{The highest tower of another realm…}
A hulking figure strode into a palace hall obscured in darkness. A great throne, shaped like a great tree, its roots winding and meandering across the floor, stood at the far end of the hall. Light flowed from many windows behind the throne, broken by the dark branches of that vast tree. Two wolves sat at the foot of the throne, gnawing on ancient bones. Someone sat upon that throne, poring over ancient tomes. The new arrival spoke.
"I've returned, father. Thanks to your power, the Bifrost shines again. The fire giant has been destroyed. It carried no flaming sword, but it called upon magic fire with its voice."
"Well done, my son. Tell me, does not the world seem different to you?"
"It is different, although it doesn't matter. Midgard is your realm to rule, no matter its form."
"What could this mean, though? None of the giantess' visions spoke of a fire giant in Midgard. Not before the Twilight."
"Even if it was in her visions, the fire giant's dead. It changes nothing."
"It changes everything, my son. The emergence of such a variable requires us to question current predictions. But I will reevaluate them later. Tell me, where is your half-brother?"
"He's in Breidablikk, bored and anxious as always. Do you ever intend to give him the mistletoe?"
"Eventually, yes, For now, his mother's magic is too useful for us to throw away. Send him here. There is more to be done in Midgard."
"Yes, father."
{The Prime Estate, Hoburns, three weeks after the battle of Kalinsha…}
Remedios Custodio, fully armored, flung open the doors of the Prime Estate, where she and her sister resided. She had a bright smile on her face. She had just spent the last half hour in her element: smiting the vile foe in the Holy Queen's name. 390 demihumans soldiers, whose diverse species she cared not to remember, had fallen before her so far that day. And she had not even needed to call upon the power of Safarlisia to strike them down. Her raw skill and the sword's sharpness were enough. None of their rulers had come forth to fight her, but it mattered not. More time had been won for the Southern armies of the Holy Kingdom to arrive and break the siege surrounding the Holy Kingdom's capital city, Hoburns. Remedios cared little how long they had to wait. Her only concern was how many more enemies she would kill in an hour or two when the next sortie went out.
"Lady Remedios, will Jaldabaoth return?" asked Neia Baraja, the Paladin-Captain's squire, following behind her.
"Eh? I don't know. The vile monster hasn't interfered so far, though."
"So some strange hero appeared in Kalinsha and fought Jaldabaoth? Was it Momon?"
"I don't remember. Whatever the case, I hope whoever it was killed the demon."
"But you were there, Lady Remedios. Didn't you see if it died?"
"We escaped before the battle went on at length and destroyed the city." Remedios flopped onto a couch, getting back up after an uncomfortable snapping sound. As she sat, she had broken one of the arrows that had been lodged in the back of her plate armor. Remedios tossed the broken arrow aside, and Neia picked it up to dispose of later.
"Can I remove the arrows from your armor now, Lady Remedios?" asked Neia. "You asked me to when you came back just now, remember?"
"Oh, right, right, yes, yes. I was lost in… uh, thought, yes."
That's a first, thought Neia scornfully. With some small effort, she pulled another arrow that had pierced the solid metal layer of the Paladin-Captain's armor. It hadn't gone beyond the mail coat beneath, however, so no real damage was done. "Either you're getting slower or their archers are getting better."
"What's that?"
"You didn't have so many arrows in your armor last time."
"Oh…"
In one ear and out the other. Fortunately, Neia stood behind Remedios as she pulled an arrow from the left pauldron, and could roll her eyes with impunity.
"Hmm… Baraja, you've never been in an actual battle before, have you?"
"No, Lady Remedios," replied Neia.
"Good. It's time. You will carry the Paladin Order's banner in our next sortie."
"As you wish, Lady Remedios," said Neia.
{The gates of Hoburns, two hours later…}
As Remedios commanded, Neia accompanied her, carrying the white and blue standard of the order. They passed through the alabaster gates of the city, two mighty doors engraved with heroic gods and angels. Remedios broke off with three-quarters of the Paladins and half the summoned angels, leaving the rest in reserve with Calca and Kelart. The sound of distant drums filled the air. Just beyond a small rise in the terrain and out of bowshot from the defenders, Neia saw the skeletal frames of tall siege engines in the midst of construction. Catapults and trebuchets, siege towers and battering rams.
The demihumans had returned, resuming their work to fill in the great ditch surrounding the city and make a path for those engines. This time, however, large, protected carts were interspersed in their work teams. Those enemies nearest the gate saw the approaching sortie on horseback, some 400 under Remedios' command. At the distance where she would usually order the charge, Remedios heard the order for "Shields!" given in the demihuman ranks.
