...Ilyatown...

Neia’s expectation was quite right. Her scouts met her at the gate, but even before the gates opened, the cheers went up, one soldier was sent back to the caravan to tell them it was safe to move on the town, but for the present Neia and her band walked in and found people, civilians and militia wearing what she now regarded as subpar equipment, cheering on either side.

Others who had fought from the walls, still stood at their positions reveling in the relief of getting to live another day, and Neia and her warriors went forward silently, bearing the look of mythic heroes. Their dark uniforms and intimidating weapons and obvious strength seemed to light the ecstatic hearts of the town on fire.

Just beyond the crowd, an elderly woman rested on a cane and a priest stood beside her, and when Neia and her formation came near, the pair knelt before her and her warrior band. "Rise," she said. "There is no need to kneel to me, I but serve the will of my god... though I do a fairly good job of it." She said with a friendly smile at the end, and she reached out and helped the old lady stand.

“Thank you.” The priest said with a voice that still shook, “If you had not come, those... monsters... would have made it inside, and I dare say I do not think we could have pushed them back.”

"No. Probably not." Neia replied flatly. "But I was glad to render my assistance. We of the Holy Kingdom must help one another, otherwise, what point is there to being a kingdom?" She said simply.

"I am Agni Vespas, mayor of this town." The old lady said, "Who might you be?" She asked.

"I am Neia Baraja, and behind me stand the fighters of our faith, Black Justice." She replied, gesturing to those behind her.

A hush fell over the area as she stated her name.

"Neia Baraja..." The priest said, "Squire of the Sorcerer King?"

"The same." Neia replied. The priest's voice was one of shock, it didn’t tell her how he felt about that, so she pressed on. "I’ve come here escorting the merchant Tinamoc and his caravan, we have a three month loop around the Holy Kingdom, trading supplies, picking up and dropping off passengers, that kind of thing, and a fragment of the warriors of Black Justice have been detached under my leadership to ensure their safety for the journey. Can I ask that they be allowed to set up shop outside the gate, as well as be granted personal entry into the town for rest, recreation, and other commerce?" Neia said to the mayor, and Agni was quick to turn a charming smile on Neia, "Of course! How could we deny the saviors of our town today, let alone the servant of the savior of our nation?"

Agni was quick to scatter the crowd with instructions to go and loot the bodies of the dead demihumans.

"Make sure you have them burned as well." Neia added, "Doing so will ensure they do not spread disease here." Agni looked confused, but she added the order for them to be piled together outside the town and burned.

When the instructions were done and the people were in action, Agni asked Neia, "Would you like to join me for dinner at my residence tonight, you and the merchant Tinamoc?"

"Assuming he has no other requirements of me, I can break away for that." Neia said with a bright smile that she used often before crowds.

It clearly had a charming effect on both Agni and the priest, because when she invited him as well, the priest was quick to reply with acceptance. Neia took the moment to look them both over more clearly.

Agni wore relatively simple garb, similar to the other commoners, the only difference was a silver pendant that hung from her neck, "Probably signifying her badge of office." Neia thought. The priest, to his credit, was dressed in no finer garb than hers, his priestly robes were a faded off white and of simple make. He wore no jewels and when Neia looked at his hands on his staff, she saw the marks of labor, her opinion of this priest went up several notches, and she found herself looking forward to the evening meal.

"Did you have any injured or killed?" Neia asked.

"A few minor injuries in the first minute or two, but nothing significant, they hadn’t got the ladders up by the time your arrows and your people were brought to bear." Agni answered, "How about you, how many do we need to bury?" She asked sadly, going up against demihumans was an ugly thing.

"None." Neia said. "These were weak, very weak." She said as if it was the most natural thing in the world to take on demihumans and come away without a casualty.

Agni and the priest shared a look of marvel.

"None? No dead at all?" She asked.

"But you fought them hand to hand outside the walls!" The priest exclaimed.

"Correct, no dead among us at all, and yes, we did fight them outside the walls, but we fought on our terms with better skill and equipment after catching them by surprise, I’d be very much surprised if we suffered any deaths at all under those conditions. Maybe if they’d been stronger or seen us coming or been better armed... but this? This was nothing, we butchered a much larger force of much better prepared demihumans just... what... a week ago or so? Time runs together on this kind of trip." She said with a dismissive shrug.

