God Rising: The Cult of Ainz
Written by: AtheistBasementDragon
Edited by: The Usual Gang of Drunken Perverted Idiots
Chapter 166: Crime and Punishment
...Golden Fortress...
When Neia woke up, the first captives were being brought in. She heard it from where she lay and her eyes snapped open out of the nightmare that was consuming her sleeping hours. She flung her legs over the cot and quickly put on her boots, her legendary armor, took up her bow, belted on her sword, and then walked out of the tent.
Outside, two of her guards held their disciplined positions without moving even a little. Relentless drill had made them into deadly statues. The wind picked up the cloak behind her, causing it to flap majestically. Today she wore red, and she kept the hood back so she could be clearly recognized for who she was. Her feet fell lightly over the ground, but hardened by the cold, the dirt crunched like bone beneath her boots.
"Line them up!" She barked to the soldiers who herded the bound captives like sheep.
Wails and shouts of fear were plentiful, but her elites were skilled riders and it was relatively easy with undead mounts to shove people into place, particularly when those people were terrified of not following directions.
Neia looked them over with a burning fury in her eyes, the perfect sky blue faded away in front of them and as they watched, gasping or frozen in terror, the ink like darkness took away even her pupils.
"I expect you know who I am." Neia said in a voice that thrummed through their bodies. The tears were good enough answer from some, others fell to their knees, but either were sufficient for her to know that yes, they had guessed her identity successfully.
Her already narrow eyes narrowed further. She looked to one of the mounted soldiers, "Are they separated by role?"
"Yes, ma'am!" Mixis replied swiftly, happily, and hungrily. "The overseers are in the center, the breaker is on the right, the family who owned the slaves and employed the rest are on the left."
Neia looked down the line, the family was shifting uncomfortably and clutching their young children protectively. The children were young, younger than Neia was when she joined the Paladin Order as a squire.
She felt a growl rise up from within as she watched love between monsters and felt the urge to destroy it, she held in a mental sigh and reminded herself of the rules. She looked along the line further, and saw as she looked closer, that the overseers had been brought with their whips.
She looked back at the soldier again, "How were the slaves treated?" Neia asked him calmly, the weight of lives hung in the balance and the entire assembly knew it. The rest of her army, busy about their tasks, began to slow or stop to watch what was happening. Heavy loads were put down, those walking stopped and turned to observe. From up in the tower, Skana, Lakyus, and CZ leaned over to watch.
"Please... let this be enough." Skana begged the heavens.
Lakyus reached out and touched Skana's shoulder as CZ stepped beside her.
Down below, Neia listened to the answer. "Half naked in this weather? What of their other conditions?" She asked with disgust.
"What you'd expect. Mutilated ears, what clothing they did have was threadbare, the communal quarters were drafty, cheap wood, not sealed against the weather. Most of the ones we checked had scars, many said they were acquired on the estate. Were it not for your orders… I would have killed them all myself, ma'am." Mixis answered in disgust.
Neia listened in quiet rage as she walked to where the family stood, the children turned their faces away and buried them into the bodies of their parents, but the parents could only look away, as there was none to embrace them and hide them from the wrath of the one they feared.
"Look at me." Neia said to the patriarch of the household. He swallowed, but did not obey.
"I will not say it twice." Neia warned him.
He tried to turn his face to meet her, and little by little he was successful.
"I'm going to ask the slaves when they arrive, how you personally treated them, what you did with them. I'm going to ask about your wife's behavior, your son's behavior, your daughter's behavior. I'm going to ask if any of them were ever abused by any of you in person. Will what I hear incline me to show you mercy?" Neia asked in a slow, soft spoken voice.
He went even more pale, if possible, but no words came out.
Her rage did. "Didn't I warn you all?! Didn't I?! Didn't you know I was coming for you! Are you so steeped in your evil that even knowing retribution is on its way that you are unable to change?!" She boomed in a voice far out of proportion to her size. Ice stabbed through the lot of them with every word.
But again no answer came.
