CZ's affection was always light in nature. She expressed herself only in one or two words and a few gestures, it took time to get to know her to recognize the subtleties of her feelings, and the depth that could lay beneath an outwardly indifferent surface. She was an ever placid lake, calm to the eye from one standing on the shore, but swim beneath the surface and you would find that she was teeming with a rich inner life, a deep well of emotion reserved for only a precious, precious few.

In all the time she'd known her, Neia could scarcely think of an occasion when physical affection had passed between them, despite considering each other to be among the best of friends.

That made CZ's hug even more impactful. The maid demon didn't break the embrace entirely, though she squeezed hard enough that if Neia had been a weaker person, some bones might have cracked a bit. She did, however, pull back from it while keeping her hands on Neia's shoulders. "Don't." She ordered.

Neia's face was mute and numb, her jaw had fallen open, foam still dripped from it and her normally narrow, dangerous eyes were wide with horror at what she'd done and what had nearly happened to her. Her face began to crack, and quiver and tears welled up in her eyes.

"I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I just wanted it to end, I just wanted to stop hurting, I didn't want to get anyone else hurt anymore… I'm poison… I didn't want anyone…" Her voice was shaking as she let it out and her eyes clouded over, CZ stopped her from speaking by placing one finger over her lips.

"Friend. Not poison." CZ said in her quiet subtle monotone.

Neia looked around as the reality of what just happened hit home, she wanted to say something else, but the question suddenly came to her… "Wait, why are you two here?" She asked as confusion temporarily replaced all other emotion.

"Why are you still sitting on the floor?" Lupusregina said as her hand fell back to her side, "You didn't die you know, though it was a close thing, thanks to my amazing skills as a cleric, you're healthy as ever. -su" She said with a wide full grin as she put her hand to her chest, touting her skills.

"Oh, ah, yes." Neia said, and as CZ stood up, she held out a hand to Neia, who grasped it and accepted the pull that brought her to her feet.

"Now, about how you two came to be here?" She asked as she went to a nearby chair, her body still trembled and shook like a leaf in a summer breeze.

"Lord Ainz said this might happen, soooo, he had me follow yah. -su." Lupusregina said proudly.

"He is never wrong." CZ said succinctly.

Neia's face was pale at their words. "He- he knew? No… please tell me it was some other way… I can't bear the shame…" Her voice was soft, broken. She put her elbows on the table beside her, then lowered her face into her upright arms. "My god expected me to fail him… how low can I fall, that I'm expected to be weak? I don't want to know that, I don't want to know that…" She said in an almost childlike whimper.

"Lord Ainz wants to see you." Lupusregina said flatly, and a moment later the gate opened nearby. "He said he'd open that as soon as you could move, you can move, so… don't keep him waiting." She said, her voice somewhat softer, but no less 'instructive' than it customarily was.

Neia stood up and looked over at the two maid demons who had saved her life. "Thank you," she said, wiping her face and her mouth clean, "I'd better go face whatever I have to over there, ugh, I'm a mess. Please though, don't… don't tell Skana or the others."

CZ nodded, Lupusregina shrugged, and Neia stepped through the gate.

She found herself somewhere quite unexpected. She had thought to find herself in Nazarick, instead she found herself not far from Prart, her single largest, though not her last, clash. She was not at the gates or within the city, instead she was to the west of it, in front of a very familiar tree on a low hill.

She looked around for the Sorcerer King, but her eyes lingered on Illyana's grave for a long moment, and while her gaze lingered her search ended.

"This is where she was buried, isn't it?" The Sorcerer King asked softly from behind her. "You picked a beautiful place to lay her to rest."

Neia whirled and fell forward towards him, she did not kneel, she prostrated herself, the way those who were the most deeply grateful, or the most desperately lowly, put themselves before their benefactors or their betters, a posture of absolute supplication.

Ainz didn't say anything.

The silence stretched out, his black robes flapping softly in the breeze, the rustle of the leaves and branches of Illyana's tree, these were the only sounds to fight the silence. It took a moment for Neia to realize he'd asked her a question.

