Argeus the Paladin
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Chapter 2
Prince in Distress
The trail of elven refugees painted a blurry, long, twisted line across the thick forest. The sound of footsteps worn out from prolonged trailing, amidst the crackling of flame from a distance and groaning of pain, sorrow, humility, or simply fatigue, was something the elven population of Mediava never expected to encounter. Not with all the military prowess of their kind to back them up.
And now that unforeseen exodus had become reality all of a sudden, a harsh reality of war that drew wails and cries and moans of suffering every so often, along the narrow path through the wood. The proud high elves had lost their wealth, their relatives, their peaceful ways, and most importantly, nearly all their dignity in a mere week.
But some of them hadn’t surrendered to fate just yet. Taking the lead, the Elven Foremost Paladin, Harthrane Nightowl, his sword and shield still in hand, cutting his way through the more unfriendly vegetation to clear a path. Even though the glint of fatigue and the occasional pain from the gash on his shoulder were taking their toll, decades of training and vigilance finally proved to be useful to keep him together even in the face of this challenge. He couldn’t afford to falter, for both the fate of his kind, and the tarnished honor of a Paladin defeated, forced him to work double to repay the humiliation.
The fall of Silverlush the previous day was, after all, partly his fault. Certainly, it was the King who authorized the surrender of the city, himself and the Orb of the Forest, in a final hope to preserve the Elven race from utter annihilation. The King’s surrender brought nothing to him and his people, apart for a summary execution and another attack at the already weakened and demoralized Silverlush.
The result was devastating. Over half of the fair city was lost in the attack and some more in the rout. Much of the wealth the elves had garnered through the ages were lost in the annihilation. It was only owing to the Paladin Order’s bravery, as well as the death of a vast majority of his brothers that Harthrane was able to lead the rest of his people out of the carnage into the wood beyond. The warrior in him now blamed himself. Had he steeled his resolve and stopped his liege lord’s senseless sacrifice, things might have been brighter. Might have been.
And the Prince’s fate was another story. Presumably Faegard Elfblade was unable to escape the city, judging from how his escorts were attacked and overwhelmed by a full contingent of fully-grown, adult Mountain Giants. The bestial humanoids of the Northern Range, well known for their weapon of choice, twenty-feet-tall trees uprooted on the spot and swung around as war clubs, as well as their appetite for elf meat would have more than enjoyed the Prince as a midnight supper.
Even then, when the refugees where a good distance from the city, Harthrane Nightowl was still laying the blame solely on himself for the Prince’s loss. The kind of rigorous anti-Giant trainings he had taken seemed a bitter irony, what with how he failed to bring it to use when his liege lord most needed it.
But it was no time to be lamenting on the past. Danger was still behind them, for the Black King would most certainly not leave the preys alive to recover after such a defeat. The late King had entrusted him with the fate of his people, and as a proud elf, and Paladin to boost, he would honor that trust, even if it cost him his life. A glint of hope, further embellished by the courage of a born fighter and that oath of honor, flared up in his eyes, shining through the dark, moonless path they were about to walk.
That much wasn’t enough to clear up the doubt or the morbid fear of the crowd. Even harder it was to win back their trust, knowing that the Paladin order itself was already defeated and crestfallen. Bravery alone could barely save the day, snd in the face of death, the sort of blind valor Harthrane possessed looked more like empty bravado than what the people needed. It wasn’t long before the Paladin felt the weight of the responsibility swiveling out of the control of what little leadership skill he had.
“I am tired, Mommy,” a wearied, beset voice somewhere behind the single-file line of refugees, sounded, in a tone best translated as a desperate, morale-sagging complaint.
The speaker seemed to have been an otherwise very loud-mouthed kid ordinarily. His tone was unreasonably loud, drawing the attention not just his mother, but also of much the entire file of adults around him. The effect spread along the line rapidly, halting the exodus wherever it went, and before the Paladin even had enough time to realize what was going on, the whole line of refugees had come to a temporary standstill, as each and every elf sat down on the spot, refusing to carry on.
