Paladins Never Run

[Anonymous]

Lowbrow wanted to slap himself in the forehead. There, standing with his back pressed against the wall of a building a little way down the street from a rather large house, he realized the flaw in his plan.
He had sent Shafer in to do the most important part. Not that he didn't trust Shafer, it's just that he had no common sense...which was probably why it was taking him this long.
The plan wasn't too hard. It was the dead of night, and the band of dark elves from Vie Vitalis they were looking for were apparently held up in that house. And since they had something that really belonged to the Templarian Order, it was the mission appointed to Lowbrow and Shafer to recover that item.
So there were at least eight of the Vexians in their band, and they had a makeshift stronghold. Not to worry, because Lowbrow had a plan: One of them would sneak into the house and use an explosion of light, since the dark elves were very sensitive to bright light especially after being in the dark for so long, and force them out. Once out of their house, it would be a lot easier to 'convince' the band of Vexians to hand over what they had stolen.
That made the part of infiltrating the house the most dangerous and the most crucial.
Naturally, Shafer begged to do it.
And Lowbrow was beginning to regret-

*BOOM*

Brilliant yellow light poured out from every window in the house, and even caught Lowbrow by surprise.
Finally!
He lifted up his warhammer and started to charge towards the house-
When Shafer crashed through the front doors, running like mad out of the house and down the porch steps to the street.
"Shafer?" Lowbrow said with a confused look. "What are you doing!? You were supposed to get them out-"
"RUN, Low!! Run-run-run-run-run!!!" Shafer exclaimed as he high-tailed it down the street.
"Run? Paladins never run!" Lowbrow was quick to reprimand-
*STOMP*
A huge, reptilian-dog looking demon with a mouth full of banana-sized teeth squeezed its way out of the front doors, its footstep very audible and menacing, quite like its bloodcurdling growl.
Lowbrow looked back to see the monster with a face of latent horror.
"Well... maybe every now and then," he corrected himself as he nearly tripped over his own foot scrambling in the direction Shafer ran.

[Anonymous]

Surely monsters and other non-human creatures weren't uncommon, and Teras had seen a few here and there... But, uh, large reptilian dogs that had teeth bigger than his head were another story.

In fact, it was the last thing he expected to see when rounding a corner with a bag full of groceries on his way home. But sure enough - there one was lumbering down the street. He didn't even notice the paladins running from it - the creature itself was a liiiittle distracting.

Gaping, Teras stood stock still. Maybe he should play dead! Didn't someone tell him once that running from monsters only attracted their attention? Or maybe it was 'don't play dead, they'll still eat you' or something. Uh. Wouldn't it figure, he'd left his arrows and crossbow back at the inn, figuring he'd be safe enough without them. Pfft. So much for that idea.

Panicking, Teras yanked an apple out of his bag and chucked it at the dog-demon (What? It seemed like a good idea at the time; maybe it liked to play catch!) and turned tail to take off down the street along with Shafer and Lowbrow.

[Anonymous]

The creature batted the apple out of the air when he saw it flying toward himself, watching it as it rolled down to the street. The monster made an unearthly bark at the apple and took a twisted pleasure in pouncing down on it, biting a good chunk out of the street as well.
One of the dark elves stumbled out of the house, holding a hand over her eyes that still burned in agony from the sudden bright light. She managed to part her fingers some and take a peek out to see two...now three people retreating from the scene.
She pointed down the street and the creature lifted his head up after taking another chew of the debris in his mouth, then started to shamble its way down the road at a speed that was somewhat surprising for a beast as big and heavy-looking as he was.

