Chapter 404

'This can't be happening!' Alain's frantic thought rampaged through his mind like cattle stampeding away from a wildfire. He saw Heaven and Earth's art get wrapped in the adamantite links of the Divine Chain's singular weapon. 'Who even struck first?!' Alain had to wonder that, he'd seen nothing but the angry faces and accusations… then the violence began.

"Don't you know what you're doing?!" Alain felt his throat tear from the sheer force of his scream of horror as his friends began to kill one another. The Sixth Seat was driving back the Strongest Human, the long swift piercing blade, far too fast for Strongest Human's cumbersome but more powerful ax…

'Attack… attack… attack… always be on the attack even if you're weaker and you can control the fight, you have a chance…' Students of the mighty and followers of one of humanity's once great heroes all heard the admonition as if Raymond were right there with them and this was but another training session.

But when Tenjho's fist burst through the chest of the Divine Chain and the man went still, staring dumbly down at the hole in his body… a hand touching the wet sticky redness and the hole around it as if he couldn't quite understand how the arm in his chest got there… any memory of training together was gone.

The Divine Chain went limp and slipped backward to fall staring up at the dark sky with empty eyes.

"Damn it! When has Zesshi ever lied to us?! When has Raymond?!" Cenna roared at his companions for the first time in all their years working together, still trying to convince the ones who refused to join the turncoat, "How can you do this?!" He shouted and began to use the butt of his spear to strike the hands of the eleventh seat, shattering the bones of her fingers to keep her from casting her spells.

She didn't so much as shriek from the pain as she fell back, raised her hand despite his perfect and painful blows, "Ligh-"

"So be it!" Cenna shouted and dropping down to a crouch, he spun the spear overhead, the blade cut open her throat at the vocal cords, stealing her voice and killing both her lightning spell and herself.

With the Captain's decision clearly made in favor of both Raymond and Zesshi, the battle was truly over before it even began, and when Alain's sword sank into the eye of the third seat, the last resistance came to an end.

"So… we're the loyal ones…" Cenna said and swept his spear out to cast off the blood of the dead. "At least," he looked around at the bodies of those he once called comrades, "at least where it counts…"

"Counts… what even… I don't…" Questions swirled in Alain's head, the haze was coming on fast, "What was this… all this… loyalty… where it counts… we just killed our friends!" He shouted and collapsed to the bloody ground, thudding into place on his knees and stabbing his sword a full meter into the moist earth.

Cenna spat into a divot in the ground that was filled with blood, the spit spattered and then blended in with the red where it disappeared. "I've always protected the Theocracy because it meant protecting the people I like. Most humans are shit, I've got no love for them, let alone a desire to protect them. Besides, the Theocracy is always willing to sacrifice us. Giving anything willing to leave you to die, too much loyalty is just… stupid. Besides… you've seen all the same things I have. If the Theocracy were really protecting humanity, why is most of humanity against it? We keep fucking them all over… and for what? No. This was the last straw. The last. God. Damn. Straw. If Raymond says we're on the wrong side, and they'll throw away the one they've depended on for all this time… we're the baddies. Fuck the lot of them. And as for our friends… they chose the other Cardinals over us. That says all it needs to."

It was a clear dismissal, but the fact that the Captain turned his face away, said plenty about how he really felt, at least to those who knew him best.

"Come on, let's go talk to Zesshi again… we can… we'll take care of the bodies in a few minutes, we can do that, I'm sure." He said and put his back to them to walk away from the place of slaughter.

Any response on Alain's part was stopped by a sudden sharp pain in his head. He grabbed his forehead and squeezed, "It hurts… oh god damn, it hurts…" He winced, he almost wept, out of the corners of his eyes he saw his trio of companions collapse to their knees, groaning as the pain ripped through their brains.

Alain blinked, he blinked hard, he blinked fast… he found himself not beneath the night sky, but a stone one. And his back was not against anything like earth, but rather cold metal. Nor did a moon linger in his vision, instead there was the face of his killer on the left, and the sharp chinned face of the glasses wearing demon on the right.

"Welcome back to life." Ainz said with magnanimity, he put a hand over Alain's chest and tapped his warm fingers over the bare flesh of the hero's torso.

