Paladin's Cross

by Sage Quill

Wagon Wanderings

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

-Nelson Mandela

---

Stars glittered in the dark sky above the line of wagons as they trekked over an endless plain of silver bladed grass, uncaring of worldly troubles as they twinkled happily in the heavens. They shown like gems watching the sea of grass lilting gently in a breeze that never ceased blowing across the plains. The full moon washed over them and made the drifting blades appear as the pearlescent waves of a quiet ocean. Among the waves sailed the wooden ships of the caravan lit by yellow lantern light, providing warm color against the cool shades of night and the monochrome glow of the moon.

Twilight rested in the bed of her assigned wagon, staring out into the deepening night. It was crowded with people and supplies as it made its bumpy way through the Grey Flats. She couldn't complain. All the wagons were full to bursting, and many of Hollodrum's refugees were forced to walk along side them.

A system of shifts were assigned to every wagon in order to divide the time between walking and riding. During the day, one group would walk while the other group rested, and during the night they would change places. Only a few were exempt from this. One of them lay next to her, propped up under a heavy woolen blanket with his back against the front of the wagon bed.

His face was ashen and his eyes sunken with dark circles as if he hadn't slept. In the low lantern light a sheen of cold sweat could be seen shimmering on his pale features, adding a ghostly quality to his face. Matted black hair clung to his sweat drenched face as he took quick, shallow breaths. His bloodstained clothes lay next to him in a haphazard pile beside Twilight's armor, and occasionally, he would thrash violently before settling back down into quiet shivering.

He was fighting. Even with the battle over he was still fighting. Barely clinging to life as the sinister magic from his wound coursed its way through his body. It had been this way for more than a week, and during that time Morenth hadn't woken even once.

The town apothecary had thankfully survived the destruction of Hollodrum, but even in his expert care Morenth's condition hadn't improved. There was little he could do besides dress the wounds and apply simple healing salves. Most of his herbal stock had gone up in flames with the rest of the town, leaving him with only the local herbs of the Grey Flats to work with.

Twilight herself hadn't awoken until two days after the battle. She'd suffered a magic burnout, pushing her limits too far in the desperation of the battle. It left her in a feverish state of unconsciousness during those two days, but it didn't worry her. Unicorns had burnouts all the time, at least they did in the circles of Canterlot University where scholars and mages pushed the boundaries of magical study on a daily basis. She had at least four separate incidents before when testing magic beyond her abilities at the time, ending up bedridden for days.

Upon her recovery, Riegar filled her in on what happened after she blacked out. Thinking back on his words made her glance back at Morenth's pained features. He'd saved her; carried her from the depths of that darkness while wageing a losing battle against poison induced hallucination and slow death. The guardsmen said that by the time he reached them he was already too delirious to tell friend from foe. When they tried to help by relieving him of her unconscious body he'd fought them even when his hands could no longer hold onto his sword, throwing wild punches at them until the poison sapped his remaining strength.

Across the other side of the wagon, canvas blankets rustled as Wynn shifted in her sleep. She murmured something at the edge of hearing before settling back into her dreams.

'Or nightmares,'Twilight thought sadly.

Wynn had lost everything to the horde of undead; her worldly possessions, her home, and her family. She tried to put on a brave face, but every night she cried silently in her sleep. It wasn't just Wynn. The trek across the plains was hard on everyone. Even Riegar's seemingly endless cheer had become few and far between, his jokes and gruff mirth coming and going in shorter cycles as the journey wore on.

The Grey Flats stretched out in all directions and as hauntingly beautiful as it was the plains offered little in the way of water. It hadn't taken long for the guards to begin the rationing of what they had left. It wasn't much, and most of it was saved for the Tefflas drawing the wagons.

A small portion of Twilight's scholarly interests had come back with the discovery of the gentle beasts. They were extremely large mammals, at least half again as tall as any human and almost as long as the wagons they pulled, and just as wide. Their brown coats were long and soft with curls at the ends, trailing low to the ground around massive, elephant-like feet. Round, docile eyes adorned their blackened faces over their short snouts and absolutely enormous mouths. By the sets of flat teeth inside their maws Twilight reasoned they were strictly herbivores.

