God Rising
Chapter 114
Written by: AtheistBasementDragon
Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots
...Prart...
Whether one called the time alone between the pope and her wife a 'reunion' or a 'make up session', no one would have called it quiet and no one would have called it tender. They fell to one another as the hungry wolf fell upon its prey, though were one to observe them, the observer would have been hard pressed to determine the true aggressor.
When at last mutual satisfaction left them to fall into the bed arms and legs entangled, they could only look at one another and twine fingers together. They locked gazes and did not turn their faces away, finally Skana spoke. "I couldn't sense any feeling from you... then, when you ordered it done. That was what scared me the most."
"Because there was no feeling to sense, not till after. Not till it was done. I'm General Neia Baraja, the warrior pope, the mad-eyed archer, I can't allow myself to feel when giving orders. When I say the things I do, it isn't the woman you love speaking. You weren't wrong to call some of the things I've said or done 'monstrous', but war makes monsters, just as monsters make war."
"Just don't lose yourself in this, my love. Stay as much yourself as you can, remember there will be a time after this is all over, and it isn't enough to just not die in body, you have to remain alive in spirit, otherwise what's the point of it all?" Skana replied.
Neia was quiet, she smiled gently and inched closer, so that their bodies were pressed together, "I'm fine, everything will be fine. We'll win this, grind the enemies of our God into the dust, and build the world we seek, where people like Evileye, and Ulthis, and the elves, and orcs, and everyone, can live happily and in peace. When that happens, then we can settle down into the home our master gives to us, maybe we can have a few children."
Skana laughed, "You noticed we're both girls, right? Did nobody tell you how this works?"
Neia laughed in turn, "Perhaps we'll adopt, or find a suitable body father to... assist. We can work that out later. For now we'll live off dreams of the future and passion in the moment."
"You know me, I'm always in favor of that." Skana grinned wryly, thinking about her life as a peasant and the 'live in the moment' way in which she spent her life before the invasion took it all away.
"It's a welcome reprieve, I spend too much time on the future, not enough in the now." Neia said, prompting Skana to flick her wife's nose again. "I'll do that every time I have to remind you of the moment." She teased, then teasingly kissed the tip of the nose she'd flicked. "Now come on, moment or not, we do have work to do, and I'd like a bath first. If we're going to fight to the death out there, I'd rather not go charging into the fight smelling like sweat and sex, I can have both of those things 'after' the fighting." She laughed, got out of bed, and helped Neia after her.
Another hour later they'd taken up their positions along the wall, it had taken a number of hours for Remedios and Suchala to reposition everyone in place of the defeated Astraka, leaving little daylight left. This suited the city's commanders just fine, Ulthis had taken it upon himself to organize the former Astrakan army into support units that bunched themselves at tower bases to provide reinforcement, and to then space out reinforcements at staggered intervals further back into the city. If a position was threatened, the nearest unit would raise a flag and move in to the fighting position, the unit nearest to that one would raise a flag to half staff and move to occupy the former's position, and only move in to support its predecessor if the former appeared to be in trouble. In this way they retained a reserve unit and there were always fresh reinforcements, plus it also alerted others that there was a problem in a particular area and allowed command and control over the city's defenses.
Neia made a mental note to add Ulthis to her permanent staff after this. She hoped Cersei wouldn't be too sore about the temporary loss to her of his talents.
She was just inspecting all the work her soldiers had put into everything, but even then, she felt something different was at work. Even if this night saw little more than skirmishes, she swore there was a tension in the cold air, like the falling snow and winter breeze brought something new on its back. As Neia walked the wall, she saw that most of the soldiers gathered there were wearing similar expressions.
She walked to the top tower at the gate where CZ had perched herself. "CZ, can I have a moment?"
"Yes." CZ said, setting her rifle down for a moment.
"I mean alone." Neia said.
"Not here." She said bluntly.
Neia opened her mouth to argue, but something about CZ's face told her it would be a waste of effort.
"Fine." Neia said with a sigh.
The general looked out over the army in front the city, she could feel the hatred and fear they represented.
