Paladin 4: Chapter 8 (Patreon)

While Callum was perfectly capable of dealing with these cultists, the same couldn’t be said of the demon lords they’d just summoned. Quite a few of them were at the fifth order, and those behind them were at the fourth order. The demons were packed tight, some riding on top of one another’s shoulders so they would all fit in the summoning circle.

It gave them a less-than-impressive entrance and was probably a lot less grandiose than the entrance the cultists had been expecting from Kortharat, but these demons were desperate to escape the Seven Hells, likely due to his own actions there.

Unfortunately for these demons, they’d jumped straight from the frying pan and into the fire.

Darren tore the remaining cultists shielding the summoning circle with a wave of Divine Aura energy constructs in the shape of flying blades. When the shield went down, he pounced on the Demon Lords within.

Callum stayed in the air while Darren attacked with full speed. A geyser of demonic blood shot into the air, coating the floors and ceilings, snuffing out the candles, and destroying the lines on the ground.

Demon claws, arms, legs, and eventually heads flew in all directions. Faster than a blink, the small army of Demon Lords and their entourage were reduced to mincemeat. His assault came so suddenly and so relentlessly that the cult leader who moments ago thought she’d been saved died from shock upon witnessing the decimation of these Demon Lords.

Less than a minute later, Darren and Callum were the only people alive in the summoning chamber. Any cultists who survived did so by fleeing and running through the halls as fast as their legs could carry them.

“Shall I hunt down the runners?” Callum asked as he hefted his bloody spear. Blood covered his armor and clothes, coating him from head to toe.

Darren shook his head. “I’ll do it.” He was coated in even more blood, but he used his purification ability on himself. The blood turned to white dust and dissipated into Divine Aura that filled the air. He waved his hand over Callum to clean him up as well.

Darren wanted Callum to have the pleasure of rescuing the prisoners. The looks of relief and gratitude were what they endured this kind of slaughter for, and it was important for Callum to remember what he was fighting for.

So Darren chased down the remaining cultists and demons. The evidence for their guilt lay on the sacrificial altars around them. He hoped he could prevent the cult from ever reforming again by cutting these cultists down. It would also ensure that all those prospective cult members would not even have the option of organizing under any of the cult’s survivors. Hopefully, that would cut any ties they once had to demon worship, and they would go on to lead normal lives.

Darren’s new legendary movement skill, One With the Universe, allowed him to perfectly redirect the energy of his environment. He reached deep beneath the earth, where underground currents of water sped over the bedrock and down the nearby mountains. Those currents came to a sudden standstill, and all that energy was transferred to Darren instead.

He soared through the citadel, cutting down cultists one after another. His bloody work was finished in a matter of minutes, and he’d hardly even tested his movement skill’s full abilities when he ran out of enemies to hunt down.

He returned to the central chamber where the cultists had cast their dark ritual and rummaged around in his Inventory for a pair of gloves, a bag, and a chest. He used the gloves to pick up Laura’s discarded dildo, toss it in the bag, and then lock it in the chest before throwing the whole thing in his Inventory. He was only a little worried about the dildo’s corrupting powers, since he was pretty sure he could fight them off. He was more worried about all the places that thing had been. The dead cult leader said it had been with her cult for generations.

After he tossed all the demon remains in his Inventory for later conversion into Divine Aura, then he got rid of all the cultist corpses too. This was a nice citadel, and perhaps he could send some of his people over to the Northern Trade Union to clean it up and get it operational again. There was no sense in letting the rats and cockroaches take it over. Or worse, another band of bandits or cultists.

Darren reunited with Callum a short time later. He was busy directing the survivors in raiding the cultist’s pantry. They were feasting on the freshly baked bread and the pantry full of cheese, though a few prisoners had even gotten ambitious enough to break out the flour and start cooking travel biscuits.

Not everyone who was rescued was having such a merry time, though. Darren and Callum hadn’t wiped out the families of the cultists, and enough of them knew something was wrong that they ran to the citadel’s armory to get some weapons.

