The Trial: Journey's End

Written by: AtheistBasementDragon

Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots

Chapter 25: Stampede

...Fortress of Last Home...

When they were alone, Neia was not long in finding out just what mystery was left unknown to her before.

Mu'Anik turned on her, "I will be blunt. Prisoners sent here, are sent here to fight. You are a prisoner here, therefore you will fight when I tell you, and if you die, I don't give a damn."

Neia didn't say a word, she only looked at him, sky blue eyes staring without guile at him through the light of the cheap candles that hung along the walls.

"Don't expect to live, you're only a human, and the things that fight out there, are beastmen. They routinely kill minotaurs, so a little animal like you? You're prey." He said as he looked down at her, the eerie sense he had earlier was gone, and he dismissed it as an effect of the winged being that delivered her.

Neia said nothing, so he simply turned around and walked on until he came to a door, "You were going to be thrown in with the dogs, but this is... better. Get in." He said, and opened the wet wood that the crumbling construction had failed to keep dry.

Neia obeyed without a word. 'If I hadn't heard her speak, I'd wonder if she was mute... something wrong with her? What could that thing have done to be in this kind of situation?' A fragment of him pitied her, but he crushed it easily enough.

"Your sword is over there, we have no armor suitable for you, just make do, and when you hear the bell, come out to the courtyard." Mu'Anik said, and Neia nodded without a word.

As the door shut behind her, she looked around. The cot was dirty, blood stained, and rotted. The blanket was no better, the stone was filthy, both for the walls and the floor, a half burned candle sat on a barred window, the metal for which was rusty.

She went over to the sword he'd pointed out, and picked it up. "Well, this is garbage." She said to herself as she hefted it. She balanced the sword on her fingers by setting it there at the tang. It tilted and fell forward. "Pathetic." She grumbled and caught the hilt and held it up, the edge was shit, it would take hours to sharpen, and flecks of blood and rust were spattered about, the one who made it hadn't even put a channel for the blood to run off. In short, to her, there was nothing good about it. Worst of all to her mind however... "Steel? Not even very good steel." She snorted in professional contempt.

"Fighting with this garbage would be a disgrace to father's name." She muttered, "I want 'my' equipment." She said to the empty room. "There's blood coming here... I can feel it... feel it in my bones..." She whispered and looked serenely to the blue sky beyond the bars of the room that confined her.

And so, after a moment's hesitation, she sent the message request.

Mu'Anik went back to his office as quickly as he could, that human's silence and tranquility was unnerving, like she wasn't all there, it was comfortable to get some distance between it and himself. But he wasn't alone for long.

Mu'Bin burst into the office only moments later. "Sir... it's begun early... our scouts report skirmishes against the Devor, they're over the border, a-a few hundred. Please... let us go and stop them."

"Did you warn the villages?" Mu'Anik asked with flat indifference.

"Y-Yessir." Mu'Bin replied.

"Then you've done your part, if they choose not to run, what can we do?" Mu'Anik asked. He parted his hands and looked at Mu'Bin as if there were nothing to be done.

"We can fight, sir! We can take our Kiril-damned axes and cut them down!" Mu'Bin exclaimed.

"Because that worked so well last time?" Mu'Anik asked sarcastically. "Nope, we're staying here, I'll let you go out and fight those things if they come this way. Otherwise, my answer is no. Warn, skirmish, withdraw, anyone slow to escape, deserves what happens." Mu'Anik replied bluntly.

Mu'Bin looked at him in frustration for the hundredth time. "Sir, can't we at least... I don't know, send that new thing, the prisoner you're going to ah... take care of? I mean it may be small but perhaps it can buy enough time for at least one more of our people to get away!"

Mu'Anik shook his head, "No, too obvious, besides, it might try to run away, then it would be a problem for me."

"So you'll wait till you get the chance to throw us away too." Mu'Bin said with weary resignation.

Mu'Anik looked nonplussed as he said, "Yes, you know what happens if you try to leave this place. Fight hard, and you'll survive another day."

Mu'Bin slowly reached over his back for his ax, Mu'Anik did not physically react.

"Go ahead and do it, you'd succeed in taking my head, of that I'm sure, but what happens if you do that, you sure you want them out here next? Killing me won't protect him. Besides, you know what'll happen if they ever go far beyond this fortress, you really do get to fight the ones who would eat him." Mu'Anik remarked indifferently.

Mu'Bin's hand drew away from the hilt and went back down to his side.

"Good boy, now, just keep the scouts out and reporting on any movement toward this fortress, at the very least, I want us ready to fight 'here'." Mu'Anik said contemptuously.