Finally after looking for a long moment, Neia went down to one knee. She drew out her sword and put the tip to the stone and held the pommel with both hands so that her fists closed around it and one another, then she looked up to the sky.
"Your Majesty, I do not know if you can hear this, if my prayer to you will be heard even from the highest tower or before the most dangerous host, but if it can be, if you are listening to your loyal... servant, please, help me. I feel the wind turning, and I do not want it to blow me down. If it is your will that I die a second time in your service, then let your will be done, let me die a thousand deaths if it will serve you but please, if you can, for the sake of those servants I have shepherded to your justice, please send aid. I can bear a thousand pains on myself, but one on my wife or my friends this day will... will rip me apart. Please... help me protect her, them, everyone... please... please... lend this nation your strength... just one more time." Neia said softly.
...Nazarick...
Ainz was watching at the mirror as she spoke, though no sound carried, he could read her lips, and even if he couldn't, the nature of her plea would not have been lost on the blind or the deaf. Sebas stood beside him in attendance.
"How may I serve you, My Lord?" Sebas asked as Ainz looked towards him in thought.
...Prart...
Neia finished her prayer and looked to the sky, she felt a chill pass over her, some part of her felt that, against all reason, her god had heard her prayer, and as the moments passed away she thought the silence meant the answer was 'no'.
Until she heard a voice behind her. "I understand you were asking for help, I couldn't come last time, but the Sorcerer King said that things have changed, and I am at your service for this battle."
Neia shot to her feet and turned around, her eyes went wide as her eyes took in an aura that felt supremely noble and overwhelmingly powerful. "Lord Momon..." Neia barely suppressed her joy, her lord had heard her prayer.
"How can I help?" He asked the warrior pope.
...Road to Hoburns...
Astraka rode like demons were at his heels, not realizing that there was but one. "Hoburns, if I can get back to Hoburns I can organize the raising of another force, I can come back from this." He said to himself. Even he didn't know if he believed that. He'd been riding all day, he even changed horses, stealing or rather... trading one from a farm and leaving his horse behind. "Peasant got the better end of that unintended deal I think." He muttered, disgruntled.
The trees were quiet on either side, he didn't hear much, the birds were leaving and the clouds were ominous overhead. He knew what that meant, snow was coming and it was coming soon. Fortunately if he continued for a long time without rest, traded out horses again, and both ate and drank from horseback, he could get to the capital much faster than he'd left it with the army.
His fists tightened on the reins. Going without rest wasn't going to be a problem, the nightmares never seemed to end. In the quiet hours he wondered if it was because of the resentment that had grown up around that girl. She'd become a symbol of everything that had gone wrong since the day she died. Even though she was rotting in the great sea by now, and couldn't refuse him anything, the hour he touched the cold shell of her body, that was when everything started to go wrong as far as he was concerned. Everything else had just made it worse, and though she was gone, he needed somewhere to take it out, and her memory was a convenient target... even if the nightmares plagued his conscience when he saw himself through the eyes of the dead.
"Damn it! It was her fault! All she had to do was obey! Just talk!" He said angrily to the empty air. She was the first person he'd ever had tortured, though not the last. He wondered if the secrets in her mind would have explained the curse he seemed to be under.
He kept up that train of thought as he rode through the night, pausing at a farmer's home to trade out horses again. It sickened him, to play the role of a sneak thief, creeping through a field and getting away as fast as he could with a horse.
He rode for eight hours after midnight before he grew too utterly exhausted to go further, he felt like he was going to fall over in the saddle, so he took the horse off the road and a short ways into the woods, out of sight of anyone who might pass by, then he stripped off his armor and did his best to make himself comfortable on a bed of leaves and grass. A king's bed it was not, but in his exhausted state, it might have been heaven's own embrace.
Vanysa watched it all with great amusement from out of sight. As soon as he was well and truly asleep, she crept over to where he was and used a scroll to put him into a deeper sleep. She rolled him onto his back. His hand struck a rock, it scraped him, but that didn't bring him out of the deep slumber she'd placed him into. She straddled him as she had become accustomed to doing, and thought about what memory to give him next.