The complaint and its effects were reasonable. The refugees had been marching for long enough that day, more than enough for the average adventurer to travel for three days, at a feverish pace, for fear of enemy pursuit or other deadly complications. Many of his companions had never once been used to such rigor before, having enjoyed life within the cozy city walls for centuries. Still, resting was something of a luxury now, at least according to the Regent.
“What is going on here?” Harthrane rushed to the spot, urgency overriding his entire expression as he stared at his demoralized people. “Why is everyone stopping?”
“Lord Nightowl, we can’t walk any more,” one of the downtrodden elves replied weakly, leaning against a nearby tree stump, clutching his legs.
“And we have the wounded, the old, and children with us as well,” another continued. “If this goes on, we wouldn’t last.”
“The Black King has dragons in his army, friends,” the Paladin replied, somewhat annoyed. “If they should catch us, the millennia of history of our kind will be put an end to, once and for all! I shall not allow that to happen! We must press on!”
“To where?” defied another of the refugees, with sparked resentment. “Where would you want us to go now? Without the Orb, the forest and its every denizen have turned their backs to us! We have nowhere to go now!”
“Absurd,” the Paladin gritted his teeth. “Believe that the Spirits of the Wood is still on our side! We wouldn’t surrender to fate that easily!”
“With all due respect, sir, you are being absurd yourself. What can we do when our king himself perished before the battle even began, and Prince Faegard is lost!”
That statement was like a sledgehammer blow squarely on the face for the Paladin for sound reason. It took him a good couple of seconds to stern himself up once more to respond.
“Regardless,” determinedly spoke Harthrane, as he suppressed his own doubt. “We ARE going to find a place to live, and we shall rebuild our civilization from scraps, if need be!”
“Your words, excuse me, sir, do not bear much strength now, Lord Nightowl,” yet another refugee talked back. “We are stuck here in the true wilderness, the wood forsaking us, our enemy ready to devour us any time now, and most importantly, we can’t go any more.”
The paladin was going to speak, but what he got next from the crowd was nothing too encouraging. A mutinous glare from every person still conscious around him took the Paladin aback. Within it he saw a degree of resentment he had never experienced throughout his career. The situation prompted Harthrane to find a better solution, as in, to appease the people first of all.
“Alright then,” Harthrane sighed, as if giving up. “Everyone, looks like we’ll call it a day and have a rest for now.”
The Paladin glanced at the darkness behind them, sighing once more, before concluding.
“I’ll keep watch, and should the Black King’s pursuers reach us, run as far as you can, and don’t look back. I’ll buy you time to get away and survive.”
The crowd’s relief was profound, as every single member of the exodus took a seat, leaning against the nearby trees, heads buried in their laps. Before the paladin knew it, the sound of snores and contented breathing had filled the quietness of the forest with a soothing blanket of quasi-peace.
“Snores,” Harthrane thought. Yes, the insomniacs of Mediava, never known to sleep more than a few hours each night, and did so with one eye open, were now hopelessly and defenselessly unconscious.
The Paladin was left alone, standing on self-appointed guard duty, watching over the rest of the refugees as his eyes wandered across the dark night, strained out from both the stress and distraught of the day, as well as the attempt to detect any malignant movement from the shadow.
The night was expected to contain much astonishment. The current plight of his people allowed Harthrane little ground to relieve himself. Should the bad come to worse, Harthrane would not hesitate to give his life up for the survival of his kind.
But sometimes, the night could conceal good news beside bad…
******
Never before in history had a city of Mediava been so terribly and utterly destroyed like what had befallen Silverlush. Apparently the Black King had made it a point to make sure that everything Elven would be eradicated from the world for good. He had so far largely succeeded. All was left of the once glorious Silverlush were streets filled with rubbles, flames and the carcasses of the slain. Marching over that devastation were the armies of infernal beasts, taking their time to plunder, loot or otherwise desecrating anything remaining.
And yet the struggle for survival had not yet concluded, at least for a particular young life.