Unfortunately, they’d realized something was wrong about the same time some of the prisoners had the same idea. So both groups had rushed to the armory, and the fight that followed was more wanton slaughter than battle.

The prisoners burned with fury for their period of captivity, and they threw themselves at the people, arming themselves with reckless abandon. A dozen bodies lay on the ground already, foremost among them the man Darren spotted earlier. He lay sprawled by the armory door with a sword buried in his guts and a bloody smile on his face. He’d died leading the charge to drive the cultist’s families away from the armory so the prisoners could grab some of those weapons themselves.

Now, both the cultists’ families and the prisoners were armed. Few among them were warriors, which only made the resulting conflict all the more bloody. Powered by hate and desperation, the prisoners threw themselves at their captive’s family members with fearless eyes and a willingness to die, killing those they perceived had wronged them.

The cult’s family members held their weapons with shaky hands as they retreated down the hall in a disorderly mob, defending themselves with clumsy desperation.

Darren realized that if he let this continue, both parties would suffer heavy casualties. They might even lose half the people they planned to rescue to the fighting. Letting them have it out with one another and simply rescuing the survivors would be the easiest solution, but when had he ever chosen the easy path?

“Stop!” Darren shouted, and an aura of overwhelming presence filled the air.

People turned to him, and as they did, tendrils of light shot from around Darren and wrapped around each weapon in view. Normally, he couldn’t use Celestial Storm tendrils to tear weapons from their wielder’s grasps, but these were just regular humans, and his tendrils had more than enough strength to overpower them.

He sucked all those weapons into his Inventory. A few made motions to rush back toward the armory, but Darren used his tendrils to slam the door shut on them and held it closed. If they wanted to keep fighting, they would have to do it with their fists.

Sadly, that was just what some of the newly released prisoners were willing to do. They charged the families of their former captors, and with grim faces, their former captors charged back. They punched and grappled with one another. One of the prisoners went down, and someone on the other side kicked him in the head. That enraged the rest of the prisoners, and when they dragged a young woman from the side of the cultists’ families and threw her to the ground.

Someone pinned her, and another ripped her shirt off to use as a rope to choke her to death. Darren sliced the shirt in two faster than anyone could blink, but the escaped prisoners were insistent, and a moment later, they were trying the same with her torn-off pants.

“I said, STOP!” Darren shouted, and the air rang with his strength of his voice. The citadel reverberated with it, and Divine Aura rushed out from him. This time, everyone did stop. To them, it felt like the heavens themselves had opened up and issued a mandate that would strike them dead should they deny it.

Darren’s patience with them was wearing thin, so that might not be too far from the truth.

“I decide who lives and who dies, not you,” Darren said to everyone fighting. “I have killed those who I wanted to kill and spared those I wanted to spare. This is done, and these people will not bar you from freedom.”

“They’re cultists!” One of the escaped prisoners shouted. “How could you side with them? Aren’t you a paladin?” His face was red with fury, and the blood that coated his hands probably belonged to one of the bodies behind him.

“I am,” Darren replied. “But they are not cultists. The real cultists are already dead. These are their families.”

The man spat. “Same thing.”

But Darren shook his head. “It is not the same thing. Go return to the kitchen. The others are filling their bellies, and you should as well.” He turned to the cultists’ families. “And you, round up all the children and keep them close. I will speak with you later.”

He cast them a dark look, and that seemed to mollify the prisoners a little. The two lines froze for a moment, but Darren stood between them. He rested his Hell-Sundering Sword of Annihilation on his shoulder, and with his massive height, he cut an imposing figure. Neither side wanted to turn him against them.

Darren reached for a cloak from his Inventory and tossed it to the disrobed woman on the ground. He pushed the men trying to choke her to death off her and wrapped it around her shoulders before guiding her back to her friends, who stepped between her and the escaped prisoners protectively.

The standoff between the two factions lasted a few minutes more, but Darren maintained his intimidating presence all the while.