Mu'Bin slumped, turned around, and trudged out, and Mu'Anik reached for a wineskin and started to drink before the door of his office had even fully shut.

...Ainz's office...

Vanysa prostrated herself as soon as she was allowed to enter. "Master... master, please forgive me." She whimpered, choking the words out through sobs.

Ainz felt his emotional dampener kicking in, 'Oh hell, what's going on 'now'?' He wondered, though outwardly he said, "Calm yourself Vanysa, forgive you for what?"

"For... master something is wrong with me! Something is twisted and broken... and it's... master, every time I'm with your daughter... it's all I can do to keep from hurting her... I don't know what's wrong, what's happening! I'm a fury, but she's obscured to me, and even though she is, which itself don't make no sense... all ah can think of is cuttin an bitin an makin her sing fer me... she's yer daughter, she's mah friend an ah don know whas goin on! Ahm scared! Ah was s'posed tah help'er an ah trahd, las time, but... but... when ah had'er chained down... all ah wanted ta do was start cuttin! Yah cain't let me near her... bahd 'nuff ahm tryin ta get'er killed out ther!"

Vanysa's words went from sane and sensible if emotional... to the unstructured voice of the rudest of uneducated peasants, and her eyes danced with absolute madness that seemed to barely comprehend anything. She kept herself prostrated on the floor, but looked up from where she was at rest.

"Please... master... please... help me..." She managed to say clearly as she struggled desperately to hold on to who she was, her wings trembled as they hugged her body. "I love you... I love you so much... you saved me, helped me, taught me, protected me, avenged me... I'd do anything for you... anything... please don't let me live to cause you any pain, stop me... even if... yah gots ta kill me ta do it... ah ain't got an don't want no life if'n it means my livin does somethin that hurts yah. An what mah instinct're screamin at me tah do tah her..." She squeezed her storm grey eyes shut.

Ainz listened quietly as she got that out, and he was eminently grateful for his emotional suppressor as it worked on overtime as Vanysa broke down in front of him.

"Please... master... do somethin... anythin... ah cain't take it... bein pulled everwhich way an not knowin what tah do..." Vanysa whispered out, she heard him stand up, and barely heard the sound of him walking over to where she lay prostrate and unmoving except for a shaking she couldn't control no matter what she did.

Ainz crouched down next to her head, and lay his skeletal hand on the black hair that grew from her demonic head. "Get up, and look at me." He said evenly in the commanding voice she loved.

She slowly rose to her knees, and when his bone fingers went under her chin, she did not resist as he raised her face to meet his.

"Vanysa... do you know how I made you what you are?" Ainz asked as his mind raced a thousand miles a moment.

She shook her head, "N-No Majesty." She sniffled.

"Your body was delivered to me in horrible shape, maggots had eaten their way into your wounds, the pear of anguish had torn you, the whip had ripped off flesh, there were more wounds on you from Astraka, than you likely even remember them inflicting, not to mention what was torn apart by fish in the waters where you were found." Ainz explained slowly, patiently, and she trembled again at the memory of the brutal torture her current prisoner had inflicted on her.

"I... don't understand, master?" Vanysa asked through her trembling lips.

"In this world, those who die can refuse resurrection, and those with weak bodies, have their flesh reduced to dust if they cannot sustain a resurrection spell. As so many things had been done to you, and you died in terror, not only of pain, but of failing me, and your body was very, very weak, I feared you would not be able to endure an attempt at resurrection. And so... I used a morphomantic spell, changing your form to something strong enough to survive. I chose the form of a fury, because they long for revenge above all else. I had hoped, rightly, that you would be drawn to that. Understand so far?" He asked, and she nodded vigorously.

"Your body was essentially used like an ingredient, a reagent to make something else where a human had been, that is why you are as you are. Because your demonic nature is laying claim to the part of you that is still human." Ainz lowered his head, "You destroyed yourself to keep faith with me, and as a result, I changed you. However..." He put a finger to her lips, "there is more. The reason you cannot see Neia's actions clearly, is that they are not all clear to her either. As she remembers more of them, as you did of your time with Astraka before that, they will become clear to you. Your instincts toward her grow, because your power does. To put that into perspective, if you were to fight Meidhall again as you did before, I think you would defeat her handily."

Vanysa sucked her breath in surprise... "B-But she's mah friend, an yer you, ah ain't ever had much back then, but yer all, them ones ah like, all worth the world tah me, ah don't wanna be the one what hurts thems..." She stopped, her insane eyes reflecting a bitter, bitter struggle within before she met his face again.

