All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 270: The Coming of the Lord

Chapter 270: The Coming of the Lord

Arthur scratched his head as he watched Lord Void zip out of the tent. After a moment of silence, Captain Major coughed behind him.

"Do you think their plan is going to work?" He asked casually.

"Probably not exactly the way they intend, but I think it won't matter too much," Arthur mused. "The city is as good as ours, from what I can tell. As long as the demons serving the king are contained to the castle instead of being able to roam free. Which, if we do surprise them, is the natural fallback location. And with Lord void here, I don't think we have too much to worry about if things do go awry."

A few of the other officers murmured something about standard tactics. Arthur's gut couldn't help but agree with them a little bit, but still. He was proud of Miss Beatrice. That she had found a way to take the city with minimal bloodshed was commendable. It may have been a little bit less reliable than the good old siege-and-destroy method. But it had much more potential to leave the people on her side and be willing to cooperate when she eventually took over.

That was bound to happen, after all. Who else would take over in the vacuum of power? No, Beatrice was going to have to lead an entire city. The idea would have sounded absolutely absurd up until very recently. But after seeing the girl's ability to handle the church and keep the castle running smoothly over these past months, perhaps it wasn't so far-fetched.

Arthur was proud of her. It wasn't the same kind of pride as he felt with his daughters or sons, honestly. He thought of her more as a favored niece. And so he was happy to see her do well, even if they hadn't honestly known each other that long. Regardless, it was clear that Beatrice was competent yet innocent in some ways. She was a lot like Lord Void if he had to be honest.

After the rest of the meeting wrapped up, Arthur excused himself and walked back to his tent. The army camp was set up in neat rows and regiments, every line perfectly taut and every tent placed just so. Military precision had always been something that Arthur had prided himself in. But more recently, even the men had shown more enthusiasm for the practice. Some even got outright excited about putting up camp, and for good reason.

When you earned experience for just putting up your tent properly instead of sloppily, it was pretty easy to motivate yourself to do everything perfectly right. In fact, he had never been in such an orderly camp, and it had only improved as they traveled. The soldiers were happy to move on, break down camp, and set up camp as many times as necessary because it was an easy level. Natural activity about the tents caused things to become out of order, and whenever they replaced a fallen item or tightened a loose knot, they were immediately rewarded. Assuming they were a follower of Void, of course. But as far as he knew, pretty much every single soldier was now a follower of Void.

Soldiers were a superstitious lot, and when you had literal divinity walking or rolling amongst you, it was pretty hard not to latch onto it. The only issue had been the fights over who held the right to clean up after mealtimes. And, of course, they had all tried to cheese the system by making messes on purpose to clean up later. But if the mess was intentionally made for the sole purpose of cleaning it up again, the recipient would actually lose experience. That put an end to the practice very quickly. You couldn't even make a mess for someone else to clean up intentionally without the consequences.

There were a lot of changes and adjustments to get used to. But they were learning to live with it. The freakishly neat camp, though, would be pretty eerie for anyone who didn't have any background on who the army was, Arthur admitted to himself. Even their camp followers, who included many of the people from the castle who didn't have families or children to watch back at home, set up their things in orderly rows as if to outdo the military. In fact, one would be forgiven for thinking this was some undead necromancer's force if it wasn't for the fact that skeletons didn't need to sleep.

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And to top it all off, this group wasn't just the most disciplined troops he had ever commanded. They were also the most highly leveled. In fact, in any other force, most soldiers would be officers based purely on leveling, whether or not they had any connections or skills relevant to the position. An average of 11 levels per soldier over the winter put them even the most average soldier at the peak of most countries' elite troops. The few old monsters and officers like Arthur himself were all closing in on level 50, which was absolutely unheard of.

An army like this would be nigh unstoppable. So when he considered the city already theirs, it was with good reason. There were only a few wild cards left, and luckily, he wouldn't be the one who had to deal with them. It was all up to the High Priestess and their god.

---

Bee wasn't sure how to address the cult leader's bizarre greeting. "The coming of their lord"? Technically, there was nothing wrong with it, factually, but still. It was the way that he said it: the diction, the intonation, the slight fervor in his eyes. It was almost as though he didn't really understand the implications of his words.

"Void had been in the city for nearly two weeks at this point. Our lord has already come," she answered after several moments of thought. "Surely you can see the signs in the city."

Zeal stood and bowed. "Indeed, I have. The streets are clean, and the people are cared for for the most part. But the world doesn't yet believe! Many more people have been receptive to our cause since the city has changed. But they don't understand what it means for divinity to be walking amongst them. They must be made to understand for his coming to be complete. For our lord to show himself and declare to all that the city shall be cleansed."

"Hmm." Bee stared for a half second, almost getting caught up in the speech. The words made a certain twisted amount of sense. Sure, people should know. Why not share the truth with them? They should know that the benevolent lord has come to save them from the rule of a despot and clean up their city and way of life. But what about the people who didn't believe? Would Void take action against them?

Maybe, Maybe not. She had no real control over what her lord would do, and she didn't want to assume that her master would do what they expected. In fact, she was pretty sure that it would do almost anything but what they expected and likely leave a whole lot of people confused.

As long as she'd known it, she found that even when asked direct questions, Void usually answered with allegories and stories left up for interpretation by the recipient. At least, that seemed to be the case, depending on whether she wrote them down properly or not. Was it right to force their understanding on others? Probably not. Maybe it was hard to deny the truth when it sat in front of her, waving happily and playing ball with the children. But she didn't think Zeal was quite so understanding.

"Well, we will have to interpret what Void wants when he makes it known," she hedged. "But it has been very clear that our master has declared that he wants the city. And so we shall deliver."

"So we shall deliver," Zeal echoed as he sat down.

Bee took the chair across from him. "So, have the members of the church who are also guards done what you asked for them?" Beatrice inquired.

Zeal nodded. "So have all the wagon drivers. And more...."

---

I found Beatrice as she was walking down the main avenue to the northern gate. Today was the day. It was time to take the city.

I wasn't sure exactly when Arthur's army would get here. I hadn't made time to check, as I was busy checking up on our own preparations. Beatrice seemed quite stressed about them, so I figured it might ease her mind to have a second opinion on things.

There were a few issues that I thought she needed to be aware of. First off, some of the wagons blocking the roads needed to be moved more toward the centers of the alleys. Others they had set up in the pre-dawn light weren't properly lined up. There were plenty of gaps and uneven spaces that could easily be fixed with just a little bit of maneuvering. But that was ok. It was an easy problem, and we could solve it together. In fact, I was a bit impressed that this was the most major issue I'd found. She'd spent the last couple of hours helping the people set up, and evidently, it was time well spent.

But just as I was about to inform her of the inefficiencies in the setup, a bell on the wall started ringing in a steady clang, clang, clang rhythm. It sounded suspiciously like a smoke detector going off but with more metal. Or like a giant doorbell indicating that our friends had arrived.