Paladin 4: Chapter 38 (Patreon)

Shortly after receiving his quest and a bit of advice on the Sixth Order and on where to find the quest items he’d need, Darren returned to the surface. Laura was sorry to see him go, but she understood as well as he did that he didn’t have all the time in the world.

“Darren! You’re back already?” Thalia said upon his return. Her face went pale, and her lips and brows drew tight with concern. “Did the Lady of Darkness turn you away for not bringing enough sacrifices?”

“No, the gifts were plenty,” Darren replied. “I went there. We talked, and she helped me with a quest.”

Thalia looked skeptical. “Ashe, you were there. Can you share the details with me?”

White mist swirled before Darren, and he pulled Melancholy from his Inventory and deposited it on the floor so Ashe and Thalia could talk.

[The Lady of Darkness attempted to seduce Darren with all manner of peculiar perversions...] Ashe began. [Come, I’ll tell you all about her wicked ways.]

Darren had important things to do, so he left Ashe to fill Thalia and, eventually Cassandra in about what happened during his brief trip to the Seven Hells. But in the meantime, he also needed to find Callum, Sasha, and perhaps Cassandra.

“What do you need, Darren?” Callum asked when Darren tracked him down in the capital of Whitegaurd. He and Sasha were helping with the kingdom’s reconstruction effort.

“I’m looking for the Heart of a Realm and a Relic of Ancient power,” Darren explained.

Callum frowned. “Well, if Whiteguard has any, they’d be in the palace treasury or the Heavengrace family vault. I think you’ve already looked through both. But I’ll put the word out through my people. Perhaps some of them know where one might be.

Being reminded of the Heavengrace family vault got Darren’s hopes up, but they were dashed again when he walked through it and found nothing to satisfy either quest requirement.

After, he hunted down Sasha in the hopes she had some clues.

“You know, I’ve heard of the city of Marsa having many strange and exotic magical artifacts. They’re not part of the Sacred Seas, but I’ve heard stories from merchants. I’ll ask around,” Sasha promised.

Darren also set out a quest to all the sigil-wielders of his forces.

New Quest Available

Locate the whereabouts of either a Heart of a Realm or a Relic of Ancient power.

Information leading to the location of either will be heavily rewarded.

Darren launched the quest and sent it to everyone while also setting a few of his lower-level clone bodies to searching. Then, with progress being made on that front, he found a quiet place to sit and work toward reaching the Sixth Order.

He pulled out the book Laura had given him during his first visit to her home, containing all her insights about the Sixth Order. If he was to make use of the quasi-Genus Loci Laura had offered to help him build, he would need to reach the sixth order and become capable of using it. Only then would it be able to serve its purpose of helping him fight Kalaziel.

Darren sat hunched over Laura’s book as he settled in for a long meditative thought deep within Whiteguard’s deepest chambers. His eyes scanned the neat lines of text, looking for anything that jumped out at him.

If he was a demon, this book alone would be enough to reach the sixth order and become a Prime Sin from his current power level. He had accumulated enough raw aura for the transformation. All he needed was to find a concept that would resonate with the kind of power he wanted to wield. He guessed he had an affinity for bloodshed, and if he were a demon, he might become the Prime Sin of Slaughter or something similar.

But he wielded Divine Aura, not Demonic Aura, so he had to reverse the advice before applying it to himself. Perhaps there could be a Prime Saint of Slaughter, but that didn’t fit. While Divine Aura could be just as ruthless as Demonic Aura, it was more calculative and less bestial. While the Demonic Aura turned spirits ever more like beasts, Divine Aura turned spirits closer to clockwork machines like the ophanim.

So what was the opposite of slaughter? Protection? Guardianship?

Darren tried out the two concepts for size, feeling each like trying on a new suit before buying it. Neither fit quite right. If he was a protector or a guardian, he never would have left Limedeep. He would have sat there and prepared his defenses and waited for Kalaziel to come to him. Instead, Darren had taken over the entire Sacred Seas. He even ventured into the Heavens themselves to take Kalaziel on there.

