Paladins Chapter 16: We Who Bear Swords
           I am the Bard, who has seen princes set up and torn down. Rarely are they utterly extinguished, until all nobility has been forgotten.
For several long weeks the paladins had traveled the Northern Garden and now the time had come to at last assault Bloodstone Abbey, the seat of power for the local Hobgoblin legion. They had stripped away their defenses, slain or recruited half their forces, including the elite cleric Numa and the Primus Pilus Scythia, and now the time had come to break the abbey and destroy the Legate, Pompey.
Julian laid out the plan. First, the Paladins and archers would approach the abbey from the woods by night and remove the sentries with ranged attacks. Second, the Paladins would climb the walls and move to the back door of the gatehouse. Next, Jort and the goblins they had won to their side would run for the gate with the halflings on their tail to try to trick them into opening it. After the gate opened, the party would breach the gatehouse from behind to keep the gate open and allow them to move in their full force.
Once the force was inside, they would send in the goblins to the camp to try to turn as many as they can before launching a lightning assault to wipe out the surviving loyalists. This would leave them in control of everywhere but the abbey itself. From here, they would assemble to catch any attempt at escape and use their superior numbers to keep them inside while Julian used his wings to fly to the top and let down a rope, allowing the Paladins to get inside and attack the legate. Once the legate and the command staff were dead, the party would proceed downwards while their forces pressured the entrances, hitting the enemy from both sides and forcing them to surrender. It was, in theory, a good plan, a clever plan, perhaps even a merciful plan compared with their original idea of just filling the lake with poison, but it was a plan with one major flaw. It assumed the party could kill the Legate.
It was night, three nights since the battle of the Turning Sword, where Jort revealed his colors and together with the traitor goblins helped the party shatter half the legion. Three nights of preparation, planning, drilling, and training. Three nights of constant work for Kazador, reforging not only the Pilus’s plate but also a substantial amount of hobgoblin armor to fit the halflings. Jok himself now wore the bronze that once rung from the tower in the abbey in ages past. Tonight, it would ring again.
Concealed in the shadows all around the fortress were Yndri and her archers. Unbeknownst to any, tonight their arrows were not the same. Tonight, she had gifted them an assurance of killing. In the dark between the days, Yndri had slipped out of the village, and in the woods gathered nightshade, death nettle, toxic mushrooms, and other such poisons. She had ground them together into a potent natural venom and coated her charge’s arrows in them, cautioning them not to scratch themselves and swearing them to secrecy. They must not fail, even if it might offend Senket’s sensibilities.
Julian readied his crossbow, and Peregrin his sling. Kazador had taken a set of javelins from the fallen goblins and now hefted one. The sentries walked the walls, silhouettes clear in the full moon and stars, and Yndri readied a special whistling arrow tuned to play the song of a nightingale to sound the beginning of the assault. Bows were drawn, target set, breaths taken… And the nightingale sang.
Black shadows on the dark blue sky, a score and more of silver strings slipping through the air to their target. Several flew wide, but there were enough arrows to land stinging blows, and enough of those for the poison to do its work. Yndri was in fact the last to fire as she had to swap her whistle arrow for a normal one. She silently cursed the songbird, having not thought that an actual nightingale might tamper with her plans.
Still, it was to her benefit this time, as one hobgoblin remained standing, he opened his mouth to shout a warning, but it would never be sent. Two arrowheads lodged in his lungs, and the wind that would have warned his comrades of the danger was stolen from him. He gasped a few times, struggling to fill deflating lungs, and then sank to his knees. It would be a few seconds more before he died, perhaps a minute if he was particularly strong, but his last words had been spoken, and he would die drowning in his own blood.
With that near disaster averted, the second part of the plan began as the party rushed forwards to the base of the wall. While the twenty-foot cliff of solid sandstone was too sheer for even agile Yndri and Peregrin to climb, it was not so tall that a paladin ladder could not reach it. Kazador was at the bottom, followed by Julian, then Sen.
