the prisoners, including Raymond, were finally recalled. As they went up the long walkway, Raymond looked at one of the guards, "Excuse me, where is the other human?"

"Kiril's Angel has not returned. Go back to your cell, I know as much as you do." The guard replied and shrugged his shoulders.

Raymond obeyed, following the long walkway of metal and stone until he arrived at his designated cell, which to his surprise, was right next to the one belonging to Mu'Ulm.

The many small quarters were quiet that night, and Neia did not return the next day, or the next. Nor did anyone send word to Raymond, or to Mu'Ulm, about what was happening, nobody, not even the elves sent as instructors, knew what was happening. Or if they did, they weren't saying. Though as Raymond watched their fearful expressions, he felt certain they were telling the truth, whenever he approached them again in the yard.

...Nazarick...

For the next two days, Neia went back and forth between the room of her father, and Demiurge's lab.

"Please remove your robe." Vanysa said gently, and as if to show she intended no harm, remaining in her human state, she held out her hand to Neia and assisted her onto the table after she stripped herself.

"This won't hurt a bit... I promise." Vanysa said with a gentle expression as she leaned over the Black Paladin and secured adamantite chains to Neia's limbs.

Neia's breath quickened, and the woman took her hand and held it, "It's alright, we're not in court, my orders are to care for you while we try to understand what this is, why your head hurts, why you got this way. I never want to be the one to hurt you."

Neia forced herself to relax and closed her eyes, "You fooled me."

"I didn't fool you, Neia, I never lied to you." Vanysa replied as she took up a small blue stone and laid it over Neia's belly button.

"You said..." Neia stiffened briefly at the contact, and then relaxed as another was placed a few inches above it, "that I wouldn't be your prey, but between you and Lord Demiurge, you know me more intimately. You were the one who went up there... knowing I would break, knowing I would kill that man, and knowing it would probably get me killed."

"You're not dead yet, Neia Baraja." She said as she laid another blue crystal between Neia's breasts.

"You're not even going to deny the rest?" Neia asked with a raised eyebrow, intimately conscious of the chains on her wrists and ankles.

"Do you want me to lie to you? I'm a demoness who avenges the murdered, a Tisaphone Fury, my vision of your actions is... strange. I see it clearly, however it also feels off somehow, but... still, some things stand out. I don't want to do these things to you, but Demiurge was allowed to choose who to use for this, and he chose me, that means those orders are the same as if they'd come from Lord Ainz himself. Please... please forgive me." Vanysa said as she squeezed Neia's hand.

"So what is all this, anyway?" Neia asked as the demoness in human form laid down another crystal, this time on Neia's forehead.

"Please don't move. We're trying to see if the cycle of magic energy has changed in some way, we've found that the flow in different people represents their capacity and their aptitudes based on the way in which it is absorbed into these little stones. Sadly we don't have many, and they're very limited, but they're good enough for this." Vanysa explained as she monitored the stones and moved away from Neia. She took up a clip board and began to scribble notes.

"Where is Lord Demiurge?" Neia asked, "I'd have thought he'd be eager to be here to do this."

"You're naked. We're both women, your father is not going to see you deprived of your dignity for the sake of his experiments. You will not be shamed in Nazarick by having any member of it treat you roughly. And though Demi would certainly obey, he'd be fighting against his own nature. Lord Ainz thought it better that 'I' help you by myself." Her brow wrinkled suddenly. "Interesting." Vanysa finished and tapped the quill on the document several times.

"What?" Neia tilted her neck slightly up to look at the demoness who, to all the world, would appear to be a pretty blonde girl in just a long white coat over black pants boots, and a green shirt.

"Neia... can I... I have no right to ask this, but for the sake of knowledge needed to help you, can I hurt you? I promise I'll heal you right away." Vanysa tapped her quill with an ever quickening rate of speed. Around the room were various instruments of pain, all immaculately clean, which made it all somehow more horrifying because it meant so much care had been given to those things.

"You're crazy." Neia said flatly.

Vanysa bowed her head, "I know. But I am being serious, I think I may have some idea of what drives the thing that happened to you, and if I can confirm it, we can at least make sure it doesn't hurt you like it did at the pavilion. I know it sounds insane, but it won't be much, and if I'm right, I really can do something for you."

Neia relaxed her head and stared up at the ceiling. "What do you want to do?"

"I... I want to hurt your mind. Bring something powerful and painful to the forefront, like you're reliving it. Please... I wouldn't ask if I didn't think I had to." Vanysa set the clipboard aside, and took Neia's hand again.

"If I say no, are you going to hurt me anyway?" She sounded somewhat resigned as she asked the question, as if it was just a formality.

"NO." Vanysa replied firmly, "I know you may never forgive me, I don't blame you... but I really am trying to help you now."

