AN: Welcome to the 100th chapter of 'God Rising' this storyline (with its related side stories advancing the plot, has now considerably exceeded 1,000,000 words and also contains more material than ALL of the canonical Overlord story written by the original author, it has been an amazing journey so far, and I'm glad you've stuck with it, I hope to continue entertaining you to the very end of it all. OK, on with the show!
...South of Prart…
Remedios's face froze when Calca asked that. "What have I done?" She blinked, that was all. The joy on her face at seeing her beloved, revered, icon of justice and righteousness ask with a broken hearted voice, what she, her champion, had done, turned to hurt and confusion ever so slowly.
They sat across from one another. "Tell me, Remedios, my true paladin, that what they're saying isn't true." Calca asked and held her hand out across the divide between them.
Calca was a beautiful Queen, rivalled or surpassed only by Princess Renner among human nobles, and even with her hair sheared off at the shoulder, she was a heavenly sight to behold. Yet her pretty face was now contorted into a mask of emotional anguish, and Remedios could not miss it.
She snatched Calca's hand, but didn't answer. She caressed the surface of it as if she was uncertain whether or not it was truly real.
"My Queen, my Queen…" Remedios stared, murmuring the words again and again.
"The day… the day you died, I thought I'd lost all hope. Only saving everybody, all the people you worked so hard for, only that kept me from ending my life in despair." Remedios whispered just loud enough to be heard.
She snapped her gaze from the hand up to the face of the Queen. "But I wasn't enough!" She said loudly, "We sought the aid of Blue Rose, they turned us down, they told us to seek the hero, Momon. If only he had come, perhaps we would not be here now."
"Or if only I'd been stronger, perhaps then…" Remedios said in a voice full of recrimination and self-loathing.
Her eyes were welling with tears. Suchala sat uncomfortably next to her and traded a glance with Neia that showed, if only for a moment, their mutual frustration in dealing with the former head of the Paladin Order.
Neia, however, for all her hatred, found an ember of pity for what seemed to her now to be just a broken woman.
"But I wasn't." Remedios said bitterly and thumbed a tear away from her eye and flung it away. "Momon didn't come and I couldn't stop Jaldabaoth, so we turned to a monster, to fight a monster, Ainz Ooal Gown…" She said, only for Neia to savagely cut her off.
The pope of Black Justice slammed her hand down hard on the table. "That is 'His Majesty' to you! Or at 'least' the Sorcerer King, you disrespectful butcher!" Neia snarled out at the fallen paladin and glared at her from behind her visor.
Remedios looked at her and said, "Ainz. Ooal. Gown."
It was an obvious provocation. Neia reached for her visor and tore it from her face. She turned the force of her gaze at her one time idol, her torturer, the butcher of her followers. "I said… His. Majesty."
Remedios had been about to provoke her again when she was locked into the gaze of Neia Baraja, and her lips shook as she tried to form words. The pupils of Neia's terrible eyes expanded and contracted ever so slightly as if they were the head of a drum being pounded upon, a terrible rhythm that reminded Remedios of a siege where a ram was slammed against a gate until it was shattered asunder. The kaleidoscopic shadows that spiraled and twisted in a convoluted dance of agony behind them was not even recognizable as human to the woman who had sought to slay her. And her voice had torn through Remedios's body like lightning from the sky ripping apart a great tree.
"What… happened to you?" Remedios managed to get out in a hushed voice. Suchala was about to ask what she meant when he followed the gaze and met those eyes for himself, and the power of Neia's voice struck him as it had her.
Neia didn't answer that question, instead she said in the voice she had used to tell a dragon it would serve as her mount, "One day very soon, Remedios, we will meet again, but there will be no table between us, and I will end your life." Neia's voice was quiet, but it felt like the deafening roar of a mighty, uncontainable storm, and within the breast of Remedios Custodio, she felt the malevolent hand of death tenderly embrace her still-beating heart.
Suchala looked over at Remedios, "We came to this meeting at your request. At least adopt the proper protocols and refer to others in the proper way, or I will order this ended now."
