Even though it took them about two hours to climb down from the mountainside, the team finally made it to the city. Manape left much to be desired, but it was their picked destination spot nonetheless, so they strode within the city with their eyes wide open, and their weapons swinging around on their belts.
No one attacked them, thankfully, but it took a while to find the church. This city was way under-organized, to the point where even its architectural layout was messy, and hard to figure out. Most of the structures here were made of wood, so it was difficult to tell houses, businesses, and religious sites apart from each other.
The church should've been easier to find, considering that places like that often looked expensive and holy, but that was not the case here. When they found the church, after asking several other goblins for directions, they discovered that this House of God was no different from the houses of Frank and Francina, or whatever the common names of these Armor-hide Goblins were - Point being, the structure was poor, and funny looking.
It was shaped like the letter H, in the most literal sense possible. Now the symbolic values behind this architectural design radiated dominance, but it still made the church really snug overall, and for that matter barely functional!
“Okay, so the priest is up there?” Skendus asked a guard.
“Yes,” The guard answered, and then he waved his arm above everyone's heads.
Once the letter H appeared on all four of their foreheads, the guard then relaxed a little bit more. There weren't many guards around the church, so this one was pressured into handling the responsibility that would otherwise require several more men to perform.
Anyway, after the marks were imprinted on their foreheads, the guards said. “This is so you don't go nuts up there, the marks will keep you safe. You guys are strangers, and maybe you don't know how things work here, but trust me that it is our duty to keep every visitor alive, as best we can.”
“We really appreciate the gesture,” Skendus said, and then after they greeted the guards, the group made their way up.
The two towers that held the thing together, featured narrow staircases within them. The staircases were barely different from what a lighthouse would have, except these ones here were even tighter! Timothy chased his tail while he climbed up.
“Jesus, I can't tell if I'm going up or down…” He blurted, the dizziness was getting to him.
Anyway, once they made it on the platform that held the two towers together, a priest greeted them there, and had them sit right away, as it would appear that people were praying here right now. There were about fifteen people in this room, they were all sitting on the floor, and crying near an altar that was made of marble.
This may be the only thing made of marble in the entire city, and perhaps it was worth the expense too, because it signified their god. Above the short marble table, there was an iron metalwork of the letter H, and this symbol was of the utmost importance to the church!
The group managed to squeeze between the crowded prayer room, but of course, they did not pray here with everyone else, and just listened instead, because they did not follow this religion themselves, just like they didn't follow the one in the prior church. This was the Church of Gulism, that's what their religion was called, and they prayed to the god Firunal.
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It was very foreign to the group, even Arvena hadn't heard of it, so of course they didn't want to be part of it. They just waited for about half an hour, and listened to the believers bawling their eyes out.
After that point, the goblins started leaving, slowly but surely. After each and every one of them left, the priest started paying attention to Tim and his friends.
Unlike the priests in the prior city who wore enough gold and silk on them to put a whole neighborhood in debt, generational debt even, the priest here was not up to par. He wore fur clothes, perhaps because the mountainside was colder, but also because this city may not have too many variations regarding clothing. Either way, he seemed humble, and the only thing of importance that he wore was a silver necklace with the letter H on it, and that necklace could be used to assume this guy’s entire wealth.
Anyway, he was also nice enough to come and speak to the team directly, rather than summoning them. This prayer room was too tiny to allow any actual summoning, but this was still a gesture of goodwill on his side.
“I imagine you're not here to pray, children, so what brings you here?” He asked.
Arvena decided to lead the conversation from this point onwards. She knew that Skendus hated the idea of begging some random priest for help, so she didn't want to put him through that torture, especially since he might say something stupid in the process, perhaps something even dumber than anything Timothy would say! That would be dangerous, so they talked about this prior to getting here, only Arvena was allowed to speak.
They bowed to the priest first, and then she said. “We came here to seek your blessing, father, to seek the blessing of your church. We were in the Church of Ariuism a couple of days ago, and they claimed that we're cursed with the Mark of Death.”
“Oh, so that's why you reek?” The priest asked, he was in visual discomfort.
“The other priests said the same thing about the stench,” She played along, “The church there blessed us, though, so we're seeking your blessing today as well. If you can find it within your grand belief in faith to help us, will you bless us?”
“No,” The priest answered shortly, and boldly, so perhaps his prior kindness had just been a mask.
After that point, it took every ounce of strength for Skendus not to intervene and cuss out the priest as a response! He was grinding his teeth in silence instead, because he understood that this conversation was already going terribly, and he didn't want to make it any worse. Patience was the key.
“Why won't you help us?” Arvena then asked the priest.
“Why should I? God is supposed to forgive everyone, but it seems that you folks are beyond forgiving. You have your stench to prove your lack of worth!” He expressed, and then further added. “If you want to appeal to me personally, then you should be on your way to the Forbidden Caves.”
“It sounds like it's forbidden to go there,” Timothy couldn't help himself from pointing out, he broke the no-talking rule.
“It is forbidden,” He admitted, “The caves have been sealed for three hundred years now, and the city has gone downwards ever since. There is a lot of iron down there, and a priest in the past had been stupid enough to deprive the city from the tons of ore that came out of those caves. To this day, we still don't know why exactly it was sealed, but that doesn't matter. Go unseal it, make sure it's a safe place for my workers, and then come back here for your official, second blessing!”
At last, he also added. “The priest in Letazix may have been generous, but I am not. My brother is in that church, he's been gone for years and serves as a diplomatic delegate there, and greed has overcome him, he's no man of god. The Church of Ariuism may be wealthy, but they've never sent a nugget to our struggling city, even when we needed their help the most! Half of the believers come up here to cry, daily, because they can't take the hunger anymore… if those fat guys in Letazix only knew of the struggles here, I wonder how they would react.”
The priest spoke of a lot of things there, he was surprisingly open about rather tough topics, and perhaps many respected him for that matter. However, it was obvious that he had given the team a task just there, a task which was likely to be dangerous, and they had to accept it, worst of all, no questions asked. They could only oblige, and hope to not die because of the potential dangers that were sandwiched in those caves!