On the southern front of the ruined city, hours after the fall of the city, a young elf was trying his best to shake off a persistent pursuer. His size, features and voice were comparable to a teenage human, showing that he could not be older than a hundred years old and far from physical and magical maturity. He was a typical elven youth, marked with his signature long ear, fair skin and long platinum hair flowing down his shoulder, all of which soiled heavily by the business of the day.
His garments were in no better shape. What used to be a noble garment had been deformed beyond recognition throughout the escape. Both sleeves had been torn off, the backside battered, one shoulder burnt, and a multitude of scratches had ripped the cape to shreds. As he realized after pulling himself out from his latest hiding place in a rundown bakery, the suit’s fancy collar had been well painted black by a combination of soot and ash.
His pursuer was, quite unfortunately, a brutish Mountain Giant the size of a five-storey building, armed with a large uprooted oak tree which he twirled in his hand like a one-handed mace.
It was common knowledge that those colossal creatures native to the Southland Ridges were fond of nothing more than the tender flesh of young High Elves. It didn’t matter even if his prey was of sizable political value if wisely used by his master. Which was exactly the case, as the young elf running for dear life happened to be the only child of the dead King of Greenglaze, Prince Faegard Elfblade.
Throughout his life, the Prince of Greenglaze had never had to face such absurd amounts of imminent danger, until around a week ago, when the invasion came to be. From then on, everything seemed to have gone the wrong way, climaxing with his father’s death, the people around him being killed in cold blood, and the last platoon assigned with protecting him sacrificing to the last to try to see him to safety. How successful that endeavor had been was wholly up for debate. Even now he was trying to prove them right.
Owing to more luck than talent he had eluded his foe’s grasp so far. In the past few hours, he had been surviving by haphazardly swinging fireballs one after another at his oversize foe just to buy himself more time. Such commitment of magic had exhausted whatever reserve the apprentice he was could muster. A building headache started to build up within his cranium as a warning sign of magic overuse at all the wrong time.
His luck appeared to be running out at long last. The earthshaking footsteps of the gargantuan creature prompted the escapee to attempt to swing another fireball back at him on reflex. This time it didn’t work as well as it should have. All the elf got for all his effort was another stroke of headache and a mere sizzling ball of lukewarm light. Maybe it was just the young elf’s terror making up an illusion, but he could swear it did hear the beast give out a loud slurp as he charged him, club in hand for the kill.
Survival instinct didn’t allow him to give up – just yet.
With all his agility, the young elf burst forth in a desperate attempt to outrun his predator. The key word was ‘desperate’. The mountain giant’s legs were far too long to ourtun. In the end, the elf could but helplessly look back as the mountain giant closed on him with impunity, reaching its calloused, dirty, grimy hand out for him. The last thing he realized was himself involuntarily shutting his eyes, covering his ears, and letting out a sharp shriek of terror as his fate was sealed…
And then there was a blinding flash, piercing through his tightly shut eyes and paralyzed his keen sense of sight.
Before the light had even died down, the young elf felt his body losing weight at such a rapid pace, as if each and every single bit on his material body were being ripped from where it was, before being thrown into a massive melting pot for rearrangement and placement. Not being a physically constituent figure himself, he felt violently sick as a result of the process, before being wrapped up with a dreadful shock that pierced his every sense, rendering him comatose.
Whatever happened to him after that point, no one in Mediava would know. The Prince of Silverlush, as well as his pursuer, had been simply erased from existence in his native world, written off as dead by friends and foes alike.
He most certainly wasn’t.
It might have felt like an eternity in a prison of darkness for the prince in question. After that perceived eternity, eventually he regained consciousness, realizing himself comfortably hidden within a green bush, covered and concealed well by the leaves above and kept warm by the grass below. As his senses came back to him, the Prince nervously reached for different parts of his body, finally breathing of relief when he realized that none of his limbs were missing. In fact, whatever happened had left him without a scratch, a good sign for a survivor.
The next thing that came to him was to find out where he was for the moment being. Apparently he was nowhere near the ruins of his hometown at the moment. The soot-filled atmosphere, the air thick with ash, smoke, and nauseating with the smell of burnt bodies and blood was nonexistent in this place.
