The Synod: The Book of Black Justice
By AtheistBasementDragon
Edited by The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots
Chapter 21: Home
...Arwintar...
Goosebumps rose on the bodies of the assembled leaders of the... 'Seven', as one stood with eyes red and penetrating their very cores.
Ainz spoke slowly, allowing the echo to stay ahead of his every word. "You have changed the world today. Let it be decreed in every temple, send my sacred text to all, and the priests and priestesses who were mine alone, are now part of the assembly of all. I will leave it to you who lead these great institutions to decide how to integrate them into your ranks, but know this as well. Many of my worshippers are nonhumans, and there will be no preaching of human supremacy in any temple anywhere in the Sorcerous Empire. That way lies destruction, as the recent war has so clearly shown. To save humanity, I must ensure that humanity does not turn its neighbors against itself."
He let that sink in as he sold the peace, and then continued, "We all share this world, and either we learn to live together, or we sentence the children of countless generations yet even born, to horrible deaths. Take one... no... two days to celebrate your decision here in Arwintar, all of you, at my expense, and then return here to be sent home by my magic."
"Divine one... where will you go?" The high priest asked eagerly.
"I will go to deliver word to the human who worked hardest for this hour, she should hear it from me, and know how proud I am of her." Ainz said solemnly.
Sudon bowed his head, "That is right."
"Yes, it is." Ainz said softly, and the gate opened a moment later, and he was gone.
...Illyana's House...
Ainz entered the building to the surprise he expected on the many faces of those who were arriving, residing, visiting, or working in the recovery facility. Those who sat on chairs lined against the wall, some still in their damaged uniforms, others with grim or haunted looks but dressed in civilian clothing, whatever the case, their response was alike. They knelt.
"Who bled or broke themselves for their neighbor, my kingdom and cause, should stand in my presence, that they can better defend my kingdom and their lives again." Ainz said as he struck 'wise and benevolent king pose number eight', with his back squared in the entryway, he held his hands out and upturned at waist height.
"You did well, you won the world, now... win back yourselves, and know that your king is proud of you, and will be for as long as the kingdom endures." Ainz said in his most charismatic voice, briefly thinking, 'Thank you Jircniv, for all those lessons.'
Many of them fell to tears, some collapsed into their chairs again in awe of his presence as he moved past them. It took no time at all for him to be approached by an elven nurse, she knelt and bowed her head. "Your Majesty. I am 'her' nurse. Enlaith. I assume you want to be taken to her?" She said quickly.
"I do." He replied in a low but confident voice.
"Please, follow me and I will take you to her room." Enlaith said in an equally hushed tone, and when he gestured for her to move, she stood and walked swiftly down the hall.
The footfalls echoed the gentle pace of the walk, and Ainz resisted the urge to tell her to hurry. 'She's doing her job as she knows how, I always hated that, when people would frustrate my work by trying to make me rush when there was a reason for my pace.' He thought to himself as he briefly recalled his life before the New World.
"How is she?" He asked, keeping his tone carefully neutral.
"She slept. I understand that is something of a rarity. And... she seems to genuinely want to get better. She attended a session with a group of other veterans this morning, we taught her some of the soothing techniques Lady Pestonya brought to use from your divine realm. Things to help keep her grounded, controlled, and draw back when one of those moments struck. She's also taken to painting to help cope, her work isn't... actually bad, it's like she'd done it before." Enlaith remarked with a mildly impressed tone of voice at the end.
Ainz spoke with a small hint of pride in his voice. "She has. Part of her training in Nazarick included painting, to learn to gather impressions quickly. She would have a few seconds to look at a scene, and then she would paint it without looking again. I kept all her work, though... she doesn't know that."
'He sounds like my father did, when speaking of me.' Enlaith thought to herself, and continued, "You should put those in a gallery one day, she might blush a bit at her early efforts, but, I'm sure people would be curious."
"I may take that advice, but I have to ask for now... is she alright to leave, at least for a short time?" Ainz asked with very clear concern in every syllable.
Enlatih thought for a moment, "I think so, if she's looked after. I've had orderlies checking on her room, and... I won't tell you she's always seeming to do well, last night and this morning were important milestones but... please understand, Your Majesty..." Enlaith stopped, turned and prostrated herself unexpectedly with her head to the floor, "what I need to say now, I do not say to displease you, I love her, as do all elves, we revere her as the agent of our freedom, our avenger, as the body of divine wrath sent to deliver us from monsters... may I speak it, though it may displease you?"
Ainz froze as she did all this in one fluid motion and rushed the words out like a torrent. "Yes." Was all he managed.