”Careful where you place your eyes.” Yndri warned the dragonoid as she clambered up.
”If yer at all symmetrical, ah might as well be lookin’ at an anvil even if ah did look up.” The dragonoid grumbled at the elf. “Now hurry up ya bloody prude, plate armor is heavy!”
With the two lightest members up, they were able to brace themselves against the crenulations, and while they don’t exactly pull Senket up, she didn't pull them down hauling herself up. She then turned and helped Julian. Kazador backed up, and took a running leap, but wasn't able to reach their outstretched hands. It seemed this dragon could not fly very well. Julian began mentally cursing himself for not being on the bottom since he could fly, but Yndri instead got out some rope and tossed it down. “We really should have thought of this sooner.” She said as she helped haul the heavy dragonoid up.
“Alternatively, we could have used Sen’s tail if we didn’t have any rope.” Julian commented dryly as he gestured at the unusually long and thick appendage.
“Try it and I’ll turn you into chicken dinner bird boy.” She responded. Peregrin curiously picked her tail up and got slapped in the face with it for his trouble.
“Let’s just deal with the hobgoblins and not waste any more time ogling the freak, shall we?” Senket grumbled irritably as she took up her position near the edge of the gatehouse and waited for Jort.
Sure enough, there he came right on schedule alongside a whole parade of goblins behind him and some particularly angry looking halflings after him. “Open the gate! Open the gate for the god’s sakes!” He shouted, and apparently it was believable, as the gate started to creak open. “Now!” Kazador hissed and the paladins moved out.
Guarded by such high walls and with a half-score men supposed to be walking atop them to view the surrounding woods, the hobgoblins in the gate house never expected to be attacked from the other side of the walls. As such, though the door was sturdy and there was a bar and lock available, it was not being used.
Kazador led the way, surprisingly quiet for his size, and one of the hobs guarding it had a moment to shout a warning to the others and draw his blade before the massive dragonoid was upon him. A whirlwind of axes split him into several pieces before he could even scream. At the gate, the leader of the commander turned from the breathless Jort to heed his comrade’s shout. He went stiff as a blade stabbed him through the back to the front, a hobgoblin blade. He was alive just long enough to know that he was betrayed.
The last of the three saw he had no chance against Kazador, and unafraid of being called a coward he flew past, ducking under his strike and pushing every ounce of his being for the door. He made it through, and then went flying forwards, wind flying from his lungs. He turned to his side to see familiar armor glinting in the moonlight. “Scythia?” He asked in confusion. The morningstar said no.
With the gates opened, the party’s small army made their way inside the quiet abbey. The great walls of Bloodstone Abbey were surpassed. Next, the goblin camp. The party called in their mounts and mounted up for the lightning strike while the goblins slipped inside their camp, that was except for one paladin.
“Where’s shorty?” Julian asked as he looked around and saw a golden retriever without a diminutive knight on his back.
“Uh oh.” Each one said at once when they realized Peregrin was now in the camp, having slipped into the goblin camp to try to convince them to lay down their arms.
“Well. If he got torn to pieces, it’s his own damn fault.” Julian said as he crossed his arms and sighed. Jort ignored this, and bereft of mount, began moving stealthy forwards towards the goblin camp.
Inside the camp, an argument was beginning to formulate as cowardice and self-interest combined with the naturally disagreeable nature of goblins to formulate the beginnings of what was looking to be a riot. Into this mess stepped Peregrin, who raised his hands and voice and began to speak.
“Friends, goblins, lend me your ears.” Several dozen flat feet turned to stare at the implacable halfling, who smiled like a champion. “Here you stand arguing amongst each other, brother and sister against one another, but asked yourselves, who is your enemy?”
Only the straight up divine intervention of his magnificent oath kept them from answering “You!”.
