God Rising: The Cult of Ainz
Written by: AtheistBasementDragon
Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots
Chapter 152: Crossing a Line
AN: Well somebody donated to charity so... here you are, chapter 152 delivered early. OK so 'now' I'll hold off on chapter 153 until it reaches 2900. :) Anyway, as we come down to the final stages you'll get some additional perspectives, a closer look at the Agante, there's a lot to pack in to the last 48 chapters and... yes it may be 'slightly' over the 200 mark, but not by a lot, I've cut out a lot of the material that would have taken this out to 300 chapters. I may, near the end just to draw things out so I don't have to post the last chapter, do some of those materials as one shots and shorts just to build on the world a bit before the end, but we'll see how that goes. Today I'm doing Chapter 5 of 'Scales of Trust' but I'm still a bit sick so it is slow going. Thank you all for reading for so long, every review has made my day, you're an amazing community and don't you forget it! :)
OH, obligatory plugs: Join my discord for early looks at both Overlord and original work, or help turn me into a full time writer through my patr3-on at slash tellingstories.
...Golden Fortress...South of Wheaton...
They had assembled one hour south of the fortress, but it took three hours for the army to be completely reassembled into their companies and battalions. Neia watched the glorious sight from atop her undead horse. "Do you think anyone stayed behind?" She asked quietly, then looked to her left in surprise, Skana wasn't there. "Oh, right." Neia whispered to herself and bit her tongue, anger with herself was rising in her breast. "How the hell could I say that to my wife? What the fuck was I thinking?" She berated herself as she watched the ranks form up.
Inta rode up to her and eased his horse to stand beside hers. "General Baraja." He said formally and inclined his head to her.
Neia looked over to him, her eyes suddenly gentle and somewhat downcast to go with her sympathetic tone. "Vice Commander Inta, or... should I say 'General Inta' now? I heard about Gustav's passing, I'm sorry you bore that loss, he was a good man, and died like a hero. I will remember him well."
"Hardly 'General' when you have only a few hundred survivors, I'll happily stay on as one of your Vice Commanders, let Gustav keep the title instead. And by the way, thank you for your sympathy, he was a good friend. You knew him pretty well, before all this, I mean." He said in passing, looking away for a moment as he thought of his time with the paladin.
"I did, he was the only paladin to speak up for me, the only one to acknowledge my contributions, the only one out of all my so-called comrades to give a damn if I lived or died. He was a superior, but he was also a friend. If he'd lived through the war, I'd have begged father on my knees to show him some leniency for his part in what Remedios eventually did." Neia's fingers tensed for a moment and she rubbed her face on her sleeve, wiping away tears before they could form.
"He was the first human friend I ever had, he'll be dearly missed in the years to come. But before then there is one more thing that must be done." Inta said, his voice going from mournful to hard as steel.
"He must be avenged." Neia guessed with a voice that matched that of Inta's own.
"Yes, there's a blood price to be paid." Inta said, baring his vampire fangs with his red eyes flashing bright in the light of day.
"Then let's exact it together." Neia said and stuck out her arm, Inta grasped her forearm as she grabbed his in turn, he squeezed, tight, and to his surprise, the child of the unliving did not even flinch from his vampire strength, he felt the pressure of her own grip coming down on his own, and watched as the darkness began to fill her eyes.
"With pride, may I ask for the right of the first charge, assuming they don't surrender?" Inta asked as their mutual grip broke.
"You've earned it." Neia said sharply, "It's yours."
"Thank you, General." Inta said sincerely as Lakyus, CZ, and finally, far later than she should have taken position, Skana.
The march to the Golden Fortress was loud, units called out cadence proudly, filled with confidence and a bounce in their step.
"War! War! It's what we come for!
Blood! Blood! We want some more!
Gore! Gore! In buckets by the score!
An all we want is more, more, more!"
They talked themselves up with such overwhelming spirit that the fortress knew they were coming by the thunder in the air that was the voice of a single living thing, the Army of the Sorcerer King's most fanatical follower.
