God Rising
Chapter 81
…Kami Miyako…
Raymond composed the letter while he sat at the desk with Ginedine and Berenice, but before he could get a full word to paper, Berenice interrupted him.
"Are you serious, you're actually going to write to the Sorcerer King?" Her voice was that of a concerned mother, and her eyes were wide as saucers as she asked a question she'd never fathomed asking before.
"I am." He said gravely.
"But we're at war with him." She said, as though he were an idiot who had forgotten that little detail, he looked back in turn, as if she were being an idiot for saying that.
"I'm well aware of that fact, but do you have another option?" He asked.
"Do you even have a plan?" She asked incredulously.
"He probably does." Ginedine said cryptically.
"Not really." Raymond answered with a tired voice.
"No, the Sorcerer King. He's unfathomably intelligent, he stole Zesshi, our best weapons, everything, he built an impossible alliance of nations against us, I wouldn't be surprised if this was all part of his master plan and we were just dancing in the palm of his hand all this time." Ginedine clarified and let his head fall forehead first into the curve of his hand between thumb and forefinger.
"Maybe, but if that is the case, well, we're going to be better off learning his tune quickly. If we want to do this, he's our best, perhaps our only chance." Raymond's voice took on a dejected note.
"Well, perhaps we can make it easier for him, Ikari is lost and Crossroads is threatened, what if we proposed expanding the farms near Wheaton and moving a large number of slaves there, if Crossroads falls, well, how much more can we raise to fight for Wheaton?" Berenice asked.
"A lot, really, but unlike Dominic I don't expect us to win this war anymore. You all felt that, the Sorcerer King has probably lost all patience with us, and the torture of that servant of his by that idiot Astraka has not only drawn the Draconic Kingdom into the war, it has no doubt served to void whatever show of respect we had left for the Draconic Accords. We'll be lucky if the Argland Council State doesn't join the war at this point just to take a shot at us and ingratiate themselves with the undead." Raymond's voice was calm, but his eyes were wounded and tired.
"What do you think will happen to us?" Ginedine asked.
Raymond frowned, "I try not to think about that. If we're lucky, Zesshi will just kill us and we'll have quick deaths. If we're not… if we're not…" His face turned pale.
"All we can do is accept what happens, is that what you're saying?" Berenice asked, a hint of fear coloring her voice.
"It is." He replied.
"Has Thousand Mile Astrologer told us anything new?" Berenice asked.
"No, she's going to give another look into Re-Estize though, and see if anything new happens, I don't know what could be worse than we've already seen, so perhaps the worst is over and we can do something to minimize the damage." Raymond answered, fearing he should not have said that.
…Nazarick…
Ainz stood before the mountain in front of him. "Gargantua! Arise!" The mountainous golem stood from its sleeping posture, rose to its feet, and then knelt before the Sorcerer King. Ainz took out a map and had Sebas hold it up, and then pointed to the south of a city on the map with a bony finger. "Go to this place, and strike the stone down until you have a path to the other side as wide as your body!" The mountainous being did not speak. It could not speak on its own, only repeat exact phrases if it was told to. It wouldn't understand those phrases, only parrot them.
The lumbering steps shook the ground, and though it did not move with great rapidity, the steps were so long that the effect was the same. "Now… I should probably send word to my allies not to bother Gargantua as he works… I'd feel bad if I ended up crushing one of Zanack's armies by accident."
"My lord, how long will it take for him to reach the mountain where you wish your new pass to be?" Sebas asked as he rolled up the map and stood idly in attendance.
"A few days, and to crush the mountains down, well… perhaps a week, a lot of good building material will be had from that as a result. Sebas make a note to tell the Re-Estize Kingdom they're free to have first pick of the materials we're creating for them, I believe they'll need it." Ainz added as an afterthought.
"You are most generous, my lord." Sebas said with a respectful bow.
"Do you remember what is on the other side of those mountains?" Ainz asked.
"I believe there is an amalgam of different tribes called dark dwarves in a region to the north west closer to and part of the mountains. And then to the southeastern areas on the plains and hills were the dark elves." Sebas replied patiently.
