ALL NOVEL Chapter 1: Escape
At first, the Paladin was baffled. He couldn’t understand why he’d been taken back here, to the Head Mage’s laboratory. He hadn’t been back there in 5 years, not since they confirmed that they’d finally finished making him into a perfect Paladin. His eyes scanned over the room, and he tried to sit up to see a bit better, but he found that he was strapped down, and for some reason his strength wasn’t responding to him as it should.
“Stop that! You’ll ruin the experiment if you keep that up!”
The Paladin immediately became perfectly still, just as he’d been conditioned to be after years of experimentation and testing. However, talking should have still been permitted since he was often asked various questions during the testing period, so the Paladin opened his mouth and asked what had been bothering him.
“...Why am I here? What happened to the war? Has the monster breached the city walls yet, or did he leave after defeating us?”
The Head Mage squinted his eyes and shot a look at the mage that was monitoring the IV’s before beginning to inspecting the Paladin, taking his pulse and checking the reaction of his eyes.
“...Perhaps the last dose was incorrect. Subject 168 seems to be experiencing dreamlike delusions and rambling nonsense.”
For a moment the Head Mage stood up and wrote in his experiment log, but soon enough he nodded to a nearby waiting mage.
“His condition shouldn’t be severe enough to get in the way of testing. Proceed.”
“Yes, Head Mage.”
The mage that had been waiting near the door came forward, wheeling a small tray of implements with him. He pulled out a scalpel and made several deep cuts on the Paladin’s left arm, going deeper and deeper with each cut until it felt like he finally reached bone. Then, with that arm done, he put away the scalpel and pulled out a dull looking sword, making small hacks of varying intensity at the Paladin’s right arm with it.
The Paladin only ever let small grunts escape his mouth, closing his eyes and enduring the horrid pain just like he’d always done for these 11 awful years that the Mage’s had spent preparing him. He knew full well that his body had already been treated with multiple agents both inside and out to dampen his pain, but even if 60% of the pain was reduced, that didn’t mean that what he felt was still bearable. There were many times in the past where he’d thought that if he’d been feeling 100% of the pain from the tests, that he would have surely died from it.
Through the pain, he did consider all of it to be quite odd, though; They’d only performed these exact kinds of extreme experiments on him at the beginning of the last year before they proclaimed him a successful Paladin. Their purpose had been to assess the strength of his self-healing abilities and see what needed further tweaking. Being a finished product like he was, they wouldn’t need to keep wasting their time doing such harsh tests on him. Still, he was at least glad that they weren’t performing the final tests on him, where they’d practically acted out the role of mad scientists, stitching parts of him and other people together, and doing all kinds of things with his blood, just to see if they could somehow produce more of him.
However, after leaving him alone for half an hour and studying his progress, the Head Mage came back and uttered a phrase that the Paladin would never have forgotten.
“Hmmm… If it’s like this, then he’ll soon be ready for the final tests. Ready the saws.”
The Paladin opened his eyes wide, and could see the hateful bonesaw glinting from the top of the testing mage’s implement tray. An irrepressible sense of deja vu washed over him, and for a moment he couldn’t stop himself from trembling.
“W… Why are you doing this to me again?! I thought I was finished! I thought you said I was all done!”
The Head Mage’s face scrunched, and for a moment he looked at the Paladin like he was some kind of bug, but then he turned back to write in his log once more.
“Subject 168 is still babbling nonsense, even after blood loss and recovery. It could be that some of the chemicals are starting to interfere with each other. We’ll have to run a thorough analysis on him later. Give him only a small dosage for now, and we’ll see how that affects him in an hour.”
The mage in charge of the IV’s nodded dutifully and got to work, while the Head Mage withdrew from the room, leading the mage with the testing implements out with him. The Paladin could hear the IV mage grumbling to himself as he worked, swearing that he’d gotten the dosages right before, and for the first time, the Paladin paid attention to the mage, and was astounded; He clearly remembered this mage dying before the experiments were finished, and him being replaced. The Paladin had even been present during the chemical accident where it happened, so he knew of it very well.
“You… You’re not dead? You were alright after the explosion…?”
