Chapter 11: The Third Fall of Prart 2
When they made it to the front, some of the guards turned about and turned their spears on the crowd, forcing people back.
The remainder stood at either side of the priest.
"Neia Baraja, you are under arrest on the charges of heresy and blasphemy, and are hereby ordered in the name of Alah Alaf, all the gods, and regional governor Baron Nigrand en Tusia, to surrender yourself immediately!" The priest said in a voice that suggested he expected to be obeyed.
The crowd went quiet and waited for her to be taken away.
"I say I am NOT under arrest." Neia responded flatly and looked down at the priest with contempt. "I am indeed Neia Baraja, servant of the Sorcerer King, bearer of the armor of the Grand King Busar, rescuer of the Zern Prince BeeBeeZee, guardian of royal merchant Tinamoc, bane of bandits, savior of Ilyatown, protector of villages, bearer of the Ultimate Shooting Star, founder of Black Justice, arbiter of Capitol Reconstruction, and liaison of the Sorcerer King, and I tell you I am NOT under arrest." What she said was a mouthful, but she knew how titles played on the minds of people steeped in them, so she laid it on thick.
"I am not under arrest because I have committed no crime, blasphemy? I can only blaspheme against the true God of Justice, Ainz Ooal Gown! Heresy? How can I be a heretic? I praise the true god of justice, the only god left in this world, before the people here!" Her voice carried to the crowd, and she said, "If your life was saved by the true god of Justice, Ainz Ooal Gown, then raise your voice in praise to him!"
"Long live Ainz Ooal Gown!" Sounding with earth-shattering force, echoing off the walls in the square, it rang out again, and again, drowning out the priest. Still, he didn't act, she needed more to provoke him.
She held out her hands to still the crowd, "Do you see?!" She said to the priest, "There is no blasphemy here, we praise the god who cares for his people, not the gods that ignore the people as they die and cry out for aid!"
His face turned purple with rage, and Neia's company began to move from out of their positions of observation. What alone would simply look like a well-outfitted soldier, gathered together in a group, became an intimidating military display. The priest, however, with his eyes up on Neia, did not notice.
"I will have you dragged down from there!" He shrieked.
"You will?" Neia said, laughing, "Because your gods cannot do it for you? The gods of old might have been powerful in their time, but they did not protect us! They did not instill strength in us, they did not save even a single infant from being devoured on their very altars, even as their worshipers who had lived their lives devoted to those gods pleaded for mercy! It is not blasphemy to praise the god who acts for his people, it is not heresy to serve that god, it is heresy and blasphemy to DENY that god! YOU are the blasphemer, YOU are the heretic! You corrupt reprobate, you who steal the hope from the people in exchange for power and peddle your notions of righteousness before dead gods who care nothing for your oaths and nothing for their people, I serve the one true god in this world! Praise to him, the savior of the people of the Roble Holy Kingdom, Ainz Ooal Gown! Long may he reign!" She shouted, "Long may he reign!" The crowd echoed,
The priest could bear no more, "Get her down NOW!" He shouted, "And arrest all those whom you saw speak with her!" The paladins were distraught. Some of them had served with the Sorcerer King in the time of liberation, they had seen him sacrifice himself against Jaldabaoth, and they saw him risk himself and save the Kingdom at the final battle, bringing down Jaldabaoth forever. That was when the priest saw the other members of Black Justice, and the Paladins saw the same. One of the common soldiers stabbed one of the peasants, prompting another peasant to throw a rock, prompting another guard to stab another peasant, "Take them if you can, kill them if you can't!" Shrieked the priest, and Neia's powerful evangelical voice carried above it all, "Black Justice! Protect the people! Protect them all!"
The actions of Black Justice were honed by endless hours of training against foes of all types, from skeletons to homunculi giants, individually and in teams, and as a team, they were a single organism.
Neia's voice echoed far enough that even in the market where Tinamoc was setting up, he heard her voice, and so did her warriors. "Go, he said, leave ten for here, take the rest." He said, and hundreds of Black Justice fighters moved like the wind.
