Chapter 411

Aalon stood in front of the burning estate, the lord within was likely dead, from smoke if he was lucky, from the fires if he was not. His family was no doubt joining him in the afterlife already, and the flames? Those were spreading rapidly outward in all directions and striking the fields of golden wheat.

Amidst the gold lay the bodies of dead overseers, half-elven traitors and their human leaders, and at his back stood his army.

His army… and the liberated slaves who were even now devouring their first proper meal in none of them even knew how long.

"We'll need to move on from here, father." Kahzi said, and put her hand on his arm. "It won't take long before their fire brigades arrive."

"I know. But… did you find her?" He asked at once, and she looked over her shoulder briefly before answering.

"We asked everyone if they knew her, gave them her name and description… none of them have ever met Nua." Khazi said and moved her hand up his shoulder. "Please, father… I'm so sorry, but she probably died a long time ago… stop torturing yourself."

"No!" Aalon roared so loud that the liberated slaves looked up from their meals and stopped even chewing, their mouths stuffed so much their cheeks bulged, and it seemed even the roar of rising flames grew quiet in fear of the vampire's wrath. He smacked his hand on his chest, "If she were truly dead, I'd know! I'd know it here!" He said and closed his fingers into a fist. "Nua is alive out there! Somewhere! And I won't rest until I know where she is! Until I've undone what I did! And if she takes my life or turns from me… then and only then can I rest!"

Khazi sighed deeply, "If you insist, but either way, she is not here, and we don't want to be either."

"Send out the scouts, capture all those who are coming to fight the flames. Question them, and then if they know nothing, throw them naked into the fields except for one man. Send him to Kami Miyako, tell them the burnings will continue until every elf is freed." Aalon glared at the far horizon, the dark was no barrier to his red eyes, "Let them all burn."

"As you wish, father." Khazi said, and then mounted her horse to carry out his orders before the army of elves could move again.

'There are so many of these estates… so many… all over the Theocracy… if I have to burn them all down to find my Nua again… no, not just the estates… cities, towns… I will see her again, or I will see only ashes around me.' Aalon resolved, then mounted his own horse and spurred it to a gallop that carried him to the head of the column.

Sooner or later the Theocracy would send their armies, Aalon was sure of that. 'But by the time they do, it will be far, far too late. The worst damage will be done, and even if they win… they will still lose.'

It was the only comforting thought he had as he signaled his army to march.

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Dominic sat around the table with the other members of their council, all of them appeared older than their years now, even Raymond… who had at least the good grace not to appear smug in the face of their troubles. Their faces were all haggard, worn, and would have had the dark eyes of sleeplessness had they not all been wearing rings of sustenance that kept the need for that at bay.

Though it did nothing for their mental exhaustion.

"The good news," Berenice said, "is that we've recovered all of the smuggled elves, not just the ones King Mare warned us to return, but others whose missing status wasn't yet identified. As long as he keeps his word, Kami Miyako is safe. Most have already been sent to the border, and a letter of apology regarding the remainder."

"That's a long way of saying, 'if' but now that begs the question," Maximilian said, pausing to clear his throat before drinking a cup of water that trembled in his hands, "why were the rest not sent back?"

Berenice produced a letter from her pouch and slid it across the long stone table, "They have signed a statement saying that they will continue to assist their brethren and someone they call 'The Liberator'."

"The Liberator?" Maximilian read over the letter and then passed it to Yvon, allowing it to circle the table from one Cardinal to the next.

"Someone in the Holocaust Scripture who apparently took it upon himself to set free every slave on the estates that had smuggled elves. I don't know his motives and they didn't provide a name but-" Berenice paused when Yvon interjected.

"That violates the rights of inheritance! Everyone knows that slaves are passed through their estates from parent to child! Some of those were probably heirlooms, and were the possessions of the estate for over two hundred years, perhaps even more! He can't just decide to unilaterally set every slave free just because there are a handful of smuggled ones added into the mix!" Yvon practically screeched and slammed his aged hand on the desk, rattling it from one end to the next.

"Tell him that." Raymond said, he didn't smirk, though it was hard not to feel a little smug at least, "Besides, it's probably for the best. It may have been an impulse decision, but if we put out a proclamation that anyone found to be in possession of a smuggled elf will lose all their elves, we may just convince them to turn those over all on their own."

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Dominic. The memory of his Nua's scars on her back included knowing that it was Dominic himself who put them there. Hatred burned deep in Raymond's heart, smoldering like unsmothered coals waiting for just the right fuel to roar to life again.

But to his surprise, in this at least, Dominic spoke up, "Raymond has a point. We can't just force the issue with raids, we have other concerns, we need to encourage the estates themselves to enforce matters for us. A small number of investigators should be sent out to ensure the estates have no stolen elves, and we announce a ninety day amnesty for all estates to check their own stock. Anyone after that, loses everything."

