The gremlins, as a matter of fact, did laugh more as they stared at Stephan. They didn’t just laugh. They howled, clutching their sides, wheezing, and rolling on the ground as if Stephan was the finest jester they had ever seen. One of them toppled backward, smacking its skull against a cobblestone, and only laughed harder for it.
“What’s so funny?” Stephan screamed, his voice rising above the crackle of fire and distant screams. “People are dying! Our town is burning!”
The gremlins snickered louder.
“Stephan!” Lady Clara’s voice cut through the chaos. “Get back into the temple! Now!”
“Yes, yes! Run back in!” One of the gremlins shrieked, wiping tears of joy from its bulging, fish-like eye, slapping its butt with the other. “Go hide under the crone’s skirt!”
“Go, go!” the other chirped in, rolling on the ground. “Help Boss break Redcap’s record.”
The complete lack of hostility stunned Stephan. There was no reason to fight two fae sitting around, laughing and screaming. He turned, intending to run, to fight the ones torching homes and attacking innocents, to do something useful.
That’s when the monsters pounced.
Stephan caught the glint of their vicious metallic teeth and swung. A gremlin’s skull cracked, tiny, pointy teeth flying, but the other one snapped its jaws around Stephan’s forearm. Fangs parted flesh like knives and Stephan screamed.
He shook his arm wildly. The gremlin flew off, but the little creature took a pound of flesh with it.
While it rolled and skidded on the ground, Stephan’s wound glowed gold. Flesh knitted, the wound closed. A chunk was still missing, the skin sealed over the torn muscle, but Stephan had no time to look at it.
The gremlin darted low, and Stephan roared. He swung the mace with such force, the gremlin’s head sank into his body with a nasty, wet crack.
“Haha! We’ll call him Shorty from now on!” Another gremlin squealed in joy as the already short body fell to the ground, a head shorter.
“Stephan!” Lady Clara shouted again. “Go into the temple! These little abominations can taunt you into attacking them!”
“Yes, yes,” a gremlin jeered. “Run under the crone’s skirt!”
Another one slapped its rear in Stephan’s direction, and something inside the youth snapped. He didn’t remember charging, nor the strike. He stood over a small, broken body, light dancing before his eyes.
[Level three reached…]
Stephan ignored the letters and lunged for the next gremlin. Suddenly, warmth clamped down on his shoulder, firm and unyielding.
“Cleanse.”
His head cleared, Lady Clara was standing next to him, her hand on his shoulder.
“Enough,” she said, her voice low and harder than iron. “Go back inside. Leave the gremlins to me and Mike. You’re more important than all of us combined. You must survive and receive proper training. Do you understand me?”
“I can do more good here!” Stephan knew it in his heart. He had to stand for the people around him, for those who hadn’t yet reached the safety of the temple.
“Yes,” she snapped. “Yes, you can, but the long term good you can do outweighs what you will do now by risking your life here.”
Stephan staggered as if struck by a mace. Lady Clara’s words were certainly true. What did that mean?
Long-term good. Future good. Strategy. Was it evil to fight and risk his life when he could gain levels, become more powerful and then protect more people? But at which point would he be strong enough to step in? How much evil would he have to tolerate before he acted? When did patience become cowardice and cruelty?
“I will stand for them.”
I made a vow. I will stand even for a single person and do my best, as long as it’s not clearly suicidal. And gremlins, I have proven I can handle gremlins without dying.
He clenched his fist. He had to speak up.
“With all due respect, Lady Clara, I am the Paladin. My job is to risk my life for the sake of innocents,” he pointed at the burning town. “And there are a lot of innocents that need the Paladin.”
Lady Clara stared at him as he ran off, then sighed sharply.
“I’m too old and tired for this hogwash,” she muttered, yet she still ran after the youth.
Smoke choked the air. Sweltering heat pressed down with physical weight, and sweat ran down Stephan’s brow and soaked the back of his shirt as he sprinted through the main street. He healed where he could, burnt flesh reformed beneath his touch, gashes closed, and people stood. Behind him, Lady Clara followed, muttering prayers that Stephan must have mistaken for curses.
She was a far more competent healer than a freshly minted Paladin, so they split the job, she healed, and he watched over her or brought over injured people from burning homes, handling minor injuries on his own.
With each act, the warmth in Stephan’s chest grew. The comfortable feeling swelled until it burst.
[Level four reached…]
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Euphoria washed over him, taking some of his fatigue. Then the light vanished, leaving the giddy, addicting feeling of a level gained.
“I don’t see anymore gremlins,” Stephan huffed.
Lady Clara, on the other hand, panted, sweating buckets. “I’ve gained two levels from this. The last time I leveled was ten years ago. I prayed I would never gain another level.”
She suddenly realized she was talking aloud and pulled herself back together. “We need to return to the temple and see how Mike is doing and where Tod and Kel are. They should be fine, these are just low-level fae.”
Stephan looked around. They were on the other side of town, nearly half a mile away from the temple, with only a handful of townsfolk still with them. The rest they had sent to the temple, including Stephan’s and Lacy’s families.
“Let's head back,” Lady Clara said. “The attack is over and the townsfolk are saved.”
Stephan took in the surrounding destruction. He didn’t agree the townsfolk were saved. Sure, they had saved some lives, but a lot of homes still burned.
Lady Clara noticed his gaze lingering on the fires.
“Everyone will work together to rebuild what we have lost,” her sharp, commanding tone relaxed, growing surprisingly optimistic. “Until then, they can stay at the hospice cottage or the temple. Come on, let’s go back.”
“Yes,” he nodded. “Let’s head back.”
As he turned around, the fatigue and the weight of everything he had done struck Stephan like a maul. He had fought, killed monsters, healed, and, most importantly, protected the innocents. Everything people expected from the Paladin.