She gently stroked his cheek, her talons could have shredded him with ease. "You're homeless now, like I was." She said. "Ever been homeless? Ever been hungry? Ever wanted for anything at all beyond a throne that wasn't yours?" She asked his sleeping body. He didn't answer.
She made a fist and stared hard at him as he started to snore. She lowered her forehead to his and looked through his dream. He was dreaming of a warm bed in his palace. She almost didn't swap the dream with one of her memories, after all, it might make the realization that the capital was lost, that much more cruel. In the end, she decided against it. Ever since she'd begun the process of seeking revenge, more and more memories of what he'd done to her came roaring back, things she'd blocked out, things she didn't want to remember. She wished the only thing she could remember was the tear and sting of the lash, but at least as they returned to mind, they gave her new ways to exact her retribution.
She called up the memory of the filthy rag in her throat, the water being poured down it, the feeling of drowning when she was strapped down on the table, eyes wide with pain and fear as he looked down at her and asked her questions. Constantly shaking her head no, but pleading with eyes that searched for mercy and found none from jailer or noble.
She set that on a loop, let him drown over and over, all night long, then she got up, picked up his armor, took the horse, and rode both back to the farmer the horse had been taken from. When she arrived at the farmer's residence, he reacted with surprise to see a beautiful woman riding his horse directly over to where he stood in the field, looking with confusion at the 'new' horse and scratching his head at the whereabouts of his other one.
"S'cuse me, this your horse?" She asked him, applying deliberately the thick peasant speech that she was gradually leaving behind.
"Aye, it is, how'dja come by it?" He asked in confusion.
"Ah done found s'm bandit done run off with it, ah knowd it weren't his cause the horse didna wanna go with 'im. After ah got'im away, well he done walked back this'ay on 'is own, an ah guess he knows yah?" She said with a kind, folksy air about her.
"Well ah thanks yah for returnin im." The farmer said as she dismounted and handed him the reins.
"Yer right welcome, neighbor." She said kindly, "An yah know, yah can'ave this too." She said as she dropped the marvelous looking armor at his feet. "Ah can't use it, an ah thought yah deserve some'thin fer all the trouble them bad folk putcha through."
The farmer's face lit up. "Thankee, I should be able to sell this fer lots when ah goes to town next time, tell yah what, when next yah come by here, there'll be a share waitin fer yah, lady."
"Right friendly of yah." Vanysa said with a radiant smile, "Well, ah done the right thing now, so ah guess ah otta get goin, gots a long ways to go yet, you have yerself a right fine day, kay neighbor?" She replied, and with a wave, she turned and walked back the way she'd come.
She smirked, that armor was worth a small fortune, if he managed to sell it, he'd be able to expand his farm enormously even if he did only keep half the money gained from the sale.
She returned just in time to watch Astraka from concealment as he awoke and found his horse and armor gone. He moaned in anger and frustration as he realized he'd been robbed, he punched a tree in a blind rage, only to then swear and rub the injured hand. Vanysa wondered if it was broken, she hoped so.
She moved a little further away and used a weather control scroll, the snow was coming anyway, but she wanted it sooner. The flakes began to drop and so did the temperature. He began to rub his arms. His gambosen kept his chest warm at least, but now he'd take two more days to get to Hoburns.
She stalked him happily, his every shiver from the cold making her body shiver with pleasure.
Finally he had to rest again, and when he slept, she decided to skip the memory and deep sleep, she wanted him to see the city, so instead she cut his satchel with his remaining food and coins, and took them away. As soon as she was gone from his side, she took to the air and found a farmhouse nearby, and there she overturned the satchel and dumped out all the food and coins into the yard in front of the house.
Then and only then did she return to stalk him again.
He awoke and found his satchel gone when he reached for it, he must have been hungry, he didn't eat before he slept. She laughed, he'd used food against her towards the end of their time together, leaving her without a bite while he ate in front of her. She didn't know at the time how much she'd miss hunger in place of the later torments.
