Paladin 4: Chapter 63

Darren instantly realized what dire trouble he was in.

Kalaziel had stolen access to his skills, something Darren hadn’t even known was possible. Worse, one of the skills he lost access to was Phoenix’s Blessing. Six of his skills had randomly been locked, and with a grimace, he noted they all had to do with his movement and survivability. Perhaps Kalaziel had some way of nudging these things in his favor.

With mounting dread, he realized what Kalaziel was planning on doing. He would destroy Darren’s body, then what was left of his soul would be struck by the Heavenly Purification beam. It would destroy every part of him that hated Kalaziel, leaving him nothing more than a fraction of his former self. Worse, he’d end up as one of Kalaziel’s lackeys.

Was this all his battles and struggles amounted to? Utter defeat in these final moments?

Darren’s heart pounded in his chest as he fell from the sky, arms and legs devoid of strength as burning white light plunged down on him from above.

No. He couldn’t die like this. He’d promised everyone he’d come back alive. He promised Thalia he’d help her rule the Blackwind Empire. He’d promised the people of Limedeep he’d care for them. He promised Whiteguard he’d rebuild their kingdom.

He promised Callum they’d go out for drinks when they were done. He promised he’d build Ashe a new body, and Laura that he’d bring her more chocolate.

He promised Cassandra he’d be a father to their child.

No no no...

He would not fall here. He couldn’t!

Reaching within himself, he touched upon those dull embers. This was all that was left of the flames of vengeance that had once burned within him and empowered him to fight Kalaziel on equal terms.

He squeezed, struggled, and shouted at them. He could not die here. He would not die here!

But it was too late. Kalaziel had used the last remnants of his father’s soul to twist the very fabric of reality and remove his need for vengeance. No matter how he cried out for them, they would not come.

His mind focused back on all the promises he’d made and all the things he had yet to do. While the fire did not return, a new feeling blossomed in his heart.

He grasped at it, like a drowning man reaching for a lifeline. He reached for anything that would give him the strength to survive.

The name eluded him, but he realized then he’d brushed upon a new aspect. One that he’d never touched on before. It was a deeper truth that he never even realized could be an aspect. It was the aspect of humanity.

There was Justice in it. Honor too. It even had undertones of Kalaziel’s aspect of Valor. For all such ideas had been born from the human mind and the human will to strive to do better. The human mind and soul had reshaped this very realm according to its hopes and dreams. Hopes and dreams that Darren shared.

As a mortal man, he’d battled his way through the Seven Hells. As a mortal man, he’d led armies of humans to crush all the demons within it. As a mortal man, he’d stormed the heavens themselves.

Demons and Seraph were spirits born of the human experience. Of lives lived, loved, and lost. They were born of human joy and human sadness. Human hatred and human kindness.

Born of the connections all people shared. From mother to son, or husband to wife. He shared all these thoughts and cherished the connections he’d so painstakingly forged since he arrived on the surface world.

He was human, and through trials and tribulations, he’d prevailed. He had lived his life well, and he would live more of it yet. No living being, seraph or demon, would stand in his way.

Something flowed through his veins, but this time it didn’t feel like fire. It didn’t feel like anything, really. There raging flames within him were gone, extinguished forever. The brittle feeling they brought was gone as well.

And he felt all the stronger for it. Hot blood coursed through his veins, and he felt like he had become more of himself. The humanity that pulsed within him had grown all the greater with his transformation.

Congratulations on reaching the Sixth Order!

You are now the Paragon of Man.

Your locked skills have been restored.

The light of Kalaziel’s Heavenly Purification washed over Darren’s body. It felt like nothing more than the gentle sprinkle of rain. The aura flowing within him had a different feeling to it, far weightier and heavier than anything he’d sensed before. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Divine Aura.

It spurned the touch of the Heavenly Purification beam, as though the Divine Aura it sought to purify was beneath it. Beneath him, the Paragon of Man.

An unyielding spirit filled him, drawing on the insatiable drive that had filled humanity since the first ape stepped from the trees.

When the light of what should have been Kalaziel’s killing blow faded, Darren opened his eyes. His wounds had healed completely, and his new aspect filled him with power like he’d never known before. Rapid Regeneration alone had doubled in strength, and what would have taken minutes to heal before now took only seconds.