What she saw next nearly made her heart stop. As well as shoveling dirt, the attackers had been hamstringing and throwing live human prisoners into the ditch in an effort to fill it faster. Some of the demihumans had broken off to form a 'shield' wall of sorts, and in each hand was a human child, each in rags, bound and squirming uselessly against their captors.
The demihumans behind the 'shield' wall continued their gruesome work, throwing human prisoners into the ditch and piling dirt over them as the poor wretches cried out helplessly from the pain, their voices muffled by the gags in their mouths and the other victims piled on top of them. Remedios ordered her contingent to halt.
"What devilry is this?!" cried one of the Paladins in horror. Others joined in.
"What the-"
"How can they-"
"Monsters!"
"Any closer, humans, and we'll kill every last one!" shouted one of the demihumans, tightening its grip around the throat of a 5-year-old girl. The other demihumans began making similar threats.
There was only one thing Remedios could do in this situation. "Retreat." Neia only stared at Remedios as everyone began to fall back, a deep rumbling of horses' hooves on the ground. But Neia was deaf to it, and all the other noises of the siege. Her ears rang only with the derisive laughter from the enemy and muffled shrieks of human agony that Remedios had done nothing to stop.
"Remedios! What is the meaning of this?!" shouted Kelart in frustration. "You fall back when you have not even attacked?! Those are human beings being buried alive, for heaven's sake! We can't leave them like that!"
"We can't attack them, Kelart! They're using children as shields to block us! We have to think of a way to save them all!" urged Remedios. Since the action she suggested involved thinking, the 'we' really meant 'you' in this case.
"Even the children… Your Majesty, what do we do?" Kelart turned to Calca, and all eyes were on the Holy Queen.
"I… we… they…"
Neia felt her stomach twist on itself at Calca's fumbling. The crying of the prisoners, their limbs slashed and the dirt and bodies piling higher over them, seemed all the louder to Neia as the tense silence drew on.
"Your Majesty, you can have us attack regardless," suggested Kelart. "We can still save many of our people that way."
"NO!" shouted Remedios. "You can't do that, Calca! The hostages would die if we attack head-on! There's got to be another way!"
"It's a sacrifice we may have to make, Remedios!"
"But they're children, Kelart!"
Kelart knew there was no persuading her sister directly once her mind was set on something. She decided to persuade someone else with more influence instead. "Think how many more people would die if we did nothing! How many more people in the kingdom will cry tomorrow from our inaction today?!" It worked.
"Kelart. That's enough," said Calca in hasty understanding. "We will attack."
The priests and paladins stared at Remedios as she sputtered and stammered at Calca's decision. "B-b-but Y-y-your Majesty! How-"
"I will lead the charge from the front," proclaimed Calca, her voice breaking slightly.
"Your-your Majesty! You should stay back here. What happens if you get ki-" started Kelart.
"You are right earlier, Kelart. More of my people will be lost if we do nothing, and so many more will cry from the losses once the war is over. Would they not find comfort in seeing me do battle for them and for my promise to bring them happiness?" Calca had steeled herself, and it showed in her voice. "We can waste no more time."
The defenders' charge crashed against the 'shield' wall. In spite of her resolve, Calca's eyes stung with tears as a golden-haired boy of twelve and his captor fell before the damage of her [Holy Ray]. Calca stopped her steed as she saw the two of them thud onto the ground. Her eyes were fixed on the unmoving body of the hostage, the face of the boy she had killed. The paladins rode around her like a glimmering tide of white and silver. Calca cursed that hand of hers that had done the deed, wishing it could just wither and die. Perhaps something far deeper inside her had done so instead.
Remedios pushed and shoved her way through the demihuman 'shield' wall with her horse, before leaping onto the ground and setting to her deadly work behind them. She dared not look back at what the other paladins were doing to the 'shield wall,' so she focused her efforts on freeing the other captives instead. Safarlisia tasted the dark wine of battle once more.
With a sickening crunch, Kelart's mace smashed into the skull of her immediate foe, a goat-like demihuman holding what was once a brown-haired girl of seven. Blood and spattered brains dripped from her mace as the bodies collapsed, and Kelart did not wish to discern from whom those gory remains had come.
The onslaught of angels and paladins continued, and barrages of magic both divine and arcane hammered the besiegers. Arrows and spells showered down like destructive rain from the city walls. At last, the 'shield' wall of demihumans broke and fled. Calca reined in Remedios and her paladins as they began to harry the enemy in pursuit. "Stay here; you will get surrounded that way!"
"B-but Your Majesty they-"
"Do as I say!"
"U-Understood."
"We will regroup and drive off the rest of the attackers, then free the remaining prisoners."