The Paladins were beyond stunned at the direction that events had taken, they...THEY were supposed to protect the people...THEY were the guardians of justice, THEY were the servants of the true gods, THEY were the ones who were supposed to protect the Holy Kingdom. Yet their side was killing citizens, and the "heretics" were acting to save them. The priest drew and blew a horn, it echoed far, and guards abandoned their posts and headed for the sound. The garrison commander ordered the men out of their guard houses and towers, and the governor looked out the window over the city. The sound of fighting began to ring out.
Neia drew her bow, and fired, finding her mark in the bodies of spear wielding guards, she fired until she ran out of arrows, darting down only to bludgeon the priest and silence him, the Paladins hesitation was treated as complicity, and they found each of themselves engaged by a member of Black Justice, and they found their own arts being turned against them, the transition from hand to hand and sword work and their martial arts brought one paladin down after another, but guards began to pour in and the members of Black Justice who had accompanied Neia were badly outnumbered.
"People of Prart, get behind us, we will not let them hurt you again!" Neia shouted, and the crowd began to move backwards. Neia's sword was out, and she stood in front of the ten who had accompanied her.
Some among the crowd had flashbacks, remembering the Sorcerer King standing before the army, in the way of Jaldabaoth as he sought to burn them all.
There was no time for words, the guards saw the downed priest and other guards, crumpled in front of the fountain, and lowered their weapons, preparing to charge. They did not get the chance. Neia was not one to let the enemy seize the initiative. "Protect the people!" She shouted and charged full tilt. The other black justice members had drawn their bows and fired their quivers empty before the shock had even worn off among the city guard, who had definitely not expected a single woman and ten men to go on the attack.
As their numbers dropped by the sudden impact of arrows, and the shock wore off as the eleven charged full speed against them, they found it in themselves to respond, despite the greater skills of Black Justice, it might have gone in favor of the guards...except for the REST of Black Justice, which had divided its numbers, some had gone high over the roof tops and dropped in the front, leaping down to join Neia and her comrads, while others had gone leap down into the middle of the enemy, while the rest had charged from the rear, and swords in the back are hard to protect against. The Black Justice front began to fall back, drawing the guards into the open, while unbeknownst to the front, in the rear of their ranks, their own people were being slaughtered, the illusion of victory made for boldness.
And from the crowd a voice carried from one figure, "If we won't fight for justice, how do we ever GET justice! Attack!" And one man charged out of the crowd that Neia had been protecting, and that one became two, and two became five, and five became a hoard. The first to rush forward grabbed the weapons of fallen guards, others carried their own personal knives for protection and drew those, and still others fought with just their bare hands.
For the guards and the few paladins who had answered the call, it had become a nightmare, the guards who were used to oppressing cowed people through fear, and now they felt the fear they inflicted, some of them not for long, as a spear in the brain tends to still thought more or less permanently, while others panicked at the raw fury they were experiencing directed at them and tried to flee, tangling themselves with others and making the killing easier. The paladins who had responded to the call, found themselves killing the very people they were supposed to protect, and found that they weren't doing any better at that, than they had been doing when they were protecting them, and one by one they went down, one of them managed to grasp his horn and desperately blow it several times before the noise was silenced by a rock to his face.
The fight was over in a few minutes, well, most of it, those had been the bulk of guards who had been close by, but others were still coming, bodies littered the ground, and as other guards came closer, they found themselves trickling in to a nightmare, Black Justice members took most of them down with bows, but a few had to be brought down with blades.
Neia quickly seized control, "Citizens, take up swords and armor, quickly, there is no time to lose!"
When the first man had finished putting on his equipment, she said, "You are in charge of the next ten to be ready, stand over there!" And she pointed to a spot a few feet away, and soon ten more were with him. "Go and spread the word in the place where you live. It's time to bring it all down, then go and seize control of an intersection, let no one under arms pass who is not dressed like us, or who is not an unarmed citizen!" She said, and he quickly departed. One by one, she gave instructions to groups of ten, and the bodies of other guards were dragged into the square and stripped of their equipment, only to repeat the process with more citizens. "The rest of you, follow us!" She said, "We're going to get you more equipment!" Her grin was wolfish, and met by equally wolfish grins from the crowd, who understood what that meant.
