God Rising: The Cult of Ainz
Written by: AtheistBasementDragon
Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots
AN: Another one closer to the end, and I want to say again how truly moved I am by the sheer breadth of enjoyment so many have drawn from this story so far. There are, it is true, some especially dark chapters ahead, as we bring the story of war to a final conclusion, the truth is, every chapter brings me closer to the realization that, when these are finished, it'll be time to move on to new projects. But you know something? Overlord is for everyone, and that means 'God Rising' is for everyone. So if you enjoy this story so well, then by whatever gods there are or are not, take it up and write for it yourself! If there is something I did not do but could have, then do it, if there is a different ending you wanted to see, then write it! Go forth, create, and be happy in doing so. :) This story may be of my making, but it does not belong to me once written, it is a gift, and once a gift is given, it isn't right to tell people what to do with it. So it belongs to you, as much as it does to me. Alright, on with the story.
Chapter 157: The End of All Hope
...Golden Fortress...
CZ was moving even before Neia, whipping her spellgun out and up to the threat from the very first twitch. Thus she was firing on full automatic before the strings could even be released. Her rounds were not targeted expressly to the archers, though a number were struck anyway and went down like a bag of rocks to the bottom of a lake. Her target was instead to hit the arrows themselves, her rounds went out and her targeting eye let her instantly lock on to the relatively slow projectiles as if they were tree sap sliding down instead of deadly projectiles flying faster than the birds that provided their feathers.
Wooden shafts cracked in mid-air and the deadly objects dropped down with the sudden loss of momentum, others went wild as the spellgun's impacts struck metal arrowheads meant to rip flesh apart. "Neia!" Skana shouted in desperation as she realized the danger and tried to rush from the ground to her feet. Neia opened her mouth and let out a gentle laugh that only grew louder from second to second.
The tasks to which Neia had set them had kept Blue Rose away from their usual position near to her command. It was uncomfortable for all of them, but tasked as 'symbols of courage' at the forefront of several units, there was nothing to be done but bear with it. But seeing what they did, they immediately regretted their distance, save for Evileye, who was just within reach, and saw more than mere arrows moving.
As if things were meant by nature to go from bad to worse, a trio of scorpions mounted on the walls launched their man sized projectiles, because if you're going to kill, overkill is the rule. This however, was met by a shout of [Crystal Wall] by Evileye, whose now maskless face lay bare and glaring as the enormous shots bounced off her hastily made barrier.
Many things can happen in an instant when there are many players upon a stage, and what else happened was that the vision of the Black Pope, with arms out and back arched and face tilted to the heavens as if to embrace the death flying at her after casting her wife to safety, burned itself forever into every watching eye.
From their place in front of a series of companies of soldiers, the members of Blue Rose had watched incomprehensibly as Neia seemed ready to embrace the sharp points racing toward her. It had all been in slow motion, like some cruel magic meant to make them watch a fellow soldier perish. Lakyus in particular, had been appalled by the breach of the white flag and even more so at what had briefly looked to be the loss of the one who had been targeted by such treachery.
It was only seconds in time, but it felt like an eternity, and as that moment passed, a new era dawned in its place that was scarcely longer. An age of disbelief as the horde that followed her and the betrayers who had tried to assassinate her, each looked in disbelief at the Black Paladin. When the last 'crack' sound faded into silence, the crystal wall was dispelled, and Neia's laughter faded away as she realized she was not to be struck. She opened her eyes, straightened up, and lowered her arms back down to the reins of her horse. Skana managed to recover and was just getting back onto her mount, ready to call an attack all on her own, but Neia chose to break the silence and speak.
"That was bad form." She spoke with the calmness one usually reserves for describing the failure to catch something casually tossed over. "Not only for attempting to assassinate me under a flag of truce, not only for putting my wife at risk... but also for failing. Your sinful weakness in both strength and integrity has cost you your lives." Her reverberating voice thrummed like a stringed instrument through their blood. "This is what you will do. Send one man out of your fortress, tell him to run to Wheaton, he can tell them I have arrived, I want them to know it, and I want them to start to dread it. Once you have chosen that one man among you to survive, make peace with your six dead gods, and when the hour passes, well, you are all going to meet those gods and find out what they really think of treachery under a flag of truce."