“Is it each other? Tell me, whom among you was the one who cast you from the abbey, though there be room enough for all? Who among you decided that you shall be chattel beneath the heels of the hobgoblins? Let him stand forth and be answered for. Whose gods cast down your pantheon and left you a scattered people? Who was it that decreed that you must leave your homes and your families, to depart from peaceful life into unending service in this host? Who is it that lays claimed falsely to your lives, to your labor, to your very souls? I tell you; it is not your brothers or your sisters, it is no goblin at all!”
“How long shall you allow petty disagreement to keep you at the bottom? How long shall you live enslaved to your so-called betters, and even still to the weakling bully of a god that bears his whip? Is this what you desire? Hovels and shanty towns on the outskirts of the conquests you fought and bled for? The scraps tossed from the table of the hobgoblins and the conqueror? Is this all you are worth? To be less than scum, never to be anything more than the lowest of the low? To be forever despised and reviled by your “allies”? To be thought of as rats?”
The goblins began to listen, in spite of themselves, and look around, look at what was built by the free and what they were allowed to build. “I say thee nay! I say let this be the end of that age, let this be the end of such a state! The paths lie before you are thus. You may attack me, and because of your great numbers, you may even strike me down. What then? A continuation, a lifetime beneath the boots of others and then an eternity before the whip of the bully god. Or, rise above this wretched station, forsake this wicked hierarchy, you know this, those fruits of villainy are never anything but servitude and hatred. Turn from this, and let this day be sung in history of when the noble history of the goblin people began, ever upward until the day when your children, your grandchildren, they are called heroes and champions, worthy as any other!”
That speech, perhaps because of the divine will behind it, perhaps for persuasive rhetoric, or perhaps simply because this halfling, this knight, this hero dared to believe in goblins of all creatures, stirred their hearts and minds and for a brief moment they dared to dream. To dream that one day they might be slaves no more, that their children might be something more, that there might even be a day when they could be called heroes in their own right. For a brief shining moment, the goblins stood and saw a choice before them.
“Well done well done indeed!” An old and rich voice spoke, and that voice made the whole of the host flinch, slow clapping of metal gauntlets echoed as a hobgoblin stepped into the light of the goblin’s cooking fire.
He was tall and almost noble looking, broad yet lean, neither as heavy as Senket nor as mighty as Kazador, but still his presence made him seem a titan. His armor gleamed in the firelight, and a , febladearfully and wonderfully forged hung at his side, and on his side a sturdy steel shield. On his back was a great cloak of a dire bear’s skin, a princely garment paid for with a scar and a harsh battle. His face was handsome in spite of his many scars, in fact it might have been more handsome for them. Doubtless his noble visage would have been the envy of many kings, and his mighty frame that of adventurers and savage lords. He bore a helm crowned with seven eagle plumes, and behind it shone silver eyes bright with cold intellect.
This was the legate, the breaker of legions. This was the champion, the slayer of heroes. This was the scourge, the bane of abbots. This was Pompey, lord of Bloodstone Abbey, knight of the great Conqueror.
Fear began to close on Peregrin’s heart as he realized that this was a trap. The guards at the gatehouse did not expect to be attacked from within the abbey, and so they did not lock the door. The paladins did not expect to be attacked from without, and forgot to shut the gate.
The last halflings to enter the gate, the archers, whirled as they heard the sudden thunder of steel boots behind them. The remaining hobgoblin legion charged them from behind and fell upon them. They screamed out into the dark as the horde filled the door and trapped the rebels inside. The paladins whirled in total surprise, and Yndri turned dark as she remembered the mocking words of a jester. “This is indeed not over goblin. You shall suffer for this.” She promised as she drew her bow.
“I must admit, your strategy has been quite good, and you behaved just as you should have to defeat me. Whomever your strategist is, I salute him.” Pompey said as he stepped forwards and drew his axe. “But I am afraid that your little incursion is at an end. Singulares, deal with him.” He ordered the goblins, but they did not move, either for fear or for indecision.
