Paladin 4: Chapter 13 (Patreon)

Princess Clair of the Eastwood Kingdom entered her room with heavy footfalls and flopped herself down in her usual spot on a cushion by her window. She wiped the makeup off her face with a cloth as she settled in to watch the city and sit through another long day of accomplishing nothing.

Her auburn hair fell in waves around her shoulders as she turned to stare through the shutters and look down from the top of her tower onto the rest of the city below. Behind her, she heard the Order of the Rod’s men going about their business, completely unaware of the discontent of Clair’s ears on them, hoping that, for once, they might forget to lock the door to her room.

Unfortunately, the distinctive click that came a moment later soon told her otherwise. Those heavy iron gates looked like they belonged in a prison cell, not a princess’s plush and pink, girlish room. They’d given her little enough freedom back when her parents were alive. Now that they were dead, she had none at all.

She turned her head to see the man’s hands as he locked the heavy iron gates, securing her in her room again. It was a routine she had become all too familiar with over the past few weeks. She used to be under constant guard by third-order paladins, but they’d downgraded to holy adepts, and now it looked like she was going to be guarded by a pair of ordinary men.

Not that she minded. Though they pretended to be her honor guard, they were her prison guards. That was why the door locked from the outside, and she was only ever allowed out once a day to wave to her people and remind them she was still alive.

Tears threatened to spill from Clair’s eyes as she thought of her parents, killed in the last demon attack. Now she was a pawn in Whiteguard’s game. A captive princess who would linger in her bed chambers until Whiteguard saw fit to send a bride she’d be forced to marry.

Her father had been a minor lord out of favor in his homeland and exiled to the wild north. The two hadn’t had the easiest relationship, but they learned to get along well enough eventually.

Somehow, Clair didn’t think she’d have it so easy. This latest wave of demon attacks and undone fifty years of work rebuilding Eastwood, and now her kingdom was poorer than ever. The fields they’d been restoring had been trampled, and people were too frightened of the demons in the woods to even cut lumber upstream, which was their last major source of trade.

“Be strong, Clair...” Princess Clair muttered to herself as she squared her shoulders and turned away from the window. As grim as her prospects were, she was still the princess of Eastwood. She had to maintain her court and be a beacon of hope for her people and a reminder of their lost glory.

Castingwatch had been a bustling city as recently as a few years ago, filled with merchants, nobles, and common folk. But with little to trade, the merchants left. These days it was just the common folk and nobles, but with the common folk getting poorer by the day, every noble with the connections to leave for Whiteguard was setting sail.

The damn turncoats switched sides on her, betraying the kingdom of their ancestors and the royal line that gave them their titles in the first place. Now, Clair, the princess and rightful ruler of Castingwatch and the entire Eastwood Kingdom, was nothing more than a prisoner in her family’s own palace.

It was warm and more comfortable than the conditions most of her people were enjoying, but the lock on the door and the iron bars around it meant it could be only one thing. A gilded cage for a captive princess. She was helpless to aid or influence her people, and all she could do was look out her window and watch them toil below.

Today, the city was in chaos. Clair squinted into the distance, eyeing the crowded streets below. Suddenly, most of the people in the market square started running. She watched as a woman armed herself with a frying pan, another with a poll, and a third with a felling axe. Approaching them was a clumsy and shambling man. Clair sensed something off with him immediately.

A moment later, the shambling man lunged at the woman with a frying pan and stopped only when the axe-wielder buried his tool in the shambling man’s head. But the shambling man didn’t stop moving until the axe-wielder tore his tool free of the skull and exposed its inner confines to the light and the open air. The cloud of black mist that shot from the skull told Clair everything she needed to know. That hadn’t been a shambling man. That was a zombie!

Several other zombies followed the first, striding toward the surviving humans with a singular purpose. The humans of her city were prey to these undead creatures.

“Guards!” Clair yelled. “Report to Commander Xavier immediately! There’s an undead outbreak in the city market. They need to sweep through the streets and cleanse it before it spreads too far!”

From her window, she could just barely make out the looks of fear and desperation on her people’s faces as they fought for their lives. There was a bystander somewhere in that crowd, a holy adept who must have been a traveler. He fired off an ability that shot balls of white fire at the nearby zombies. Clair thought he might hold the line, at least until something far more powerful appeared.