“What?” Kalaziel’s voice finally held a tinge of panic. He didn’t understand how Darren survived his attack, or how he had so swiftly returned to the Sixth Order. “How? Impossible!”

Darren met Kalaziel’s eyes with a steady, even gaze. The fires of vengeance no longer had him stare his old foe down with eyes of hate. He looked on only with the steady and even confidence. Kalaziel would fall before him, and he would set all wrongs to right.

Darren’s third set of wings reappeared on his back, this time shinier and brighter than ever before. He took to the air again, soaring to meet Kalaziel overhead. The wind whipped through his hair, and he watched as the last of Kalaziel’s arrogant expression was wiped away.

The space between them seemed to shrink with impossible speed. Melancholy’s edge connected with the center of Kalaziel’s breastplate. He sheered through the last bits of his Radiant Armor, and then cut through the metal armor beneath hit. His sword dug deep into Kalaziel’s flesh and came out the other side.

[Wow, Darren! I thought we were really done for there!] Ashe said from within the sword.

The Dungeon Queen in the crown over his brow muttered in agreement.

“That should have worked! They told me it would work!” Kalaziel growled. He stared at Darren with wide and fear-filled eyes. “What are you?”

Darren smiled. “Just a human.”

Kalaziel reached for Darren’s sword to tear it free from his chest. Both hands grasped the weapon’s edges, just as he’d done with Horon’s weapon. But Ashe had other ideas. Still burried deep in Kalaziel’s chest, she generated an explosion of Divine Aura that burst out ward in all directions.

Kalaziel’s hands and chest throbbed as the explosion tore him apart from the inside. This time, he was the one to plummet from the sky, not Darren.

The two fell, Darren in a smooth and steady descent, and Kalaziel in a shaky, desperate fall. Darren was waiting for Kalaziel to use the last of his Legendary abilities, Divine Restoration. He’d been holding off Nullification for just that purpose. From the beginning, he’d selected his Nullification ability to counter that one skill.

But Kalaziel’s shaky hands reached for a pendant around his neck. Before Darren could stop him, Kalaziel pulled on the pendant. An explosion tore open the fabric of reality before him, just as the two of them had done so many times throughout their fight. These Dimensional Rifts were small and temporary, but that was enough to slip through them to another place entirely. Darren had done exactly that many times with his Dimensional Rift skill.

Now, Kalaziel used the same ability to slip away, fleeing in terror just as Darren had done from him twice before.

Darren flew to the open rift, trying to stabilize it. But the realm it led to was even more flush with Divine Aura than the realm he was in now. The power coursing through it healed the rift near-instantly, to the point where it almost appeared like it had been a trick of the light, save for the fact that Kalaziel had disappeared within it.

“What a tricky crazy beard man. He ran away!” The Dungeon Queen laughed.

[We chased off Kalaziel, Prime Saint of Valor!] Ashe giggled in excitement. [You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him that nervous. Not even when the war with the Seven Hells was at its fiercest.]

Darren let a small smile cross his lips. “The next time we meet, he won’t get away.”

***

After chasing off Kalaziel, Darren turned to the battlefield below. Despite his hopes, only a small fraction of his forces were able to escape the city in time. And most of the local residents who were cowering in their homes throughout the battle didn’t even know they needed to leave.

As a result, many of them had been killed in the crossfire as Darren and Kalaziel battled for supremacy. The dead numbered in the thousands, and Darren felt guilt weigh heavily on his shoulders. He thought of Horon, chief among the dead.

Kilean and Natashiel stood around his headless corpse, both with tear streaked gazes as they mourned their fallen commander.

Darren realized he had a choice to make. He could use his resurrection skill to save Horon, or he could resurrect all those in his army that he had lost. He could either resurrect a single sixth order like himself, or he could resurrect dozens of fallen Fifth Orders and hundreds of those of lower rank.

He fretted over the idea for a few minutes, but the more time he wasted, the more the seraphim bodies dispersed and the harder it would be to resurrect them all.

In the end, he chose to save his subordinates. It was what Horon likely would have told him to do, and Darren held out hope that he could restore the Prime Saint of Honor tomorrow when his power had been refreshed.