An Addarak.
Of course, remembering the name of the nether-spawned beast chasing them didn't acutally do anything to help the situation.
"How did this happen!?" Lowbrow asked while on the go.
"I don't know! But I did find something out!" Shafer, who was a couple feet ahead of his comrade, called back to him.
"Like what!?"
"Low!" He called back again, taking a haphazard over his shoulder, not much of his face visible over his large plate pauldrons. "One of those Vexians... is a summoner! She can summon demons!"
Lowbrow had the sudden urge to slap himself. Not Shafer, but himself - hard. "I can see that!!"
He turned around and backpedalled for a few steps to see how fast the Addarak was gaining-
!!!!
There was someone else running the Addarak.
And by the looks of things, the demon was rather indiscriminate about which one of the three it could catch, so it was naturally going for the last in the chain first.
"Shaf!!! Light!!!" Lowbrow yelled urgently to his partner.
Shafer took a few seconds to stop and assess what was happening, then drew his Maul from his back. He held it high into the air with one arm as the metal portion of the weapon abruptly shined light as brilliantly as a lighthouse.
Just as the Addarak was licking his chops and started staring fixedly at Teras, the beacon of light caught its attention and caused it to stop. Forgetting about Teras almost instantly, it became fixated with the light of Shafer's Maul and started stalking forward towards this new prey.
Lowbrow motioned quickly to Teras, pointing with his hands to suggest cutting through an alleyway to the next street over. "Quick! This way! Let's go!" Then a fast message to Shafer, "Meet up back at the church! Can you get there??"
"Uh... sure! Yeah! No problem," replied Shafer confidently unsure of that, as he now second-guessed the idea of attracting the beast's ire.

[Anonymous]

Teras skidded to a stop, panting as he stared at Low and the paladin's gestures toward the alley. 'Oh, sure, let's get the monster to barrel through buildings.' But, well, he had to assume these two had a hell of a lot more experience running from things than he did, so without argument he ducked into the alley, still clutching the bag in his arms for dear life.

He did, however, cast a look back at Shafer. "Uh, that thing's going to eat him, you realize," he started, but then decided against arguing too much. Better someone else than him, right? As cruel as it sounded, he did have a survival instinct that clearly said let the big scary monster eat someone else if it means you can get away.

Turning forward again, he started making his way briskly through the alley, knowing well where the church was a few streets down. Normally he'd have considered it a safe haven of sorts, but if mister dog-demon...thing... smelled them out, he didn't think a church would provide anymore safety than any other building.

[Anonymous]

As Lowbrow and Teras bolted through the alley, he had time to explain in a tone that level and factual, "Well, he's a good sport. I'm sure he won't mind taking one for the team."
By the time the two of them had reached the other end of the alley, the reality that Lowbrow was wearing plate armor, no matter how specially crafted and blessed it was, caught up with him and effectively delivered a punch to his stomach.
That and the other fact that he was just a terrible runner. Shafer never seemed to have a problem with running... which was one reason why he was a good candidate to draw the Addarak's attention.
Lowbrow hunched over and supported his upper body with his hands on his knees. "Ok... Whew... So I'm not the greatest runner... probably not a marginal... one either... whew... I really need to practice more..."
After a couple more large gasps of breath, he finally felt like he could continue to go again and at least utter a few short sentences to Teras, "Yeah, the church. Minusary's was the name. That one. Let's go."
Minusary's church wasn't too far from where they were currently, just a fair while down this street. And, if everything went well, Orrim would be there, which was the pretty much the core of Lowbrow's 'fall back to the church' plan.
Lowbrow had a pretty good feeling, or pretty bad feeling depending on how one would consider the circumstances, that the man with the bags would get there before he did. And as he started up another semi-swift jog towards Minusary's, he reminded himself how much he hated running.

Meanwhile, Shafer waved his radiant maul side-to-side slowly, watching how the Addarak's eyes trailed after it hungrily.
"Good boy... good boy..." Shafer, in his infinite wisdom, attempted to coo the demon.
The Addarak responded with another deep and rumbling bark.
"Ok, bad boy-"
Not amused, the demon pounced at Shafer's beacon of light, his mouth wide open to try and shallow his prey-
In a move of desperation, Shafer hurled his maul straight at the Addarak. The two-handed weapon easily found a place upside the demon's head, and the one-two combination of such bright light in his face and a heavy metal brick clocking his forehead caused the Addarak to be dazed and stumbled about for a few seconds.
More than enough time for Shafer, who was more than happy to leave the area, to scramble away from the Addarak's landing zone and gain some distance from the beast. By the time the Addarak regained his senses, he saw Shafer slip into another alley a couple buildings across from the one that Lowbrow and Teras used.
Now infuriated by his escaping victim, the Addarak barked loudly and galloped toward the alleyway, preferring to leap onto the roof tops of the buildings to continue the chase than to try and futilely squeeze into the alley.

