Well, she has a while longer to make it.

There was utter silence in the cart, not a whisper was made over the sound of the carriage rolling along the road. Isabell looked between myself and Millana with a horrified expression, and Millana herself wore an empty look as she thought about what I had said.

I awaited her response patiently, only for the next sound to be the carriage halting its movement. I raised my eyebrow as both of the women seemed to hold their breath to see what was going on to cause our halt.

After a few moments and some audible movement on the outside, the door to the carriage was opened. Outside, was simply Norman's men who had been escorting us, holding the door open as bodyguards would the car door of a celebrity.

One of the soldiers leaned forward and addressed us, "Sir, madams, it would seem we have arrived." I gave him a nod in return, and he moved back into proper position. I straightened myself up a bit before gesturing for the others to go first.

They both watched me carefully as they slowly exited the carriage, seemingly still thinking about everything that had been discussed. Regardless, they made their way outside, and I followed a respectful distance behind.

Looking around, we seemed to have stopped in an almost random spot in the forest. Almost random, as near the road were signs of conflict. With them was a somewhat cleared pathway, on which the corpse of a man in priestly robes laid.

I walked down the path to examine the man. It did not take the knowledge of a doctor to tell that the man was thoroughly dead, a hole puncturing through his head along with many other injuries.

As a sign of respect, I lowered the man's eyelids down so he appeared at rest, or at least as at rest as a man with a hole through him could be. I performed some hand gestures and whispered a made-up prayer in simlish to act generally priestly while watched by the others.

It seems this act caught the attention of the other party in our caravan, as Karen shouted out to me, "Hey! You leave his body alone!" I turned to see her striding towards me angrily, still hiding her arm from my view. I could tell there was almost certainly something regarding it she wanted to hide by now, and she was doing a very poor job of being inconspicuous.

Standing up, I made an apologetic bow before responding. "My apologies. I can assure you, I did nothing to the corpse aside from wish it the blessing of a safe travel to the afterlife. I did not perform any magics." Knowing that there was someone nearby who could detect truths, I had to be a bit more careful about what I said. regardless, the only lie there was that I wished it a blessing, which would be a more confusing lie than a revealing one.

Karen glared at me, seemingly struggling to hold back her resentment of me. "I do not need nor want anything relating to you or your god. Especially in relation to the caring of my dead comrades. You will leave them to us, or you will leave now."

I gave a surrendering hand gesture and stepped aside, having no reason for a confrontation over this. If anything, it served me better as a story that I was simply trying to help before being **** aside by the aggressive light faction.

It was now, that Lana finally noticed what I had been waiting for. "K-karen, where exactly were we when we fought that monster?" Looking over to her, I hid my smile as I watched her looking around the ground, a look of fear slowly intensifying on her face.

To her credit, Karen's first instinct was not to panic. She looked over, seemingly trying to use the landmarks of a few objects to figure out the spot. "Don't overreact now, this forest is just fighting us again. It's right over... right over..." It was at this point, that a look of concern began to appear on her face.

I walked up, looking around the floor as if that would help find the corpse of a large monster. "Is something the matter? What is it that seems to have been lost?" I had to remember to keep asking questions at important moments, as a question can't be true or false.

Lana was petrified, standing locked in place with a look of utter terror on her face. She slowly managed to bring herself to speak as Karen tried to ignore me, "There w-was a large beast, humanoid. We fought it, right here. S-so its corpse should be..."

Millana and Isabell had caught wind of the situation by now, and were sweeping the area with steadily more nervous expressions. Today was just not their day, I suppose. With both my lovely discussion with them in the carriage, to an unknown monster on the loose, that is.

Now seemed like a good time to begin my attempts to subtly uptalk my own forces, "Well, are you certain it was dead? Perhaps it only imitated **** in order to escape?" I was hoping to get a strong response to that, though I was not certain how they would reply.

Karen replied with a scoff, "I took off its entire upper half, I am quite certain I killed it." I let out a wince and she looked at me confused. "What? Feeling pain on behalf of the monster? Or were you somehow related?"

I shook my head, careful about the second part as I could not lie about it. Thinking about the first part of their question specifically, I responded. "No, I was simply thinking about how that makes it much more dangerous."

Lana turned slowly from her view of the ground to me, not changing her expression. "What's that supposed to mean? Why does that make it worse?" Judging by her condition and response, I came to the conclusion that she did not fare well against my champion in their battle, and needed Karen to come save her.

With a concerned expression and a few strokes of my beard, I answered her. "Well, if you are certain it was killed, then clearly it has the capability to resist **** more thoroughly than a normal monster. However, it sounds as if you killed it with a smite, which to my knowledge are far better at killing things such as undead or demons that could reanimate."

After that, I let myself go into a considering silence. Giving a few moments for my words to sink in, I wondered what kind of response I would get from them all.