He screamed at the sky, the sky did not care. He began to wander onwards, trudging through the snow that was starting to blanket the road. She watched while he caught himself a lucky break and found a house where a peasant had left both a bow and a quiver of arrows outside his home.
"Ah... finally some luck." He said to himself and after looking around, he stole up to the home and swiped both objects and moved as far away from the house as he could, as fast as he could. He went into the wilderness in search of prey.
Vanysa shook her head and continued to watch. Reluctantly she admitted, he was a skilled hunter, left alone in the wilderness even as he was, he would almost certainly not only survive, but he would thrive. She, however, had no intention of leaving him alone.
She tracked the same prey, and when he came to shoot it, drawing bow and nocking arrow, she waited until the time was right, and then spooked his prey. The deer got away from him as if he were an amateur hunter instead of a master of it. She savored his frustration for hours before she finally let him shoot something, no sooner did he injure it, than she used a healing potion so that even if it were on the edge of death, it would recover and escape. The peasant had not kept many arrows, and soon the quiver was empty, making the bow useless.
"Gah! Damn it all!" He shouted and flung the bow deeper into the woods with utter frustration.
He resumed the long, cold walk, trudging through another night, eager to get away from the snow and the cold. Vanysa kept her distance and tracked him still, until that very important moment when...
He stepped out onto the road, and found himself smiling joyfully as he saw his capital city, Hoburns, center of the royals of the Holy Roble Kingdom for centuries.
However as he drew closer, she could feel him start to have misgivings, and then she saw it, that face. That crestfallen, hopeless, despairing face of utter ruination and loss as he realized that Queen Calca's banner was flying from every tower. He collapsed to his knees in utter disbelief. "No... no! How... how? How could this have happened?!" He didn't even scream it, he yelped it like a whipped cur. He slammed his fist into the frozen, snow-covered ground. He was tired, he was hungry and he was colder than he'd ever been in his life... so far.
He got up, and moved off the road and back into the woods, he rushed deep within, as if fearing he were pursued even though none, that he knew of, had seen him. When he'd gone two or three miles within, he found a large dead tree with a hollowed out trunk, it was some protection from the wind and the cold at last, so he curled up within and fell into a slumber borne on the back of pure exhaustion, both mental and physical.
Vanysa approached his sleeping form. She was dressed in magnificent clothing, and he... well, wasn't anymore. She smirked and drew out a scroll, she summoned a minor monster, it was nothing to speak of, just a very harmless slime, the weakest of weak monsters, this one had one particular trait, it ate fabric of all kinds. The only fabric around, other than hers, was his.
She gave it a small kick away from herself as soon as it appeared, and it rolled over to where Astraka lay, ironically the thing probably helped keep him warm for at least a little while, as it ate away at his gambosen, his shirt, his boots, and everything else he wore, while Vanysa moved away from him.
He awoke when it mistook his now scraggly and ruined beard for some form of fabric. He was horrified and disgusted by what he saw crawling and sliming all over him, leaving a dreadfully foul smelling goo all over his body, he pushed it away and got up, he drew his sword, and immediately hacked at the slime with desperation.
It didn't kill the slime instantly the way he thought it would, though it obviously did some damage, he felt ever more and more tired as he used the weapon, until the slime finally died. When it was a puddle of ruined goo on the snow, he looked at it with disgust, then lowered himself to the ooze, and began to scoop it to his lips just so he could have 'something' to eat, however foul.
Vanysa had to bite her lip to keep her laughter from revealing her presence just yet.
She took out another scroll, and summoned a wolf. It darted out of the place it had been summoned from and rushed to where she'd sent it, straight at Astraka. It snarled as it padded in the snow, its growl was menacing and it looked equal parts hungry and dangerous.
In full kit, armor, weapons, everything, Astraka would have looked down on the beast with contempt. But now? Cold, tired, sore, hungry, bedraggled, devoid of everything but his sword? Now it was a very real threat.
