Paladin 4: Chapter 11

After getting chased out of the village, Darren and Callum dealt with all the remaining quests in the area, staying well clear of the settlement. They took care of three open portals to hell, a couple of imps, and a few minor demons. There weren’t that many quests to be had, but that was because so few sigil wielders had walked through these lands. The ophanim’s ability to survey the local area was probably quite limited.

But Darren would change that soon. He would send his people in to scout the area. They’d complete any quests they could complete, and he could come back to finish off any quests they couldn’t.

Nothing on their lists was a real challenge to Callum. Darren stayed back and let Callum complete the quests one after another, and he watched Callum’s soul all the while. It was growing stronger bit by bit with every adversary he overcame. Fighting the cultists had helped a lot. He would be ready for the fourth order with perhaps one more life and death battle, or a few weeks of these milder challenges.

While Callum was fighting, Darren studied Gwen’s map. Eastwood was bigger than he suspected. It was about the size of Whiteguard, though unlike Whiteguard, which was mostly fertile farmland, a lot of Eastwood had always been untamed forests.

It was a nation that had always had a lot of potential, but just when it looked like it was going to finally realize that potential, the Order of the Rod played its tricks on them. They called all the sigil wielders from Eastwood to rush to their aid and then worked with demons to butcher the lands those sigil wielders came from. Most of the sigil wielders were captured by demons at the Battle at Bridgefort, the decisive conflict that granted the Order of the Rod, and ultimately Kalaziel, complete control over Whiteguard. Eventually, they leveraged that into nearly uncontested control of the Sacred Seas until Darren came along to ruin their centuries of planning.

And so what Darren was most interested in was located further east and along the coast. When the Eastwood Kingdom lost all of its defenders and was overrun by demons three times over, they needed to beg for whatever aid they could get.

Naturally, the warriors of the Order of the Rod were the only ones with the manpower to answer, and they charged a heavy price for their help.

They set up their base of operations in the ruined city of Castingwatch, which was once the Eastwood Kingdom’s capital.

The king and queen were long dead, along with most of their kingdom’s population. The remaining princess had been married off to a connected lord from Whiteguard, though Gwen’s news said that they too died rather recently in the sudden surge of demon attacks, leaving their daughter as the Order of the Rod’s puppet queen-to-be.

After all Darren had done in the Northern Trade Union and the Blackwind Empire without drawing the attention of the Order of the Rod, he figured their resources must have been taxed working elsewhere. Besides the lands of Whiteguard itself, Castingwatch was the place where they were most active. That meant that if Darren wanted to disrupt Kalaziel’s plans, he had to go to this city and cripple the Order of the Rod’s influence there.

In Darren’s mind, the chance to kill all the demons was just a bonus. But if the last few days of adventuring with Callum had proven anything, he needed more boots on the ground, not just him and Callum. It would take dozens of encounters to ferret out every imp, cultist, and felbeast, and it would take dozens more to change the local perception of sigil wielders, and paladins especially.

Fortunately, he could look through Morgana’s sigil to see the help he’d asked for was about to arrive at Neverhorn Citadel, the ruins he and Callum had recently liberated from cultists.

After finishing the last of Callum’s quests, he and Darren reunited with Morgana, Sasha, and Asuriel. Thalia remained in the Empire’s capital, and with Cassandra there to help her, the broken Empire was quickly being put back together. Still, his other three companions weren’t needed much now that things were stabilizing. They’d come ahead of everyone else to secure the citadel, but now their subordinates were arriving by ship, which made repairing and administrating the ruined citadel finally feasible.

Asuriel was the first to spot him and Callum flying from afar since she was in the air over the ruined citadel herself for a leisurely flight and to keep track of the damage. She was wearing Darren’s old cloak, so the presence of a fifth order seraph went unnoticed. Not that she needed to hide anymore. Sasha had brought three fourth order humans to help establish order in the Northern Trade Union and the Eastwood Kingdom. Now that things were winding down in the Blackwind Empire, these powerful men and women were growing rather restless.

“Darren!” Asuriel shouted as she flew to meet the two of them. “You called, and we came! I would have come sooner, but Sasha and Morgana are still slow. I thought about flying off to find you a few times, but Sasha said you two needed guy time or something. I hope I missed nothing fun.” Her face turned into a pout.

Callum coughed. “Nope, strictly boring, normal quest completion stuff.”

“Indeed.”

Asuriel eyed Callum and Darren suspiciously, but then she shrugged and wrapped her arms around Darren’s waist to pull him into a tight hug.

Darren returned the gesture, and Callum wiped some sweat off his brow now that it looked like Asuriel wasn’t going to quiz them about their recent adventures too closely.

Asuriel led Darren down to meet the others while Callum separated to check in on the prisoners they freed, as well as the families of the cultists. The two groups had an uneasy truce and stayed on opposite sides of the ruined citadel.

Some of the freed prisoners had left already and made their way southwest on foot as they headed back to the city states of the Northern Trade Union, but many others were still lingering where they were.

“How are things here?” Darren asked.

Asuriel shrugged. “Humans are being dumb and grumpy. You know, the usual stuff. Sasha bashed a few heads together, but now they’re playing nice.”

“Good. Take me to her.”

Asuriel and Darren circled the citadel a few times as they looked for Sasha, and eventually she found her speaking with a few of the freed prisoners. She had them in the practice yard and had given a couple of the young women from that group and given them practice weapons. Now she was running them through a few practice drills.

Darren and Callum waited until she had them performing simple thrusts and parries on their own before pulling her away to talk.

“You’re training them?”

Sasha nodded. “A few of them are quite grateful to you. They might make good recruits for the Order of the Rose someday. And it gives them something to do. They’re growing restless.”

