Paladin (part 2)
Filed under Fiction on May 26, 2004
Tagged: Aribeth de Tylmarande, paladins
“I had a dream, just short of a month ago. Only, I’m not sure it was a dream. I was spending the afternoon relaxing under the shade of a great oak tree, watching the wind ruffle the grass and the clouds wander overhead. My eyelids were incredibly heavy and I am sure I was moments from a peaceful nap. Suddenly, a cloud stopped above me. Not all the clouds, just one. In fact, the remaining clouds seemed to race along behind this stationary one as though time was speeding faster. Slowly it began to roil, until certain features started developing: eye sockets, a nose, mouth.
“I, of course, sat bolt upright. I rubbed my eyes and pinched myself. I am not sure if this works to wake you up from a dream if you are doing it to yourself in a dream, but it was all I knew to do.
“Regardless, nothing changed. Except that the cloud started to speak to me. Well, the cloud’s mouth started moving and I heard words in my head. I could not tell if the voice was male or female.
“It told me that a great imbalance was coming. ‘My children will need protecting and you will be that protector.’
“The next thing I remember is opening my eyes to an orange sunset. There was not a cloud in the sky.”
“I assume that the ‘things’ began happening to you shortly after this.” From her tone of voice, it really wasn’t a question, but he nodded anyway.
“My friends and I do a lot of odd jobs. Adventuring, you might say. Stuff like escorting caravans, or survey and exploration, that kind of thing. Why, once, we even guarded a flock of sheep against goblin raiders.” His weak laugh died off under Aribeth’s steady gaze. She offered a patronizing smile.
“Anyways, we just completed mapping some caves for a dwarven mining guild. Ran into some gnolls. Big, tall ugly suckers with paws for feet and muzzles like a dog.”
“I have dispatched a few.”
“Right, sure you have. Of course. Well, have you ever seen a gnoll glow? I did. None of my buddies saw it, but we were coming down a tunnel and all of a sudden I saw a light from around the corner.
“No, that’s not right. I saw the light through the cave wall! Several lights, in fact, which turned out to be a patrol of those damned dog-men. Well, even though we had that little warning, the encounter didn’t go so well. One of the guys got gutted, pretty bad. I had already broken a couple of spears and was left with just my dagger.
“I charged the gnoll standing over my fallen buddy. My blade slipped through his hide and a flash of white light passed from me through the dagger. The gnoll exploded. Now, I’ve had that dagger for quite a while and it’s never done anything like that before.
“There’s more. We finished off the gnolls and I knelt down beside Skahn. He was still alive, but blood was oozing from where he held his hand over his belly and he coughed up more when he tried to talk. I knew this was it, so I tried to comfort him. Suddenly, my hands grew warm and were enveloped by a yellow light. As I held Skahn, the light spread up and down his body until it covered him entirely. As it slowly faded, I looked down and he was whole again!”
He shook his head at the memory of the event. “I have never studied magic. No one in my family has been cursed. I talked with the priest and he thought perhaps I had been chosen by a god. I don’t know who or why. I’m not anybody special.”
Silence blanketed the pair. Neither stirred. Afraid to see rejection on that beautiful face, he did not look up from the floor.
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