Instead there was the soothing scent of green grass and vegetation. The light breeze and the mild sunlight penetrating the wall of leaves revealed that he was now in a rather open place, like a prairie or a forest opening. Either way, the fresh scent of nature was a much-needed change. The death-polluted air of his ruined home town had already given him more than his life’s share of torment already.
For now he was safe within the embrace of nature. The most probable explanation to it was that bolt of lightning or magical beam, or whatever might fit the bill. Where it came from or how, he would not know for sure, but from his meager knowledge of common magick, such kind of space-altering effect could only be brought about by a teleporting spell, and not just any of them.
Faegard had even less clue as to who was behind it all. Even a powerful wizard would consider successfully teleporting anyone other than himself to a different place a formidable achievement. And even so, most wizards can only teleport those within their line of sight. As far as Faegard knew, he didn’t see anyone, let alone a powerful spellcaster, around him at the time of distress.
”Maybe it’s a miracle,” the prince came to the most logical conclusion. ”Thanks the gods for their kind aid that I am still alive.”
An all too familiar roar in the background instantly stopped his train of speculations and theories. A chill ran up his spines as soon as he realized the source of the noise, confirmed just a second later by peeking through the leaves.
It seemed that whoever saved him from that moment’s imminent death hadn’t taken into consideration all the consequences of his actions. The careless teleportation had brought not only him to this place, but also the very creature that was threatening his life. The dirty, brutish Mountain Giant he had been throwing fireballs at and running away from for the last half a day was now keeping him company, having finally woken up from the teleportation spell’s impact.
“Oh no!” Faegard blurted. “Wait, did I just say that out loud?”
He most certainly did. The last thing Faegard would want in the new situation was exactly what he heard immediately following that, a delighted roar from the hunter in question. The giant’s instinctive reaction was to lung towards the bush at full speed.
Barely had Faegard run out from his once-comfortable position when the giant crashed into to bush, crushing the vegetation under his weight. Its hasty move worked against it, as the dangling branches and roots effectively tied its limbs in place, entangling it for a few seconds.
On reflex, Faegard tossed yet another fireball at the beast. Fortunately, his headache had left him for now, though only temporarily. The flame managed to incinerate the entangling roots, and singing the creature’s left foot with it, causing him to tumble over in an awkward pain.
Taking that chance, Faegard sprang to his feet, and dashed away in a random direction. It took his foe quite some time to recover from the pain and stage a pursuit, its face tensed by rage. It gave out another massive roar, dashing towards the silhouette of its prey at top speed. Its intelligence, however, was only so much, and once again Faegard forced him face-down on the ground with another fireball that scorched his knee.
The next fifteen minute was spent repeating the same trick again and again, with the giant growing madder and madder as he tumbled time after time.
However, this time Faegard wasn’t as lucky as when he was back in Silverlush. His newfound fortune ran out before he could devise a possible plan to escape. Random running around finally caught him in a dead end, cornered by a cliff in front and the pursuer behind in a classic face-off situation.
Faegard nervously glanced down the only escape path, feeling slightly nauseous as he did. The deep ravine, the howling wind and his ever-growing magic overuse-induced headache together sent a shiver up his spines. Death by falling was not much better than being buried in a giant’s tummy by any accord. And lest he think about tricking the beast into charging him and falling into the pit, the ground below him wasn’t exactly stable enough for the rampaging footsteps of the giant.
The beast, on the double, seemed, at least at this particular moment, to be remarkably smart enough to avoid a suicidal run towards its prey and the pit. It slowed down, looked around, and then proceeded with a noticeable degree of cautiousness towards the prey. Then it tried, with the same degree of cautiousness, to reach its hand out for a quick grab. Faegard took advantage of the movement well enough to dive-roll out of his reach, and away from the pit as a result.
But now it was back to square one for the lost prince – without his back facing the pit to daunt the monster, and without even the amount of magic needed to cast a simple spell, Faegard was now completely defenseless before the creature’s whatever action. The loss of balance from the dive made it impossible for him to avoid the next grab from the monster. Once again, involuntarily, the downtrodden prince shut his eyes, as if to avoid having to set his eyes on his own demise.