Darren wasn’t so sure about that. When he loomed over the practice yard, the women fighting with swords and spears struggled to practice on their sword forms. Several pairs of eyes were darting toward them, and one unfortunate girl misplaced her forward foot as she stepped into her thrust. But she was looking at Darren instead of where she was placing her feet, and she slipped and fell on her face, much to her embarrassment. A few of the other girls looked on smugly, and a couple of them laughed.

“No laughing!” Sasha turned and glared. “If you want to join the Order of the Rose, you have to learn to work as a team!”

Darren smiled in approval. Perhaps Sasha could turn these battered women into warriors after all.

“Morgana is talking with the other group, the families of the former cultists,” Sasha said as Darren turned to leave.

A few flaps of his wings later, Darren landed on the other side of the citadel compound and watched Morgana leading a scene somewhat reminiscent of what Sasha was up to, though with her own touch. Like with Sasha, the crowd gathered around her was made entirely of young women. They sat around her in a circle, watching her with rapt attention while she spoke.

“All of you are guilty by association. Your mothers, fathers, cousins, siblings, or what have you were members of a dangerous and deadly cult that wasn’t long for the world, given recent events in the Seven Hells. That association forever stains your souls, and you will never have the life you might have lived if you hadn’t been screwed over. You will have things rough. If you want to survive and redeem your family names, you are going to work hard!”

Murmurs ran through the crowd of gathered young women, but not one of them stood up to leave. Darren nodded in approval. He knew what trainees looked like under Sasha’s command, but he was very curious about what Morgana planned to teach these trainees. She’d never volunteered to be an instructor before.

“Luckily, I am a kindred spirit to the rest of you.” Morgana pressed a hand to her heart. “Like you, I consorted with demons, and even now, I am working to regain the trust I lost.”

“How did you do it?” One girl in the crowd asked.

“The same way all of you will!” Morgana replied. She jumped off the barrel she was sitting on, and with a grin, she pulled the lid off and tossed it aside. “You will all prove your devotion to the side of light!”

She kicked the barrel over and out spilled dozens of maid uniforms. One of the young women picked it up curiously.

“Aren’t these a little skimpy for maid uniforms?” she asked.

Morgana shook her head. “No, that’s exactly how you want them! Serving as a maid is only one part of your path to penance. The second half involves finding yourself a heaven-blessed husband! After all, what better way to leave your evil past behind than to get yourself hitched to a warrior of the light? Don’t worry. I rewrote Sasha’s latest set of orders so the reinforcements arriving today and meant to take control of this citadel are all the most dashing, heroic, and handsome young holy adepts, paladins, and clerics you can find in the Sacred Seas.”

“A-and... you think if we win their attention, our families won’t be forever associated with evil cults?” the young woman asked, still looking at her maid uniform.

“Cross my heart and swear to the heavens. Now hurry up and put these things on! They will arrive any minute now, and first impressions are everything!” Morgana started urgently, handing out skimpy maid uniforms.

Darren shook his head. He supposed that was one way to solve the problem. And it wouldn’t harm his men to have someone worth coming home to. So many of the holy adepts on the way to fill out the rank and file of the citadel were fresh recruits from Limedeep, barely out of their teenage years. They would no doubt be quite enamored with these maids of Morgana’s.

Seeing she had them under control, Darren finally gave into Asuriel’s constant tugging on his sleeve. The two of them ran off to find a quiet place somewhere for a little fun while the new arrivals settled into Neverhorn Citadel.

***

Asuriel and Darren tried going at it in the air, since Asuriel said it was possible and wanted to try it. However, it took a bit of getting used to, and it was awkward. But when Darren found a new skill to practice, he would continue to hone it to perfection.

Fortunately, Asuriel wasn’t nearly as loud as Cassandra, so they didn’t disturb their forces settling into Neverhorn Citadel. The rest of the afternoon was a bit as they moved in wagonloads of things shipped over from the Blackwind Empire and Limedeep, courtesy of Cassandra’s merchant fleet.

Darren was surprised by the size of the growing crowd. There were three people at the fourth order, an archpaladin, archpriestess, and archcleric. Beneath them were roughly a dozen each of paladins, priestesses, and clerics. The third orders served as the heart and soul of the citadel and would be the ones completing the majority of the quests in the area.

Beneath them were about three hundred holy adepts. These young men and women were too weak to complete quests alone, but in teams of five, they could take on lower-rated dangers. Having their eyes on the ground would also let them spy on the area for Darren’s sigil network, which would let either him, Cassandra, or his mother up in the Heavens set new quests for the third order warriors to complete.

But matching the holy adepts in number were dozens of cooks, blacksmiths, masons, carpenters, and other tradesmen. Darren hadn’t even thought about that aspect of repairing and maintaining the citadel. In the past, whenever something needed to be repaired, or a shelter built, he’d always done it himself.

But Sasha had experience with these sorts of army-sized logistics and had planned accordingly. He made his appreciation known at the feast the cooks held while everyone settled into the castle.

“You organized this well, Sasha. I am impressed,” Darren said as he sat next to Sasha at the highest table in the citadel’s main hall. Recently, he and Callum had fought off a cult and a small army of demon lords in this very room. The bodies were gone now though, and the leftover Divine Aura from the kills meant the chamber felt charged with power. It was a good place to linger and contemplate the heavens.

“How impressed?” Sasha asked as she stabbed an odd-looking vegetable. She held her fork up for Darren to try, and he tasted it. When he made a noise of approval, she risked a bite herself.

“Impressed enough that I hope you found a good bedroom.”

Sasha blushed. “Getting an appropriate bed shipped over to the new citadel we’re claiming was a priority. Cassandra included several.”

“Perfect.” The two finished their meal, and Darren vanished for the second time that day.