Paladin 4: Chapter 4 (Patreon)

The following morning, Darren’s wedding with Cassandra began. She had insisted on going first since she was the first to be engaged to Darren.

The event was situated in the palace ballroom, a huge affair that had taken a bit of damage when Darren sliced half the wall away as he cut down the Sinful Servants running through the halls less than a month ago.

The carpenter and mason’s guild had been paid three times their usual fees to repair it with all haste so the imperial wedding could occur without delay. The paint hardly had time to dry before people were hanging up flowers, banners, and other decorations.

Rows of seats lined the ballroom before the altar, and Shrine Maiden Bonnie came over all the way from Limedeep to preside over the ceremony. Normally there would be a priest from the Golden Temple to do it, but Lothar had banished all those who didn’t agree with him, and those who did agree with Lothar weren’t the kind that Thalia wanted in her new Empire. It would take some time to cure the local branch of the Golden Temple of the poison that infected it, and until that happened, it would fall to Bonnie and those like her to fill the gap.

The seats were completely filled, with a crowd standing in the back, with a crowd. Cassandra’s ceremony would be private, but once that was finished, Darren’s marriage vows with Thalia would happen on the balcony above for the entire city to see.

Cassandra’s father was there again. His expression was serious as he stood behind Cassandra, prepared to give her away to Darren. He wore an impatient look on her face since the actual wedding was just for show. The palace was no doubt filled with rumors, and everyone knew Cassandra was Darren’s already.

When he handed her off to Darren, he lifted the veil from her face and smiled. She was even more beautiful than the day they met.

An orchestra of a hundred people set the ambiance, and a dozen young girls walked the gilded carpet, scattering rose petals in all directions. Shrine Maiden Bonnie had prepared a long speech for the both of them after she asked for their vows.

“Cassandra Silvercross, do you join your fate to this man, to take him as your husband, to love and cherish him from this day until the end of your days?” Bonnie asked.

“Yes, I did! Uh... I mean, yes, I do...” Cassandra blushed.

A few chuckles through the crowd. Cassandra’s thunderous moans had woken many of them up out of sound sleep over the last week.

“And you, Darren Heavengrace. Will you join your fate to this woman, to love and cherish her from this day until the end of your days?” Bonnie asked.

“I do,” Darren said.

“Then may your spirits become one! Kiss now, as man and wife!” Bonnie announced.

Cassandra hiked up her dress and leaped from where she stood into Darren’s arms. He caught her and held her up against his stomach, taking a step back to steady himself as Cassandra attacked his face with passion and vigor. Her tongue smacked against his lips as she held on to the back of his head and pressed her face tightly against his.

“Alright, I said kiss!” Bonnie giggled. “You can save the rest of that for the wedding night. Or wedding week, in your case.”

“There’s a backroom off to your left,” Cassandra whispered in Darren’s ear. Darren felt his chest grow damp where Cassandra was straddling him and realized he needed to make his escape with all haste, so that was just what he did.

Leaving all their guests standing there gawking was a bit rude, but this was Cassandra’s big day, so as far as Darren was concerned, she could do whatever she wanted.

The room Cassandra had pointed out had a particularly sturdy bed, the kind that you didn’t find available to just anyone. The wood still smelled fresh, and it was relatively crude with its size and sturdiness. The carpenters must have assembled it in place quite hastily.

“Fuck me, Darren!” Cassandra said as soon as she came up for air after their follow-up kiss.

“You mean fuck you again?” Darren chuckled. It was hard for the wedding night celebration to feel special when it was their fourteenth time going at it that day. Any other man would have been a dried-up husk of himself long before now.

Still, Darren obliged. With one hand, he grabbed her wedding dress and tore it free. With the other, he spread Cassandra’s legs. He planted one last kiss on her forehead before inserting his head into her wet sex, which was already soaking the sheets.

He filled her completely, and Cassandra moaned as her fingers gripped the sheets so tight her nails were poking holes through them. Darren hoped she would at least be a little quiet, considering all the wedding guests were just outside.

“Heavens above, harder! I want you to breed me!” Cassandra screamed.

But apparently, Cassandra had other ideas.

And so breed her he did. She lay on her back, and he bottomed out inside her. He focused his magic in his body, channeling it to certain regions. His powers had allowed him a far greater understanding of his physical form than a normal human would have, and he had used his Divine Aura to reinforce certain aspects of his body in battle before, like his legs for jumping or his arms for swinging his sword.

Now, he channeled his Divine Aura deep into his balls, filling them with an overwhelming quantity of Divine Aura. Power flowed through him, channeled much like a skill. In fact, if he taught this ability to others and put it in a skill book, sigils would probably recognize it as a skill.

But this was tailored specifically for him and Cassandra. His Divine Aura understood her body nearly as intimately as her own, as Cassandra’s Divine Aura had grown from the seed of his own power that he’d placed inside her and fed so that it would take root in her soul and grow her power.

This connection went deep, and this deepness allowed Darren to do what he did to this extent.

Darren felt himself reach his limit just as Cassandra reached her peak. She screamed and hollered so loud the walls shook, and he braced himself against his thighs.