"Y-yes, sire," she said nervously. She held her position, he hadn't told her to rise, and the truth was, she didn't want to rise, from this posture he couldn't see that the eyes that had brought down terror on the mighty were shut like a dam holding back a sea of tears that she feared would drown her if she let herself fall into them.

She was shaking from her position, but she otherwise did not move as he walked past her, she could see his skeletal feet were bare under his robe, unusual for him, but now was not the time to ask. He approached and touched the gravestone.

She could hear the click of his bones on the stone, it was those little gestures that endeared him strongly to her, they seemed so very human, made him an exception almost from the beginning to how she saw the undead.

She wondered what he was thinking.

"Stand up, Neia." He said.

She was used to obeying him after years of service, it was as natural as breathing. She slowly stood, but she didn't turn around.

"Look at me." He said, standing beside the gravestone, resting his hand gently on it.

"Please…" Neia said, her head was hanging low as if she was looking at the ground, but she didn't want to open her eyes, she kept her back to him, fighting her instinct to follow his command.

"Would you turn your back on me, Neia?" He asked softly.

She shook her head back and forth in a vigorous denial.

"Then why is your back to me still?" He asked.

"I can't bear to look and I can't bear to be seen." She said, cracks appearing in her inflection.

"Because?" He asked her back.

"Because of what I did, tried to do, almost accomplished," she said with her fists clenched and shaking at her sides.

She heard him move slowly, the scrape of his bones like a knife as his hand moved over the surface of the grave marker, then lifted from the stone.

"That is why you must." He said.

She slowly turned around to face where he stood, but she kept her eyes closed.

"Open them, I promise it will be alright." Ainz said.

She forced her eyes to open, ever so slowly, and she saw him standing there with open arms.

"Come here." He said, and the dam burst. She rushed forward with the same urgency she had used previously when striving to kill Remedios Custodio, but this was more like desperately swimming towards driftwood to avoid being carried beneath the waters that were bound to consume her.

She fell into his embrace. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said over and over again, more times than she thought she could. What she had gurgled out through foam and futility in what had been meant to be her final moments she could now say clearly. At least for a moment, before they were choked out with sobs and snot and hiccups.

Ainz towered over her, but when he spoke this time, he put just enough space between them to get down on her level. To many others, to see the blank skeletal face and the burning red orbs would have been a moment of terror, but to Neia, it was like looking into the face of a father.

"What are you sorry for?" He asked her.

"Where do I even begin?" She whimpered softly, looking down as she stroked his magnificent robe. Her eyes shot up, "I tried… I tried so hard… I thought, I thought that if I could just hold on, be what I was supposed to be that I could be a bottomless vessel of strength. That I could bring everything to the way it was supposed to be!" Her voice began to rise, her caress ended and she stared madly down at her hands.

"Instead I almost killed my own wife! Not once, but twice! Bad enough she died once already because of her closeness to me! But I drew a sword on her! I took a blade and pointed it at her! HER! Only one small difference and I might have cut her open! What about the next time? What then? Will I not see who she is until she's a corpse?! I'm a danger to everyone around me, like HER!" She wailed and banged her head on the Sorcerer King's unmoving chest. There was no need to say who the 'her' was. Ainz knew how she felt about the late Remedios and the terrible realization about how similar they could be to one another.

"I almost shot a little boy in the street when he ran into me! I poisoned everything! Tinamoc will never speak again! Illyana died because I promised her freedom! Tiksin, the first person I thought I had truly saved from the depths of personal oblivion, ended up an inquisitor's prey! Gascon died because I was too stupid to think to assign him guards! Calca trusted me, and now she winces every time she sees her own face in the mirror! And that is without all the people who have died, so many… many others. The other elves of Wenmark, the Blood Miners, the Vines, so many of my loyal soldiers!"

Her little hands balled up into fists and she began to pound on him in frustration, her eyes went shut tight against the world and she pressed her head hard enough against his chest that it hurt.