Neia turned her head away and looked, "Go ahead. I assume I don't need to pick something, you already know what will hurt most."

Vanysa flinched at the jab, but didn't respond except to take the blue crystal fragments away, and then take another set, and coating them with a small amount of clear gel, she stuck them back onto Neia's body. "Adhesive, you're going to thrash."

"I expect so." Neia said as she put on a brave face.

"Bite down." Vanysa said as she held out a leather strap, Neia opened her lips, allowed it to be put into place, and grasped it in her teeth.

Vanysa finished securing the crystals to Neia's body, a few seconds later, she went behind the pope's head, on the long table, and then taking her cheeks between her own deceptively delicate pale hands, the buxom beauty lowered her forehead to Neia's own.

Neia could only scream as the worst memory of her life rampaged through her brain as if it was happening again, her legs kicked madly her fists slammed violently hard into the table. Agony ripped apart her mind, until at last Vanysa felt it end, and cut off the replaying of it.

Neia's eyes went dark as night, and her voice was that of doom's echo. "The minotaur kingdom must lose its king, or it will cease to be a kingdom. The coming of the three calamities will draw the wrath of the children of demons, and the harvest of man and his brothers of the other flesh, will end in the center of the world."

She began to scream again, "It hurts! It... huuuuuuuurts!"

This time, Vanysa was prepared, and she snatched a potion from under the table and dumped it over Neia's body after tearing away the crystals.

Neia ceased to scream, and immediately fell into unconsciousness. With her 'patient' sleeping, Vanysa quickly made her annotations, and left the lab to head straight to Lord Demiurge in his private office.

She walked in without knocking, and with crisp quick steps, she soundlessly laid the clipboard on the desk at which he sat. He looked down at it and then looked up at her. "Explain." He said flatly as he set aside his quill.

"First sample is her at rest, perfectly natural mana flow through a body, no extraordinary magical talent whatsoever, capable enough when it comes to one highly specialized type of Sacred Death magic that lets her use martial arts aplenty..."

"Holy Death Magic." Demiurge corrected her without looking up from her results.

"Agree to disagree." Vanysa said passively, and pointed to the second set. "This one," she said as Demiurge brushed off her contradiction, "is what happens when I dredged up her most painful memory and made her relive it. It shut down a part of her mind where part of the mana normally flowed, and pumped it into the same place where her evangelist skills are active... 'but' the flow is so rapid its..." She scratched her head as she tried to think of an analogy... "Remember what happened to her at Prart when she first drew on our master's power? It almost killed her in minutes or less and she couldn't stop herself. It's like that, the flow is too great for her mind, and so it starts to destroy her from within."

Demiurge looked up at her, then down at the clip board, then back up to her. "You're sure of these numbers?"

She nodded, "I checked the crystal contents, the flow intake definitely changed, on the first one it was a slow but steady fill on the left and right side of the crystals, on the second it was rapid but even in all of them. However at her head, the left channel got nothing, it filled only from the right side. That is only possible if the left side shut down completely, and the flow rate that resulted was impossible for a normal human to bear. Frankly if she weren't the level you say she is, she would have died instead of just suffered." Vanysa said with confidence and drew her hand back to fold into the other at the small of her back.

"Do you plan to repeat the experiment?" He asked with an arched brow.

"I don't, not unless I have to. She's my friend, Demi. You know I don't want to hurt her." Vanysa said with a quiet firmness in her voice.

"Lord Ainz's orders are absolute." He said in a low voice of warning.

"Yes they are, and he hasn't ordered me to hurt her for no reason at all. He ordered me to find out what was wrong, why this was happening. I've done that. If he orders me to torture her, I will obey my master. But I won't pointlessly torture a dear friend for nothing."

Demiurge looked at her and rested his head on his hands with his elbows on the table.

"And if 'I' order you to do it again, to be sure?" He asked quietly.

Vanysa thought for a moment, and met him with her insane, storm gray eyes. "You won't, because you know he cares for her, you can't fool me, not that easily." Vanysa sensed the sadistic urges rising up in her lover, "Shall I lock the door?" She asked archly as she took off her lab coat.

"No, if anyone comes in, well with the noise you're going to make, they must obviously want to see." He said with a low, brutish laugh.

"Alright... she'll be asleep for hours, and Lord Ainz won't be back till later... we have time, but one thing please." Vanysa said as she kicked off her boots.

"What?" He asked as he undid his tie with a smooth gesture and cast it aside.

"Make me hurt this time." Vanysa said in a rush of masochistic defiance.

Being the perfect sadist, he laughed as he peeled away his clothing and said simply, 'Maybe.'

She laughed. "Me or you, me or you, pick one, but one of us is gonna get hurt real good." She said as her skin turned gold and her wings emerged from her naked back.