Faegard expected his own bones break under the squeezing grip of the creature. It didn’t happen at all.
Instead, the next thing he knew was a roaring explosion from a distance, followed by the sound of solid metal smashing into flesh with a slam, and the thunderclap of the massive creature being forced to the ground. The effect was tantamount to a minor earthquake, forcing the prince down in a dangerously vulnerable position.
When the tremor had ceased, Faegard stood up and opened his eyes to realize how lucky he was that he had rolled away from the edge of the cliff. The impact of the fall had caused the entire cape to collapse, leaving a bottomless expansion of the pit just where his feet were half a minute ago.
The offending beast was well lying on the ground writhing in pain, clutching its gigantic chin, as whatever had hit it must have probably broken the beast’s jaw for good. But there was more to meet his eyes now than just that, in the form of the person, or thing, that had just saved him.
A steel golem, or, rather, what could be classified as one, was Faegard’s first impression of his savior. The creature seemed to fit no other definition in Faegard’s dictionary. But even calling it a golem was stretching the definition too far.
The humanoid was far too elaborate, too luxurious and too majestic to be simply a mundane golem. While a normal golem would be no larger than an ogre for ease of use and control, this golem was as large as, if not larger than the Mountain Giant itself.
The prince couldn’t help but marvel at the construct. Leaving out the difficulty to control, as Faegard speculated, just animating this humanoid alone would cost an ungodly amount of magic power. Whoever owned this monstrosity of a golem, Faegard thought, would easily outpower the dreaded Black King and his cadre in every field of magic.
Faegard could only wonder who could have constructed such a golem. No wizard, however skilful or extravagant, would go as far as to even paint his golem, let alone decorate it. This one was attached such myriads of decorations and unknown features as metal lion heads, manes and stained plates and countless other pieces of metal accessories. A variety of otherworldly structures and parts protruded from its back, arranged in a rack-like placement lining up its backside.
At first glance, it appeared that the golem had got a missing hand. Faegard’s second look corrected him, when what appeared to be its missing appendage flew back to it from a good distance away and magically connected back to its wrist as if nothing had happened. The dark bloodstain on its knuckle suggested that it was that detachable arm that was responsible for severely mauling the Mountain Giant just now.
And then the huge steel golem bent down, as if to look at Faegard, at which point the awed prince nervously backed away on instinct As he backed off, eyes still glued to the creature’s shape, the golem’s next action, as Faegard saw it, was completely unfathomable.
The creature’s hands clasped at its chest, at which point the entire lion head-decorated chest of the golem sprang open, revealing an opened hatch. Faegard could swear such a feature was nonexistent in any design of golem throughout the history of Mediava as a whole.
But the surprise was yet to end. Before Faegard could properly put his feeling about that bizarreness to words, the prince once again felt light on his feet. The explanation came a second later when the tip of his feet left the ground. He was being sucked into the bowels of the machine before he knew it.
That movement came with such suddenness that Faegard could only respond by a loud scream, trailing behind him as he was finally sucked into the golem’s opened chest, and brought to an abrupt end when the hatch closed. His unnecessary twitching and struggling within the body of the golem resulted in a mild concussion, phasing him out for a moment or so.
When Faegard finally managed to get a hold of himself, he could but open his mouth in an awe even greater than before. There was an entire cabin built within the chest of the golem, with a screen before Faegard, showing him nothing other than the scene outside, as lively and realistic as real life itself.
In front of his hands was a rack of various buttons arranged in colorful panels. At least three were lined up before him, as if inviting him to press. While they clearly reminded him of buttons and levers on various gnomish contraptions, but way beyond the level that the tiny inventors could ever dream about creating.
Faegard stared at the keyboard, blankeing out. According to what he knew about such gnomish constructs, each button was supposed to do something, but exactly what would be the private knowledge of the inventor. Sometimes even the inventors failed to take note of what which button was supposed to do, making the entire process of using a gnomish machine a purely trial-and-error process. This one might be the same
Faced with such predicament Faegard naturally felt tempted to temper with some of the buttons and levers, just to find out what would happen.