He was huge and hulking, as tall as a paladin. Worse, Clair was pretty sure she recognized the armor he was wearing.

Combined with that big blue cloak...

No. It couldn’t be. How could someone like Captain Xavier turn undead? Her eyes must have been deceiving her. He was the most powerful man in Castingwatch.

Her guards hadn’t responded. They stood by her door just as before. “We have to do something! Those people in the market are in danger. An undead outbreak becomes exponentially more powerful the more lives it claims. I can see the miasma spreading from my window!”

The guards exchanged a skeptical look, clearly unaccustomed to taking orders from their captive princess. “I’m sorry, princess, but our orders are to guard this door. Not to relay messages for you.”

Clair scowled. “Come in and I will point the miasma out to you.”

The guards glanced at one another again, and eventually, one of them opened the locked gate with a sigh and strode into Clair’s room. There, she pointed out the growling black cloud over the market and the running people.

“It seems there really is a problem in the market district...” the guard muttered.

“Please, just tell the paladins about it,” Clair pleaded. “The city needs them.”

“They probably already know.”

“But hearing it again wouldn’t hurt anything.” Clair batted her eyelashes and smiled hopefully.

“Alright, fine. I’ll relay your information just to make sure they know what’s going on,” the guard grumbled. He ordered his companion to stay in place while he ran off to send a message.

Minutes ticked by, and Clair grew increasingly worried. That her remaining guard looked worried didn’t bode well.

“Should he be taking this long?” Clair asked the remaining guard.

“It shouldn’t have taken him more than a minute or two, and it’s been nearly fifteen...” the remaining guard muttered.

“Perhaps you should check on him.” Clair crept up to the metal bars.

The guard looked doubtful. “I’m not supposed to leave my post.”

She reached out to touch the guard’s wrist. “You can’t be expected to adhere to protocol when there’s an undead attack. I’ll be safer if you find out what’s happening. Go, please.”

The guard’s face flushed at her touch. Captive though she may be, Clair was still a princess and a rather beautiful princess at that. The distraction was just enough for him to not notice her hand snatching the key from his waist.

“Alright. But stay here! I don’t want to get in trouble with the captain!” The guard turned and ran down the stairs toward the rest of the palace.

Meanwhile, Clair held her prize in her hands like the precious thing it was. She waited to hear if the guard would come back. If he did and everything was fine, then she would pocket the key for a rainy day. But if he didn’t come back, she might have to use it a lot sooner.

She paced the floor anxiously for a few minutes, stopping every so often to listen for footsteps down the stairs or look out her window. The cloud of miasma was spreading, and no one was rallying to fight the undead. Where were Captain Xavier and his paladins? Most of them had left for Whiteguard last week, but they had to have left some of them here...

Unless they had abandoned Castingwatch entirely. That would also explain why an undead infestation could spring about in the middle of a city. A decent priestess would have been able to sense the miasma building long before it took over its first corpse.

Clair knew she wouldn’t find any answers where she was, so she took her precious key and flipped it around to fit snuggly in the lock. Then she turned the key and stepped outside of her room without a guard for the first time since her parents died.

Deciding it would be best to act casual about her little escape, Clair hiked up her skirt and strode down the stairs, listening for the sound of people. The kitchen was located on the ground floor of her tower, so that was where she ended up first.

“What are you doing here, my lady?” One cook asked, her voice rising with surprise. She dropped the rolling pin she was holding like a club. “It isn’t safe for you!”

“What do you mean?” Clair asked, though she had a good idea what the problem was.

“The guards said there’s been a massive zombie outbreak in the city. Nobody can contact Captain Xavier or any of his men either, which means we don’t even have any sigil wielders. It’s just a few men with swords against an undead horde! We’re certain to be overrun. You need to get to the docks and flee to Whiteguard!”

Clair’s heart sank as she realized things were even worse than she feared. “I’m not going to run. Tell everyone who can hear you as they flee through the streets that I, Princess Clair of Eastwood, do hereby cordially invite them into the palace.”

“What, you want the entire city to hide here?” the cook asked incredulously. “This place is hardly built for defense.”

“No, but the old palace was. The catacombs beneath us are still there, equipped with supplies and defenses to fend off an undead army and protect the citizens of a city far larger than our current Castingwatch. It is the safest place to go.”

“I’ll... I’ll spread the word if I can, my lady...” the cook said reluctantly.