"Majesty there is no single thing that will ever cure her. This isn't a plague, or a severed limb. She will... almost certainly, fight this battle for as long as she lives. There will be no 'Siege of Prart' moment, that serves as a turning point that will give her a sudden turnaround and then one day she'll be just who she was when you met her. She will have to live with little victories, small improvements... yes, some things will be bigger than others. But I know what you wonder, when will she be 'whole'? Am I wrong?"
Ainz was quiet.
She took that as his answer, "Majesty, even pieced together, the broken vessel will have its cracks still, and she'll spend her life patching them, this doesn't mean she'll never be happy, or that she'll spend the rest of her life drinking herself to sleep at night and raging at those around her during the day. But it means that dealing with all of these will take time and effort, and that no amount of either can erase them, or her other problems, forever. She... she may always have some of these struggles. I am sorry, if I... If I could bear it for her, after what she did for us..." Enlaith's voice quivered, but as he looked down at her, he understood it was not out of fear of his wrath that her voice shook like a trembling leaf.
"I understand. Even coming to get help, that in and of itself was a large step, for those who are proud, or those who fear judgement, or those who dread weakness or being seen as weak... even getting help can hurt as much as the very thing you need help healing from in the first place. So she's taken a step... but her recovery, her coping, is a journey, not a destination, and the steps never end." Ainz said with a note of understanding that made Enlaith's heart ache.
"Yes, My Lord. I... I feared you would not understand, at least not so well as you do... that you would want to know when she was cured, that we couldn't do that, I beg your forgiveness for underestimating your wisdom." Enlaith said with eagerness, 'He is otherworldly... no wonder she was willing to go so far for him...' She thought with a profound sense of awe at his majesty and insight.
"It is given, now, take me to my Neia." He said gently, and she quickly rose and took him the rest of the way.
She peeked into the window of the heavy locked door, "She's awake, calm, it's OK to see her." Enlaith said soothingly.
"You intended to urge me away if she were not, didn't you?" Ainz said in a voice that sounded not the least bit amused.
Enlaith nodded soberly, "I am a nurse here, taking care of my patients is what I do."
"I am proud that you are among my servants." Ainz said with quiet reverence, "I knew a nurse once, long ago, who was like that. She died giving her all. You may go now, I will take things from here."
She bowed her head, humbled and proud beyond words, as she knocked, opened the door for the King, and stepped away to give them privacy.
When the door closed, Neia got up from the bed where she lay reading a book, still dressed in a blue robe, she crossed the room, casting the book aside, and embraced him tightly, burying her face into his robe.
"My lord, my king, my father, my god." She said happily, "Do I even need to ask? No, I don't, do I?"
"No, after everything? You don't. The vote was not universal... but it was overwhelming." Ainz said as he put his boney hands on her shoulders and drew her back to look at her.
Instantly shadow swept aside the sky blue of her eyes. "There were those who dared vote against your divinity...?" For a moment, bright red points flared in the darkness of her eyes, pulsing in and out like a flash of light repeating in the darkness.
"Who will not support my god, will betray him. Give the order father, and let me break them. Too many died, to allow denial to continue now." Her voice reverberated off the walls of her room, but the rage began to calm as she felt his hands caress run through her hair.
"There is no need. Those two who voted against me, have only voted to end their beliefs forever." Ainz chuckled mildly, "As they struggle to promote their faith, which fails every time, against my will that always triumphs, they can only make of themselves a mockery, until they all die out on their own. Let them pass with a whimper, like a candle run out of wick and wax alike, and left forever behind."
"A-As you say, my lord." Neia said as she calmed herself under his slow touch. "I wanted to be there... I did, I really did..." She added as she looked down at his feet.
"You were." He answered cryptically, "And now, if you are willing, I want to show you something... special."
She raised her head with a questioning look in her curious eyes.
He reached behind himself and took the door handle, then opened it. A gate appeared just beyond. "Will you follow me again, Neia Baraja?" Ainz asked, and as she nodded with silent eagerness, her head bobbing like mad, though robbed of speech by the moment, she followed him without a second's hesitation as he entered the gate.
Her blue robe and slippers did not make a sound as she stepped over the floor, and left the empty room behind.
When she looked around after crossing to the other side. Around her was a great, wide field, green grass was abundant, rolling hills, isolated trees filled with leaves, and overhead the sun shone brightly against a blue sky only lightly speckled with soft looking white clouds.
Neia scratched her head, "This place... it is beautiful, but father, why are we here? And where exactly are we?"
Ainz held up a finger over his jaw, indicating silence, until another gate opened, and the auburn haired wife of the Black Paladin appeared. Confusion was etched on her face until the instant she saw her wife, and she pounced like a tigress on her prey and wrapped her arms around Neia's neck and drew her in.
Ainz discreetly looked away as Neia discomfitingly disengaged herself, jerking her head towards the Sorcerer King. Skana blushed and rubbed her head sheepishly.