“Perhaps it was a better speech than you realized.” Peregrin answered as he drew his own blades and eased into his stance.
“Jaborah.” Pompey said with a smile. “It has been twenty years since I slew the last champion of the withered guard. It shall be good to do so again.” He said shifting into his own stance, and Peregrin felt a cold fear try to take hold, but he did not quail before it. For a moment, hope and terror looked one another in the eye. Feet bare and booted shifted, and the fire of the goblins crackled in the night. Then they sprang.
Peregrin struck first and struck hard, lunging low beneath his opponent’s swipe and opening two festering wounds in his legs. Those same legs lashed out and kicked him back. A blade came down. Peregrin raised his swords and parried, but the might of the blow staggered him briefly. A shield crashed into his guard and scattered. Peregrin went pale as Pompey reversed his axe and struck the halfling across the face, sending him sprawling with ears ringing.
Sparks danced in the darkness as Peregrin and Pompey went back and forth, swiping, dodging, parrying, grazing, each well aware that a single mistake could cost them their lives. Each was a master of their art, both good men, but both knew that a big good man would eventually beat a small good mam. Furthermore, Pompey’s armor was troublesome for such small blades to defeat, even if they could slip past his defenses. The goblins watched in awe, unwilling or unable to betray their master, yet still holding on to hope against hope that he might fall as the two figures clashed in the firelight for the fate of the abbey.
Back at the gate, Yndri whirled in the night and called blade to hand to plunge into the melee, ancient words upon her lips. “Arise root and branch, wind as web and wave!” And as at the ruin of the halfling village, the forest answered, binding the hobgoblins in silver vines like spider thread.
“Order on me! Protect the halflings!” Julian shouted as he drew his blade and charged, cleaving down the bound soldiers before their friends could free them.
“Kazador!” Senket shouted as she moved to help him “Get Jort and Peregrin, then guard our rear! We shall hold them!” She promised, reforged armor and old mace glinting as she fell into the fray.
“Aye las!” Kazador said as he ran for the goblin camp. It was not too far, but still he prayed he was not too late.
The hobgoblins did not simply climb over their friends like the gnolls did, but instead those on the other side of the obstruction shifted to two handing their longswords and hacked away the vines, freeing their friends and then stepping aside as others rush in. Despite being so heavily outnumbered, the paladins did not give an inch, despite sustaining blows. Julian rolled past the cut to his shoulder and struck a head from its owner’s shoulders. Using the momentum of the blade, he cut into another before whirling to cut through sword, armor, and hobgoblin.Â
His phantom blade took its place beside him. Senket bore perhaps the harshest fury of the hobgoblins, as they recognized whose armor she was wearing, and fell upon her with all wrath. Fortunately, that armor was also enough to ward her from their strike. She responded without fear, every motion pushing through one attack to another, hurling hobs back and splitting apart bodies with mighty swings.Â
Yndri received once more the ancestral hatred hobgoblins have for all her kin, but this time she was better prepared and a shade more cautious, not allowing a single blow to land. She danced between their dangerous yet inaccurate blows and showed just why a careful strike could be as deadly as a mighty one by way of slit throats and severed arteries.
As the hobgoblins pushed forwards once more into the thin line of the crusaders, their charge was blunted by an unexpected source. A shower of projectiles fell upon them, wounding several as the halflings picked up the bows of their dead comrades and fired into the oncoming horde. The heroes took heart, and though the odds were against them, fought on all the more furiously.
