[Archived Short Story] Paladin Of Rot

I hate farming.

I really hate farming.

This, however, is a slight problem when you’re the son of a farmer, the only son. Oh, and that farmer is one of the bigger ones in the area with a certain amount of prestige to their name.

Not nobility levels of prestige, sadly. At least then, I could probably get away with divesting myself of any actual responsibility when it comes to farming. No, I’m expected to be hands-on for every part of the process. Working out in the field alongside the slaves and the undead.

Like, you would think having all of that would mean we didn’t have to be out there? Most places do, in fact do that! Not our farm, though. The thing is, my family worships [Natura]. The deity of nature, plants, and farming. A little bit of an odd combination since, as far as I can tell, farms are about the opposite of a natural setting while still involving dirt and plants, but I’m not a deity so what do I know?

To be fair, hir darker side plays into the whole nature part and survival of the fittest. Convenient since that means it isn’t too hard to find one of hir more martial followers to go out and kill a goblin or two when needed. Anyway, you might be asking why worshiping hir matters? That happens when I don’t put enough emphasis on it. My family worships [Natura]. We aren’t just followers, but rather direct members of the clergy with all the magic and requirements attached.

The magic is nice as it allows my family to pull in an extra harvest every year as well as a greater chance of our crops ending up being a higher tier or even mystical. The requirements for it are we actually do work on all the fields involved. As a kid, I worked harder than the slaves! The only things that worked more are the undead, and that is just because we keep them going overnight as their life-sense lets them pick out pests that try to attack our crops.

So yeah, my father has worshiped [Natura], my grandfather has worshiped [Natura], and this goes all the way back hundreds years to when our family was recognized for clawing out our farmland from a monster nest. Of course, that founder was one of those martial followers, but his kids slipped right into being farmers.

I don’t want that life. [Natura] isn’t my deity. Zombies are disgusting!

Some people want to see the world burn. Me? I want it to just rot away!

That’s why I worship [Rigslom]. The deity of Rot, Decay, and Plague. Shi doesn’t mess around like most of the other deities. [Natura] is all hoity toity about keeping hir darker nature aspect contained within the idea of it being a “test”. Nonsense! Nature is a dog eat dog world, survival of the fittest, all around bad time sort of deal. All the main sapient races, even the elves, work to push back true nature in exchange for well-kept parks and expansive farmland. Those pointy eared hypocrites manage to take it even further by taming forest and jungles.

Not [Rigslom]! Shi accepted hir darker side. Even better, shi hates the undead. You would think a deity devoted to plagues might enjoy having a few zombies around. After all, if not properly taken care of the things literally breed plagues. Nothing quite like necromatically preserved flesh to mutate a disease, but no, they are against his faith. After all, the flesh should be rotting!

You would think that some farmers would worship [Rigslom] because of hir role in things like compost, preserving food, and so on. Because sure, shi doesn’t like the false preservation caused by necromancy, but natural stuff like salting meat and making pickles is fine. They do still eventually rot away after all. It only slows the process. Something [Rigslom] is perfectly happy to help with.

But no, there are no farmers who worship hir, at least not on this continent. After all, there isn’t a single farm without at least a handful of mindless undead to help. Hell, the only reason my families farm has slaves at all is because we are trying to grow life aligned mystical produce and while the undead can deal with pests, the plants need a living hand to tend to them.

Anyway, I’ve been worshiping [Rigslom] on the sly for a while. Not too hard as until I wanted to do anything serious, all I needed was to pray by one of the compost heaps at least once a week. Oh, and not get found out. Still, I figured that this would eventually need to end because my father would want me to take the rite of marking and devote myself to [Natura] so I could cast her higher circle spell.

For most of my life, I’ve fudged this by simply casting the spells directly. It isn’t like the cantrips or the first circle spells are all that special. While not just anyone can use magic without a deity, my family definitely has a history of it being in our blood and so those are simple enough.