"Hmm, we haven't made contact with either of those groups yet, but they're surely aware of us through the Slane Theocracy or through the Abelion Hills, and what is more, Gargantua is going to be pummeling through the mountain to create a passage, is there any chance it will destroy some cities under the mountain?" The Sorcerer King asked as he stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"Forgive me, my lord, but that I do not know." Sebas said, his perfect servant voice disguising his mortification at failing to know the answer to a question his master had asked of him. Down to his core Sebas, like all the other denizens of Nazarick, dreaded the possibility of the last supreme being departing them, and every possibility of failure, already hated and despised, became a cause for dread, for what if that one failure was enough to drive their lord away from them forever? Therefore every servant of Nazarick strove above all to know everything their master might ask of them, and more, even on the off chance, however unlikely, that it might come up, and now Sebas had failed.
Ainz seemed not to think much of it, for he shook the question off, "It doesn't matter, I'll have the eight edge assassins inspect the area, if there are cities in his path or which might be affected by Gargantua's activities, I will have to go and see to the problem myself, we can not have it said that the Sorcerous Kingdom slaughters neighbors just to get a chance at their enemies, can we?" He asked rhetorically.
"No, definitely not, my lord." Sebas replied, pleased by his lord's mercy.
Within the hour the eight edge assassins had been dispatched via gate, and they would find anything there was to find, and Ainz was more than pleased.
…Demiurge's office…
Vanysa was casually licking the blood off of her talons as she approached the desk where he sat going over the results of his experiments. "I finished the last one, Lord Demiurge." Vanysa said.
"Anything else I can help you with?" She added casually.
He didn't bother to look up at her at first, "No, nothing really… no… wait, that was very quick, how did you do it?" He asked, suddenly realizing how fast she'd broken the Zuranon member that had been holding out. He set down his papers and looked up at her with his crystalline eyes.
"It was easy." She said, licking her lips. "He had… oh god, it felt so good, it tasted so good…" She shuddered in bliss for a moment, "So much guilt… he hated so many things he'd done… it took a while to pierce the veil of his mind, I knew the guilt was there, but the shame was like a thick mist, all that self hatred, I spent hours, days just staring at him, saying a few random words, just looking for things that might trigger a reaction, and gradually I pierced the shadow of his memories of shame and saw more than just the shapes…" She paused, her body growing heated and clearly excited, her heart was pounding in her golden chest and her wings shook like spider's webs in a breeze.
"When I saw them, I knew how to break him, I got His Majesty's permission, and used some illusion scrolls, I called up the images of those he felt guilty over, and I had them confront him, the mother he did nothing for as she drowned, the brother who died saving him from a monster, the comrade who fell in battle and cried for aid, but to save his own life, he simply ignored the man and continued the fight. He judged himself in his own heart, and was therefore guilty. These and other things like them I called up, and I turned his own mind against him until his self hatred and guilt drove him mad, and he begged me to start cutting him instead… and I promised I would, so long as he broke his own mental seal, he spilled his guts about what little he knew, and I wrote it all down before I finished him off." She grinned with much satisfaction. "God, you wouldn't believe some of the horrible other stuff they had those Zuranon members do. Better off without them, that is what the world is." She said matter of factly.
"Here is the report anyway." She said and placed it in front of him on his desk.
He picked it up and read it over quickly, flipping from one page to the next in rapid succession.
"You wrote this?" He asked with some disbelief.
She looked mildly offended. "I did."
"Forgive me, it's just…" He paused.
"Yah thought mah brains were in mah boobs?" She finished archly, leaning over his desk, closer to where he sat and giving her chest a shake.
"Well…" He took off his glasses and leaned his chair back, his elbow went to his thigh and he tried to explain. "It isn't that I thought you were stupid, but I didn't expect you to catch on to these things so quickly."
"Well, ah did." She said as her mad eyes shone as bright as the light in his crystal eyes. "An' more too." She said. Before he could even ask what she meant, she reached down and snatched up a paper off his desk. He was about to be profoundly offended, even angry, when she said, "I've seen what you're doing with those heads, but the problem, my lord, is that you're just cycling old blood, if you want to sustain them without magic, I would suggest you try to find a way to either renew the existing blood, or supply a steady source of fresh blood to keep the brain going."
