Gilbert had the goblin leaders organize a distraction to the best of their abilities. If nothing else, the critters were distracting by nature, so leaving them to it without any further instructions would most likely be fine. He did explain to them that going into the water was not a good idea, but still expected heavy losses to it. Although if they really wanted, the goblins could probably run into it faster than they would melt and reach all the way to the gate on a bridge made of their melting friends – it wouldn’t even be that surprising if they tried that. The life of a single goblin had pretty much zero value to the rest of the tribe, but neither did the lives of a thousand more. As long as there was a goblin left standing at the end of the day, it would consider the plan a success and run along to die of something else.

In fact, one of the things Gilbert thought was a bit unsettling about a god adopting them, was the possibility of them getting their act together under her. As they were, goblins did a good job preventing their numbers from growing too much; but if their absurd rate of death would dip even slightly, they’d overrun the other sentient races in a matter of decades, if not years. He could only hope that the god understood this and would keep her influence on them to a minimum – which she wouldn’t, since gods aren’t like that. After all, they were trying to undo the horrors that another god had caused right now. This ‘cancer god’ had undone what little respect Sylvia had earned for the divine from Gilbert, and even in her case, his trust was placed more on the shoulders of the devoted mess of low self-esteem and punching that was Emilia, instead of the puppeteer herself. To him it was obvious that even if Sylvia would appear to be on their ‘side’ right now, she could change her mind at any moment without any fear of consequences from her actions – and that was Gilbert’s main problem with gods: they had uncontested power over mortals and no responsibilities or clear motivations.

One of the goblins Gilbert and King had taken with them to help with the dam’s destruction noticed the adventurer’s frown. “Why angry?” It asked.

“I’m not angry, just thought about some annoying stuff.” He said and switched his focus back to their mission. “We’re about two kilometers away from the town now. Probably a bit overkill but I’d rather be sure they can’t see or hear us. Though that means it’ll take some time for us to get around the town to the spot where I think the dam is, but as long we make it there before sunrise and can work in the dark, we’ll be fine.”

“How we break dam?” The curious pest continued while trying its best to not fall over while talking.

“Depends on what it’s made from and how big it is. We can probably break a wooden one pretty easily, or even weaken it by setting it on fire, but if they’ve gone through the trouble of gathering stones and clay for it, we might have to look for other solutions. Like having you guys dig a new path and do whatever we can before they notice it, but that’ll take time we really don’t have…” Gilbert explained, even though most of it didn’t seem to reach the goblin.

“We burn!” The goblin celebrated, completely ignoring the rest of the explanation.

They had taken a total of ten goblins with them for the trip around the town. Gilbert had figured that together they could down a guard or two and losing a few wouldn’t endanger the entire mission. While having a few more would have definitely helped, having too many would have increased the noise they made and the risk of getting caught because of it, so ten seemed like a reasonable number.

By the time they reached the river on the other side of the town, they had lost two goblins. Gilbert assumed that they found something tasty looking on the ground and fell behind without anyone noticing it in time. But those were still within acceptable losses and otherwise things were going well; they were slightly ahead of the schedule he had planned and had presumably managed to stay unnoticed.

Gilbert gazed at the river and realized the same thing Anastacia had noticed earlier while hopping along the rooftops of the town. “The water in and around the town doesn’t reflect light… Means it’s not spreading down the river, yet.” He muttered to himself and stared at the moon’s reflection on the surface of the slowly flowing river. He hadn’t noticed it while walking, but Gilbert was starting to get tired. Sure, he hadn’t eaten anything since lunch and was starting to near a full day of traveling and running around without a wink of sleep, but that wouldn’t have been a problem just a couple of short years ago. Couple more and he’d probably have to leave quests with this much traveling on foot to the next generation of adventures. But now wasn’t the time for self-pitying, there was a dam that needed to be broken and damsels in need of saving! The old adventurer shook his head to clear his thoughts and turned to King and the goblins. “Alrighty! We’re almost there now. I’ll silently scout ahead a bit until I can see what we’re up against, you guys can wait here for a few minutes and then come after me.”

Only one or two of the goblins actually listened to him, but since King would stay with them, it didn’t really matter.

“Remember, no screaming and do not touch the water! It might look safe, but there’s no way to know if it actually is.” He reminded them and took off.