[Anonymous]

Teras had nothing to weigh him down save for the bag in his arms, and even then it was getting increasingly lighter the farther they went as a few random pieces of fruit were occasionally falling out. After the first one hit the ground and rolled away and he'd turned around to stare at it forlornly, he seemed to give up any hope of trying to retrieve any of the lost food. Sigh. There went this week's groceries...

He might've gotten to the church faster than Lowbrow, except he lingered and stayed just a few paces ahead of the paladin to make sure he didn't fall behind. Well, that, and if the scary puppy decided to come play with them after it'd eaten Shafer, he didn't want to be caught alone.

"...It's still barking," he commented after a moment. "That's probably a good sign. It means he's not eating. What is that thing, anyway? And what the hell did you two do to piss it off?!"

[Anonymous]

Finally, the church!
Lowbrow hunched over again and banged on the door a few times, slowly catching his breath while Teras spoke. After he got a good few breaths into his lungs, he knocked on the door again and remarked, "If it ate Shafer, at least it would get alcohol poisoning and hopefully keel over. Now that's what I call sacrifice."
He stood up straight after recovering from all the running and pounded on the door yet again, albeit this time a little more frantically. After that was done, he answered Teras' questions, "That's an Addarak. It's a creature that is brought into this world by summoning, most commonly through Shadowhand magic, a trademark of the dark elves of Vie Vitalis.
"I don't know what happened, but apparently within this band of dark elves we have been chasing they had a summoner, and somehow Shafer managed to not keep them from summoning the Addarak. I specifically told him to stun them when they are trying to summon something!"
Another unearthly bark could be heard, and it was a lot closer than the last one.
A moment later, Shafer came barreling out of an alley nearby the church and the Addarak was plodding along the rooftops of the two buildings that formed said alley.
Back to square one, apparently.
"Low! That idea didn't work very well!" Shafer exclaimed as he ran up to the other paladin and Teras.
"Don't be so modest, you were excellent bait," replied Lowbrow to his companion.
"Hey!" outburst Shafer, who looked rather abused.
The Addarak barked again, jumped off of the building, and... began to eat the miscellaneous pieces of fruit that littered the street.
Both Shafer and Lowbrow looked incredulous, while the sooner of the two suggested, "Vegetarian?"
Finding it hard to peel his eyes off of the strangely behaving beast, Lowbrow remarked, "I have never seen one of those do that..." He glanced over at Teras and the bag he was holding. "Where'd you buy those? I'll have to stop by there later."
After scooping up and finishing all of the fruit in the area, the Addarak quickly shot its look towards the three by the church doors... specifically at Teras and the bag he was holding.
"Open up! Come on! I'll pay you!" Shafer begged of the church door as he started to pound on it. "Where's Orrim??"
The Addarak barked again, then charged forward with its mouth open wide.

[Anonymous]

(Sorry for slow response. My computer's currently out of commission, so I can really only update from work on my breaks. =_=; Hopefully the problem will be fixed tonight.)

"Th... the market--" Teras backed up until his back bumped against the door. He watched in complete bewilderment at the creature eating up all of his fruit, and his jaw dropped.

"HEY! That's mine, dammit!" he started to shout, until the Addarak was looking right at him, at which point he gulped. "Just... kidding... you can have it, really-!" Oh boy.