He drew the blade again, and immediately it felt heavy in his hands, he was even more exhausted than he realized, but at least he wasn't a coward. He attacked the wolf, and though he seemed to be doing damage, with ugly red wounds appearing on the body of the animal, his arms, then his entire body felt incredibly heavy. The two tangled back and forth, the wolf kept him hard on the defensive, but every time it lunged, he struck and it retreated again. Finally he felt he had nothing left, and he wagered all on a single swing, he screamed a warcry that would have made him proud to have yelled in battle on the walls of Prart when facing Neia Baraja herself... only to have his sword strike the wolf in the side, and to his utter disbelief, it shattered into a multitude of pieces that scattered into the blanket of snow and disappeared.
"So this is the end." He said as he fell forward in front of the wolf, unable to move. To his shock, he did not feel the bite at his throat that he expected would end his life.
Instead, the wolf turned and ran away, back the way it had come. He wondered why, then he wondered if freezing to death was the better option. He'd noticed how ruined his clothes were, his boots were scraps, so were his pants, his gambosen was gone, his shirt was in tatters, he didn't even have anything with which to make a fire.
He wanted to cry.
He might have done so right then, had he not heard a voice.
Astraka forced himself to turn his eyes up, there, floating above the ground was a well dressed demoness of golden skin, grey eyes, bat wings, horns that looked as hard as stone, and talons that looked like they could shred steel like paper.
"What...?" He asked weakly.
"I said, how does it feel?" Vanysa asked from above him.
"How does what feel?" He asked, shivering in the cold snow.
"To be nothing, to have nothing, to be all alone." She clarified, with her arms open as if to embrace him. "Nobody loves you, nobody cares about you, you're completely isolated. If you made it to a village and died in the gutter, they'd use your body to step to the other side of it, and nobody would even bother to move your corpse unless you clogged the trench or your flesh went fetid and started to stink. You have no money, no wealth, no power, no good name, you have nothing left, not even clothing, except for the filthy sweat stinking rags that remain on your skin now. It's all gone, isn't it?" She asked. Her voice seemed... sympathetic... almost.
Astraka regained a little of his strength, enough to scratch his beard, a tick or flea was crawling through it, its once noble trim was now no different than that of a homeless peasant.
"You don't even have a title anymore, Queen Calca occupies Hoburns. She has all the official roles and with this last debacle, nobody will get in the way of her stripping it from you, it's probably already done." She said casually.
Astraka nodded mutely, his face looked pitiful. He tried to stand so he could be closer to where she hovered, but as he tried, he fell and his knees struck a pair of rocks, it hurt like hell.
Vanysa lowered herself, slowing the flapping of her perfect wings, she put a talon under his chin as he looked down in pain, she raised that talon, curling it towards her upturned palm and forcing his face to rise to meet her gaze, or to start bleeding from the sharp pressure of her terrible natural weapon.
His resistance gone, he looked up.
"So now you're a peasant, just wanting to crawl out of the gutter again, you're probably hoping you could make it south, to your other family members and their estates, but I'm afraid that isn't possible, they've disowned you completely and are switching sides to Queen Calca in exchange for immunity from retribution, rather like your army did, don't you think?" The demoness asked, she still sounded sympathetic, and that was the only reason he listened, but his mind was racing with horror, wondering how she knew the things she did.
She reached into a satchel at her side and pulled out copies of two documents. He stared at her blankly as she held them down to him. "Take them, I brought them for you to see." She said sweetly. He reached up reluctantly, his arms felt like they weighed more than a palace, but he managed, and read the document that disowned him, signed by both his mother and his father, he looked to the next document under that one, the family tree, his older brothers were there, but his name was blotted out permanently.
"That's right, you don't even have your family now, even if they wanted you around anymore, you'd just get them sentenced to death, you're dead weight, a burden, an anchor tossed to the drowning, and if you did go to their homes, they'd turn you over to the crown just to save their own lives." She said casually, slowly descending and putting her fine boots into the snow.
"No... no, it can't be true, it can't be! You're lying, you have to be!" He shouted and tore up the documents into countless small pieces and flung them into the cold winter breeze, they fell around him, as if besieging him with a truth that Astraka was not prepared to face.