"I tore my own body apart… I tried to dig the voice…her voice… out of my head, I ripped apart my nails, tore up my skull, sliced my ear attempting to stab a vision of someone dead and gone! I did all of that, with my wife asleep in the very next room… I almost ended everything that night. I stole one of her blades, and she might have found my corpse in the morning if… if she hadn't woken up. Then I lied to her, slept next to her, and screamed at her in rage the next morning when she just did what she was supposed to do, worry about my injuries, and I lied to her AGAIN!" Her voice was so rapid that Ainz could barely follow it, he didn't say anything, he just let her speak.

"I tried to be the vessel of strength you needed, I tried so… damn… hard! But I'm empty! There's nothing left in me at all but poison and it's killing me! And if it doesn't kill me, it'll kill someone else! How long before another assassin targets me and gets my wife? Or targets her just for spite! I drink to forget, as if the wine will fill the void! And when that doesn't work, I turn to sex, it is a frenzy with her, but not for my pleasure or even for hers, but just to let that emptiness go away for a little while!" She stopped pounding against his chest and grabbed his robe and gazed up at him as if it were a lifeline and he was pulling her up with it.

"Then perhaps worst of all I compounded all that and I might have failed you! I stood before the Synod, someone provoked me… and I… I called upon your power without meaning to. In my stupid empty rage… god I could have crushed them into jelly, all of them, even those who support you! Lakyus was there! What if I had killed her too?! I don't know how to live with myself anymore, the nightmares when I'm asleep, numbness, emptiness, and miserable pain when I'm awake, and surrounded by people who I'll destroy… because I'm poison. It's all that is left, a residue of something toxic in an empty vessel, cracked and broken. You'd be wiser to throw me away! What good is an empty, broken shell… and… and… and...?" She finally trailed off, her eyes opened up to look at the shimmering black robe of her divine god. All there was, was the sound of a war hero, a living legend, a dragon rider who could call upon the aura of her lord, the black paladin, Neia Baraja, weeping as if she were a child again.

She began again after a little while, "I don't want to die…" She whispered softly. "I know that now…that was my last thought before I was saved…I just don't see another way, I'm lost… just so lost, like I've fallen from a cliff and I don't know when I'll hit bottom."

She looked up at him with eyes more like that of a frightened kitten or puppy than the woman who struck terror into armies. "Majesty, tell me…" She said, "How did you know? How did you know what I was planning? Have I been so weak for so long…" Whatever she was going to say beyond that was cut off by finger bones at her lips.

He could see in her eyes how the question burned, there was no choice but to answer.

"In the world I come from, the place my servants have come to call the 'First World' many terrible things happened, I told you about that, didn't I?" He asked.

She nodded earnestly.

"The needs of the injured in mind as much as in body, were plentiful, and our finest minds turned their resources to studying the human mind. In the course of this, discoveries were made about human behavior, and one of those discoveries was that when someone was in enough pain, the decision to die brought happiness. So, knowing this, I told the others to watch over you. If you appeared to be suddenly happy after everything, I was to be notified. When word was passed to me of your sudden change of mood, it was trivially easy to realize your intent, therefore I had CZ and Lupusregina dispatched to tail you." He said calmly.

Neia's eyes were still pouring, her lip was quivering, she wanted to speak, but his finger was still over her lips.

"That however, is a minor matter, what is important is this… Neia, never in all the time I have known you have I ever considered you to be weak, nor do I think you are weak now. You've just tried to be strong for far too long." He said, and she gave him a fragile smile and clasped the hand whose finger covered her lips. "I should have given you a reprieve during the war, or sent someone to help you along the way, instead I put so much more on your shoulders…and this is the result. I owe you a great debt." He said and bowed his head.

"Sire…no… I… please don't bow your head to your servant." She said in a frail voice that reminded him of his nervous little dark elf child.

He sighed, "Very well, but know that I will repay that debt no matter what." He answered.

Her face turned briefly thoughtful and she asked, "Sire, if I am not weak, then am I insane?" She asked as his hand moved back.

Ainz contemplated that a moment, and how best to answer it, and he quickly hit upon an answer. "I spoke with my servant, Vanysa, after you left. She told me what you asked her." Ainz began.

Neia looked surprised, but he continued. "There was more to her answer, but before she could give it, you asked to see me. I'd like to let her answer now, if you'll hear it." He said, Neia only nodded slightly in reply.