"I would rather die, than lose control, and torture Neia. There must be something you can do, Master." She looked at him in desperation and confidence.

Ainz nodded slowly, filling her with relief. "From this point forward, outside of the court, you are expressly tasked with the absolute protection of Neia Baraja's life and safety, even at the cost of your own, whenever she is in your presence."

Vanysa looked profoundly confused... but only for a moment, and then it began to dawn on her, and her gray eyes went big as saucers.

"I 'can't' disobey that... can I? I can't even want to... it's like if... if Lady Shalltear turned me into a vampire, all I'd want is to serve and obey her." Vanysa asked in quiet disbelief.

Ainz stood up without answering, "You were never as free as you thought you were, I did not realize you were unaware of this... but now you know, and... I hope you can forgive me."

Vanysa shook her head, "I admit... this leaves... questions. Am I still myself? Or am I just a puppet on strings bearing the memories of a dead girl? What thoughts are really mine at all? Do I have any will of my own... but... at least I know this, Master." Vanysa looked up at him and slowly prostrated herself before him.

She spoke slowly, clearly, articulately, and with the conviction of a truly faithful servant swearing allegiance that was already given in the quietness of the heart before it was ever given voice. "I am yours. I made that vow, before I had this wonderful body... I loved you years ago, and the loyalty of that dead girl you put into this marvelous form... was absolute, if I'm not her, or if I am her... I know I am truly yours, and I would rather be your puppet, and serve you faithfully, than live freely the way she did before you, ever again. That will, was also hers. I think... I think I will be no threat to Neia now... no matter what she does... thank you... thank you my beloved lord..."

...Re-Estize...Re-Estize...

"For the sake of all that is our faith, we who treasured the safe return of our loved ones, owe it to those who sacrificed all, to ensure their safety. The temples will support you who undertake this venture, because you do this for the sake of something greater than yourselves, to bring a hero home! That she not die without holding the child that, even now kicks within my belly, aching to enter the world to the loving arms of parents who will adore it! If that is not worthy of your labor, what is?!" Skana called out her aching heart to the crowd of worshipers within the temple of Black Justice, gate to gate she'd gone, city to city, it was a whirlwind tour the likes of which she'd never dreamed of in her childhood.

As her aides went and took names, others were visiting the training grounds where priests were forged out of the faithful, and while both were doing that, Skana went and took a seat and lightly caressed the belly where her child was growing. "I can't wait to meet you, and you know what... your other mother can't wait either. I don't know where she is right now, but I know she's thinking of us both, and all she wants is to come home again." Lightly, gently, the one eyed warrior woman who had pierced the flesh of hundreds and claimed their lives without mercy or regret, sang to the unborn child for which she was already prepared to forsake the world, if that was what it took to protect it.

"Woe to them... that threatens the child of the mother of wrath" Skana smiled sweetly down at the bump, and as a chill sensation swept over her as if danger were coming near to the woman she loved, she turned to look east, as though she could see through the wall of the great temple, and across the miles to the distant Minotaur Kingdom, she felt that she could smell the scent of blood rising in her nostrils.

...Last Home...

Neia grumbled with annoyance on the second day of her time in Last Home. 'Their Discipline is shit, their weapons are shit, their armor is nonexistent, their fortress is shit, their commander is shit, it even smells like shit. If this were my command, I'd be reaming out asses so hard nobody would sit for a month. The hell kind of unit is this?!' Neia groused as she moved through the line to take some lukewarm stew. Unlike the prison, none of the minotaurs here challenged her, but as she looked at the way they trudged through the line, she knew why they didn't.

'Their spirits are broken, they haven't got much fight left in them... what the hell is happening out here?!' She wondered as she took the bowl back to her disgusting room without a word to anyone.

She found out just 'what' the next day, when the bell went off.

She went out carrying the shit sword she'd been given, and still wearing the crude sackcloth that served as prisoner clothing. The rest of the fortress was trudging out like zombies into the courtyard.

They carried axes, but most barely did more than drag them, as if they were unwanted burdens.

She heard a noise behind her, and looked up over her shoulder, the gray haired old minotaur was up top looking over them.

"Our scouts report that the Devor raiders took very few, only a hundred and fifty of the aged, the carrying, and the children from the surrounding villages, our warning was a 'success' and now they are coming 'here' to make up the difference. So... hurry up and die for me." Seeing Neia down below, he pointed to her, "You, human, go get up front."

Neia felt her mouth drop open as she heard what he said.

The dots began to connect in her mind. "So this is it."

'So it does fear, well that'll make this easier.' Mu'Anik thought as the ranks parted and she stared unbelieving up at him.

