Chapter 73

After quickly cancelling our future reservations at the inn we headed back towards the adventurer's guild. Torien hung behind a little, waiting for me to fill her in on what was happening. I felt like everyone would be better off if I brought them into the loop so I let Bella and Morrigan walk ahead a bit so I could fill Torien in first.

"I don't know the full story but Bella was tricked into selling herself into slavery by her abusive father and... a slaver. At least a few years before that, her mother was beaten pretty severely and ran away with Bella's aunt. Bella told me her mother abandoned her. At the time I assumed she just meant she left without taking Bella with her but I think there's more to it than that now. Bella has always been pretty hostile towards the Tamin church and recently even had an outburst that seemed pretty out of character for her at the time. I didn't really know what to think about it when it happened but this puts it all in a little bit more context. Do you have any idea what might have happened?"

Torien nods solemnly. "The Tamin church is known for aggressively recruiting anyone they can. One of their prime targets are people who run away from family because they're so vulnerable. They take in broken down people and turn them into fanatical zealots. In cases like this they make people give up all former attachments, property, family, even pets."

"And no one thinks that's fucked up?" I reply sharply.

Torien sighs. "It's not universally seen that way. That's my perspective as a beastkin, I'd be the first to admit I see everything the church does in a negative light. A lot of humans see it as a benevolent church saving people at their lowest and giving them a place to start over and rebuild their lives. The whole brainwashing aspect is just seen as the people being grateful for the 'good deeds' of the church that 'saved' them."

"Sounds like a freaky cult more than anything to me."

"You're not wrong, best not to let people hear you say that though. Their zealots are everywhere and we know for sure they're in town. If you go around calling them a violent cult they'll do everything they can to prove you right."

The two of us caught back up with Bella and Morrigan again. I gently placed a hand on Bella's shoulder. She leaned her head against my hand and took a few steadying breaths. Morrigan took this as a que to hang back and get filled in by her sister.

"Are you going to be okay Bella? I might be able to talk to the guild master if you need to sit this mission out."

Bella went quiet for a moment, lost in thought, but eventually shook her head. "No. That... woman already cut all ties with me and Bruno is gone now too. I am no longer that woman's son. This is something I need to face, even if it's... hard."

I squeezed Bella's shoulder reassuringly. "I'll always be here for you."

A genuine smile broke through Bella's dour mood for a moment and she kissed my hand. "Thank you Lilith. I'll... tell you more about what happened later. We're almost there."

As we approached the adventurer's guild we could see the grumpy looking Tigerkin guildmaster waiting outside with six Tamin church adherents and two adventurers I hadn't seen around before. One was a enthusiastic looking male elf with a long ornate halberd resting against his shoulder the other was a incredibly muscular human woman with a pair of crossed swords on her back and sheathed knives adorning most of the rest of her body. It was almost humorous how opposite they were from typical fantasy hero characters.

The elf was cracking jokes and talking a mile a minute at the people from the Tamin church and the woman was watching every shadow and corner for an ambush that would likely never come. She had a bit of wildness or perhaps even madness in her bright blue eyes but you could sense her she was very self-disciplined from the way she moved. Confident steps that didn't give off the same feeling of paranoia her searching eyes did.

Raksha'va nodded at us when we walked up to the group. I was somewhat relieved she didn't seem upset with how much time we had taken. There was no way I would have rushed Bella in the state she had been in earlier but I also really didn't want to get on the guild master's bad side.

"Good, the four of you are back. There isn't much daylight left and it'll be necessary for you to make it to the base camp near the dungeon as soon as possible. Luckily the church's paladins have assured me they have no objection to entering the dungeon remains at night once you arrive.

She turned towards the two adventurer's that were waiting there with the guild master. "Nora, Tarklin, these are the four I was telling you about." She proceeded to point each of us out, "Lilith, Bella, Torien, Morrigan. These are the four you will be escorting to the dungeon and back." They both nodded seriously, clearly aware of the implications of the mission they were on.

The woman walked up first and held out her hand. "Nora." I nodded and shook her hand, she had a strong grip and her hand felt hard and calloused.

The young looking elf held out his own hand next and smiled brilliantly. "Tarklin Silvergrove. I'm an elf from the Northern Greens. It's nice to meet such a pretty beastfolk, you look like you have fire in you. I like that"

His smile was disarming and I felt comfortable returning it. "Nice to meet you Tarklin, I appreciate your presence on this mission. You too of course Nora," I quickly added.

"Alright, the twelve of you best get moving before you run out of too much daylight. I expect to see all of you back here by tomorrow nightfall. If you are still returning by then keep an eye out for a rider. I'll be personally expecting you when you return. Understood?"