If there had been any doubt in Neia's mind about whether or not she was doing the right thing, it vanished when she saw how easily the guards were turning on the people and how happy the people were that the guards of Prart were dead or dying. Black Justice, a hundred strong, swept over the streets, followed behind by a growing mob. Some guards died without ever knowing they were being attacked, and others died with just enough time to realize they'd made a very bad decision about which side to be on.
Either way, the mob was getting better and better armed, they didn't have a pitched fight again until they came to a baricade where a dozen or so guards had stationed themselves, they wore the faces of men who considered themselves to be already dead, and they fired arrows wildly and without discipline, they did not know to fire in unison, so the members of Black Justice easily avoided the arrows, or just let the flimsy things bounce off the vastly superior armor the Sorcerer King had given them, but they did find a mark somewhere, injuring or killing some of the crowd, adding fuel to the fire and fury when the distance was closed, and the baricade was overrun and a dozen or so more members of the mob were given equipment and dispatched with like instructions.
Block by block they moved and secured gear, as the city's authorities tried to get a handle on what was happening, Neia however, was one step ahead, and sent some of her scouts to the main entry to the governor's residence, and laying in secret after killing the guards in the immediate area, they took down every messenger sent asking for instructions, Neia had effectively disrupted the chain of command. The head did not know what was happening to the rest of the body, and the body could not coordinate without the head.
Neia having dispatched armed citizens to secure intersections, provided effective barriers to the small patrols of guards that were normally out and about within the city, some attempted to just bull past as if their authority mattered, they just died, having failed to understand the mentality of citizens who believe they have a chance to end their suffering, others recognized the danger, and surrendered on the spot, removing arms and armor and withdrawing, either way, the intersection occupiers had more gear to hand out to more citizens who were learning what was happening.
The strength of the city guard was decreasing, and the strength of the rioters was increasing, as they took on the equipment provided to the city guard. It was a delightful irony from Neia's perspective, within a few hours most of the slums were in her hands and several of the noble establishments were occupied, with the nobles still inside them and now held by the mob, other riots began to break out independently as the pent up fury of the people turned on their oppressors, over in the wealthier quarter, this did not go as well, the personal guards of the well to do were more effective than jumped up thugs one step removed from being outright bandits, but as Neia's forces grew and took more and more control over intersections and guard posts, it became more and more obvious to the rest of the guards what was happening, and to conserve their strength, they began to draw back to defensible positions.
It made the mob ecstatic, but Neia knew better. She sent out other men as scouts to determine the locations where the guards had chosen to make a stand, and when they found one, Neia reacted by taking the people down a different route. However for one unfortunate group of guards fifty guards, they had chosen to make a stand with one side of the building being joined by a tavern, with all that flammable alcohol available, it seemed a shame to let it go to waste, so she had her people simply throw flammable debris over the side of the building, she lit a few bottles, and flung them over the side where the very confused guards promptly understood what that had been all about, as they roasted alive.
The few survivors were quick to surrender and were told to get out of town after being stripped of their equipment. That move gave her several blocks in quick succession.
That was when she came to the wealthy district, where they encountered what would have counted as serious opposition, if they had not been prepared by constant training, which included urban combat, and as Neia lead the charge from the fore, the others used unconventional entry into side residences, and then unconventional egress out windows, and hit the private militias in the flanks and in the rear, crumpling them without a hitch. As all the others, they were stripped of equipment, and the mob moved on, the circle of the authorities' control simply kept contracting.
Block after block fell with ease, but the temples were defended by paladins who saw their obligation to the gods as being greater than their obligation to people, and after the impulsive charges of several groups of commoners were thrown back, Neia and her squads went on the attack and took the paladin order down, dragging bodies out and then leaving naked, dishonored corpses behind, and handing their equipment to Neia's followers.
A few after that had holdouts who preferred to die in the temples of their gods, however most were largely abandoned, and Neia sent word for her scouts watching the governor's manor to pull back, "Get all the rats in a nest" she had said, and though they picked off a few, the temple guards, few remaining paladins, and the city guard had begun to pull back to the single manor.