"How did you come to that conclusion?" He asked, incredulity rich in his voice.
"Simple, you stab someone, they bleed to death, right?" She asked.
"Yes…" He said in a leading tone of voice.
"Well, when you stab somebody and they start to bleed to death, you patch them up, they'll eventually move again, right?"
"Also yes, what is your point?" He asked, his voice now intrigued as he realized she had a line of thought before her that she was taking him through.
Her eyes turned sharp and engaging as she gave him a seductive demonic grin that bared her fangs, words came from her lips, but lust came from her body, blood lust. "Well, it stands to reason that if the body loses blood and gets weak, then gets strong eventually on its own, it must be making new blood to replace what is lost, so it seems to me that the head, when separated, must have the same issue, only it seems that however the blood is made, it isn't in the severed head. So if you did find a way to either renew the old blood or replenish new blood for use and route it to the head, you could make sentinels that watch, listen, and smell, with their magic almost totally unnoticeable. Have you considered that?" She asked.
His face took on a serious look, he'd seen Vanysa many times, even helped her once, though more out of loyalty to Ainz who he was fairly sure did not want her crushed, but never had he seen 'into' the creation of his master, not this way. Yes, he'd found her to be… easy to look at, and he'd found he enjoyed her talented music making in the torture chamber. But her… insight, her unusual way of thinking in this instance, made her much more.
"I hadn't, but that is… brilliant. You say you were just an ignorant peasant?" He asked.
"I was, till master saved me, took me, taught me… and saved me again." She said, looking over her new body.
"He chose wisely." He said, it was high praise.
"Just because I'm pretty?" She asked wryly.
He laughed, "No, not just because you're pretty."
"So you do think I'm pretty." She said with a smug matter of fact tone of voice.
Demiurge snorted.
"I'm a girl, Demiurge, we were born to ferret out the secret thoughts of men." She said, her voice quite proud.
"I thought that was just succubi." He replied sardonically.
She smirked at the deflection, "Now, how about I assist you further with these experiments?" She asked, "I don't have much to do."
"I'd like that, come sit next to me." He said and he pointed at a nearby chair, she pulled it over and sat as close to him as possible, reached out, and took a paper up from the desk, in the end they ran far past the time they expected to be finished, but neither found themselves either tired or regretting it.
…Abelion Hills…
Aureole Omega was all smiles when they reached the base of the mountains. "You want us to do what now?" Leinas asked.
"Scale the mountain." She said.
"Oh, I heard you… but… why exactly?" Leinas asked incredulously.
"Well, all those raiders we sent out have been doing a very fine job, but the entire point of that was to give us a chance to take Fortress Alaf." She said, "We're going to take it, and we're not going to lose many at all." She said in a cheerful voice.
"Won't we lose half our army trying to cross these mountains?" She asked.
"Nope, because you see, we've got the Sorcerer King on our side, which is to say, we've got the scrolls he provided us." She said in a sweet, patient voice.
"What do you plan to do?" She asked.
"Well, nothing yet, but when the Slane Theocracy violates the treaty and my king, our king, has a full report of it, we'll be free to use those higher tier materials, and with his genius, I'm sure he timed it so that it would be just when we needed it." She hopped up on one foot and clasped her hands together, "Ahhh, my Lord Ainz, such a genius."
"Well, I agree, but that is a lot to take into account, even for him." Leinas said.
"Maybe so, but then that just means we'd better start moving." She said, and so the long, slow mountain march began. There were goat paths here and there, and trails fit for one to pass with care, too, there were low places to climb, but more than once the incredible strength of Aureole Omega was brought to bear to pull soldiers up a great slope, and more than once her monstrous strength was called upon to dislodge a boulder or other obstacle. Still, slow as it was, dangerous as it was, they progressed with very light losses over the course of day after arduous day. Little sleep was had, and she had to dance her magic heart out to ensure the blessings of stamina held for one more mile, one more foot, one more inch of ground, until after what seemed like an eternity, they had traversed to the place that Aureole Omega sought to lead them to.