"W-We still get the hour?" The commander asked as he reared back in his saddle.
"I gave my word, didn't I? I am the servant of His Majesty, your dishonor is not a flaw I will share. Besides, you are no threat to me. The force of my contempt alone could bat your arrows away like so many flies. Do you think the scourge of god could be brought low so easily? How pathetic." She said scathingly, spitting upon the ground in front of the hooves of his horse, and looked at him with the disdain usually reserved for a dog barking from behind the safety of a fence.
"Now, go within your walls, choose your one, make your peace as I have said, pray for deliverance if you like, but it is much too late for that, my god has delivered you into my hands, and from them there is no escape, no matter how you plead for the six to descend and fight for you." Neia's voice hit them like a landslide, and her words made them worse. Fear pounded into every heart that heard her, and thanks to her evangelical arts, everyone did. She wheeled her undead mount around, and Skana drew her sword and cut the few shafts of arrows that stuck into the flank of her own unflinching mount, then CZ stowed her weapon, and they turned to follow their general.
"Establish a tent for me to work in, we don't need a full camp, destroying this place will not take long, and make sure they notify me when the 'survivor' runs away." Neia said formally as she went back behind the ranks of her lines. Tens of thousands of eyes watched her with reverential awe, and behind her one swift acting volunteer rushed to have her commands carried out.
Neia was silent as the grave, staring blankly at the fortress as her orders were carried out and a tent was erected right behind her.
When it was done, she dismounted and went inside. Skana did not wait for an invitation, she dismounted and walked purposefully and briskly into the tent, closing it behind her. As soon as it was shut she turned to face Neia who stood not two feet in front of her. "Neia what the h-" Her attempted complaint was cut off.
It was cut off by the sudden bone crushing embrace of her wife who pulled her tight with one arm around her waist and another at the back of her head and brought Skana's lips fiercely to her own. Her lips parted and her tongue sought its way past the lips of her beloved, it was so sudden and so ferocious that Skana did not respond for a moment. She let her arms come up after that and hold the one she loved, and let herself melt into the kiss until Neia herself chose to break it.
"I thought for a moment I was going to lose you... it was all I could do... I've never been so frightened in all my life..." Neia's voice was like stained silk, beautiful even in its imperfection. She pressed the side of her face into Skana's chest, "I'm so happy, happy that you're alive, if they'd struck you, if they'd killed you..." Neia could not finish the words, and all Skana could do was stroke her lover's back, from its lowest point all the way up to the top of her neck.
"Well give a care to your own life, please. If I lose you, I'll be no better off than you if you lost me. We're a 'team', we work together for both our sakes, and 'neither' of us is expendable to the other." Skana's rebuke was mild, gentle, and held none of the anger that had been present before the tight embrace.
Neia accepted the rebuke with a blush of embarrassment. "That was pretty stupid, wasn't it?"
"Yes, it was." Skana said softly as she touched the straw colored hair of her wife, "Maybe I can't keep you off the front lines, but damn it! If you die up there..." She bit her lower lip, and Neia put one finger over them and shook her head.
"Don't say that, it's fine. I'm alright and so are you... but they on the other hand... they've damned themselves." Neia's voice went from tender to terrifying in the span of a syllable.
"Yes, they have, they can all die... all of them... all of them... you were right, I was wrong. Giving mercy to the Theocracy is like giving mercy to a snake sleeping beneath your bed, it will just bite you while you sleep." Skana's voice was as gentle as the wind, her one green eye was hard as the emerald its color was named for.
They might have gone on, but CZ stepped through brusquely and spoke, "Their one is gone. Riding North." Her flat voice sounded indifferent, and it was, but when Neia detected a very slight twitch to her eyes, and noticed that she came just a little bit closer to her charge than she normally did.
