The rest of the day is spent packing things, preparing ourselves, and fully mapping out the route we’re going to take. It does feel a little antithetical to the whole ‘explore the world’ aspect to be following a map, but if we don’t, we’ll most likely get lost.
So, with everything prepared, we head out. Grandma is wide enough for us both to ride, so we do just that, Rice taking the reins and me sitting in the back, now able to actually enjoy the view.
Despite being called a sprint-drake, Grandma is far from hurried, but rather takes the whole thing slowly and securely. It’s pretty comfortable, even if Rice’s saddle is only designed for one.
As we ride, aside from watching the clouds drift by and the sky shifting, I also keep an eye on myself.
See, my skin is pale now. Really pale. It’s basically white, and I’m colder than Grandma, who’s literally a cold-blooded lizard. This isn’t even to mention the fact that since my blood is no longer being pumped anywhere, it’s all started to pool in my arms and legs, giving them a strangle, dark-purple color. So this is what it would look like if a corpse started walking around, huh?
At one point, for fun, I try poking Rice in the back of the neck, making her yelp from how cold I am. Hehe. I really am a menace, huh?
Much as I did with Fiir-ette, we stop every four hours or so to eat. Curiously enough, Rice never seems to buy any food from the store. When I ask her about it, she explains that she doesn’t have enough points to buy things. Apparently, she even had a period of time where her hasty reaction to the appearance of goblins caused her points to go into the negative, making her lose her entire inventory.
“Ever since, I haven’t trusted my inventory. I’m starting to use it more since Hunter promised He wouldn’t let it get sold again, but I’m still suspicious.”
She’s… Literally me, for real.
Most of the food we eat has either been hunted or foraged by Rice, bought from physical stores, or given as a gift. It was honestly pretty impressive, and I would have enjoyed it a whole lot if it weren’t for her lackluster cooking abilities.
“Pickled egg from Grandma. Whole dried baby bunny. Intestine-balls. And with just a bit of grated blueroot on top… Ta-da!”
Luckily for me, I have the perfect excuse to get out of increasing my poison resistance. “Ah, no, sorry. I don’t need to eat, so I’d rather not use up our precious resources.”
“No? Alright, then. More for me!”
Curiously enough, despite the display she proceeded to give me, I did not gain any increase in the blindness resistance skill. Weird. Next time, I’ll have to fully absorb the concept that I am blind and always have been. That should work.
On the second day, she introduces me to her banjo, ‘Finland.’ Or ‘Finnie’ for short.
She’s upsettingly good at it. All my life, I’ve been exposed to jokes making fun of the humble banjo, comparing it to bagpipes and accordions, telling me that its foul twang cannot be forgotten once heard. But they were all wrong. I will always remember her playing, but not for the reason they made me believe. It was so soulful it made me unwilling to use my flute, since it would only besmirch her performance. Had she not beckoned me to join her, a siren calling upon the stranded sailor, I would have kept my tongue. But it was not to be.
She plucked at the strings to create a harmony of epic proportions.
I tooted my flute.
And the nights were so much more pleasant.
All and all, it took us twelve days and eleven nights to reach the town wherein the nearest church of children was located. According to my calculations, it was late August, and the weather seemed to have caught on, as a light drizzle and a fairly thick fog heralded our arrival. Because of this, Rice had opted to wear an insulating poncho along her usual gear, and Grandma was wearing some additional gear to keep warm as well. Me? Shirt and pants. Damp shirt and pants, but shirt and pants nonetheless.
Blanketed in this fog and the light drizzle, it was hard to make out the town at all. Although we called it a town, really, I would more-so describe it as a large village. Even in the darkness of the early night, I could easily tell that it had no more than fifty or so buildings, including the church in the middle of the town. As we trotted through it, we passed a lamp-carrier man, who thankfully doesn’t startle too badly at our arrival.
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The single church in the middle of the town, however, is not for the goddess of children, but rather the god of harvest.
“Wait, so, where is it, then?” Helpful as always, Rice passes me the map. If it hadn’t been for my night vision, I wouldn’t have been able to read a single part of it in this darkness. These goblins should really invest in some fixed street lanterns or something. Maybe I should have asked that lantern carrier from before to stick around? Anyhow, let’s see here… The village is here, and we just passed this building, which means that the church of children should be… Over here? But that’s outside the village. Why would they put the church so far away from the town’s borders? That’s weird. It’s basically in the middle of the forest!
“I’ve never actually been there myself,” Rice says from ahead of me, “but the forums were certain that it was here, so I doubt it’s misplaced.”
“If it’s not here, there’s another one around… twenty days away. Ugh. Yeah, alright, let’s hope it’s really here.” I check the map again, and then the road we’re on. “Right, so, continue on this road for a few more minutes, and then to the left, into this small forest-road…”
“Gotcha,” she replies.
It’s really quite dark. The fog isn’t exactly helping with visibility either. So far it’s pretty light, not thick to the point where we can’t see where we’re going, but enough to make the entrance into the forest feel spooky, if only a little bit. As a kid, the few times I went into a forest, anytime it got even slightly dark, I’d start seeing trolls. For a while there, I was convinced they were real. In the darkness, chunky, moss-haired rocks looked an awful lot like mountain trolls. The protruding root-lids left from fallen trees, especially the earthless kind, appeared like creeping forest trolls. And distant trees and bushes… Well, you get the point. Everything was mystical and spooky back then.