Though his words sounded formal and polite, Yuri knew what they really were. It was a man responding to his own fear, and she did not blame him for it. She looked over into the eyes of Neia Baraja, and felt quite clearly the fragile nature of her own mortality. Something within those eyes was trying to break out, and it was getting a lot closer than Yuri cared for.
"Fine." Remedios said, and turned to face Calca again, trying very hard to pretend that the concealed horrors within the Black Paladin's gaze hadn't gotten to her.
"Remedios, I've already been informed of what happened. The Sorcerer King told me himself, shortly after he brought me back to life." Calca said, lowering her gaze in shameful remembrance of her death.
"So it really was the…" she paused, carefully avoiding the word 'monster', "Sorcerer King. How did he threaten you? Did he torture you? Please your Highness… tell me what to do and… and I'll save you." Remedios said desperately.
Neia gritted her teeth.
Calca shook her still hanging head, "No, Remedios. He didn't hurt me, he didn't torture me, and he didn't even threaten to do so. Do you really want to know what he did?" She asked with a little smile, prompting a rapid series of mute nods from the paladin before she braced herself.
"He offered me an estate to retire to if I wasn't willing to help him, or an escort if I rejected his help but wanted to go back to reclaim the throne on my own. I hold no delusions about the power he bears within him, so I know he 'could' have done anything and I would have been unable to stop him. But after he saved me, he gave me clothes to wear, a good room, a servant or two, then when I agreed to his wishes, well, you've heard about the meetings with the other powers. I am myself, whole and intact… except for that hair I cut off this morning." She said, adding the last part somewhat mournfully.
"My Queen, he is an undead! He doesn't care about any of that, even if he wanted to, he can't love or care for anyone, any respect or kindness is an act of deception to manipulate or control others!" Remedios said emphatically.
"I know that is not true." Calca said firmly to Remedios. "You helped me see that." She said to the former paladin.
"I what?" Remedios's face was confused.
"Wenmark." Calca said in a hateful voice, her little fists clenched together and she shook with rage, "That such a place could exist under my rule, even in the South… I am ashamed of my own country, but perhaps worse, I have to know..." She stopped mid-sentence and grabbed Remedios's hand and squeezed it as hard as she could.
She searched the eyes of the closest companion in her last life, her most dedicated paladin, she asked in a childlike voice, "Did you really go there, did you… did you really ride in on horses and cut down slaves fleeing a nightmare, please tell me, I have to know."
"Oh that?" Remedios said flippantly and waved it away with a gesture of her hand as if she was turning away an offer of a glass of wine, "Of course I did. My riders and I killed hundreds of them, hard to say exactly how many, but we guessed it was well over a thousand easily. All we had to do was ride around the city, they'd come down their ropes and we'd send their heads flying or finish them with a thrust, whichever was easier."
Lakyus and Evileye grabbed Neia's shoulders and held her forcibly down to her seat as the woman tried to rise.
"Sadly we didn't get more, it was a big city after all, but it made that bitch suffer, and we did our part to punish those opposed to your rule…" She trailed off again as Calca yanked her hand away in horror and looked at her as if she were a stranger.
"My Remedios… give me back my Remedios… you can't be her… you can't be… she loved my justice, my peace, a nation where everybody could be happy and nobody cried…" Calca's voice was cracked and her body was shaking.
Remedios was stunned by the reaction of her queen. "Yes, for people. Demihumans aren't people, it's why you never cared when I butchered their children as future threats to humanity, it's why you never cared about the fate of the elves in our sister kingdom or the ones who ended up here, a nation like that… for people, and neither of those groups, not elves, not demihumans, not halfbreeds, and definitely not the spiritual heteromorphs, like that bitch," she nodded her head in the direction of Neia, "who can follow and serve the undead, those have to be burned to purify them of their sins, only their screams can bring redemption, and… help me to sleep."
"No…" Calca said, "You can't be my Remedios…." Calca's lips parted and she did her best to wipe away the trickling proof of sorrow that ran down her cheeks.