Though he guarded what he loved and protected those he cared about, neither aspect suited Darren well. He was something a bit more active. More aggressive.

Battle, then? He could be the Prime Saint of Battle. He certainly knew how to fight and enjoyed completing them. Being the Prime Saint of Battle wouldn’t be so bad, though it felt below being the Prime Saint of Honor, like Horon, or the Prime Saint of Valor, like Kalaziel. Both were wider-reaching concepts than the clash of weapons in large-scale conflicts. Not to mention that Darren fought alone more often than with an army at his back. How many parties needed to duel before a fight became a battle?

Laura’s book was filled with all sorts of esoteric knowledge about patterns of energy circulation and diagrams of how Demonic Aura should look within a Prime Sin’s body. While informative, needing to translate such things into Divine Aura and guess what changes would be present in his body when he reached the Sixth Order made the process an incredible challenge. It took all of his focus to puzzle through, but pieces slowly started clicking into place.

He saw how a demon’s aspect related to the boost in their power. His Hollowed Idol skill allowed him to draw power from all those who held reverence for him that bordered on worship. A demon or seraph’s aspect was the same but even wider reaching. They tapped into the very concepts they claimed as their domains.

Darren was even more reluctant to choose anything but the best aspects. For a while, he suspected an aspect could be shifted or guided to grow over time, but once it was established, he doubted it would be possible to change it. Once he made a decision, he would be stuck with it for a very long time. If he picked a subpar aspect and was unable to defeat Kalaziel, it might be centuries before he could rally his strength to new heights for a second attempt. And there was no telling how much stronger Kalaziel would become in that time.

He needed something more common than battle. Something fierce and bright that burned within every mortal soul. Not only that but something that resonated deeply with his own soul. He needed something that spoke to him and would provide him with its power.

What had driven him for so long as that boy lost alone in the depths of the Seven Hells? At first, his mother’s guiding hand had kept him alive, but after she passed, there was one burning desire he remembered creeping into his heart and filling his mind each time he closed his eyes.

Vengeance. He wanted to bring justice for himself, his mother, his family, and the life he should have had. All of it had been stolen from him, and while he couldn’t bring it back, he could make those who had taken it pay.

That was why he’d killed Gaimon, and it was why he could never rest easy so long as Kalaziel lived. Whatever the Prime Saint of Valor offered, Darren would never trust him or offer peace.

Yes, the more he thought about it, the more he realized the title of Prime Saint of Vengeance would probably suit him even better than the Prime Saint of Battle. The idea was something that he felt connected to.

He might actually be able to reach the Sixth Order and become the Prime Saint of Vengence.

He should have been excited by the prospect, but instead, he found himself growing irritated. He was annoyed that such a thing fit him so well. He didn’t want to represent the concept of vengeance, but if it was where his surest path to power lay, then he needed to take it.

Darren knew he needed to push forward anyway. Misgivings or not, Kalaziel was coming for everything he cared about. He didn’t have time to second guess himself.

He’d been taking notes while reading Laura’s book, and by now, he’d assembled notes of his own in the empty pages toward the back. He scribbled down his own theories on energy circulation, layering in the complexities that arose from Divine Aura interacting with a living human body and not just the soul.

“Vengence...” he whispered the word, trying to imprint it on itself as thoroughly as his own name. If this worked, it would become part of his name. He would be Darren, Prime Saint of Vengence.

His aura was steady at first as he whispered the concept to himself. Then, focusing on it, he strained both his mind and his spirit. It was like trying to use an extra limb he was certain should be there but that he’d never used before. All the strain and concentration were making little progress, but then he felt a twitch.

That was it! All he had to do was push a little harder. Once the transformation began, completing it would only be a matter of bringing the Divine Aura flowing through his body into a stable state reminiscent of the one in his notes.

He held his breath. Hours passed, and sweat flowed freely down his brow. He held that position for as long as he could, pushing for that last sudden breakthrough.