A moment later she heard the bouncy, crystal belled voice of a familiar servant.

"You called for me, sire?" She asked.

"Go ahead Neia, ask her again." He said.

"How did you keep it together?" Neia asked her.

"I didn't." She replied as she approached in small steps with her hands folded in front of her. "After I was captured and tortured, I knew I wasn't going to make it, nobody knew where I was, nobody would miss me around my neighborhood… I'd lost my shop and everything I'd worked for a long time before that, I was just a nothing bound to die in the gutter, only I was getting tortured to death instead."

She smiled a little winsomely, "Master would have cared, but I was so ashamed of losing his reward and failing at my ambition, that I didn't reach out for help when I needed it. If I had, I doubt I would have been taken for long. But I didn't, so Astraka got me, and then I didn't think I could keep taking the pain, so I beat him in the only way I could, I killed myself. When his majesty revived me I had blocked it all out, weeks of memories I didn't want to see again, and when it came back, I felt it all over again as if it was fresh, and my mind is never going to be the same."

Vanysa shook her head and knelt next to Neia. "The truth is, you did better than I did, by leaps and bounds, I'm as… well, healthy as I am, because I've had constant nonstop care provided to me by our lord. I am treated as what they call an 'outpatient' at a place I'm sure you've heard of, called 'Illyana's House', that means I can come and go, and when I go there, I am given all the care and support I need. In Nazarick, Demi is so patient with me, so kind and gentle when I'm frozen in place reliving something… and the lord we all share gives me all the space I need to function. I'll never be the same girl I was before the beastmen came, and killed the man I loved, or even the girl I was when King Astraka took me and… did the things he did. But I'm learning to live again!"

She reached out and clasped Neia's hands in her own. "It isn't over, not as long as I'm alive, not as long as there are people who are willing to help me, love me, support me. I don't have to do everything alone, and the truth is nobody ever really does, whatever those stupid stories say about impossible do everything and feel nothing heroes!" She snorted in contempt and spat on the grass.

"Even our god leans upon us, he calls upon us to labor for his cause! If he sees no weakness in having us support him, how can we who serve him, call ourselves weak for wanting the same?!" She was speaking furtively, rushing her words but Neia didn't miss a single syllable.

"Just because everything can't be exactly as it was, doesn't mean there isn't a future, get the help you need, and set an example by doing so for all your people as much as for yourself. It isn't shameful to need an army to fight a war, or a cleric to heal a scar, or even a team to build a house, you won't be weak for needing a few people who understand, to help you heal your mind. I learned to live again, to cope, and yes, some days are harder than others, but you aren't poison! I admit I don't know you as well as CZ or Lakyus or Tinamoc, but I'm an Erinyes, a Fury, and I can say with certainty that the guilt you're holding in isn't nearly as much as you think it is. I know that if you were as toxic as you think you are, then they'd have done something other than try to help you. Let them do for you what you would do for them, let yourself seek the help you need." She said urgently, squeezing the clasped hands of the diminutive pope.

"But… the Synod… I need to finish, or it is all for nothing! His majesty must be recognized as the god he is!" She said with desperate fervor.

"Neia…" Ainz asked seriously, "Have I ever told you anything about faiths of the place they call 'First World'?"

"No sire, truth be told I never even thought to ask about it…" She replied.

"In the first world, there were many different gods followed by many different people all over its lands. People prayed for good harvests…and when the harvests failed, they blamed themselves, or pinned it upon scapegoats who had done nothing. People prayed for an end to sickness and watched their children wither and die. People called on their gods for victory in war, only to see their lands overrun. People called for salvation, and the great salt sea roared in on one of the holiest of days and killed vast numbers. People begged the lightning not to strike their houses of worship, only for them to be burned down when the lightning struck anyway. People attributed many things to these gods, even absurd things like helping to find lost keys, to starting a machine that cleaned clothes. Whenever they wished for something good and it happened, many people claimed it was the work of the divine. Whenever something bad happened, they said their favorite deity was mysterious, or their answer to the call for aid was a no because it had some other plan. But in all this, it seemed the same as if none of their deities were real, and things happened or didn't happen simply by way of either human intervention or chance and nature at work." He shook his head.

