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◈ Paladin of a Ruined Order

Chapter 63

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Green-Eyed Paladin

Groan-

Matilda, who had been endlessly working her pen beside Elbridge, stretched.

Matilda looked at Elbridge and said, "I've finished all the urgent work, so I'll head out early today. That's fine, isn't it?"

Matilda was a freelance priest, so she had to leave around sundown.

But despite the terms of her contract, Matilda had worked through the night every other day from the end of last year into the start of this one. There had simply been too much work.

Elbridge answered, "Of course. I'm always grateful."

"No need for gratitude. It's just what I'm supposed to do."

"The priests at other temples know you've done more than what your role required."

Matilda gave a mischievous smile at that.

"It's all a plan. I make sure to get noticed during the busy times so nobody minds when I coast a little during the slow ones."

"Ha ha."

"You're just as tired as I am, aren't you, Sir Elbridge? Get some rest now."

"Yes. I'll just finish this up and rest."

Matilda rose from her seat, then gave a small clap. Clap!

"Oh, right, I almost forgot the gift."

"A gift?"

"Wait just a moment."

Matilda went to a corner of the temple and came back holding a bottle a little over a hand's length tall, offering it to Elbridge.

"Homemade mead. Warm it up before you drink it and you'll sleep deeply."

Elbridge opened the mead's stopper and sniffed. A strong scent of clove hit him.

This was less a drink for a drinker and more something made half for medicinal use.

"Thank you, Matilda."

Matilda left with a light step.

Elbridge finished his own work shortly after, warmed the mead, drank it, and went to bed.

Elbridge had been watching a small boy trailing after some stranger for who knew how long.

'...What is this?'

Elbridge studied the boy's face.

The boy's face resembled his own to an uncanny degree.

Before long, Elbridge understood what was happening. It was a dream.

In the dream, Elbridge was looking at himself as a child.

'A lucid dream.'

Under normal circumstances he would have woken up on his own.

But maybe it was the clove-laced mead, because Elbridge did not wake up tonight.

Lucid dreams were rare enough. A lucid dream where he could watch himself from the outside was rarer still.

It felt something like watching an unusually vivid play.

'Might as well watch it through.'

Elbridge studied the scene carefully.

The man leading young Elbridge along had red, unkempt curly hair, a face Elbridge recognized from memory.

'This must be when I was first sold. Then where we're headed now is...'

Young Elbridge arrived at an abandoned temple at the edge of a small village.

The man who had brought him said, "Welcome to the Order of Ivy and Well. Train hard and become a fine paladin. Only then will your family live in comfort."

Young Elbridge was led into a room that looked like a storeroom.

The moment the door opened, a musty stench of sweat hit him. Inside the dark room were nearly twenty children.

Young Elbridge shuffled in and sat down in a corner.

Not long after, a bell rang, announcing prayer time.

Dong- dong-

Young Elbridge went to press his hands together out of habit, when someone said, "No need to pray."

Young Elbridge turned to look at whoever had said that.

The kid looked to be around fourteen or fifteen, fairly large, with a decent amount of facial hair already growing in.

Elbridge watched the scene unfold in the dream and gave a faint smile.

'Back then that kid looked like a grown adult to me. Now he's obviously just a child.'

Young Elbridge asked the bearded kid, "Why not? It's prayer time, isn't it?"

"The God of Ivy and Well doesn't answer prayers."

"Really?"

"This place is a church that sells people. That slaver picked this temple because he knows the God of Ivy and Well has no interest at all in the mortal world."

"Then why does the temple even exist, if nobody prays?"

"Because it looks bad if a church deals openly with a slaver. They need a fake church like this to pretend it's real."

Even so, young Elbridge clasped his small hands together and prayed to the new god.

He must have thought that even if the god ignored everyone else's prayers, it would surely listen to his.

Of course, the God of Ivy and Well never once spoke to Elbridge.

Still, in Elbridge's memory, the Order of Ivy and Well hadn't been such a bad place.

Training was hard, but there were plenty of kids his own age, and they were fed well.

A somewhat stern-faced knight came into view. Another familiar face.

'This must be when I was sold the second time.'

The knight asked young Elbridge, "Are you Elbridge?"

"Yes, Sir Martina."

"I'll start by teaching you how to maintain armor. Get this right and you won't get on a knight's bad side. How much weapon training have you had?"

Despite her blunt expression, Martina had been a thoughtful and kind person.

She had taught him the basic etiquette a squire needed to know, and she was also the one who first taught Elbridge how to handle a shield.

Though he hadn't learned much of shield work from her. She died in the battle after next.

Rain began to fall from the sky.

Elbridge lowered his eyes to look at Martina's body, its upper half gone.

A short distance away, young Elbridge trembled uncontrollably.

He couldn't quite remember which church Martina had belonged to.

Nearly every paladin there had died in that single battle, and the church had scattered into nothing afterward.

In cases like this, squires and apprentice knights were treated much like spoils claimed by knights of other churches.

A paladin with a pointed mustache walked up and stood in front of Elbridge.

"You're now a squire of the Order of Dusk. Get up and follow me."

But young Elbridge's legs had given out, and he couldn't rise.

He staggered up, only to collapse again, over and over. The mustached paladin didn't help him. He just stood there watching.

When Elbridge finally managed to stand, he said, "...I want to go home."

At that, the paladin swung his gauntleted right hand and struck Elbridge across the face.

Crack- thud!

Elbridge, who had just barely gotten to his feet, went sprawling.

"Your brothers are dead! The paladin you served is dead! Don't you dare disgrace their sacrifice! Swear that you'll avenge your brothers through the Order of Dusk!"