Eventually, the tense moment passed, and the two groups parted ways in peace. Darren followed the prisoners from behind, ushering them toward the kitchen. Once the blood of their fallen comrades was out of sight and being replaced by the scent of freshly baked bread, they rushed to join everyone else in feasting after their long period of imprisonment.

Darren reunited with Callum again and pointed out the troublemakers of the group for him to keep an eye on.

“I’ll watch them closely. Don’t you worry, Darren. Most of them have been pretty good. They just want to gather enough traveling supplies to look for their homes or whatever’s left of them in the wake of the demonic invasions,” Callum explained as he gestured around the busy kitchen.

After reuniting with Callum, Darren left to speak with the cultists’ families again.

He heard them speaking in hushed whispers, and many of those he’d driven off were now gathered in a circle on the opposite end of the citadel. He stopped before making his presence known so he could listen in on what they were saying.

“So it seems that paladin was speaking the truth. We can’t get in contact with anybody who earned their robes...” a grim-looking bearded man muttered, brows tight with worry.

“He’ll definitely slaughter the children and us. We should make our escape as hastily as possible.” A woman wrung her hands through her hair, fidgeting nervously.

“No, no. If he was going to kill us, he wouldn’t have stopped us from getting attacked. You saw how he helped Jess when those prisoners had her pinned. Animals, the lot of them.”

“Hush. The cult imprisoned them, and let’s not forget they were prepared as human sacrifices. Their anger is natural, and I doubt they’re ever going to view us with kindness. Martha fed most of them with her own hand, and they murdered her the moment they escaped.”

The people continued to debate among themselves, but Darren heard what he was hoping to hear. They were focused on escaping their current situation alive and getting somewhere they could lie low. They weren’t thinking about restarting their cult and renewing their practice of human sacrifice.

There was no small share of vitriol thrown in his direction, though. All these people had been associated with the cultists one way or another, so the people he slaughtered had no doubt lost many friends and family members at his hands. Their entire plans for the future had been upended in one afternoon. Oddly enough, they seemed to think he was just one paladin of many and that one or two couldn’t have possibly overrun the entire cult so quickly.

Darren decided to let them think that. He’d already used one of his other bodies to send reinforcements from the Blackwind Empire. Having heard what he wanted to hear, he made his presence known.

With glimmering silver wings, he descended from above. He withdrew his Cloak of the Mysterious Hero, which let all of them observe his presence. All conversation when silent as he approached.

“I have decided what to do with you,” Darren announced.

They stayed silent, waiting with bated breath.

“You will remain here until further notice. Others will deal with you in a week’s time.”

And that pretty much summarized the plan Darren had come up with. Sasha would be among the reinforcements he called for, and so these cultists would soon be her problem.

He didn’t even think about sending them off with the newly freed prisoners. The first thing they’d do when they left Darren’s sight would be to slaughter each other. He’d focus on getting those people healthy enough to travel and then send them on their way. Perhaps King Bogo in Yellowcrest could take them in, or maybe they could help repopulate Salsroth. The survivors there were getting by, and what they needed most were extra hands to help them rebuild and harvest enough food to feed themselves.

***

Callum and Darren spent the following week hunting for bandits, cultists, and other demons in the Northern Trade Union, using the citadel as their base of operations. Some of the newly freed prisoners used that time to look for their old homes, but most of them were too nervous to make the journey and decided to spend a bit more time regaining their strength in the citadel.

Now that they had moved into real quarters and had free rein over the place, they were a lot more comfortable staying right where they were. Darren would have a hard time kicking some of them out, at least until the food reserves ran dry.

The family members of the cultists were the ones who managed the garden, and the occasional supply runs to Yellowcrest to resupply the citadel, and at the moment, they were locked away in their wing of the citadel. The tables had turned for them, and now they got to experience what it was like being prisoners, albeit with better conditions than those their cult had prepared as sacrifices. The children among them were growing particularly rowdy, but until Sasha and the Order of the Rose arrived to keep the peace, Darren didn’t trust the newly freed prisoners and the families of the cultists to get along.