So I was getting ready to have to forsake my true deity when luck went my way. See, to do a rite of marking you need a proper place of worship, a few moderately expensive items, and a sacrifice. The specifics, of course, vary deity to deity. The deity of wealth won’t even look at a place of worship that isn’t at least gilded in gold and studded with gems. [Natura] needs a couple rare life aligned plants as focuses and the deity of death needs a live sacrifice which isn’t sapient.

[Rigslom] is easy enough to please when it comes to a place of worship. My family hadn’t realized it, but the fact that they keep tossing any broken undead into the fertilizer pits has basically got that covered in spades. The sacrifice is also covered by my family. After all, what better sacrifice than an undead? It was only the needed items that held me back. Well, one of the needed items. Living on a farm next to a big city made some of the items easy enough.

For instance, dirt from the grave of a plague victim. Any decently sized city is going to have an entire section of land devoted to grave victims. Not in the city, which made it easy for me to grab unnoticed and yet protected enough so that I wasn’t at risk. After all, if the plague managed to spread to an animal, it could cause all kinds of trouble.

The second and third items were just as easy for me to source, though each was more expensive than the last. One was a piece of petrified wood. If you find a place with the stuff, it is everywhere, but there are so many uses for it. I was honestly surprised when I managed to get lucky while gambling on stones. Everyone knows that the merchants in charge of street stalls for stone gambling have already picked out the good stuff.

Still, for a silver or two you can pick out a stone and crack it open to see what riches are inside and I admit to being slightly addicted to it. Most people believe you can’t actually tell the difference without using magic, but I have a method! Sure, until that piece of petrified wood I hadn’t found anything better than a small bit of emerald, but I’m sure if I could get into one of the stone auctions I would strike it rich! Too bad my father never gave me enough money to get anything there. We would have been even richer!

But yeah, I got lucky there. The third item, however, is entirely on my dad. He isn’t free from vices either, though he likes to claim his collection of aged wines is classier. Not that he drinks them. Oh no, that would ruin the value. My father just collects them. And among that collection is his most prized bottle, an elvish herbal mead that is older than the kingdom we live in. Mead which if my decay detection cantrip is to go by has long ago turned into vinegar. Perfect to use for the rite.

That left the rarest and most annoying item to get a hold of. A mystical mushroom that grew on the corpse of a third circle or higher beast and was aligned to rot. That is so damn rare because if a mushroom even has a chance to grow on a corpse like that, it is nine times out of ten going to be aligned with whatever the beast was aligned to. And that tenth time? Well, nine times out of ten that one will be aligned with death!

You might be thinking, “Oh, sure one in a hundred is a little rare, but it doesn’t sound that rare”, and you’re right. A one percent chance of a mystical mushroom on such a corpse being rot aligned isn’t too bad. Now, if I was specifically growing mushrooms using such a situation, I’m sure I could easily make them. Hell, cut out the middleman and just use the corpse of a rot aligned beast.

It isn’t that easy though! First, the beast’s body needs to not get eaten for long enough to start growing mushrooms. Near impossible. A third circle beast is a potent source of power and will always be fought over, let alone any higher circle beast. Secondly, is the fact that it has to be a mystical mushroom. We baby our plants and are lucky if one in a thousand end up life aligned. We make our life aligned plants using sheer scale. Sure, with a high rank beast as fertilizer, the chances are higher, but I point you back how those bodies are coveted.

I tried, I really did, to source my own. Since we claimed our land from a monster nest, we are right next to the wilds. There are a ton of monsters in there and they’re dying every day. I don’t need a full corpse, just some blood or meat from such a beast and I could try to grow one. Even lower odds with that, but at least there was a chance.

Then, out of nowhere, one showed up in the hands of a child. The idiot was trying to sell it at the market and I noticed it right away. Seems the idiot had crawled into a hole he barely fit in and found a bunch of edible mushrooms in what must have been a nest of something at some point. That something must have been a beast that managed to get back to its den before dying.