"How many dead then?" The priest asked.

"Also none. Though we had a few injured." Neia said, prompting gasps of surprise and open mouthed stares.

When Tinamoc arrived, the bonfire of demihuman bodies was already lit and the smoke had risen high, his eyes widened, but as he thought about it, he didn’t really know why, they’d already killed worse than this under worse conditions.

The merchant and his people began to establish their positions outside the gate, converting wagons into stands to show their wares, and the rest of Black Justice and the accompanying guards went about establishing perimeter security.

Having had much practice in all those tasks, none of them took very long, and soon where there had been nothing, a bustling market place stood, and the townsfolk created an impromptu holiday, rushing home to get coins and goods to engage in trade.

Tinamoc left those matters to his people, and came to where Neia, Agni, and the priest stood.

"I’m Tinamoc, owner of this caravan." He said, putting out his hand.

"Agni, the mayor of Ilyatown." She said and shook his hand.

"Orphi, priest of the god Surshana." The priest said, and shook it in turn.

"A pleasure." Tinamoc said, his winning smile that must have won over many a deal, prompting warmth to be returned to him from the two leaders of the town.

"It seems we have you to thank for these heroes." Orphi said, "When their scouts warned us, we had few guards on the walls and we were not even slightly prepared, had they not bought time with their fake signaling, there would be many of our people mourning today, and many more being mourned."

Neia’s face was proud as she spoke, "They learned well, thanks to the library of the gods."

This drew some odd looks, but her smile turned cheshire and coy, and she said nothing more. "You will excuse me for the moment, I must inspect the work of my people, but I trust we will all make time for dinner tonight, if for no other reason than to celebrate this turn of good fortune." Neia said, and did an about face, and walked back out the gate.

"She is... impressive. Isn’t she?" Tinamoc said in such a way that his question was not really a question. It drew answers nonetheless from both Agni and Orphi.

"She is." Agni answered.

"Very much so," Orphi said, but followed by asking, "What is this "library of the gods" she spoke of?" As a priest, anything to do with the gods was of great interest to him, but to his disappointment Tinamoc could only shrug.

"I’m not really sure, I know it has something to do with her god, and it’s some great repository of knowledge, but how one gets there, what one does, or how it helped her people... well you will have to ask her at dinner." Tinamoc replied.

"I will." Orphi said, "I definitely will."

A few hours later, that is precisely what happened, Neia entered and was greeted warmly by Agni, as well as Orphi, and she took her seat across from them next to Tinamoc.

"I hope I didn’t keep you waiting, just some last minute details to take care of for the guard rotation." She said apologetically.

"Guard rotation?" Agni said, "We’re perfectly safe now, aren’t we?" She asked.

Neia replied somberly, "It is at the moment of greatest safety, that the greatest danger occurs. When you believe you are safest, you are at your most vulnerable, and was it not this belief that your town was safe that left your walls near empty and unmanned? That easily could have resulted in us arriving only to find a smoldering ruin where your town had been."

Her sober reply to the mayor saw the color drain from the faces of both Agni and Orphi, as the truth was driven home. Tinamoc saved them all from silence by raising his cup, "To lives preserved." He said in a jolly voice, and that snapped them all back to the moment, and they repeated the phrase with raised cups, and drank in satisfaction.

Orphi did not waste time getting to the meat of his question from before, "I’d like to know more about this ‘library of the gods’ you spoke of, what is that, where is that?" He asked.

"The library of Ashurbanipal," she said with a deep stare that seemed to peer through Orphi. He shuddered internally the way he felt her eyes grab him. "That is what it is called,” Neia went on, “it was built by the forty-one Supreme Beings, led by His Majesty Ainz Ooal Gown, the Sorcerer King and the undead god of justice. He chose to see to my education and training, and the training of all those fighters of ours you saw. He provided us with instructors stronger than any fighter in the world. Within the library itself, under the tutelage of a grand strategist, I and one other were given mountains of books on every conceivable subject. I learned battlefield strategy, the arts of deception in war, fieldcraft, and much, much more. Had I a thousand lifetimes, I could not have poured through the whole thing. But the result of just scratching the surface, is what sits before you now, and what was given to those chosen, stands watch over all outside." Neia said, her voice carrying the awe she felt as if she had returned to Nazarick again.

