Paladin 4: Chapter 66/Epilogue (Patreon)

Ashe and Darren walked the rest of the small room, centered on a device that Darren now knew to be called a particle accelerator, which helped the Lord of Light manipulate the world on its most fundamental levels, beyond what even his Divine Ascendancy ability let him do.

He stuffed it in his Realmvault. Who knew when it might be useful?

After clearing out the valuables in the Lord of Light’s study, they departed the Seventh Layer of the Heavens and returned to the palace. There was someone else Darren wanted to see, and unlike Horon, he could restore her even in his weakened state. He just had to track down the right Prime Ophanim.

Darren and Ashe left the palace behind, shutting the door to the Lord of Light’s study behind them. The lock clicked closed, and it was like the door had never been there.

Walking past the Heavenly Throne, they were soon out in the garden again where the ophanim roamed. Darren’s eyes searched for the ophanim, who were still drifting through the grassy fields as they had been when he first arrived.

“There it is,” Darren pointed as he traced the thin thread of Divine Aura that stretched between him and the ophanim his mother was trapped inside.

“A Prime Ophanim...” Ashe shook her head and smiled sadly. “That happens to Prime Saints if they lose identity coherence. A few unpleasant experiences are all it takes to lose your sense of self. And... well... if that happens, this is where you go.”

Darren grit his teeth, his heart beating faster than even when he confronted Kalaziel. He approached the celestial being, and its wheel-like form, adorned with countless eyes, seemed to follow his every move.

Despite watching him, it drifted in a haphazard, drunken walk that looked like a thousand minds were pulling it in different directions. As Darren understood it, that wasn’t too far from the truth.

“You won’t stay trapped here any longer,” Darren whispered to himself as he reached his hand toward the Prime Ophanim. Instead, he focused his thoughts on his mother.

Reaching into the Prime Ophanim in search of a single soul was like reaching into a lake and expecting to pull out a specific water droplet. There was so much noise, and the hardest part wasn’t finding the soul but finding which one he was supposed to pull out.

The Prime Ophanim shuddered violently, and the many eyes adorning its body flashed with something resembling anger. Darren felt its powers rise in opposition to his own. He was more than its match in terms of Divine Aura; his singular will held just as much force behind it as all those he faced.

But the chaotic discontinuity of all those tens of thousands of voices shouting at him had a power of their own. He felt like he was being pummeled by hundreds of half-remembered abilities. His body caught flame, and the tattered remains of his clothes started burning away.

“Uh, Darren! I think we have a problem!” Ashe said nervously.

Darren closed his eyes as he focused and endured the storm of attacks. He remembered her voice. Her face. Her warm presence. He just had to focus and find it again.

Darren...

He heard something familiar. A call that reminded him of her. He scoured the ophanim’s collection of souls for its source. Still, it evaded him.

“Darren! The other ophanim aren’t happy with whatever you’re doing!” Ashe said, a little louder this time. He could hear her firing off a few abilities of her own.

He just needed a few more moments. Any second now, he would find it...

Darren...

Her voice drew closer in his mind, and he reached out. He knew roughly where it was, but didn’t have time to sort through them. Instead, he grabbed hold of all the souls within the ophanim surrounding his mothers and pulled.

With a loud shudder, one ring of the Prime Ophanim shattered. Darren opened his eyes and immediately pulled the broken pieces into his Realmvault.

Turning around, he saw Ashe throwing bolts of Divine Aura in all directions as a dozen more Prime Ophanim bore down on them from all directions. Divine Aura flowed freely from each, and the concentration of power in the air had increased to where it rivaled what they’d felt in the Seventh Layer of the Heavens.

“Let’s go,” Darren said as the assault began.

He pulled Melancholy into his hand from his Realmvault, and with one swing, used Dimensional Rift to cut a path back down the Fifth Heaven. He wrapped an arm around Ashe’s waist and pulled her through after him.

The tear in space closed a moment later, and the Prime Ophanim didn’t follow. They were free, and Darren was pretty sure he had his mother’s soul somewhere in his Realmvault.

“We did it!” Ashe cheered. “Wow. Ophanim can get pretty creepy when they’re mad at you. Now I know why they always freak mortals out so much.”

They spread their wings and soared down to the city entrance. Ashe guided him to the place Cassandra had claimed as Darren’s temporary residence upon his inevitable return.

His lovers were waiting for him on his approach, and they ran to him one by one.

“You’re back! Finally!” Cassandra wrapped her arms around his waist.

“Hold still.” Morgana pulled back Darren’s shirt. “Morgana and I had bets on how many scratches you’d take kicking Kalaziel’s ass!”

“Now, now, let me and Cassandra tend to his wounds. Sit, dear husband.” Thalia grabbed Darren’s wrist and pulled him to a nearby couch. “Let us tend to you. The troops will want to see your strong face later tonight, so let us take care of you until then.”