It felt good, the victory earned. Even his sore legs and arms felt good, like his muscles were growing.
“We did well, didn’t we?” he asked, and the old priestess gave him a disgruntled sideways look.
“I guess we did fine, but risking the Paladin like this is unacceptable.”
“But, Lady Clara, isn’t taking these kinds of risks my job?”
She frowned. “You could argue that, but paladins always chose their battles. They couldn’t be everywhere, and they only went where they could do the most good.”
“So there’s more than one Paladin?”
“You are the sixth.” She sighed. “But there’s only one Paladin at a time. For you to hold the class, must mean Sir Danso the Wise has passed away. He was older than me, much older, but I don’t believe he was in poor health.”
Stephan nodded, considering her words in silence as they and the people sticking with them approached the temple.
Suddenly, a scream rang out ahead.
Stephan looked up just in time to see Nina’s head spin through the air, her blood spraying like rain.
“Seventeen,” a high-pitched voice sulked.
A gremlin walked out of the temple’s yard, a trail of bodies in his wake. The creature was red, with a red cap and Mike’s head hanging off a belt, the dead man’s face frozen mid-roar.
“Why did it have to be only seventeen? I tried a dozen times, and seventeen was the best I could do.”
A child-sized scythe hung loose in its grip, and unlike the other laughing, jeering gremlins, its gristly face was locked in heartache.
“Why’s it always seventeen?” the creature muttered. “Tried for nineteen, got seventeen. Twice.”
“Redcap!” Lady Clara yelled in terror, and the gremlin sneered.
“It’s BLUE now, innit?” It roared, insanity in its eyes. “Everyone, everyone screams Redcap! Like decapitating nineteen people at once is some grand feat! I just did seventeen twice, and I would’ve done nineteen if only they’d stood still!”
Stephan watched the creature in silent horror. Lacy, his family, friends… they were all in the temple. The scythe in the gremlin’s hands was crimson, drenched in blood. He suddenly realized the creature was blue, just soaked in so much blood, it appeared red.
It took off its cap and looked at it with a frown, eyes widening. Its voice changed to infantile surprise. “Well, stick an apple up me bum, innit red?”
Emotions flickered on the alien face. Its flippant expression turned to one of rage as realization dawned in those inhuman eyes. “That cheatin’ son-of-a-horse—”
Something in Stephan’s head snapped at the macabre creature’s surprise and frivolous tone. He screamed and charged towards it, his mace glowing gold.
The gremlin looked at him, its face changing from bewildered anger to joy beyond human words.
“I’m gonna get me a paladin’s ‘ead! What nineteen ‘eads? Now, that’ll be stuff of legends!” Its smile threatened to split its skull, the joy mixing with avarice in its bloodshot eyes.
It was just a gremlin, Stephan knew it. He swung his mace, and then the gremlin moved. It stepped towards him, ducking under his blow, then jumped, moving so fast Stephan failed to follow. His neck stung, then the world tilted, and he watched a headless body with a mace wreathed in golden flames stumble forward and fall on the ground.
“Got me a paladin’s ‘ead!” The jolly song mixed with Lady Clara’s shriek, then the world went dark.
***
“Remember me, the one who lives there
For she once was a true love of mine.”
Stephan fell down on his knees, gasping, the bard’s song ringing in his ears. He stared at the ground, then at the glowing letters flashing before his eyes.
[Stephan Cobblerson, Paladin level 4
Class skills: In Living Memory XVI, Blessing of Healing I…]
Lacy grabbed his shoulder. “You all right?”
Stephan looked at her, tears welling up in his eyes even as he touched his neck to check whether everything was in place.
“Thank Hope you’re all right,” he whispered.
She gave him a weird look and smiled. It was strained, slightly uneasy, then she jerked her hand from his shoulder as if surprised to find it there.
“Well, as long as you’re fine. What happened? Did you get a class?”
Stephan nodded
‘Didn’t we already have this conversation?’ He was about to ask, but the words wouldn’t leave his mouth for some reason.
“Yeah, I did. More importantly, gremlins are gonna attack us soon, we have to prepare the defenses and warn everyone. We have like ten minutes.”
The crowd gasped and murmured. Mike approached, truncheon in hand.
“Lacy, what’s happening with Stephan?”
“Who?” Lacy asked, confusion written across her face.
“Stephan.” Mike pointed with his club. “Your boyfriend over here.”
Lacy’s gaze moved between them incredulously. “What are you talking about, Mike? I don’t have a boyfriend, and this is the first time I’ve seen this man.”
[Level three reached
Skill acquired: Smite I
+1 Agility, +1 Charisma, +1 Composure, +1 Dexterity, +1 Endurance, +0 Intelligence, +0 Luck, +1 Perception, +1 Presence, +1 Strength, +1 Toughness, +1 Vitality, +1 Willpower, +1 Wisdom]
[Level four reached
Skill acquired: Blessing of Protection I
+1 Agility, +1 Charisma, +1 Composure, +1 Dexterity, +1 Endurance, +0 Intelligence, +1 Luck, +1 Perception, +0 Presence, +1 Strength, +1 Toughness, +1 Vitality, +1 Willpower, +1 Wisdom]
[Stephan Cobblerson, Paladin level 4
Class skills: In Living Memory XVI, Blessing of Healing I, Blessing of Arms I, Smite I, Blessing of Protection
Attributes: Agility: 13, Charisma: 13, Composure: 14, Dexterity: 13, Endurance: 14, Intelligence: 11, Luck: 13, Perception: 13, Presence: 13, Strength: 14, Toughness: 13, Vitality: 14, Willpower: 14, Wisdom: 14]