No amount of tears could Calca shed that would ever wash away the memory of that boy's face, only the first innocent of that war to die at her hands. No amount of tears could repair her faith in the Four Great Gods, the Gods who had proven impotent in her hour of need, her people's hour of need. What kind of Gods could allow such horrible things to befall such innocent people?
In the coming weeks, Calca, the Custodios, the paladins and priests sallied forth to attack the demihumans as they tried again and again to pile more bodies and soil into the great man-made ditch that surrounded Hoburns. The demihumans abandoned their human shields altogether by the third sortie, instead bringing the all prisoners in the carts to be slashed and hurled into the ditch. Safarlisia would slaughter the besieging enemy by the bushel, before the sortie would retreat or be driven back by the hail of arrows and spells from the besiegers that would meet them if they tried to pursue. Footmen and summoned angels would cover the retreat.
A few more weeks passed, and the contingents of demihumans who tried to fill the ditch thinned out. An angel guardian came from afar, annunciating to Calca that reinforcements from the Southern Nobles, fresh and nearly 55,000 strong, would arrive the next day.
The siege was broken. The defenders and the relief forces stormed the siege camps. But they found no enemies to fight.
Queen Calca and the Custodios, with Neia in tow, carrying the Order's banner again, meandered through one part of the siege camp. Two main species of demihuman inhabited this area of the camp, mostly goat-like and or centaur-like, lay dead in grotesque numbers. Axes, spears, swords, and arrows protruded from the bloodied corpses. Those were not Holy Kingdom weapons at all, but their own, used on each other. The stench of decomposing flesh filled the air.
"Leave it to these monsters to turn on each other in the end," said Remedios in a vindicated tone of voice. "It seems not even the vaunted Demon Emperor can make much of them."
Calca disagreed. "I am not so sure, Remedios. I am unfamiliar with demihuman appearance, but do they not look starved to you?" she wondered aloud. She looked at a particular specimen of the fallen, a one of the goat-like demihumans wearing a green coat of scale mail, topped with a red cloak. The broken edge of a mighty two-handed axe was firmly lodged into his head. This one might have been a king or a lord of his people, and may have once looked the part in days of greater abundance. Calca did not see the belt he wore, decorated with the broken skulls of human infants that lay covered under his corpse. One of the centaur-like attackers, likely the ruler of whatever species that was, lay slain a few meters away, just as emaciated and holding the broken remains of that two-handed axe. Calca looked at the body of the warrior-king in the green scale mail with pity. "What brought him so far from home to die? Was it bloodlust? Or was it lies and threats from Jaldabaoth?"
"It doesn't matter, Your Majesty. The world's a better place without these things infesting it, regardless of how they die," replied Remedios, very matter-of-factly. Calca said nothing.
"Your Majesty, their supply lines must have collapsed," suggested Kelart. "It might have happened if the stranger at Kalinsha actually destroyed Jaldabaoth. Without the Demon Emperor to lead them, their organization broke down from within even as they besieged us."
Calca put a hand to her chin. "We can only hope he is dead."
"What do we do with them, Your Majesty?" asked one of the priests.
"Purify the bodies. We will send word to the Abelion Hills and beyond and offer to send the fallen home."
"Y-Your Majesty… you saw what they've done to innocent people. Our people! Will you really give them such an honor after what they made us do?" asked Remedios.
"If we had been enslaved by Jaldabaoth in their stead, would we have done any differently than they?"
At last, the Holy Queen united with the alliance of the Southern Nobles. They scoured the rest of the siege camps and found that many of the other besiegers had also turned on each other. As far as Calca was concerned, the war was over, and her kingdom had been saved from ruin.
{The Royal Palace of Hoburns, four months later…}
Calca, with her brother Prince Caspond, who had been freed from one of the enemy's internment camps to the east in the months after the war, sat in council with the Custodios, the Southern Nobles, the few living Northern Nobles, and the priests of the Temple of the Four Great Gods, discussing the ongoing recovery efforts for the ruined northern region of her realm. Count Dominguez, one of the Southern Nobles and the chief administrator of the repair project, was speaking.
"And so Your Majesty, there will be a mild food shortage this year unless we can buy grain from abroad. My magistrates have estimated approximately 40,000 people, mostly from among the peasant and poorer burghers, will perish in the winter from the shortage, even with the priests creating food and water for them every day of the season."
"We will buy what grain we need. We should have plenty of coin once the magic items from the war are sold abroad. Who should we send our offer to?" said Calca. "I would like your opinions."
Kelart responded immediately. "The Re-Estize Kingdom is not an option. They will have little enough grain to sell come harvest season, thanks to their manpower losses from their war with the Sorcerer King. They may have a shortage of their own to deal with."