They all piled close to him. They’d already heard the story through Ashe, but now they wanted to hear it again directly from Darren.

“I showed up. We fought, and I won,” Darren explained.

“Lame! More details!” Asuriel complained.

Darren pulled the crystal loop off his brow. “Dungeon Queen will explain it.”

The Dungeon Queen was a much more detailed storyteller than even Ashe or Darren. With a bit of help, she could even display a few images of her memories of the fight. Meanwhile, Darren pulled the broken ring fragment out of his Realmvault and sorted through them.

The shattered ring was shiny, like quicksilver. It seemed to flow in Darren’s hands, and it looked like it should fall apart and disperse into liquid at any moment. Yet it remained all the same.

There were thousands of eyes on this ring alone, and all stared back at Darren. He saw the tiny flickering forms of human souls within each of those eyes. His mother was in one of them, but how would he find her?

He sat a while, trying to listen. But removing the ring from the rest of the Prime Ophanim had broken something, and she could no longer give even the faintest response. This was going to be a long and tedious process.

But then Darren had a thought. Why did Darren have to only resurrect his mother?

Shortly after having that thought, an unfamiliar seraph appeared in the room, blinking in confusion as her body reformed after her soul spent who knew how long within a Prime Ophanim.

“Huh, who, what?” The woman asked in bewildered confusion.

“Ahh! Stranger danger!” Asuriel reached for the frying pan she’d been using to prepare dinner moments before.

“It’s fine,” Darren waved Asuriel off. “I resurrected her.” He moved on to the next soul a moment later.

Anywhere else, the sudden appearance of dozens of formerly dead people would have been strange, at the very least. But Darren’s companions were used to the many weird things that could happen around him, so they soon set up a system. Cassandra would explain what happened, Morgana and Sasha would dress them, Thalia would get them fed, and Ashe would lead them out into the rest of the city.

Those who had been seraphim before joining the ophanim adapted quickly. The former humans had a tougher time doing the same, but given time, they would adapt.

The resurrections weren’t perfect. Human souls not at the third order or higher couldn’t manifest as a stable seraphim. Those souls that wouldn’t make it flickered as he tried to resurrect them, and if he pushed them too hard, they would turn into the wild beasts that roamed the lower levels of the Heavens.

He held his breath and hoped his mother hadn’t fallen too far during her time at Prime Ophanim.

Darren didn’t even realize when he finally found her. She was blinking in confusion, just like all the others, and he waved Cassandra over to explain things when he did a double take at her.

The seraph turned, and he saw the bright-eyed face of a confused young woman. She reminded him more of Priestess Blossom or Sasha than of the warm and protecting figure he still remembered in his mind.

What threw him off most was the fact that she was so small. His mother had loomed over his shoulder as a steady and protective presence in his memories. But the woman before him was more akin to the people Darren guarded.

But he’d been so young and frail when she died. In his memories, he was still that frightened boy. But here and now, he was the strongest paladin the Sacred Seas had ever known.

He searched for his voice as the woman turned back to him. Finally, the confusion began clearing from her eyes.

“J-Johnathan?” she asked curiously.

Darren would have frowned in confusion if he hadn’t learned his father’s name so recently. Now he just smiled.

“Not Johnathan. His son. And yours.” Ariel Heavengrace’s eyes and mouth both went wide as saucers.

***

Darren’s mother’s memories were a mess, though it took some asking to figure out exactly what was wrong. She’d expended a lot of power while she was in that Prime Ophanim to influence the other spirits and send Darren his quests. As he’d feared, the efforts had cost her power.

That would have meant a decrease in Divine Aura reserves for a human. But Ariel Heavengrace was a seraph now, which meant a decrease in order to reset her to an earlier stage of her life when she was only at the Third Order. The rest of her memories were locked away accordingly.

It wasn’t quite the heartwarming reunion Darren had been hoping for. However, his Absolute Analysis skill told him those memories were still locked away inside of her, awaiting the day she returned to the Fourth Order. With the powers at Darren’s disposal, that day wouldn’t be too far away.

He sent her back to Whiteguard. Finding the palace empty of the friends and family who seemed so recent in her memories would be a blow to her, but Darren gambled that the familiar scenery would set her at ease. The one good point of her memory loss was that she wouldn’t remember being betrayed and hunted down.

“Your mother seems really sweet,” Cassandra said after talking with her. “I’m glad meeting her went much better for me than meeting my family went for you.”

Darren chuckled. When Darren met Cassandra’s older brother, their dispute got Darren imprisoned. Eventually, Darren killed her brother just outside Limedeep. Cassandra hadn’t had the healthiest family life. Thankfully, her father let bygones be bygones, though Darren suspected being the emperor of the empire the Silvercross family was a part of had something to do with it.