Ulial had always counted himself a brave man, but it was easy to be brave behind stone walls. Or so he'd often said to the new recruits, but when the thunder of thousands of voices and stamping, marching feet hit his position atop the wall, his doubts about that expression began to grow. Gradually the advancing army came into view, he saw the black and red banner of Black Justice, the banner of Neia Baraja, and he narrowly kept from pissing himself. His comrades were frozen in shock. "What is she doing here?!" He shouted in a voice that was more of a 'squeak'. He turned his back on the advance and back into the fortress, "We have an attack! Battle positions! Battle positions! It's the herald! The demon! Get to your positions!" He shrieked and it snapped the others out of their stupor. Bells rang to alarm the entire facility, and the peaceful stillness was broken utterly.
Armor clattered as thousands upon thousands of soldiers ran around like mad men. Ulial looked down and watched them scurry around as the shouting cadence of bloodthirsty undead worshipers drew closer and louder. As Ulial watched the way his own were running, he remembered his childhood, kicking over an anthill and watching the way the little things ran like mad. He'd thought it was funny at the time. He felt no urge to laugh now, color ran away from his face and those whose faces he could see were etched with the same terror he felt. He thought of the stories that had been spread among them, "Neia Baraja bathes in the blood of the worshippers of the six! She dips her bread in a broth of human blood over dinner! She forces parents to slay their children or see them tortured!" The stories spread around grew worse and worse with every telling, along with exhortations to be brave to protect the Theocracy from the terror that came with her. Ulial's body trembled against his will, but well drilled, he took out his bow and, like his comrades that were lining the walls, prepared for action.
The gate was closing and barriers were being put up against it to keep it from being battered down easily. He was breathing hard and fast, his chest rose and fell as his heart all but leapt into his throat. His blue eyes were clouded with fear, he was sure others were feeling the same as he.
The banner of nightmare flapped in the wind with horrifying nobility, he turned and looked at the banners of the Slane Theocracy, they didn't flap at all, they lay limp along the poles on which they sat, as if already bowing in submission to the herald of the dark new god that was rising in the north, west, and east. "You've got to be kidding me." Ulial said as he rested a hand on the crenelations of his fortress.
"What?" A soldier next to him asked, barely looking at him as he watched the advancing army march in lockstep.
"They've enchanted their goddamn banners to fly even when there's no wind!" Ulial said and grabbed his own bushy brown beard and pulled on it as if to waken himself from a terrible dream.
"Such a use of magic for something so... minor..." The soldier next to him said in a hushed and disbelieving voice.
They watched the long line snake its way up the road until it was within range of the fortress. Only then did a white banner come up.
When Neia had the banner raised, she was about to spur her horse forward, a hand clapped hard on her shoulder, she looked to her right, Skana's hand gripped her tightly. "No."
Neia looked at the hand, then at her wife and Vice Commander. "What do you mean, 'no'?" She asked in a quiet voice. Her voice had a low and grim reverberation to it, and when Skana met the eyes of her wife, she saw an endless empty shadow in place of the sparkle that she'd seen not so long before.
"We wait until they send a delegation, and you do not go alone." Skana retorted angrily. "I will not lose you. I can't lose you." As she said that, she felt her eye mist over, and the shadow began to fade from Neia's eyes, a tender smile formed and she laid her free hand gently on the one Skana used to grip her shoulder.
"You will never lose me." She gave her wife a crooked, winsome smile, "As long as you want to be where I am, I want you with me, even if I'm dumb enough to say something I shouldn't."
The fortress gate ahead of them opened up part of the way and two people rode out. Neia refocused her attention on them and waited patiently until they reached the halfway point between the army and the fortress. [Voice of God] [Echo of the Underworld] [Fear of Death] [Wrath of God] Neia activated her evangelical arts as they halted, then she whispered to her companions, "Come on, let's go pick a fight."
Without waiting for their confirmation, she spurred her horse into a gentle trot, along with her companions and rode to within a few feet of her Theocracy counterparts.
"What do you want?" The commander of the fortress asked coldly. He was an older man, balding and wrinkled, with a white beard seemingly there to compensate for its loss up top. He had a thin, wiry frame that seemed to retain some of his once youthful vigor. The soldier in Neia approved, but with some regret.