But more than honoring Horon’s memory, Darren found Thalia and Callum had gotten caught up in the fighting. She’d been helping civilians, and was the weakest of his women present. She had been too slow to dodge a ruthless blow from Kalaziel that cut a building clean in half. She’d been inside the building at the time and been bisected straight through the middle, just like a dozen humans and seraphim standing nearby.

Callum, meanwhile, had been crushed by a rock the size of a building. He’d insisted on being one of the last to retreat, and he paid the price for it.

“Why didn’t you tell me when it happened?” Darren demanded of Cassandra when he finally heard the news.

“You were fighting, dear. During a battle like that, I dare not distract you,” Cassandra explained.

Darren’s anger cooled at that. Cassandra was right, as usual. He gave her a warm embrace. Sasha soon joined him.

They recovered the two halfs of Thalia’s body and put them back together. By now he and his companions had seen Darren resurrect the fallen enough times that it wasn’t nearly as difficult a job as it would have been had they not known Thalia would be with them again shortly.

“Thalia’s going to be mad that she’s an ugly corpse.” Morgana shook her head and let out a grim chuckle.

“She died a very heroic death,” Sasha reminded Morgana. “She was saving people from a building in the middle of a battle.”

“I guess...” Morgana shrugged her shoulders. “She should have run off the moment Darren gave her the warning...”

Scraping up Callum was a tougher job. Thankfully, his armor kept him mostly together, despite being crushed.

Darren waved his hand over their bodies, spreading his gesture to all the hundreds of corpses beside her.

“Rise.” Darren commanded. One by one, wounds healed and bodies stiched themselves back together again. The souls of the dead humans returned to their mortal vessals, and the souls of the destroyed seraphim took humanoid shape once again.

Slowly but surely, the fallen returned to the world of the living, sitting upright one at a time and blinking in confusion.

Eventually, Thalia awoke.

“I... I guess I died...” Thalia looked at her hands. “I wondered what being resurrected would feel like.” Her eyes darted up to meet Darren’s. “Am I still me? I didn’t leave a fragment of myself behind, did I?”

“You’re still you.” Darren reached out with a hand and pulled her back to her feet. She ran her hands over the deep tear running straight through her Priestess robes, embroidered gold to show her status as Empress of the Blackwind Empire.

“We can stitch that right up,” Morgana assured Thalia. She pulled a few pins from some place tucked under her belt and helped Thalia fit the two halfs of her dress back together.

Darren watched on with a warm smile. Despite her earlier threat of teasing, Morgana was quick to help those she cared about.

Though, despite Morgana’ s efforts, the bottom half of Thalia’s robes kept falling down. Darren only stayed to watch a few times before reaching into his Realmvault and withdrawing a new set of robes for Thalia. The ones formerly belonging to Prime Saint Iliana would fit her perfectly.

“Thank you, Darren.” Thalia gave him a kiss on the cheek. “These are lovely. I’ve never felt fabric so fine.”

“Presents from Darren are the best.” Morgana nodded in agreement. “There’s nothing quite like them.”

She eyed Darren out of the corners of her eyes and held her hand over her lips. “Especially when they’re plundered by someone else!”

Thalia frowned when she was reminded of the robes’ former owner, but whatever hesitation she had wasn’t enough to override the fact that these were far nicer than the tattered rags she was wearing.

She accepted the change of clothes and dressed herself again.

Only then, after minutes more of regeneration, did Callum finally bolt upright. A shiver ran up and down his spine as he reached for his face and felt it.

“That hurt,” Callum said.

“I bet,” Darren chuckled. He helped Callum to his feet. Callum accepted the hand and groaned as Darren pulled him upright.

His armor was so twisted and bent that he could hardly move in it at all, so Darren and Morgana cut him free. Eventually, he was standing among them in the flesh once again. His shirt beneath his armor was equally tattered and pulverized, but Darren had plenty of spare clothes in paladin sizes, as well as spare sets of armor.

Only when he was armed and dressed once again did Callum finally voice the question on his mind.

“So... since I was revived, I’m assuming we won? Did you beat him?” Callum’s eyes bore deep into Darren’s.

Darren shrugged. “Gone, but not dead.”

Callum nodded. “Then it’s a bit too soon for me to start selling off loot for coin. Gotta fill my pockets before we go drinking! I have no idea how much ale it takes for a Sixth Order Paragon to feel tipsy.”

