Chapter 4. Six Knights of False Righteousness.
1386 Words
You may think that you know what a paladin is.
But you have never read of paladins such as these!
There are fantasy paladins in some fantasy worlds and THEN there Are “FANTASY PALADINS”, Underlined In bold, and in all caps!
You may have a paladin that has, full plate and a magic shield and a magic sword.
But OTHER paladins have a full plate armour set, shield and sword that can change into a single two-handed sword of mace at will.
Instead of some mere holy charger, these OTHER Paladins have instead a huge glowing white dragon that can change into a horse or even a humanoid companion at will, (if needed)!
This is what was flying above the valley at this moment.
Upon a glowing large arch dragon…
(Note: a proper “full-on” DRAGON note just some ‘piss pour’ wyvern that dreams of being a dragon!)
… Rode a mightly paladin.
Although as mighty as this dragon was, this paladin could beat three such dragons single-handedly!
His armour and weapons glowed white with “holy” power!
Flags and bight livery on the dragons fanks and the paladins shield showed him to be a person of the Sunite Empire!
This was a Knight that could have and indeed had wiped out, entire armies, alone!
They were the figurative “Nuclear Option” of this land!
This Person ONLY handled the biggest problems, never the small stuff!
This Paladin ONLY answered the Emperor personally!
But his first loyalty was NEVER to the Emperor, EVER!
Their first and ONLY real loyalty was to the Sunite Empire itself!
The Emporer was only third in their line of priorities and loyalties!
First came the Empire
Then came the Imperial church
Only Then, and at mere third place, did the Emperor needs to get a “look in”!
This Paladin had authority above any normal laws of the land.
Only the head of his order could give them instruction.
From out of the sky sored another dragon mounted Knight, exactly the same as the previous description.
Within ten minutes another three such knights joined them.
The five flew with purpose and magnificence to their destination.
Sure, they could have arranged to be teleported.
However one of their creeds was that it was never enough for justice to be done, it also had to be seen, to be done!
Those seeing them flying overhead would know that full Sunite Empire might have been brought to bear!
It was never known for five such knights to be seen together, before!
Then the head of their order arrived on his slightly larger dragon with a slightly brighter white glow.
They took their place at the head of the flight.
The Six Knights sored onwards!
All six of them comprise the entirety of their order!
For this order only ever allowed six members at any one time.
They were the Righteous Order of the Dexterous Sunite Imperial Hand!
Each of the five was named after a digit, Little Finger (the newest member), Index (the librarian), Ring (the caster), Pointer (the hunter and seeker), Thumb (the main tank).
All of them looked identical, in their armour, to each other in all ways, and only they could instinctively tell the difference between themselves.
They were lead by “The Palm”!
Whose presence could be distinguished by their slightly larger size and glow!
If each of the lower five were the empires figurative nuke, then The Palm, was the Empires ultimate doomsday weapon.
(There was also a secret Sinister Hand order, but they were a deep secret, known only by a few, while the Dexterous Hand was a public propaganda display of power!)
Never in living history before had such a gathering ever taken place!
The Dextrous Hand Sunite Order landed in a clearing at the foot of a mountain surrounded by bodies.
Up in the nearby mountain, trapped in a cave some abomination screamed in rage as it sensed their presence.
Little Finger looked up longingly at the mountain eager to face such a foe.
Without speaking The Palm shook his head as the youngest and newest member.
The forces that had “Blessed” each of them had made it clear, the beast trapped above was to be left alone.
There is ALWAYS a “Bigger Fish!”
For as mighty as this order was, as almost all-powerful as they were each, even their combined might could not defeat the thing up there!
They were not here for the trapped abomination.
They were, Instead, here to crush a rebel army that may one day wish to free the trapped abomination!
Although the abomination was not really ‘trapped’.
It could if it allowed itself, burst through the top of that mountain like a rocket through a pile of shaving foam,
The “Trapped” Abominaiotn was, (with a great effort of will) holding itself back!
The Sunite Paladin Knights looked around the piles of dead.
All of them draped with the holiest symbols of the Sunite Imperial Church.
A Church that the entire Sunite empire went to every ten days, got christened and got married in.
A church that all the average citizens of the empire considered, the one, most holy and true faith!
Each member of this knightly order was revered and almost worshipped in their own right as living saints of this church.
Their pure white weapons, bright white full plate armour, and bright white mounts seemed to constantly glow brightly because they were all, so, very holly!
As The Plam and the most senior members sat in quiet contemplation they gave the newest member, Little Finger some minor grunt chores.
The sort of minor jobs, that they felt were beneath them.
The Sort of jobs that would be character building for Litte Finger to do.
There were four whole armies of dead Sunite troops.
All of them had been killed, ripped apart in seconds, in close quarters, by the “Trapped” Amobinaiton above!
Alone and without help, Little finger raised all the dead around him as a sentient, fully skilled zombie army.
All the dead around him!
There was no sweat of any effort in it for him.
It was just a minor chore for him.
They had all the skills, and knowledge of their living selves but suffered constantly with the pain of feeling themselves rot.
They were all now bound in cursed unlife to the will of the “Holy” Knights of Sunite.
Those that were only mere body parts, amalgamated into large, horrendous flesh golems.
The knights did not really need the four armies, at all.
It was more or less, just for show, to have their power seen by their enemies.
The suffering of four armies, of people, now trapped and bound in will and undeath was only as made to do so as a “Fashion statement”.
The Armies were forced into agony because “It looked good”.
Those that had pledged their lives and loyalty to the empire were now being abused and spiritually violated, merely to “look cool”.
Such was the power and “Holyness” of the Rightgious Dextrous Hand of Sunite!
The most terrible part was that each knight thought that they were holy.
Each knight was deludedly convinced that they were living holy saints.
Each Paladin Knight though they carried withing them the blessing and raw power of heaven itself!
They could never be convinced of anything else, ever.
No matter what evidence was put before them.
They would always see themselves as the embodiment of angelic forces.
They had no clue that 'their will' was not truly their own.
While inside, the Demons within them pulled their puppet strings, on the behest of the Lord of all Evil Chaos in the multiverse.
After a brief ponder The Pointer Knight indicated the direction that Mal Wears Army had gone.
The Six Knights and their four armies of the dead now followed the rebels underground.
As I told you at the very start of this chapter…
…You may think that you know what a paladin is…
…But you have never read of paladins such as these!
- Writer
