Chapter 28
According to Horpus intel, which Lala and Lili verified, a collection of paladins was scheduled to assemble in Orthlox. Paladin orders described it to each other in letters as a training retreat to prepare for “the tests that lie in all our futures,” but it sounded more like a paladin summer camp.
Leveling, lectures, group meals, mentorship–Puke. I was doing the world a favor by crashing this gathering.
At any rate, I wanted to be rid of paladins, and as a byproduct of doing the world such a service, I hoped that others would take note of how thoroughly I pursued their defeat. They rose against me, and that was their end. Wiped out. Every last rat purged from civilization.
Minus the ones bearing their holes for Sanctuary South citizens, if they were still alive.
Setting a strong enough example with paladins could spare me the bother of terrestrial conflicts as I pursued enemies in planes high and low. By the time anyone on the material plane worked up the nerve to try me, hopefully, my other threats were long resolved.
Invia practically begged me to bring her along for my next paladin-slaying adventure, so she joined me in scouting Orthlox. We had a noose hung in an inn room so we could come and go as we pleased, and Invia, bless her heart, had a weakness for hotel sex. A working vacation didn’t sound so bad.
Orthlox was a bit of a shithole. If it’s still around and you think it’s nice there, put this book down and get the fuck away from me. But I imagine it probably isn’t.
We scouted around, found the local office for Tailwind Merchants Incorporated, saw their enormous warehouse in the merchants’ district, and got a feel for the routes guards used for patrolling the city.
We returned to the inn, Invia had a snack, and then we inhaled a small mountain of dreamdust. She had just undone the buttons on my pants when a knock came at the inn room door.
“Sorry to disturb,” a young woman’s voice said. “Someone is here to see you, Lord Byron.”
That was a bad sign. I had never given the inn that name. Invia crawled on her knees across the ground to stay head height with my crotch, continuing to undo my pants as I opened the door.
“Yes?” I asked.
The woman turned cherry red at the sight of Invia pulling my cock out. Invia let it flop onto her face and laughed.
“Yes?” I repeated.
“A man by the name of Paulson the Pure is downstairs and wishes to speak with you.”
That was the king of all boner-killers right there.
A spark of fear burst in my chest. A paladin had caught me off guard.
Was I growing overconfident, or was I facing an exceptionally competent foe?
First, I skipped and whistled my way into an ambush simply because strangers offered me a gift.
Now I had scouted a whole town without noticing I had a tail.
My life was too important to me to allow these mistakes to continue.
Fuck. The dreamdust was starting to hit me too.
I closed my pants and grabbed my sword. “Ithaca, if a fight starts downstairs, pop back to Sanctuary and get reinforcements.”
“Yes, Father.”
After a deep breath, I descended the stairs as nonchalantly as I could.
“I come in peace, Lord Byron,” a man with a long, perfectly white beard said. “I do not wish to fight.”
“You’re armed.”
He chortled to himself. “You of all people know that peace is simply a time to prepare for war. What kind of opponent would I be if I so easily offered you my throat?”
I activated Sense Weakness. This man’s greatest weakness was his desire to spare innocent people suffering.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I am Paulson the Pure, and I wish to share a drink and speak with you.”
“To what end?”
“By the time a man has grown old, he has seen many young men die. Just because the system gives us a quest does not mean we have to complete it.”
“I didn’t know the system assigned such a quest.”
Paulson tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. “You’re speaking the truth. If a man with your mind had received a quest to eliminate all paladins, surely he would assume that enemies were assigned a similar quest. But you don’t have a system quest to kill us, do you?”
I shook my head, and that was also the truth. My class certainly encouraged me to murder paladins by rewarding me with unlocks when I did, but the system never specifically assigned that objective to me.
But it gave the paladins a quest to eliminate me. How was that fair?
“Well, now you know why paladins have been particularly aggressive in pursuing you,” Paulson continued.
“For a paladin, completing such a quest can offer the chance to ascend, to rise beyond our human potential to be closer to the Goddess. Such quests are also rare. This is the first quest I’ve seen in my lifetime, for example. ”
“Back on topic, please,” I said.
“Right, right. Of course, of course. My proposal assumes you would reject an offer of a peace treaty. Is that a correct assumption?”