Julian stood proud, his mighty blade and long reach keeping the wide center of the corridor clear, keeping the hobgoblins from getting close enough to strike down the rallying archers. A small pile of mangled bodies was forming around him, though his own blood flowed freely, golden ichor swirling into strange patterns among blue blood, streams of light in an ocean of darkness. Senket stood by the wall as if she were a part of it, unbreakable and unmoving. Though hobgoblins swarmed all around her and wounds slowed her, she did not fall. Using every weapon she could in the tight melee, shield and mace, tail and hoof, every part of her a weapon to hold back an army. Opposite her, radiant even bloodied, flowed Yndri. The elven woman stood where the moon shines and knew no fear, for her goddess was with her. A smile on her lips and life fully in her eyes, she did not diminish even as she whirled, dealing death with death drawing nearer with every blow she took. Still she stood, a song upon her lips and a bulwark against terror.
And to that bulwark, to that wall, to that whirlwind of fury the halflings rallied, and they filled the gaps between the paladins, giving them much needed breathing room. In that moment, the plot of Pompey failed. While he had planned to turn the abbey into a death trap, the Paladin’s swift action had turned the gatehouse into a massive force multiplier, preventing the full horde from attacking at once, and without their overwhelming numbers, they could not win. Whether they would all live to see that victory was another matter altogether.
Jort finally raced into view of the duel between the two champions. “POMPEY!” He roared in challenge, briefly distracting the warlord. Peregrin saw his chance and leaped, blades leveled to piece the legate’s throat.
Only the warlord’s armor saved his life, as the blades deflected, but in that moment, fate bent, and they deflected into slim cracks and slipped through, pumping Pompey full of dark energy. The warlord roared and threw Peregrin off with his shield, bringing his blade down again, but for the third time the world twisted, and his blow struck air. But he had another blow, and as he reversed his blade for that second blow, the scales of fate were balanced. It was a textbook hit, perfect even. The blade pierced under Peregrin’s chain shirt, and came out his back. Then, Pompey tore it out and to the side, ripping out half of the halfling’s intestines, severing his spine, and leaving him in the midst of a rapidly forming pool of blood and bile.
There were two clacks, and then a thud, as two bone hilted swords hit the dirt, followed by the ruined body of Peregrin Horserider.
“Yes, Jort?” Pompey asked. “I believe you have come to try and kill me. Do you still think that wise?” He asked, leveling his bloodstained blade at the younger hobgoblin.
“No, but it doesn’t matter.” Jort snarled, and charged. Gladii clashed against one another with enough force that steel chipped, and Jort’s shield met Pompey’s. The older hobgoblin went flying back, landing on his heels with the breath stolen from his lungs. The young man crashed against the old like an avalanche, pushing him back another step and making him strain for all he was worth against the sudden, fanatical strength of the young warrior. “For the sake of my father. For the sake of my friends. I. Will. Kill. You.”
“All this still for Marius. You betray everything for a dead man?” Pompey asked. Then he was to the side, Jort’s force carried him forwards, off-balance, Pompey struck, and Jort raised his shield to block. But in the space of a breath, Pompey’s sword and shield switched places, and one shield clubbed another aside. Pompey’s blade flashed, and Jort’s shield fell away from his now lacerated arm, cut free. Pompey’s boot followed through, hitting Jort below the belt, before coming up smash into his face. Jort fell to the ground, but rolled back to his feet, bleeding from a broken nose and a slashed arm.
“Not just that.” Jort wheezed, but raised his blades again. “It’s wrong, all of it. Damn you. Your treachery, your cruelty, the way you need to see everything under your boot, every good thing in the world crushed and brought to bear, as if only we, only you could have any of it! As if we have the right to starve and enslave the ones in the same breath we say we’re protecting. As if we can betray our brothers, our allies, in the name of greater brotherhood and your damned corpse of an empire! Even a child could see and understand how wicked you have made us. If you are loyalty, then I will gladly be called a traitor!” He roared, and came back in again.