Peering down into the remaining contents of the bag, Teras gave a heavy sigh. Well, this was all the food he could afford for the next week, but if he didn't try something, he wouldn't be alive to eat it anyway. So stepping away from the church doors and towards the Addarak a few paces, he pulled an apple out of the bag and chucked it as far down the street as he could. "...Uh, I do hope you realize that this isn't going to work forever. I'm going to run out of fruit eventually." Unless Aadaraks liked carrots? He had a few of those, too!

[Anonymous]

(No problem. I work crazy long hours anyway, til the 23rd of this month, so hence my slow one as well. I wish I could post while there though, lol)


Lowbrow knew enough about Addaraks to know that they had nearly insatiable appetites, but he had never seen one almost do a back flip just to catch a piece of fruit that was thrown past it.
Of course, he was still amazed that the demon liked fruit to begin with.
"Yeah," Shafer replied to Teras as he and his partner were informed about the limited timescale of the fruit-defense. "But don't worry, I have a plan!"
The Addarak snapped its view back up at the three and barked very, very loudly.
And Shafer, who took a moment to regain his bearings after that, stated frantically, "Ok, so I kinda forgot it though."
"You're so much help, Shaf," remarked Lowbrow as he slid his hand down his face.
The Addarak, now looking like it had its fill on fruit, fixed its eyes on Lowbrow. Not wasting a second, it began its charge-
Lowbrow clenched his teeth and hefted up his warhammer, holding it defensively-
!!!!
*TVVVOOOOOFFF!!!!*
The Addarak howled a bloodcurdling scream as it stopped dead in its tracks and reared back, a blast of light erupting from its face and a shockwave of the same illuminating its body for a second.
Lowbrow narrowed his eyes, recognizing the effects of the spell as the beast collapsed over onto its side kicking and flailing its feet: Exorcism. That must mean-
He looked over his shoulder, seeing Orrim standing behind him and Shafer and Teras, her hand extended outward toward the Addarak and steaming slightly.
The church door, however, was still locked and closed.
"Hey, we're the ones that are usually late," Lowbrow remarked to her. "You could've told us you'd be this time."
She smiled and explained, "I had some unforeseen complications." Then, dropping her smile as she shifted her glance to the Addarak that was slowly finding its way back onto its feet, "Seems that you and Shafer had some of your own as well."
Shafer shrugged innocently and said, "Yeah, well, you know... I swear they were fast, I mean, whoa!-whoa!-whoa!-type... yeah, it was me."
Lowbrow, turning his attention back on the demon, asked of Orrim, "You wanna take care of this?"
"You are going to go to class at your earliest opportunity," Orrim informed him as she stepped forward, walking towards the demon as an orange aura appeared below her feet, illuminating the ground she walked on with holy symbols.

[Anonymous]

Teras might've had a thing or ten to say about a woman going out on her own to tackle a demon, and he took a small, nervous step towards her and did indeed open his mouth to object.

His jaw promptly snapped shut, however, and his eyes fixed on the runes glittering on the ground beneath her feet. ...Okay, so maybe this wasn't some ordinary woman. Maybe it wasn't fair to underestimate women the way he did - especially seeing as his long hair and baby-face and scrawny figure allowed for people to mistake him as one on occasion - but still...!

"Couldn't she have opened the church doors first and gone to play with the Aradak... Akara... whatever is is afterwards??" he grumbled, bag (empty save for a small packet of medicine) clutched in one arm and the last apple held tightly in his other hand, just waiting to be thrown as a last resort if need-be. "She'll be alright... won't she?"

[Anonymous]

The Addarak found its way onto its feet, shaking its head once a stable footing was had. The demon soon saw the single paladin walking in its direction, and it growled an unearthly sound and prepared to lunge.
Orrim stopped and drew her blessed claymore from her back, sinking the curved tip somewhat into the ground and waited.
The beast barked, then gave a full-out charge with its mouth wide open-
!!!!
Seven spheres of light rushed up from the aura at Orrim's feet, then quickly barraged the Addarak's massive head and face. Each one burst into a brilliant show of light upon impact, and each made the deep bass sound of clock ringing out a death toll.
Obviously damaged and staggered, the Addarak nonetheless recovered and began a new attack undeterred: It issued out a low, menacing rumble of a snarl before six tendrils of darkness seeped out from its body and shot towards Orrim.
Recognizing the attack, Orrim wrenched her sword up from the ground and-
Was caught as the six tendrils wrapped securely around different parts of her body. Immediately, the tenebrous tendrils glew with a faint bluish aura.
"Cleanse!" Orrim called back to the other two paladins.