"Where can I find this place?" The priest asked with hunger in his words, leaning forward longingly.

"In the realm of gods, in Nazarick, where the Sorcerer King resides." She replied.

"You call him a god," Agni said as she dipped her spoon into her stew, "is that just a figure of speech?"

Neia shook her head, "He is the undead god of justice, I mean that as fact, not fancy, he is the only god left in this world, wherever the other gods went, I am sure of this, they are no longer with us."

Orphi choked on his stew at her words.

"How... can you say such a thing?" He asked as if she’d suggested eating the children of the town at a feast.

Neia looked him over, "You were never at the prison camps were you?"

"...No" he reluctantly admitted.

"Did you see what the demihumans did to our country? I traveled over a large part of it while attending to the Sorcerer King as his squire, I saw it all. Demons used humans in experiments as living test subjects, severing limbs and attaching them to other living people, the demihumans ate children in front of their families, they ate children before the very walls of our city to frighten us into submission. Every temple to our gods they saw, they desecrated, they shat on the pews, they used the god’s own emblems to wipe their asses, the altars were used as tables where the worshipers of our gods, from youngest babe to oldest grandmother, people who had spent their lives devoted to the gods, were not just ‘sacrificed’. That would be blasphemous enough, but no, they were eaten there. They could eat children and the elderly on our gods’ own altars... do you understand?" Neia asked as she tore a piece of bread away from the whole.

"What did the gods do about it?" She asked with ice in her blue eyes. "Where was their justice? Why did not Alah Alaf come down from heaven and do battle with the demon Jaldabaoth on her own, where was Surshana, when the walls of Hoburns fell?" She asked again, her fist clenched tight at the memory, and her eyes clenched no less tightly.

They were silent for a moment, and the priest replied, "The gods tested us."

"Do you think so?" Neia asked. "Who then tests the gods? What use are gods who test their people by torturing and abusing those who are too young to even know the gods, who cry out for mothers who already rest in the bellies of demons, just before being devoured themselves? It seems to me that if those gods were testing us, they were no different from the tormentors they ‘used’." Neia replied, but she clearly was not done.

"The only god that matters is the god that acts. And Ainz Ooal Gown, god of justice, took it upon himself to come and save us, he liberated camps, he broke demon armies, he slew Jaldabaoth in personal combat, and he took nothing from us, his justice, is justice. His power is the power of a god. If it isn’t, well what IS the power of a god?" She finished her statement, and they shared a troubled look.

"If you ask me," Neia said, "there is some kind of connection between Ainz Ooal Gown and Surshana, because I’ve seen pictures of what Surshana looked like, and I’ve seen Ainz Ooal Gown up close, and I tell you, they look exactly alike. But I’m just speculating, I’ve never asked him that."

Orphi’s look was intrigued. "You know the story of how Surshana sacrificed himself against the eight greed kings?" He asked Neia.

"I do, I think most people have heard that in some form." She replied curiously.

"Who is to say a god cannot come back, cannot change his name, cannot..." His train of thought faded, "but wait... do you know anything about the spell the Sorcerer King used on the Katze plains?" He asked.

"I wasn’t there for it, but I learned of it from survivors and other witnesses while visiting his country. All reports say that he destroyed an entire wing with one spell, over 70,000 men and their horses in an instant, they also agree that he then summoned enormous monsters, which wiped out another hundred thousand or so, and it so terrified his own allies that they fled and trampled each other, inflicting over one hundred and thirty casualties." Neia said. "Why?"

"Because Surshana never used any kind of power on that scale, not even when he went against the eight greed kings, and it seems that power like that would have been helpful." Orphi replied. "Is it possible that he is Surshana’s father, come from heaven as his son before him?" Orphis started shaking with excitement, and Neia was more than pleased, as soon as she learned he was a priest of Surshana, she knew she had a chance to win him over.