“Do it inside me, Darren! Breed me!” Cassandra screamed as she convulsed around his length.

“Brace yourself,” he warned, grunting as the ability he’d crafted on the spot reached its apex. He exploded inside her, gushing hot seed right as his tip pressed against the opening to her womb. He felt himself gush within her, and Cassandra gasped as he filled her. And continued to fill her. And then continued some more.

Darren’s spirit had the might and power of ten thousand men, and so now that he funneled it all into his balls, he ejaculated with ten thousand times the might and power of an ordinary man.

The bed Cassandra was lying on snapped in two, and her belly swelled as he filled her. The floorboards beneath his feet shattered, and cracks formed in the stone beneath him.

Soon, he’d filled Cassandra with so much cum that an onlooker would have thought she’d become pregnant right then and there. Then the rest of his seed leaked out of her in a great gushing river that soaked the shattered remains of the bed and spread out over the room.

But it didn’t spread far. The stuff almost seemed to have a mind of its own as it climbed up Cassandra’s thighs and legs, desperate to get back inside of her. Some of what escaped her cunt crawled up her stomach and between her breasts until it found its way to her mouth.

It was a disconcerting experience, especially when Darren realized he had some control over his seed. Like his second set of wings, it was like suddenly getting another appendage. Only this one was even harder to control. Fortunately, it seemed to seek out Cassandra instinctively, since the ability that made it was created with the explicit purpose of filling her up as much as possible.

Cassandra lay in a heap on the bed, panting and gasping as she held her hand over her sperm-slick cunt to keep as much of Darren’s seed inside of her as possible. Any other woman would have found the feeling of such a full, swollen womb as painful, but Cassandra was an archpriestess.

More than that, Cassandra was an archpriestess whose soul had learned to thrive in Darren’s power, the very energy it was now surrounded by. To Darren’s amazement, she started soaking in his Divine Aura without any need for processing of conversion like most sigil-wielders would need to do.

Instead of consuming and combining with a fraction of the Divine Aura, Cassandra was able to take in all of it and absorb it with complete efficiency. Cassandra had essentially borrowed Darren’s power without needing to go through the arduous process of making it her own.

Before, she’d been at the very beginning of the fourth order. She’d been an archpriestess, but a weak one in terms of the nature of her soul. She met the qualifications of that threshold, but only barely.

But that had changed with that one orgasm. Her soul was growing by leaps and bounds. If her soul was a seedling, and the fourth-order a bigger pot to grow in, she was now doubling with each passing moment until she utterly filled the pot.

Now, instead of being at the beginning of the fourth order, she was close to the end. As soon as she had time to acclimatize to her new soul and the depths of her Divine Aura reserves, she would be ready to ascend to the fifth order, assuming Darren could help her with that the same way he helped her reach the fourth.

It was a remarkable discovery. If this worked for Cassandra, it would likely work for Morgana as well. And to a lesser extent, with Sasha too. Asuriel had reached her current level of power on her own and might have trouble replacing her power with his, but for those who he’d guided from the beginning, he now had almost everything he needed to take them all the way to the fifth order.

As soon as he figured out what changes took place when a soul ascended to the fifth order, he could elevate his women. That was a relief, since his increased lifespan was actually a source of considerable worry for him. Life without them sounded empty.

He’d already been prepared to figure out how to steal their souls from the heavens so he could keep them for himself after they passed away from old age, but now it looked like he might keep them alive for as long as he’d live.

While Cassandra basked in post-orgasm bliss, Darren crossed his legs and focused on recovering his Divine Aura. That one orgasm had consumed more of his power than any ability he’d ever used, and he’d nearly wrung himself dry. In fact, he’d never felt so completely empty of Divine Aura in years, not since he was in Hell and had to steal what scraps of power he had from demons.

Fortunately, that was a trick that still worked just fine, and he kept plenty of Demon Lord corpses in his Inventory for just such a scenario.

He pulled them out one after another, then purified the bodies and absorbed the Divine Aura. If he had Melancholy, he could have just stabbed them. But Ashe had wanted to watch the wedding, so she was sitting in the crowd with his sword strapped to her back.

But fortunately, his abilities could more than cover for her absence, and it only took a little longer to do everything himself. The Demon Lord corpses dissipated into the air, and he breathed that power-laced air in and made it his own. It would take him some time to replenish himself, but as long as he wasn’t running on fumes, he would be a lot more comfortable.

He’d gone through six dead Demon Lords and had roughly a third of his reserves left when Cassandra finished taking in his seed and was coming back to her senses. He produced a bath from his Inventory, and Cassandra realized she was missing her own wedding.

“Crap, we’ve been tucked away in here a little too long!” Cassandra said, still clutching her slightly distended belly.

They washed up, dressed, and headed out. They got a few strange looks when they reemerged, and the food was already being served.

“Look at that, one lay, and the bride is already six months pregnant!” One man chuckled.

“That Darren Heavengrace is truly a man among men...” another muttered.

“I wonder what exactly they were doing in there...” A young woman blushed. She’d no doubt heard some of Cassandra’s moans.