Meanwhile, Shafer and Lowbrow were watching their superior paladin fight the demon. Lowbrow, after hearing Teras' question, gave his honest answer, "Probably better off than we would have been. She has a few tricks for fighting demons, so me and Shafer are going to help from here-"
Almost like he had opened his mouth too soon, Orrim was caught in the Addarak's mana-siphoning attack.
"Right on, we got you!" Shafer called to her as he and Lowbrow each casted a quick cleanse. Two beams of multi-colored light circled around Orrim, causing two of the six tendrils to fade away.
Obviously, a few more cleanses would be needed-
*PRRRECHT!!!*
Shafer immediately fell to one knee and held his abdomen after the blow to his kidney, looking like he had the wind knocked out of him.
"Shaf-!?" Lowbrow turned just in time to see a female dark elf, presumably one from the house, come into view behind Shafer. The Vexian drew two large, curved daggers and bolted straight for Teras, the next in line.

[Anonymous]

Great. First demon-dogs, and then dark elves. Teras didn't have any more apples to throw! And his best weapon was at the inn just around the corner... In fact, all he had was the most pathetic excuse for a dagger tucked into one of his boots that was better for skinning a rabbit than defending one's self.

But it was better than running away screaming like a five year old girl. Teras stumbled back a few steps, dropped down long enough to yank the dagger out of his left boot and lept back, hopefully out of striking distance. In the process, he had little choice but to drop the bag he'd been holding onto for so long since then. Attempting to make another bold leap back, his feet lost their footing and Teras plunked right back onto his rear in a rather ungraceful manner. So much for that.

Happening to glance over, he spot one of the apples from earlier sitting just a few inches away where it had rolled and come to a stop and, somehow, managed to go uneaten. Grimacing, Teras glanced at the elf, then back at the dog-demon nearby. Well, this was worth a really long, stupid shot.

Snatching up the apple, Teras gave a loud, piercing whistle to try and draw the Addarak's attention and held up the fruit for it to see.

[Anonymous]

Two diagonal slashes sliced through the air where Teras once stood before backpedalling away. And as he did, Lowbrow had his warhammer ready and rushed forward to put himself between the dark elf and Teras. He hefted his weapon up above his head and swung it downward with a mighty force at the-
Ground, which tremored a little and cracked plenty upon being struck with the hammer. The dark elf had dodged to the side and already closed the small gap to be in weapon range of the paladin; her left dagger took on a dark purple aura and she spun around to strike Lowbrow across his breastplate with it. The weapon itself did almost no damage at all to the armor, but the aura jumped off of it and sent a paralyzing shock throughout his body. The effect would only last several seconds, but that was more than enough time for the dark elf to position herself behind Lowbrow; her right dagger took on a icy blue aura before she spun the weapon around in her hand to point downward and plunged it into Lowbrow's back, right through his armor.
Lowbrow yelled out after being the victim of the backstab, and he stumbled forward as the paralysis wore off. The dark elf scraped her blades together and dashed at him again-
!!!!
Lowbrow pointed his left hand in her direction and opened it up to show his palm and the quick flash of Blinding Light held within. The dark elf recoiled as if physically struck in the head, covering her eyes as she quickly backed away and began searching blindly for something on her belt.
That worked out as Lowbrow had hoped; his hands glew yellow as he began casting his healing spell while the dark elf was distracted.

