The Trial: Journey's End

Written by: AtheistBasementDragon

Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots

Chapter 47: Do Demons Have Nightmares

...Devor Border...

"Ever wonder if demons have nightmares?" Mu'Ulm asked as he watched Kiril's Angel shake and sweat in her sleep, he sat close at hand on the log with his back to the ash and embers of the flames where the survivors and soldiers had stayed the night.

"Not till now." Mu'Bin replied as he sat next to the minotaur champion.

Neia's eyes flew open wide as saucers, her breathing was labored and rapid as she sat up as fast as the string of a drawn bow being loosed.

She blinked several times, looked around, and after closing her eyes and stroking the back of her hand for a moment, she stood up.

"God damn, I'd kill for a bath right about now." She said in a banal sort of voice, and you'd have never known from her face that a nightmare had troubled her at all.

"Everybody up!" She snapped and the moments of horror ceased to be on her face as if they'd never been at all.

Mu'Ulm and Mu'Bin traded a questioning glance as if each one tried to understand what just happened from one moment to the next on her face as energy seemed to rise from nothing within her and even the sweat that smeared the bloody face seemed to vanish.

"What are you two waiting for? I've got work to do and there's no time to dawdle." Neia's face became resolute and harder than steel, her ice blue eyes seemed to stare into the deepest places of their hearts.

The peasants and soldiers that had been sleeping soundly began to rise, and those from more distant guarding positions began to come back together with the group, and in no time at all they had been assembled again.

"Mu'Ulm, take command of the peasants, Mu'Bin, see to your soldiers." Neia' gave the orders with such brusqueness and confidence that it seemed impossible to even think of disobeying her. The minotaur warriors formed up in ranks, but the peasants milled in a more 'round' gathering, less a formation and more a cluster.

"In a few minutes, I'm leaving, I am grateful to all of you for coming this far with me, through trials and snares and hardship, I've encountered many a brave soul and many a coward. Many a faithful friend, and many an unlooked for helping hand that I've never seen again. So... Mu'Bin, thank you, and pass my thanks to your comrades, who looked out for me when I was helpless and unconscious after the fight at Last Home. Mu'Ulm, thank you for your loyalty in Kirakira prison, and for fighting beside me in saving what of your people that we could."

"You talk like you're on your deathbed." Mu'Bin responded, uncertainty in his voice and his eyes looking to the right of him where Mu'Ulm stood in front of the peasants, who themselves looked nervous at the thought of losing their initial security.

Neia was quiet for a moment, "I won't be dying in my sleep, but I'm on trial for my life in this country, I killed a man in open court, and someone sent me to Last Home to die, I have every reason to think I'm going to hang in the next few days, if not the next few hours. I can't even say it is entirely undeserved, but that doesn't matter. What does matter is getting done what can get done, while I can still do it."

Mu'Ulm stamped his hoof angrily, "Let me go with you, when they come to take you away."

"For what purpose?" Neia asked bluntly.

"The second goes with the commander, and that's all there is to it." Mu'Ulm replied and folded his enormous arms over his chest, the big shield he carried covering most of his torso, he was the definition of a living wall. "Besides, somebody has to carry the heads back, and I would love to tell the story in Kirakira prison of dumping that pile of beastman heads out in the capital city as a great big fuck you to the king and everybody who says we can't defeat them."

Neia grabbed her belly, threw back her head, and laughed long and loud at the image, like a demon in ecstasy. "Oh by god, yes! Do that."

"Then I'm going as well." Mu'Bin replied resolutely, "Someone has to tell them what happened at Last Home, and nobody knows better than I what Mu'Anik ordered. Even if it is only the weight of a blade of grass, let me put that on the scales in your favor." He said and folded his arms in front of his chest as well.

"Alright... I suppose it's just as easy to send you back to the fortress as it is to take you with me."

A peasant hand went up. "Yes?" Neia asked patiently.

"What about us?" An older minotaur asked, his fur was a patchwork of gray, and his voice was cracked with advancing age that marked him as only a little younger than the one who died on the journey.

"You have a choice." Neia replied, "You can go back to your homes, or... you can go to my temple, I should have a small one established now, I have no doubt that whoever is running the place will take in anyone connected to the Pope. If you go to the temple, and ask to be taught my ways, do not expect it to be easy. Weakness will be erased even if it has to be wrung out of flesh like water from a wet cloth. But the choice is yours which way you go. Mu'Ulm and I saved your lives, but that's a gift, and once a gift is given, it isn't right to decide what the receiver should do with it. But decide quickly, because once that gate closes, don't expect it to reopen."

Her words were interrupted by the appearance of a gate behind her, and a message that rang within her mind.

