Chapter 117

Memory turned out to be a tricky thing. "How long ago was this, it will be easier if I know when it was."

"Four or five years ago, My Lord." Zenberu replied without opening his eyes.

"I see, simply stay relaxed." Ainz instructed as reassuringly as he could, and the lizardman then shifted a little uncomfortably, clearing his throat, he waited.

With the spell in full effect, Ainz began to sort through the mental fog. Everything was a blur, everything was confusion… a gray mist surrounded Ainz, 'If only I'd had practice with this…' Ainz thought with embittered frustration, the more recent memories began to come into view. 'Is that what I really look like?' He asked himself when he got to memories of seeing himself. In Zenberu's memories, Ainz saw himself much taller than he appeared to be.

'If I were more experienced could I shift the view to something closer to the truth? Am I seeing only his perceptions? Or is that all memory is, imperfect perceptions? I have no way to test it, and this may be important one day.' Ainz sifted further, as he did, the deeper he went, the thicker the gray fog around them became. Even drawing closer in his walk through Zenberu's mind, the memories themselves became somewhat fuzzy.

Curiously, his meeting with Zaryusu stood out a great deal, the fight which killed him… Zaryusu seemed much taller and broader than Ainz knew him actually to be. 'So perception influences memory… I should have expected that…' Ainz made a mental note and moved deeper into time, he felt himself all but sprinting past images, village life among the lizardmen was fundamentally dull, but it was oddly tranquil.

A brief morning common meal, time on the lake in their little boats, some combat practice, but otherwise just enjoying life. 'Almost like a vacation.' Ainz mused, live, fish, eat, mate, raise children, die… though the lizardman tribal war proved a brutal thing. 'His tribe lost a third of their numbers… what must that be like… those you grew up with, and then so many missing faces all at one go in just a few weeks…?' What he did next left a feeling of wrongness roiling in his gut.

He watched Zenberu go out onto the lake in the middle of the night, dive into the water, and wail beneath the placid surface where none could hear his pain.

'Was he going out to end his life?' The question hung in his mind, but guilt over invading his privacy farther than he should have gave Ainz pause. He couldn't bring himself to look further. But if Zenberu was typical of the lizardmen, and in this sense it seemed likely, 'No wonder they embraced me so quickly, even if they defeated the frogmen, they would have lost another thirty percent or better of their numbers. Perhaps they would have lost so many that they would have been doomed. One more such pyrrhic victory and they would have been lost.' Pity swelled for the lizardmen, 'To lose so many of their comrades… a terrible thing.'

'Focus, Ainz, focus.' He told himself and pushed deeper into memory.

Finally he found sight of Zenberu leaving a mountain entrance where two dwarves stood guard.

'Found it!' He moved somewhat deeper into time. Drinking. Lots of drinking. Dwarves… all of whom seemed to look alike, 'Are they actually like that? Or is this also perception?'

The dwarves at least seemed to like their beer a great deal. They were also notably big on beards, with every one of them seemingly having a thick one that went down half their bodies. 'Do they have no women, or do their women also have beards?' Idle curiosity and unimportant, but it was a strange thought to have.

Finally he found the moment Zenberu 'entered' the mountain, and the fog of time thickened, the vision weakened, until at last Ainz found himself looking at the fuzzy, fog shrouded outline of Zenberu at the fork on which they now stood, and the direction he took, to the right.

Ainz cancelled the spell, and found himself back in his own mind again.

"I am finished, you may rise, Zenberu. I have what I need."

"Yes, it's this way." Ainz pointed down the path, and Zenberu gave a nod.

"Yes, that feels right somehow… My Lord must be correct." The Lizardman stood up, stretched, and resumed the long steady walk back the way he'd come years before.

Now settled in, and briefly distracted, and perhaps enamored with some of Zenberu's more pleasant memories of daily life in the village, Ainz began to hum a traveling song of the sort once used by Ulbert, it was an almost bouncy little song torn from the pages of a favorite fiction Ainz no longer recalled the name of.

The mountain drew closer and loomed larger with every passing hour, the long walk gradually bringing them to the point where they were at last in its shadow. The terrain became craggy, more gray and less green. For three days they went that way, pausing at night, returning to Nazarick.

And every morning, Ainz awoke from dreams of Albedo's body entwined with his own, with guilt just piling onto guilt.

Finally they ceased to walk straight ahead, a long steady path curved upward along the mountain ridge. The great stone that jutted up from the depths of time, obscured the sun as they ascended, jutting crags on the long winding path that must have stood for countless ages, and yet somehow looked as if they would topple over to crush the lot of them at any moment.

The wind began to pick up, to howl and become cold as ice. Zenberu began to shiver. And it was then that Ainz stopped, and felt profoundly foolish. 'I neglected to think of what taking him out of his natural environment unprotected would be like. I could cast a spell to warm him, or draw an item from my inventory, but perhaps this is far enough for him… at this point we're on a path directly to an entrance. We can do without him now, since I'm a human they shouldn't have the same bigotry that I might experience if I were coming to them as one of the undead…' That settled it.

"Zenberu." Ainz said, stopping in his tracks. The lizardman turned around and seeing the way his Lord had straightened up, sensing eyes focused on him from beyond the mask, he knelt.

"My Lord?" Zenberu asked, his entire body shivering with cold in an altitude high enough that snow was clearly visible on the peaks. Ainz, in his moment of panic, could within mere minutes of 'flight', to escape the pressures of his duties and do something as simple and absurd as taking fresh snow for a home made snowcone.

Ainz improvised as fast as he could, grasping the quickest excuse he could come up with to get rid of the lizardman without seeming like a bad boss for making him needlessly suffer this long before noticing the discomfort. "You bled for your people and froze for me. You have done enough. I permit you to rest within Nazarick as a reward for good service. I will send you back to your people when I return."

Zenberu shivered again, but this time with more excitement than discomfort, "My Lord… I will grind myself to the dust for you if-" He began, but Ainz raised the white gloved hand.

"For now, you will rest, relax and enjoy yourself. Happiness is the reward of loyalty." Ainz promised, and summoned a [Gate] for the lizardman to pass through. "Inform whatever maid you see on the other side of what I have said here today." Ainz added, 'Hopefully they will take that to heart and let me give them more time off.' He didn't consider that very likely but maybe?

"At once, My Lord!" Zenberu stood up, bowed, and passed through the [Gate].

"Demiurge, let's make the rest of this journey alone. It looks like we're nearly there." Ainz said and looked at the winding path that curved upward along the mountain slope.

"Yes, My Lord. It appears so." Demiurge replied, and they resumed their walk to the peak with only the howling winds for company.