Earlier in the trek Twilight had embarrassed herself by trying to open up dialogue with one of them, which was met with good natured laughter from the wagon driver. Twilight's face heated up at even the mere thought of it.

She was shaken from her thoughts by a yawn from the wagon's lowered gate where Riegar sat. The rolling sound was accompanied by a long trail of lazy smoke. He had his back turned to her, but she could hear the sounds of his pewter pipe as he teethed at it, teasing another puff of smoke from it thoughtfully. "Somethin' on yer mind missy?" he asked without moving, "Ain't no use bottlin' it up ye know." She did. She had a lot of things she wanted to ask, but she didn't know how to form the words. Twilight opened her mouth to try anyway, but her voice caught in her throat. "Well, if ye don't know what to ask then indulge an old man in his ramblin's."

He ran a hand through his sandy grey hair and reajusted his pipe. "There things in life ye can't avoid. Death be one of 'em. Oh, we like to think we understand that, but the truth of the matter is we don't, at least, not until we stare it in the face that is." He took another long draw on his pipe and looked over the little lantern lights bobbing in the dark around them. "Lookin' death in the face has a funny why of remindin' us 'bout life, and what it is we want out of it. These folk see tha' now, the young knight too. Ay reckon he's seen enough death to truly know what it is he wants."

Twilight shifted beneath her blanket. "Riegar, I don't-"

"Bah!" he interrupted, taking the pipe out of his mouth, "Ay'm no good at these speeches. Maybe Ay'm not old enough, thank the gods. What Ay'm tryin' ta say is the knight made his choice ta defend the town. It was a choice he made a long time ago when he took his vows. There's no reason ye should be blamin' yerself fer the outcome o' his choices."

Twilight choked on the sudden denial she felt rising in her throat. It was true. She'd spent the nights of the last week running through the battle in her head and came to the same conclusion every time. If she'd just insisted on being on the front line with Morenth then she could've done... something. Warned him of the trap that left him and that young lieutenant isolated from help, or been there to help fight the demon knight, or even just teleported them out of danger. But instead, the lieutenant was dead, leaving the remaining guards leaderless, and Morenth was close behind him, teetering between life and death.

"And," Riegar began, cupping a hand under his chin and letting out a low sigh, "If ye're still set on beatin' yerself up fer it, ask yerself if the lives of the refugees-if the little seamstress' life was worth it. Ay wouldn't have been able to hold the line by meself, and if ye hadn't been there the whole lot of us would've ended up as ghoul droppin's." Twilight winced at the crass description but understood it was just his way of lightening the mood.

Her eyes found Wynn's sleeping form across the cart, and for a while Twilight just watched her, trying to imagine her not being there. She couldn't. Looking back to Morenth, she tried to imagine what he'd say to her and was surprised when she realized she didn't have the slightest clue what he'd say. All the time she'd spent around him the last few days she'd been so focused on finding out about Soulis and how to get home that she never even asked him a single personal question. Lastly she looked to Riegar, his back still turned to her as he fiddled with his pipe. "They were worth it," she answered finally, "And so were you."

Riegar coughed and shifted uncomfortably. "Well, I- Ye know..... Bah! Careful with tha' tongue o' yer's missy. Men have thrown themselves on their swords fer words less kind then tha'." He composed himself again, a companionable silence falling over the wagon as Riegar seemed to become absorbed with inspecting his pipe.

Without warning he asked, "So, now tha' ye've looked death in the eye, what is it ye want?"

He waited patently while Twilight thought about the question. The image of her friends appeared in her thoughts, as did her home and a baby dragon greeting her with a smile on his face. It left her feeling utterly homesick.

"I want to go home." It was such a simple phrase compared to how it made her feel, like a vice was closeing around her heart.