"Surshana sacrificed himself to save us from the eight greed kings, despite being undead, he obviously did not hate the living, I have been to the realm of Ainz Ooal Gown, his people prosper, he has even cared for the orphans left behind by his deceased enemies, he came to our country and sacrificed himself, then returned in time for the final battle and saved us all, how can I not call him a god? How can I imagine that he hates the living? How can I not serve that? I do not dispute the nobility of Surshana for the sacrifice he made, but we have another god who is here now, with us, among us, who works to help us even now. Did you know that all... ALL of the supplies to feed and rebuild the capital and the surrounding cities and towns have come directly from the Sorcerous Kingdom?”

Their expressions, troubled and with haunted, hollow eyes, told her they did not. “The Theocracy serves the same gods we did, and yet where are they? A few weeks ago, a priest of Alah Alaf tried to assassinate me for asking for permission to build a temple in the name of my god... why? If the gods are offended, can’t they strike me down themselves? If they tried to work through that priest, well obviously he failed, because here I am, and I am here because I wore the armor my god allowed me to have. He protected me, the priest opposed me even as I rebuilt their city, even as he gives me the means to do so, and they try to kill me? Following Ainz Ooal Gown is an easy choice. After all, he gave me the strength and knowledge to save my people, and taught me what justice truly is."

"What is that?" Asked Orphi.

"Strength." Neia said, jabbing her forefinger’s tip down onto the table. "All justice requires strength. In mind, in body, we suffered because we allowed our nation to become weak. We lost the means to protect ourselves. We kept our eyes on the heavens looking for gods, as demons grew in strength and came to make us suffer. But Ainz Ooal Gown showed me that by having strength, I could work justice, save lives, and protect our people. He taught me that by example, by doing what needed to be done, and not flinching from his promise even when it put him at risk."

Their attention was rapt and Neia saw that the time was right to ask, so she took the plunge, "I must continue to guard Tinamoc and his merchant caravan until we return to the capital, but if you’re willing to receive them, I would like to send a member of Black Justice here. They will train your militia in our combat arts as well as the teachings of Ainz Ooal Gown. Additionally, if you would like the assistance, I noticed that most of your fields are empty. This is, I assume, because of the losses you sustained in the war?"

They nodded and continued to listen.

"The Sorcerer King has been providing skeletons as laborers for some time now, with great success in his own region as well as among the dwarves, a dozen of them can do in a fraction of the time, what it would take a hundred humans to do. You could have your fields restored to full production overnight because they require no food, drink, or rest. They can work constantly without pause at any simple task you direct them to undertake. The price of them is a percentage of the increase only, so you will never pay more than you can produce." She said with enthusiasm.

Their eyes widened at the possibility. Agni looked over at Orphi and said, "What do you think?"

Orphi thought it over for a moment, his eyes went up, whether to seek the guidance of heaven, or in thought, was uncertain, but his answer was as Neia hoped. "Very well, send your teacher and send us a few dozen skeletons. You took a chance in saving us, I would be a coward indeed if I didn’t take a chance on trusting someone who risked their life for us all."

Agne nodded in agreement and shook Neia’s hand, followed quickly by Orphi, and Neia turned to Tinamoc, "Do you think sir, that you can provide them additional seed at a reasonable price, I expect they’ll be sowing far more this year than they thought." Tinamoc’s smile almost went wider than his face, "I’ll not only do that, I’ll give a discount if they’ll give me a discount on the first harvest trade to the Sorcerer King."

"Agreed!" Agni said.

"I do believe this is the best meal I’ve had in quite some time." Orphi said, "And I do hope to see you both again soon... maybe without the demihuman raid next time though." He laughed heartily, and was joined by the rest of the table.

"I’ll send additional laborers to pick up the seed in the morning, I assume you’ll be leaving by noon for your next stop, yes?" Agni said, prompting a nod from Tinamoc.

"Yes,” the trader replied. “We’ll be visiting a city next, it’ll be the first one other than the capital that I’ve gotten to see since the war ended."

"Well I wish you luck then." Agni said as she stood, "It’s been a wonderful, enlightening, and profitable meal everybody, but these old bones need to rest, so until next time, goodnight." She said, and the rest of the table stood and said their farewells.

Neia went back to her bedroll quite contented, and quickly wrote out another letter to be dispatched back to her people in the capital, and another letter to Ainz Ooal Gown with a request to rent undead labor. And then she went to sleep and had... very hopeful dreams.