Clair sent her a confident smile in return, though inwardly she was just as nervous as the cook. Still, she put up a bold front as she addressed the other castle staff and found out what they knew. Things were grim out there, and her two guards had been commandeered shortly after leaving her side to help fight their way to the docks. Apparently, some castle staff had seen them seizing one of the last ships in port and fleeing with all haste. So much for the brave men of Whiteguard meant to protect them.

Though the zombies had yet to arrive, the disappearance of the guards had thrown everyone else into chaos. The staff knew the guards knew something that everyone else didn’t, and the lack of activity from Captain Xavier’s paladins meant it had to do with the sigil-wielders being even more understaffed than previously believed.

Clair spoke to more people, all of whom were surprised to see her out of her room. She encouraged them all, but also tried to find out what they knew. The news she heard didn’t bode well for the city. When she confirmed the spread of the undead with her own eyes on the battlements, her stomach dropped.

“Keep the gates sealed, but set up ladders over the outer walls. Most zombies don’t have the coordination to climb a ladder, but people do,” Clair instructed. And for lack of someone else to lead them, her people did as she asked.

“Now, everyone, gather in the palace courtyard. The entrance to the old palace is buried there.”

People arrived to find their princess with a shovel, wiping sweat from her brow. More than a few of the men who’d arrived in the palace thanks to her warning and offer of sanctuary, felt guilty just looking at the sight, so they followed her lead, grabbed some shovels, and made short work of the job before them.

“I think I hit stone!” One man said.

“That should be the main entrance. Let’s get it uncovered. After that, there should be a puzzle to solve,” Clair replied.

“A puzzle?”

“To fool undead. Only the strongest undead have enough cognitive power to be sentient, so most can be kept out with a few simple traps.”

There were a few murmurs of understanding, and soon Clair and the men were hauling the heavy stone entrance out of the way. Clair was the first to enter, and someone passed her a torch. Her people filed in behind her, trailing after their princess as she carried the only light in the dimly lit cavern. It seemed fitting, since she was the only hope for so many of these people.

Before long, they came across the first of the puzzles left behind by Clair’s ancestors meant to foil any undead hoping to get in, but be simple enough to solve for any living human desperate to reach safety.

Clair knew from her studies and exploring these catacombs as a child that the password was a simple matter of spinning the lock until the four disks spelled the word open.

The only problem was the language those symbols were written in. Once common, the old language of the Eastwood Kingdom had been lost to memory. The growing popularity of the Golden Temple over the last hundred years and the kingdom’s increasing trade dependence on other nations meant they had given up their old form of writing and switched over to the script of the Blackwind Empire. As a result, there were very few who could read these long-forgotten symbols.

But Clair was one of them. She wracked her memories, figuring out which of the blocky letters represented what letters. She scrambled to work the stone disks while the people behind her stared at the puzzle in despair.

“We’re locked out! We’ll never get through!” A man cried out behind Clair.

“No... we’ll get through about... now!” Clair said as she dialed in the correct combination to open the doors. “Everyone through, quickly! Close them up once the last person is through. If we hear people coming, we’ll open them from the other side.”

More than a few people gaped in awe at their princess so quickly solving the first puzzle, but that was far from the only one. Soon everyone was headed through a room whose bridge would only rise from the ground when a special key was inserted. Another had six keys that needed rearranging into the proper pattern, taken from a board game popular a few hundred years ago.

“We would be completely lost without you, princess!” The man who’d spoken earlier said in admiration.

A few others also added their praise, but they were interrupted by a noise from far behind them.

Graaa...

The long moan echoed out was somewhere between twisting metal and the rumble of moving earth.

“I think that was the doors being torn open and thrown aside...” Clair said, face pale with worry. Her mind flashed back to the hulking brute of an undead she’d seen earlier. “We need to head deeper into the catacombs. The fortifications and traps there should hold it!”

Clair and her people raced down the halls, but the further they ran, the louder the groaning noises got. But eventually, Clair found what she was looking for.

“There! Off to our left is one of the shelters. The doors are reinforced with iron and stone, and between them are many layers of sawdust to dampen all noise. The undead sense by sound, body heat, and sensing the presence of human souls, all of which so much sawdust should dampen. Behind those doors, you will be safe,” Clair said as she dialed in the password to open the doors to the shelter.