"If you live long enough, you'd be nothing but a pauper in the street, if not an outlaw perpetually on the run. You'd learn all about what it means to be a peasant in the power of others who can hurt you, abuse you, do anything they like to your body, and be unable to do anything about it because you're just another object to the nobility." She started to pace in front of him with her hands clasped behind her back as he managed to get up from all fours to his knees.
"Maybe in different conditions, that would give you a new understanding, and make you a decent ruler." She said philosophically as she trailed off. He stared down at the torn up shreds of the documents as if willing them to reassemble before his eyes, with words other than what they bore.
He felt numbness start to creep into his fingers.
"But of course, you'll never get that chance, not anymore." Vanysa said, her voice taking on a mocking tone.
"Why are you here, demoness? Why?" He asked through gritted and chattering teeth. "Did you come to offer me power in exchange for my soul? Or just to mock me? Whatever it is, out with it! I'm busy dying here and haven't got all day." He snapped out in anger and frustration. Tears began to come then, as he realized he truly was dying out here like a miserable animal, most of the tears froze on his face, a few landed in the snow or on a scrap of torn up paper.
She stopped and stood up straight in front of him. "Well, for starters, I thought you might want to know why all these bad things happened to you. Would you not?" She asked with a voice of almost idle curiosity.
He looked up at her, she bent far to one side, looking at him with her head to one side so that her face was even with his as she asked, "Well?"
"Yes... I would! I didn't do all those things! I didn't hurt any children, I didn't kill any, I didn't steal from my army! I... I don't know why any of the things that happened, happened, but I swear I'm not responsible!" He tried to shout, but his misery and the cold caused his voice to crack pitifully.
"I know." She said, "Well, you're not 'entirely' responsible." She added the caveat as she straightened up, and pointed at him with one talon.
"Y-You know?" He asked in utter disbelief and momentary happiness that someone finally believed him.
"Yes, I do, because you see," she flapped her wings and hovered a foot above and back from him, and with her talon still pointed down at him she said, "I made all that happen, well... with a little help." She smiled happily, her broad sadistic grin bared her fangs.
"No! How?!" He tried to ask, but then she began to lay it all out, explaining in great detail, pausing only to give in to her terrible fits of almost insane laughter and pure unadulterated joy as parts of it broke him down sobbing when he gradually understood that one thing after another, all the things that had happened, had been orchestrated expressly to be done 'to' him, to destroy him.
When at last she finished telling him everything he had only one question.
"W-Why? Why would you do this to me?! I never did anything to you! I don't deserve this! I never did anything to deserve this!" He exclaimed angrily through chattering teeth.
She looked at him like he was the village idiot. "Oh really? Did Vanysa deserve any of her suffering? You abused her, you humiliated her, hurt her, stole from her, tortured her, you let the jailer hurt her, you drove her to suicide. You desecrated her corpse when she died, throwing her out like garbage after weeks of trying to grind her down to worthlessness, you denied her dignity even when she'd been reduced to nothing but a little bundle of dead flesh, you chose your line of march in part in the hopes that she would be further desecrated by your ugly fluids as you pissed into the river you dumped her body into, because it made you feel good to get some petty revenge on the dead peasant whose life you first ruined, then stole away."
She bared her fangs and her talon trembled as she spoke, "She didn't know you either, she'd never hurt you, her only crime was daring to have a friend that nobody could take away from her, her crime was that she wouldn't betray the trust of someone she cherished, she didn't deserve a single thing you did, did she? Why did you strip her naked, were you planning on breaking your promise to her if she hadn't died when she did, or just watching that pig of a jailer do it?" Vanysa's voice was loud and wrathful as she laid into Astraka over his actions, but he was, after all, still himself.
"I did the things I had to do! It was a necessity, not a pleasure! I needed her knowledge and she kept it from me! As to the rest, I... no, I did many things to her or had them done, but I was not going to commit that abominable sin against her, nor was I going to allow it." He said defensively and in disgust. "The truth is…" he rasped out, "you're right, she didn't 'deserve' any of it, she was just an ordinary person, and she hadn't done anything." He looked down, a little ashamed of himself, he looked back up, "But she had knowledge out of the ordinary! She knew things I needed to know! I never thought it would have to go as far as it did! I'm… I was, a king damnit! The things in her head would have saved the lives of my people and could have ensured my victory, or at least prevented my defeat!" He said emphatically. "It doesn't matter that she didn't deserve it, she still brought it on herself by forcing my hand!"
