...Slane Theocracy...North of Crossroads…
"You don't have to do those, you know. -su" Lupusregina said as she set two cups of tea down on the crude field desk that General Enri was using, when Enri had hers, she took a seat opposite her ward, her friend.
"Thank you." Enri said as she took a sip and put her seal on a document. "Yes I do, however. I ordered these people out, the least I can do is put my seal to the notice of their current status. Can you imagine how horrible their families would feel, never knowing what happened to someone they loved? I'm sure they'd never stop waiting for them to come home. I wouldn't like that, and I won't inflict it." She said firmly.
Lupusregina shrugged. "If you say so." She said and picked up her own cup, she propped her feet up on the corner of Enri's desk and drank casually. "Doesn't hurt me any I guess, so do what you want. -su"
Enri rolled her eyes. Lupu often made her do that. This time though, she set down her seal and the document and looked at the red headed beauty.
"Lupu, we're friends, right?" Enri said.
"Yes." Lupusregina said without hesitation.
"How would you feel if… say, I died out here?" She asked the maid.
Lupusregina's eyes went a shiny gold and hard as iron. "That won't happen. I won't let it."
"But what if I did?" Enri asked emphatically.
Lupusregina calmly set down her tea and clasped her hands over her stomach. "Alright." She said in a rare serious voice.
Enri cocked her head to one side and looked at her expectantly.
Lupusregina looked at her quietly for a long moment, and then said bluntly, "I'd probably get off on it."
Enri was very quiet. Lupusregina was not done talking.
"But. I'd miss you very much. I'd mourn you. I'd ask Lord Ainz to bring you back if it were possible, and if it weren't, I'd look after Nemu and Kuuderika and N'firia for you. But you really want to know? I'd get off on it first." Lupusregina looked at her with a calm expression on her face.
Enri wasn't sure if she should be hurt, offended, moved, comforted, or disgusted. The answer was so contradictory and absurd that she had no idea what to make of it all. A complex array of emotions ran across her face.
"You…" Enri started to say, and Lupusregina interrupted.
"Don't get me wrong, I like you a lot, you're my best friend in the outside world, I'd protect you even if I was told I didn't 'have' to do so. But I will always be as my creator shaped me, and that is to enjoy suffering, even, or perhaps especially, in the ones I like. I don't know why he made me the way I am, but I can't feel differently." Lupusregina said it calmly and plainly, then took up her tea again and resumed drinking.
Enri relaxed a bit, her followup explanation was… strange but comprehensible. "I see. That actually explains a lot now that you put it that way. I guess I can forgive you some weird orgasmic bliss if you have no choice about it, long as you'd miss me afterwards… and there goes another sentence I never imagined saying." Enri said, sighed, and rubbed her forehead.
Lupu snickered. "You shouldn't ask questions you don't really want answers to, it's all your fault you know. -su" Her grin was wolfish as she spoke, "Though as far as taking care of N'firia first, well maybe you and I should practice first so I know what to do, from what I could hear in there you two are experts by now. -su" Lupusregina burst out laughing as Enri blushed a strawberry red.
"Damn it Lupu! Stay the hell away from my bedroom window, I don't need 'guarding' then!" Enri said in a deeply embarrassed voice.
Lupusregina was still laughing when Enri picked up the next document, and her own laughter died.
The maid stopped laughing when she saw Enri's face. "What?" She asked.
Enri swallowed. "This is Goan's mother." She said.
"Moira, right?" Lupusregina asked.
Enri nodded. "Yeah, Moira, she… she was one of the volunteers to lead Boabdil's army away from Ikari City."
"You didn't know?" Lupusregina asked in surprise.
Enri shook her head, "No, I left it in the hands of companies to accept volunteers, the names didn't have to come up to me, only the numbers to make sure we had enough, I didn't know she'd volunteered for this, what the hell was she thinking?!" Enri all but shouted and threw her teacup to the ground, shattering it in the dirt. "She's got a son damnit! She's his only living parent! What's he supposed to do now?!" Enri's voice rose to a shout and she pounded a fist on the table, then she shot to her feet put her hand over her forehead and put her back to Lupusregina as she stepped away from the desk. She started pacing.
"She was trying to honor a debt to the Sorcerer King." Lupusregina said firmly.
"She did that by volunteering here in the first place, she didn't have to take on a damn suicide mission!" Enri snapped.
Lupusregina went strangely quiet. "Calm down, Enri." She said after a moment. "Dying for the cause of a Supreme Being is the most noble and honorable way for a life to end." Her tone was serious, even… corrective.
"Then honor has its victims, victims that shouldn't have to be." Enri retorted.
