Chapter 367

Zesshi woke up early, before Brain, before Layali. The sun wasn't even up, the stars were still visible. Her skin felt a tingle, a pull urging her somewhere… she dressed in silence, taking only an extra moment to put on her sword, then ventured out. Her body felt light, ghostlike, and though she walked one foot in front of the other, it felt more like she was gliding, an airy call to her form, guided by the prickling tingle on her skin and telling her when she was going the right direction.

Down the stairs and down the hall, she was alone, a light fog over her mind that, though it didn't keep her from her awareness, made it all more dreamlike, distant, as if she were watching herself and operating her own body as if it were a puppet.

'Whose door is this?' She wondered when her hand went up to shoulder height and knocked.

"Come in, I've been waiting for you." The soft voice within said, and thus invited, Zesshi reached for the handle, opened it, and passed through to the other side.

The tingle in her skin faded away, and the distant foggy feeling went with it. "What… why am I here?" Zesshi reached up to her head and touched her skull through her strands of thick black hair. "What was that."

"It's [Shrinemaiden's Call], and I am a shrinemaiden. I can maiden any old shrine I like, and priestess so hard I'd convert rocks if I wanted to." She gave a silly grin and a wink to the half elf, and Zesshi cocked her head.

"Say what now?" Zesshi asked. "I'd better go."

"Layali wouldn't be happy if you did, I'm Aureole Omega, by the way." The red and white clad girl bent slightly forward at the waist, but Zesshi froze, her hand squeezed the metal handle, crushing it in her grip.

"What do you know about my Layali?" Zesshi asked through gritted teeth.

"That she loves you very, very much, and is terrified that you'll die out there, she's terrified for both you and her 'papa', Brain." Aureole Omega said, and Zesshi's hand on the door handle began to relax.

"She offered a great deal to me in exchange for my help, a very great deal. And now I'm going to fulfill my part of the bargain." Aureole Omega added.

"Bargain?" Zesshi asked with a steady stare.

"Yes. Bargain. All you have to do is stand there, and then all you have to do is say nothing." Aureole Omega promised, and drew out her wooden sword.

Zesshi stood still, braced and ready for an attack, but instead the curious maiden withdrew by a step, then two, and then a faint hint of musical notes began to play from somewhere, the shrinemaiden's feet began to move in a complex dance, her swaying hips, hair and rising feet moved in a multitude of pirouettes, and then… it was done.

She rose to her feet, and gestured to the door. "There, you can go." Aureole Omega said, "I doubt we'll meet again for some time, and I'm sure you've got questions, but those can wait, just trust me, you'll understand what happened here, soon enough."

The woman's hand came up and her fingers wiggled out of sync in a curious sort of farewell wave, and Zesshi, unsure of what else she could even do in such a situation… left the room the way she'd come, and made her way to the arena.

Why she didn't go back to Brain and Layali was something she couldn't quite answer, the chill of the early morning air, the fog amidst the darkness, the world itself concealed its emptiness from her. Though the temperatures were nothing she couldn't handle, nonetheless Zesshi rubbed her biceps with her hands, her long hair dangling and dancing behind her, every step carrying her ever closer to a lifetime's wish, and nobody was there to see it.

The chilly morning left goosebumps on her skin long before she reached her destination, and at such an early hour, nobody was at the arena either. Even though it took plenty of time to get there, not so much as a guard was present. 'I suppose that's no surprise, who is going to steal used practice swords and hunks of wooden or metal men? There's nothing here of value until people show up.' She told herself as she walked beneath the great high stone arches.

Her footfalls echoed as the darkness became pitchlike, hidden from the stars with only the breeze at her back to keep her company, the breeze, and her thoughts. 'How many years has it been?' Zesshi tried to recall as her foot tapped along the stone until she reached the sands. 'I was younger than Layali when I promised my mother I would kill my father. I'm sure of that. But how much?'