"Then let's get this started." Neia snarled and moved away from the family and to the center of the assembly. She pointed to an overseer, "Free that one."
Belki had no idea why he was being released from his bonds by the pair of black armored soldiers, but a look in their eyes told him it was 'not' for his benefit. As soon as he was free, the one at his left grabbed him by the collar of his tunic and pulled him forward out of the line. He staggered forward and fell, and the two soldiers stepped back from the mystified line.
"Get out your whip." Neia ordered.
Belki slowly got to his feet. Then he looked at the one who he'd identified as the demoness herself.
He looked at his side. The whip hung there, dangling with every motion.
"Do it." Neia said again. "It's your only chance." She told him.
He took the whip in his left hand, and looked at her blankly, unsure of just what she was asking.
"Whip me." Neia snarled, "Go ahead, use it on me." She taunted him. [Speed of Death] [Eye of Death] She uttered quietly.
He didn't move, he was like a statue.
"What's the matter, are you too afraid to use your whip on someone who can fight back?! Did the gods only choose those without spines as their favorites?! Come on 'overseer' show me how you discipline someone who isn't broken!" She spat every word as if it were venom, "Come on, coward!" she spat further. He still didn't move.
"Either you strike at me, or I'll tie you up and throw you to the slaves to do with as they like when they arrive." She said with a sweet smile, as if death had taken the form of a very young woman, and death very much enjoyed her work.
He looked around for help that didn't exist, gave his whip several test swings, and then, Belki did what he knew how to do best, the whip went out as he aimed for the eye of the Black Paladin, and then the pain hit him.
The pain and the laughter.
He fell to his knees clutching his wrist, his hand was on the ground, still holding the whip, but it was no longer attached to his forearm, and that was just the first pain to hit. An instant later he saw that his left and right ears were on the ground as well.
He then fell back when a knee connected with his face and a moment later, someone in black armor was binding his wounds as he writhed on the ground.
"Next!" Neia boomed out.
Faces went white as a morning fog while the horrifying ritual went on and on, whip hands were piled up like cordwood, along with ears, until her justice was dispensed to all but the breaker and the owners of the estate. Not a single lash had managed to touch her. There was abject fascination on the faces of her army at ground level.
Up in the tower above, Skana watched with a measure of satisfaction. "I wish I was down there with her for that part." She was shaking with rage, a rage especially shared by the elven and orcish members of the Army of Black Justice that had lived under supremacists in the past.
Nonetheless, despite her words, as the shouting and cursing of the earless one-handed mass increased, something within the wife of the Black Paladin began to ache.
Beside her, Lakyus fell to her knees and closed her hands, she looked down and closed her eyes. "What are you doing?" CZ asked.
"I am praying." Lakyus said.
"For?" CZ asked.
"For my friend." Lakyus replied as she squeezed her eyes tight and wished she could do the same with her ears.
Skana fell down beside her and imitated her posture.
"Why?" CZ asked with just the barest hint of curiosity.
"Because even if she is being the embodiment of justice... to do that as easily as she does, she is truly... truly lost." Lakyus replied.
"Healthy people don't... do that, CZ." Skana explained as she brought her hands together. "Tortured people do that, I thought by feeding her people deserving of the most severe treatment, I might later talk her into... sending help, rescuing those who flee but... I know my wife, this is not what it appears. In fact, I'd say nothing is what it seems."
"How do you know?" CZ asked flatly.
"Because they're still alive, and she's doing this in person. Remember what she said about terror? And also, what you said about her doing things anyway, regardless of the cost?" Lakyus answered as Skana began to whisper out a desperate plea in the hopes that her god would hear.
CZ didn't ask anything else, she watched from atop the tower, and when the slaves finally began to arrive, though even with her hearing she could not quite catch the questions Neia threw at them, or the answers she was given, she was fairly sure that they could hear Neia's snarl of anger and fury as she turned her eyes on the family.
She stalked over to where they were and brought her blade down, cutting the bonds that secured parents to their children, and with the strength of the unliving still coursing through her body, she grabbed the patriarch of the household by the hair and pulled him down to eye level. "Do you know the difference between justice and revenge?" She hissed at him through clenched teeth.
