Chapter 73: Cult

“Sorry for the wait, ladies.” The captain walks over to us with a hurried pace, rolled up letter of commendation in hand. She hands it over to Hilda.

“Thank you very much. So who should we ask for in Skaok?” Hilda puts the letter in her pack.

“Just head for the docks and look around for Captain Taylor, her ship should be called Sam’s Revenge.” 

Behind me I hear Sam starting to cough while I and my sister giggle a bit. 

“Something funny?” 

“Ah, that tall nekote over there is called Sam.” Hilda clarifies nodding towards Sam. 

“Oh, right, I see.” The captain smiles. “It’s a good name.” 

Sam’s still coughing but manages to reply nonetheless. “Thanks.” 

“Anyway, I wish I could give you an escort out of the city but I have something to do in the city dungeons. If you’ run in any more problems with the guards at the gates… well… just try to not kill them too slowly.” 

Hilda laughs. “We’ll try.” 

The captain shakes Hilda’s hand and waves the rest of us goodbye “Safe travels!” after which she starts walking off to what I assume is the city’s dungeon. 

“You too!” We call after her. 

“Everyone ready to leave again?” Hilda now turns herself back to the rest of the group. 

“Can’t we wait until it has stopped raining? My hair has only just dried.” Élise hops off the fence we were sitting on. 

“I have no clue when it will stop raining.” Hilda looks to the sky in the distance. “It might take hours, if not days before it’ll stop. Unless someone has a weather app on their weapons?” 

“Sadly enough this bow comes without an operating system so I’ve not yet figured out how to install anything on it.” Sam jokes while she inspects her bow.

“Alright, alright, let’s go then.” Élise gets on her horse. “Skaok was not that far from here, right?” 

“A couple of hours at most.” Hilda saddles up too as I walk over to Sam so she can lift me up our horse. 

“Great.” Élise nods after which she looks over to me. “By the way, sis, aren’t you going to learn how to mount up yourself?” 

“But I like it when Sam puts me on the horse.”

“Well, you heard her.” Sam lifts me on top of our horse with a very big grin on her face. 

“Valid.” Élise laughs. “If only Nikki would let me do that.” 

“You wish.” Nikki replies almost immediately. 

“See, she’s so mean.” 

“Yes, I’m evil, very evil. Just wait till I sink my teeth in ya.” She rides up to my sister and puts her hand on her girlfriend's thigh, looking flirtatiously into her eyes. 

“Halp. I think Imma die.” 

“Sorry, can’t help you with that one, sis.” Sam has jumped up behind me and rides up next to Hilda who’d already started moving towards the northern city gate.

“Ayayay.” Élise wipes the imaginary sweat of her face.

Unlike the first guards we encountered these let us through without any issue although they were occasionally taking a glance at me. 

“Do you think they also know?” 

“About the Goddess thing?” My girlfriend replies to my question. 

“Mhmm.” I nod. 

“They might, but they might just think you are just a beautiful girl too.” She whispers that last part into my ear. 

I melt into her arms. “Unfair.” 

“Hmm hmm.” Sam chuckles smugly and squeezes me tight. 

“Looks like it won’t stop raining any time soon…” Élise comments as the light drizzle turns into full blown rain. 

“Yeah, that’s why I didn’t want to wait. But we should arrive at Skaok soon so we can get dry a little.” 

“I’m happy my base equipment gave me a leather chest piece that has a hood.” Sam comments, hanging over me to shelter me a bit from the rain. 

“Lucky you, I spawned in just a cotton robe...”

“Wow, you really drew the short straw didn’t you, sweetie?” 

“Yeah.” I pout. 

“It might be because Sam didn’t spawn in a ‘beginner’ area.” Hilda speculates. 

“I also got attacked by a wolf though… but I did get a pretty good ‘award’ from it as well.”

“Advantages and disadvantages.” Élise shrugs. 

A loud crack suddenly interrupts the conversation, a lightning bolt striking a couple of hundred meters in the distance. 

“Wow. That’s impressive.” Nikki stares in awe in the distance. “I don’t think I’ve never seen lightning strike that close before. 

“Me neither.” Hilda shakes her head. 

We follow the road and approach the place where the lightning struck. 

“Help! Someone, please help!” A man is running towards us in a hurry. “The lightning… it hit a cart in our convoy…” He’s completely out of breath. 

