by John “JAM” Arthur Miller
We promise to accept the Pledge of Beauty,
To contend for Purity, Justice and the Path of the Paladin,
To lay our Faith upon the Altar of Sacrifice,
And to Die with Valor.
Sol Invictus!
—Paladin Francesco di Bernardone
March 3rd, 2010, 0700 hours
FROM: Michael Phillips Worthington III, Paladin Deacon
TO: James Sanders, Paladin Deacon; and to the Paladin of the III Order
As I sit in the study and survey my blurred estate through stained glass windows depicting my Patron Paladin Giovanni Francesco Bernardone, otherwise known as St. Francis of Assisi to the Mundanes, I have to ask myself whether I’ve received what I deserve. Have the events that unfolded on January 1st, 2010 transpired because I reaped what I’d sown? Did I get what I deserve? I have to wonder. And I still see her face just as clearly now, haunting me, wearing her blood-stained wedding dress, crying out my name. For all my power and prestige, I couldn’t save my beloved. In fact—dare I say it?—I killed her. Don’t argue the point, for it’s fixed in my mind: I killed Systerln Vanesteinhelm as surely as if by my own hand.
To my dismay, I am quitting the Fold. I took the Pledge of Beauty as a young man, over two-hundred years ago, intending to die in combat for the Order. But I am getting on in years. I appear to be in my fifties. Still strong enough to slay a dragon or two, mind you. But inside, where faith sits enthroned and rules the heart of Paladins everywhere, I have been… I have been…
Well, this is my final report. It isn’t written in concise words as befitting a Paladin Deacon, but it will suffice. Instead of just the facts, I have removed my heart from my chest and placed it within these pages. After two-hundred years of servitude and leadership, I think the Order can capitulate to the final whim of an old warrior.
Let me be perfectly clear by reiterating: I am quitting the Paladins, as I said. But be of good cheer, my brothers, for you are in good hands. James is a good leader, a fine warrior; I trained him myself, as I’ve trained so many of you throughout the decades. And while I know many of you would attempt to change my mind, know that I cannot keep the Paladin Pledge—I cannot die with Valor, for intrepidity no longer resides within my heart.
I have become old. And it’s time to meet Systerln, my beloved.
In the name of Paladin Bernardone, this is my final report.
It was supposed to be an effortless mission. We circumnavigated over the island called Capri off the Sorrentine Peninsula in Southern Italy, our Cessna Citation X shielded from radar by magick and prayer as we cut through airspace. Romanesque columns supported old castles dotting the craggy rocks and green landscape below, and cuneate sails of yachts filled the Gulf of Naples surrounding the island. Cliffs thrust straight up from the gulf hundreds of feet resembling the legendary Cliffs of Dover, then leveled to flat grassland that gradually morphed into rolling hills.
In the middle of the island was Giovanni Castle, once owned and operated by one of the most influential Old World crime families. When Agatha Laitano wed Christiano Giovanni two decades earlier, she married into the Family. No one expected her to latch onto “the Life,” as the Mafia called it, but she fit right in. With her husband, she orchestrated some of the most brilliant and illegal schemes, bringing in billions through contraband, illegal arms deals, and drugs. She obtained the respect of the Family easily through her charming demeanor that masked her malign nature, and rumors whispered through the old castle about black magick rituals practiced in the dungeon. Her husband died suddenly a decade later, an apparent heart attack—although he’d been young and robust—and Agatha took over the entire island and Family through shrewd manipulation and her dark arts. By this time, her name had become well-known to the III Order, and surveillance via remote viewing revealed that the island had become blighted by demonic energies.
With me were six Knights, six Squires, and fellow Paladin Deacon James Sanders, my friend and backup should I die with Valor. The knights were decked out in their white armor, blessed by prayer and magick, and each gladius and shield glowed with power. Besides that, one had a semi-automatic assault shotgun and another had an AK-47. All had 9mm pistols. Personally, I had the traditional weapons as well as my Desert Eagle .357 magnum and a combat knife. I preferred the old weapons, but these were modern times, and the nineteenth century in which I had become a Paladin had come and gone. Almost ruefully I checked my revolver for the hundredth time.