"Those were do nothing gods. If they were real at all, they routinely abandoned those who loved them most to suffer and die, or they abandoned the weak and the innocent to suffer evils they might sometimes have been too small to even understand. The same way the Six Gods responded when their altars were turned into dinner tables on which their worshipers and their children were consumed." He covered the pair of cupped hands with his own large skeletal finger bones.

"Would you have me be such a god? To do nothing as my followers tear apart their own flesh in pain? If I AM that sort of god, then I do not DESERVE the title! I would sooner abandon it than abandon those who serve my will! If this world is made into the heaven in life people long to reach after death, then I am god enough, and where my will resides in every heart and mind, there my divinity is also found! This 'Synod' will no more make me a god than it will deny me the position! They're a gaggle of people making a bureaucratic decision that does not change anything about who or what I truly am. If I am to be called a god, then they will speak only for themselves, as others will deny it. If I am not to be called a god in their eyes, then they will again speak only for themselves while those who follow me will continue to proclaim it! What are countless voices raised in hollow devotion, compared to the true loyalty I am shown by you and those like you!" Ainz asked, wiping a tear away that hadn't made it all the way down her cheek yet.

"Let Skana or Lakyus or myself speak, don't carry this burden alone. Do as Vanysa said, allow me to do something for you, by allowing you to help yourself. Please." Ainz said, and the final word struck her like a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky, never had he heard him use that word.

She gave a nod that was so small it was almost undetectable. "You will seek help? This very day, of your own will?" He asked.

"I will. I just don't want to hurt anymore, or get anyone else hurt along the way, I'll do it…and I promise I'll do my best to get better." She said softly. Briefly Ainz thought of all the stories of his childhood, the sudden emotional turnarounds, the enthusiasm in sudden changes of heart, the blazing jump in fiery determination, it was appealing to watch, but it wasn't the reality. Neia did not suddenly turn around, she didn't give a giant smile or have a sparkle appear in her dull, battered gaze, her voice remained small, but there was truth in what she said.

"Good, that is the first step, it is perhaps the hardest, particularly for those accustomed to displays of strength, who like you, think they must be strong forever or be weak forever, and don't recognize the impossibility of the former. I'm proud of you Neia, so very… very proud." Ainz said and patted and stroked her hair.

Ainz was very grateful for his emotional suppression, because as she now was, he was reminded once again that he had put the world on the shoulders of a girl who was barely more than a child out of her teens.

"Thank you, sire…" She said softly, her voice still sickly and choked.

"Remember this, when you think about taking your own life… while nobody may own another, we all leave pieces of ourselves in those who care about us, and when a person takes their life, they rip those pieces out of those beating hearts, and leave only mourning and sadness in their place. That is what it means to 'take' one's own life, to take it away from those who value it."

She gave another barely perceptible nod.

"Alright Vanysa, call for a gate, and escort Neia to your treatment facility. I will inform Lakyus, CZ, and Skana that Neia will not be with them today." Ainz commanded.

"Ahm on it, yer majesty!" She said as her bouncy voice returned in force, she stood up and stepped a few paces distant.

"Oh... and one more thing." He said as he lifted her chin to look into the red orbs of his eyes.

"Yes, your majesty?" She asked uncertainly.

"Call me Ainz more often from now on." He said, and though his skeletal face could not show any emotion, she could sense a smile on it.

"As you wish, Ainz." She said, and embraced him once more as the gate opened, Vanysa held out her hand beside it, and Neia stood, walked over to it, took her hand, and they passed through the gate together, leaving Ainz Ooal Gown, alone but for the body in the grave.

AN: Well that was a rough one, triple release today, one for this story, two for 'Bone Daddy's Daughters' I hope I did a respectable job on this section, I rewrote some parts a half a dozen times or more, trying to convey everything Neia felt without being melodramatic. If I did a good job on it, leave a review. If you want to support my projects, you can support me on P atreon dot com slash godrising. Or you can join my discord for exclusive content, I look forward to hearing from you! :)