Paladin's Fall: Kingdom's Forge Book 2

by Kade Derricks

  Regan and Hexen fought a demon at the top. Hexen’s sword flared and flashed as it struck the demon’s chest. The beast screamed and, from the courtyard below, another answered. Gashan paused. The courtyard. There is another of the beasts inside the walls with us.

  More scraping came from the wall. Gashan drew his sword just as three more demons pulled themselves upright. He stabbed the first in the face and it dropped away into the darkness below. Behind him, a demon’s howl drowned into a gurgle. Hexen must have killed his.

  The remaining demons around Gashan surged forward, and the guardsman’s sword met their talons and claws. He was fortunate that none of these beasts moved as fast as Kray had. He was unfortunate that four more demons sprang up behind them. Their jaws snapped and popped as they regarded their prey.

  Getting eaten had not been part of the plan.

  Hexen flew past him then, sword glowing and humming with Light. He struck at the nearest demon, and when another reached for his back, Gashan stabbed it. Regan came into view then, fighting fiercely. The man’s technique was sound; his sword sliced the outstretched arm from a demon and he swung for another’s throat in almost the same fluid movement.

  In moments the wall was clear. Limbs and bodies lay in small piles all around the three defenders. They panted for breath, white clouds of moisture puffing into the cold air. Each had taken at least one wound, though none fatal. Hexen held his still-glowing sword high, trying to shed its light over a larger area.

  “Do you think that’s the last…” Regan started, then trailed off as more scrapings came from below. Another group of demons climbed to join them, hissing and snapping. Gashan didn’t hesitate. He stuck at the nearest, his sword driving through the beast’s eye. Hexen struck the head of a second and it exploded into a spray of blackened gore.

  The fight seemed to last for hours, though it must have only been a matter of minutes before the wood elves came to their aid. Mages, archers, and armored warriors closed in from the towers and slaughtered the demons that remained.

  Regan clutched at an ugly wound in his shoulder. Gashan’s left leg felt aflame where a demon had bit it. Hexen was covered in shallow cuts and bruises, but he’d escaped without serious injury.

  One of Hexen’s fellow Paladins used his healing arts to do what he could for the others, and then he put a sphere of spiraling Light into Gashan’s leg. The guardsman felt the immense heat of it before his world went white.

  “There were seventeen in total, Baroness,” Hexen said. “All posing as members of the Black Corps, much like Kray impersonated one of the golden elves in Mirr.”

  Gashan watched without expression. He lay abed while the Paladin explained what had happened the night before. Regan sat in a chair opposite him. His arm was in a sling and wrapped with thick bandages.

  “And whose idea was this?” the Baroness asked, looking somehow weary and alert at the same time. Something that comes with the mantle of leadership, I’d wager, Gashan thought.

  “Gashan’s, mostly.”

  The Baroness faced him. For a moment he was sure she would strike him, and then her expression softened a bit.

  “Well. It seems we owe you,” she said. There was still a lot of anger there, Gashan saw. Building trust would take time, but at least she was addressing him directly now.

  Patience, he counseled himself, every path forward starts with a single step.

  “I am glad to be of service,” Gashan said. “Tell me, Baroness, are there plans to repair the wall?”

  “There are. Tem and a young man named Birke, one of yours, have a plan to coat the bottom section and recast it with runes,” she said.

  “How are you going to keep the demons off them while they work, my lady?” Hexen asked.

  “We’ve kept the valley shrouded in fog, and,” she looked at Gashan again, “your golden elves offered to guard them while they worked. Our wood elf soldiers will cover them with bows and spells from the wall. And now I must see to them, excuse me,” she said, turning to leave before the last words had left her mouth.

  Hexen looked at him, smiled, then shrugged. The Paladin was exhausted. His eyes were bloodshot and his broad shoulders sagged. Whatever inner force he’d used to defeat the demons had taken a toll on him. He took his sword from where it lay propped against the wall and followed the Baroness out.

  Gashan marveled at his strength. If the Light allowed him to cut through demons like he had and recover so quickly, he might follow it himself.

  “I owe you as well, guardsman,” Regan said from his chair. He offered a hand, and Gashan took it.

  “I must admit, I find no pleasure in having been correct in my suspicions. I would have rather we found the demons coming over the wall than hiding among us. This will breed more distrust, and we can ill afford it,” Gashan said, and Regan nodded grimly.

  “It might pull us together, though, if there are no further murders,” Regan said.

  “If there are no further murders,” Gashan nodded.

  Creator let it be so. We could use a lucky break.

  “I have never seen a human before.”

  Dain and his family stood in a huge domed chamber lit by dozens of glowing yellow and blue crystals. Paintings, writing materials, and stacks of books surrounded them on every surface and wall.

  In many ways their host resembled an elf, if an elf were seven feet tall and red-skinned like a lobster. Tattooed markings in swirls and circles covered his face and bare arms. Even his bare red feet were blanketed in them. He wore a pair of loose white pants and a matching shirt stained across the chest with a variety of colors.

  “I said I have never seen a human before,” it said again. “I am sorry if that offends you.”

