Prologue - The Good Times

What was the point of knights training in an era of peace?

It was a thought on the mind of the blonde-haired holy woman sitting in the shade cast by the barracks of the royal knights, as she waited and observed their training. Dozens of young to middle-aged men and women stood under the post-noon sun in the field filled with well-worn training equipment. In near-perfect synchronization, they were practicing forms, sparring with one another, or learning tactics that they would likely never have to use. Knights rarely ever needed to do more than guard a castle that had never been assaulted in the thousands of years of their nation’s history.

Guards handled civil unrest and petty crimes, like larceny or the occasional banditry. The soldiers were stationed in fortresses. Adventurers were sent out to eliminate the Corrupted, most of the time. Only the knights had the privilege to train combat techniques and martial skills that would never see use. And because most knights were the children or members of noble and influential families, they had the best facilities to train with.

It was for that reason that she was watching from a corner of the training area as two women not wearing the uniformed under-armor clothing clashed wooden weapons against one another. The squires and knights avoided the secluded section of the field, doing their best to ignore the intense, high-level swordsplay demonstrated.

“Do not lower your weapon!” The tall, muscular redhead barked, her voice carrying over the field and making it all the more difficult for their match to be ignored. The orange and red metal plates of her armored chest plate, gauntlets, and grieves glimmered in the afternoon sun, contrasting well against her bronzed complexion. Her powerful, toned muscles allowed her to wield the large, broad, wooden greatsword with the finesse and precision of a conductor of an orchestra and deliver devastating, boulder-shattering blows. “Plant your feet! Watch your opponent and predict their next action from the anticipation of their movements!” She added, rooting herself and twisting her hips for a broad, telegraphed, upward swing of her weapon.

Her opponent was a much smaller, plain girl with no impressive muscular development to speak of. She wore no armor, unlike the redhead, dressed in simple clothes that complemented her feminine figure. Her shield arm was thrown back, leaving her wide open to the attack she was about to receive, but she was barely able to block and parry most of the powerful attack with her smaller, one-handed sword. The force behind the strike tossed her back as she struggled to maintain her balance and jump to the side to dodge the redhead’s leaping follow-up attack.

“Essa! Maxine is two levels lower than you. Don’t let her beat you!” The blonde called out playfully as the brunette continued to just barely avoid or block attacks from the redhead.

Her sloppy maneuvers could only save her from the more precise and measured attacks thanks to her superior physical abilities and reflexes. The gap in skill and experience between them, however, was something much harder to overcome. “Maxine’s also been training for much longer than me!” She said back, bringing up her shield to block a horizontal swing from her opponent, only for the strike to have no weight behind it. Before the smaller, less-experienced swordswoman could react, something swept her feet out from under her, causing her to fall onto her backside harshly, dropping her sword.

In the same motion, she had spun to trip up her brunette, Maxine stood up and caught her wooden greatsword before it touched the ground. “Be that as it may, your higher stats should more than bridge the gap in our training, Champion Inessa.” She said, leveling the edge of the training weapon against Inessa’s neck. “I am still unable to match your predecessor in a sparring match, and status-wise, you should be relatively equal. Your overreliance on your Divine Artifacts has curtailed the growth of your battle instincts.”

“You, your mom, and your uncle. Do the Quentellias think everyone is born with ‘battle instincts’? I was just a normal girl before all of this!” Raising her hands in surrender, Inessa heaved a weary sigh and flopped down onto her back as she caught her breath, wiping sweat from her brow.

“A ‘normal girl’ would have a husband, or at very least a suitor, by your age.” Maxine countered, relaxing her posture and resting the wooden greatsword on her shoulder. “You’ve been approached by many suitors; Baron Galafren’s son, Count Dradion, even Minister Lovaniston’s youngest. Have none caught your fancy?”

Sitting up and rubbing her shoulders as a shudder worked up her spine, Inessa’s freckled face twisted in disgust as she thought about the nobles who approached her. Superficial, arrogant, pretty boys who look at any half-decent woman like a trophy. Creepy, old men twice her age or more who collect younger women to boost their egos. Kids too young to have adults filling their heads with talk of marriage, family, and intercourse. It was rarely about love, especially if the man already had a wife or two… or six. It was all politics and lust.

“Ew, gross! No thanks. I don’t want to be someone’s mistress. And Brandon’s, like, 16, and already has a wife.”

Shaking her head and shrugging, Maxine let out a long sigh. “Finding someone our age and unmarried is uncommon. Had I not been born into the Quentellia family, I should have already given my husband two or three children of his own. Alexander has a second child on the way already.”

“Maxine, he’s 16, too! How old is his wife?” Inessa asked.