Remedios spat on the grass in disgust, "They trade their souls away, abandon the gods, promote an undead who killed almost two hundred thousand people as a god in the stead of the true ones! They have to die! All of them! Demihumans! Elves! Half breeds and heretics! Any of them not in chains should be in a hole in the ground!" Her eyes looked frenzied as she reached for Calca's hand, only for Calca to yank it all the way off the table.
"Don't you understand, Your Majesty?!" She said frantically, "I'm working your will, if I destroy them all, then we can finally create a human kingdom that is completely safe, where nobody will cry, where the gods can bless us all, and we won't ever have to sacrifice anyone again!"
Calca stood up, outraged and pointed at her. "You are sacrificing my people! You are NOT my Remedios. I don't know what you are anymore, but you are my paladin no longer! I strip you of your rank! I strip you of your place! I strip you of your title! You are no paladin of MINE!" Calca spat the words out as if they were rot within her mouth, while her eyes looked at her most loyal follower, and saw only a mad dog.
Remedios was frozen again, as she had been before, and a serene, tranquil look came over her face. "I understand, truly I do, I cannot fight for you anymore." The 'former' paladin said with a welling in her eyes that did not fall down her cheeks.
She held her arms open as she stood up slowly, calmly, her gaze lowered, her lips quivered. "I was… I was truly wrong. Let me say goodbye."
Calca was moved, she opened her arms to embrace her former paladin, "Go out there, and find your peace, I failed too, I failed to see what you had become or could become, so I have no right to judge you, for all your many sins, but end this madness." She stepped closer, and Neia reached out to take her hand.
"Majesty…" Neia started to say, then paused as Calca looked at Neia and shook her head.
"I have to say goodbye." She mouthed, and Neia dropped her hand away in midreach.
"I understand." Remedios said, and fell sobbing into her embrace, "None of it was ever true… though it feels good to see your face… you are not my Calca." She said, and it was just as Calca's eyes were widening, that she felt a sudden pain in her stomach, she looked down, and saw the welling blood around the hand that pierced her flesh.
"Go and die, false Queen!" Remedios snarled into her ear, and brought the hand out and up in a blow that smashed the shocked Queen's jaw and shattered her face all the way up the length of her cheek bones, turning her beauty into a ruin for a second time in the Queen's existence.
The poignant moment turned to nightmare as the Queen fell back with eyes wide with disbelief as she staggered and fell onto her back, clutching at her stomach and unable to move her jaw to scream at the pain.
It was uncertain of who moved first after that, Evileye went straight for Remedios while Neia ran back, cursing herself and Remedios, then picked up Calca in her arms and rushed her away, the cloaked figures at the back threw off those cloaks and revealed the uniform of Holocaust Scripture members.
Yuri went straight for Gagaran and quickly found that this had been a bad idea as the ox of a woman could move her hammer as easily as she could her own arms.
Suchala began to engage with Lakyus as the twins cloned themselves to face off against the Holocaust members, it was less a battle and more a brawl, but in this, Neia had at least one advantage.
Her voice turned on their foes, "You will lose, the gods will not support you!" Her words reverberated in their bones and sapped their strength of will. "For the true god, fight, Blue Rose! His power is at your back!" Energy and strength filled their bodies as Neia rushed the Queen who was now gurgling on her own blood to an undead mount secured behind the meeting area.
"She's secure! Withdraw! Blue Rose, withdraw!" Neia shouted and wheeled the horse around, she yanked a healing potion out of a pouch and poured it on the pain riddled queen. A horn went off somewhere.
"Flag of truce, my pope ass! CZ, target is clear. Suppress! Suppress! Suppress!" She shouted, and as Blue Rose disengaged, pops began to ring out, faster and faster, two heads of the Holocaust Scripture exploded where they stood and the rest went for cover, Suchala and Remedios went off into the woodline, followed hotly by Yuri and the surviving scripture members.
Blue Rose rushed to their mounts and took off after Neia, Calca didn't move, she could have, the potion had done its work, but reduced to being 'royal baggage', she simply let her guardians do what they did best.
She looked behind their path of escape and watched as her most loyal paladin, the woman who had just tried to kill her under a flag of truce, withdrew under fire from a weapon that could only be held by the hands of the maid demon who was always with Neia.