  “Well, I’ve never seen anyone quite like you before either,” Dain said, finding his voice at last. He kept himself positioned between the giant red elf and the twins. His hand remained glued to his sword hilt, and he suspected Jin, standing slightly to his right, held a hidden dagger against her leg. “We didn’t expect anyone to be down here, ah, sir.”

  “I see. And now you are wondering if I am friend or foe,” the elf said. His voice was thick with an accent Dain couldn’t place and deep in tone as if it had boiled up from a bottomless pit. “I suppose introductions are in order. My name is Teran.”

  “I am Dain, and these are my children: Jin, Luren, and Telar.”

  Teran’s long, thin eyebrows quirked upwards. “How pleasant to meet you all. It has been long since I’ve had visitors; years or decades, even. Time has no meaning here. Please, sit anywhere you can find a space.” The red elf gestured to the stacks of paintings and papers around them.

  “Teran is…I mean Teran was a city,” Jin said.

  “It isn’t a city any longer?” the elf replied.

  “No it isn’t,” Dain said. Neither he nor his children had moved.

  “Pity,” Telar said with a shambling shrug. “I rather enjoyed having a city named after me, though at the time they built it I begged them not to. Please sit, won’t you? Those stairs are a challenge, even coming down. I walk them a couple of times each day for exercise.”

  “Forgive me, but…what are you?” Jin asked.

  “That is a complicated question. First, will you tell me where you are all from? I’m quite curious, and it will make the telling easier if I have an idea of where to start,” Teran said. If the big elf was offended by Jin’s question he showed no sign of it. He took a seat near an easel that held a half-finished painting. Once settled, he drew a brush from his palette and flicked it through a shade of purple. “I hope you don’t mind if I paint while we talk. I want to finish this before the vision fades. You were going to tell me where you are from.”

  “We are from here in the valley, a castle near the east fork of the Wessen,” Dain said. He couldn�
��t see much of the painting, just a swirl of colors.

  “How close to the ancient road?”

  “A mile south. We protect the caravans.”

  “A good site,” Teran nodded. “But you, Dain, a human, were surely not born there.”

  “I was not. I am from the far south. My wife and children were all born here.”

  “I sense the Light in you. It is strong. Are you one of Palatine’s followers?”

  Dain coughed. “I am.” How could he sense that? How could he know about Palatine? Everything about this room suggested the elf never left it.

  “I sense it too in you, Jin, though you are wholly elven. That seems strange to me, but as it ever was, there are many strange things in the world.” Teran’s brush dipped into a sea-green color, blurring with the purple.

  Dain opened his mouth to ask the creature to explain who he was again, but Teran answered his question before he’d even spoken the first word.

  “I am an elf, obviously. The first elf, to be precise,” Teran said. “And yes, that makes me quite old; around twenty-thousand years or so.”

  “Nothing could live for so long,” Jin whispered.

  “Honestly, won’t you all take a seat? I’m growing tired just looking at you standing there. If I meant you harm I would have done it by now. Truly, I get so few visitors that I couldn’t bring myself to harm one. The paintings are horrible conversationalists, after all.” Teran twisted up his strange face into an approximation of a smile. He didn’t look ancient. There were no wrinkles at his mouth or around his black eyes, though there was a deep sense of age in the latter.

  “What do you mean the first elf?” Luren asked, taking a cautious step forward.

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t have time for a visit. We need to find the Well,” Dain said. Fascinating as this all was, Koren drew closer by the minute and there were preparations to make.

  “Ahh, the Well,” Teran said. He tilted his head to one side. “I can show you where it is, though none of you seem like the type to covet its power. But I’ve been wrong before.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t think we’ll need your help. There aren’t too many places it could be,” Dain said. He didn’t trust Teran, intriguing though he was. The elf claimed to be thousands of years old, and for someone who seemed to be sealed away in this pit, he knew an awful lot. Dain wanted to be away from him.

  Teran smiled again. “Let me know if I can be of help. I grow tired of hearing my own voice.”

  Keeping the twins behind him, Dain backed out of the chamber and onto the shining glass. Needing all the light he could get, he left the door open behind him. He turned to his children.

  “Search around for another door.”

  He led Jin and the twins around the walls, feeling along for another chamber. Perhaps it was hidden. A secret entrance of some kind? Teran emerged from his room, watching them with a sly grin. He waited silently until they circled and stood at his door again.

  Dain made a second lap with nothing to show for it. If the Well was down here, it was hidden beyond his ability to find it. He doubted Koren would have that problem. She’ll sense it immediately, and it will likely sense her. He sighed. There was no help for it but to ask the elf.

  “Alright, where is it?” he said, trying not to sound too sharp and failing.

  “Come,” Teran said. He led the group into his room again and through the stacks of books and parchment to a small, arched doorway at the back. “Through here.”

  Dain followed, and the little door swung open into a cavernous chamber. It looked nothing like he expected. In every way but one it resembled a cave, with growing stalactites and dripping water, but at the chamber’s farthest side was a row of round, stacked rocks around a bubbling underground spring. The water glowed green and blue and bottomless. Its surface boiled and bubbled as tendrils of smoke rose from it, drifting around the cave like fog. It smelled of an overpowering marriage of ash and sulphur. All but Teran covered their noses, trying to block the stench of it. None of them moved beyond the doorway.