Looking back on it now, that paladin probably hadn't slapped him hoping to knock some sense into him.

He was the type who found any excuse to raise a hand, whether or not Elbridge had actually done anything wrong.

But young Elbridge hadn't known that then, and he had understood one thing clearly: showing weakness here could get him abandoned on the battlefield.

"...I swear."

Young Elbridge followed the mustached paladin to the Order of Dusk.

Similar situations repeated themselves, again and again.

Barely surviving a lost battle, being rescued, passed to another church...

But even Elbridge, who had grown numb to extreme situations, eventually met one he could barely endure.

By then he was thirteen or fourteen, sprawled at the base of a rugged mountain with a broken leg.

'I really thought I was done for, that time.'

Atop the mountain coiled a demon shaped like an enormous serpent.

If the paladin he'd served hadn't shoved him down the mountainside right before dying, Elbridge would have died there without question.

He watched dozens of paladins gather again and march up to fight the demon.

And every one of them died too.

When the same demon defeats a force twice in a row, the standard response is to give up the fight and simply wait for it to leave.

Young Elbridge moved his lips in prayer. But even then, the gods sent him no oracle.

Only two futures remained for young Elbridge now. Die slowly of thirst and hunger with a broken leg, or be killed by the demon once it crawled down the mountain.

About two days later, a miracle happened.

Four paladins began climbing the hill.

The serpent spewed poisonous smoke and crushed the paladins beneath its massive body.

Three of them died. But the last one survived and managed to subdue the demon.

Young Elbridge had marveled at the sight then. Elbridge marveled at it now too.

'Even now, that still looks...'

Just as the paladin who had subdued the demon turned to leave, young Elbridge screamed with everything he had left.

"Help me! Please help me!"

By some miracle, the paladin heard him, came over, and knelt in front of Elbridge.

Golden hair like an autumn wheat field, and green eyes. A broad, confident build and strong, prominent features.

And an expression far too playful for the situation. Even now, that image stayed vivid.

The paladin fed him lukewarm water from a canteen and grinned in satisfaction.

"See? Had a feeling one of you would still be alive."

Instead of watching his younger self, Elbridge looked at the green-eyed paladin and smiled.

The green-eyed paladin carried Elbridge, his leg broken, on his back for a long stretch of walking.

The temple they finally reached bore a symbol Elbridge recognized. An olive branch with three fruits. The Order of the Olive Tree.

The green-eyed paladin set Elbridge down on a chair, took a deep breath, and stepped into some room.

Shouting followed almost immediately.

"You bastard! You didn't just save one brat! You killed three of your own comrades!"

Then a crash, the sound of someone tumbling to the floor.

That wasn't the end of it. More cursing and dull thuds followed several times over.

"Think you're the only paladin here? Get out! You selfish son of a bitch!"

When the door opened, the paladin who emerged had blood running from his nose.

Honk-

The green-eyed paladin pinched one nostril shut and blew out the other. Blood shot from his nose like spit and splattered on the floor.

The green-eyed paladin rubbed his jaw, then hoisted Elbridge onto his back again, muttering.

"Ugh. What a bastard. I said I was sorry..."

The paladin carried Elbridge out of the temple.

Even young Elbridge understood the situation well enough.

The green-eyed paladin had acted on his own to defeat the demon and save Elbridge, but the price had been three of his comrades.

For that, he was reprimanded and cast out of the church. It wasn't a particularly harsh punishment. Any church would have handed down something similar.

Riding on the man's back, young Elbridge said, "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"Three paladins died because of me. And you got kicked out of your church..."

"No need to be sorry. I'm the one who did wrong. I did enough to deserve getting kicked out."

Hup.

The green-eyed paladin climbed the stairs as he kept talking.

"But Elbridge, I hate compromise."

"Compromise?"

"That's right. Doesn't matter how small it is. Once a person starts compromising, they end up compromising on the things that actually matter too. In the end, everyone turns into the same thing."

The green-eyed paladin, still carrying Elbridge, stopped by a few more temples.

"Don't you need a paladin who's good in a fight?"

But every single temple turned him away.

This in an age when paladins were always in short supply. It couldn't have been for lack of skill.

"There's nowhere left to go now, is there?"

"No, there's still somewhere. It's a bit of a distance, but there's one church that's bound to take me in."

"Really?"

At young Elbridge's answer, the green-eyed paladin made a great show of feigned hurt.

"Wow, you don't believe me either? Ouch. Now I'm hurt."

"That's not what I meant..."

"My friend is the High Paladin there. Looks like a bandit boss, but he's pretty solid. The other knights aren't bad either. Nothing like your average church."

Elbridge, watching the two of them, walked over on steady feet and stood beside the green-eyed knight.

Late at night.

The green-eyed paladin carried young Elbridge on his back and left the city, walking into the dark. The grown Elbridge, somehow present now too, matched his pace.

In the deep darkness, the steady rocking motion, and the warmth of a trustworthy adult, young Elbridge's breathing slowed.

Before long, the green-eyed paladin turned his head slowly toward the Elbridge walking beside him and grinned.

"I knew from the start you'd grow up to be somebody great. Elbridge."

The grown Elbridge smiled too.

"Don't lie to me, Sir Leonhardt."

When Elbridge woke, the light outside the window had already brightened.

The first thing that came to mind was Leonhardt's face.

Then came the words of the Master of the Central Magic Tower.

[This clue reaches past the individual named Leonhardt, all the way to heaven.]

[Go to the Lake of Eternity.]

Elbridge leaned against the window and gazed quietly at the southern sky.

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