She was too numb to care, the woods raced past them as their tireless mounts carried them swift as the wind all the way back to Prart. No time was taken to slow down, the blood pumping in their veins told them to go all the way back to the heart of their operations, much had to be said and none of it was fit for the public.
No sooner that they'd gotten to the manor where they were operating out of than they'd jumped down off their horses. They didn't even set them aside, just left them for a servant to attend to. Neia reached up and helped the royal baggage down from the horse and walked straight to the door and flung it open hard enough that the handles slammed into the stone and left deep marks in the brick. She entered without looking back, followed quickly by the others.
Tia and Tina shut the doors behind them as the last entrants, nobody broke stride, nobody said a word, they simply followed the long quick steps of the pope until she'd made her way into the office occupied by the former governor. That door was opened by a guard, to which she said only one sentence. "Nobody comes down this hall until we've all left this room, go guard the way from over there." She said, pointing down the hall.
He nodded numbly as General Neia entered, one by one the rest of the party followed behind her. When Tia entered last, Neia closed the door, and in the span of a second, far faster than she was once capable of moving, she'd reached the wall and slammed her fist through it. "Gah!" She shouted as her face twisted into a mask of rage.
"Neia." The Queen said to her.
Neia looked over to where the woman stood.
"Damn it all!" Neia said, looking at the Queen's feet, she went down to one knee.
"Your Majesty… I'm… I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let her get that close to you. I was prepared for anything Suchala might do, for an attempt by the scriptures, even for Yuri. But even though I suspected the possibility, I didn't really believe that Remedios would… to you of all people…" Neia's voice cracked.
"Neia, raise your head." The pope did, and as Calca looked down at her, she saw her face reflected in Neia's eyes, the memory of the pain, her guts, her jaw and cheeks being turned to powder, the sight of her mutilated face that she'd seen in a puddle just before the potion did its work, it rushed unbidden to her mind, and she flinched against her will.
Neia's soul turned to ash at the flinch, but the Queen steadied herself and recovered. "Neia, I am alive. I provoked that… that thing wearing the skin of my former paladin. If I hadn't done that, she might not have done what she did. I thought, I thought she had understood me, that I had reached her… you tried to warn me, I didn't listen."
Lakyus touched Neia on the shoulder, "You were charged with her safety, she's alive, you did your job."
"I let the Queen get her face demolished and her guts ripped open because I misjudged someone… forgive me if I don't feel especially successful right now." Neia said with a bitter voice, her teeth clenched and her eyes shut tight as if she could keep from seeing the memory of her charge's shattered face playing behind her eyes.
"One thing bothers me." Gagaran said from where she stood, leaning up against the wall sullenly.
"One thing?" Tia and Tina said in unison.
"One other thing." Gagaran corrected herself. "Why didn't you tell us about CZ being out there, Neia."
Falling back into her status as a General, Neia stood up and looked over to the giant of a woman.
"Need to know only, you didn't need to know, so I didn't tell you." She said bluntly.
Gagaran's jaw tightened. "You didn't trust us." She said through gritted teeth.
"That's not it." Neia said reassuringly. "If one of you had glanced in the direction of her position, you'd have given away that she was there, if you didn't know she was, you couldn't give it away to anyone else."
"I still don't like it." She said.
"I don't like that I screwed up and let Remedios get close to the Queen. If I'd just made her stay a few steps back, gotten in the way, pulled her back…" Neia trailed off and kicked her desk, it shattered.
Her fists clenched and unclenched, knuckles cracking over and over, for a long time it was the only sound in the room, until the door opened and CZ walked in and closed it behind her.
"Thank you for the help, CZ." Neia said appreciatively, "You took out two scripture members at least, even if they can resurrect them, they won't be as strong as they were."
"You're welcome." CZ said simply and sat down.
"Neia, I'm alive." Calca said forcefully, almost snapping at her, "Remember what I said before, if I perish, I perish. I count this as a success because I'm still here alive, and I have what I really wanted."
"What was that, Your Highness?" Lakyus asked.