Neia gave her a winning smile and replied, "Thank you CZ, for the report, but also for your protection, I knew you could do it. Oh, and could I ask one more thing of you?"
CZ cocked her head, "What?" She asked.
"Suppress the parapets, I want to ask Fluder to do this part. He's been bored lately and should have no problem demolishing those pathetic walls, they're probably not a threat to him, but I don't take chances, only lives." Neia explained, flashing her pretty, pearl white smile and giving as happy an expression as she could.
"Of course. I will tell him." CZ said succinctly, then with a snapped salute that Neia promptly returned, she left the pair alone.
Skana was about to say something, Neia could tell, but an instant later, just before the words could form, a crash sounded outside. The two looked at one another with surprise, the hour wasn't up, eyes full of affection suddenly turned hard as they exited the tent. "It looks like they don't want the full hour." Skana growled.
"Guess not!" Neia exclaimed with glee as a scorpion bolt slammed into the dirt a few feet in front of their ranks. She grinned maliciously and snatched the reins of her undead steed, flinging her leg up over the side and herself into the saddle in one smooth, practiced motion. She could see Skana's back riding away to her position, for just a moment before she turned away herself and began riding to the front. "I will make these brief, since they did as well! You are on Theocracy ground! They're willing to die for their country, your job is to help them do so! Make them like their gods! Dead and forgotten! And remember also this!" Her voice became as thunder in the sky as she reached the front of her formation and began riding along the line. "Who sheds their blood with you is your family! As long as one of you stands, your family will never die, you will never be forgotten, and if you are never forgotten, then you are more immortal than their gods! Make... Ready!"
Lakyus was troubled, Neia had nearly died and she seemed, from where she stood in front of a rank of soldiers to bolster courage in their first real fight on Theocracy ground, as if the Black Paladin did not give a damn. It troubled the veteran adventurer because she'd seen battle mania before, come upon those so drunk with blood that nothing but fighting made sense anymore, such persons typically came to hard, painful ends. 'I have to do something. Maybe not right this moment, but soon. If it weren't for her... well hell, it's enough that she's a friend, but this can't go on for long.' She thought, then shook the brief contemplation away and focused on the task about to befall her.
Weapons rose and fell and cheers alone threatened to topple the stone of the Golden Fortress. Neia raised her bow horizontally over her head and looked to the crenelations. No more scorpion bolts came down, and she could hear the crack of CZ's weapon, she was probably responsible for that. Or so she was thinking when Fluder arrived at her position.
"Are you ready, 'student' of magic?" Neia asked with a smile of pure bloody joy on her face, the grin split from ear to ear as if the desperately thirsty had found water.
"Of course, Neia Baraja." Fluder said as he stroked his long thin white beard.
"If you take the gate down in one blow, I'll ask my lord to reward you somehow, I want the last survivor to know what terror looks like." Neia said with a hungrily disconcerting smile.
Fluder watched the fading away of her natural eyes and the forming of the dark, had she the red orbs within the center, it would have been the spit and image of his master, but to him, curious as the change was, all that mattered was the possibility of reward of new knowledge.
He gave a nearly toothless grin and turned to face the gate. "[Fly]." He cast, and slowly ascended to the air. When he'd moved to the central position that gave him the best view of the gate, raised a hand up. He could see the fearful scurrying of the people below, a few caught sight of him and looked up with eyes pleading for mercy that he would not give. "A shame, but you are a sacrifice to my pursuit of knowledge, a sacrifice to my god. So... goodbye." He said with an uncaring shrug. [Maximize Magic - Napalm] he cast, and a ball of white hot flame not much larger than a fist formed just inches above the upturned palm of his hand, he lowered his arm and pointing to the gate, the white ball moved with sickening slowness, but Fluder did not stay to watch. To him, it was enough that this was done. He returned to the ground where Neia Baraja waited.
"Is that really enough, those are big gates after all?" She asked with surprise.