When the city was hers, she stood before the gates and shouted for all to hear, "I am Neia Baraja, avatar of the Sorcerer King's true justice! You are guilty of blasphemy! You are guilty of heresy! You are guilty of embezzlement! You are guilty of oppression! You are guilty of conspiring against the interests of the crown! You are guilty of the murder of the people! You are guilty of the rape of desperate women of this city, for giving them a choice between hunger in their bellies and the bellies of their children, or bouncing in your beds for your cruel amusement! All of this are you guilty of, and much, much more! But that no more blood be shed, I give you a choice of sentence, you may be exiled from this city forever, with nothing but clothes on your backs and what food and water you can carry, or we can fucking KILL YOU ALL!"
"All those who wish to take the former sentence, come out now!" She shouted.
A long minute of silence passed, and a few figures began to trickle out, a few fat priests, and behind them some paladins who, if Neia could read their faces properly, seemed to have simply given up the pretense that they were still agents of justice when they were confronted by the obvious corruption of the people in the manor with them. Neia was moved to pity to see their illusions shattered in the worst way possible.
"Those who are dressed as priests, give them common garb, they are no priests NOW!" She snapped.
"You, paladins, you have seen inside there what I saw, you now know there is no justice flowing from there. The Sorcerer King is justice, that is not. You will lose your arms and armor now, and walk out of this city as peasants would, but that does not mean you cannot carry the lesson with you, you have your lives, and with life comes the chance to live differently than you have before. Seek true justice, and maybe you can make amends for your support of...THAT!" Neia said and spat in the direction of the manor.
A few more trickled out, wealthy men who had profited from their crimes or the crimes of others, but didn't have the backbone to defend themselves personally. They were personally identified, so that it would be known whose property to seize, and they were similarly ejected. Then, no more came out.
"The rest of you choose a sentence of death?!" Neia asked of the silent house, and an arrow sped towards her in reply. She caught it and threw it down contemptuously.
"Have it your way!" She said, and they attacked the manor, which was not well built for defense. It was just a government building and a residence, there were many ground-floor windows, and the guards, though more numerous, were stretched thin. After the first successful attempt at repelling them, Neia called her forces back and then changed strategies. She had her archers fire at one broken window, taking down forces there and forcing the guards to stretch themselves thinner to make up for the losses.
As that was going on, she had her forces divided and attacking multiple windows at once, chiefly with rocks and stones, while a group of her elites went to the side where cover had to be laid, and had them use ladders to climb to the roof, they secured ropes there, and then lowered themselves to the second story window, and crept in. Not expecting an attack like that, the few in that room were quickly and quietly dispatched, and then more of her team took the same route. Neia made sure she herself was visible and focused her eyes on only the lower floors, so that nobody would notice her checking the upstairs. When almost the entire hundred was inside that space, Neia couldn't see what they were up to, but she knew.
They went out the door, checking each room one by one, and eliminating anyone they encountered. When they got to the stairs going down to the main hall where the defense was taking place, they pulled out their bows and announced their presence with a volley of arrows into the enemy's backs. When they were attacked from the rear, many of the survivors turned and charged up the stairs to deal with the sneak attack, but it was uncoordinated, and it left the downstairs vulnerable, and Neia ordered a second charge, and this time first one window, then another, then another, and then the rest of them, were all breached, and the people poured out like water bursting from a dam, stabbing and cursing and grunting and brawling was everywhere, but the main entryway was otherwise quickly secured.
That left room clearance, and though a few losses were taken in isolated places, there was little doubt about the end, and Neia went straight for the governor's room, it was appointed with the wealth of a king, and he wasn't there, or at least wasn't visible, so she went silent and listened, until she found the sound of breathing, and detected him under the bed.
"Come out from under there, worm, or I'll set the damn bed on fire, I don't need to drag you out to finish you." She said.
He crawled out after a moment and was about to stand when Neia put her foot on his neck. "Stay down, worm. That is where you belong." She snapped.
"I'll have your head for this!" He said sharply, in what may have been the bravest moment of his life.
"No you won't...baron..." she said, loading the title with contempt, "because you have violated the justice of a god, you have stolen from the largess of the Sorcerer King, nobody will protect you now, even if Count Handor was willing to look the other way as you saw women forced to prostitute themselves, as your guards extorted coin from those with only a coin to their name, even if the King himself did not care about his people at all...NOBODY crosses the Sorcerer King, NOBODY escapes the Justice of my god." Her visor was off, and she looked down at him in contempt, "I was going to kill you myself, but as I think of it now, I should leave you to the King's justice." She said.