"I… I really was dead, then was that- that a dream?" Alain asked and swallowed the lump in his throat, one look at the Allfather and he could see there was little chance he was right.

"No and yes." Ainz said and Time Turbulence felt the sharp tips of the demon's fingers briefly touch his forehead and peel away a blue crystal fragment.

"Magic… what spell… what did you do to me… what did I see…?" Alain's eyes bugged out, he locked his gaze on the little blue stone as if it were a vampire with fangs ready to bite down on his jugular.

"A vision of probability, possibility… some other future that was somehow prevented. Or maybe diverged. We don't understand all of it." Demiurge said to the human on his table.

"Then this- didn't happen or?" Alain felt relief begin to sweep through his heart.

"Not in this world. But maybe in some other." Ainz answered, "It's shown up in a number of subjects we tested, so we believe that there is at least some possibility that we're seeing an alternate world… a world where the Theocracy's human supremacy became vengeful… brutal… where you brought inescapable destruction down on yourselves" Ainz tapped his fingers over the shaking flesh where Alain's heart still raced.

"Why… why even show us this, was this torture…?" Alain searched his memory for some answer in his training for how to respond to this kind of interrogation, and found none.

"No. It's a call to action." Ainz said and summoning up his sales skills from his old life and every scrap of his charisma. "In that world, the Theocracy's rabid behavior led to its slaughter, a human Neia rampaged over your lands, slaughtered your population, and armies of undead, beastmen, and elves left fewer than half your people alive. Or so we're guessing."

"What… what nightmare caused that future… how do I keep it at bay…?" Alain asked, the smell of burnt corpses still lingered in his nostrils as if he were still there in the aftermath of the vengeful campaign.

"We don't know what started it. That event hasn't been discovered. However, it appears to have been motivated by religion, religion and human supremacy. Which means-" Ainz let the statement hang, and Alain's cheeks went pale.

'We have more of both than the sea has fish. It could still happen… we could still be destroyed…' He understood the implication well enough, and gazing up at the serene, but concerned monarch that had both bested his team and restored him to life… he just couldn't find cause to doubt what he was hearing. 'Why bother lying when he's already strong enough to destroy us?' He realized, so instead Alain asked, "What do you really want, Allfather?"

"Help with a peaceful transition. Refuse to support the actions of your country, let it fall gently so that it can rise again in peace. Your Captain has recognized the truth, he waits for you to do the same. Will you help prevent a world like the nightmare you just saw?" Ainz asked.

"I-I will." Alain answered as the existential dread of an abyss staring into his soul threatened to swallow him whole.

"What about the others? Will they listen?" Ainz asked.

"I'm… I'm sure they will… My Lord." Alain said and felt himself slip back into unconsciousness.

Demiurge stared down into the now sleeping temporary Captain of the Black Scripture. "Remarkable." He muttered, "I expected that everyone would experience this differently. But so far every single one has experienced the same delusion… I wonder if Lord Ainz can guess why…?" His curiosity piqued, he resolved to ask about it later, but for now he knew enough to be confident about one thing for sure.

'Every one of them will join with us, one way or the other.' Demiurge was still smiling when the Allfather entered the room a moment later.

"How did it go, Demiurge?" Ainz asked and stood over the sleeping form.

"They talk in their sleep toward the end, Lord Ainz, suggesting at least some belief in their own awareness of events, but they all experience the same story… it's really a curiosity." He cleared his throat and shook his head to prevent his inevitable rambling from overtaking him, "Ah, regardless… they talk, they go to sleep, but the other three are showing complete loyalty with their captain's agenda, just like this last one." He tapped the unconscious Black Scripture member's steadily rising and falling chest.

"Best of all, they'll all see it as their own idea, since it will be, we're just helping it along." Demiurge grinned with malicious pleasure, and to his joy, Ainz inclined his head toward the archdevil.

"Excellent. I'll wait until they wake up a second time, don't mention my late arrival, I had things to do." Ainz reminded the archdevil and pulled up a chair to wait for their renewed consciousness, it scraped along the ground and Ainz ignored the nasty noise before putting his hand on the barely moving, barely breathing young man.

"I wouldn't dream of it, My Lord." Demiurge said with a little smile on his face that prompted Ainz to laugh before they settled in to wait for a return to consciousness of the defeated and 'realigned' to return.