Fluder threw back his head and laughed so hard that she could see the back molars of his few remaining teeth. He slapped his chest as if to beat the laughter out of himself, and when he finally regained control and caught her quizzical, cockeyed look, he shook his head. "Yes, my dear General, that was the seventh tier spell I successfully cast some time ago, those gates are done, it just takes a few moments or so before the destruction begins. Just wait, you'll get your offering of blood to our god." He said with confidence that went beyond smug, but Neia was in no mood to doubt.
"I will take you at your word." She said and looked up at the wall again, CZ was wreaking merry hell on anyone who attempted to use a bow or man a scorpion. "I guess she's still a little sore about their assassination attempt." Neia said with sarcasm dripping from her tongue like syrup over pancakes.
"I suppose she is." Fluder remarked as he watched an archer bravely draw a bow, die, only to be replaced by someone else who took it up and tried again, only to die just as quickly as his comrade.
"She might not say much, but she means every word she says, and I couldn't ask for a better friend or bodyguard." Neia said confidently as she held her eyes on the gate. The instant the final word was said, a horrendous boom resounded and a flash of white blinded everyone, and a wave of heat swept over the army, only to disappear beyond them.
Everything was a blur, at least to most of them. But the black eyes of the general were unaffected, as if they had swallowed up the light itself, so Neia was among the first to see that the gate was well and truly shattered. Stone blocks were still flying through the air in a terrible arc, a few bodies sailed with them, and the gate became nothing but splinters and shrapnel. Numerous cries could be heard from within as those who had the misfortune to be too close to the burst were either killed by the force, the localized high temperature, or impaled by lethal shrapnel. The rest were blinded.
"Well done, Fluder! Attack!" Neia shouted with a reverberating voice that ripped through the air like the arrows that had so recently threatened her life, and it demanded she be obeyed.
Farthest from the burst, Neia's soldiers recovered more easily, and Inta's soldiers were quick to heed the call, charging like screaming fanatics. The few hundred survivors of Gustav's forces had a bone to pick with the Theocracy that had slain their general, and they showed it by shouting his name as a battle cry when they came within a few feet of the gate. Neia gave them a minute on their own, allowing them the chance to create the breach, and then she shouted again, "All units! Seize... that... place! Burn it down!"
The entire army began to move as one. The sound of stomping boots, the lowered halberds created a wall of sharp points, the third and fourth ranks drew their swords and prepared to advance. Neia rode her horse in between the marching ranks, her bow out, she picked targets and saw them fall, her actions devoid of any feeling, any thought, arrow... after arrow... after arrow... as they drew ever closer and then joined the mass of soldiers, filling in the gaps where some of Inta's men had fallen. Neia saw him fighting beside his sister not with sword, but with vampiric claws, as if he wanted the Theocracy to know what was killing them. As her soldiers spread out within the fortress and rushed to closed doors to batter them down, the battle became a brawl.
Neia felt her fingers grasp for arrows she no longer had, and put away her bow. Without thinking, she drew her sword and prepared to join the fray, when she felt a hand on her shoulder, the owner of that hand was shouting something, but it was as if it was across a great divide, barely heard and not understood. All Neia could hear was the sound of death screams and the clash of weapons, she picked a man, and the friendly hand on her shoulder pulled harder.
"No!" She finally heard the voice then and whirled on it to find Skana, "You will NOT endanger yourself! Not again!" The tone of her words struck home but Neia only stared at her in blank disbelief, as if she had not really understood. She moved as if to go into the fight again, only to be yanked back even more forcefully.
"General!" Skana shouted over the din of battle, her face wild. Skana's eye was wide with anxiety and her fingers shook as she held the shoulder of her wife, it was her expression most of all that drew Neia back to reality, the hollow blank stare began to fade away, and the inky darkness within the general's eyes faded away, returning them to their natural sky blue shade.
She did not make to return to the rear, but she did grab Skana's shaking hand as if to reassure her, and she did not move to advance within the fortress. "Vampires, seize the walls! Soldiers, bring up ladders! Move to the upper floors, ropes and hooks to take the top of the administration building!"