But it never came. The feeling of standing on the precipice subsided, and soon it receded entirely. He was merely sitting crosslegged in his room in Whitegaurd, covered in sweat and nowhere near becoming the Prime Saint of Vengence.

He should have been disappointed, but somehow instead, he felt relief.

Darren wanted to chase that feeling a little longer, but when he did so, he received word from his sigil that someone had completed his quest. He had a clue to the whereabouts of Laura’s items.

He hurriedly left Whiteguard, tracing the line of Divine Aura that connected him to the person who completed the quest. In a flash, he was gone, flying so quickly that the air trembled in his wake. He followed the tether to the southern end of the Blackwind Empire, where it pointed down toward one of the minor towns on the Blackwind Empire’s southern border.

He descended and soon saw it led into one of the nearby taverns. Whoever completed the quest must now be getting a drink in there. He scanned the bar and spotted his target hallway through a tankard of ale. She was a paladin that reminded him of an older version of Sasha, but with a deep tan and dark hair. The scars on her face spoke of a lot of battles, and she looked like a rough woman. She sat across from a slightly built merchant of an earthy complexion. They were an odd pair, with the paladin woman looming head and shoulders taller than the merchantman.

“--Guess the quest was a scam. Here it says I completed it, and it just tells me to wait for my reward. Ah well, I’ve been screwed over more for less. Anyway, tell me more about--“ the paladin woman continued to chat. At the same time, the merchant sat with a patient smile and a look that said he really wanted to get going but didn’t want to be rude.

Darren slid in beside him, and the merchant looked even more nervous at the thought that he would be caught in the middle of a pair of paladins and their ale. But the paladin woman looked up at Darren in surprise.

“Congratulations, quest completed,” Darren said, mimicking the words quest prompts often displayed upon the successful completion of a quest but before revealing their reward. That was what he was here for, after all.

“Huh?” The paladin woman frowned in confusion.

“Tell me what you learned.” Darren reached into his Inventory and piled up skill books, gold coins, and other trinkets that would be valuable to someone at her level.

The woman stared at the empty air, waving her hand as though swiping aside a quest prompt. Then, when Darren didn’t disappear, she blinked in confusion.

It took a while for the paladin woman to figure out what Darren was there for, and Darren suspected that the cup of ale before her wasn’t the first one she’d drunk. She’d been completing a few quests in the area when she got Darren’s quest, and she thought it was a good excuse to talk to some of the traveling merchants. More of them came from abroad, and she enjoyed learning about other cultures.

Paladins weren’t a common sight outside of the Sacred Seas, though, so a lot of foreign merchants were quite intimidated by the massive battle-scarred paladin woman who just wanted to have a little chat with them.

The merchant she was still chatting with when Darren came along was the one who had the information that completed his quest. The paladin woman gave Darren a drunken half-remembered explanation, but he got a straight answer from the man himself.

“Sir, I am from the city of Marsa,” the merchant began. “It is home to many wonders, and if you ever have the chance to visit. There is the Temple of the Sun in all its radiant glory, as well as the Ever-flowing fountain in the center of the city was granted to us as a gift from the gods. There is the towering ziggurat of the priesthood, who accept offerings and makes the will of the golds known. There’s also the Spirit Origin Stone, a powerful artifact said to have once been the heart of a ferocious beast master of another realm before the gods slew it and remade its body into their own Divine Palace!”

Darren’s eyes lit up at those last words. A beast who controlled another realm? And this stone was its heart? That sounded like a Heart of a Realm to him.

“Tell me more about this Spirit Origin Stone,” Darren asked.

The man described it, and as he did so, Darren became increasingly convinced that this was exactly what he needed.

At some point, hundreds of years ago, when the Sacred Seas were embroiled in a brutal war between the Seven Heavens and the Seven Hells, the gods of Marsa waged war against a race of powerful spirit beings from a pocket world. This one was smaller than the Seven Heavens and Seven Hells but still quite terrifying to a city-state and its handful of gods.