"Mind if I get another weapon?" She asked as the formation parted for her.

Mu'Anik barely suppressed a laugh.

"Find an old knife in there? Well, why not, one more swing can't hurt. Be quick, if you're not back by the three hundredth tap of my hoof, I'll throw you naked and tied up to the Devor, and you can maybe shout them to death." He laughed at his own joke as she ran back inside, threw on the armor of the Grand King Busar, donned her sword and bow, put on her boots and cloak, and her less often used visor for good measure.

She took a deep breath as if she were about to enjoy a picnic. "Now this... THIS is more like it." She jogged out as she heard the words, "Two hundred ninety six..."

His hoof stopped in mid descent as she made her appearance again, and walked without a word through the hole the formation kept open for her.

Mu'Anik's mouth was agape. "They're coming..." Someone shouted from the wall.

Neia couldn't see them yet, but she could hear them, behind her, the stomping hooves of minotaurs trudging forlornly forward reached her ears. The pathetic excuse for a gate was opening up, she stopped and turned behind her.

"Minotaurs!" She shouted, calling upon the power of the voice of the divine, "Disobey that old trash that stands atop the wall!"

Mu'Anik froze stiff at the insult, and the few hundred minotaurs that followed her, were no less frozen than he.

"Do not die for that trash! Instead, live because you have a job to do! Who sheds his blood for his comrade is a brother! You are not going out to die for him, you are going out there to fight for one another! If you must be sacrifices! If you must die! If I must die! Then let it be so that the one beside you may live! In every hand lies the life of those with whom you live! Beyond this fortress, stand the children of your nation! If you must die, then die for them! If you must fight, then fight for them! I cannot promise anyone their lives beyond the opening of that gate! But this, this I can promise... that if you fight with the ferocity with which your ancestors forged a kingdom, you can make an end of yourself that will terrify the Devor for a hundred years! Though I am but a human, I am prepared to fight, are you worth less than I?! Bring back your pride, and prove that is not so!"

Her voice pounded through their veins and their weary hearts began to beat and their bloodlust began to rise.

The gate opened, and Neia beheld the Devor for the first time. Catmen and bearmen, behemoths on par with or greater than the size or speed of a minotaur.

Neia began to advance, the spirit she'd pounded into the minotaurs was not broken, and they walked behind her, she drew her bow and fired the first shot, [Snakeshot] She whispered, and guided it through seven beastmen as they ran toward her position with bloodlust in their eyes.

"Oh... they're aggressive. She said as she began to send arrows flying at them in the distance, one by one they fell with arrows in their eyes and Neia began to laugh.

"Is she insane?" Mu'Anik wondered. And then thought better of it as he saw her arrows rip through flesh like a fist through paper.

The minotaurs behind her, having never seen the bow in action before if she had to guess, watched it drop targets one after the other, and it did not stop until she ran out of arrows, but still the Devor charged over the open ground toward the hill on which the shitwreck of a fortress stood.

"Fine." Neia said grimly, "This will take sterner measures."

"Kill them all... kill them all kill them all kill them all... blood... you want blood, you were born to end lives, take the lives that belong to you... the goal of all life is death... now help them all achieve life's goal!" She whispered over her shoulder at the minotaurs behind her, and their eyes went blank, and turned red as bloodlust overtook them.

And something happened that the Devor had not heard in an age.

They heard a minotaur warcry. The infection of bloodlust spread like mad as the voice that whispered destruction to Wheaton, caught fire in the hatred of the Minotaurs for those who had preyed on them since the time of their grandfathers.

Hooves trampled the earth beneath and Neia howled with bloodlust of her own as she drew out her sword and ran forward. The Devor froze in disbelief at the impossible...

The broken spirits had been reforged in the image of berzerker madness, Axes rose and fell and the spirit of the battle began to change like the turning of one season to another.

"Your lives belong to my god!" Neia howled like a banshee as she turned her voice on the Devor, "Give them to me! Give them all to me! Ha...ahah ahaha hahahahaha!" All reason was gone, all sense was gone. [Death Grip][Wrath and Retribution][Endurance of Unlife][Grim Hand] She used one Black Paladin martial art after another as the distance closed to the beastmen, her mind went farther from sanity, and she was among the quailed hearts of her prey. Her adamantite blade ripped through armor and flesh like it wasn't there.

A few feet away, a minotaur lowered his head and rushed headlong with berserker strength, only a little faster than his brethren, he hit first, but right behind him others had done the same, and the mad bulls bowled over their opponents no fewer than eight deep before they even began to use their battle axes in earnest, the worthless steel heads often shattered or broke, but the bars were used to bash in brains.