But now, I can’t see anything like that. Even with the whispering fog distorting the trees and rocks and things around us, I can’t see the trolls. It’s just a forest. Strangely melancholic, I turn my focus to the road ahead. It’s getting slimmer. Before, it was easily wide enough for a caravan to pass through, but now, it’s getting hard for even Grandma to trek through it. Not to mention the ever-thickening fog, obscuring our view, making the dark forest even less visible. If the path were to branch in any direction, it would be impossible to know which way to go. Luckily for us, the map is pretty clear. If we keep following this road, we should arrive soon. Hopefully.
“It’d suck if they don’t let us spend the night there,” I mutter, trying to read the map even in the thick fog. The rain is light enough to where I don’t need to bother trying to escape it, but Grandma and Rice both need proper places to sleep. If the church doesn’t accept us, and the village refuses us…
“We can always sleep in the forest,” Rice says. “Plenty of caverns to be found, though they might be a bit inhabited.”
I consider her words for a moment. “Easy fix.”
She nods solemnly, and we continue riding.
After about half an hour more, close to midnight, we finally spot it. Abruptly, the road opens up into an overgrown courtyard, filled with half-grown and wild bushes covering up what might otherwise have been a solid courtyard. And as for the church itself…
Can this even be called a church? It looks more like a haunted mansion! A few of the windows have been broken and boarded up with mismatched planks of wood, and the house in general is just as overgrown as the courtyard. Creeping vines have covered almost the entire lower half, snaking through formerly red-brown bricks and emerging out at the top to spread out their leaves fully. The tiles on the roof are cracked, allowing rainwater to drip in; the admittedly well-made statue out front is both overgrown and missing an arm and an ear, and the door is kept closed with a single brick—one of many lying here and there.
If it weren’t for the scent of people inside and the few, tawny lights in the otherwise dark windows, I would’ve assumed we’d accidentally stumbled onto some abandoned lord’s mansion. Honestly, I’m not sure if I want to sleep here. After a second’s deliberation, I pull up my map again and check. Ah, nope, the closest human-friendly inn is several days away. Bummer. This is, unfortunately, our best and only choice.
“Guess this is it,” I say, hopping down from Grandma’s back, shaking the water from my hair. “But, man… Are you sure this is the place?”
“I think so,” Rice says, following suit. “I haven’t been here myself, but I’ve seen one or two other churches of children, and this one is honestly not in terrible shape, all things considered.”
Right. That’s a bit worrying. “Is there even a stable?”
“Not sure. I guess we’ll have to ask whoever answers the door,” she says, heading towards the mansion. Absently nodding, I follow suit. Still, considering that this is supposed to be a church, it feels weird to see it so dilapidated… And if my nose isn’t betraying me, I even think it’s mostly filled with children. Which is… somehow both predictable and odd. Why keep children here? For what reason? Confusing.
We step up to the door, the doorway effectively bringing us out of the rain. It looks ornate enough to have been a grand sight a few dozen years ago. Now, though, it’s cracked and faded, and it seems to be slightly too small for its frame. Poor thing.
Rice knocks on the door, thankfully not harming it in the process, and as per our usual script, I step in front to be able to talk to whoever’s there. Although Rice has a more inviting face and is less likely to be mistaken for a scarecrow, I’m the one with the can-talk-to-anyone skill, so I have to be the face, too. It usually works out, though, so we don’t hesitate to take the standard formation.
We wait. After a couple of seconds, Rice perks an eyebrow at me. I take a sniff. Yep, someone’s coming. Not especially hurried, but I can smell a candle in their hand, so their slowness is excused. To keep Rice on the same page, I nod at her. She straightens her back in turn, and I try to do something similar. Hm. Strangely enough, it feels easier to straighten my back out than it used to be… I wonder why that might—
The door begins to slide outwards, the brick on the ground scraping along, forcing Rice and I to take a step back. In the darkness of the interior, a bored face peeks out, lit from below by a wavering candle. “For the last time, stop pulling pranks in the middle of the night, you’re not allowed to—” Her eyes fall on me.
I blink at her. “A fellow human?” I blurt out, right at her. Because, well… It is a fellow human! How rare. Turning to Rice, I smile wide, all friendly. She smiles back at me, and we both turn back to the third human here, like two Jehovah's witnesses knocking on the door of another believer. “Boy, are we glad to meet a friend! I’m Kitty, and this is Rice. We’re here to do the mission of the goddess of children… Well, I am, Rice being here is more of a moral support thing, but… Yeah, you know. Anyway, we were hoping to spend the night here, if possible. Would that be alright?”
And now, to show I’m truly amicable, I smile. See? I’m nice!
And she… She… She isn’t moving. Not at all. Her eyes are wide, her mouth is agape, and her entire body is frozen completely stiff. That’s odd. What is she…?
Oh, now that I look down, I can actually spot a goblin at her side—a tiny one, holding her hand, dressed in pajamas. It’s staring at me, too, but at least its lip is trembling, so I know that it’s scared.
“Hey, there,” I say, hunching down a little. “There’s no need to be afraid. I may look a little scary, but really, I’m—”
There’s the hiss of a blade being drawn from its sheath, something at my side abruptly moves, the candle drops to the floor and goes out, Rice yells, “Kitty!” and then there’s a flash, a swish! and my vision drops a meter or so onto the floor.