Lupus went quiet when she saw the hurt on Enri's face, and let her continue.
"You don't understand Lupu. You know if it came to it, I'd die for this the same as you, I believe in him, I owe him everything, he's the only king or god I've ever seen that is worth dying for." Enri said softly and Lupusregina's expression relaxed some, but Enri continued, "You know what happened to… us, but you weren't there. My mother and father, died saving Nemu and me, we got away, you know how the Sorcerer King saved us. We're always grateful for that. But later, do you know what happened to us later?" She asked in a small voice.
"No." Lupusregina replied, she finished her tea and set the cup down.
"Nemu knew our parents had died, and then, well I had to become her mother and her father. I was part of a family of four, I was a daughter and a sister, then it was a family of two, and I had to become a mother, a father, and a sister. And every day, every single day for months, Nemu would call for or look for her mother and father. She watched them die fighting to save us, but she still couldn't truly grasp what had happened. Goan is… strange, very different from her, but he's still just a young boy, and his mother was all he had. He's got no uncles, he's got no aunts. He's got no sisters or brothers, so now what happens to him?" Enri asked.
"He's blessed by the Sorcerer King, he'll be taken care of. He won't end up in a pit somewhere like Kuuderika, and nobody will be struggling to take care of him like you did with Nemu. It might be a big blow, but he'll have the most powerful, dangerous, educated, intelligent, wise, and caring body of pseudo-aunts and uncles scrambling to look after him for the rest of his life. He caused quite a stir from what I hear. So feel bad if you want, I won't say you're wrong, but don't worry about his future, alright? -su." She smiled a little reassuringly at Enri.
The Grand Matriarch calmed herself and sat back down, she put her seal to the document to be sent home and then looked at Lupusregina. "I'd rather he not have to wait for weeks to find this out, can you… can you do me a favor and send a message back. I'll send the official notice out with the others, but the least I can do is ask this little bit extra for him."
"Sure thing, I'll do it right now. I can guess where he probably is. -su" Lupusregina said.
...Arwintar…
Jircniv collapsed under his wife as they finished together. "Jinx, you owe me some wine." She said with a laugh as her breasts pressed against his chest.
He laughed in turn, "Not from down here I don't." He replied, and she rolled off of him.
He got up and stretched, then went to the cart nearby and poured them each a glass, he returned the wine bottle to the cart, then walked back to the bed and handed one glass to her.
She sat herself up against the head of the bed, neither bothered to cover anything. They'd memorized it all anyway. "Thank you." She said, and took a sip.
"So, you really think this war is about to take a turn?" She asked.
"I do." He said. "The Slane Theocracy has been spilling blood everywhere and not only do they have nothing to show for it other than more enemies, but they're also losing allies and land. The good news in all this is that we've performed exceptionally well, we've achieved every objective with minimal losses and played our role to the hilt, as the Sorcerer King's most long standing and most effective allies, I really expect we'll draw a lot out of this for our people."
She twirled her hair in one finger thoughtfully, "What about the Synod after all this is over?" She asked. "If the priests of the empire are not on board after everything that has happened, then it would be a real embarrassment if, after everything, the Baharuth Empire's temples voted in the greatest numbers against the deification of our lord."
That made Emperor Jircniv go silent for a moment. His mind raced. "That is a good point, I know we have the most highly placed priests on our side, but they can't 'command' the temples of the empire any more than I can." He said uncomfortably.
"So, what do we do to ensure things go the way we want them to?" She asked.
"Well, for starters we need to know where things stand, so we start surveying the Empire, find out where the strongest anti-undead sentiment lies. If there is a lot of it, we start pumping out positive information and shipping in undead laborers to those areas to make people comfortable." He said as ideas began to storm into his head.
"That might be somewhat effective." She said as she finished her glass and offered it out to him to refill. He refilled both and returned it to her. "But maybe we should think about getting rid of some of the more vocal, and hostile priests, people die every day, and if a few of the ones on the wrong side of this disappear…" She shrugged, "Well like I said, people die every day."
"You know," he said, "I often wonder, if all tombstones read just the facts, under the 'cause of death' how many would have the phrase 'Died of being an inconvenience to the powerful'?"
She laughed, "Too many in some eras, not enough in others."
"Not that I mind that in principle, but it is a little obvious, isn't it?" He asked. "And if people pick up on a pattern, well that could cause problems for His Majesty down the line, and I do not want to be responsible for that." He said, and they shared a vigorous shaking of their heads.