His passion gave his muscles strength beyond their limits. Like a man possessed, he threw himself at Pompey, who fell back before the nearly rabid onslaught. Even so, though he gained ground, Jort could not land a blow. The legate’s weapon and shield were everywhere, able to switch between hands and change his threat profile in an instant. There were no weak spots, and no safe angles of approach. Cuts lashed across Jort’s face, arms, and breastplate as he continued his assault. “If even a child can see this, understand that there is some law written on the hearts of man, some truth of good and evil, and you reject it, how can such a fool as you dare to lead, dare to claim the right to commit such great evils for such a greater good?”
Pompey hit him with the edge of his shield, hard enough to crack the younger man’s jaw. His blade flashed backwards nearly instantly, sending Jort sprawling with the side of his face cut to the bone. “I see now that not only I failed you, but so too did Marius. Indeed, children have many foolish ideas that they think wise. It is the responsibility of fathers to beat such things out of them.” Jort staggered to his feet, grimacing through the pain. “But for you, it seems our combined failure was terminal.” Pompey growled.
They clashed again, but weakened by his wounds, Jort was simply outmatched. He realized there was no way to win this and live. His brief life flashed before his eyes. Warmth by the fireside. First his father. Then the paladins, a long darkness between them. There could still be hope, but not so long as that darkness remained. He moved with a blow from Pompey’s shield, and switched his sword from one hand to the other and raised it high. Pompey’s blade was already moving towards his throat. He didn’t bother trying to block, but brought the blade down.
Something turned it aside. He stared in shock, as Pompey had drawn a dagger from a hidden sheath behind his shield, swapped it into his other hand, and parried the falling blade. A masterful display, that left Jort’s all or nothing attack falling to the side worthlessly. Then his true blade flashed upwards, and Jort staggered back, blood spraying from the side of his throat. Pompey had slashed open his carotid, a mortal blow.
“I take no joy in this, my son.” Pompey said, almost regretfully, as he watched Jort stagger back. “But I’m in it for the species. This is the only path that we can take to restore our glory. I cannot allow anyone, even you, to stand in that path.” He sighed. “Such a waste, I thought perhaps one day, you might carry on to see the world as it should be.”
Then, he paused, and shifted back slightly. The blood had stopped flowing, and Jort did not fall. He took a step back, and then snapped his gaze down, meeting eye to eye with the legate. “Maybe, maybe you’re right.” He said, with cold clarity, and a foot forwards. “Perhaps, the only way we can regain the world is through your methods.”
The two clashed again, Pompey raised his shield, and it didn’t matter. A flash of lighting roared into being at the impact, blinding and electrocuting the legate. He howled in pain and surprise, and went staggering backwards. “But what cost will you take from our souls?” Jort took a step forwards and kicked his shield into his hands. “And what cost must that bring?” Blades locked, lighting howled, and the legate fell back. “Justice will always step forwards to have her due!” Jort continued, and slammed his shield into Pompey’s chest. The legate hit the ground hard, and Jort brought his blade down, all the fury of heaven shrouding it. He drove it towards that hateful helm, and struck true for the eye slits. His blade pierced through, and buried itself in the legate’s eye, making a ruin of it, though he could not reach the brain. “And the world cannot long abide those who turn from the path of the righteous!”
The legate tore himself free from the voltaic judgement. Jort’s blade slipped, biting into the earth, and then Pompey’s dagger slashed open his heel. “Souls? A soul is only a man's memory, the story told of him. To those who triumph, the right is given to write their own story. Those who are damned are the weak, for only the weak may be damned.” The legate remarked as he came to his feet. Jort whirled to strike, and hit air, before another boot struck out. He raised his shield, but the block threw him back onto the wounded heel. His balance failed, and Pompey pressed him further. “Righteousness, Justice, you speak with a child's understanding. Justice is found in determining exceptions, and those are made by the sovereign. Whosoever is king, he then is justice.”