The maps Gilbert had were light on accurate geographical information and focused more on the locations and general terrain types, so he couldn’t really say how close to the town or how big the dam was. As far as he could tell, the town was built into a shallow valley between the desert and an ancient, worn down mountain range that was barely visible over the treetops on the other side of the river, meaning the dam would probably be a wide one so the water wouldn’t just flow around it and not too tall. Those kinds of dams were easy to build and sturdy, but the thing about dams was that breaking them from one spot made them more or less useless – so as long as they could do that much before alerting the horrors hiding in the water, the town would get drained.

Only about three hundred meters from the town, Gilbert could see the dark lump of something that was blocking the river from flowing freely. He was too far away to see what it was made of, but the shape wasn’t that of a well-built wooden dam: it looked more like someone had tossed a lump of dough into the river and it had set to fill a tighter spot in the river. As always, the water had found a way around the dam on the far side of the river and steadily poured over the lowest point of the blockage, preventing the water level from rising any more than it had. Next to the blob of something was a sawmill that would usually be powered by the faster flowing water of the narrow part the river, but now its wheel barely moved at all in the stagnant pool behind the dam.

“No guards, huh?” Gilbert said to himself and sat down on a tree stump to wait for King and the goblins. The lack of human guards probably meant that there were plenty of the abominations lurking in the water behind the dam and going closer alone probably wouldn’t be a good idea. While waiting he discovered that his knees weren’t what they used to be either and rubbed them to make the aching go away.

Suddenly he heard talking from the direction of the town and could barely make out two figures walking through the water in the darkness. Confident that he wouldn’t be visible in the pitch-black woods, Gilbert snuck a bit closer to hear what they were saying.

“I can’t believe she fell from the roof like that and knocked herself out. What an idiot!” One of them laughed. Based on the man’s size, Gilbert guessed it was the older man from the chapel.

“We got lucky there. It was smart of her to travel by the rooftops, so she may have something else up her sleeves too.” The other figure responded. This one Gilbert recognized as the old woman who tried to trap him.

Fighting the urge to charge the pair and give them a thorough beating before interrogating and maybe giving them to the goblins to be dealt with, he stopped to listen some more.

“I bet Yulia told her to do that. She might have outlived her usefulness for us, and honestly, she and her mother always were a hinderance to the town. Why didn’t we just sacrifice her on the first day?” The man asked with an arrogant tone in his voice.

“You’re just bitter because her mother wouldn’t marry you – but that’s all in the past, only He matters now.” The old woman cackled.

“The stupid wench deserved everything she got… Once the sun rises, I’ll pay a visit to Yulia and the priestess. The seal should be complete now and Charles left our message for them to find. Maybe Yulia will pass out from terror and I can just drag her to the cave, if not, I’ll just smack her around a bit and take her anyway.” The man chuckled as they walked over the dam and disappeared into the ebony woods on the other side.

Gilbert sat back down to figure out what he learned from the conversation he overheard. It seemed like Anastacia had been captured and Emilia isn’t doing anything for some reason. Also, there was a cave they took people to, and it was probably where Anastacia was being kept. That meant they would have to pick between going to the chapel and trying to find the cave, or he and King would have to split up.

“Who they?” A goblin asked suddenly and startled Gilbert. Somehow the simulacrum had managed to silence all seven goblins they now had left, and they had snuck up on him while he had been deep in thought, trying to figure out the right way to approach the situation.

“Bad people.” Gilbert said and hushed the goblin. “Be silent. They’re coming back.”

The two cultists emerged from the woodline and crossed the river on the dam again. it seemed like they were now having an argument.

“Sometimes I feel like you’re not wholeheartedly in with us… During the prayer you barely spoke at all.” The old woman said, clearly annoyed by the other one’s lack of conviction.

“Laura, please. You know exactly why I’m in on this, no need to skirt around it – but rest assured, I’m just as serious about all this as you are.” The man dismissed her worries. “Just a month or so and we’ll burn this town to the ground. That said, have you picked a city you’ll take the flesh pile to?”

“DO NOT CALL HIM A FLESH PILE! But yes, I’m taking my piece of Him to Thurum. The sewer system there is massive and will provide a great home for Him. A month with you feels like an eternity and I can’t wait for never having to see you again.” The old crone snarked.

They returned to the town and shortly Gilbert could hear the heavy doors of the chapel slam shut in the distance.