"Of course, some things are riskier than others, once we identify the priests who would most likely vote against his deification, we do have options. The senior priests who are on our side can have those dispatched to the front lines, after Re-Estize falls, I'm sure our soldiers will all be going south to face off against the Slane Theocracy, if they're at the front, they'll be exposed to the benefits of his rule and some may change their minds, and the ones who don't, well it is a war, and in those, 'lots' of people die every day. Easy enough to let war do the work for us." He said.
"This is why I love you." She said with a smile, and she finished the glass and set it aside. Her arms and legs opened for him once again as he finished his own glass and set it down as well.
"Come back to bed, if you can manage it." She said archly.
"And that is why I love you too." He said wickedly and got on top of her again, their lips closed to kiss as their arms and legs entwined once more.
...Lizardman Village…
Crusch Lulu was happy, she missed her husband. But they could still trade letters, and she was enjoying the process of writing another.
"Dearest Husband,
It has been months since last I've seen you, though I am grateful for your many letters, it is your embrace I miss the most. Our child is well, healthy, strong. He is asking about you often, and I always tell him you are away making him safer, making a better world for him. I'm very proud of all you've done and all you continue to do, and I of course am also doing my best for the village.
The road is completed now, we can travel on dry land to the mountains of the dwarves or to E-Rantel or even to the Empire without getting our feet wet. The quagoa workers did a marvelous job, as did the dwarf engineers. Between the two, the undead labor of the Sorcerer King, and our own local knowledge of the ecology, not only do we now have easy routes to the most important trading areas for miles and miles around, but people are using them. We see new merchants all the time, and small waystation areas are set up around every twenty miles. The young ones who are too young to fight, but old enough to work, have been running those, and we're establishing fish farms and small green houses like from those books at all of them. This way we can feed, house, and profit from travelers from all over.
Perhaps more importantly, the big fisheries are doing amazingly, your invention may have changed our world, but with the improvements of the Sorcerous Kingdom's knowledge, they're doing even better. The ground elevation methods have allowed us to build even more, and the deeper pool areas have doubled as new areas for additional fish farms.
You may be out there fighting to change the world, but the world you're coming home to is already changing, I know you'll be proud of everything we've accomplished while you've been away, and I can't wait to show you, not only that… but just how much I've missed you.
Yours in war and peace,
Crusch Lulu"
...Guild Headquarters...E-Rantel…
Ainzach was happy. In fact one could say he was very happy, and had only grown more so as the years of the Sorcerer King's rule had continued. He had multiracial teams of adventurers who compensated for each other's weaknesses. He hadn't seen a great team of high potential die before they'd reached it in… well not since the training dungeon started to go into full time use and the vastly improved equipment was issued out to teams of the appropriate skill level.
The days of the old system grinding potential up and spitting it out were done, most of the guild was empty at the moment, many teams had been contracted for service in the Roble Holy Kingdom to protect people from violence by religious fanatics and… there had been some casualties, but even with that, they were very few and none had come from 'his' guild. The casualties among adventurers had come from those hired under the old system out of Re-Estize.
The system His Majesty had derived was proving itself by leaps and bounds to be vastly superior, and now his dreams were all come true, they had, to use the words that he had engraved upon his heart by his majesty himself years and years ago, 'become adventurers'.
Now he had a new task, he had to select a few teams for expeditions, and he couldn't be happier about it. Several teams to go far to the south, beyond the land of the elves, to explore the mountainous regions and beyond. A team to go to the far west, beyond the borders of the Baharuth Empire, to explore the mountains and act as representatives to the Karnasus City State Alliance. Perhaps most exciting, a team to go to the Understone Empire, to explore an unknown chasm which exuded both magic and mystery. And two teams to take ship on the great sea and sail off into the unknown, all expeditions were being fully funded by the Sorcerer King himself. Every expedition was going to be 'insured' so that any member of any team who died, would leave behind them wealth enough that they not only be properly honored, but that any surviving spouses or children would not only avoid being left in poverty, but could live richly for the rest of their days. This was an enormous incentive by itself, in addition to the promise of custom crafted gear made especially for those teams who accepted the jobs.
What made it even more exciting was that the Sorcerer King had provided the designs for ships that could handle voyages lasting several months, which made what were impossible voyages, seem almost trivially easy, if there was in fact anything out there other than an endless sea.
Yes, Ainzach was happy beyond words, and even with all the news of war and strife that came through his guild, he had every reason to be nothing but optimistic about tomorrow. He looked at the stack of applicant documents volunteering for those first great expeditions and began to thumb through them, as he put his seal of approval on the application for 'Darkness' to visit the chasm, all he could think was, 'Yes, it is a wonderful time to be alive.'
AN: Been awhile since I've been to this story, lots to do lots to do, reviews welcome. :)