“Shit. Ami, Sam, quickly.” Hilda spurs on her horse, racing past the man, with our horse following. Nikki and Élise wait behind to help the man while we go on. Not even a minute later we arrive at the site. People are sitting dazed by the roadside, a couple of them wounded, with splinters in their bodies, a bit further near a burning cart we see people bent over two bodies, crying. 

I look over at Hilda and she gives me a nod. “Go and save them, I’ll find the most critical ones and bring them to you.” 

“Hyaah.” Sam spurs on our horse to go even faster and races towards the burning cart. The people sitting beside the bodies scare away to the side.  “Don’t worry, we are here to help.” Sam jumps off and helps me off the horse immediately. 

“What do you think Ami?” Sam and I take a look at the bodies. They are two male tiger beastkin from what I can tell. Both of them are severely burned but luckily still breathing.

“They are still alive, very badly wounded though.” I take out my staff and start channeling my healing spells on the both of them.

“Will they be alright?” Another couple of beastkin who were originally scared away by our horse approach us. 

“I’m sure they’ll be fine.” Sam tries to comfort the couple. “Just give our healer some space so she can concentrate on her work.”

“Is she…?” 

“She looks like…” I hear the couple whisper. 

Slowly but surely more people who belonged to the caravan start flocking in our direction.

“They know, don’t they…” I whispered to myself, trying really hard not to lose my concentration. A pat on my back from my girlfriend with her ever loving smile calms me and helps me refocus. “Thanks Sam.” 

“Just keep doing what you’re doing. I’ll keep them at bay.” She winks and then continues doing some crowd control so I work quietly. 

“That should be it.” I wipe away some of the rain of my forehead as I take a couple of steps backwards. “I can now take care of the others.”

“You sure, don’t need to rest for a bit?” Sam comes up to my side. 

“I’m fine, this was nothing, really.” 

“Alright then.”

Right at that moment Hilda appears next to us as well. “I couldn’t find any critically wounded. It’s mostly some bruises and splinters. How did things go here?” 

“Good, Ami just saved two people, she’s going to want to get everyone back into shape though.” 

I nod with my girfriend’s assessment.

“Alright. Nikki and Élise went after the horses that ran away after the lightning hit, they should be back shortly…” She stops explaining and looks behind me. “By the way… what’s that about?” 

I look back too, following her gaze, seeing a couple of people bowing towards me, sitting on their knees in the mud. “Oh… I didn’t even notice that…” 

“I think some of them started to connect the dots and found out about Ami’s ‘Goddessness’.” 

“Can you try to get them to stand up? Or at least out of the mud…” 

“I tried to but they wouldn’t listen…” 

“Ugh.” I sigh, this is even more embarrassing than I thought. “Let’s just start healing the others before we deal with this…” 

Sam and Hilda nod and follow me around to help the wounded.

Ten minutes later, after most of the wounds have been healed, Nikki and my sister rejoin the party, followed by a couple of horses.

“We couldn’t get them all, some ran away a lot faster than we expected.” Nikki hands over the leads of the horses to one of the people from the caravan. 

“Looks like you have been quite busy too.” Élise nods in the direction of the constantly growing group of people who are bowing down to me. 

“I’m starting to feel like a cult leader…” I hide behind my girlfriend. 

“Yeah, this surely is a bit of a... situation…” Élise pats the back of her head. 

“While Ami was healing the minorly wounded I heard from one of them that the caravan belongs to a really traditional community. Might be why their response is so different from the people at Parma.” Hilda explains.

“Hmm, maybe. Let’s try to get them to move into Skaok first so at least we are out of this blasted rain.” Élise moves on to the front of the caravan. 

“How are you going to do that?” Nikki asks her partner. 

“I have just the plan in mind.” She winks at us.

“Oh no, I don’t have a good feeling about this…” 

Hilda giggles at my comment. “Me neither, Ami, me neither.” 

My sister crawls on top of the burnt out remains of the cart and addresses the entire group of people in front of her. “Ahum, ahum. People! The Goddess Amicia doesn’t want to see her followers getting drenched in this rain and being stuck in the mud… um… for you might become sick! Therefore she has asked of you to please make your way into the city walls of Skaok and find a dry and warm place to rest and to wash up… yes!”

“That was… definitely a speech… of some kind... I guess?” Sam is quite flabbergasted. I would never have the guts to do that.“

Hilda agrees. “That’s Élise for you.” 

Sis… why do you do this… 

FieryKathy

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