“Take it down by the Marina Grande,” I told the pilot. “Contact the Jesuits in Rome and announce our mission—we don’t need another Inquisition.”
“Yes, sir!”
The Jesuits had initiated the first and subsequent Inquisitions when supernatural threats had gotten out of control. Witch hunts, werewolves and especially black magick practitioners lured demons into physical reality like moths to flame. It was the III Order’s job to remove threats before conflagrations burned out of control. If we could not put down threats against humankind, the Jesuits would have no other choice but to initiate another Pogrom to stamp out evil.
Magick-based prayer kept the Cessna invisible to tourists as well as masking us. Incanted prayers originated by Paladin Bernardone solidified the water beneath our steel Sabatons covering our feet. I looked down and saw light reflecting off the waves splashing against the greaves protecting our calves and shins. I adjusted the vambrace protecting my lower left arm, lowered my visor, and led my Paladins across the water into the Blue Grotto. Hundreds of tourists using boats floundered about the deep-blue water that burned brighter inside the sea-save, and we walked on the waves right past them, invisible like armored wind. We had to duck to enter the grotto, and once inside found the legendary tunnel filled with Roman statues of antiquity depicting gladiators and Senators. Still walking on water, we came to the furthest reach of the tunnel and Deacon James scryed the Shallowing.
“Here.” He clanged his gauntlet against the cave wall, his voice echoing with the noise. “Agatha has sealed the entrance with demonic magicks.”
It was true for I felt it; an evil presence washed over us, and the palpable malignancy thickened like syrup. I touched the wall with my armored finger and muttered, Sol Invictus! A black pentagram appeared on the wall, tall as a man with two points projecting upwards and one protruding down. I spoke an incantation in Latin. The pentagram shifted so that one point projected upwards and two protruded down. Now it was fit to work Paladin faith through.
Ad Caeli Reginam, I said, meaning “To the Queen of Heaven” which was the Madonna. The five-pointed star disappeared and we entered a tunnel. Capri had been used throughout the ages for nefarious operations, and Blue Grotto had been feared by locals for centuries for being used by witches and the demon possessed. Often, I mused, evil uses the most beautiful of God’s locations to tempt the unwary.
We followed the tunnel through miles of island bedrock, leaving the noise of chattering tourists far behind. The tunnel led to a thick, wooden door at the Giovanni Castle dungeon. The Knights readied their weapons and shields, none using traditional weaponry I noticed. Deacon James and I stood alongside each other.
“On the count of three.”
He nodded and I began the Litany of Power. With pride in my heart at the display of bravery from the Paladins surrounding me, I touched my gauntlet to the door. It exploded inward and we ran through smoke and haze. With brazen faith we entered the dungeon and began our attack. Although the sights were atrocious, none of us screamed; in fact, we all shouted in unison our battle cry: Sol Invictus! Unconquerable Sun.
As I watched the young Paladins in my charge, none over seventy years of age, flashing with preternatural swiftness in the torchlight glimmering off their armor, their bodies blurring with incredible speed via magick and prayer, I remembered my own introduction into the III Order of the Paladins. I was born in Falmouth Town in Southwest England. Royalty flowed through my veins from dukes and barons in ancestral past, but in my heart burned a zeal uncontained. My father begged me to take up the practice of law, to go to school; and my mother worried when I spent my days praying before the mural of St. Michael at the abbey. As a child, I often sat in a pew inside the small cathedral as Jesuit priests and nuns went about their duties. This portion of the abbey was open to all as a place of worship, used for litanies and Mass for Falmouth Town. It wasn’t unusual for the faithful to come at all hours of day and night, to kneel before the altar for penance, or to visit the confessional booths. What was unusual was the young and wide-shouldered youth ever sitting near the mural depicting Saint Michael killing the demon.
Jesuits watched me with interest, and when asked what I was doing, I replied, “I do not know; all I know is I have to be here.” A summons beyond space and time had laid itself upon my heart, and I prayed to God to enlighten me as to the mysteries my heart sought yet could not find.