I snapped that shroom up so fast I didn’t even bother to haggle! It was obviously mystical but the kid didn’t know for what alignment and so only wanted a couple gold for it. Even if it was a muddled mystical, that would be a steal, let alone the critical item to free me from my family’s heritage!

The kid thought I was being nice or something. Recognized me from the farm since he was born of one of the slaves and I don’t beat the slaves. Why would I? If I crippled them it would only mean more work for me. Nevermind the fact that the kingdom requires all children to be free when born. A complete waste of resource that. We raise them and so all that they create should be ours!

Meh, slaves aside, I now have everything I need to declare myself to my deity. I just need the right chance. A night when both moons are new and some tasteless sleeping meds so my father and mother don’t discover what I’m doing. The second is easy enough to find since the local healer uses it all the time to knockout farm animals that need more drastic care.

Of course, the kingdom once again wants to ruin my fun by outlawing personal ownership of the drug if you aren’t a healer. Something about keeping it out of the wrong sort of hands. Heh, I still managed to get some though, and the time approached!

Of the four moons, there would generally be three in the sky and we have no recorded instances of them all being new at the same time. It is only at the height of summer when only two are up and only at the very beginning and end of this when both will be new. So spring passed as I carefully preserved the mushroom of rot and then the time was right!

Yes, I could have done the ritual just about anytime and I probably didn’t need to put my parents into such a deep sleep, but I had a reason! I didn’t want to just become another follower. I wanted to rise up and take on a much more devoted role. For that, I needed actual runes to be carved out and other similar, somewhat noisy tasks to be done. I had the zombie guarding the compost do it for me.

Sure, the zombie’s hands ended up all ripped to shreds from doing it and my dad would have tanned my hide if I just left it there, but this wasn’t the end of my needs for the zombie. After all, I needed a sacrifice and what do you know? Here one is, all ready to be used and willing to follow every single command I gave.

So I lit the candles, spoke the words of power, prayed to [Rigslom]’s glory, and spread some of my blood onto the sacrificial knife I had knapped from obsidian. All leading up to my plunging the blade through the zombies head and severing the magic that animated it. My mind goes blank as I sense the power enveloping me!

Divine power pours up through the decaying mass and strikes the young man’s body. The zombie that had been in front of him rotted away at an accelerated pace until even the bones had decayed into dust. Then this spread into the compost heap, which burst into flames as the rapid rate of rot caused a massive spike in temperature. Though before the flame could try and spread, it too decayed, leaving only a burnt piece of ground.

The man, now laying on the ground sees none of this because the massive influx of power had knocked him out cold. For his rite was not the controlled rite which many would go through in their pursuit of more closely worshiping their deity. No, instead of a controlled amount of power meant to awaken the connection between worshiper and deity, he instead was deluged with the latent rot that had set in after over a thousand years of being used to compost plants, animals, and many, many undead.

It was near dawn when the man awoke, now flush with power, which was beyond anything he could imagine someone having. He waved his hand and a healthy young tree fell over as it rotted from the inside out. A smile crept over his face as he cackled and turned towards the farm his family had been tending for well over a thousand years and the many undead that populated it.

Before the change, he could have held himself back. Maybe if it had been a normal rite, he could have held himself back. He couldn’t hold himself back. The divine power of rot, decay, and plague surged within him and endless bone dust flew out of the ground, turning into heavy plate mail armor that covered his frame. Not a single weak point as even the face was completely covered, but still he could see using the power gathered from the compost heap.

He felt, however, that it wasn’t really enough and that more couldn’t hurt. After all, this wasn’t the only compost heap on the farm and there were plenty of other smaller farms around. So the newly minted paladin of [Rigslom] walked toward the next as all undead within a hundred paces fell over and decayed away.

The light of dawn washed over the land and a certain farmer woke up later than he usually did, feeling groggy as if he had drank too much the night before. His wife still slept next to him and he frowned. Neither had touched a drop of brew in the last fortnight. Then he felt it. The connections he had with his undead, half had vanished! Another snapped as he was feeling for them and he knew something was very wrong.

