Chapter 2: Black Justice is Born
She quietly put the list away while she awaited a replacement guard and contemplated what to do. As she thought, she came to a realization.
"The question is not what 'I' would do, but rather what would the Sorcerer King do for the sake of his justice." She thought back to his grim choices, executing hostages that demihumans attempted to use against him and his allies, making carefully considering when to fight and when not to fight so that he maximized his power and minimized losses. Trying to do everything would accomplish nothing, trying to save everyone would in the end save no one.
"I don't have his magic, I don't have his resources...but I do have my eyes, my reputation, and my position. I need to exploit them all to maximize the impact on others." She said to herself. Then she took out her sword, lifted the head of the fallen criminal, and removed it from his neck. In a distant sort of way, she reflected that there was a time when she never would have considered doing something like this. She shrugged it off, she was younger back then, more naïve, more idealistic. Jaldabaoth ensured she became otherwise.
She then took the dead man's halberd, and stuck the head on the sharp iron tip, then jammed the butt of it into the ground. She stripped the corpse of its armor and etched the word's 'Caught stealing the Kingdom's supplies' on the breastplate. After that, she secured his body upright using his own belt against the pole of the halberd so that all would see and know that theft would not go unpunished.
She wiped her brow and walked thirty paces from the corpse, then turning to it, she began to fill it with arrows, including two in the eyes. This was the state 'they' were in when the replacement arrived...along with two other men...the noble who had provided the dead man, and the noble who was supplying the replacement.
They stopped and looked at the horror of the scene, and the casual way Neia inflicted injury upon the corpse. Before they said anything, she turned her merciless gaze on them, her eyes were always like daggers, but now they were like daggers in a demon's skull. The nobles and the replacement began to sweat and lost the ability to speak.
Seeing their silence, Neia spoke first.
"He was a thief. I exposed him. He tried to kill me for it. He turned out to be even worse at murder than he was at stealing. Now he is a corpse, and he has another duty, which is to serve as an example to others who would consider stealing from our people, I think he will do very well at this job. Don't you? She asked, she used short, clipped and abrupt speech very different from her usual method, and it rattled them almost as much as the dead man did. When she'd finished her last sentence, she gave them a smile that could almost be considered 'warm' a stark and horrifying contrast to the scene that was now at her back
She pointed with her bow to the dead man behind her. "This is my justice, the justice of the strong. His weakness was his fear, and his corruption, and in his sin, he brought about his own death. Questions?" She asked.
The replacement looked down and shook his head, the nobles did the same, and it was as if there were a competition to determine who had turned paler than his fellows. She had a distinct feeling this was not as over as it looked to be, but she was quite sure that the replacement guard would NOT be partaking in any theft.
"Um...Lady Neia..." the guard said, adding an honorific she had never had before, "should I take him down...?"
"NO." Her fierce answer shocked even herself, and the guard nodded. "I said he has a job to do, and he does. What remains of him can be removed when his body rots enough to fall on its own, then have a priest bless his corpse so he doesn't earn the honor of coming back as an undead like his majesty, only after that will we throw his corpse in an unmarked hole in a field somewhere. Until then, let him feed the crows for now, and the crops later."
The noble who provided the replacement looked at the man and shook his head slightly, and the one who had supplied the thief began to tremble.
"One more thing," she said, and they listened with extreme care, as behind her back a crow came to light on the head decorating the pike and picked at the flesh. "put it about that I'll be looking for the missing supplies, and the person he provided them to, but that I'll stop looking if the supplies are returned to this place in forty-eight hours. If they're not, that thing will earn a companion." She pointed to the corpse and walked away.
The day's work proceeded apace, and that evening Neia stood in front of a large gathering, larger than the previous one, as each one had been, the one that followed was always bigger than the one before, and she found herself enjoying the growth of her message.
"To be a god is to have the power to create justice. If we are to emulate our god and obtain the power to create justice, then we cannot abide weakness in ourselves or in our nation, if weakness bars justice, then weakness itself is a sin against justice! Our sins lead to our suffering, and the strength of the Sorcerer King was the justice of the world that saved us in our time of sin. But even the most graceful god may have limits to their kindness, and if we embrace our weakness of the past again, if we sin again, then one day a new Jaldabaoth may come to us, or a new invasion of demihumans, and our children will suffer for our sins!" She walked about the stage, as if carrying her words to them all, her arms were open and out before the crowd as if to invite them to embrace her as their sister, and the crowd responded with enthusiasm as her words reached their ears.
"Will we let that happen?!" She asked passionately.
"NO!"
"NO!"
"NO!"
The crowd replied in three successive cries.
"The justice of the Sorcerer King is the only justice there is, and it is the only one that matters, yet even were there another, for what other justice saved you from starvation? From torture? From being eaten like cattle?! Did anyone?! Did the justice of our beloved Queen save you? Was it even the gods we prayed to for all our lives, who received the devotion of our ancestors for so many generations? Did they save us?! Or was it a foreign king of unimaginable might who put his justice on the line for our lives?!"
"The Sorcerer King! The Sorcerer King! The Sorcerer King!" The cries rang out again.
"Then if he is not a god by doing what the gods could not and did not do, what the queen could not achieve, what our people could not achieve...if his justice is not the justice of a god, if his strength is not the strength of a god, which is to create and define justice...then tell me what is? What other gods are there to which we can compare him and say, 'they are greater than he'?"
Nobody had an answer, silence fell.
She nodded firmly, "You all know what transpired today by now, a guard, a man trusted by our lords to serve and protect our interests, robbed our supplies, and would have stolen more had I not caught him, and tried to kill me when I confronted him. What were his sins, what was his weakness?!"
"Cowardice!"
"Greed!"
"Selfishness!"
"Corruption!"