"I know the truth of Remedios. Whatever she was before, she is a monster now, and the seed of the monster today was planted a long, long time ago. I never thought much about the things she did out in the field, as long as my people were safe and she saved their lives I didn't worry about much else. But…" Calca began to pace, she placed a hand on her forehead and another unconsciously went to her stomach where she'd been injured earlier. "I wasn't thinking. I wasn't thinking about what 'people' meant, and I never thought to consider it as more than humans, even though if somebody had asked me, yes, I would have considered elves the same… if I'd known what was happening at Wenmark, if I'd sent an investigator like I'd planned to, and done it sooner… Damn it, none of this would be happening now."
Neia went to the ruins of her desk and looked down at it. "Well, that leaves only three things to do now." She said.
"What's that?" Lakyus asked.
"Well, I need a new desk brought in here, and we've got to prepare for a siege tomorrow. I had hoped we could stretch that meeting out for another two days at least, but that is not going to happen, even if she offers, I won't allow the Queen anywhere near Remedios again."
"Won't 'allow'?" Queen Calca asked archly, only to be shocked with the intense look Neia gave to her.
"Correct, Your Majesty, unless the Sorcerer King chooses to relieve me, which I admit he may after this, I am responsible for the security of this city and yourself and if I have to restrain you to keep you alive, I will beg your forgiveness later, but I will have that gate opened and throw you bound and gagged through it and straight into His Majesty's throne room if that is what I have to do. Remember I said I learned from my mistakes, and my most recent mistake was to let my charge, even for a moment, dictate a security risk to me. Queen or not, I will not let you take unnecessary risks again."
Calca was not accustomed to being spoken to that way, she found that she did not much care for it, but as she looked at the face of the Black Paladin, it was obvious she meant every word. She let out a resigned sigh, "Fine."
"And of course, I need to do is report this to His Majesty, I almost cost him a subordinate today because I didn't properly respond to a potential threat and lost control over my charge, if he wants me replaced, I won't even beg for forgiveness. Failing His Majesty is unforgivable." She said grimly.
Though she said 'replaced' she had to turn away from them as she spoke so they wouldn't see the expression on her face. Part of her wondered if she'd end up in a session with the fury, and a warped, twisted part of herself told her that not only could she, but that she belonged there. She'd almost gotten the Queen killed, it could have thrown the whole war into disarray, all for one more delay. She wanted to hit something, but there was nothing left to hit but walls, as she wasn't going to strike her friends.
"CZ, could you make the report to His Majesty, I'll go order the siege preparations accelerated, everything has to be ready tomorrow. Blue Rose, can you handle some last minute lessons, just be seen, boost spirits, just be yourselves out there." She gave the women a crooked smile, and Lakyus nodded in acknowledgement.
"Yes, we've got it." She said, then as she was about to leave the room, she said, "Remember this Neia, the person you were responsible for keeping alive, came back alive, no matter how bad you feel about how that went back there, that is a win. You got her back alive, we all got out alive, they lost two of their elites and left the area with nothing to show for their losses. Injuries may be bad, but death is worse, and she didn't suffer it for long, right, Your Majesty?" Lakyus said to the Queen behind her.
"Right, I'm alive, you picked me up, rushed me to a horse, and got me away while under attack by the most powerful paladin in the country, an entire scripture, a famous general, and a squire with a nasty reputation. You then healed me in the middle of that high risk situation and shielded me with your own body as you rode away. I count this as a success, even if you don't." Calca said firmly.
"Thank you, Your Majesty," Neia said in a hushed voice, "and thank you, Lakyus."
"Any time." Lakyus said, "It was a rough spot there, but we all got out alive and they didn't, who really should feel like failures today?" She added, and on that note, she walked out with her party following behind her.
"OK, I guess I'll go see to the-" Neia began to say, only to stop when CZ shook her head.
"His Majesty wants to see you." CZ said.
"Can you see to the defenses?" Neia asked softly.
"I will." She said in her clipped, abrupt fashion.
"Thank you." Neia said, and when the gate opened, she stepped through it ready to face the consequences, whatever they may be. She wondered how much it would hurt.
AN: One hundred chapters. Who saw that coming? Not I, my estimates are always wrong! :D If you liked, leave a review.