He tried to slam his fist into the snow, but his arm was to weak and it simply 'fell' like a dull thud. "Queen Calca could not be allowed back on the throne! Don't you understand?! I come from a martial line, all three of my elder brothers went north to fight Jaldabaoth and none of them came home again, then Caspond took over and had three failed reconstructions before basically handing our country's fate over to a woman more loyal to a foreigner than to her own people, a woman who did whatever she saw fit, Neia killed a royal governor… scum yes, but it doesn't change the fact that she was a rogue element that nobody could or would even try to control! Then Handor got control and he was just a corrupt scumbag, cousin or not, I'd have killed him myself eventually… I was the only one left! The only one who I knew would not sell out my country, and would not let us stay weak! So I had to get at what was in that girl's head, whether she deserved it or not didn't matter, I did what I had to do!" He said vigorously and emphatically.
As he spoke his last denial, a hint of what had once been a noble voice came through, and it gave Vanysa pause.
"Is that why you neglected her, left her in agony, left her to whatever else might happen, let that torturer… work… on her?" She asked curiously, for some 'greater good' relating to your ambition?"
"Yes! It is what kings must do, accept the vile to accomplish the good of the nation!" He said defensively. "I'm not wrong! People don't always get what they deserve, but that doesn't mean they're not responsible for what they get anyway! If she'd just obeyed me the way she was supposed to, she'd be rich and being waited on hand and foot, instead of being food to fatten the fish." His eyes blazed with righteous anger as he finished his rasped out rant, and then he went on.
"Now, tell me why! Why did you do all this to me!" He shouted in a hoarse, agony filled voice, "I demand an answer, damn it! Surely this wasn't all over some peasant from a city gutter or a dead village somewhere?" He asked in disbelief.
Vanysa smiled with an almost matronly warmth and flapped her wings again, giving herself the best possible view of his face. "Well, what if I said I had a deal to offer to you?" She asked, "Not many peasants are given the opportunity to make deals with kings you know." She said encouragingly, she watched as his face started to change with the stirring of a vague memory. A ride in a carriage, a terrified girl shaking with fear and silent in spite of his best efforts, her beautiful storm grey eyes, he looked closer at the demoness in front of him, searching her face, her eyes, and finding storm gray surrounded by golden skin looked very, very familiar.
His eyes went wide, he started to shake. "No... no... no... no... no... no... no...!" He shouted in disbelief and denial. "You're a demoness, you're not a human! She was just some no-account trash that didn't know to obey royalty!" He snapped hoarsely.
"If she'd just told me what I wanted to know I never would have hurt her! I never wanted that end damn it! I thought I'd ask her, bribe her, then cut her loose and there'd be no problem! But she wouldn't cooperate! OK, yes, after her death I was angry! Furious! Everything went wrong after her, maybe I made her corpse a target, punished it because I couldn't punish her! But we couldn't let Calca come back! She almost RUINED us the last time she was on the throne! If that stupid peasant had just told me what I needed to know about the Sorcerer King I'd know what I was dealing with, I have to have information to make decisons and she held it back from me! She should have obeyed! I had no choice but to get hard on her! I tried and tried and tried to buy the knowledge, but she wouldn't sell it, so I had to take it by force!" He ranted at the demoness, holding his hands up in frustration and clenching his now very numb fingers into fists.
"You tried to buy the only things she had anymore, what did she tell you they were? Her loyalty, her integrity, to give you what she knew would have been to betray her only friend in the world, the one who saved her life and gave her a chance at starting over, but you didn't care, and so you missed the most important information of all." Vanysa said contemptuously.
"Information? What information?" He asked, confused.