'It is time, daughter... but when you come, storm this place like you stormed that fort. This is the hour of decision, more than any other before, more than any after.' Albedo said with a gentle voice that was filled with a wealth of pride, pride that only swelled as Neia answered.

'Whatever happens, I will not disgrace either of you.' Neia replied, 'If this is the start of my last hour, take care of father, protect my family, and if there is a world beyond, I'll be cheering you all on from it!'

"Time to go." Neia said, and spun in a perfect military turn, and marched through the gate.

She got to the other side, and found what she expected, the adjudicator and the panel on either side of him, the spellbound audience wondering what would happen next, the demons overhead and the illusionists casting their spells, Albedo and Pandora's Actor sat at their table, Demiurge and Vanysa at their own.

For all the expectations she had, they met them. She however, met none of theirs. Neia stepped through the gate as the embodiment of a blood demon, a whorling void in her eyes illuminated by two pulsing red points, and her body a sheen of blood, much of it wet still from the earlier sweat. Her straw hair matted down, for many it was the first time seeing her face, and around the empire, the burning pulsing red points embedded themselves into memory.

Just as the sky blue did, when those points faded away to nothing, and only a deep sky blue replaced them in the narrow whites.

"I'm back." She said resolutely as she walked out of the gate and to the center of the room, the judge raised his gavel as if to pound it and draw her attention.

"No." Neia said to him, turning her sharp blue eyes toward the minotaur adjudicator, "Wait... please. I don't come alone. And I owe an explanation."

The gavel stayed aloft as the judge hesitated at the unexpected words and actions.

As she spoke, hooves gently echoed over the stone from the entry of one minotaur peasant after another.

"I left Last Home because your country lost some of its precious jewels, and I went to recover them. The peasants you see behind me were taken by the Devor, and my second in command and myself went over the border together, raided their camp, killed all the raiders, and rescued them. The blood of the beastmen stain my body and my clothing."

Silent eyes watched as the filing in continued, and uncertain of what to do, the peasants clumped together a few paces away from where Neia stood as she relayed the story in its entirety, she put no terror into her voice, but spoke sonorously of the fight, the sacrifice of the minotaur woman, the consumption of her flesh, and the assistance of Mu'Ulm.

"Who is 'Mu'Ulm'?" The adjudicator asked as his eyes darted from the blood demon that was the defendant, and the band of peasants that had finally stopped coming through the gate.

"I am." Mu'Ulm said, drawing the adjudicator's eyes to the champion who emerged out of something of legend. Beneath his mask, the adjudicator's eyes widened. "Kiril..."

Mu'Ulm laughed. "No, I'm not Kiril, I'm Mu'Ulm, her second in command from Kirakira Prison."

"But... the armor... the white ax..." The adjudicator stammered out as murmurs began to grow from the panel as much as the crowd.

He shook his enormous head, "Nope, came from her people, given to help her." He pointed to the red bodied Neia who let the exchange pass on uninterrupted.

Neia felt her body relax as she took in the rhythm of the moment, "I defeated him, and now he follows me. Keeps calling me Kiril's Angel for some reason but..." Neia shrugged, "That's neither here nor there, the thrust of the story of where I've been is that we rode out to correct your country's sin!"

The last word was loudly emphasized, "Your country tried to have me killed by sending me to Last Home as a slave warrior, a sacrifice to the Devor, only we killed them all instead. We killed all the Devor at Last Home, and then we killed all the Devor at their waystation on their own ground. We burned their bodies, and we brought you proof." She glanced over to Mu'Ulm, who shrugged off the rope that held the big sack on his back.

It dropped with a thud and fell over on its side, and heads began to roll out.

The gasps became cries of shock, which only redoubled when the minotaur champion grabbed the gray cloth of the sack and yanked it up, spilling the remainder into a pile.

"The Devor can die! The devor can bleed! You sinful, sinful people have let them eat more than the flesh of your brothers and sisters, you've let them eat your very souls to save your own flesh! They are not gods, they die like anything else! Your people can kill them! Only we two were enough, and we slew them to the last, so what then could a country do?!" Neia's voice became passionate and her evangelist gaze captured the entire audience, each seated soul felt he or she alone was being spoken to and heartbeats picked up.

"Rid yourselves of weakness, that greatest of sins, and look what you can accomplish!" She kicked a head for dramatic effect, and as if it had been planned, a hoof from a peasant came up, stomped down, and shattered the head of a lionman into fragments and mushy brain matter.

"In your prison, I found this one!" She gestured to Mu'Ulm, "A cast off who your kingdom considered mere garbage, yet with will and skill he became a god of death in the eyes of the Devor, who turned and fled in terror from him!"