As she tallied the days of her more than hundred year lifespan, the years back became a blur, her isolation from the world made so much of it blend together Zesshi had to wonder, 'What if I'm older than I think I am?' Nobody had celebrated her birthday after she was removed from her mother, not until Raymond became her handler.

'What a ridiculous sight that was.' She chuckled a little as she went to take position on the sands as if her father were already there. The hard bitten Black Scripture head, carrying a lemon cake, and Cenna, handing her the little cube with different colors on it. 'How many times did I play with that stupid thing, and I never once got close to solving it.'

The years of revenge fantasies punctuated by monster hunts and living in shadows never weighed on her before, but now, having been out in the world, and traveling with Brain and Layali, she knew… 'I can't go back to that life. I can't, and I won't.' She told herself, the other thoughts that troubled her began to fade away with fresh resolve, and though she still had no idea why she'd come all this way at such an early hour, she was content to wait and watch the stars. Her eyes turned up to watch the passing of night until the sun began its slow march across the sky.

The crowd began to fill the arena shortly after first light, the sea of faces and cacophony of voices was enough to make her ears twitch with mild annoyance. 'Humans are loud. Very loud.' Notably though, there were some 'non' humans in the mix, foreigners who came to watch a historical event. On one level it marked the significance of the duel in the eyes of the world around them, on the other it also marked the weakness of the empire in its current state that it would allow races normally considered 'dangerous' to enter without argument. Beastmen, orcs, even a few trolls took seats. 'I suppose that means there will be stronger races fighting today now that the scrubs are all gone.' It was a passing, dismissive thought, there was only one thing Zesshi wanted, and it would likely prompt the other fighters to put down some extra coin on reinforcing their groin armor before they faced her on the sands.

As if the floodgates opened, the seats were quickly filled, but Zesshi had eyes for only one spot before the match began.

She scanned the crowd, and then saw them. Brain was holding Layali on his shoulders and they were waving down to her ecstatically. He had his broad, charming, roguish smile on his face, and it only then occurred to her… 'I can't remember the last time I objected when people thought I was his wife…' Not in any of the stops since they were in the town with that cursed orphanage.

It wasn't, to her mind at least, an unpleasant thought, though he was weaker in combat, he was stronger in his understanding of the world, and he lavished affection on the little half elf that had effectively become a daughter. 'If I met someone stronger, would I want to leave?' The question stuck in her mind while she waved back, the sick and twisted answer she came up with was, 'Like my mother, it wouldn't matter.' The sense of herself that others considered twisted, a seeming willingness to mate with anyone who could defeat her, was laid bare as she tried to imagine herself willingly walking away from them both.

'I've just been playing a game with myself, pretending I would be 'consenting' when I've just been finding a way to cope with the nightmarish reality of my mother's life… her nightmares, her reticence when touching my ears… 'oh, I'll have the child of any male who can defeat me… when I really just assumed I'd go through my mother's experience…' It was a grim thought, and not the first time she held it, but as she watched the couple waving from the stands and she tried to imagine someone defeating her, and then walking away from the two… she couldn't.

'No way.' She told herself, and with a smile on her face, she waved back at them both. 'I'm not going anywhere.' She resolved without any further doubts, and waited.

The elf king loved the sound of his walking. The world shook when he strolled to relieve himself, his foes quaked when he yawned. His will was their dreams and his rhythm the dictate of the lives of those who were lucky he let them live to serve him.

Around him the stone of the arena quaked, he did nothing to disguise his footfalls, nothing to soften his step, and if the stone fell? Then that was just a consequence of their pathetic efforts at building things that were impressive.

The light of day opened up to him when he stepped onto the sands, the very first of his opponents would be a woman, that was his instruction. 'A lucky woman who will bear my child, and I will make it right then and there on the sands. A sound slap of my hand, and when she falls, I will have her.'

The annoyance he felt at losing his servants and toys was still grating, insulting, and above all, a mystery that taunted him because of its familiarity.