“He is Chosen,” one of the Jesuits said, and I wondered what he meant. Would I become a priest? Perhaps join their arduous Order? I did not wish to, for I’d always been one for sports and wrestling with the occasional fight—the priesthood did not appeal to one so strait forward and impetuous as me. And so days bled into weeks, and weeks became months, and still I remained. Until one fateful night, the abbey’s doors locked for the night, and with candlelight as the only means of light, I saw Saint Michael move within the mural. He smiled at me as he raised his sword high, his foot upon the back of the demon’s neck, and I felt a moment of transcendent epiphany when the blade came down and beheaded the helpless demon.
I jumped and shouted with much emotion, tears streaming, hands trembling and falling to my knees in devotion to a power greater than myself, to a force that had lured me inexplicably over the long months. I worshipped God and prayed to St. Michael as he continued to smile with benevolence upon my prostate form.
“Who dares disturb the abbey at this late hour?” Father Daniels roared from the front of the church by the altar.
“It is I.”
As I stood, Saint Michael stepped from the mural, black demonic blood dripping from the glowing sword and steaming as it splattered the stone floor. Father Daniels cried out when he saw the Archangel, and he made the sign of the cross as he approached.
“Do you know what this means?” Father Daniels whispered.
“No.” I continued to weep, but I stood now before the glowing splendor of that mighty angel. “Tell me.”
“You have been Chosen.”
“Chosen for what?”
“Have you heard of the III Order, my son?”
Into the dungeon we exploded, my Paladins and me. Smoke from the Litany of Power’s explosive words filled the room, but haze from burning flesh and torches already filled the clouded dungeon. True to surveillance, remote viewing and espionage-based works, Agatha Laitano, indeed, practiced black magick in the dungeon of Giovanni Castle. No wonder through her leadership the Giovanni Cartel—as we’d come to call them—had been able to amass billions, their tendrils sweeping into countries around the world. Backed by black magick and demonic influence, the Giovanni Cartel had grown powerful, buying not only into legitimate businesses, but even buying out legitimate corporations. The innocent hung from chains along the walls. Red hot pokers in the clawed hands of hideous creatures with black wings glowed in the dim interior. The ebony surface of the demons’ skins glimmered orange, and sulfur made me want to retch.
“Intruders!”
An alarm went off. The AK-47 erupted, and the holy water contained in the hollow-points exploded in demonic flesh. White light engulfed each demon as the enhanced missiles struck their black flesh, like silver bringing down vampires. The demons moved with supernatural speed, but against a volley of bullets they stood no chance. Deacon James’ prayers protected the innocent from harm’s way, and the rest of us pushed on, stepping over the smoldering remains of our spiritual enemies.
“I’ll free the innocent,” Deacon James announced as he stood next to a naked man writhing in chains, braised welts puckered red from torture. “And I’ll lead them back to the Blue Grotto.”
“We won’t return until the witch is dead,” I declared, full of faith and gusto. “Sol Invictus!”
“Sol Invictus!” my Paladins returned.
Together, we ascended the stone steps and stormed into the rest of the castle.
While in Archangel Michael’s warm presence, both Father Daniel and I wept openly. The spiritual experience seeped into my soul and I felt my calling. Michael stepped back into the mural, but not without leaving his mark. Upon my chest over the heart he’d traced a symbol with the point of his sword, then leaned in close and whispered in the purest voice I’d ever heard, A fortiori ad hominem, a caelo usque ad centrum, soli Deo gloria which meant, “From the stronger to the man, from head to heel, glory goes to God alone.”
When he was fully integrated back into the stone of the wall, Father Daniels led me into the parsonage connected to the abbey. While I thought it strange, it was no stranger than meeting the archangel, and I said nothing. He opened a trapdoor in his bedroom chambers which led down into the depths of the earth, and there he showed me coats of white armor.
“What are these?”
“These are the true tools of your faith.”
He began to transcribe reality as it really was. Father Daniels explained that the purpose of the Inquisitions was to stamp out pure evil. “To the Mundanes,” he said, “the Inquisitions were counter-attacks against blasphemous Turks or sects, but the deeper reality was that they were full-fledged wars on Evil itself. We eventually gained the upper hand and put an end to the Inquisitions. Today, when Evil rears its head, before it becomes a movement that threatens to take over the world, the III Order removes it. That way we will never again have to instigate another Inquisition.”
