Gren was surprised when he heard that his mother might still be alive. Gabriella told him about the story that his mother--Hildr--had lost an arm in the past but grew it back after three weeks. Even if she was chopped into two it was possible that she could recover. Gren wasn"t entirely convinced that she was alive but he had to have hope.The knights would travel quickly and try to overtake the Duke"s soldiers so that they could prevent them from recapturing her. It was the previous Duke that had captured her when she lost her magic abilities but his death nearly thirteen years ago allowed the Church"s spies within the Duke"s household to free her.
The Church"s spies involved with the rescue were all killed so even the Church lost her position. It turned out that she had been hiding under all of their noses.
The current Duke disliked his father"s actions and stopped the search for the G.o.ddess. However, right now he"s attending an important conference in the capital regarding the possible war with the kingdom to the west. The current Regent, one of the Duke"s twin sons, had decided that he would capture the G.o.ddess and control her using her own child when she gave birth.
Gren knew what to tell the knights now and what he would have to do. Words were nice but Gren had to go with them and prove that he was the G.o.ddess"s child, even if he had to use the system to do so. The knights were his only way of saving his mother right now.
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Gren hated being thought of as a girl but perhaps it would make it more difficult to figure out his real ident.i.ty. He returned to Gabriella and told her to prepare enough food and water for the trip and that he would deal with transporting it. She didn"t know what he meant but she already thought of him as a G.o.d so she followed his order.
Jessica and the rest of the women couldn"t come with him since it would risk exposing his ident.i.ty. Gren found it hard to tell Jessica to go home without him and that he might not see her for a while but in the end she understood. "Make sure to come back to us in one piece."
Gren was nervous to use his ability in front of outsiders but Gabriella had finished preparing three carriages full of supplies like he had asked for. This was enough food and water for their group"s round trip to and from Newton. There were only thirty or so knights but it would be fine since their goal wasn"t to annihilate the enemy; just to get the body of Gren"s mother before the Duke"s soldiers did.
Gren realized that he didn"t have enough room to store everything so he decided to remove some of the stuff he had in his pocket dimension. "Can you make s.p.a.ce for me?" After a small area was cleared, Gren placed down a few of the statues that he had stored in the treasure chamber. The knights were surprised by the sudden appearance of the statues--one knight even drew his sword when he saw them.
Since the carriages would take up too much s.p.a.ce, Gren decided to just take the supplies off of them. "The food disappeared." Gren didn"t feel like explaining it to the knights that were making comments until all three carriages had been emptied.
Gren hopped off the last carriage and addressed the knights. "Now we can travel much faster. I guarantee that I"ll be easier to bring along than all of those carriages." Gren put his arms on his hips in a triumphant pose and had a big grin on his face; not that anybody could see his grin through the veil he was wearing.
A carriage was prepared for Gren; it didn"t look like it would fit someone the size of Jasmine. There was a driver"s seat mounted on the front of it, practically on the carriage"s roof. It looked like it would be comfortable to sit in but the horse they brought out to pull it was scary.
The horse was overflowing with muscles and had long horns on top of its head. Gabriella explained that it was a rare breed of horse called a Dragon Horse but Gren couldn"t understand why it was named that; the horse didn"t even have scales. The knights were mounting similar-looking horses but their horses" horns were shorter.
Gabriella entrusted Gren"s safety to Georgia and returned to the cathedral; she would be of no use on their journey and she didn"t want to slow them down. No magician would be brought with them but each knight had a small collection of potions just in case they got injured. The potions they had were slow to heal their injuries but they could be used at any time without having to worry about how much magic energy someone had left.
Gren sat inside the carriage as Georgia took the reins in the driver"s seat. The knights were all mounted on their dragon horses and everybody was ready to go. Gren worried about returning to Newton but if his mother was still alive then he needed to make this trip.
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Gren had nothing to do until the knights needed food or water so he lowered the curtains on the carriage and used the magic light to start reading the Beginner"s Introduction to Magic; the book he bought from the book store that didn"t have any actual spells in it. It was pretty large and it explained how to control magic; there were even easy to understand explanations of the terms used in spell books.
Gren didn"t even realize that he was hungry until someone knocked on the carriage door and he could hear Georgia calling out to him. "The knights are taking a break. They need food and water."
Gren stored the book away and crawled down from the carriage. "How long has it been since we set out?" The sun was still out and shining brightly so there was at least another day until they could make it to Newton.
"Only a few hours. The knights hadn"t eaten before we left so we need to take a break a bit earlier." Gren stretched before walking to the knights to distribute food and water, distracted by his thoughts about the book he had been reading.