'Just like that time… the Nines came to me to take my prisoners and used undead to distract me before setting them free… then…' The memory of dying, blacking out, then waking up again and his prisoners back where they were, but not the same… 'So strange… but I never forgot them…'

He ignored the words of whatever bothersome speaker was up there, barely responding other than to raise his fist when his title was used, until…

"No! He is not the elf King! He is the elf Peasant! He has no kingdom now!" The voice of the shouter was tantalizingly familiar.

'The whelp? That brat… no, her mother?!' He licked his lips, the Draconic Queen was the one he wanted to breed. He whirled and faced the stands and there she was, an adult woman, ripe… and not bad to look at. He felt himself harden with desire, but her words brought only confusion.

"Do you remember me, elf peasant?!" She shouted from the stands, and 'shrank'.

"Tricked?! You tricked me?! How dare you?!" He bellowed, the brat wasn't the daughter, but the woman he sought!

"Your Kingdom has fallen! It is now under the reign of my Lord, Ainz Ooal Gown of the Kingdom of Nazarick, father to All and master of nations!" She shouted down at him, and the name caused the elf King to freeze even in his anger.

"You might know me by another name!" A man shouted from beside her, "I beat you before, I and my friends. I'm sure you heard it… I'm sure you heard someone say 'Momonga!" a towering man in rich royal robes shouted.

The elf King processed it all. 'He took my kingdom, he took my servants… it has to be him! Momonga… Nines… perhaps it was Ainz… it's all him! Him! Him?!' The elf King bellowed and jumped from the ground with a roar, leaping toward the daias where his prey had gone to hide, his arms stretched out and fingers grasping ready to close around his stolen plaything.

Draudillon's heart sang when she watched the shock on the elf King's face, his dismay, his disbelief, his rage and confusion, at her left stood her Lord to whom she had surrendered herself and her people in trust of all their security.

And true to the predictions of the master of Nazarick, her god, the elf King reacted with violence. His leap brought cries of fear and shock and awe all at once to the crowd.

But then… the elf King was unable to land. Ainz's arm was outstretched, his fingers were closed around the elf King's throat. The behemoth of an elf was every bit as large as Draudillon remembered, but now he dangled helplessly.

And Ainz's kingly voice projected out for all the world to hear. "You don't. Do that. To my servants!" His free hand was… slapping. Just slapping, back and forth across the elf King's face as if he were slapping a misbehaving schoolboy who had gone too far with his bullying ways.

The elf king gurgled and raged, his face was turning purple and his hands clawing at the Allfather's wrists. "You don't. Do that. To my friends!" He bellowed the words and continued the assault, every single slap cracked like thunder as the elf King's face began to bruise and bleed, and before the sight of all nations, the elf King was simply… flatly… bitchslapped until his strength was gone.

"Now go down there and die!" Ainz yelled, and raising the monstrous elf up, he flung his arm down and sent the body to crash into the sands and shake the whole of the arena.

Silence befell the whole of the site, the elf King appeared to be alive, but… groaning.

Finally a speaker's voice called out. "As the injury was not sustained during an official duel, it is the ruling of the arbiters of the tournament that the elf King should be healed and allowed to fight!"

As if that had been the question… but nobody seemed inclined to question it.

A healer approached over the sands at a steady jog, cast their spell, and turned to flee before the injured would-be combatant could rise.

"You're having a bad day, father." Zesshi spat as the elf king began to get to his feet. That made him pause and look at her, he had many children, but none that he knew of looked like her.

"You are…" He began and she confirmed it with a nod.

"You kidnapped my mother from the Slane Theocracy. You ruined her life, and now I'm here to make you pay. You will not enjoy this, and I won't be done quickly, but it won't matter, because you will not survive." Zesshi hocked her spit the way Brain showed her, and launched it past her lips to land directly in his eye.

He snarled and wiped it away, casting the fluid down to wet the sands.