And thus Father Daniels prepared me, as the Jesuits are wont to do, until a Paladin appeared in our midst as if by magick. “It is not heathen magick, lad,” the white-armored warrior said, “but the power of faith-based magick and the power of God Almighty.”
The Paladin examined the mark upon my chest left by Michael’s glowing sword, the symbol of Paladins everywhere. It looked like the letter P with an X superimposed over it, called the Chi Rho – the Christian-warrior. Satisfied that if God’s own archangel left his seal of approval branded into my flesh, I was inducted into the III Order of Paladins.
“The first rule of order is Secrecy,” the Paladin told me as we walked into the wall and disappeared, appearing on Mount Sinai. “We Paladins fight against vampires and werewolves and witches trafficking with demons, but we withhold this knowledge from the rest of the world in order to protect them. Thus we pledge a vow of Secrecy.”
I said nothing as the wind whipped through my hair and tugged at my clothes. I surveyed the land that stretched for miles from the mountaintop. What could I say, other than, Yes!
Agatha was easy to kill. She’d obviously expected attacks from without, but not from within. Had she researched her castle, she would have learned of the underground tunnel leading from the Blue Grotto to her dungeon. In a ballroom situated directly above the dungeon, we shot her in the back as she fled, then cut off her head and placed it in an alabaster box. We’d take it back to the headquarters of the III Order for proof.
In the middle of this ballroom a fountain billowed three streams of royal blue water. The surface shimmered with magick such as I’d never seen, and when it rippled, we tensed expecting some attack. Instead a naked nymph rose from the fountain waters which obviously had been taken from the Blue Grotto—for that water glimmered a phosphorescent blue. She walked upon the surface to the edge of the fountain where she collapsed into my arms.
Before God created the angels, he first created a variety of lesser-angels. The instinctual simpletons created to keep the forces of Nature in rhythm are Elementals; the angels of Beauty are known as Elves; and the angels of Nature are known as Faeries. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Good and Evil, these races of lesser-angels have no concept of good and evil, nor of nakedness or shame. And in my arms lay the nude Systerln, water nymph and mistress of empathy.
As I held her, my heart melted as I gazed upon her blue face, and peered into her emerald eyes. Purple hair contrasted beautifully against her sapphire-toned cheeks. I carried her down into the dungeon, through the tunnel, and I walked her across the water to our plane and fastened her into a seat.
“She trapped me… siphoned me,” Systerln said. “So weak… ”
“Rest,” I told her. To the pilot I ordered, “Let’s be off.”
We’d lost no men, but I can safely say that I had already lost my heart.
As a young man, I took to the III Order like a duck to water, loving the combination of faith and discipline practiced alongside magicks and rituals. I could lift one-hundred pound weights above my head with one arm after a few months of training, but with faith-based magick I could lift many times that amount. My body became faster than the wind, and I learned to fight with a variety of weapons, striking like lightning. My hands, I could drive them into rock; my enhanced gladius, I could drive through steel. Battle tactics and the weak points of vampires and werewolves became second nature. While old friends socialized back in England on weekends, I staked vampires and beheaded werewolves and burnt witches.
There was true evil in the world. When a vampire in Iceland killed someone for blood, we were there. Werewolves in the Congo? Yes, we took them down. Wherever evil flourished, we went and subjugated it. As for simple practicing Wiccans, even those who maintained they practiced black magick, we left them alone, for only when a real demon manifested before a witch did we get involved. And vampires that used willing subjects were tolerated as well—although it wasn’t always the case. But times change, and over the years so do leaders. Thus I rose in rank until, at last, I became a Deacon within the Order.
“Why don’t you take a wife?” my friend James goaded me.
“I could never ask a Mundane to put up with me, my friend.” I sighed. “I’m always away battling evil. What would I tell my wife? I can’t break the oath of Secrecy.”
“True. And knowing you, lies are out of the question.”
Time moves slow for a Paladin through the years, and it is a lonely existence. Most do not marry, although we are not forbidden to do so. But those of us who do marry certainly have complications explaining why we don’t age, where we go and why we come home with scars, as well as the Chi Rho symbols branded into our flesh by an Archangel’s sword.