Neia closed her eyes briefly, then opened them to let him see the infinite dark. Her voice reverberated violently with every word. "I want your walls, your buildings, and the life of every man and woman here, then I want to destroy Wheaten, then Feron, then C'teon, and Kami Miyako. I want to salt your fields so that they never bring forth life again, to see your women and children flee my advance as your soldiers sing to me their death screams while I crush their bodies under the hooves of my undead horses. I want to destroy your temples and cast down your failed gods, and I want to sever the heads of your cardinals and gift them to my god as a tribute to his greatness. That... is what I want... Commander of the Golden Fortress. But I will settle for your unconditional surrender."
The power of her voice ran through their veins as if it was their own blood, the commander could neither move nor speak as he saw the nightmare she painted, pass before his eyes.
"You heard from my 'herald' didn't you, the inquisitor who survived Yanana's destruction?" She asked with horrific calmness.
All he could do was nod.
Neia went on, keeping the midnight dark eyes on the enemy commander as she did so. "Then you know my rule, your fortress has one hour to surrender, if it does not, I will exterminate it to the last man and erase it from existence." Her tone of voice did not shift even in the slightest as she spoke, and her words carried up to the top of the fortress, as well as to those within the walls. "Those who surrender now will be spared, they need only have their faces in the dirt. Anyone still standing is a combatant, and I will kill them."
Skana spoke up with a sudden urgency in her voice, her eyes darted beside her to her wife as her tone spiked "Anyone who wishes to surrender after... have them on their knees at the north wall. They'll be spared."
Neia tensed, but did not dispute the matter.
The little assembly was quiet, and the Commander reached up to the back of his head and scratched, uncomfortably, while his compatriot, seemingly without thinking, looked up over his shoulder at the walls behind him.
Archers atop the wall suddenly drew and loosed in one practiced motion, sending numerous arrows directly against the Black Paladin. Neia saw it coming the instant the men atop the wall began to move, and swiftly knocked her wife off of her horse with a sudden shove. Skana fell to the ground, and the undead mount moved in front of her. Neia however, did not attempt to dodge, she opened her arms out from her body as wide as they could be, then arched her back and looked to the sky as if offering to embrace the rain of death that came toward her.
...Crossroads...
Without the means to compel the city's surrender, the fighting went on block by arduous block, leaving Enri making a slow, terrible trot beside her bodyguard and chief advisor as her army captured or destroyed one building at a time. "General Enri, when they fortify a building, should we strive to take it or...?" One of her soldiers asked, but did not complete the question.
Enri looked over the soldier and answered abruptly, "Burn it, destroy it, do what needs to be done, but clear it out of the way. Offer one chance to surrender, then eliminate it if they don't accept. I will not spend weeks on this city, we will have it by dawn." She kept her eyes clear and hard, but inside, she felt saddened by the absurdity of the losses that were being taken. Her elite squad of goblins was an unstoppable protection, and with Lupusregina at her side, it was easy to be confident. A dragon flew over head, its breath came down and froze an entire building with archers on the roof. They were moving back and forth in a zig-zag pattern just before the army, identifying or eliminating hazards. It made the work relatively quick.
A few hours later, captives began to pour in, her lines of march halted as dribs and drabs of small groups knelt in the road or walked over and simply threw down their swords in frustration, or kowtowed in terror. The handful of mages and the surviving scriptures presented the clearest obstacles, but one by one those too fell before vastly superior numbers and in some cases, decidedly superior quality.
Leywan was distraught in the extreme, the dragons, the goblins, the gods-be-damned vampires! Even though he had only a moderate build, he was one of the elites of the Windflower scripture, capable of taking on most of humanity's enemies. Or so he thought. He looked through clear green eyes and shook with a rare moment of fear as another squad came on against his improvised intersectional barrier. He looked to his left and right, his group of scripture members and common soldiers was down to three elites and twelve common militia. In front of his barrier lay dozens and dozens of dead, yet still Enri's armies came on.
He gripped his enchanted spear as a rank of goblins advanced. His breathing became heavy, "Damn it! This isn't supposed to be the way things are! If humanity really is chosen by the gods... why are things turning out like this?!" He hissed out to his companions. 'Gods who stand above and watch over humanity, give me the strength to endure the trials you have given me in this, the hour of your servant's sinful doubts…' He thought the prayer and forced himself to relax.