"Sorry, Sire." She grinned with equal sheepishness that showed she wasn't as sorry as all that.
"Neia, ask your question again." Ainz instructed her patiently after an uncomfortable cough got him back on track.
She did, and Ainz put his back to them and swept his arm out across his body to encompass the whole of the open field. "To answer your last question first, you are a few miles Southwest of Carne, and to answer your first question last, we are here to give you something." Ainz's emotional inhibitor kicked into overdrive with his excitement, the giving and receiving of gifts, the memories of both, were close at hand and he seldom got the chance to do something as grand as this.
"Something?" Neia asked, and took her wife's hand in her own.
"Yes." Ainz answered, "Years ago, before you first knelt before me, the Demon Emperor and his armies ravaged your homeland. They destroyed your village, and I know you have been 'homeless' ever since. You have done much for my cause, and served me with such absolute loyalty, that to leave you bereft of a home after it all, or forced to replace it yourself, is utterly unacceptable."
Neia felt her heart pounding in her chest. A look at her wife, and the feel of the squeezing of one another's hands, and she knew Skana was feeling the same rush.
"Therefore I chose this site, and on it, I will raise a home for you, and not for you alone, but to be held by all future popes after you retire to Nazarick to become a Guardian of the Faith in your immortality." Ainz spoke grandly, though he could not smile, Neia felt the satisfaction and anticipation coming off of him as she watched the way he moved with his back to her.
Then it hit her. 'Immortality? Me? A Guardian? Do I... am I... really fit to live forever? I... this requires much thought.'
Before she could raise any objection, the magic of the Sorcerer King stunned her into silence for what must have been the thousandth time, as but a few words from him, accompanied by a sweeping gesture, and from the ground, as if it were a plant, a building began to rise.
'No... not a building... this is... a complex.' Neia thought with open mouthed wonderment as she saw the multistory structure rise above the ground. Nor was it the last of what she saw rising. From around the exterior, fountains rose and water shot to the sky only to arch down and strike with the constancy of a flowing stream, around the massive grounds... the earth moved aside and streams connected one fountain to another and wound like a snake from a singularly large great spring on one side of the grounds. The building itself was a marvel, with its many whorling patterns within the stone and wood that made Neia think of watching dancers from overhead and tracing out the path of their movement over a great wide floor.
The great structure made the earth shake as the world gave birth to Neia's home, but the very shaking of the pains of the world itself were nothing compared to the shaking of Neia's own body as she fell to her knees in transcendent awe as a feeling came over her that she had not known she had.
Finally it was done, he dropped his arms, the world itself ceased its rumble, and he turned to find her with wide and tearful eyes and speaking in a voice almost lacking in any breath. "I'd forgotten what it felt like... to have a home. I've been so used to thinking of myself as having none, no place of my own in this world, having only dreams of a place to stay to sustain me... this is real, isn't it father? I'm not back in Illyana's House, dreaming? I'm not back in the cave of The Resistance, dreaming while I hide from Jaldabaoth?"
"This is real, this is yours, and will not be taken from you. Now, I have not furnished it. I thought you and your wife might enjoy doing that yourselves." Ainz said in passing. "You may sort through the endless materials of Nazarick for furnishing it, or you may use your considerable wealth as you see fit to acquire goods from anywhere you wish, the use of [Gate] will be provided liberally to go anywhere." He said as he crouched down in front of her, Skana had already gone behind her and wrapped her arms around her kneeling wife to kiss the top of her head.
"I had ample rewards set aside for you, so that you would want for nothing when your work was done, so that if after giving so much, you wished to retire in peace, you could do so at ease in the knowledge that you would never know want again." Ainz said as the bones of his hand touched her cheek and wiped away a drop descending from her eyes.
"I know you wish to get better, so stay at Illyana's House for now, work on yourself and your wellbeing, but know that 'when' you leave there, 'when' you come away from that ordeal's greatest hurdles, there is a place for you in this world. You have a future, Neia Baraja. You have a life out here, if you want it. We will none of us forget you, whether you reside away from us for a week, a month, a year, or however long it takes." Ainz said to her, his blank face was not far away, his enormous red orbs pulsed like the embers of a fire whose temperature was in constant flux.
"I... can I go inside, look around, you know, before I go back?" Neia asked as if fearing it was all going to vanish with the question.
Ainz stood, and held out his hand, and answered as he helped her to rise again to her feet and swept the other hand toward the door. "Yes, it is yours, like your life, explore it as much as you want, however you want, for as long as you want. That is the point of it all."
He said, and stepped aside, and watched as the Pope and her wife, in the sudden throes of childlike excitement, sprinted over the space between where they were in front of him, and the front door, and disappeared inside.