He pressed down, throwing Jort further off balance by his wounded heel. Jort struck to counter, but Pompey’s dagger was swifter. Three of Jort’s fingers fell from his hand, and with them his sword. Then the dagger struck him in the side, and Pompey cast him down. “As for such things as righteousness, indeed, there is the instinct of group survival, but it is only rightly followed to one's own kind. To show mercy to your enemy is to show cruelty to your kin.” He kicked the younger hobgoblin’s shield aside and brought his boot down on it, breaking Jort’s wrist and pinning his arm to the ground. Gentleness in battle is evil, for it allows the enemy to destroy your people. Righteousness, in short, is only that which benefits the race.”
He raised high his blade in both hands. “Finally, as for laws, I know at the very least I taught you this much. Quoting law is worthless for we who carry swords.” The blade fell, and something hot as a forge stepped forwards.
“This then, is where you fail” A voice, deep and terrible, spoke. An axe met the falling blade, and the blade shattered like glass. Pompey whirled, then something hit him in the chest, a white-hot blur that burned and broke his armor, hurling him bodily with broken ribs. “Those who think swords make laws must not wear crowns.”
Pompey got up, coughing up blood, and looked at death. The dragon stepped over his wounded comrades, blazing like a torch in the darkness. His scales glowed red-hot, his breath licked with tongues of fire. But his eyes, his eyes were most terrible, piercing through Pompey and leaving his soul bare. “Your laws end with your sword.” Kazador snarled. “Your rule dies with you, and its death is long overdue.”
The battle still raged at the gate. Julian still swung, blood still flowed, hobgoblins died, and the paladins held, but all that was distant now to Kazador. All of it was so very far away, gone beneath a tidal wave of fury, a melting, searing hate like magma from the core of the earth, white hot and overwhelming. His body burned, the dwarven mail turning red-hot from its wearer’s own internal heat as axe raked the air like a talon. Kazador spoke an oath, not in his thickly accented common, not even in the dwarven tongue his mind knew best. He spoke as a dragon, in the language his mind had never learned but his blood had never forgotten, and his words were power, graven into the soul and name of the world by ancient magic.
“Pompey. By Bahamut, by Tiamat, by ancient Mardok. By the blood of my ancestors, by the strength of stone and by the purity of fire. I will kill you. For the sake of any righteous crown cannot abide unrighteous ones, and, petty as it may be, because you dared to hurt my friends.” Pompey felt in that moment a chill, though the night was warm, and heat washed out in waves from the enraged dragonoid such that the air around him shimmered. He felt the chill of death, and his breath left frost upon his lips at the sheer might of Kazador’s vow of enmity.
The other paladins sensed the divine power manifesting and knew what it meant. For a moment they considered turning back, but they would not let this be in vain, and so, in the name of their fallen brother-in-arms, they brought furious vengeance upon the hobgoblins. Pulsing crimson, slashing silver, radiant golden flame. The fury of the paladins was greater and more terrible than anything the hobgoblins had ever seen. Julian moved like a Solar, each blow turning bodies to red mist, leaving mangled armor in his wake. Yndri flowed like lightning, and neither blade nor bone remained unsevered before her blades. Senket was perhaps most terrible of all, horns in flame, hooves grounding dust into the air around her, armor was broken, bodies burnt to ash as though the fires of hell itself sprang forth from her.
What then shall hobgoblins do against such reckless hate? Naught remained but to flee, for even the iron discipline of that race has limits, and to see so many of their number laid low by such mighty forces was too much even for them. They broke and forsook the abbey forevermore.
Yet their captain remained, and he and Kazador flung themselves at one another. Axe clashed against dagger. Though weakened by Peregrin’s fell blows, Pompey was still a mighty man of valor indeed. He caught the other axe on his shield, but the axe went through, and Kazador ripped it from his arm, carving a deep rent in Pompey’s flesh and armor as he did. He swung again and Pompey reached up and grabbed him by the wrist, holding the larger man back. The remaining paladins turned and rushed to their friend’s aid, pounding down the courtyard in their haste.