Before they could answer, around the corner behind the goblins came three riders, a goblin, a red haired woman in a maid's outfit of all things, and a pretty blonde woman in white armor.
Leywan looked at his companions, "It's her. This is our chance, she has only a squad and that funny pair with her, we can still turn this around." He said with a smile, 'The gods are finally giving us their blessing!' He thought happily, the tension gone, he relaxed, as did the rest, he looked around and pantomimed going over the wall. There were looks of acknowledgement, he watched, he waited, and then as they drew near, he gave the signal, he planted his hand on the barrier and leaped over. He charged straight for Enri with his spear level, his eyes wide with determination. 'The gods deliver you into my hands, servant of evil, nothing can save you now...' He thought, and a tranquil kind of peace settled over him that was so profound that he did not even utter a battlecry.
His comrades, and the gods themselves, were with him, and all would work out... or so he was convinced it would be, which was why he was so very confused when his head started rolling over the pavement. As his head rolled, he saw that the red headed maid's hand had gone out in a chopping motion. His body was falling and his eyes beheld the complete massacre of the common soldiers and his fellow scripture members. He wanted to speak, but while his lips could move, he could not say words aloud.
'How... How could this happen?' Was all he managed to think, before his eyes closed forever, making the sight of General Enri Emmot-Bareare and her party moving on without even breaking their stride, the last thing he ever saw.
"Good job, Lupu." Enri said with a smile as the body toppled over and the head went rolling past her.
"Thanks." Lupusregina said with a wide mouthed grin as she brought her hand up and licked the blood clean.
"He was a weird one, didn't make a sound, and he didn't seem to care what happened to himself." Enri said with idle curiosity as the last scripture member and the last militia soldier fell.
Lupusregina shrugged indifferently, "Just desperate I guess, resigned to his own death. At least he was brave, I'll give him that, a damn slight braver than that Barbro was when I tortured him to death. That coward pissed himself in the first minute and didn't even have the guts to fight back, just kept trying to surrender, it was pathetic."
Enri brushed off the casual reference to her former prince's fate, she knew quite well that in the past, such a thing would have made her turn green or shudder at the thought, but now she was an angel of war carved from stone. It meant nothing to her.
"How much longer before the entire city falls to us, master Sun?" Enri asked of the goblin to her right hand.
"It will fall by dawn, though we could simply destroy the rest of it by sunset if that is your will. However, that would exterminate the rest of the population." The goblin strategist stroked his beard and looked at Enri thoughtfully.
She went quiet for a moment as if contemplating it in seriousness. "No, these are to be the Sorcerer King's people too, they're resisting out of fear born of lies, you've seen the posters, we've heard from other captives, we know they're lying, and I won't make a word of it true. The belief in what horrors we'll inflict is almost certainly why that bureaucrat's 'surrender' was so ineffective. If I torch the entire city I'll confirm everything they say. I won't do that." Enri said with absolute conviction in every fiber of her being.
"Then may I suggest we establish ourselves somewhere and allow the rest of the soldiers to do their work?" He said reasonably.
"Somewhere with alcohol." Lupu said with a great deal of enthusiastic nodding.
"There's a bar right there, I sort of doubt the owner is at home." Enri said, pointing to a sign.
"That will serve our purposes for command and for rest." Sun agreed as he looked for something better among the many nearby buildings, and did not find it.
"I suppose, if we must, and of course... I will stay up all night guarding the ah, entrance, I must stay ready to face all threats, and limber, in case my General demands my services 'again'." Lupus winked at Enri, who blushed a deep cherry red while Sun laughed at them both.
"I have 'never' demanded your services Lupu! Don't say that in front of my goblin friends, do you know how long it took to dispel the 'last' rumor that started after one of your little jokes!" She covered her face with both hands to hide the look of horror on her face.
"Fear not, General Enri, your secret affair with the Lady Lupusregina will remain my secret. I will not tell your husband. Though you really should not harass those under your command in such a way..."
"Damn it, Lupuuuuuu!" Enri shouted as they went through the street entrance, oblivious to the cries of the dying as the city fell into their hands, one street, one building, one forever ended life at a time.