Darren chuckled. “Coins are no issue.”

He opened his hands, and bronze coins spilled out of it from his Realmvault.

“Yeah yeah, Darren. We know you’re rich,” Morgana yawned.

“Wait, look at the coin faces!” Callum picked up a coin and saw Darren’s face painted upon it. “Did you have these smelted in your image?”

Darren shook his head. “I made them myself.”

“When?”

“My Realmvault can make anything. I showed you the porridge.”

As proof, Darren made more coins from silver and gold. He made gemstones and simple jewlery. Anything he could visualize could be drawn forth from chaos through his Realmvault.

“Woah!” Asuriel gave Darren a poke. “You have an infinite money hack! Damn!”

Darren shrugged. His reserve of coins had been near-infinite already, so this didn’t really change anything for him. He thought it was simply a nice parlor trick, but all his companions wore looks of shock and giddy excitement on their faces.

The only person who hadn’t reacted at all was Cassandra. Darren thought that was strange, since he thought she’d be the most excited at his new ability. She did like collecting lots of shiny coins.

“Uh... Cas?” Sasha gave Cassandra a poke as she stared at the coins appearing from thin air and pouring into Darren’s hand with a look of dull incomprehension.

“I think you broke her, Darren!” Morgana laughed.

Sasha gave Darren another poke, and Cassandra collapsed to the ground like a wooden board, fainting from the shock of it all.

Everyone shared a good laugh. Darren joined them. Now that the city had been taken and Kalaziel repelled, Darren set about claiming this territory as his own. The Dungeon Queen did her best to wrest it away from Kalaziel.

“It’s getting tough!” the Dungeon Queen said. “I think the fact that this Heavenly Throne thing is nearby is making it harder. I’m only a quasi-genus loci! That thing is the real deal.”

Darren gently patted his crown. “Just do your best. And you will be the real deal someday. I guarantee it.”

Even when Kalaziel was defeated, Darren didn’t intend to stop. Fulfilling his father’s dream of reaching the Seventh Order again as a human was a task that had been passed down to him. If the Sacred Seas really did need someone at the Seventh Order to defend them against outsiders, it would be his responsibility to fill that role.

Fortunately, the Fifth Layer was small enough that he didn’t need to fly its perimeter all that much. Just sitting by a campfire with his friends and allies was enough. They talked, chatted, and healed while the Dungeon Queen did her work.

“You know, Darren, you feel a little different.” Morgana gave him a poke on the arm.

Darren cocked his head to the side. “Do I?”

“Yeah. Less... I don’t know. Less likely to be targeted by a pickpocket as a naïve newcommer in any area you meet.” Morgana shrugged.

“It would have to be one brave pickpocket to target Darren!” Callum chuckled.

“Well, I mean, just the way he talks and speaks. He used to have this freshness to him. Like he didn’t know what was going on. You know how it was. He didn’t know how money works. He had trouble buying things.” Morgana looked to the others.

Sasha nodded. “It was very adorable. Such a big tough man, and yet still so cute.” She ran her fingers through Darren’s hair.

Cassandra nodded in agreement, pressing herself against Darren’s side. She rubbed her cheek against his chest while her hands wound tight about his side. She’d been glued under his arm and unwilling to part with him from the moment she learned he could create infinite money. It was comforting, but she clung to him so tightly he was starting to feel like she was trying to keep him from escaping.

“Super adorable...” Cassandra muttered, still half drunk on the mere thought of Darren’s new power.

Darren chuckled. “I practiced and learned.” He knew the ways of this surface world now, and he knew the hearts of mankind. He may not have been born and raised to them like others were, but he’d overcome those years he’d spent in the Seven Hells.

Eventually, the Dungeon Queen let out a contented sigh.

“Whew! That’s the last piece. I think I’ve done as much as I can at my current level of power.”

Darren stood. With great difficulty, he pried Cassandra off him.

“Here, you can pretend Sasha is me.” He dropped her off in Sasha’s lap.

Sasha immediately lowered her voice into an imitation of Darren’s. “I’m Darren. Come on, Cas. Let’s kill demons and bonk stuff with my super huge sword!”

Everyone laughed, and Darren shared one last smile with his comrades.

“I’ll be back soon. It’s time for me to finish this.”