“It is.”
“Understandable, given the position we’ve put you in. My proposal then: To spare the civilians of this city, people who have no stake in the conflict we share, I offer to meet you outside of the walls in an open field. We can have our fight and close this quest out one way or another.”
“Just you?”
“Ha!” Paulson slapped the table. “No, I’ll bring everyone I have, thank you. Your attempt to cheat or manipulate this situation is inevitable. I’ll need all of my men to overcome your trickery, I imagine.”
What was this guy’s angle? His manner and his flattery were surely an act, but he seemed genuine and honest in everything he communicated. Even the words that went unsaid felt sincere.
Unspoken sentences like, “We both know what happened to Ludwig the Lawful,” or “This offer is its own form of trick.”
Paulson knew that a fight with me meant taking on every resource and advantage I had at my disposal. If he was willing to put his men out in the open like that, his plan surely accounted for me being a piece of shit. But how? I knew the trick was there, but I couldn’t see it.
“If you know I will cheat, what sort of battle are you really expecting?” I asked.
“I’m willing to pay you for the privilege of a fair fight with Byron of Zaglis.”
Another move I didn’t expect. “Go on.”
“I understand that you collect soulstones,” he explained. “If you agree to a fair fight, I will put my soul on the line. If you defeat me, it is yours.”
“That’s a bet, not a payment.”
“True enough.” He reached into a pack hanging on the back of his chair and set a stack of letters in front of me. “I was sorry to hear your father had passed. He was a good man.”
“Using a dead man as a ploy isn’t against the paladin’s code of honor?”
“This is not a ploy, Brenin.”
I froze, failing completely to hide my surprise at hearing my old name.
“Tad and I met when we were both much younger. I was visiting Borja to level, and we bumped into each other at a tavern as strangers so often do. We stayed in touch. Losing your mother was hard on him, and having met her, I can understand why. She was sweet and kind, willing to help anyone in need, even when she barely had anything herself. You and I met a few times when I happened to be in Borja, but you were too little to remember.”
Paulson pushed the letters to me. They were in my father’s handwriting. These were real, without a doubt.
“I’m ashamed to say we lost contact over the years, but as you can see, we corresponded with some regularity for a while.
He was quite interested in the work paladins did, and though he would have started at an older age than most, he considered becoming one himself.
Then he gained you and lost the love of his life on the same day.
He couldn’t go off on adventures with you to care for, and hear me on this: He did not regret that choice.
Tad chose being your dad over being an adventurer without hesitation.
“He talks about you quite a few times in those letters. When my father passed, a family friend gave me a stack of letters like this. Reading them for the first time was as close to resurrection as we can hope to get. For a few seconds, you can hear their voice as if they’re right in front of you.
Were other lives not at risk, I would give you these freely.
I’m afraid, however, that too many people are counting on me, so I must be unsavory and use them to bargain. ”
What…
How…
I…
My hands shook. I heard Aurketzu’s lips part to speak, and I smashed her jaw closed.
The spasms stilled.
Paulson the Pure was a snake of the worst kind. His performance was masterful, an act so convincing that I didn’t feel him tugging at my strings, methodically setting his grips with every careful word.
Aurketzu always said that the Holy and the divine were far more cruel and conniving than demons. Paulson the Pure exemplified that fact better than anyone I had ever met. He would have done very well with the viceroy class. It suited his talents far better than paladin.
He was right that I wanted what he offered.
“I will accept the letters as payment,” I said, finally.
“There is enough here that I’m willing to offer you this concession: I will swear that only I and my partner upstairs–no doubt you saw her when you had me followed–will participate in the battle, and we will not intentionally spread the destruction beyond the battlefield.
In exchange, you will inform the city that this is a lawful duel.
Every paladin in the fight agrees to become soulstones if we kill them, and you swear on penalty of every woman alive in your bloodline becoming my property that no celestials or other outsiders will interfere with the battle in any manner. ”
The old paladin swallowed. Ah, now he was the one off balance. Getting off my heels and back on the offensive felt wonderful.
Or was that the dreamdust?
Oh fuck, I did a lot of dreamdust. I hoped I was actually as sober as I believed myself to be.