Her voice boomed out far louder than a woman her size had any right to be capable of, "Orcs to the flanks, surround the remainder! Halberds to the fore, pin them down!" Orders flew fast and hard as she took complete control of the flow of the open ground. Knot after knot began to form as soldiers of the Theocracy were isolated and cut off from support.
Screams of men and women filled the air like water did a vessel, and as if the world had overflowed with them and had no more space for pain, they began to little by little, die out with those who bore them. Neia did not resume her personal advance on horseback until her wife did, and the defenders died by inches, until the entirety of the open ground had only a handful of wounded still struggling to draw themselves away to the relative security of the closed doors of the administrative building where a last stand was in the offing.
Neia rode her horse close to where some of her soldiers, angry, furious, and filled with hate, were making to kill one badly wounded man, and to call him a man would be a stretch, because he was barely old enough to shave. She wondered idly if it was cruelty or mercy to kill someone in that state. He had a spear broken off in his mouth, it pierced through one cheek and out the other before it had been snapped, he had two arrows in his thighs that had somehow missed the arteries that would have given him a quick death, he had a stab wound to his eye that looked similar to Skana's. His helmet was long gone and he was bleeding copiously from several wounds on his head. His guts had the head of a halberd sticking out, and he was writhing and shaking in agony on the ground, his sword was gone, along with the hand that had held it.
He was a sorry, valiant sight. The weapons of her soldiers came up, but before they could stab down and end his pain, she shouted, "Hold!" It froze them in mid strike. The clip clop of her horse was the only sound but for the cries of the wounded, and such had been the power of her voice that many others halted in mid task until they saw to whom she'd spoken.
Neia looked down at the pathetic figure, and he looked up at her with one piteous eye. The Black Paladin did not leave him that way for long, she reached into her pack and pulled out a healing potion. "Remove the implements of war from his body, then use this." She ordered, and cast it to the nearest soldier.
Mystified but obedient, four men held the boy soldier down at the limbs, and extracted the spear from his cheek, the halberd from his guts, the arrows from his thigh by pushing them out the other end, he wailed and screamed and struggled as the already great pain was made worse, but when it was done, they did not hold back on the use of the potion.
"You don't get to die today, boy. I have a use for you." Neia said calmly as the wounds and pain faded, but the grip of those holding him down did not. She let her eyes go black and the terror hit him. "I will give you a task, and you will carry it out. Do you understand?" She asked as her voice reverberated as low as a demon plucked from hell.
"W-What task?" He asked hesitantly, his eyes still wide as he stared up, unable to look away, though he desperately longed to do so.
Not far away, soldiers scaled the outside of the administrative building, walking themselves up the wall as the last defenders of the outer walls died where they stood under the claws of angry vampire siblings.
"General?" Skana asked. Neia ignored her for the present.
Neia looked over her shoulder, "Lakyus! I want you and Blue Rose to take point on the main floor, the rest will descend from above! I don't care about most of those inside, but if you can I want the ones who tried to assassinate me... alive."
Lakyus approached on foot, and her team fell into step behind her. "That we can do, breaking a flag of truce is a very grave offense."
The boy trapped on his back was breathing harder and harder as he went unanswered, Neia watched as the door was smashed in, and the thorns of the rose began to end the lives of the last Theocracy holdouts.
Only when the sounds began to fade did Neia look back to the captive. "We already dispatched one to tell Wheaton that I'm coming for them, but I fear they may still have hope of your victory here." His lips pursed and his breathing slowed as he started to understand, but this immediately changed when the green armored pope got down off of her undead mount and she put herself directly over him with one foot on either side of the soldier's torso, she squatted down and put her hands on his cheek, and she smiled a small, cold smile. "I want you to go and tell them that you've lost, that you alone survived. I want you to be the messenger that makes them see the truth, that I am unstoppable. I am the end of all hope, I am the end of your lives, the end of your nation, the end of your gods, the tip of the divine spear thrust into the heart of your kingdom. The scourge of god is come, and anything and anyone in my way, will perish utterly from this world. Do you understand me, boy." Her voice was as if someone had taken silk and turned it into a garrott. He couldn't look away, he couldn't stop listening, and he couldn't help but piss himself.