The crowd rattled off his sins as weaknesses until they could think of no more, and the din died down.
"I killed him, I beheaded him, I placed his head upon his halberd, marked his corpse, and decreed his fate to rot as a dishonored pile of meat! I declared that the missing supplies should be returned, or I would hunt for them till I found the guilty to whom the stolen materials were given and made them join their cohort in crime. Was I just?!"
"YES! YES! YES!" The crowd was in a frenzy.
The speech went on as she lauded the virtues of the Sorcerer King and told stories of his exploits as their savior, until a lit candle nearby burned down and went out.
"Now we have had our talk, and I tell you we must expiate the weakness from ourselves, and our greatest weakness was weakness, and so we train, and tomorrow we show our growth, and we will grow stronger, we will repay our debt to our savior by making sure we do not need to be saved again!" She shouted.
The training was brief as the hour was late, but she could see that the daily routine of training was paying off, the men and women who followed her were getting stronger, a few had even learned martial arts, and guards who had been eyeing her doubtfully were trickling in and joining her cause.
The next day, Gascon did an inventory and then reported to Neia that he found a pile of supplies out front of the supply dump, everything had been returned, including a little extra for good measure.
Neia's reputation for harsh and unflinching justice…and savage reprisal for crossing her people had begun to spread like wildfire.
Back in the Sorcerer Kingdom, Demiurge watched those events unfold, alongside Albedo.
"I am truly impressed with our master's ability. Look at what he has done with an ordinary human. Not only has she grown more powerful, but he has won her over as a convert, and an influential one at that. Now she is the first human to recognize Lord Ainz as the god he truly is."
Albedo nodded, "She is an interesting one, I truly believe that if he ordered her to die, she would obey him as readily as we would if the order were given to us. Perhaps in her...we are seeing the truth our master did, the worth of humans who know the glory of the ruler of the forty-one."
Demiurge raised an eyebrow, "You may be right, her speech suggested it, and I doubt I could have written a better one for her if I tried. Should we put her to the test and see how she responds?"
"What did you have in mind?" Albedo asked.
"Only what she would eventually face anyway, killing that guard was good, even if she was relatively merciful compared to me, but this was going to raise the ire of the nobles even as it intimidated them, I'll just increase their anger and reduce their fear a little early." Demiurge replied with the smile of a first-rate devil.
"How will you do that?" Albedo asked curiously.
"I will have a minion whispering temptations into their ears as they sleep, influencing the direction of their thoughts, and driving them to greater anger." Demiurge replied with a satisfied smile as he pondered the events to come.
"A good idea, surely my beloved Ainz foresaw this, and if it speeds up his plans, so much the better, but let us also have her watched and make sure she is protected, we do not want to accidentally get her killed." Albedo suggested.
"Agreed." Demiurge said and departed to work his will.
When Neia began the holy day by learning of the return of supplies to their proper place, she was pleased with herself and her choices, and she idly hoped her idol, Ainz Ooal Gown, would approve of her measures.
This day was left to minimal manning for necessary tasks, while the rest of the workers under her celebrated the founding of the Sorcerer Kingdom. It left some citizens, usually nobles and priests, feeling somewhat dubious, but she was too significant a figure, with ties too important to risk offending, and so they let it pass.
Well...almost all of them let it pass. Remedios Custodio was as loud as one might expect. She demanded Neia's arrest for killing the guard, only to be shot down, and when the workers took the day off to celebrate the founding of a foreign kingdom, she demanded they all be tried for treason. The return of the stolen supplies did little to ease her anger, and the King was no help.
"While it is somewhat awkward, she is our tie to the only source of materials to rebuild. If you have another option, present it, otherwise, shut up." The King said in no uncertain terms.
The nobles, however, listened to Remedios more readily, and so too did the priests of the six gods.
Among the nobles, anger began to stir at the jumped-up squire who had killed a noble's man without hesitation.
From the start of the war to the departure of the Sorcerer King, and after, Neia had been developing her combat skills, and gradually she had begun to form her own martial style, which blended archery, one-handed sword work, and one-handed strikes along with point of impact magic applications. But not until that day did it have a name.
When celebrating the founding of the Sorcerer King with ritual combat, it was seen in earnest, she used her bow with blunted arrows and brought down several guards who had joined her group, and rushed in at high speed, struck several more with her blunted training sword, and used her free hand to engage in grips that through men off balance and struck them at their weak points. A paladin saw what she did and approached her gingerly.
"What...was that..." He asked her, "I've never seen a fighting style like yours before. Usually, one-handed sword users use a shield, archers stay back, and brawlers use none of those, but you have taken pieces of all three."
Neia thought for a moment, buying time by drinking water from a canteen, and then said, "I call the style 'Black Justice'. Strength after all, is justice, and by taking the strengths of three and combining it into one, I have the flexibility to attack multiple weaknesses."
"Impressive..." The paladin said.
And in Nazarik, an observing Cocytus, echoed the sentiment.
He looked to the iron butler of Nazarik standing beside him and said, "She has a warrior spirit, admirable in the weak that she could create something that effective, perhaps we should send her help to further develop this, perhaps we should even consider adopting it among our soldiers and allies who are fit for it."
Sebas stroked his beard, "You may be right, but before we lend her assistance, we should seek Lord Ainz's approval, he may wish to see what more she will develop before supporting her."
Cocytus nodded, "I will present the suggestion to him today."
When the paladin walked away, Neia went about her company of volunteers and critiqued their methods. It was a good day, everyone seemed a little stronger than the day before, and they all returned to work the following morning with spirits renewed.
Those spirits held for several days, until Gascon didn't show up for his shift, and he was found beaten to death and beheaded in an alley.
However...nobody had touched the rotting corpse of the thieving guard, except for the crows that picked at his flesh, and all the supplies remained intact.