Ginedine sighed, "We have no choice, the militia that went out to stop the rebels have failed. Thousand Mile Astrologer has said that not only was it a failure, but that the rebels are now stronger than before since they took the slaves that were used to service the needs of the army. Militia just won't do it, we need to send out the army."

"Can we afford to?" Raymond asked.

"Can we afford not to?" Dominic countered.

"What do we even know about what we're fighting? Feron is burned, a dozen estates have been burned since, but they're not headed this way. This doesn't seem to be a war of conquest." Berenice remarked, and Dominic chimed in again.

"Thousand Mile Astrologer spent most of her time looking for the missing Black Scripture, but when we had her watching the invaders, she reported that they are almost all elves. There do appear to be a handful of human leaders, but they are few. Regardless of what they want, we have no choice but to confront and crush them. Whatever it is that they're after if we give it to them now, we look weak!"

"We are weak." Raymond snapped and slammed his own fist on the table, a long crack spread out from the point of impact, "We have no allies. We're reduced to mixing in other metals with our gold to keep the weight up, and it's only a matter of time before that gets found out, when it does, our already declining currency will be worth even less! On top of that, we don't have the Black Scripture, or the extra seat, or the divine equipment they were all carrying! The Holocaust Scripture was reduced to hunting smugglers and the hostile country on our border has a king who can obliterate cities on a whim! We are past the point of trying to show strength!"

Raymond hadn't noticed he'd been on his feet, or even that he'd been shouting, 'Blind stubborn fools! Can't they see that all we're doing is destroying ourselves?!' "All we can do now… is throw ourselves at the feet of the Allfather's mercy, before we're faced with even more problems. As the first to officially propose his deification, even if it was only by a few days, we should have some leverage there. We can negotiate a peace, proceed with a liberation of the elves, and call on the Empire of Nazarick for support while we transition. Anything less than that is just asking for our whole country to be turned to ashes sooner or later, and probably sooner."

He sat back down, his whole body feeling heavier than it ever had in all his years of service, and barely noticed when the entire table began shouting at him at once. For a moment he felt a flash of envy for whoever the 'liberator' was among the scriptures. 'At least he knows exactly what he's doing.' Raymond thought, and waited for that shouting to subside.

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"Congratulations." Vargas's supervisor said and held out a letter to him. "You're being given a special assignment."

Vargas furrowed his brow and accepted the parchment, he tore off the seal, unrolled the document, and read it in silence. 'What in the name of all six gods am I supposed to do about this?!' He wondered as he read and reread the words in front of himself.

"I'm being assigned to… see to the discovery of all stolen elves and the repatriation of them and all other possessions found therein… back to the Elf Kingdom? Are you…" He looked up, but his supervisor was already gone.

Vargas couldn't blame him, 'I wouldn't want to be around when help was asked for on this one either…' Asking for volunteers among his unit would probably yield very few results, a few friends might join him, but for most of the rest?

The raids had been boring to the level of pointless, and with rumors of an army on the move along the west of the Theocracy, everybody was hoping for a more action filled assignment dealing with that. By comparison, hunting some errant smugglers was anticlimactic.

Which meant there was only one real option.

He picked up the little cheap dinner bell on his desk and rang it. Before the second clang finished sound off an elf entered through the door and presented herself to him. "Does the Liberator require anything of me? Or does he require food, or drink, or simply someone to talk to?" She asked, she'd stepped rather closer to his desk than propriety dictated, and a small frown spread on his face.

"Work. It's work…you. It seems we're going to look for more of your kind after all. I've been given the illustrious task of investigating and hunting down everyone in possession of stolen elves and returning them to, well, back where they came from." Vargas acknowledged, and the elf woman's now intact ears wiggled and twitched.

Her eyes filled with tears, "You are truly a saint… a saint… all my life, I have never met a human that didn't love to hurt us, use us, break us… the very man you brought us out from, he tormented my mother to the point of suicide… she died only days before you came to us… if only she'd lived to know that there truly are some wonderful… wonderful humans in this world." Her hands trembled as they came up to cover her mouth.

"You're really going to free them… all of them?" She asked.

Vargas found himself struggling to look at her, instead focusing down on the document bearing his assignment. "Those are my orders. But I will need help to complete them."

"Anything!" She cried, "Anything for our Liberator!"

Vargas expelled a weary breath, the hero worship set his spine to tingling, "Go talk to the others, I assume most of you have been around other estates, you know the worst of the worst of humanity. I want to know where to look. Go, and hurry, I want to get started as soon as possible."

She went pale, "My Liberator, if you wish to know the worst of the worst, who would think nothing of buying one of us ripped from our beds in the night and carried far from home, there is only one place you need to go."

"Where?" Vargas asked, "And don't say Kami Miyako."

She shook her head, "No, noble hero… no… not there. There is only one place, and anyone who names another, has never been there. You must go to Wheaton."