“I sense you’re not coming with us, princess...” the man who’d taken to speaking for the survivors following Clair said.

“You’re right. There are other paths through the catacombs, some far more treacherous. I will lead the undead down those paths hoping the traps left behind by my family can deal with them.”

“But...”

Clair shook her head. “No buts! Unless you think you can solve my family’s puzzles faster than these undead can break through them?”

There were a few grumbles from everyone after all their princess had done to help them, but her decision was firm.

Clair doubled back to the last door she’d opened. She shut the door and ran through the symbols until the door was firmly locked, then she turned in the other direction. Her ancestors had prepared for just this sort of situation, where someone like her would be running from undead and trying to divert their pursuers away from more vulnerable survivors.

The puzzles would get harder, and the traps more deadly. That was intentional because it would make it a lot harder for semi-intelligent to pursue. Though from the sounds Clair was hearing, what was chasing her was getting past through less puzzle-solving and more tearing through walls with sheer brute force.

She ran faster, drawing their attention so they’d chase her down the treacherous hallways instead of the safer route that led to all the survivors she’d just saved.

“Follow me, you big, ugly, undead bastards!” Clair shouted. She heard their groans increase in volume, along with the sound of another door being torn asunder.

Now that she was running, her dress was getting in the way. It was already torn from her earlier encounter with a zombie, so there was no harm in doing a little more damage to it.

She tore open the side so it wouldn’t restrict her movements and kicked her heeled shoes off so she could run without issue. Soon, she made it to the next trap her ancestors left behind. Six sets of swinging axes dangled overhead, swaying like pendulums. There was timing to their movements and, judged correctly, there was always a moment to slip past. The undead wouldn’t be able to time it properly and would take at least a little damage from the flying axes, but a human would be smart and agile enough to slip by unscathed.

Clair made it through without issue, but her dress was another story. The tear she’d put in it meant it billowed behind her like a cloak, and the swinging axes behind her sliced the back half of it clean off. The ankle-length gown she was wearing was now something scandalously short.

The next trap tore her dress even further. She had to jump over a series of spikes that shot out of the ground, and part of the dangling fabric trailing behind her got caught. That tore the loose fabric around her back and away from her stomach. Her maids would have been absolutely mortified to see their princess wearing something like this.

Next, she had to crawl through a narrow tunnel, too small for any undead above the size of an average adult man. The shambling undead would have a particularly tough time getting through this tunnel, especially if they didn’t notice it was boobie trapped as well.

Clair’s shoulders rubbed raw against the narrow cavern, and once on the other side, she armed the deadly trap. A thin wire lay across the exit, obvious enough to human eyes but too faint for the nearly blind undead to see. They would trigger it as they emerged from the tunnel, and the trap would send the ceiling crashing down on that narrow cavern and crush Clair’s pursuers to paste.

At least, that was the plan. She held her breath in hope when she heard the tremendous crash, but then she heard stone grind against stone, along with the hideous noise of enchanted steel cleaving through hard granite.

Clair realized she had to step up her pace. The difficult traps she was up against soon became incredibly difficult. Instead of just moving keys around, she had to find the keys hidden in their surroundings, insert them into their proper locations to unlock other keys, and then open a chunk of heavy wood and steel thicker than she was tall. These sorts of puzzles were exponentially more difficult than those before it, and they foiled even the intelligent undead. Clair herself would have long been halted in her tracks if not for the fact that she’d read some of her family’s old books on these catacombs.

But with pressure heavy on her shoulders and the sound of her pursuers growing ever louder. What kind of sword could cleave through stone and steel so easily? The undead following her must have been tremendously powerful and tremendously persistent.

It was that fear and tension that made Clair make her first mistake. She was reaching shoulder-deep into a hole to turn two keys at once. But she must have miscalculated because she heard a noise that sounded nothing like the next door opening.

She felt cold metal snap around her wrists. In an instant, a pair of manacles had wrapped around her outstretched wrists as she buried her arms elbow-deep into the two keyholes. She was stuck!

An undead caught like she was attempting to solve this puzzle would have been easy pickings.

“Not good... not good!” Clair muttered, face full of panic.

But she didn’t let the fear get to her. There was a way out of this.

She stayed calm, twisting the two keys in either of her manacled hands. She just needed to switch the keys so she was holding the right one in either hand. Then the doors would open, and she’d be free.

