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Jara, Benediction Knight

The air above the battlefield sizzles with visible energy, miniature lightning bolts firing and forking in a haze of pure electric power. The forces of the Demon Lord Ungoth stop mid evisceration, their groping claws covered in Elven gore, their mandibles oozing blue Elven blood.

Chaotic currents swarm larger and brighter in the air until, at last, they coalesce into a humanoid form, made of pure light, which falls to the ground in a shattering explosion. The shock wave of the impact spreads across the field for hundreds of meters, and where it touches evil, evil is destroyed utterly. The orcish forces of Ungoth vaporize into powder when the wave of light sweeps over them, and in its wake those elves which were injured are healed and their strength returns apace.

When the dust has settled the Elvish forces seek out the figure in the center of the holy conflagration. They stare in awe at an armored figure in the middle of a giant impact crater, a living meteor of light sent from the Gods to destroy evil once and for all.

Jara, Benediction Knight of the Third Order, stands up and slowly, with a pained expression, places his right fist on his lower back, stretching mightily.

“Fuck.”

The elves pause and look at each other. The highest ranking of their number approach Jara frightfully and speak in hushed, subservient tones.

“Thanks be to the Gods for sending their warrior to our aid. What is your name, fairest one?”

Jara wasn’t listening. His thumb and pointer finger held the bridge of his nose and rubbed ineffectually at an intense headache. He mumble the word “shit” to himself.

The elven commander is nonplussed. He points out toward the expansive field of battle, where Ungoth’s hordes are already beginning to amass at the edge of the impact zone, and where fell Ungoth himself can be seen on a high, far ridge, his multi-legged mass towering even from such a distance.

“My lord, you have come at our darkest hour. The elven race is on the brink of destruction and your aid…”

Jara cut him off. “Man, I have got a hangover like you wouldn’t believe and this is the fifth Goddamn time I’ve been summoned *this week*. So spare me the bullshit and point me at the mother fucker I need to kill, OK?”

The elven commander, flabbergasted by Jara’s crass demeanor, stands slack-jawed. He turns to the left and points up at Ungoth.

Jara gauges the distance, thinning his eyes and scrunching the skin on his forehead. “The fat dude on the ridge?”

The elf nods dumbly.

Jara stretches his neck with a crack, first left and then right, does a couple of squats and then unsheaths his sword. “K” he says with near complete disinterest, before launching into the air like a rocket, flying faster than sound toward Ungoth.

Embarrassingly, Jara miscalculated the trajectory just a bit and instead of landing in front of Ungoth, the warrior angel slams into a tree, uprooting its giant trunk and falling into a chaotic jumble of wood and leaves.

Ungoth watches, his fear subsiding, as Jara’s roll comes to an inelegant stop. The demon lord’s foul laughter reverberates through the air, the bass of it amplified through Ungoth’s dozen cavernous stomachs.

“Is this the weapon of the Gods?” Ungoth pronounces with dark confidence. Raising one of the longer of his many arms toward the heavens Ungoth screams defiantly. “Your warrior is a fool, Prime Ones! Ungoth shall rule for an age!”

On the ground beside Ungoth, Jara stirs, his head aching terribly, more from movement in general than from the impact, which would have vaporized a mortal being. He groans audibly.

Ungoth looks down at the interruption of his screed with abject disdain. He bellows another laugh and it echoes down over the battlefield like a foul tidal wave. “You have failed, Warrior of the Prime Ones,” Ungoth spits and then draws his most terrible weapon, the Blade Grvnovr, of which it is said no physical force, nor any living soul, can withstand even a grazing blow. “Die, now.”

Grvnovr swings down with the force of ten thousand charging bulls, it’s edge racing toward Jara’s neck, thirsting for blood.

Jara sighs annoyedly and raises his left hand up. The most putrid steel of Grvnovr, smithed on the Fetid Forge, suffused with the purest shadow of the ancient Dread Lord whose name cannot be written, father of Ungoth and all evil things, shattered in twain.

Ungoth is struck by the breaking of his soulbound weapon as if it were a blow unto himself, and his ear-splitting scream of agony rings out across the whole of the planet. The terrible sound of his wail sends all living things to their knees, hands clamped to their ears, in its sonic wake.

Jara cringes. “Oh fuck no” he says, and with one clean swipe of his Prime Blade, halves Ungoth at his immensely thick neck. The demon lord’s awful yell is cut short and the gargantuan head of Ungoth the Doom Bringer rolls down the ridge, crushing beneath it scores of orcs, and coming to a stop in the middle of Ungoth’s army.

The remaining orcs stare at it for a moment, then at Jara, and quickly begin to rout, the Elvish forces falling in behind them, cutting them down in droves.

“Ew.” Jara wipes Ungoth’s green slimed gore off of his sword carefully in the dirt. The elvish commander from before races up to Jara on the ridge, out of breath.

“My lord…” He managed through deep breaths, “It’s a miracle… You are the savior of the elvish race… however can we…”

Jara puts a hand up to silence the elf, who takes the hint mid-sentence and stands there awkwardly. “Don’t mention it,” Jara says, and when the elf begins to speak again, Jara reiterates, “No really, *don’t mention it*.”

Then Jara stands up and mutters the sacred words to himself as quickly as possible, like a bored child saying a prayer in church, hardly pronouncing each word.

“Andsothisworldiscleansedreturnmetomyrestohgreatprimeones.”

As the Prime One’s transportative beam of light appears over and around Jara, the elvish commander and several hundred elvish warriors raise their swords in admiration. “Praise be to the Prime Ones,” they yell.

Jara shows them all the middle finger of his raised left hand. “Yeah, whatever…”

A flash of light, brighter than a hundred suns but cool and without heat, illuminates the field of battle. As Jara disappears into the heavens, the elves look on with wonder.

Jara, Benediction Knight, was never forgotten and, over the centuries and millennia after Jara’s departure, Jara’s final holy gesture – the display of the middle finger of the left hand – became the most important religious symbol of Elven culture, one displayed only by the high priests, and only in celebration of the most important elvish ceremonies and high holy days.

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