  “Yes, it smells, doesn’t it? You get used to it in time,” Teran said. “I put the rocks up. My little joke, you see. Everyone kept calling it a well, so I thought it should look more like one.”

  Even Dain could feel the power in the thick air. Once or twice in his time he’d held a Magentite, a rare gem that amplified any magic drawn through it, and the power he felt here dwarfed that a thousandfold. He couldn’t face Koren in this chamber. Not surrounded with the sweet allure of so much might. It would surely burn him to a husk.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said. Jin nodded agreement, but her eyes never left the water. She felt it, too. Telar and Luren were likewise mesmerized by the cavern’s spell, the water’s green-blue glow reflecting in their eyes. Dain seized the twins by their arms and dragged them back toward Teran’s room. Jin squeezed her eyes shut. He felt her nails digging into his shoulder as he led them out.

  Back in Teran’s chamber, they collapsed. Dain could still hear the echo of all that power rebounding through his mind.

  “Beautiful, is it not?” Teran asked. “I remember the day we found the chamber. The world’s deep magics rushed out in a heaving burst. The Well was cleaner then, of course—before the demons fouled it. In that first rush, thousands of demons gorged themselves on the power and died, drunk and happy.”

  “What?” Dain said, recovering himself some. “Why did they die?”

  “Lesser demons, those that the great lords commanded to dig, can’t survive such an onslaught. They lack the capacity to force themselves to stop feeding. They smiled, as much as demons can smile, and howled in ecstasy as their bellies burst with the magic.”

  Teran sat down again at his easel. He took up his brush and started to paint again. “There were elves there too, of course. But the power didn’t affect them, at least not in the same way.”

  “Why not?” Jin asked. “Did they stop themselves?”

  “I stopped them,” Teran said. “I could hardly allow my children to die.”

  “Your children?” Dain said.

  “Did Teldrain tell you nothing of the Well’s history? He should have; I patiently explained it all to him, and to his predecessors.”

  “How did you know my grandfather?” Jin asked.

  “I have known all the guardians, except the most recent. Although I suppose I know you now.”

  Teran gestured to a stack of paintings in one corner. Jin lifted the topmost and showed it to Dain. In perfect detail, it captured not only Sera’s father, Teldrain, the last true wood elf king, but also Selasa, Jin’s grandmother.

  “Teldrain told me demons dug the Well, and that his ancestors arrived with an army of elves. After years of fighting the first elven king captured the Well,” Dain said.

  “That is partially true, I suppose,” Teran said, adding a wisp of paint to his canvas the color of the Well’s swirling waters. “I’ve found that, with most of the guardians, they deny the whole truth once they learn it. I wondered why Teldrain stopped visiting. A pity he didn’t pass along the true story, but none of the others did, either.” Teran sighed, sounding in that moment every bit his age.

  “And what is the true story?” Luren asked. She still had a glimmer in her eyes that Dain didn’t care for. The Well seemed to have affected her more than the others. It made sense, given her spellcasting talents.

  “Demons did dig the Well; the ancient demon lords commanded it, but they had others digging with them. Elves. There was no great elven army that marched into battle with the demons. Indeed, there were no elves beyond the valley’s borders. You see, the demons created us. They created the elves. All elves.”

  “That can’t be,” Jin said. “Demons can’t create anything, all they do is destroy. You’re lying.”

  “
Sadly, child, I am not. Though you are correct in one thing; as creatures of the void, demons can’t truly create anything,” Teran said, then paused. “Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the demons formed us into what we are today.”

  “Formed how?” Telar asked. “We were created to oppose the demons.”

  “In a way that too is correct, but it’s a twisting of the truth. Has our history become so distorted? It saddens me, but I suppose I understand it.” Teran frowned and shook his head. He put down the brush and crossed the room to yet another stack of paintings. Sorting through them, he picked one out of the pile. “I have something that will explain it better. Here it is.”

  The red elf held out a stretched canvas. He placed it on the easel over his current work, and spun the legs so that it faced them.

  The drawing was beautiful, every detail exquisite. It showed a demon wrestling with a winged being of pure Light.

  “This depicts the demon Helfaust and the fae-spirit Yanleh. This is during the final battle between the demon lords and the Light and its champions. Helfaust was mighty among the demons, and Yanleh the strongest of the fae—and their last hope. Every fae that met Helfaust died.”

  Dain had heard the legend of Helfaust and Yanleh during his travels. In some ways, the story of Palatine and Atraxas mirrored it.

  “This time it was Helfaust who died,” Dain said. “But before he did he drew Yanleh deep into the demons’ lines. And though Yanleh slew the demon, he himself was slain in turn.”

  Teran nodded and smiled. “Correct. And after Helfaust’s death, the fae army rallied and carried the day. But not all of the fae were so fortunate. Many were taken by the demons in their retreat and, instead of killing them outright, the demons bound them with spikes of iron and chains of steel.”