He gave a small and rapid series of nods. His dull brown pupils shook within the whites trapped in the reflection given to them by the inky darkness on the Black Paladin.
When she was satisfied, Neia stood up and looked at the soldiers holding him fast. "Let him up, give him a horse and send him out of here. Give him some food and water as well, I don't want him to fail this mission, and he doesn't want to fail either. Do you lad?" Neia asked gently, he could only shake his head as rapidly no as he had nodded rapidly yes before.
A water skin was given to him, and two loaves of bread, and someone brought over a horse. The sound of fighting had vanished completely from within the administrative building.
As soon as he had the horse, he was on it and riding as fast as he could away from the dead fortress. Skana looked at Neia in silence as her wife watched the boy ride away, and felt a swelling of relief. 'She is still capable of mercy, she's not gone... I shouldn't worry so much.' She thought to herself,letting out a deep, audible sigh.
The Black Paladin had a tranquil smile on her face as the boy soldier fled like the demons of Jaldabaoth were at his back, his arrival in Wheaton, Neia felt certain, would bring a panic on the Slane Theocracy like nothing else had. She saw her wife looking over in her direction.
Neia looked over to her, "Are you alright, Skana?" She asked as her sky blue eyes restored themselves.
"Yes, just... you had me worried... I thought... no, never mind what I thought." Skana gave a sweet smile and got down off her horse, approached Neia, and embraced her tightly.
Neia returned the embrace and held it. Soldiers around them were seeing to the end of battle tasks, looking for wounded, tending their own, and inspecting any crates and barrels for any useful supplies, and they were all still doing these things when Lakyus emerged from the administrative building, behind her came Gagaran, and behind them came Tia and Tina, each dragging one of the pair that had been present for the assassination attempt during the truce.
The twins tossed the pair unceremoniously at the feet of General Baraja and Vice Commander Skana. They crashed hard into the bloodstained dirt, and rose to all fours spitting out the foul, copper flavored muck, but they'd barely gotten to their knees when as if they had read one another's minds, Skana and Neia drew their swords out, turned, and ran both men through at the neck.
The two looked up in disbelief at their killers, they grabbed in futility at the blades as if removing the metal would save their lives. All they did was cost themselves a few fingers, the blades held them up, twitching and dying as blood poured down their armor and flesh, until the first drops joined the blood already on the ground. Only then did the vengeful couple withdraw their blades and clean them off, allowing the two fortress leaders to topple into the dirt.
Neia was quick to shout an order, "Gather all the bodies of the enemy dead together and burn them, then dispose of what remains with a proper burial, but these two, do not touch!" She gestured with her blade to the two still twitching corpses. "These violated the laws of peace under the white flag! Strip their bodies and leave them as nothing but naked, dishonored corpses, oathbreakers are fit as nothing but food for the crows and rats!"
It was not a sentiment anyone was willing to argue with, such a violation was completely unprecedented. When Neia put her sword away, she looked over to where the members of Blue Rose were standing. "Thank you all, you did good work today, probably saved a lot of lives."
Lakyus wiped some blood from her cheek and nodded somberly with a neutral face. "It had to be done, we were glad to help."
"And I was glad to have it." Neia responded.
"How long do we stay here, General?" Skana asked as her own sword was returned to its place in her scabbard.
Neia tapped her chin and looked up as she thought it over, "Not long, give the soldiers time to finish their orders, we'll give them a half day's rest after that, and we'll set out in the morning, I want Wheaton to be good and terrified all day tomorrow. As soon as they're ready though, I want the hundred ready to go out and start hitting the farming estates, there are probably a lot here, I want breakers and overseers taken and the farms inspected for indications of brutality."
"And what do we do with them?" Skana asked, already sure she knew the answer, and a tiny part of her that would not stop gnawing at her mind, dreading it.
"Why my love, I should think that would be obvious. Bring them... to me." Neia said, and the blue of her eyes vanished as her instruction reverberated down to Skana's very bones.