"Here." She said, it was a high, natural plateau with large amounts of snow, and far down below, was the fortress city of Alaf.
"Now what?" Leinas asked dubiously.
That was when the wave hit, even from on high, perhaps carried by the winds that froze them to the bone, they could hear the screams of the city as the raw unbridled terror of the Sorcerer King struck the heart of every Theocracy citizen and soldier, it shook the mountain, and below the plateau on the steep slopes, mass amounts of snow collapsed with the shaking of the stone, and it fell farther and faster, in greater amounts than Leinas had ever imagined possible, as if all the snowflakes in all the world throughout all of time, had come together to race to the fortress city down below. It hit with such force that the walls collapsed in several places, and Aureole Omega's grin redoubled.
"That, for starters." She said.
Leinas, and most of her army, paled. Beastman, elf, and human alike, even though they had felt new warmth bring life to their freezing forms, felt awe at the divine force that had passed over them all. His wrath had fallen below, but his blessing had come on high. "OK, but… what next?" She asked.
Aureole Omega went silent for a moment and she used several scrolls to disguise her message request to the Sorcerer King.
"He has given permission, the Slane Theocracy and the Astrakan Loyalists have both irrevocably violated the accords, and the Elf Kingdom has stated intent to do so as part of a deal with the Cardinals of the Theocracy. I may use whatever scrolls I need to ensure complete victory." She said with a smug 'I told you so' look to Leinas.
"I would never have dreamt he could plan so deeply." Leinas breathed out so softly it was only her inhuman nature that let Aureole Omega hear her.
"What will you use?" She asked the guardian.
"First, we will control the weather, we want the night to be cloudy and snow to fall on the city." She said as she held up one finger to tick off her intentions. "Next we will use [Slow Fall, Area] and drop down from here." She said, raising up another finger.
"Why, what's down there?" Leinas asked with uncertainty.
"Their aqueduct." Aureole Omega said. "We're going to walk into the fortress city from above it under cover of snow and night."
Leinas smacked her forehead, "Genius." She said with a smile to match the guardian.
When night fell, Aureole Omega took out the first scroll, used it, and pointed at the sky. A few moments later, clouds formed and covered the moon and snow began to blanket the city.
When this was completed, as she planned, she used the [Slow Fall, Area] scroll and stepped off the cliff with a confident wave, rather than plummeting down, she simply 'drifted' very comfortably, having time enough to wave several times as she slowly reached the lower divot in the land where the snow collected that provided fresh water for the fortress city and its surrounding farms in the spring time. She landed gently in the snow, making only a tiny soft crunching noise as she hit, she didn't have to look above her, she already knew what was there, the soldiers of the Abelion Hills, humans and beastmen alike, were dropping as slowly as snowflakes themselves, and in ones and twos, then in small groups, their own gentle crunching footfalls broke the snow beneath their feet. Aureole Omega pointed to the various collection points where long elevated stone trenches curved over and down into the city to various points. No more directions were needed, they began to walk, slowly, carefully and in single file over the stone.
Though they were still cold, the fire of desire for victory burned in every breast, and the unutterable cunning of their commanders made them more than confident. The beastmen had a more difficult time at this than most on average, save for the bafolk, for whom this was no more difficult than a stroll in a public park. The bitter chill kept most indoors, the darkness kept those not indoors blind, and their elevated position and the noise of nature kept them obscured, until they reached their destinations around the city, the distribution points of the aqueducts, and gently dropped down to ground level. Of course, no luck holds forever. A woman, just a peasant laborer who worked in the great citadel who stayed out too late, not even a guard, was who finally saw the danger.
She saw the uniform first, perhaps she wouldn't have, had there been only one, but when she saw a dozen men helping a dozen more sneak down to ground level gently, she immediately jumped to the one and only explanation, and she screamed. "Sorcerous Kingdom! Help! It's an attack!" She was quickly silenced by a knife to the neck, but the damage was done, they began to run to seize their objectives around the city, a group of squads hit a barracks where soldiers were drinking away the winter cold, and being unprepared to fight at all, even if they hadn't been drunk, they were easily dispatched. Another group seized a tower and raised their banner over it while casting the Theocracy banner down to the ground to be trampled.