His eyes popped wide, his son and daughter's frantic pleas were cutting through the air, but they were so frantic that he could not understand the words. His wife was mute, her voice trapped in fear like a fly in a spider's web. He shook his head frantically.
"Funny..." Neia hissed, "Sometimes I don't either. Maybe they know, lets go find out!" She replied, then with the husband's hair still held in an unbreaking grip, she trod the cold earth beneath her feet, dragging them with her as she walked. The earth crunched in the cold, and even through the cries for mercy, Neia could still hear it give way under her boots. 'How many more? How many more? How many more?' She wondered on a loop, listening to the sound of the earth while the question continued scrolling behind her eyes, and not at all to those being dragged behind her.
Tied to her husband as she was, there was nothing the fear-filled wife could do but stumble along crying out in horror at the fate she saw coming.
"Do what you need to with these two, they belong to you!" Neia shouted and stopped cold a few feet from the gathered group of slaves. She pulled their former owner by his hair and with her arm moving in one smooth motion, she flung the pair bodily forward, they staggered and fell at the feet of the slaves. For one moment in time, they looked up in consternation and dread at the hateful glares of their former property.
Neia watched until it was done. From up above, Skana and Lakyus winced and looked away from the gruesome vendetta as it was carried out.
"Why does she always watch?" Lakyus asked as she finally opened her eyes again as silence began and shouts died down.
"She thinks she has to. You might have heard her say before... 'If I can give the order, I can see it carried out.' She considers it an obligation to know the consequences of her commands. It has... made her great, but also terrible, hard, and fearsome. It's... I think, why she's always the one to put down hostages when they're taken, she's imitating the example of our god." Skana explained in a troubled voice.
Down below, Neia approached the two crying survivors of the household. She looked at them until her gaze forced them to look up and fall silent, "You live, because you were not yet them. Become them, and we will meet again." She warned them in a silken voice. "Had they been to others as they were to you, they would not be where they are now, and you would not be without them. Actions have consequences." She thrust her finger toward the badly mangled bodies, "Theirs," she slid her finger to the slaves who had done the deed, "theirs," she then moved her finger to the two teenagers, "and yours. Do you understand?" She asked as she lowered her hand back to where her sword rested at her side.
"What about you?!" The young man spat out through sniffles and tears of fear and loss as he clung to his sister.
"You just go on, no consequences for you?!" His sister added as she clung in turn to her last living family member.
Neia let out a heavy sigh and put her one hand on each of the young one's shoulders. Her eyes returned to their native blue, "Oh yes," she said with, to their shock, what could only be described as resignation in her voice, "there are consequences for me. Every action has a price with which something else is purchased, even if it isn't clear at the outset. And if you're willing to pay any price, anything is possible, anything… except one thing." She spoke very quietly to them, so that they alone were going to hear her. She put the power of her voice to work for her then, so every word would be pounded into their souls.
"What's that?" The young man asked, so caught up in the entrancing sound that there was nothing else he could do but carry on with the one who had seen to their ruin.
"Living with it afterwards." She said gently, caught in a moment of sympathy for the orphans she'd just had made.
She cut off the power of her voice and they snapped back to reality, her voice grew cold again. "You two will live, as I said, but you have a job to do."
From atop the tower, they could only watch as Neia went and took two horses, then under her directions, the hands of the overseers were bound together with their own whips, and the ears were gathered into a double pair of bags.
"You will carry these to Kami Miyako." Neia said to the two surviving young ones. "Tell them what you have seen here, that Neia Baraja has kept her promise. Tell every village, every town, every person you see on your way, that even the slightest resistance will be erased utterly. And also, when you get to Kami Miyako, tell Cardinal Dominic something for me. Tell him... the next time we meet, I'll do much worse than just spit on him."
The distraught heirs of the dead obeyed as if their lives depended upon doing so, and, certain this was the case, they slung the bags of ears and the dangling hands over the horses, and barely paused to take a pack of food and a skin of water before they rode as far and as fast away from camp as they could.
