The Last Paladin: Ep1: Sacrificial Virgins and Hungry Pigs
Act 1: Under the Gallows
Miriam was fifteen years old the last time she let the pigs into the kill yard. She opened the gate from outside the fence. The hungry pigs scrambled towards the pile of bodies below the gallows for their meal. The pigs were fed only once a day. And the amount they received varied based on how many people the secret police had executed. So the pigs were often ravenous. Opening the gate from inside the kill yard would been dangerous. It would have put Miriam at risk of being mistaken for part of the main course.
She watched as the pigs tore at the bodies and stripped flesh from bone. She didn’t like her job. But she had little choice in the matter. The pigs scared her. Not pigs in general, she liked most livestock animals. But these pigs, raised on human flesh and made to fight each other for that food; these pigs terrified her.
Miriam looked up into the distance. Storm clouds coiled around the Sundered Tower. Chunks of the tower floated about the sky, drifting on the winds. Grandmaster Melchior had captured the Sundered Tower. And since then the storms there had not stopped. Miriam had been an infant when the Grandmaster had conquered the Sundered Tower. It was then that he had taken command of the land. Miriam’s mother had said that this was when people had been forced to continue fighting without hope. Miriam had laid her mother to rest three years ago. But Miriam hadn’t forgotten her mother’s words, and Miriam had not stopped fighting.
Miriam herself could only fight back in small ways. Sometimes she fought only by refusing to give up in the depths of her heart. But still, she refused to stop fighting. Still, Miriam often had to concede that most of her life she’d fought only in her mind. She did not buy the propaganda of Lord Gaspar and his Obsidian Knights. She did not believe the preaching of the Diabolist Priests. Lord Melchior sent the priests. They explained that the Shadow Across the Sun was there to protect the people and keep them safe. Miriam ignored their preaching.
But every day, she woke and tended to the livestock at her family farm. And then she made the trek out to the kill yard. And there she tended to the pigs of the kill yard and the corpses that accumulated under the gallows. She made a point not to look at the faces. She did not want to recognize anyone she found under the gallows. She would wait until the pigs were done. She waited until the remains were nothing but bones and gristle. Only then would she risk looking at the bodies.
When a friend or a family member disappeared, Miriam didn’t ask. Nobody asked when somebody disappeared. Miriam didn’t know anyone who attended the executions. Lord Gaspar expected people to attend the executions. Lord Gaspar intended them as a show of his control over the populace. But sometimes people protested through their apathy. And Miriam would not give Lord Gaspar the pleasure of her obedience. She would not suffer through the execution of somebody she loved.
Perhaps she was a coward. Perhaps she was fooling herself. But it was how she kept going each day. When even waking up and going on seemed like a war itself, sometimes ignorance was a battle strategy.
She was watching the pigs finish their meal. She noticed the four diabolist priests. They stood near the gates to the execution grounds. Behind the priests stood a collection of ten Knights of the Obsidian Guard. They loomed, all black armor with red cloaks and hoods. Miriam shuddered. The Diabolist Priests had a group of girls chained together in a long line, seven girls in all.
Miriam looked up at the pale sun, not bothering to shade her eyes. The sun peaked through the shadow that spread across the blood orange sky. Miriam did the math in her head. Diabolist priests. Obsidian knights. Girls in chains. And the Shadow across the Sun nearly blotting the light entirely.
And Miriam was fifteen years old and still a virgin.
Miriam turned and bolted at a full run, hiking up her skirt as she careened across the kill yard. She heard somebody yell a command for her to stop. She ignored the command. Did they think she would let them sacrifice her to the Shadow willingly? Did they expect her to put the chains on herself?
She kept running.
Somebody behind her began to chant in the Dark Speech. Her skin crawled at the sound like maggots were trying to escape from inside her. And then crimson hands emerged from the ground. The hand reached out with snake-like arms and coiled around her. The clawed hands snagged her and pulled her to the ground. She crashed down, and felt something burst in her nose and her lip, and blood sprayed across her face. And she lay, glowing red limbs wrapped around her, as the knights marched towards her.
The obsidian knights dragged her to her feet. They locked her into the chains beside a pretty girl with a wild mane of red hair and a visible black eye.
“Miriam Kell,” one of the priests said, reading from a scroll. "You have been chosen for sacrifice for the good of the empire. Your death shall feed our master and bring the empire continued life.”
The priest kept talking, but Miriam didn’t listen. She should have let Tyson into her skirt last year. Then she wouldn’t be eligible for the sacrifice. But that would only work if people knew he’d bedded her. And she hadn’t wanted to have to admit that. Besides, not being a virgin was dangerous too. Not being a virgin put a target on one’s head. The state would kill a man who stole a virgin meant for sacrifice. But if you weren’t a virgin? The state didn’t care what happened to you, and neither did most of the men in the village. Better to stay a virgin until you were eighteen and then get married. Hope you were lucky and never got chosen.
Well, that had been the plan. But Miriam had been unlucky and this was it. Fifteen years and now she would die.
Miriam considered her options. The priests and the knights marched the girls down the hill from the kill yard and through the town square. People saw the procession coming and turned away. Nobody looked. Nobody met the eyes of the girls as they walked.
They were going to die. And they were going to die horribly. And nobody wanted to face the reality of the situation. Things had been bad before Miriam had been born. Monsters had hunted in the night and the unnatural darkness caused by the Shadow. The Shadow had sent half demons known as Cambions to infect mortals and turn them into monsters. The full demons tempted and seduced humans. They bred new cambions and granted the willing demonic power for a price.
But for hundreds of years the Paladins, empowered by the archangels, had held back the tide. Paladins like Lord Melchior and Lord Gaspar. And then they had fallen and the world had fallen with them.
Miriam didn’t want to die. But what chance did she have to survive? She was a pig farmer and nothing more. She was fifteen years old with no magic powers or unholy pacts or angelic blessings. She had tried to run. But that had worked about as well as she’d expected.
“So. What are you in for?” the redhead next to her asked.
Miriam laughed, “For having standards in my men.”
“Nice.” The redhead grinned. “I’m Eve. What’s your name?”
“I’m Miriam. Nice to meet you.”
“No talking!” A knight snarled.
“Or what? You’ll kill us?” Eve laughed. “You don’t have any good threats given what you’ve planned for us.”
The knight smacked Eve with an armored fist. The blow knocked her, Miriam, and two other girls to the ground. Miriam checked Eve, the blow had left the other girl unconscious.
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