The danger facing the fortress city was slowly recognized by those who lived and worked there. There was though, a critical weakness. Hubris. The fortress had stood for over four hundred years not that far from the Abelion Hills, but never once had it faced an attack of any kind that it could not fend off. Those who lived and worked there often said they were glad to be there because they'd never have to fight. After all, its walls were enormous, thick, and it was flanked by a mountain that gave them nearly endless water. Believing the danger was close at hand, a soldier, even a poor one, will start at a sudden shadow, look that much more closely at a bush to see if it has moved, and be more quickly to raise an alarm. Yet those who think themselves safe, cast themselves into danger by believing it so, and as such they do not believe risks even when they are recognized by others.
Such was the case now as Leinas burst into a guard house and took a head that lived long enough to form a confused and bewildered expression. The soldiers behind her included wolfmen and bafolk, but also humans and a handful of elves, and they made quick work of their position. A fair part of the fortress had fallen completely by the time the rest of the fortress recognized that yes, they were indeed in great danger.
"Far too late, far too late." Aureole Omega said as she moved ever deeper into the fortress. The winter chill and lax approach had cost the Slane Theocracy many lives, and they were scattered, leaderless, drunk, and uncertain of what was happening where or to whom. Fires began to light, some by accident, some by intent. A group of soldiers that had managed to arm themselves in time attempted to depart their billets, only to find the way out blocked, and the building set alight with themselves still inside of it. The lucky ones died first from the smoke.
Soldiers crunched the snow underfoot as they moved from house to house and bound captives or slew resisting soldiers, tower by tower the Slane Theocracy's banners were taken down and many to be promptly consigned to the flames while the shouts of the dead and dying carried only a little, not only by way of their weak drunkenness, but also being impeded by the high winds.
Leinas had one goal, the center. She entered the main inner citadel and began to kill her way through the hall as others of her people followed behind her, which eventually included the pretty looking guardian. The drunkenness that many responded to the terror with, proved that they deserved to lose, though some fought bravely, their desire to banish their fears and the cold and their confidence in their security had made them barely worth calling silver ranked adventurers. It was more a chore than a fight, not just for her, but for Aureole Omega who had finally come into step behind her.
"You're late." Leinas said.
"I can't be late if I'm where I want to be when I want to be there." She said winsomely and kicked a door so hard that it flew inwards and crushed the man attempting to hold it back, all the way against the opposite wall. It penetrated the stone, creating deep cracks before hanging their for just a moment, and then falling forward. The man behind it was a shattered mess, his arms and legs were bent the wrong way, his face was caved in as was his chest, every bone in his feet were broken. He hung there in the impression of the stone that he had 'helped' to make, and then in very slow motion, he fell forward with a limp 'thud' sound against the door like a puppet with its strings cut. More of their soldiers were in the keep, the entire fortress city knew it was under attack, but Alaf had never fallen, desperate men clad in half their armor due to the want of time to dress, clashed against soldiers in full armor, with predictable results in close quarters combat. For the unarmored to face the armored was not battle, but butchery. Even more so when it was beastmen of incredible strength and battle fury, or a guardian of Nazarick.
When dawn began to rise the next day, the weather had dissipated and the sun shone over the mighty citadel, and light illuminated for all to see and know, the Sorcerous Kingdom had won the day. The fighting had stopped, a few had fled through the broken parts of the wall, while most had surrendered outright if they were still alive by then. To those loyal citizens of the Slane Theocracy who looked out their windows and doors with their mouths fallen open and children clutched protectively in the loving arms of their parents, this was a trauma like no other. Swords and spears and axes rose and fell in battle cry of victory, and despite the clear bright morning, those who watched the spectacle of the army taking what was theirs felt as if night was falling on their nation.
AN: OK, yup, triple release, again, thank the beta team and those who have donated to bdgiving dot org. :) I hope you find the chapters entertaining, leave reviews of course, those feed me and keep me writing. :) Want to get early access, don't forget the discord server, the invite for which is on my author page.
Till the next chapter, pleasant days! :)