He didn't face her, but Twilight could see Riegar tense up at her response. "Aye, home be somethin' we all yearn fer." There was a weight to his words that felt like he know the sentiment all too well. "If home be what yer wantin', then stick with the knight. He'll see ye there. If he ever gets off his lazy arse tha' is." He let out a rolling belly laugh that warmed Twilight's heart, and slowly, a small smile found its way to her lips.

---

The dreamer found himself under an old oak on a warm summer's morning, its long branches providing shade against the glare of the sun. The tome in his lap was open but his hands were at his sides, propping him up while the listless breeze flipped slowly through the pages. Inked paintings and lines of scriptures adorned the pages, many depicting the goddess and her many dealings with men throughout history.

The boy under the tree had long since memorized the passages and scriptures of the book in his lap, but he found himself drawn back to it. Yuelith, as the First Men had named her in a time before written history, was depicted as a deity of unquestionable power but also as a being of motherly affection toward mankind. To the boy under the tree, the idea of a mother was vastly enticing. He was an orphan like all the other children of the abby. He'd never known his mother, but some of the other children had come to the abby a little older than the rest and would sometimes talk about what it was like to have parents. The boy would marvel at their tales of families, warm hearths, and bedtime stories, as would the other children like him. The stories weren't always happy. Some were full of misery and poverty, while others were of violence and death. The priests would scold the boys who told them.

Sleep crept up on the boy, serenaded by the scent of the hibiscus bushes that lined the stone walls of the abby. They were tended to by Father Shelby, an ageing man with a warm smile and the rough hands of a carpenter. He was also the head priest in charge of the orphanage and the closest thing the boy would ever have to a father.

Shaking himself free of his lethargy, the boy closed the tome in his lap and began to rise when someone shoved him off his feet. "Look 'ear lads, it's the new kid," said Boris, a fat boy who'd grown tall for his age. He was the leader of a group of bullies all of whom were several years older than the boy under the tree. "What was your name again squirt? Maivis was it?" Boris sneered and looked to his posse for support. They laughed and jeered.

The boy wasn't new enough for them to forget his name. He'd been a resident of the Abby for a season and a half, but that meant nothing to these boys. They just wanted a reaction out of him.

"Maivis? Isn't that a girls name?" one of them supplied, garnering more laughter from the group.

"His name isn't Maivis. It's Morenth," came a voice from behind Boris' posse. A blond haired boy, no more than a year older than Morenth, stood with his arms crossed over his chest. His name was Fythe, and he was one of the boys who'd come to live in the orphanage as an infant. He'd lived there his whole life, and that demanded the respect of the other orphans. "And if you paid attention to your lessons you wouldn't forget it. Or do you not remember the Last Exodus led by Saint Morenth of Karth? It was covered last week." Morenth blushed at being given the name of a saint. It was the first gift Father Shelby had given him, followed by a home.

Boris looked taken aback by the condescending tone in Fythe's voice, but it quickly turned to anger. "Why you sidein' with the new kid, Fythe? All he does is sit by himself with his nose in a book."

"Because he's a good kid that doesn't go around making fun of others to cover for his insecurities," the blond haired boy shot back, "Now back off."

"Or what, blondy," said the larger, older boy in a low tone. Fythe might have been respected by the other orphans, but Boris was the type to take threats very personally. "You gonna run and cry to the Father about it?"

Fythe shrugged, unfolding his arms. "No," he said simply, "I'll make you."

That made the older boy laugh, but the other boys in his group backed away slightly. The priests came down hard on any fighting and they didn't want to risk a brawl if they could avoid it. Boris was a different case. "I'd like to see you try."

He didn't have to wait very long. As soon as he finished his sentance Fythe lunged forward and did the only sensible thing when fighting someone taller and stronger; he punched Boris in the groin with all his might.

The older boy went to his knees clutching his manhood and groaned. He looked at his posse with a face full of pain. "Well? What are you all standin' around for!?" he managed, "I swear, if you lot don't pound this kid I'll make you regret it!" That got the other boys moving.