From what Darren gathered, the gods were beings in the Sixth Order, just like the Prime Sins and the Prime Saints. Each held an aspect, such as the god of the sun or the goddess of the tide. While he didn’t want to trouble foreign gods, he had plenty of goods in his inventory, some of which they might find valuable.

“Where is Marsa?” Darren asked.

“Well, as it happens, I’m returning there shortly. I’ve sold all my goods and purchased all I came to purchase, so I will leave with the next trade caravan. The journey through the desert will take about a week on camelback, though renting one to carry a man your size will be difficult.”

Darren shook his head. “We’ll go there today. You have your things?”

A few minutes later, Darren was holding the merchant by the scruff of his shirt as they covered a week’s journey for an hour.

“Is that the city?” Darren asked as he spotted a settlement in the distance. He was traveling slowly, so his passenger didn’t get a chill. Normally, when he flew with any of his women, he could go a lot faster, but the man he was carrying wasn’t even a holy adept and wouldn’t survive the kind of flying Darren was used to.

The man chattered incoherently, teeth-rattling against one another as he shivered from the cold air despite the hot desert sand below them.

“Blink twice for yes.”

The man blinked twice, and Darren headed for the city gates. They landed, and once the merchant recovered himself, Darren gave him a few gold coins as thanks for serving as a guide. His anxious expression before lightened at the sight of the yellow metal. After pocketing it, he was more than happy to show Darren around the city on the promise of a few more coins.

“Come, come! I will show you to the best inn in the entire city!” the merchant promised.

The merchant paid an entrance fee, chatting with the gate guards merrily. Darren received a few strange looks thanks to his height and heavily muscled form, but the guards let him through after warning him not to cause any trouble.

Marsa reminded Darren of Limedeep in many ways. There must have been another source of sandstone nearby, because the local architects made just as much use of the material as they did back home. The sandstone here was more brown than yellow, but it was still recognizably the same.

The difference lay in how the people used it. The architects here favored tall columns. While they had just as much love of sweeping arches as the buildings back in Limedeep, they took it to an even greater extent to form those arches into broad domes. All the largest and most impressive buildings in the city had wide domed roofs, giving the entire city a more organic feel than anywhere else.

The weather here was also noticeably hotter than he was used to, and if not for his enormous size, Darren’s paler complexion would have made him stand out just as much on the city street. He noticed he was drawing a lot of looks, though nobody had done more than cast him an extra glance now and again.

Darren put on his Cloak of the Mysterious Hero to avoid attracting too much attention while the merchant gave him a quick tour of the city. Eventually, they came across that ziggurat the merchant mentioned.

He sensed an aura unlike anything else. The Divine and Demonic Aura around him here were both very peculiar, as though the two were linked instead of separate. It was a very strange experience. If the concentration of power in the air were higher, he would have been better able to examine it. He suspected the gods of this city hoarded the power in their personal pocket realm, much like the demons of the Seven Hells or the seraph of the Seven Heavens.

“Behold, adorning the top of the ziggurat is the Spirit Origin Stone, or at least the shadow of it that shines through from the realm of the gods,” the merchant pointing to a glowing sphere of light adorning the tallest pinnacle of the ziggurat.

Looking at it, Darren saw there was nothing but light up there, even to his Divine Aura senses. Whatever was creating the light wasn’t there. It was just shining through from a pocket space far away. He frowned at that. While he wouldn’t have enjoyed stealing the Spirit Origin Stone, it wasn’t completely out of the question if the local gods were unwilling to part with it willingly. But if the stone’s true form was located in a pocket space under their control, that would be a lot harder.

“You’ll have to talk to the priests if you want to see it up close,” the merchant explained.

Darren nodded. “You have been very helpful.” He tossed the merchant another gold coin and bid him a good day. It was time to meet some foreign gods and make them an offer they couldn’t refuse.


Note:

This is coming up again and again in the comments, so I'll just put a minor spoiler here.

Darren will not be the Prime Saint of Vengeance.