Chapter 403

With the bodies laid out before him, the inner weeb came out and Ainz swept his sword out to scatter away the blood from the green edge. 'Just like one of those anime characters.' He thought, and then it hit him. 'I'm not upset? I've taken lives before, but those were criminal scum… ones who threatened my children. Or it was war.' He thought back to the way he vomited when watching the lizardmen and frogmen fight their war.

His sense of lingering guilt over what happened in the Holy Kingdom was abstract and distant, carried out by Albedo, and as with the dwarves and everywhere else, he could tell himself that everyone was better off after the fact.

But around him lay four men who never did a thing to him or his, nor threatened to. If they were even guilty of the crime of despising nonhumans, he couldn't be sure, but Ainz had his doubts. 'If the Captain or Zesshi are a clue, the Black Scripture is unique. Very unique.' He pursed his lips as his sense of coolness faded. 'Well, I'm going to bring them back so… I suppose it's fine.' But it still touched on him that he hadn't felt what he should have.

"Demiurge." Ainz said without looking up at the guardians, instead looking around at the limp corpses whose oozing blood still added to the redness of the sands.

"My Lord!" Demiurge acknowledged him at once, his tail lashing with excitement.

"I know you've been busy with your morphomantic research and the Princess of Baharuth, but do you think your probability research is ready for testing?" Ainz asked, 'I should have asked that 'before' killing them, but if he's right…'

"I'm confident to within a degree of one percent, Allfather." Demiurge answered, his use of the official title was rare, typically he simply referred to Ainz as Lord. But when he did this? 'He's still a child in a manner of speaking.' Ainz reflected lovingly toward one of the three Geniuses of Nazarick.

'So in need of my approval… so worried about failure even now… my boy, my Demiurge…' Amidst the bodies of the dead, for a moment Ainz could only think of his many children, and the world he wanted to build in which they could all prosper and be happy forever. 'This world will be a paradise… this was a necessary step in that goal.' He told himself and turned his eye toward the corpses again.

"Take them to the place, restore them to life, and show them what they need to see. I will meet with them after it's over. For now, I'm going to my office, I have some work to do."

It wasn't even a lie. In the past, in the old world, he never cared much for his work. 'I just did what I had to do to survive. But this is different… it matters. I have work that really matters… it's hard, and scares me… but this is for something to last…' He reflected on that and left the bodies behind him, and the guardians to their work.

Alain felt himself stir, his eyes opened. "I'm… alive?" He wondered about that, his hands went and patted down his body. Not only was he alive, but he was in his estate.

"My Lord, a message for you, from Dominic." The half elf servant said, her eyebrow arched when he stared dumbly at her and sat up.

"How did I get here… no, never mind, it must have been a dream. The message?" He asked.

She reached into her white robe and drew out a document, extending it to him without coming too close. 'That feels wrong somehow… why isn't she coming closer to me… did I offend her?' He wondered. But he took the parchment, broke the seal and unrolled it.

'Zesshi has betrayed us, you will find her…' Alain touched his head and rubbed the ache there. Everything felt wrong. 'That was years ago, she's the Empress, why would she be rushing toward the elf Kingdom?'

"The others already got their message and are waiting downstairs, the Captain says to eat well, there won't be time for much else for a while." His servant added, her eyes darting around the bedroom, her body was shaking just being near to him.

"Didn't he betray us… this doesn't…" Alain raised his eyes to look at the half elf, she was definitely avoiding being too close to him.

But his unexpected words threw her off. "My Lord… of course not. Sure some have betrayed us to the Mother of Terror, the Demon of the West, but never him… nor I. I am loyal, I swear it… I swear it…" She said as if afraid he might strike her.

Time Turbulence rubbed his head harder, there was so much pain there. "I… ouch. Mother of terror… demon of the west?"

"Pope Neia Baraja, is My Lord quite well?" His servant asked, he looked at her more closely. Her ears were almost completely gone.

"What happened to your ears… I'm… fine… Pope, mother of terror… Neia? Isn't she the Queen of Demalbion?" He asked.

"What? I don't… My Lord… is this… is this a test?" She asked and touched her cropped ears.

"No… I'm just… I'm confused." He said to her, "Maybe something is wrong…"

"My ears were slashed down to comply with the tighter controls on nonhumans that Cardinal Dominic's emergency measures brought down on us… you cut them yesterday." She said and hung her head. "Thank you for using a dull pain potion…"

Alain felt a grim sickness come over him. The removal of elven ears was a fairly repugnant affair to his mind, doing it himself to a half-elf seemed unlike him.

"And… I've never heard of Demalbion… but Neia leads the Black, she's not Queen of anything… she's been rampaging for at least a year now… burning everything… is my Lord sure this isn't a test?" She asked.

"No… no it isn't a test… what the hell is happening?" He wondered.

Time became a blur, the headache ripped through him and confusion swept his mind as memories poured like an endless waterfall into a thimble that was expected to hold it all. The burning of Wenmark by the founder of a Black Justice organization… the destruction of whole armies of Theocracy soldiers, erasure of cities… and as the memories ripped through his mind that were not his own, he saw his own life unlived up to that hour… and felt his body carried forward.

He barely had a moment with his comrades. "Confused?" He asked the assembled members of the Black Scripture, three of them nodded with him. 'I'm not crazy…' He thought, and felt his body lurch into motion, his mind carried along with it.