Lunch went smoothly and was a rather decadent affair. They had custard from the Northern Trade Union topped with fine flakes of shredded gold, meat from purified demons found on the second Layer of Hell, and soup brewed with heavenly water dragon bones and resting on a bed of seraphim feathers.

It doubled not only as a show of wealth but also of resources. If Cassandra and Darren could bring this much to bear for their wedding, what else did they have at their disposal?

But in truth, Darren hadn’t even been able to bring out his most powerful and important items. The unfortunate truth was that the nobility of the Blackwind Empire would die if they tried to consume a steak cut from the body of a fifth-order demon, then purified to give it a divine alignment. Even the last bits of the Heavenly Water Dragon he’d killed had to be watered down into soup so that it wouldn’t cause them trouble.

“How is the food?” Cassandra asked a few of their guests.

“Exquisite! I’ve never tasted such fine custard,” a nobleman in fine robes replied.

“Does this have Divine Aura in it?” asked a woman sitting next to him, likely his wife. She wore a sigil as a pin in her hair, and Darren sensed she was a holy adept.

“It does,” Darren replied.

The woman’s eyes widened as she picked up her bowl of soup and drank from the bowl as delicately as she could while gulping the whole thing down and asking the server for a second helping.

Darren and Cassandra walked away, arm in arm. “It seems the food is going over well! I’ll have to remind everyone to save some room for Thalia’s wedding come dinnertime.”

Cassandra’s wedding came and went, and it went considerably better than Darren feared. Cassandra seemed to enjoy it all.

“You know, we really should have a second wedding in Limedeep. Most of my employees weren’t able to make it to this one,” Cassandra said.

Darren chuckled. “You just want a second wedding night...”

“Well, yes, but the wedding day is fun too...” Cassandra’s eyes were wide and pleading.

Darren rolled his eyes. “When everyone else has had theirs, you can have your second wedding.”

“Yay, thank you, husband!” Cassandra hugged Darren.

***

Thalia had been in the crowd during Cassandra’s wedding, but she wore a veil, and Darren hadn’t been allowed to see since seeing her before the ceremony was supposed to be bad luck. The only bad luck Darren knew about were demonic curses, and if there was someone targeting couples to be wed with demonic curses, it might be a good idea to lure them out so he could kill them and put an end to such things once and for all. But Cassandra ended up talking him out of it, and he abided by tradition.

Thalia’s wedding was a grander affair but, at the same time, a little more reserved. She was a different woman than Cassandra, one who had a lot of responsibilities as the new Empress of the Blackwind Empire and one who desperately needed Darren’s help as a fellow ruler.

Theirs was a joining of one state to another, the King of Limedeep to the woman who would claim her father’s throne as Empress. She had already been coronated, but only through the armies and might of Limedeep would she hold that imperial title.

And their wedding stated as much. There were banners of Limedeep on one side, paraded forth by some of the many sigil wielders and people Cassandra and Darren had brought to the Blackwind Empire from their city.

On the other side were the scant remains of the Imperial Army, most of whom had been recruited the week prior. This was their first real task as members of the Blackwind Empire’s new military, and most of them had been trained by Darren’s people from Limedeep.

It was odd that the far-larger Empire seemed to be in the subordinate position, but such were the whims of fate. The massive Blackwind Empire had found itself at the mercy of the rising star of a city-state on their western border, to where they were even giving away their new Empress to its king.

The crowd was more somber than jubilant, not really knowing what to expect. Would this usher in a new age of glory for the Blackwind Empire and bring an end to the troubled times they’d experienced for the last few decades? Or was this a new age where the Empire would serve Limedeep as its vassal state like the Empire had done to so many smaller nations before?

Nobody knew, but all sensed this wedding marked the beginning of great change. All eyes were on Darren, king of Limedeep, and Thalia, his bride, and the new Empress.

Shrine Maiden Bonnie presided over this ceremony as well, though this time she was far more somber, and the speech she gave was one of duty instead of passion.

“Do you, King Darren of Limedeep, take Empress Thalia of the Blackwind Empire to be your lawful bride under the eyes of the Heavens?” Bonnie asked.

“I do,” Darren replied.

“And do you, Empress Thalia of the Blackwind Empire, take King Darren of Limedeep to be your lawfully wedded husband?” Bonnie asked.

“I do,” Thalia replied.

“Then kiss and let your people and families be united under the Heavens.”

Darren pulled Thalia tighter. Her fingers trembled as he grasped her hands in his, and she looked up at him with wide eyes. He cupped her chin, tilting her head upward and planting a gentle kiss on her forehead.

After a nervous pause, Thalia returned the kiss, and then they turned their entwined hands to the crowd of people watching them from past the balcony over the city.

Sasha was the first to clap, and before long, others joined her, and soon the clapping turned to cheering. It looked like they were thinking this was a good thing, after all.

“I hope Cassandra didn’t exhaust you,” Thalia whispered. “Because I was hoping for a wedding night myself.”

<Note>

Man, this first chunk of the story is ending up with a lot of sex. I guess that’s what you get when the start of the story is all about weddings and sticking around with a bunch of horny women.