Outside, the farmer finds his slaves cowering, not making a single sound as a strange being clomped around his fields, undead falling all around it. As the farmer watched, it reached one of the compost piles closer to the home and he saw it go up in flames for a moment. This scared the man for while he was an honest man of the soil, he had gone to a proper monastery and learned the teachings of [Natura].

Among those teachings he remembered, he trembled at the thought! A paladin of [Rigslom] had come to his farm. There was nothing he could do and so he returned to his wife and looked for his son. In vain, though, for his son was gone. Fear penetrated deeper into the farmer’s heart, his son liked to check on the compost heaps before dawn! His son was trustworthy if a little slow with his magic and had likely ran afoul with the paladin.

The farmer could only hope they would find the son hiding somewhere safe. At that moment, though, the only thing the farmer could do was take his wife in their fastest carriage and carry the news to the city. Even then, it took him a few hours.

The paladin of rot, son of the farmer, soon finished with his home farm and the undead on it as well as a couple slaves that didn’t get out of his way quick enough. Truly, he had brought them to see the glory of his deity! A plague known as the silent red night invaded their bodies and caused blood to weep out from every pore as their mind faded into an endless sleep. Well, it ended after a few minutes, but only because they shuffled off this mortal coil, the blood remaining there to infect any who touched it within the next month.

The man, rotten in the soul, misguided in his faith, and yet blindly believing fully in his cause moves on to the next farm. His body was ripe with power, the very bone armor that encased him had begun to meld with his flesh.

The next farm, only big enough to have a single compost heap and five shabby skeletons barely took him five minutes to “cleanse”. No slaves died only because there were none. Instead, the owner, a single man, instead suffered. This time, the weeping doctor’s plague was unleashed on the world once again. The man was unable to move, unable to feel, unable to think, and yet he lived. Any healing magic used or medicine administered would cause his body to spurt out pus that was slowly gathering below the skin. This pus would pass on the disease, a disease that fed on healing magic and herbal remedies.

One farm after another, the paladin continued his path. The suit of armor seeped deeper into his body until his legs became locked from bone spikes piercing through the joints. No pain, any nerves along the way had long ago rotted away, the body only moving through the power that was stewing inside. Still, he continued.

Not many more died for the fallen paladin of rot advanced slowly, though with a feeling of inevitability. This gave those in his path enough time to evacuate. Though they soon learned to leave their undead behind. After the second farmer tried to bring them away only to find a beam of decaying atoms slicing through them, the others learned their lesson.

Midday came and almost went without a single change. Almost.

The sun had almost moved out from directly overhead when a light seemed to spear down in front of the paladin who was now more rotted meat than living flesh, more decayed bone than healthy marrow. As the light cleared, it revealed a man dressed in only a pair of golden leather pants. Not that the paladin waited for the light to clear.

The paladin hadn’t depended on light to see since the armor had encased them. Though as the decayed atoms played over the man’s skins, nothing happened. Even his pants remained unaffected. The only thing to show he even noticed was a small chuckle.

Those simple golden leather pants had been crafted by a leatherworking master from the hide of a nemean lion the man had killed. As if a newly minted paladin of rot could even come close damaging them. Still, an attempt had been made and so a response was required. The man backhanded the paladin, sending them flying into the dirt.

The paladin floated up out of the dirt as even gravity decayed beneath them, this now being the only way they could move, their armor having pierced through all their bones and joints.

The man in golden pants slapped them again as he felt there was no reason to let the paladin live. Judgment had been passed back at the city. Paladins of any deity were perfectly fine as long as they followed the law. This paladin clearly was not, a fallen paladin who let the rot reach their soul.

As the rotten paladin slammed into the ground, their hand could be seen flying away. An attempt to block had been made and failed. From the hole left by the missing hand, yellow puss and green rot spilled as a black and pitted bone stuck out.