She then called for the commander of the Sons of Iontariil, and barked out her orders. "Go, take every town, take every village, seize control over every single population of humans around Wheaton, I want them to have no safe haven to retreat to when the rest of us advance."
The commander of the mercenaries had a blank face, save for his eager eyes. Neia approved of him and watched his soldiers march out with disciplined ranks. From up high, as the force shrank into the distance, Skana and the others could see it breaking apart into company elements. Such heavily armed units would be more than a match for any village militia, though as she watched her soldiers depart, Neia couldn't help but wonder, 'Am I maybe... taking things a little too far?' She wiped some of the blood off of her armor and whipped her hand out to fling it into the cold dirt, as she looked at the awed, worshipful faces of the slaves, and the terrified faces of the overseers, she shook off the thought. 'No, couldn't be. But... even if I am, it must be done. I will break them. Either this nation will break, or I will, but no matter what happens, my god will have his due.'
"I think I've figured out what she has in mind, and it... might not be what she said." Lakyus said unhappily to Skana as they watched the fleeing horses and the nonhuman mercenaries.
"You think she lied about letting the population of Wheaton die running from her?" Skana asked, unsure if she should be happy or distraught, emotions warred on her face, her remaining eye held wide enough that it was almost large enough to see for both itself and its missing mate.
"She plays things close to the vest, you know this, remember when we went to the meeting between Queen Calca and Remedios? She didn't tell 'anyone' about CZ's position, and she hasn't informed any of 'us' about gaining more control over her... access, to whatever that is that she does. But it seems she's getting there. She also didn't tell anyone she intended us to go to Wheaton, or even what she planned to do to Yanana until almost the last minute... relatively speaking." Lakyus put her hand on Skana's bicep, "She's tight lipped, always has something else in mind... and this time I think I know what."
"What?" Skana asked hopefully.
"I think... and this is just speculation mind you, but I think she intends to use the population of Wheaton and other places to starve Kami Miyako into submission." Lakyus said uncomfortably.
CZ's blank look didn't change, but she did utter a simple instruction. "Explain."
"We go to Wheaton, villages and towns are fleeing left and right, streaming away, Wheaton has little left but its defenders, maybe they fight, maybe they don't. Suppose they do, that leaves time for survivors to make it to Kami Miyako, survivors that have to be housed and fed. Suppose they don't, we take the city immediately, and... if I'm right, she allows them to leave as a 'humane act' and to take enough supplies to feed the refugees they catch up to along the way. Those rations won't last long, but long enough to get even more to Kami Miyako... then when we advance there..." Lakyus simply cut off her words, leaving the conclusion dangling like the desperate from the edge of a cliff.
"Why wouldn't she just... tell us? Wait... nobody would believe 'General Baraja' would just let an army go." Skana said, eagerly poking a hole in Lakyus's theory.
Lakyus frowned, "Good point... well, I could be wrong, it's happened before." She sighed, "Probably better off, honestly, I'm not sure which is worse but... probably that."
...Draudillon's Army...Later...
Taking towns and villages proved shockingly easy the further west they moved. This proved to be the case for several days, and none of the three really wondered 'why' it was, so much as they just enjoyed that it was so. Still, as a precaution in the event that it was a trap, they redoubled the scouts.
It was however, clearly answered just 'why' things had changed when the first band of elves approached the head of the column. Draudillon blew the halt on her horn as soon as the scouts reported their approach. She looked to Generals Musan and Oma and both gave her only blank stares of their own in response.
"How many are there?" She asked the scout who came in with the report.
"Around three hundred, Your Majesty." He replied confidently from atop his horse.
"And they are coming to us because...?" She pushed.
"They were told to run east." He replied.
"What?! Why?!" General Oma asked incredulously, her brow furrowing, she stared daggers at the scout.
"Ma'am I... don't know, they said they were simply kicked out by their masters and told to run this way." He answered, obviously as confused as they were.