Pompey drove his blade into a weak point in Kazador’s armor, twisting it. He slipped away from a blow, and struck again, again, and again, but it had seemingly no effect. He could not bleed the dragonoid dry, for such was his fury that he cauterized his own wounds as they were inflicted. He swung his axes in a pincer, keeping Pompey from fleeing. Instead, the legate moved forwards, using all his strength to drive his blade through Kazador’s elbow and hold back one side of the dragon’s onslaught. But Kazador tensed himself, and Pompey felt as though he was pushing against a wall. He fell back, trying to slip away. But Kazador’s other axe swung into Pompey’s blind spot and made contact.
There was the sound of shattering metal, mulched flesh, and fractured bone. Kazador’s blow blew Pompey’s helmet apart, and buried the head of the axe to the haft in the legate’s face. Pompey’s grip on his dagger wavered, then, he gripped it fiercely again, denying death even with a solid three inches of red-hot metal embedded in his brain. “No.” He whispered. “I have too much still to do.” Then Kazador tore his axe free, and swung both like a pair of scissors. Pompey’s head soared into the air, last eye briefly flicking this way and that, attempting to make sense of what had happened. Then it hit the ground with an unceremonious thud, and the legate was no more.
The party arrived to see Kazador collapsed into a seat, still glowing from his rage. The dragonoid reached out a hand and laid it upon Peregrin’s laboring body, still desperately holding on. The others laid their hands upon him, and the healing magic flowed, even Jort, somewhat unsure of himself, assisted in spite of his wounds, and soon enough the flesh re-knit and the hazel eyes open.
”Ugh… well, all of you here, it’s quite heartwarming. No wait that’s Kazador ow! Ow!” He said as he wiggled away from the still stove-hot dragonoid. “Good to know we can cook eggs on you if we ever lose the frying pan!”
Kazador looked at him sternly, and then just grinned and threw back his head in a long and rumbling laugh of relief. “A shame nearly dying dinae force ye tae reconsider yer terrible sense of humor ya wee bastard!”
Peregrin laughed, and then returned the favor, laying a hand upon Jort and healing his wounds in turn. “I saw what you did, welcome to the party my young friend.” He said, proud as a father.
Julian raised an eyebrow in confusion then remembered the sound of roaring thunder. “Wait, are you saying…” He said in some wonder, as Jort turned towards Peregrin in equal confusion.
“Aye, I saw it as well. A sleeping giant awakening. A paladin, come into their power.” Kazador confirmed.
Jort looked down at his hands, and wondered at the sparks of electricity which still danced there. “I… I guess so. I’m not sure how or what I did. I just…”
“Stood up for the right thing.” Senket finished.
“Had something to fight for.” Yndri added.
“Saw the world as it aught to be.” Julian considered.
“Woke up, and grew up.” Peregrin noted.
“Did what ye had to.” Kazador finished. “That’s all it is. We do what we can, an’ when that’s nae enough, we figure out how to do more.”
And so, the Paladins retired for the night, entering the sandstone abbey for the first time, and in triumph. The halflings and the goblins looked at one another with great unease, but for the moment the presence of the paladins and the euphoria of the night was enough to keep tensions silent.
“We really ought to re-christen this place. Bloodstone Abbey seems too grim for a place like this.” Senket considered as they entered the great hall, the warm walls rising upwards above many long tables.
“Save that theological debate for the morning, I’m tired. If you have to do it tonight, then just call it Redwall or something like that and be done with it.” Julian grumbled as he headed in the general direction of what was either the dormitories, or the cellar.
“Redwall? Seems a little too obvious. It probably had a name before the goblins took it, maybe we can find that.” Yndri suggested.
“Fer once I agree with ser chicken nugget, ah’m offskee.” Kazador grumbled as he wandered off to bed, which for him probably is in the cellar. The remaining paladins looked at one another and shrugged, before bidding one another good night, and wandering off to find proper beds for a well-earned rest.