The entire group of twelve people, including all of the church adherents, replied in various ways and the tiger beastfolk nodded in satisfaction. The four of us were prompted to lead the way and all of us left the town in a large group. The four members of my party were pretty quiet, still a bit morose from the previous conversation. Nora walked next to us, scanning from outside danger while Tarklin chatted with the group of church adherents as if they were old friends, much to their annoyance.

I opened my [Soultouched Connection] with Bella and transmitted the feeling of a comforting hug. I wanted to hold her hand and reassure her but I was also very conscious of the group we were in. I didn't want to let on how close our group was to each other. These people were so bigoted that they would actively hunt down people engaging and same-sex and inter-racial relationships and they didn't think highly of beastfolk in the first place. Best not make things worse under the circumstances.

I looked back at Tarklin who squarely held the attention of most of the Tamin adherents, anyone who wasn't being chatted up by him was focused on our surroundings instead. I wasn't sure if this was intentional or not but he kept most of the attention away from our group which made me feel a lot better. One of the people in our group was Bella's mother, her eyes calmly scanned the forest and she acted like the chatty elf wasn't there at all. It was kind of hard to tell everyone apart but now that I knew who I was looking for it was easy to identify her among the group. She was noticeably shorter than all of the other adherents and only two of the people dressed in priests' robes had come along.

Bella was pretty determined not to look at her but I could feel her anxiety through our link. For better or worse her emotions had numbed quite a bit after the large release earlier. She was still nervous and upset but it seemed she was coming to terms with being near her for now.

Things proceeded like this for a while. We ran into two groups of monsters on the way, both some kind of wolves. The church adherents quickly took care of them without any words between them. They looked efficient and well trained, which only cemented how dangerous they were. Though they made no effort to help kill the monsters, the two adventurers that were escorting us quietly drifted to either side of my party until the threat was gone. Afterwards, Tarklin quickly went back to harassing the church members once the danger had passed, like nothing had even happened.

Despite feeling completely natural, the gesture cemented to me that he was intentionally taking the attention away from us. I'm not really sure of his goal here but I appreciated the effort nonetheless. I didn't want their attention on us any more than was already the case. Nora on the other hand quietly walked next to us the entire time. She had been unsurprised when the monsters crossed our paths and remained vigilant from any outside threats. It was obvious her priority was on us and wouldn't bother with monsters unless they threatened us directly. I was honestly rather impressed by how serious and professional they were about this mission.

Perhaps I'm underestimating a personal request from the guild master herself though. It felt reassuring the guild master was willing to assign good adventurer's to protect us. And everyone in our group could clearly tell who they were actually protecting us from. If the church decided to attack us then it would probably devolve in an outright brawl. I was curious what levels they were but knew better than to ask by now. Though actually, I wonder if Mimi could tell.

-- "Hey Mimi, can you tell me the levels of the two adventurers that are escorting us?" --

-- "Sure, no problem!... The Elven man is 42 and the scary woman is 56." --

I nearly choked. Both were so far above us, the woman was more than 20 levels higher than I was.

-- "56? What level are the priests and Paladins?" -- I asked.

-- "Hmm... The lowest is 15, most of them are around level 28. That one over there is level 40." --

Mimi pointed out one of the paladins that was talking with Bella's mother. It seemed like he was the leader of the group. Some of the priests were looking over at us now, looking somewhat confused.

-- "Mimi, thanks a ton but I think they might be able to detect you identifying them. That's it for now, good job." --

-- "Sure thing! Tell me if you need anything else!" --

I felt a gentle wave of emotions through the link, she was happy to be useful and liked receiving praise. I smiled to myself. She was cute, she was still trying to figure out how to interact with everyone but it was easy for me to tell that she had a good heart. Somewhat amusing for someone who had once technically been a demon.

I looked over the priests again. The looks of confusion had passed and Tarklin had most of their full attention again. The exception was actually Bella's mother. She was watching the four of us like a hawk now. Her expression made me think she didn't trust us almost as much as we didn't trust her. This whole thing is really unfortunate. I don't really know the full situation with Bella and her mother and hell, I can't even remember my own relationship with my parents but this situation was insanely awkward.

I tightened the straps of my bag and kept walking. It would be a few more hours before we got there and it was clear my friends weren't as interested in talking as they were on the way back to town a few days ago. So instead all of us just kept walking in silence, only on guard enough to be alert when monsters jumped out before being cut down by the Tamin church adherents.

The walk continued like this as the late afternoon sun set on our journey.