Morenth watched in alarm as they circled Fythe. One of them lunged at the blond haired boy, forcing him back a step. Just as the group had intended. A lanky member of the posse grabbed him from behind and in that instant all the others closed in to beat Fythe bloody.

As Fythe fended off his attackers with flailing kicks Morenth shuffled across the ground on all fours, looking to get away before the priests showed up to punish everyone. But as he made it clear of the group he glanced back at the blond haired boy who'd stood up for him. With a resigned sigh Morenth changed coarse, coming up behind the lanky boy holding Fythe captive and took a page out of the blond boy's book. His rising uppercut caught the groupie in the crook of his pants, causing the boy to release Fythe and crumple.

It was two to four now and the posse had managed to get a few good punches past Fythe's desperate defense. He sported a shiner under one eye and his nose was bleeding, but he appeared to have lost none of his fight. Fythe looked back to Morenth with a fierce smile before charging the group. Morenth found himself caught up with him in the reckless maneuver, and the fight became a chaotic brawl. It was a losing brawl however, and the group was made up of older kids. When they finally got the pair to the ground it went from brawl to beating.

After the posse got tired and left, hauling away a hobbled Boris, the two boys were left laying in the dirt covered in bruises. Beside Morenth, Fythe forced himself to his feet with a groan. "Owowow! Okay, that's gonna hurt later." As if it didn't hurt right then. He dusted himself of and turned to Morenth with a weary smile and offered his hand.

Morenth just stared at it, then looked the blond boy in the eyes. "Why did you stand up for me?" he asked, trying to find some hint in Fythe's smile.

"What?" He just made a face like Morenth had asked something insanely stupid. "Why wouldn't I?"

Suddenly it wasn't a blond haired boy standing over him but a purple unicorn. The dam burst on the dream, flooding it with urgent memories of the present. The fall of Hollodrum. The daemon knight. Pythoes' death. Twilight trapped!

"This isn't real!" Morenth shouted, his voice no longer that of a child. He looked up to find Fythe standing over him once again with his hand outstretched. "You can't be here," he said, shaking, "You're dead."

The apparition of Morenth's friend began to rot before his eyes until only a skeleton remained. It's sockets burned with souless fire like the daemon knight's. "Of course I am," he hissed, his words filled with venom, "You killed me."

Comments

[Sage Quill]

And you all thought it was dead. Nope, just been a long month work wise. If you want to read the Washington Post about the blackhawk that went down, killing two pilots. That's what's had me so busy and unable to write. I'm back on track now though.

[Wolflordy]

Is this a GW2 cross? ('cause you use the GW2 picture of Logan but I can't tell from your description if it is)

[The1templar]

Hmmmm Paladin's Cross? Instant fav, time to read.

[Sketchy Markks]

2438984 GOOD! I really missed your enthralling and charming(kinda very dark) story!

[Sage Quill]

2439199
Not a Guild Wars crossover, just a picture that really looked like how I pictured Morenth in my head. The world of Soulis is mostly inspired by the Neverwinter universe as I wanted a dark backdrop to the overall feel of things.

[MrDenim]

I was wonderin when this was gonna update.

[Kail]

First story involving a human and pony that I've really liked. Real good work yer doin' here.

[xbox432]

Good update, seems like Twilight is gonna be a student to those older and wiser no matter what world she's in eh?

[Potato Pride]

You know what this story needs? Centaurs, centaurs from fallout, dancing to the sunrise.

[Dynrakmos]

Huzzah!
Another epitome of excellence has sprung from the genius that is Sage Quill.

[Olpoe]

2440383 Yes, all my yes.

[grey mane]

well done bro, and good way to incorporate guilt and regret along side death

[MoonDreamer]

YAY

[D48]

This is very interesting. I really like how you are building your own universe on a combination of familiar patterns with your own realistic take on things. It has a number of common darker fantasy elements mixed in with a bit of zombie apocalypse and strong hints at much more in depth world building that we have yet to see. Great work.

[DeltaOsprey]

-Sees Paladin possibly dying from being poisoned
-calls him lazy

This is why Riegar is awesome. He tells it like it is.