The group was escorted out of the city of Glorious Letazix. The guards escorted them, and although they expressed that the group was welcome in the city, they suggested that the group sought out the blessing of the other churches, before visiting here again. In fact, it would be great if they stayed away from civilization all together, according to the guards, because a god on a mission wouldn't mind vaporizing innocent bystanders, as they believed that their means justified relentless slaughter.
It was a paradoxical thing to worship a god, but the guards were trying their best to read between the lines. They knew how to keep the peace, as that was their job, after all. Skendus and the group briefly thanked the guards for the assistance, and left.
They walked out of the city, and kept moving for about five kilometers, until they found that patch of tall grass. This was where the dragons were hiding, and Georgie was their means of quick transportation, so they didn't mind walking those few kilometers to get here.
“Georgie, baby boy, are you still here?” Arvena called out, as she slid between the four foot tall grass patch. “It's me!”
They heard a couple of muffled grunts afterwards, and then, Georgie arose from the grass. He was a nine-foot tall dragon, head included, so it was really difficult to miss him once he stood up! The dragonflies were a lot smaller, but the group could hear them dashing around within the tall grass.
“Are you ready to fly?” Arvena asked, and for a brief moment, a wide smile stretched on her face as she reunited with the dragon, but then she got a whiff of something horrid, and her smile disappeared.
There were a bunch of ravaged carcasses on the ground close to him, and they barely had any flesh on them. It was clear that the dragons had a feast here, they were carnivorous after all, so she just hoped that the dragons wouldn't attack her next!
Also, she asked. “Please tell me those aren't goblins! We just made peace with them…”
“They’re not goblins, they're sheep, dead sheep anyways.” Skendus intervened, after he brisked through the brains of the dragons. “They killed six sheep, Georgie ate four.”
“We better fly out or here right now, then. We don't need any eye witnesses, or else the priest might take his ‘grand blessing’ back.” Arvena advised, and then they just hopped on Georgie’s back.
They were on the air seconds later, and started heading north-east. The church that identified itself under the symbol letter H, was in that direction, and it was only fifty kilometers away, so it wouldn't take long to reach it now that they had a dragon to do their bidding, it may take a couple of hours at most. If Georgie was full grown, they'd get there in under twenty minutes, but things like that didn’t matter right now, because the group wasn't in too much of a rush. They departed.
…
The group made it to the next city, and they had not been struck by lightning along the way. They were fine.
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However, now they had to deal with another race of goblins, and another city all together, and that simply wasn't the best thing in the world. They felt both anxious, and unwilling to deal with such matters, but yet they had to push themselves anyway, because no one really wanted to get hunted by gods throughout their entire life either, no.
They had to enter this city that was called Manape, and this made them nervous, because the city didn't seem as organized in comparison to the one they had left behind. This place looked like the aftermath of a war, and its structures were mostly made of wood too, so one couldn't count on these goblins to be civilized.
Manape seemed to have several main neighborhoods, but there were these big, empty gaps right between the city, that made the place look heavily unorganized, and its own people far apart from each other. Some goblins have had the infinite courage to build single houses, right in between these two-to-three hundred meter wide gaps of space, and this made the city look all the more ungoverned. The domain wasn't surrounded by a protective wall either, so it was obvious that these guys simply didn't care for anything luxurious.
Tim and the rest of the group saw everything from above, while they rode on the dragon's back. Now they may have flown over too close for comfort, but it wasn't like anyone down there could catch up with a dragon, so they scanned the city from high above, before they decided to land about three kilometers away from the place.
Manape was located near a tall mountain, which had a luscious, green bottom, and a rocky top. This wasn't unheard of when tall mountains were put in the equation, it was a beautiful scenery even, but the group decided to use the mountain to their utmost advantage rather than admire it.
They found a cave, and had the dragons hide in there. It didn't take much convincing, because a cave was a far better place to hide beasts in, when compared to any patch of grass. Georgie and the dragonflies hid in the cave, and then the group made their way down the mountainside afterwards.
While they made their way down, Arvena cautioned them. “Okay… so this is probably one of the worst places for a church to be in, because Manape is full of Armor-hide Goblins, so I need you guys to be careful. Keep your hands close to your weapons, because these hairy bastards will attack you if they have a chance to, no matter how small they seem. Sometimes I hate that Valporovus is so huge, I barely know how to deal with these bastards, I'm not as well-traveled as my old few uncles, so be careful.”
“Don't worry, it's gonna be easy to kill them if we have to, and I'm actually looking forward to it.” Timothy bluntly expressed, and furthermore he added. “Most of them probably haven't crossed past the God's Punishment Realm of mana, they couldn't have, because it looks like their religions don't let them progress much.”
“You’re right, but we're here for the church, so let us try extra hard to avoid trouble.” Skendus discouraged him, as they made their way down towards the city.
It wasn't that Skendus was cowardly, no, he was quite brave. However, he was also aware that the goblins down there were going to pay the group a lot of unwanted attention already, just because the group belonged to a different species. If a fight broke out, this unwanted attention could turn into a really unwanted bounty on their heads, and they couldn't have that!
The city appeared to host about three-thousand houses, after all, so there was plenty of space for things to go wrong. They had to be quiet, and behave, as it was in their best interest to do so.
“The gods have slithered their way into this universe, where their insane ideas are not welcome. They found loopholes, snuck their sons in, and they're obviously using these unsuspecting people, just to have a presence here, it's pathetic!” Skendus thought, and he was becoming quite a bit paranoid.
Perhaps rightfully so as well, because then he couldn't help worrying. “I don't want to know how much work they'd put in on someone they want to punish, for goodness sake. The gods might even use these ugly goblins to tear us apart today, I wouldn't rule that out! Let's just hope we convince this other bastarding priest to bless us as well, it's our best shot.”