Thus I intended to live alone, eternally fighting God’s enemies, unless I succumbed in battle to a demon’s fangs or an enemy’s sword. And when swords became arrows and arrows became musket balls, and when finally those gave way to bullets and grenades and bombs, I still was alone. I led the Paladins into battle, time and time again, protecting humanity against pure evil, but also protecting the world from another Inquisition, for if we let evil flourish, the Jesuits might unleash another Holy War upon humankind.
A lonely existence? Of course. Until, that is, you meet the One. When I held Systerln Vanesteinhelm in my arms, I felt my heart flutter. Not from lust, for there were faith-based magicks to halt the flow of manly lust, and I’d performed those rituals. Yet still my heart beat with slow thuds that sped into a rhythmic pattern of frantic speed. My face flushed red as I realized my breath had become labored, and James glanced at me questioningly. I averted my eyes, and tried to put her out of my mind as we returned to the headquarters of the III Order. After making sure Systerln was safe in the infirmary, I typed up my reports and sent them to the III Order’s High Council as well as to secretive branches of the Jesuits.
I thought I would never see Systerln again. In fact, I prayed that I might not, for I felt helpless in her presence…yet strong at the same time. A paradox of emotions I’d not experienced in almost two-hundred years assaulted me. I wanted to flee her presence, yet I could not stop thinking about her blue skin, her purple hair. I tossed at night seeing her swim through oceanic waves, and I became fraught with passion that bled through the lust prohibiting magick, and after three sleepless nights, I realized…I knew…
I was a strong man. A mighty Paladin and a tough leader. But I was no match for my Systerln.
I went to the infirmary but she wasn’t there. Dejected, I went to the beach outside our headquarters and saw her watching the ocean.
“I had to see you.”
“I know,” she said, her singsong voice a melody in my heart. “I felt you in the heat of the night, while you tossed upon your bed.”
I cleared my throat and stood next to her, refusing to gaze at her but unable to leave.
“I’m not used to these…feelings.”
“You’re the One,” she said with simplicity.
“What…?” I started to ask as I turned toward her, but she kissed me. This sapphire-skinned angel pressed her purple-blue lips to mine, and I swam in the sea of her passion, right then and there on the beach, not caring whether superiors or those under my command saw, not caring what God in Heaven judged. Not even worried what St. Michael thought. Into that kiss I melted, and years of battle and multiple lifetimes of scars melted into the moment. Her hands rested upon my shoulders then embraced my neck and pulled me into her.
We wound our along the beach and into the woods. Songbirds fluttered down, landing upon her shoulders, and she sang with them. A deer came out because of her peaceful presence, and after she gave it an Eskimo kiss, we came to a clearing in a glen. Giant sunflowers opened wide their blooms while we kissed, and we laughed at them.
“What is it you want?” she asked.
“You,” I responded.
Before I met Systerln, I thought constantly about Crusades, how best to incapacitate the enemy with the least strikes possible. I studied killing blows, battle tactics and leadership skills. I honed my body daily through a vigorous regimen of arduous training, and I enhanced my body with faith-based magick. After I met Systerln, my priorities changed. Oh, I still trained, and my efficiency to the III Order diminished not in the least; yet I thought of Systerln on the way to Crusades now, and I saw her face after battles concluded. If anything, I had something to fight for, to protect, and thus I fought harder in order to make the world a safer place for Systerln, as well as to make doubly sure I myself returned from battle unscathed.
Yet there were plenty of scars: a werewolf in Seattle bit through my pauldron into my shoulder; a vampire in Rio clawed my visor off leaving this scar over my right eye; and a demon-possessed witch in Hong Kong cast a fireball that melded my left hand into my gauntlet, which would never be removed again. Still, Systerln waited and personally treated each injury, doting over my frame until she soothed away the burns and punctures and lacerations.
Until the day I realized this could not go on forever.
“Are you sure?” she asked, as I knelt before her one day on the beach where we first kissed. “Is this really what you want?”
I placed the ring upon her finger and kissed it as if she were the Pope. Then I wiped tears from my eyes, complaining about wind blowing sand into them, and she giggled.
“Systerln Vanesteinhelm, will you marry me?”
She looked out at the sea and looked nostalgic for a moment, and I feared the worst. I’d faced snarling lupines and vicious necromancers, hunted down elusive blood-suckers and taken down haughty warlocks. But in that moment I was never so frightened in my life, as in terror I visualized her shaking her head and hearing her say, No.