Mu'Bin finally came through the gate, and it closed behind him, hearing the steps, Neia whirled and pointed to him, "That one is a warrior of Last Home, driven to fight with courage, he severed Beastman heads from bodies with the same ease that a child steps on an insect! You can fight! You don't have to be weak! You don't have to be prey! The strength of my god's justice flows through every living vein and pounds in every beating heart! What is the point of existing only to wait to be food?! The reason you should fight isn't just to live, but that a minotaur can stand up, and be free to follow their own justice, pursue the path of their own greatness, whatever field it lies in. Your reverence for strength is mocked by your embracing of weakness to continue to exist. Choose one! Weakness or strength, but if you choose strength, you cannot continue to throw the jewels of your kingdom away to be mere prey to the Devor Empire!"

She stopped her shouting rant, and turned to face the adjudicator, and then breathing hard as if there were a great battle, the blood demon in human form said politely and with a small smile, "That... is what I was out there for. I didn't run from your justice, I chased it down and dragged it back over the border where it belongs."

"What she says is the truth." Mu'Bin said in a deep, booming voice, "The Devor came to Last Home, and for the first time in over two hundred years, we fought, truly fought, and we won! We can beat them!" He raised a defiant fist to the sky.

"Kiril's Angel showed us the truth! We can't keep living as we have, we have to fight! We 'can' fight! They are not invincible, we just have to have the will to resist! Our horns tore open their bodies, our hooves broke their bones, our axes bit into their necks! Our warcry split the sky and made them slow their charge! I saw FEAR in the eyes of the beastmen, something none of our people have seen in centuries... All we had to do, was do what she did... and fight! Charge them, break them, crush them, punish them!" Mu'Bin had lost himself in the emotion of the moment as he described what he could recall of the battle.

"And for showing us that... Mu'Anik ordered us to kill her! She was ordered to go in front of our formation, a death sentence, and yet she lives, we live when we should have died!" Mu'Bin's voice was outraged, "The blasphemy, to try to strike down Kiril's Angel..." He shook his head, "I was ordered to have her killed if she survived, again, those orders came from Mu'Anik, but even if I could do that, I wouldn't... not because she is Kiril's Angel, but because we now know that we can win!"

"That is..." The adjudicator and the panel looked at the heads, the peasants, the impossibly armed and armored minotaur champion, the zealous looking Mu'Bin whose eyes were bright with passionate commitment, and could not think of what to say. He set his gavel down slowly, having finally remembered that he held it.

He swallowed hard from where he sat.

A long silence was around the court as sky blue eyes above a small smile and a bloody face looked over the area as if a great victory had been won, a smile that was mirrored by a demoness at a table who looked proudly over at where Neia stood.

Finally Albedo rose to speak, "This bears greater questioning, that someone could try to have the daughter of His Majesty killed... it is a problem, but I have no questions pertaining to the trial to ask any of these, so I ask that they be dismissed."

Demiurge however, stood up himself. "I have a few questions for those two." He said and pointed first to Mu'Bin, and then to Mu'Ulm. "The rest, they can go."

Albedo and Pandora's Actor traded a brief look of concern. "If someone out there knows where my temple is, please, take them." Neia requested of the spectators, and in the back, a minotaur slowly stood up.

Neia looked at the sea of minotaur faces, and in their mixed emotions, as she saw them bow their heads to herself and Mu'Ulm, for a moment, her mind flew back to the day she revisited the blasted ruin of her home, and beyond, through the passing of years, to the lost lives of those with whom she'd grown up, and of whom she was the last, and she felt as if, impossibly, she was seeing their faces once again.

Then the moment passed her by, so quickly that it was gone with a blink, and they filed past and up the long stairs, leaving her behind.

"The prisoner requires her hood, gag, and chains going forward, that was the agreement." Demiurge kept his sadistic smile in check, but his heart sang when he saw Neia clench her jaw.

"Fine." She said and approached the table where her defenders sat, she bowed her head and held up her wrists.

"Remove the necklace as well." Demiurge said, and Albedo glared at him as she and Pandora's actor affixed the chains to her wrists. She held them overhead and yanked her wrists apart, snapping the chains taut so that it was clear that she was secured.

The low rattle as they relaxed, hid the whisper as Albedo inserted a fresh silver gag over her tongue. "Well done, now we finish this, one way or the other."

"As you say, mother." Neia said with more confidence, and held her mouth open for it to be secured, and the hood closed over her head a moment later. The sense of humiliation from when it all began was gone, she stood erect and proud, while still in the central speaking area, Mu'Ulm, the armed and armored minotaur champion, and Mu'Bin of Last Home, watched in fascinated disgust as she accepted the hobbling of her body and voice.