Meanwhile, the sharp whistle caught the attention of both Orrim and the Addarak. While Orrim was rather perplexed, the Addarak actually took the sight of the apple and seemed oddly excited about it. So excited, in fact, that it discontinued its mana-draining attack and started to shamble towards Teras with its mouth opened wide.
Not letting her utter bewilderment of why an Addarak would have such a reaction because of an apple get in the way, Orrim ran after the beast with her sword out and ready to strike.
A holy, yellow light outlined Orrim's huge claymore just before she took a sweeping swing at the Addarak's thick back right leg, her weapon slicing right through the bulk of it. The beast let out an unearthly howl of pain as it stumbled and fell onto its now lopsided side, still trying to ferociously bite at the apple despite the distance between it and Teras.

[Anonymous]

HA! Grinning, Teras kept a tight hold on his small dagger in one hand and the apple in the other, making sure the Addarak had good sight of it to hopefully keept it distracted. He turned towards the blinded dark elf, noted Lowbrow needing a moment to tend to himself and had another idea. This one, he figured, just might get himself killed. But he couldn't leave all the work to the paladins, could he?

Darting towards and around to the backside of the elf, he silently prayed that she stayed distracted for just a few seconds longer. He lifted his weapons (as the apple was definitely considered one in this case, he thought) and drove the dagger through the apple and, grimacing, into the elf's back, pinning the fruit there - in that one little spot that tended to be hard to reach. Especially when you had an itch. Unfortunately, this wasn't an itch, but Teras hoped having a knife in the back was painful and distracting enough that Lowbrow could finish healing himself before the elf was ready to have another go at him.

And this way, if the Addarak got any closer to them... happy little apple-flavoured dark-elf snacky-treat!

[Anonymous]

The dark elf finally found what she sought on her belt; opening up the pouch, she quickly took out a pair of circular, black goggles and slipped them on-
And cried out as her back was pierced by the knife with the impaled apple. She staggered forward some, then whirled around to see her assailant-
"Hey!" Lowbrow yelled, drawing the dark elf's attention back to the paladin as the last little sparkles of light faded from around his body and his wounds were healed. Additionally, Shafer recovered from his stun and had joined Lowbrow's side, his maul having materialized in his hands in a flash of golden light.
The Addarak barked again as it squirmed across the street using only its two front legs, crawling slowly but surely straight for the apple stuck on the knife that was lodged into the dark elf's back.
The advantage was obviously gone, so the dark elf did what she knew to do at this point: Wincing from her stab wound, she grabbed a baseball-sized pouch from her belt and tossed it down to the ground in front of herself. The pouch exploded into a pillar of smoke and the dark elf ran into it; as the smoke dissipated and disappeared, it was clear that the dark elf had vanished.
And the demon, who only really saw the fruit disappear, snarled in frustration-
*TVVVOOOOOFFF!!!!*
Before it caught another Exorcism spell to its head by Orrim; without any sort of cry of pain, the Addarak simply collapsed fully again onto its side. The beast twitched for a few moments, then its entire body crumbled into ash that slowly dissipated into nothingness.
"Is everyone alright?" Orrim asked once the Addarak's ashes were completely gone. "Lowbrow?"
"Got hit with a backstab, but I'm fine," replied Lowbrow as he put his weapon away on his back.
"Shafer?" she inquired next.
Rubbing his stomach, he answered, "I keep forgetting how hard they can punch... ow... I'm good, though."
Orrim cast her glance on Teras then, asking with a slight smile, "And how about you? Are you alright?"

[Anonymous]

The ruffled-looking human made an attempt at smoothing down some of his long, mused hair. Now that the danger had seemingly passed and the adrenaline was slowly but surely wearing off, he could take a short 'what the HELL!?' moment over what had just happened. His eyes flicked around, located the empty bag nearby and he sighed. That stupid elf had his last apple, and he hadn't even had the satisfaction of seeing the Addarak eat said elf. Damn.

Teras turned at the inquiry, and took a second to reflect. No injuries? Nope, good. He was just fine. "I'm alright," he told her, "not hurt or nothin'." And then, because nobody had asked her, "Are you okay?"