"Caspond will never prosecute me!" He shrieked, "I'm a nobleman!"
"There's nothing NOBLE about you WORM." Neia said, she leaned over, bending a knee and stabbing her sword into the floor, she leaned on it and looked at him with her eyes of fury, "But that doesn't matter, because I'm going to offer you to the Sorcerer King, it was HIM you stole from, and when the nobles in the capitol learn that you tried to steal from the one who is literally rebuilding our nation, that you caused a riot trying to arrest the guardian of the greatest merchant in the city, just to protect your little extortion rackets and whatever thugs wormed their way here from Re-Estize...nobody is going to stick up for you."
The baron paled.
"You tried to steal from the king of a country who could wipe out an army of almost 200,000 people, who personally killed a demon that was able to slaughter whole armies, who by himself conquered the homelands of the demihuman invaders. Exactly HOW did you see this ending for you?" Neia asked and started laughing.
As the Barron began to wet himself, Neia sent a message to Demiurge about everything that had just happened, and she could hear his outrage when he learned that a mere human Barron had tried to steal from the Sorcerer King and undermine his work. "A gate will open immediately," Demiurge said. "Throw him through. I will ask Lord Ainz if he wishes to handle the notification to the Holy Kingdom royal court personally."
"As you say, Lord Demiurge." Neia responded, and as a gate opened, she grabbed the baron by the hair, dragged him forward, and tossed him through.
When that was done, she went to the governor's primary office and said, "Someone ask Tinamoc to come see me. There is a lot to get done, and I don't have a lot of time to do it. Also, someone free the people imprisoned for blasphemy and heresy, and bring them here also, I expect I'll know some of them, if my instincts are correct." There was a sea of determined faces in front of her as two people went to carry out her instructions, and the rest waited for more, and she found that she was looking forward to tomorrow.
Baron Nigrand en Tusia, regional governor of the city of Prart, landed his face on the other side of the hole in reality, it was an undignified landing, and it hurt quite a bit in his pride as much as in his body, he was already distressed enough, but that was nothing compared to when he saw the frogman standing in front of him, that only got worse, he tried to scramble away, but the frogman simply grabbed him by the foot and started dragging him along, he clawed at the floor screaming to be let go, but no matter his words or screams or struggles, he was dragged on, until he passed through a door that opened by itself, and was bodily thrown forward, where he crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
He tried to get up, but a dark elf child was standing there who grabbed his shoulder and held him down in the kneeling position he had tried to rise from. As he looked around, he saw it, death itself, a skeleton wearing a magnificent robe, holding a very impressive scepter, and sitting on a throne that only a god could own. There was only one figure it could be.
"I am the Sorcerer King, Ainz Ooal Gown. And you have chosen to steal from me. Worse, you have chosen to steal from my charity and line your own pockets at the expense of my name. What do you have to say for yourself?" He asked.
The baron thought furiously, his mind moved like the wind running through every excuse he had ever told himself for why it was OK to do the things he had done. Only one seemed apt.
"They were only peasants, they exist to serve the will of their betters. Why shouldn't I take from them?" He said, attempting to appeal to what he expected was another noble's greed.
Suzuki Satoru however...saw only white hot rage, he thought of his precious friends, like HeroHero, slaving away under cruel bosses who cared nothing for their wellbeing, who took it as their right to abuse and exploit workers, he thought of his own mother, desperately working several jobs and still subjected to the humiliation of a lecherous boss that sent her home with more tears and more poverty than before, until Suzuki was old enough to drop out of school and work so she could at least quit that job.
His emotional damper forced him to calm down, but he did not forget his rage.
"Send him to Neuronist Painkill. And keep it going until he dies of old age, and make sure that is the only thing he dies of." Ainz said.
A few minutes later, the former regional governor and former baron found himself strapped naked to an upright rack, and an unspeakable slimy monster was practically dancing before him. It held up a small metal device with some nasty-looking spines on it, and it was explaining something to him that he didn't really understand about his creator suffering from kidney stones. Soon, it didn't matter whether he understood or not, only the pain mattered, only the screaming mattered, and those would continue to matter until his sixty-seventh year of life.