"May our hearts stop beating before that monster sets foot in our lands," muttered one of the priests.
"We could ask the Theocracy," said Count Santz, a sickly looking noble from the South as well. "We are fellow humans after all, and they have no major wars on their hands."
One of the priestesses answered the Count. "We have tried reestablishing relations with them in the last few months, Your Lordship, but they do not even admit us for audience, nor our secular representatives. I fear they still resent us for the Schism of Two, after all this time, and will not even speak with us."
"Her Grace is right about the Theocracy. They want nothing to do with us. Nor can we expect help from Argland. We have no embassy with the Council State, and even if we made tried to establish one, the winter would have passed before we see even an ounce of their grain," sighed Kelart.
Calca steeled herself for what she was about to say. "And since Baharuth is no longer an independent state, that leaves us only one feasible option: the Sorcerer Kingdom."
The room sank into an uncomfortable silence at the Holy Queen's conclusion.
"You can't be serious, Your Majesty," said Remedios. Of course, she had only listened to that last sentence, the rest simply didn't stick. The high priests of the Temple murmured in agreement with the Paladin-Captain, and she continued. "The Sorcerer Kingdom is ruled by an undead, a being just as evil as Jaldabaoth. That creature's murdered of tens of thousands of people, all by itself! Would you give it money for anything? Why would it even want money or have food if it's just going to try and kill everyone? For all we know, right now it could be preparing an undead army to take advantage of our weakness from Jaldabaoth's invasion!"
"We have no choice. If we do nothing, 40,000 people will have nothing to eat in winter."
Before Remedios could respond, the High Priest, a well-fed mustachioed man in his fifties, put his foot down. "I remind Your Majesty that for international policy, the law of the Holy Kingdom requires the formal blessing of the Temple of the Four Great Gods. Speaking to the undead and officially recognizing its oppression of innocent humans is in direct defiance of all good reason and Temple doctrines. You will not receive our blessing for this. You cannot buy grain from the undead, if it even has any."
"Would you see 40,000 of my people starve, Your Grace? As I have said, there is no one else we can feasibly obtain grain from in what little time we have left. Please bless our request for aid from the Sorcerer Kingdom."
"We will not, Your Majesty! Baharuth bent the knee to that creature, and the Temple in the Empire proclaimed anathema against Emperor Jircniv's dynasty! Do not let the same fate befall yours, Your Majesty. What would the people think of the Holy Queen if she makes pacts with the undead monster? What faith would they have in a monarch who buys bread at the cost of her own righteousness?"
Calca glared at the High Priest in exasperation. The answer is so obvious! Why was everyone so opposed to it? If they won't work with me… I can't just let my people cry from hunger! I have to do this!
"You are right, Your Grace. Per the Holy Kingdom's laws, I can only act in international matters with the Temple's blessing. Since you will not grant me that, in the fall, I will exercise my powers as monarch and raise the army throughout the entire kingdom, and every field, crop, and grain silo owned publicly by the Temple and privately by its priests will be seized and redistributed to the common folk every year henceforth until the shortage is over."
"B-b-b-but Your Majesty! That grain is sanctified! If we priests starve, who will administer healing to the ill people of your realm? Who will-"
"You fear starvation, priest? Cannot your 'good reason' and 'Temple doctrines' feed you for even one season of the year?"
"Your Majesty!" exclaimed Kelart indignantly. "You can't-"
"No, Kelart. Let him answer," said the Queen, glowering at the High Priest.
"I-I-I- that-" stammered the High Priest before trailing off. Calca pressed home the attack, speaking in a cold, angry tone.
"How dare you threaten me with anathema and recite my own laws to me in front of my court! I promised my people a good land where nobody will cry, and if I need the Sorcerer King's grain to keep that promise, then I will do everything in my power to obtain it. Do you understand?"
The High Priest sighed. "I… I do, Your Majesty. The Temple… will approve whatever action you deem best, and may the Gods wash our hands of it." He bowed his head in defeat.
The nobles there wondered to themselves who sat before them: the meek Calca Bessarez, or the Holy Queen?
The door of the council room opened, and a servant entered timidly. "Your Majesty, I beg your pardon, but an emissary is here. An emissary from the Sorcerer Kingdom."
Author's Note: Queen of Clubs was canceled in Chapter 1, but the other festivities of Overlord's Holy Kingdom arc are not. Like I said, I'm working up to the actual crossover stuff, so the foundations are being laid here. Please be patient if it feels slow, I'm doing my best to make it worth the wait. I'd love to hear any comments and feedback so far and in the future, and thank you all for reading my story.