“My people ask for me to return to them from time to time.” She continued staring out at the sea. “They come from the ocean, from lakes and ponds. ‘Why don’t you come back to your family?’ they ask. And each time I tell them that I cannot, for a mortal has bound my heart with his love, and sealed my future with a kiss. And now you’ve placed a ring upon my finger, and it binds me to dry land as powerfully as your love bids me stay.”
She kissed me. That was her answer.
On the first of January we stood in the Abbey in Falmouth Town, England. Magicks had been cast to make us appear to Mundanes as wearing tuxedos and wedding gowns, but in reality the Paladin in their white armor stood with me at the altar, while I waited for my Systerln. One half of the abbey was filled with members of the III Order, and the other half filled with blue-skinned nymphs, all naked and unselfconscious. At the end of the red carpet, Systerln stood with her father who had graciously acceded to relinquish his daughter through a human-based wedding ceremony. He walked her to the front and let her stand beside me.
Ah, but Agatha Laitano. Perhaps we should have searched her castle more thoroughly when we took that witch down, for she’d been training a young warlock, Giacomo Giovanni. After we left, he took all her tomes of black magick and went into hiding. During the following years, as Systerln took up more and more residence in my heart and soul, Giacomo Giovanni studied his mentor’s dark teachings and grew in power. He proved to be more than a formidable leader; he brought together packs of lupines and covens of vampires, orchestrating the attack that would occur on my wedding day.
What better time to strike the III Order than when we were all gathered under one roof? So the pack of crazed garou attacked, howling with evil delight. Giacomo had used black magick to send dark clouds to block out the sun, allowing for the coven of vampires to assail us in sudden darkness. The assault came so quickly that half our number died before we could rally and retaliate.
It was wondrously orchestrated, save for one thing: you do not attack God’s Paladins on consecrated ground. Saint Michael stepped forth from the mural, as he had when he’d summoned each of us Paladins, and he touched the brows of our fallen comrades. They rose from the dead, and together we fought and dismembered all of our enemies.
When it was over, I swelled in pride over the thought of Systerln having witnessed me fight the enemy, and of me being able to protect her. But when I looked at the altar I saw her lying in a pool of blood. I cried as I ran to her, stumbling over the dead and fallen, and collapsed at her side.
“My Paladin,” she whispered hoarsely. She placed her hand against my face, and I pressed it harder against my cheek. “You…you fought so gallantly for me.”
Then she died.
St. Michael stood among us still, but he was ready to move back into the mural.
“Wait!” I ran to him and beseeched him to raise my Systerln as he had the fallen Paladins. “Please save her.”
“I cannot,” he said. “She is not a Paladin.”
“But I love her!”
He passed into the wall with a sad smile as I fell to my knees.
“Michael,” I screamed. “Dear God!”
And thus my tale is finished. You knew much of it, James, but the younger Paladins did not know of my beginning. I hope it serves as a lesson to the young ones, that they take it upon themselves to not weaken themselves through marriage. Although it isn’t unlawful, it will try them just the same.
As for me, I know full well the implications of leaving the III Order. The oath that has kept me alive for centuries will be broken, and my body will crumble to dust. Even as I write this, Squires wait with an urn to gather my ashes. They will cast them over the Gulf of Naples surrounding Capri where I first met my water nymph.
When I first heard Archangel Michael’s voice, I prayed before his mural until he appeared. When he asked for help, I responded. Through the years, I only asked him for one thing—the life of Systerln—and both he and God declined to answer that prayer. I am not so filled with hubris as to demand that God obey my every whim, but I don’t see why two-hundred years of service, without asking for anything, would mean so little that they wouldn’t grant me one prayer.
So knowing I will die, I break my vows, because I long to go to a place in the deep waters where naked innocence clothes all shame, and religious purpose and pomposity do not prevent us from doing the right thing. Goodbye, my friends. I walk a different path of justice now; I am going home beneath the waves surrounding the Blue Grotto.
© 2010 John Arthur Miller
Original fiction debuting at Residential Aliens.
Tags: John Arthur Miller, short story, spiritual fantasy, sword & sorcery