The mage turned to look at him doubtfully for a moment, and then turned his attention very seriously back to the IV.
“...Maybe the Head Mage was right? Let's just do another check again, to be safe.”
The confused Paladin opened his mouth to try and say something again, but he quickly closed it and gave up on the idea. It was obvious that no one was taking what he was saying seriously, and in the first place he knew that they didn’t really care about anything he ever said outside of testing. And so, instead of attempting to ask anymore, he simply decided to take a moment to try and figure things out from the clues he already had. And from what he could piece together, the only answer was that he’d returned to the past.
Part of him wanted to believe that everything that he’d experienced was just a drug induced dream, but the pain and betrayal in his memories were too vivid for him to easily believe them to be fake. Besides, even if he hadn’t somehow returned to the past and everything had been a dream, or he’d actually lived through the confrontation with the monster and had been taken back to the mages for testing, it still didn’t change the fact that he no longer wanted to be there. Everything he’d experienced seemed too realistic, and he’d lost all sense of motivation and loyalty that had once driven him to become the Paladin. Now, all that he wanted was to be free and try his hand at living life, just as he’d decided on before.
However, it was impossible to believe that the mages would let him, the work they’d put so much time into, leave so easily.
If he wanted to leave, he was going to have to make it happen himself.
Taking advantage of the mage’s attention on the IV, the Paladin strained against his restraints and made short work of them. The mage heard the snapping noise of the thick leather bands and quickly turned to see what had happened, but before he could even fully turn, the Paladin had already punched him in the throat, sending him flying into the wall, and leaving behind a bloody streak as he sank.
As the marks that the restraints left on him swiftly faded away, the Paladin rummaged through the chemicals on the table next to the IV, finding the acid that they’d sometimes used to test on him after giving him stronger doses. He currently wouldn’t be able to use his full strength, and if he wanted to make it out of this jail-like testing room, then he would need to weaken the bars on the window first. He dribbled its contents onto the steel beams that barred the window and waited, and when the bars seemed brittle enough, he snapped and removed them, giving himself enough space to climb out from the window.
The room he’d been kept in was on the fourth floor, but the Paladin didn’t bat an eye at jumping from it; Even weakened as he was, the damage he’d sustain from this height would be negligible. The test he’d just gone through had proven that his healing powers were still quite strong, even if they weren’t at the level that they were when he was deemed a finished product. A few torn muscles were nothing to be afraid of for him.
The Paladin paid no mind as he landed in the thorny bushes below and snuck his way towards the woods, ignoring the way that they constantly cut and pricked at him. It wasn’t just his skin however; His simple testing clothes were also quite torn, and he looked rather questionable. It was his luck that he’d been kept in the mage tower located the furthest towards the edge of the capital in order to keep their experiments a secret, or he was liable to be stopped by the town guard for how close his cut up clothes bordered on indecency. Or perhaps it’s possible they would have just directly kicked him out of the city, thinking that he was some sort of dirty beggar or vagrant.
No, it was better that he hadn’t needed to take such a gamble in the first place.
His current plans were already enough of a gamble without throwing yet another variable into the mix.
After becoming the perfect Paladin, he’d been given a 3 year crash course in leadership and military affairs to prepare him to become the nation’s general. They’d started him out easy, fearing that his brain might not have been wholly intact after all of the years of experimentation, cramped up in that small room in the tower, and had at first put him in charge of the city’s guard. He’d learned everything there was to know about the guard, all while being forced to chug memory enhancing drugs, and in the end he had managed to prove his competency well enough for them to move him on to learning about the army.
Of course, this meant that the Paladin still clearly remembered the guard’s schedules and routes, and could easily pinpoint the best spot for him to escape from.
As he pulled himself up onto the edge of the city wall, the far off sight of the mountains greeted him with wide open arms. His body froze and his eyes lingered on the sight, it was like his peaceful future was beckoning to him, like a beacon of hope. It was so beautiful that it made him want to cry. He was so distracted by its beauty that he didn’t immediately notice the shouting of the nearby guard who’d stumbled upon him as he stayed there, hanging against the edge.
It wasn’t until the bullet entered his shoulder that he flung himself up and ran like a madman, remembering the danger that he was still currently in.