After minutes, he no longer fought the urge, it was like his body was not his own, carried over fields of green that were turned into blasted and ruined wastelands, sometimes the 'lurching' and the pain in his head stopped. Whenever it did, it evidently stopped for the other three as well.

A burned town was one of those locations. A hundred men and women were bound to stakes… or rather, what was left of men and women. Whips were shoved into their mouths, their hands were severed at the wrist, and their bodies were blackened and burned. "The work of Neia Baraja." The Divine Chain said, tilting the head of one of the limp corpses back to reveal the slash across the throat.

"I've heard of vengefulness, but this takes it to a whole new level… whoever heard of burning down a country over one dead whore?" He asked and let the body fall limp.

"What?" Time Turbulence, One Man Army, Heaven and Earth, and Strongest Human asked all at once.

"Don't you four read your reports at all?" Captain Cenna said as he pushed past them and cut the bodies free. "They never should have joined with Remedios… such a huge mistake…"

The body fell into a crumpled heap.

"Dead whore?" The four asked.

"That's what Raymond said kicked it all off at least, before she drowned one of our armies… we're fucked… we're absolutely fucked." Cenna cursed, "We're ahead of schedule, bury the bodies… we're likely to encounter a lot more overseer corpses before the end."

Alain asked more and more probing questions, with the other three following his lead, 'It's just us four that feel a change… that something is different, lots of things are different… Neia isn't a dragonid, or a monarch. There is no Allfather, just a Sorcerer King… a skeleton… the same figure? The same name at least… what kind of nightmare world are we in?'

Every detail on top of detail made things worse.

From town to town, burned out village to burned out village, they found the evidence of a hate that was worse than anything they'd ever found in any monster ever to face mankind.

It was all a twisted reflection of what they knew, and it took days before the four of them could be alone, away from their companions who thought nothing was amiss.

"What the fuck is happening?!" Alain whispered the rough words to his trio of companions, "The last I remember I was dying in a Nazarick Arena, now I'm here and… my head hurts."

"I feel worse than I did after I got drunk the first time…" One Man Army groaned, "My head feels like it's been split by an ax… it's all a blur. A war is raging… is this a dream, is one of us dreaming? If you are can you please wake the fuck up?!"

"I wish. This all feels so real." The Strongest Human said and reaching up to the smooth bark of a tree beside them, he snapped the branch off, it cracked and he dropped it to fall with a rustle of the leaves down to the ground at his feet.

"I don't like this… I don't, I don't I don't I don't!" Heaven and Earth shivered, his eyes darting around. "The others don't notice anything, it's like they've lived through all this."

"Maybe because we died together and the others were captives… I don't know. I just don't know." Alain closed his lips and looked around, the forests of the Theocracy didn't look different. But everything felt different. And in the distance there was the sight of rising smoke.

"Another town is burning somewhere." Cenna said, appearing out of nowhere as he was want to do sometimes. "We should go after her… but they've already got people to do that, I know you'd like a crack at her the same as me…" The sound of screams finally reached them from far, far away, and Cenna turned his ear from it.

"But we've got a job to do." Cenna said at last and clapped Alain on the shoulder. "We'll get through this." He promised, "Somehow…" He then patted a pouch at his side, "Raymond gave me a little something that should help."

The splitting headache hit all four at once, and their bodies lurched through time, hour after hour, their bodies moving of their own accord, carrying their minds with them from burned out ruin to hidden places in the deep woods until they found themselves standing before Zesshi Zetsumei.

"How could you!" Zesshi raged at them, she looked so different…

Alain looked her over, she no longer wore her usual clothing, but instead wore armor that clearly belonged to a foreign country, white, and it seemed to amplify the passion in her voice. The studied indifference of her expression was gone, and agonized rage was writ on every line of her face, like a spurned woman whose dearest love betrayed her. "They send my only family to kill me… how could they… how could you?!" She raged at them as Cenna drew out the letter, and as he read, Zesshi raged at them all. Her sister Aorli's life, the realization that she had no place in the Theocracy, that the Trump Card was to be discarded…

Alain furrowed his brow, watching her rage at them like an angry teenager girl whose abusive parents had lost their power over her and had no choice but to listen. 'She has a sister? Since when… wait… ' Alain barely listened to his own thoughts as Cenna read Raymond's letter.

One Man Army snatched it out of Cenna's hands, crinkling it in his fist before stretching it open again and reading through it.

The pained look on his face suggested that his body wasn't his, the headache was ripping through him again.

'What is this… is this some bizarre play?' Alain clenched his fist as Zesshi ranted at them, pacing back and forth while the letter went from one to the next of the Black Scripture members.

"Make your choice. Me. Your comrade who has trained with you and saved your lives again and again, or the Theocracy. When the letter made its way to her at last and Zesshi's hands read over it all, she stained it with tears from her heterochromatic eyes, her fingers shook, her whole hands, then the rest of her body. "Raymond…" She whispered proudly. She wiped her face, her eyes, and leveled her scythe at her former comrades.

"Make a decision. But if you come for my life, I will kill you. My father will die, and what happens after that? I don't know. I don't, but everything will change." Zesshi spat into the dirt and waited for their decision.

"Well… shit." Cenna rubbed the back of his head, "Can we talk it over privately for a minute?"

"I won't run from you." Zesshi hissed at them, her eyes narrowed with wrath.

Alain barely had time to blink before he found himself in a circle in the woods and the shouting began…