"I am going to try." The boss of the bandits told Isaac and Lenna right as the first bit of predawn light began to lighten the sky and dim the stars.

"'Do or do not, there is no try.'" Isaac replied and then was immediately assaulted by a headache.

"What you are going to attempt is something that requires absolute conviction and nothing else." Lenna explained as she rose to her feet. "Steel yourself. But before we get any further, what is your name?"

"Dean Jamison." The boss of the bandits finally introduced himself.

"Do you have a symbol of your god?" Lenna followed up.

Dean reached into his shirt and pulled out an amulet with a clenched fist on it. The amulet was bronze and probably one of hundreds of thousands of others. Almost every soldier on the plains wore one and they slaughtered each other by the thousands. Wheat was watered with blood on the plains. "Here."

Lenna nodded. "Kneel." She instructed him and pointed towards an open space in the campsite.

Dean walked over and knelt down as he was told. Lenna walked a little behind him and stopped around half a dozen feet away. "Hold that amulet and pray." She instructed him. "Pray to your god and ask that he bear witness to your oath. An oath to redeem yourself of the sins that you have committed. Explain how. Things like standing up for the weak, bullied, and oppressed. Tell him everything. And then, once you feel the first rays of sunlight on your skin, speak aloud that you vow, with your god as your witness, to redeem yourself and how once again. When you speak how you are going to fulfill your vow aloud, the words you say do not need to be the exact same as the ones that you offer to your god in prayer, just have the same meaning to you. Gods can feel your intent in your prayers."

Dean was nodding along as he listened to Lenna's instruction. "Is that it?" He wondered.

"Your god will see your soul and judge whether or not you possess the conviction to follow through on the oath." Lenna replied. "If you do, then you will have become a paladin with all of the honor and responsibility that entails."

Dean didn't need to be told that if he did not then his god would smite him. It took around the same amount of power for a god to facilitate the forging of an oath as it took for one to smite him into the next world. His prayers would open his soul up to the god and they would use his soul as conduit for his own smiting if he failed. It was risky, but if he succeeded, if he had the resolve and conviction to never repeat his previous mistakes, he would be a new man. He would become a man fighting in righteousness against the sins of a man who died under the dawn rays of the sun and the watchful gazes of the Lord of Darkness and his Lady of Hellfire.

Isaac, Lenna, Shamesh, Karson, and Tarel all watched as Dean stayed knelt in the damp dew covered ground for nearly an hour. As far as the onlookers could tell, he had been praying nonstop. Finally, the first light of the sun cut through the trees and cast his face in yellows and golds. Dean shifted slightly and took a deep steadying breath as he tried to steel his resolve and solidify his conviction.

"I Vow," His words echoed with the divine presence who had a direct connection into his very soul. "with Raegen as my Witness," He took another steadying breath. "to Redeem myself by Protecting the weak and innocent, by Not Standing By when others Commit The Acts I Have Done, and by Going To War against those deemed unforgivable."

The clearing seemed to be held in place in time and space as the god, Reagan the god of War, judged one of his followers who had gone astray. "Liar, you do not believe that you Committed That Act and would use that as a way to Not Protect, to Stand By, and to Avoid Going to War against those more powerful than yourself. You do not have it within yourself to give your life to fulfill your Oath, and thus, do not deserve to be given the chance to break it." Raegen's voice poured from Dean's lips as the bandit's eyes flew open in horror. Only a few words were spoken aloud but the rest of what the god had meant to convey was carried along with them into the minds of all of those present by ripples in the local mana. Those few words were enough though that even if the rest of the god's intent hadn't been carried along with them, any listening would have known exactly what the god thought of Dean. Reagan's voice sounded like Dean's but with so much more packed into it that it was clearly from a being of a higher plain of existence.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The world became hazy around Dean and he looked at Isaac and Lenna with eyes wide in horror. One slip of his thoughts, one tiny loophole that he had noticed and avoided fixing had cost him his life and probably his very soul. There was a chance that Halya would try to intercept his soul to bring it into her warm embrace but if it was Raegen killing him then she might not want to risk his ire for someone as undeserving as Dean. Thunder rolled and red lightning gathered without a cloud in the sky to hold or create it. "No, no, please, I'll-" Dean didn't get a chance to finish before crimson lightning struck down with the full force of the natural phenomenon enhanced by divine wrath.