Resurrecting Horon went much smoother. The day after the last confrontation with Kalaziel, Darren’s skill was refreshed enough to perform the procedure. He brought the Prime Saint of Honor back to life using his head in Darren’s Realmvault.

“Ow...” Horon rubbed his neck, which now had an oddly shaped scar where Kalaziel had torn his head clean off his body.

“You’re alive,” Darren said, hurrying Horon through an abridged version of Cassandra’s speech for welcoming the deceased back into the world of the living. “You were dead, but now you’re better.”

Thankfully, having seen Darren’s ability in action before, Horon was quick on the uptake and soon jumped to his feet.

“Kalaziel!” Horon shouted as he reached for his sword.

“Is dead,” Darren interrupted. “It’s over. We won.”

Horon furrowed his brows. “Truly? You don’t have to hide the truth from me just because I was dead for a while. I can take it.”

“I hide nothing from you. He’s dead, and our fight is over.”

Horon sagged, and the arm reaching for his sword went slack. “Heavens beyond the heavens... he’s really gone. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Darren nodded to the city outside. “The Protectors are holding a toast in honor of your life. You should join them.”

Horon’s eyes widened. He cast Darren one last thankful glance. “I owe you once again!” Then he dove out the window to prove to his followers that he was alive again. Darren chuckled at their shocked expressions from afar. After all, Horon had put him through the same thing very recently.

***

Healing his wounds dealt by the Sword of the Setting Sun proved rather difficult. Not even the Fountain of Youth could heal those cuts, and Darren wanted this body back at full functionality. Ultimately, he had to heal himself through some rather unconventional means. First, he forced his own soul out of his body, effectively killing himself. Then he used his Resurrection ability on himself to restore himself to life at full health.

“That’s totally cheating,” the Dungeon Queen said when Darren successfully resurrected himself. “If this was a game I was running, I’d kick you out for that.”

Darren could only smile. Healthy and whole once more, he spread his wings and prepared to leave the Seven Heavens. Most of his forces were retreating from the Heavens since Horon and the Protectors had security well in hand. Unfortunately, he’d nearly forgotten about the two captive Prime Saints in his Realmvault when he was leaving. If not for Horon wondering about their whereabouts, who knew how long they might have remained there. He handed both of them over to Horon’s custody.

“Leaving the Heavens so soon?” Horon asked.

“Callum offered to get drinks.”

Horon’s eyes lit up. “That’s right! And I said I’d come too. Would it be rude of me to tag along?”

Ordinarily, seeing the captain of the city guard in the tavern was cause enough for a ruckus. Seeing the king there with him, doubly so. But most mortals of the Sacred Seas never expected to see a Prime Saint pounding back tankard after tankard and celebrating at their side.

“I regret promising that drinks would be on me,” Callum groaned as he saw Horon lifting an entire barrel, much to the crowd’s amusement.

Darren clapped Callum on the shoulder. “Perhaps the king of Limedeep will give you a raise.”

***

Descending to the surface was a peculiar experience. The world had changed thanks to Melancholy's power. Kalaziel was gone, and with him all traces of his legacy. While the change was not as apparent in the Heavens where powers at and above the Fourth Order were all over, things were different in the mortal world.

Without Kalaziel's influence, countless millions of ordinary people had not sacrificed their souls on his behalf. The cities of Whiteguard were teeming with life as though that terrible plague had never struck them at all.

Captain Emelia was extrodinarily confused to see so many people who'd been dead suddenly walk the streets as though nothing ever happened, and she approached Darren as though she feared she was going mad.

"What happened? How are all these people alive?" She asked, pulling at her hair. Though Whiteguard was whole again, Darren's forces were still present in every city, and it seemed no one living was surprised at having a new king. To Captain Emelia and the few others at the fourth order who remembered the true order of events, it must have seemed as though they'd stepped into a new reality.

But Darren was quick to reassure her and explain things in his usual manner.

"Its okay. I fixed everything."

His explanation unfortunately left her even more flabbergasted and confused than she'd been before, but Thalia eventually got the full story out of him and passed word along to the many fourth order men and women in Darren's service who thought they'd gone mad. Darren had rewritten the past as though Kalaziel had never existed.

The Blackwind Empire and Limedeep were just as heavily affected. Villages emptied to trade for Sinful Servants were restored to full health. Barren fields were suddenly teeming with crops. The children of Limedeep, slaughtered in that fateful invasion by Archpaladin Gaimon, now roamed the streets at play, a year older but none the worse for being dead for so long.

Darren had given millions of people the lives they should have had.

***

Months passed in the Sacred Seas, and things gradually returned to normal. But, new emperor or not, people had to resume their normal lives eventually.

With no foes left worth fighting, much of the forces Darren had created to invade the Heavens and Hells disbanded to take on civilian duties. However, they kept their sigils and were ready to heed the call should another quest appear before them.

