Knights of the Platinum Dragon: A Dungeons and Dragons Story

Chapter 15: A Fellow Paladin

The world was a faded monochrome blur in front of Logan's eyes, his whole body burning as he was racked from head to toe with agony. Each breath felt like his chest was being smashed with a hammer and his throat impaled with a rusty knife all at once, yet he still struggled to climb to his feet.

However, even through his fading sight, he saw the cloud of poison gas around him clear as Ren cast a spell in the distance, and even as the wind sent him and Stalk tumbling across the ground, the pain he was in grew a bit lesser. They were also away from the chimera now...

... but Logan could see the others were still battling the beast up ahead. It was still alive, and he had to help them.

Gritting his teeth as he lay sprawled face-down, Logan fought to get his right arm to move. The searing pain that throbbed through him had lessened slightly after the poison was cleared away, and so with every drop of willpower that he had left, he forced himself to act.

Logan pulled his right arm back in towards his own body, fighting against the poison's lingering effects that scorched his flesh from the inside out. Dragging his arm closer and closer, he was able to tuck his hand under his chest, and through a fearsome grimace, he intoned the words:

"Mighty Bahamut, aid your humble servant and cleanse this toxin from my body so that I may fight ever onward in your name..."

As he said that, a second heat filled Logan's body, starting over his heart and then slowly spreading outwards. But this one wasn't a painful, searing heat – this was a tender warmth, its embrace gentler, and yet stronger, than that afflicted by the poison gas.

Logan felt it wash through every inch of his flesh, and everywhere it went it seemed to push the poison out, forcing it from his body into a space even he couldn't find, and from which it would never return. His vision cleared and the colours of the world returned to him; the green of the grasses and the red of the chimera's blood.

Strength also returned to Logan, and movements that had been agonizing now came with the ease that standing up and running always had. Without delay, he leapt to his feet, relishing that he felt like his old self again before running over to Stalk, who still lay spluttering on the ground, curling up into a ball as he clutched at his retching torso, his feathers withering before Logan's eyes until they were brittle as straw and grey as death itself.

Placing a hand over him, Logan intoned a similar prayer to his first, and as the golden glow of healing beamed from his palm, he watched as Stalk's movements slowly calm and heard his squawks of pain turns to moan of relief. His coat of feathers returned to their full and shiny black, and his orange eyes opened, with Logan noticing a gleam of fear in the kenku's eyes for what must have been no more than a nanosecond.

Fear of death, maybe? Of the poison ending him, or thinking for a moment was the chimera come to finish him?

But neither of those happened – instead, Logan grabbed Stalk and under the arm and pulled him to his feet. "You're alright, Stalk..." he stated factually, hoping to give the kenku courage after their harrowing experience.

Stalk's scaled feet soon found purchase on the ground, and he looked up at Logan before nodding. "Thanks again, paladin," he said before turning his gaze towards the battle with the chimera.

Logan did the same, feeling both relief that the rest of the party were still alive, and dread that the chimera was still standing. Despite its fur and scales being streaked with rivers of blood and its flesh rent open by blade, bolt and spell, the monster showed no signs of slowing its rampage. Even with its faces near-blind from bruises following Ren launching an entire log's worth of wood at it, the creature continued to fight on without pause.