When the lightning bolt hit Dean, it did not travel through him and into the ground, instead its entire energy was absorbed and converted directly into heat inside of Dean's body. He exploded. All of the liquids in Dean's body were instantly vaporized and much of the solids were liquified, with some even sublimized, as they were blasted out in all directions. Shamesh raised a Reality Wall seven feet high and fifteen feet wide just in time to block most of the bits and pieces of Dean that were sent their way. Dean's bent breastplate was sent hurtling towards the tree that he himself had been sent into and then lodged itself into the fallen tree's side.

Isaac raised a barrier of solid shadows as bits of Dean came raining down from the sky. "Well, that was something I will never forget." Isaac commented. "He was so close to being useful."

Lenna nodded sagely. "If he was too weak to pass the conviction test, then he was too weak to be of use anyway." She then turned to look at the other two bandits. "We are going to question you both again, under a truth spell." She and Isaac needed to make sure that Karson and Tarel were not the ones that Dean had mentioned when he spoke of times that he had ignored the heinous deeds of his colleagues. "It's time to go."

Isaac was still in shock that a god had actually smited someone in front of him. He had known that it was something that they could technically do but gods didn't smite people anymore. With the Veil in place, smiting required too much power to be worth it. The act of wasting his time must've really pissed Raegen off otherwise he could have just told Isaac to kill Dean. Isaac probably would have said something snarky but still done it. Now though, he was starting to second guess being snarky with gods. He wasn't that worried about a gods followers, because a god wasn't likely to send their followers to their deaths over Isaac being a snarky bastard, but if a god was actually willing to smite him with wrathful lightning, he might have to be a bit more careful with how he talked to them. At least now he knew to never risk pissing off Raegen.

Isaac shook himself free of his thoughts and looked over at Karson and Tarel who had both turned so pale they looked like they were about to leave their bodies behind and become restless spirits. "Grab your packs and the Bottomless Box with coins, food, and water in it." He then turned to Shamesh. "This was supposed to be a two or three day trip. It's already been two. Take those two and use the Levitate and Flight means of transport to get them to Sapphirestone. Lenna and I are going to head back ahead of you."

"You want me to go alone?" Shamesh asked with concern. He was a lot more comfortable taking a caravan though the Innerworld than he was taking two bandits through open space on the Outerworld.

"Cloak." Isaac spoke and shadows reached up to surround Shamesh and in a blink he was gone from everyone but Isaac's perception. "Have Phantom meet you and them outside of the city after dark. You may wait in the nearest tree line if you or he decides that it is the best course of action. Make haste but do not risk exposure for it. If either of those two cause a problem, don't hesitate to discard them. Give Phantom the same message from me. Bring whatever loot back you reasonably can from here on your way back."

"How will you get back?" Shamesh wondered.

"We'll run." Isaac replied. "Safeharbor needs us right now and we can't afford to waste a week or two dealing with those idiots."

Shamesh bowed in acknowledgement of his new directive. "I will follow your orders to the letter." He told Isaac. "And then hurry back."

Isaac nodded. "Good." He then turned to Lenna. "That is one thing off of my list. The rest probably have to be put on hold until after the region stabilizes."

Lenna nodded in agreement to both his statement and plan. She was starting to get worried about Safeharbor and didn't want to let Sera, Izen, and Edward down, especially now that she was in fighting shape. She still had some recovery to do but she was strong enough to hold her own and by the end of the month she would be back to full strength. "Let's make it back to Safeharbor by nightfall so we can head out with a caravan right away in the morning." Lenna offered. "The sooner Ben's End can get supplies unmolested, the better." And with that, Shamesh took Phantom's prospective new lackeys and a care package to Sapphirestone while Isaac and Lenna returned to Safeharbor.

Isaac's decision to handle the bandits before helping protect caravans between Safeharbor and Ben's End was not entirely a selfish one. Yes, he did want to check something off of his list, but the bandits were risking the caravans that the trio were planning to escort to and from Ben's End. If the caravan never even got to Safeharbor, then they would be stuck sitting on their hands. The bandits also risked the lower level adventurers who liked to take escort quests where a few wolves or snakes were expected to be the most of their worries. Those were the reasons Isaac used to justify his chosen course of action but he still hadn't lost sight of Ben's End and Outpost Charles. If he ended up in Outpost Charles, he and Lenna were going to end up dragging half of the residents back with them, specifically Jennie Windwalker and her son Gregory.

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