“16 as well. Daughter of Marquis Velorquent.” She replied matter-of-factly. “I wasn’t able to attend their wedding last year, but I hear she is a good wife.”

Since the sparring match had concluded, the blonde who had been watching used her ornate, golden staff to stand up and approach the two. She had sat on the grass without concern that the pristine white cloth of her religious dress would get dirtied or stained as she watched with one eye concealed behind her long bangs. “You would think that, like us who devote our minds, bodies, and spirits to the Goddess Lini, that Essa, as the Champion, would be exempt from having to marry.” She said as she raised her arm that had a rosary of a stylized, golden figure of a woman wrapped in smooth, oval wings sprouting from the sides of her head, hanging from her wrist. With a smirk, she lightly pressed the effigy to her lips and spoke a single, magically empowered word. “Use: Heaven.”

The golden trinket flashed with a white-gold light, covering not just the area Inessa and Maxine had been sparring with tiny, faintly glowing particles of golden light, but the whole field with all the knights and squires. The shimmering particles gently floated toward the ground, outlining all the men and women in the area with a white-gold glow. All the scrapes, cuts, and bruises they had gotten through training, as well as any minor injuries that hadn’t fully healed, were mended and disappeared.

“Now you’re just showing off, Lia,” Inessa said with a teasing smile as the blonde helped her up.

“If anything, ensuring there is an heir to take up the duties of the Champion once Champion Inessa must retire would make her bearing children all the more paramount. The sooner she begins, the more time they will have to train.” Wiping the sweat from her brow and stretching as all the minor aches and pains from exerting herself eased, Maxine wasn’t allowing the matter to drop. “And you, too, lean a bit too heavily upon the aid of the Goddess Lini, Saintess Lylia. Surely you could have used your own magic just now, no?”

“I could have, yes.” The blonde replied, winking with her visible eye.

Sighing at how blatantly the holy woman disregarded her criticism, Maxine shook her head. “I have other duties that I must see to soon. We shall go once more after you have rested, Champion Iness– hm?” She began, pausing as both Inessa and Lylia turned to look westward at the same time. “Is something the matter?”

“Lia, that’s…” Inessa said, trailing off as she looked to the blonde.

“Yes, he’s definitely resurrected,” Lylia confirmed, nodding in agreement.

“Resurrected? You don’t mean to say Demon Monarch Sturmblut Nachtkrieger has returned so quickly, do you?” The redhead asked, more in disbelief than worry, as she looked to the west as well. “That’s impossible. It hasn’t even been–”

Before Maxine could finish her sentence, Inessa and Lylia had already manifested and equipped their Divine Artifacts. Inessa, adorned in golden armor and wielding a sword and shield of radiant holy light; Lylia in her white and gold robes with the regal staff, gold-leafed laurel, and a scarf of white and gold divine silk flowing around her. Unflinchingly, they both took a few steps in the direction of the menacing presence they sensed.

“Sorry, Maxine. Duty calls.” Inessa said, looking back over her shoulder with a wink. “Could you contact the Council for us?”

“Of course,” Maxine said, placing her right hand over her chest and crossing the left over her stomach as she bowed to the two.

Inessa and Lylia looked to each other and nodded, and in unison said, “Use: Teleport.”

With a bright flash of light, the two vanished.

*****

Arriving at their destination as flashily as they had departed the barracks, Inessa and Lylia stood in the familiar ruins of what might have been a castle long, long ago. Most of the structure had collapsed, with only a few walls standing that marked the perimeter of what used to be a large room, with the rubble of the ceiling having long since crumbled to dust. The dark, swirling clouds in the sky above carried a faint tinge of the malignance that fested in the ground below them. The wrongness, the Corruption in the air that seemed to suck the moisture from their throats and sap the heat from their bones, weighed on them like sandbags on their chest. However, with the protections of their holy artifacts, they felt no discomfort.

Instead, they could focus on fulfilling their duty as the Champion and Saintess of their country and confront the towering figure before them. Ignoring the smaller creatures that scurried away into the shadows, their attention was on the humanoid in the center of the room.

A large suit of obsidian metal armor that would tower over even the tallest human stared at them with glowing, dark purple pits of light that shone with a menace of Corruption from behind its visored helmet. There was no cloth or flesh visible between the joints of the battle-scarred, thick plates of armor, just utter darkness that no light could escape. And the cape of ever-shifting, ephemeral shadow seemed to suck in the light and distort reality around it.

The scourge of the land, the ruler of all the Corrupted and evil creatures, the enemy of the Pure, unblessed by the Goddess Lini, the Demon Monarch had returned from the dead to spread misery and ruin once more.

And not a soul in all the world but those chosen by the Divine Artifacts could stand against such a foe, no matter how hard they trained.