"Even now you don't see it?!" Vanysa exclaimed and slapped her palm over her face, "Ugh, if you had become a king, you'd have been a disaster, I think. Fine, she wasn't trash to the Sorcerer King. To him..." She leaned forward and whispered almost conspiratorially, "she was a 'faithful servant'."
His mouth fell open in silent disbelief.
"Of course, what she held back from you, you saw an inkling of and never knew it, he values victory and he values his servants, your failure to break Vanysa was not victory enough. He searched high and low for her corpse before he even knew she was a corpse, he almost killed a Queen over it, would have, if he'd thought she was responsible. When he found her body, he viewed her suicide as a murder and her treatment as an insult. Even though he knew she'd taken her own life and deprived 'the captor', of whatever you wanted, that was not enough for him. Though he didn't yet know it was you who had done this terrible thing to his 'faithful servant.' He sought to fix the problem." She smiled an arch smile that was happy and threatening both at once.
She gazed at her victim with pure overwhelming joy as she described the actions of the master she served. "After he got her body back, he used a tiny fragment of his massive power, and turned her to this glorious form you see before you. " Vanysa said happily and let herself drop into the snow, her arms went up and she spread her wings as wide as they could go, her talons pointed up towards the sky, her golden skin caught the light of the setting sun, and she appeared every inch as if she were some terrible goddess before him.
"Now… if it is not completely obvious, she... is me!" Vanysa said, and drew her wings back in, returning to her human form, all buxom and bouncy, she smiled sweetly and wiggled her fingers in a playful hello, as seeming as joyful as she did when about to eat a sandwich, it was a radiant, beautiful smile even now, or perhaps especially now. "As you can see, I'm a little different, I'm an erinyes, otherwise known as a fury, I am a demoness that punishes the guilty. I'm also a human. I was born, but created, free, but I serve, I died, but yet I live again. And I have, by the way, become an excellent torturer. I'm far, far better than that incompetent pig you let do things to me. He didn't know anything, I could have hurt me much, much worse. Why, Demiurge even says I have a natural talent for it, he calls me a musician." She sighed at her fond thoughts of the archdevil.
She turned her momentarily distracted gaze back to Astraka, "You'll learn all about that though, because you're going to come with me, and you're going to sing for me for many... many years, maybe a few generations, we'll have to see, I did promise your parents you'd be allowed to die some day, and if it makes you feel better, I also promised them I'd put your body to rest with theirs when I was done with you. But... I won't be done with you for a long time to come." Her beautiful face split with a sadistic smile and her eyes were wide and stared at him with hunger akin to a kind of lust.
"Don't bother trying to get away, the sword I replaced yours with was indeed enchanted, but it drained your strength to keep itself intact, and every use weakened it considerably, now that it is shattered, well, even with the little rest you just got from our time together here, I think the cold will have kept you from being able to get much of your old strength back. Not that even you at your best would be anything to me anymore." She said with her ever present smile, then kicked him in the chest, sending him falling hard onto his back, she put a foot there, holding him down on the cold, cold ground. He coughed as she knocked the wind entirely out of him, he couldn't breathe the frozen air even if he wanted to, he hacked and coughed as she used a message scroll.
"I'm ready for the gate, yes thank you, I have him, and it was glorious, everything I hoped it would be." She said, and a hole opened up in reality. "You come with me now, out of the cold, and into the hell I've prepared just for you and you alone, but tell me... how do you feel about 'horses'? It just so happens I have a wooden one I'd love for you to try riding." She said, and bent over, then grabbed him by his beard, she started to walk towards the gate as he wiggled and struggled and cried out in futility.
He managed to get out a few bitter words, "You think this... this will make a difference, that by hurting me you'll forget it all and everything will be all better?!" Spittle fell from his lips as he struggled to get out every syllable.
That gave her pause, she looked down at him as she shifted to her erinyes form and smiled with sharp fangs clearly looking him over. "Maybe, maybe not." She said, her smile never changing, "But it's a fucking start." She added, and dragged him with one more desperate, choked off scream into the gate and through to the other side.
AN: Two things...
First double release day, enjoy.
Second thing...Bigoted bullshit will be deleted, don't be an asshole.