118 Chapter 118

The howling winds might have covered words, but they did nothing to cover thoughts which billowed about through Demiurge's mind with the same whirlwind force that they struck and carried aloft the tails of his Lord's white wizard's robes.

'My Lord has been behaving so… oddly, lately. Ever since his return from Carne… or before that, perhaps before the last day?' Demiurge asked himself that question, and then his prodigious mind began to rush back to the beginning. To the very day of his making, and when first setting eyes on the creator, Lord Ulbert.

Lord Ainz was, in his mind, the bridge between the good of Lord Touch Me and the serene evil of Lord Ulbert Alain Odle, the apex of both, the master of the tomb.

And yet somehow it seemed who and what he was since coming to this new world, seemed different.

'It's like he feels something for the animals here, the various sheep… granted some few have the right attitude, and yet still that can't be why he graces them with such mercy? Can it?' His demonic heart was lost in the chaos of his inner life.

Not least because, 'Lord Ulbert… where did you go? Did I fail you somehow? Did I let you down… was I not good enough? Was I thrown away like the others… did I not perform as you wished me to?'

That string of thoughts tightened itself around the black heart within his breast and it was only, only that one among the forty-one remained behind to see them to their end. 'How his indomitable majesty managed to save their creations is something my feeble mind will never understand.'

Reverence for the One Who Stayed was one of the horses on a chariot team, beside that one ran his doubts about his worthiness to serve, born the day Lord Ulbert said farewell and disappeared.

Beside that one lay his ambition, 'I will prove that I should not have been abandoned… I will devote myself to the last service of the Supreme Beings… if… if I gift to him the world… Perhaps my father watches me? Perhaps he still cherishes his son and waits for me to make him proud?' It was a possibility, a dubious one, a doubtful one, but the mere possibility kept Demiurge, the mighty archdevil, up late on more nights than he would have willingly spoken of to anyone.

Yet in front of him was the last of the team of four horses, Lord Ainz, who remained, trusting in all his servants seemingly without question. 'Never will you doubt me… I won't let you down.' His zeal to prove himself to the vanished Ulbert, his grand creator, was matched by his zeal to serve the last creator to remain. The one to lead all the Supreme Beings.

And yet Lord Ainz was being strange.

It wasn't one thing.

It was many little things, as the undead lord who unleashed his aura of despair, he seemed to stand above all. Even now, he still had something of the divine about him, and yet the little things, the shake of fingers, the total concealment even of his face behind the mask, 'Why?'

The struggle to comprehend this led to blasphemous thoughts, things that he dared not even imagine in his wildest of dreams or most confounding of concepts.

In the end Demiurge found comfort in one thing.

'It is simply all according to his ten thousand year plan.'

That knowledge of the Supreme Being's great masterpiece woven over the tapestry of time filled the archdevil with excitement that transcended and consumed all anxiety every time questions raised themselves in ways he dared not entertain for long.

"Demiurge?" Ainz asked without looking backward at him.

"My Lord?" He asked with a voice of trepidation at the muffled voice of the King.

"What am I to you?" Ainz asked.

"I don't understand, my Lord?" Demiurge said, raising an eyebrow and holding his shaking hands behind his back. Though not affected by the cold, such an intimate question shook him to the core.

"Am I merely your King? Or am I more? To a child, a father is a provider, a protector, a steady guide, a disciplinarian, a confidant, a teacher… many things. Aura is a sister to Mare, but also his confidant, his friend, his comrade, and a guide he listens to. So… what am I to you?" Ainz clarified his question to the archdevil.

"My Lord… to answer that question in full I must ask a moment's thought for my feeble mind to answer you best…"

Ainz gave a quiet nod, and that left Demiurge in quiet reflection as they rounded the bend and ascended the mountain further. As they went around the bend they both briefly paused upon seeing something unexpected.

Ainz raised his hand to stop the archdevil in his tracks. "That," he said, "looks to be an entrance… but an abandoned entrance. No guards, fallen snow not moved aside… be on your guard, Demiurge." Ainz ordered.

"My Lord… allow me to go forward first and check for danger." Demiurge hastened to say, and when Ainz' warding hand came down, Demiurge approached.

The double doors were broad and carved in a very simple way with simple block patterns etched into a solid stone. These blocks were patterned to look like stacked columns that widened into wider squares at the top and bottom.

The stone itself was gray and likely granite, clearly carved into the mountainside itself. Around the wide gate were great crags that jutted out like teeth from a terrible maw, and from above the once distant snow fell freely.

Demiurge stood in front of the door and put his hand on the surface, the smooth carvings were cold as the icy mountain, but other than their artistry there appeared to be nothing special about them.

Nothing, except a very mild 'seal' enchantment. 'Sealed… sealed with no guards, nobody was planning to come this way again, not for some time.' Demiurge found that reasoning to be simple enough, there was no evidence that anyone passed in or out of the gate at all recently, and come to that, no evidence that the trail was being maintained either. 'Scattered stones would have been swept aside by carts or travelers, even a race who prefer to stick to their mountains won't cut themselves off completely from the outside world. Trade was always a factor, so if not through this gate, then where? And why abandon a gate like this?'

"Demiurge?" Ainz asked.

The archdevil looked over his shoulder, "It is sealed with magic, My Lord. Yet the magic in question is unique. It isn't the standard enchantment. This is an example of Runecraft."

"You can break it, I assume?" Ainz asked rhetorically.

"Easily, the runes comprise a puzzle which require knowledge, but I can break the seal with my own power easily, or simply shatter the gate, it is only granite after all." Demiurge responded with a derisive snort.

"Then do so." Ainz commanded. Drawing back his hand, Demiurge punched the gate, the sound of shattering granite was like thunder over the mountain side and echoed all the way down to the valley below. Chunks of broken stone hurled within and smashed into yet more, smaller pieces as they cracked against the stone.

"Good work," Ainz said with a sharp nod, "now let's go visit the dwarves."

They then stepped inside, allowing the mountain and the darkness to swallow them both whole.