Mu'Ulm wanted to shout, 'How can you do this?!' he wanted to unleash a sense of anger... but as Neia accepted the theft of her voice and her sight, a thought occurred. He drew his white ax, brought his shield up over his chest, and he began to pound it like a drum. Like a soldier honoring their commander it echoed over the pavilion and beyond, from one corner of the Sorcerous Empire to the other, and in shared disgust at the humiliating hobbling of the Black Paladin, Mu'Bin took his heavy ax, and pounded against his armor, redoubling the echo, indifferent that they stood alone in doing so.

The judge pounded the gavel again and again, still transfixed by the pile of beastmen heads and all that had taken place in that tiny span of minutes, while beneath her hood, Neia's eyes were wet with tears of gratitude.

After what may have been a mere minute, their pounding stopped, and Demiurge pointed to Mu'Bin. "You, to the stand." He said, clearly annoyed, and Mu'Ulm moved away and took a seat behind the Black Paladin, he looked down at the ones in front of him, his watchful eye on Neia's back.

Mu'Bin moved to the podium, and watched a golden haired human stand up from behind the table and approach him. She moved with sultry grace, stepping lightly over the stone until she was close to him. "Tell me, how long has it been since minotaurs won a battle at Last Home?"

"Over two hundred years as far as I know." Mu'Bin answered as he felt his big brown eyes being drawn to the storm grey of the small woman who held her hands daintily in front of her.

"Remarkable victory then, what grand strategy did you employ, surely it must have been great cunning at work to hand you such a victory?" Vanysa asked him sweetly.

"She did something, and then... well we charged and killed them all, I don't remember everything, but she said... things, then all there was, was blood and death until the Beastmen died, after that she collapsed."

"Berserker rage?" Vanysa asked rhetorically.

"I suppose." Mu'Bin said thoughtfully, "That's as good a name for it as any."

"So... the accused drew on some ability of her own to manipulate you all, and as a result, you slaughtered all the beastmen. I believe that is how she ended up 'here' in the first place, isn't it?" Vanysa asked and spun on her heel to look over to where Neia sat.

The chains rattled audibly.

"I submit that this action of hers at Last Home reveals that she 'does' both have and uses a power that can't be controlled, and that she used it there at Wheaton just as she did here, to kill everything without any care for whether prisoners could or should be taken. I submit that she acted on her own bloodlust and not in accordance with the dictates of the laws of war."

Mu'Bin stammered, "But wait, she saved our lives! Had she not done that, we... we were without a fighting spirit anymore, we were warriors in name only I..."

"Irrelevant. It does not matter why it is used, only that it is. We're done with this one." Demiurge pointed out from the table, trading a smug look with his paramour as the first thrust home was made.

"Redirect!" Albedo said sharply and rose gracefully to her feet, she strode over the floor as Vanysa returned to her place, the two passed by one another and flashed competitive grins as each considered themselves victorious over the other.

"You say you had no fighting spirit, can I conclude then that your unit was in a state of great despair?" Albedo asked as she held her hands folded formally behind her back, her wings fluttered in anticipation.

"Yes, yes I'd say so. Despair is the fact of living at Last Home." Mu'Bin replied bluntly. "Or was, until then."

"So, what would you say was her state, was it like yours?" Albedo asked calmly.

"No... not really, she was very forward, never trudged in the short time I saw, everything was a march and if anything, she was emotionless, right up until..." Mu'Bin hesitated briefly.

"Until?" Albedo asked.

"Until she was ordered to the front of the formation, we all knew what that meant, she wasn't just an ordinary slave warrior, she was a target, she was being sentenced to death, nobody survives alone against a Devor raiding party, and being up front, alone is what she'd be. Or... I guess I should say 'nobody did' survive, until recently." He glanced pointedly at the pile of heads.

"So her emotions were running rampant then?" Albedo asked.

"That's how it felt to me, I mean nobody wants to be sentenced to die, nobody wants to be assassinated, so... yes, I'd say she got profoundly angry, still she went and obeyed orders. That's when she did whatever it was, and then we charged and... well, you know the rest." Mu'Bin explained simply, holding out his hands as if to ask if there could be anything else to say.

"So... we're not talking about a calculated move with brutality in mind, but rather a necessary action undertaken in the greatest of stresses to save as many lives as possible, and putting those lives ahead of the lives of those who came to kill you all, aren't we?" Albedo asked rhetorically.

"Absolutely." Mu'Bin replied with conviction and folded his arms in front of his chest defiantly.

"Very good, go have a seat, we're done here." Albedo said warmly.

"Mu'Ulm to the stand." Demiurge ordered, and the mountain of a minotaur stood up.