"Bitch… daughter or not, you're going to breed me strong children… and they'll know their places, and they'll give me the world!" He bellowed his furious proclamation, but though the crowd was muted and horrified by the bellow, Zesshi was nonplussed.

"I am not your prey. You are mine." She said and drew her sword.

No sooner than she did so, than power raced through her veins, far more than she'd ever felt in her body before. The former Elf King used every skill he had and Zesshi could feel him activating them all…

'So slow.' She thought, it seemed absurd on its face. His arm sailed past her as she stood aside, she looked down at it, watching it move like molasses running downhill. 'I wonder?' She asked herself, and reached for his fist. She opened his fingers, and then bent two of them backwards, snapping them at the bone.

She broke two more, then the last. Then spun behind him and slashing her sword, she struck his achilles tendons.

Then all was at a normal speed again, and he shouted in pain as he stumbled and fell to the sands.

"Pathetic." Zesshi said, and kicked him in his ass, sending him tumbling head over heels and heels over head in a steady roll that stopped only when he cracked the stone wall of the arena.

The crowd was on its feet, cheering as the self proclaimed villain was being demolished.

"I owe you a lot of pain, you sonofabitch!" Zesshi shouted and sprinted over to where he lay.

She yanked his golden hair and put her foot on his back, she heard the crack of bone within as he struggled, his arms could not however, reach behind him well, nor could he twist under the pressure she was applying.

"Bitch!" He hissed, she took her foot from his back, and swung him by his hair back the way he'd come, tumbling over the sands and battering his body with the ground itself.

She chased after his tumbling body, and did not allow him to come to a halt a second time. Her hand snatched his ankle, and she began to swing him like a club. She watched his teeth scatter as they were knocked out of his head, sent flying like little white pearls to disappear in the sands as his fearsome face became a bloody ruin. Her arm swung him cleanly overhead, back and forth, back and forth, as if the world were a drum and she a drummer.

His left arm was the first to break, with bone tearing through flesh, his right quickly followed.

"Not yet! It's not over yet!" The cheers of the crowd were muted, so he heard her words and felt the blow when her fist connected with his crotch, blood fountained out of his mouth, mixed with the foul taste of vomit, and to his horror, her fingers closed around his manhood and… tore.

She held his favorite toy above her head like a trophy, dripping blood and pent up fluids to the sand, he finally cried out in pain.

"I suppose this is going to end quicker than I hoped… but… all good things must come to an end." Zesshi said as he lay broken at her feet. If there was a bone in his body that wasn't turned to powder, she wasn't aware of it.

"Since you like 'splitting legs open… let's see what all the fuss is about." Zesshi said, and before he could protest, she dropped his manhood, stomped on it, and grabbed his thighs with her bloody hands. Her fingers were worse than steel as they dug into his muscle, and she began to pull them in different directions…

The first tear was audible only to she and he… but then it was clear… obvious, and heard by all as his body was torn in half at the thighs, he had enough life and air left for one single scream, and it was done.

The elf King was in two pieces, torn ragged and unevenly from thighs to chest, a ruined mess only barely identifiable as once having been a man at all.

"My mother is now avenged." Zesshi said to herself, 'And so are the rest of his unfortunate victims… there's only one enemy left. The ones who are keeping my family members as slaves…' She turned her eyes up to the daias, the Allfather's power was obvious beyond measure, and yet he hadn't chosen to compete. 'The woman, the priestess or… or shrine maiden, she did this to me… even as strong as I was, I was never 'that' strong… what did she do? What did Layali offer her…?'

With the cathartic sense of peace settling over her with the end of a lifelong desire, the mystery remained and some concern with it. 'Why would they help me? They don't know me… so why?'

It was a question that demanded an answer, but it would have to wait, for now… she had somewhere else to be, and two people waiting for her there. And with that thought, she walked away from the lumps of meat she left behind, giving an apologetic nod to the unfortunate foursome who rushed past her to clean up the mess.