"Could it be a trick?" General Musan asked suspiciously as he stroked his beard in thought. "Throwing something unusual in front of us in order to stop us in our tracks? We know they don't really value elven lives, they wouldn't think twice about using them to set up an ambush. Nor would it be the first time they'd done something like that in all this war."
The scout shook his head, "No, Sir. We've checked the entire area, they're alone and they all insist that they met each other independently and chose to travel together for safety."
"Fine, bring them over." Draudillon said unhappily, "We shall question them ourselves." She added, and the scout saluted and rode off.
A few minutes later, she was looking down at a very hungry elven man with mutilated ears and a body in very bad shape. He was filthy, more tan than his race should be, and while he had a shirt on, it was ragged, filthy, and far to thin for the weather as it was. "I am Queen Draudillon of the Draconic Kingdom, to whom am I speaking?"
"Eaalor... once of Crescent Lake." The elf said through chattering teeth.
"How did you come to be here, what is going on behind you?" The Queen demanded abruptly, General Musan's suspicions lingered on in her head, so she was disinclined to kindness in the moment.
"We... don't know everything, but we have pieced a little together from the villagers' talk in the places we came from, or the few farms we shared in common, but I'll tell you what I can. Just... please... give us food, something warm, something to drink, and tell us where to go so we don't die out here... please... please..." He said and went to his knees and lowered his face to the ground.
Pity moved the Queen as his threadbare shirt rode up, and exposed some ugly scars on his lower back. He was far, far thinner than he should have been even accounting for days on the road. "You will all have what you need. But first, tell me what I want to know." She said slowly, and with more sympathy in her voice than before.
"The rumor is that the terror of the Theocracy is moving north, her army showed up South of Wheaton and she's had her soldiers, scouts, demihumans and the like, rampaging everywhere, they've been killing slave traders, ripping apart breakers, and overseers lose their whip hands, all kinds of wild stories, but... apparently enough humans believed them that they've been kicking us out so they don't get caught with any slaves. They're all running for Kami Miyako, they told us to run the opposite direction, said they'd kill us if we went the same way as them. Couple of ours said that they saw slaves being taken with their owners to go to west, but a lotta people don't want to chance that so... they sent us the other way to die out in the wilderness rather than be caught with us."
He spat the words out as fast as rain fell from the sky, licking his lips often as he anticipated the promised food. The Queen looked to her generals. "It seems that General Baraja is having an effect."
"It appears that is the case, My Queen." General Musan said with more enthusiasm than he intended to show, "This will make things much easier."
"At least until we get to Kami Miyako and they fight to the goddamn death because of her reputation." General Oma reminded them both.
"Perhaps, but it should at least make getting there easier. I'd rather the Theocracy run to us to surrender, than run to fight us." The Queen remarked, effectively ending the discussion.
"Eaalor, go tell your people to stand beside my line of march and fall in at the rear, there are empty wagons back there, you can ride in those for now as we go west, we'll leave you at a village somewhere that... I'm sure will have been abandoned, with enough supplies to keep you warm and fed for awhile, we can spare that much at least." The Queen said, and Eaalor's face lit up with happiness.
"Your Majesty," he began as he went to one knee with his head bowed, "I swear, one day I will come to your kingdom, and repay you for your kindness." Tears of relief fell from his cold face to the colder ground.
"I look forward to it." The Queen said succinctly, and blew the horn to resume the advance. "General Oma, wait with him and his people and ensure they're tended to, then rejoin us. We need to talk about how this changes things."
"My Queen?" General Musan asked hesitantly.
"Well obviously, if we're seeing elves, I think pretty damn soon we're going to start seeing humans, as they run like hell away from Neia Baraja, and I'll just bet my crown there'll be a fair number that Neia doesn't want to allow to escape her grip. So the question is... when or 'if' she asks for them... and assuming she doesn't just 'demand' them... do we give them up or not?" The Queen coughed uncomfortably, shifting in her saddle, and a tremor passed through the bones of both generals, as General Oma went to fulfill the Queen's will. Neither had a clear answer to give for her final question.