However, in that situation, tempering with unknown machine could mean death. For one reason, far too often gnomish machines would blow up if the wrong button was pressed at the wrong time. And for another, his primary source of danger, the Mountain Giant, was still alive.
Still clutching its jaw as it stood up, its eyes filled with rage, the jaw-broken Mountain Giant had gone from reckless and savage to dangerously insane. It didn’t even try to defend itself this time as it used to shield part of its body from Faegard’s spells throughout the last day.
Rather, it charged straight at the machine, ramming it at maximum speed. Without anything to control it, the defenseless golem was thrown sideway forcefully, landing face-up about sixty feet away. Faegard could have been crushed by the very after-effect of the ram, had he not grabbed the nearest lever for balancing purpose.
The monster did not cease it attack yet. A quick punch it threw as a follow-up after the ram aimed directly at the golem’s head. Frantically, Faegard tugged at the said lifesaving lever hard, as if clinging on to dear life. This time, he was lucky, once again. The moment Faegard tugged it, the golem’s legs and hip turned at an angle enough to push itself aside with a roll, avoiding the Mountain Giant’s punch by a hair.
The Mountain Giant was driven madder. It proceeded to throw another punch at the offending golem, with even more force than before. Having learnt the lesson from before, Faegard pulled the lever once again, triggering another evasive action. This time, however, the shock from the giant’s punch almost threw Faegard off his seat, making the prince involuntarily reach his other hand for another lever on the left side for balance.
The effect was not too pleasant. A loud blast could be heard right behind him, followed by a massive push upward from the same direction, nearly driving his head straight onto the screen once again, followed by another string of head-twisting turbulence that didn’t work with his present headache at all. Before he knew it, the next thing he saw from the screen confirmed that the golem was standing upright again. The prince had just discovered the hard way how to activate one of the funny-looking attachments behind its back.
“So that lever activates that machine to bring this thing back on its feet?” Faegard mused. “But I need to attack!”
Faegard didn’t have that much time to speculate. A flaring red light on the top of his head began to bleep loudly, spreading an incandescent reddish beam all over the chamber’s background. If Faegard hadn’t realized that such a reaction from a machine would mean nothing good, a rigid, mechanical voice spoke at a monotonously annoying, yet extremely urgent tone hammered the point home.
“Warning. Frame damage at 75%. Right arm and Lion Blaster offline. Left arm Boost Knuckle at 13% efficiency. Left thruster at 23% efficiency.”
Faegard couldn’t understand half of what the voice was suggesting, but from the looks of things alone, it didn’t seem to be any good. If he was to take another direct blow from the Mountain Giant, he and that machine would likely not make it.
“Damn! Is there anything on this blasted machine I can use to fight back?” Faegard looked around frantically, searching for a button that would say something even barely resembling a physical attack, a magical spell, or both. There was none. And all the while, the monster was making its advance, its fist raised high above its head, ready for a coup de grace.
All of a sudden, a fragment of the screen before Faegard suddenly flared up, displaying the words “F-MISSILE READY FOR LAUNCH” in bright, red block letter. In conjunction with that, the button panel on Faegard’s left suddenly split open, revealing a bright, red button. Such buttons would, according to Gnomish inventors, symbolize an extremely dangerous complication if pressed. Anything up to and including violent self-destruction, so he was taught.
However, Faegard didn’t look like he had much choice for the time being. Everyone knew that a Mountain Giant’s berserk fist was the only known force in Mediava that could drop an adult dragon in one solid blow. Countless tales had been told of dragons picking fights with the giants only to have their skull bashed in beyond recognition. The steel golem would be no exception, Faegard thought. Thinking so, he jammed his eyes shut, and landed a random slam on the said red button.
The next thing Faegard knew was a huge explosion right next to him, followed by a cataract of blood painting the entire area of the screen red. It seemed that whatever it caused had inflicted mortal damage on his foe. But Faegard never got to confirm it. The concussion that followed had knocked him out rather hard on impact. As he passed out, he could still blurrily hear the final roar of pain from the dying giant…
******
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