Time passed far swifter for Darren than he’d thought possible. He wasn’t used to so much peace and tranquility, and the lack of a threat had him flying over the Sacred Seas more than once with an eye to the dangers lurking.

He met with Laura again, bringing her all the chocolate her heart desired. She still wasn’t ready to leave her little cabin in the lowest level of the Seven Hells, but Darren figured he’d offer to give her a tour of the surface anyway. Perhaps someday he’d bring her up to the surface, and she’d see the world like he had that first time. It would be nice to share that moment with someone. He didn’t think anyone else would appreciate the sky overhead like he had, except for her.

His mother was doing better by the day. While she didn't remember everything, she smiled at him more often than not, and she'd even told him a few stories from when he was a baby. She didn't remember those years they spent roaming the Seven Hells with only one another for company, but in his heart Darren secretly hoped those memories would stay distant and fuzzy forever.

His mother seemed happier than he remembered, more innocent and full of joy. If he could, he would carry the burdens of that dark time on his own so she could remain the way she was now.

Darren spent most of his days jumping between all his palaces and being seen in the various capitals of the Sacred Seas. By now, nearly everyone knew that there was a new king in town and that he’d united the entire Sacred Seas under one banner.

It had never been Darren’s intention to conqueror. He’d just intended to draw Kalaziel out. But now that it was done, people seemed to like the peace and stability of all swearing loyalty to their all-powerful paladin of a ruler.

Most of the day-to-day ruling was done with the help of his women. Thalia bore the largest share of administrative duties, but that was something she’d been born and raised for. Once Cassandra finally finished her pregnancy, she could lend a bit more help.

Cassandra had worried about the priestesses at first since she ended up carrying the baby far longer than seemed natural. She was two months overdue when she finally sensed their child ready to join the waking world. Darren stood by the side of the palace midwives with as much tension on his brows as when he’d gone to face Kalaziel that final time.

“Lady Cassandra, I’m going to need you to push! It’s... oh, it’s done. My word, but I think that was the quickest birth I’ve ever attended.” The midwife laughed as the baby took his first breath. “Congratulations, Lady Cassandra, your majesty. You have a healthy son.”

Darren held his son for the first time. He’d never pictured himself as a father, yet here he was. So was this how his father felt, once upon a time.

The child stopped crying and opened his eyes for the first time, revealing two piercing orbs of blue like his own.

“Let me see.” Cassandra held her hands, tired but excited.

"Have you picked a name?" the midwife asked.

"Leander," Cassandra replied. "It was Darren's grandfather's name. I'm sure the old kings of Whiteguard would be proud."

Darren hadn't known his grandfather's name, but he was happy nonetheless.

"Hello, Leander," Darren said. And in his heart, he promised to give his son the childhood he never had.

***

Leander would have no shortage of motherly affection. Morgana, Asuriel, Ashe, Thalia, and Sasha took turns holding him and gently rocking him to sleep.

“Here, kid. I have just the thing for you!” Morgana reached into her back pocket and withdrew a golden scepter. Darren remembered it from one of the demon lords they’d slain, only now the scepter had been cut short, and someone had stuffed the enchanted gold with something to make it rattle. Morgana tucked it between the baby’s chubby fingers, and he waved the golden scepter back and forth, giggling at the gentle rattle.

They only stopped when they heard news of a gift from the heavens. Ashe had come down from a council meeting the previous day and hinted that something was coming.

Sure enough, when they opened the balcony window, they saw a massive state of Darren in the city square, standing like it had been delivered months ago and only now had been noticed. Many of the populace was gathered around it, looking on in just as much wonder.

“They captured your jaw perfectly. Impressive." Sasha followed the line of Darren's chin with her finger as she compared it to the statue looming above the city.”

Cassandra playfully poked Darren's side and added, "They definitely got your good side. But with a subject of your size, they had plenty of room to work with."

“Please express my gratitude to the heavenly craftsmen.” Darren nodded at Ashe, who beamed back at him with a bright smile.

The towering statue loomed over the city as though protecting all those within it. Darren's figure held Melancholy between his hands and resting point first against the ground. The mighty blade was nearly as tall as he was. Even this stone replica emanated a hint of the legendary sword's immense power. Ashe, having spent time inside the sword itself, knew its shape all too well. Darren suspected she had been the one to share his likeness with the craftsmen.

“We should add a plaque at the base of the statue.” Morgana grinned. “I vote for Darren Heavengrace, Slayer of Demons, Conqueror of the Heavens, and Destroyer of Bed Frames!”


The End.

<Author's Note>

Well, I hope you all enjoyed Paladin of the Sigil!

Whatever future lies in store for Darren, we know Carter (Amazon Apocalypse) has a story to finish! We'll be getting back to that shortly. I hope you'll all join me for that tale starting at our usual time.