The man frowns, this paladin was more advanced than those back at the city had guessed. Not that it would stop him from fulfilling his duty. For situations like this, the motto was that there was no kill like overkill. Though instead of being able to take a hundred beings like the paladin, the man now figured he could only take around ten. That was still nine more than was here, which meant unless something out of the ordinary happened, this was a sure thing.

And nothing did happen out of the ordinary. The paladin attempted to decay the man again, to plague the man with numerous diseases, and even just ram into him. It was the last one that caused the man in golden pants to finish the fight. He had let the fight go on to see if there was anything new, but he wasn’t willing to get any of the paladin’s insides on himself. So, without even a motion or a twitch to betray the attack, a beam of nearly solid light fell from the smaller sun and reduced the paladin of rot to a mass of molten bones.

If the man had left it at that though, this wouldn’t have been the end. It wasn’t like the paladin had been using their original body by that point. All the power had been stored in that very suit so if left alone they would have come back. In fact, the paladin was considering this very thing when a much wider and energetic beam fell upon them from the large sun.

Some might consider this overkill. Those who do should refer back to the previously stated motto. Besides, it had been required to truly finish the job. Even as the bone mass had lay there, it released bone dust glut with power. That way if the mass had been captured there would be a backup way to recover, if at a slower rate. The second beam of light had reduced every last speck of bone to powerless gas and left a hole deeper than the man cared to check.

He sighs, part of his task had been to find out the identity of the paladin but that clearly had never been in the cards. So all he could do was head back to the city and fill out an ungodly amount of paperwork. One final beam of light and the Bishop of the sun deity was gone.

As this wrapped up, a couple of entities watched on from slightly to the side of reality.

[Rigslom] sighed, “[Natura](Deity, Nature, Plants, Farming), you really have to figure out how to un-stigmatize my people!”

[Heliota] laughs, “Come on [Rigslom]! No need to talk so formally. Not everyone wants to go around spouting a person’s Name like that. I would have thought that [Rigslom](Deity, Rot, Decay, Plague) would understand that?

[Rigslom] rolls the top three eyes, “Fine, whatever. I figured since we had [Death] here, we might be a little more formal.”

[Death] snorts, “Don’t even try that excuse. You know my desire to be formal died well before you came about.”

[Natura] interrupts, “All that aside, there is only so much I can do while you have that hard on for killing the undead. Seriously [Rigslom]! Even [Death] has mellowed out when it comes to the non-sapient undead.”

[Rigslom] fades blue, “Unnatural scum! Only that foul magic keeps them from following the natural order. I would think you of all people would understand my disdain!”

[Natura], “Look, I would really love to have some of your more moderate followers who haven’t fallen into your undead nonsense. You just pack too much of yourself into your divinity. Everyone here knows that is a good way to end up less than a deity.”

[Death] nods, “I’ve seen way too many of you deities falling from your non-finite state and then falling into my embrace. Separate yourself a little or else a new deity of rot will end up forming from the more moderate believers.”

[Heliota], “Thirded! Since the suns don’t exactly go anywhere, I’ve been around the block a few more times than you. If even [Death] can get over the undead, you should be able to as well.”

[Rigslom] squints at the two deities and [Death], “We’ll see about that!” and then they leave.

[Death] sighs, “Seriously! I’ve mellowed out on undead just in time to have a deity show up with the same feelings. If I wasn’t me, I’d think there was some sort of deeper meaning behind it. Though I can’t claim to be fully for the undead. Any of the risen who keep their original souls are on my list. Cheating death can’t go unpunished. Though I do find it a bit funny that [Rigslom]’s paladins end up as being basically undead once they’ve gained enough power.”

With that, [Death]’s presence dies out leaving just [Natura] and [Heliota] watching that particular moment. Though not for long as [Heliota] didn’t really have anything in that particular mess besides one of their bishops cleaning up the mess and so they left as well. [Natura] watches the events unfold one final time, not seeing any hope of change and they too leave.