Fortunately, there were plenty of adventures to be had. While he and Callum had defeated the biggest band of cultists, there were still other foes to fight. In particular, there was that one Demon Lord his other body had heard about that needed to be dealt with.

That took them even longer than dealing with the cultists, despite being a much more straightforward quest. The Demon Lord must have gotten news of what happened in the citadel somehow because he abandoned the village he’d laid claim to, packed up all his things, and fled for his life, running eastward to the Eastwood Kingdom.

Their extermination quest turned into a tracking quest that took the two of them deep into the dense wilderness of the Eastwood Kingdom.

“I heard there are trees here that have never been touched by human hands,” Callum said as he gazed upward in awe at the towering giants, each of them standing taller than the walls of Limedeep.

They were truly massive trees. It would take ten men to wrap around the trunks completely, and the bark alone was thick enough to build with. Apparently, the original people of the Eastwood Kingdom had thought as much as well because the ruined village they stumbled across had roofs made of bark shingles rather than the thatch the rest of the Sacred Seas preferred.

“The houses are starting to rot...” Callum shook his head as they examined the ruined and decaying village. “Tragic. It looks like they left in a hurry though, which is a good sign. Every wagon and wheelbarrow is gone, along with all the food in every pantry and the tools in the various shops. They must have gotten clear of the demon attacks, which means some of them might still be alive.”

Darren poked one of the rotting, crumbling houses. This village had been abandoned during the last wave of demon attacks, long before Asmoth’Koteth’s army clashed with Darren at Salsroth. This had been the war that the Order of the Rod had used to utterly destroy the Eastwood Kingdom and get most of their rival holy organizations captured by demons to create soul stones.

This kingdom, which had once been a prosperous nation, was reduced to nothing more than a group of abandoned villages. It might have brought a tear to Darren’s eyes if he hadn’t seen the same sight so many times before.

“It looks like the Demon Lord we’re hunting came through here, past the well,” Darren said as he gestured to the well in the center of the village. Unlike everything else, the well looked like it was in reasonably good shape.

“Yes, I see some footprints here! Odd, I expected this demon to be a big bastard, but the footprints look almost human...” Callum stooped low to examine the marks in the dirt.

“We’ll follow them from the air,” Darren replied. The two took flight, as they’d been doing to cover ground quickly recently. It was tough to move through such dense forestry, and if they were traveling on foot, it would have taken them far longer to cover ground. But once they got clear of the trees overhead, Darren and Callum could travel through the forest with remarkable speed.

If they had been bound to following footprints, they would have needed to keep low to track them. Fortunately, Darren’s ability to sense Demonic Aura had been honed to perfection, so he could ignore the physical trail and focus strictly on the magical one, which was something he could do from above the treeline.

The energy emanations grew stronger, and Darren felt they were growing closer.

“I see movement up ahead!” Callum shouted.

Darren frowned. While they were getting closer, they weren’t nearly that close yet."

But Callum dove beneath the treeline, targeting what he saw. He let loose a ferocious battle cry before vanishing from Darren’s sight.

The next thing Darren heard was that ferocious battle cry turning into a shrill scream, and he feared Callum had bitten off more than he could chew. He rushed in to save his comrade, but what Callum had attacked wasn’t a demon.

When Darren landed, he found Callum on top of a young woman with bright red hair and a furious blush on her face. His spear was sunk midway into the dirt next to them, barely diverted in time to avoid skewering the young woman.

“The Order of the Rod is attacking!” The young woman screamed as she tried to wriggle out from underneath Callum. “Warn the village! Forget about me, it’s too late!”

<Note>

I'm hoping to write a Christmas special again, since I missed last year. The year before that we had that chapter where Theo tied up all the naughty elves and made them into presents.

Any thoughts for this year? Would you guys like something from Spellheart, Paladin, or Amazon Apocalypse?