Neia's eyes turned black as night but for her red eyes as she sought lives to end... 'Blood...guts...blood...guts...kill...kill…' They weren't even thoughts, they were primal instincts that made the mere existence of life in her presence anathema. She felt like she was moving slowly, but everything else seemed like molasses. A tigerman came too close, and she snatched it by the upper and lower jaws, and ripped them apart, spraying blood and bone and teeth everywhere, and her battle cry did not stop, as if a banshee possessed her voice, and air was no longer needed to give sound to death screams. The display gave pause to those next three. Two bearmen and a panther woman.

Rage. Rage. Rage. Death's Paladin walked the field of battle as if she had been born there. Vague thoughts were replaced by impulses. A claw thrust out as if to rend her throat, and her sword rose and fell, hacking the arm the way she'd chopped carrots into pieces, and finishing the kill by putting her ki into her flattened hand and thrusting it into the exposed throat of the overreaching unfortunate pantherwoman. She fell and rolled onto her back, looking up in disbelief as if she could not understand what had killed her. Her maw opened and closed, and she had enough time yet to look up in fear at the black lifeless eyes of the human that had killed it, before the boot of the Black Paladin, enhanced by the power of her profession, came down on her skull and crushed the life into mush.

If there was order to her thoughts, or any thought at all nobody could have picked it out, and it didn't matter, furious wrath was turned on the beastmen, her sword went through the guts of a bearman, it tried to bring its paw down to beat her, only for the grim hand to snatch the wrist and turn the bone within to dust, and fling the being bodily into its brethren. Her evangelist enhanced warcry ripped through the air as if that were in the way of the foemen, and tore into their fighting spirits as her adamantite blade tore through flesh, bone, and what armor they had wasted their effort bringing to the field.

Minotaur warcries pierced the air as the company of broken warriors turned unreasoning berserkers ripped into the unprepared Devor raiders and the tide turned sharply. A heavy blow struck Neia's armor from behind, and bounced off of her as if it were nothing but a bit of hail.

A brief memory surfaced, of standing before Jaldabaoth's armies, and taking a ballista bolt to the chest, before she stood back up and resumed her killing. This had not even knocked her down. She smiled a bloody smile at the club weilding tiger man, and pounced on him with legs endowed with the strength of the undead, her teeth sank into his neck as her free hand ripped at his fur. Though he tried to claw at her, he lost the first hand that did so. She tore out his throat with a bite as strong as a zombie, and whirled to seek new lives to end, landing lightly on her feet as the monster stood for a moment, then toppled lifeless to its back as its blood pumped into the dead ground around it. Her face was so coated with blood, and with the flesh still dangling from her mouth, her eyes an endless whorling void.

"I see you…" Her voice reverberated in the grim echo that ripped away the will of kings to continue looking into her eyes, "I will see you forever…" She said in a hushed reverberating voice that the unfortunate lionwoman that now faced her, took to be a promise to consume her very soul.

That beastmen nearest her, who beheld the impossible warrior coated with blood and entrails, who was seemingly hungry to devour the very flesh of their bodies and the souls within, felt her spirit break and she began to flee. She was the first… but not the last.

"Kill them all!" Neia screamed the order, but it was needless, the minotaur berserkers had abandoned any pretense of care for their lives or for reason or for mercy. They chased the beastmen down, and though the catmen were faster in theory, they had fought hard and run to the fortress in the first place, they were weary, while both the minotaurs and Neia alike had entered a berserker rage, that knew neither weariness or kindness, and could not end until there was nothing left of their enemies to kill.

No raider of the Devor survived even two minutes more, nor made it more than fifty feet from where the rout began.

Neia thrust her sword at the sky, and screamed a warcry over the battlefield that robbed even the spirits of the dead of their courage, and rang far, far beyond the borderlands. There was no pinkness to the flesh that could still be seen, there was only blood, soaking her hair, drenching her clothing and her flesh. As if she had ceased to be human, but instead a monster comprised of the blood of the dead.

Then, and only then, did she collapse.

Up on the wall behind her, Mu'Anik felt his bones freeze as the minotaur berserkers returned, and gathered around the fallen human, and after picking her up on their shoulders, began to carry her silently back within the fortress in formation once again, as soldiers would a fallen hero.

His heart was pounding madly in his breast, his pulse raced, he felt himself start to pant with panic as he watched Mu'Bin and his fellows bear the female prisoner back to the courtyard. "What... have they done?" Mu'Anik wondered with a mix of awe... and terror.