She did just that, and after a bit of work transferring the keys back and forth with her teeth later, the door swung open, and she was free. Though she was only free in that she was no longer bound to the door. Her hands were still manacled together. This was going to make solving the rest of the puzzles a lot harder.

And harder it was. The very next puzzle she faced involved stepping on an elaborate series of pressure-weighted tiles. But just when she reached the end, a length of rope whipped out from where it was concealed along the ground and swept Clair off her feet until she was dangling upside down in the air.

Clair’s heart pounded. She’d been undone by a classic hunting trap. She could hear the undead giant chasing after her. Was this the end for her?

Her mind raced as she hung upside down. She had to find a way out of this and find it quickly.

She wriggled and squirmed, trying to break free of the ropes that held her captive. But it was no use — the knots were tight, and her options were limited with her hands bound.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. Fingers scrambling, she knew she needed to get to the knot, and that meant working her way up her own body. She grabbed onto her dress, fingers digging tightly into it as she pulled herself up. Her hands came away with scraps of cloth, but she didn’t care as she hauled herself up and eventually got a good grip on her leg. Bent over on herself, she shimmied up on her side and struggled to pull herself a little closer toward her ankles.

Once there, she tried to work on the knot. But it was so tightly wound as her weight pulled it taught that her fingers had no chance of working it loose. But it turned out the manacles on her wrists weren’t entirely useless. The edges were sharp and rough with years of accumulated rust. Just rough enough to grind away at the fibers of the rope like sandpaper.

The sound of heavy footfalls grew ever louder. Just what kind of monster was following her?

She worked at an ever more feverish pace, sawing away at the rope until the line started to fray. Eventually, the knot grew thin, and she fell to the ground with a heavy thump.

Clair groaned as she rolled her feet, ankles still tied tightly together as she hopped to the end of the trap. The doors had swung wide as she completed the last puzzle, though she’d failed to evade the trap at the end.

The grinding sound of metal cutting through wood and stone echoed through the hall, and Clair realized her pursuer was right behind her. She frantically closed the door, sighing with relief as it clicked closed. Now she needed to cut her ankles free, then get far enough ahead that—

A massive sword slammed right through the thick wooden door. It carved a hole right through the door, and out of that hole, a hulking brutish hand shot out and snapped the lock in two. This was it! This was the end of her. Soon, the undead would tear her to shreds. She was just grateful that she’d been able to get so many of her people to safety beforehand.

All the action and anxiety caught up to her then, and she felt consciousness slipping away from her out of fear and utter exhaustion. She’d done her best, and this probably wasn’t something she wanted to be conscious for, anyway.

She passed out, tumbling to the cold stone of the underground catacombs just as her pursuers burst through the door.

If Clair had stayed awake a moment longer, she would have realized the person chasing after her wasn’t an undead after all. He was a tall-broad shouldered human man with golden hair and bright eyes. Behind him were three women with pairs of wings.

“Yeah, smash the stupid puzzles, Darren!” Morgana said. “Screw those things!”

“Hey, guys, look! I think we found the princess!” Asuriel shouted.

“Why is she all tied up?” Sasha asked.

<Note>

Man, the things I do to give Darren a tied-up princess.

I’m not sure if this interlude will make it into the final version of the book, but it sets up a neat scene I wanted to write for the next chapter. It also leaves us with a semi-important character I can use later if she becomes important again. She won’t do too much in this book, but if I end up doing a second arc for the series, Clair will be relevant again.

I think the reason it went so much longer than planned is because I’ve been playing a lot of Resident Evil 2, and I realized I had a princess named Clair running from undead. Adding the puzzles and traps just sort of happened on its own at that point. If I like this chapter enough to keep it, I will probably trim it down to half this size. Maybe start it when Clair is already running from the zombies halfway through. And ditch the part about all the other survivors she helped.

I could also do a full rewrite. My other idea was a little simpler -- Captain Xavier and the other paladins would still be alive, and they’d have captured Clair and be using her as a hostage to get the survivors in the city to build them a boat so they could sail back to Whiteguard.

The following chapters would be basically the same, with maybe a few tiny changes. And most importantly, Darren still gets his tied-up princess, which is the important part. I need it for a joke later.

I haven’t decided yet, but I’m trying to keep a good pace with this book, and I can’t really afford to be slowed down too much, so I’m just going to roll with this for a bit, then double back and readdress things later.