Exactly how much longer do I have to wait? I had been standing outside the church entrance for the past hour, waiting for my new comrades to show up, so that we could get this over with. And still no sign of them. I took a look at the church in all of its excessive grandeur, thinking back to when I first arrived.

At the time I was astonished by the monstrously large building. It was and still is ridiculous. It’s the size of a palace, and everything is white. Why white? I mean shouldn’t it be yellow or something, Sol is the god of the sun after all. I guess they just like to emphasize purity and all that.

I left my gaze drift over the numerous spiralling towers that pierced the sky with their sharp peaks. There’s basically no consistency in this place. It’s like a maze; I can’t even remember how many times I’d gotten lost before. Despite its current size, it’s not even complete. At this very moment I can see 3 new towers under construction.

I was starting to zone out as I absentmindedly gazed at the numerous inscriptions, sculptures and carvings littered all over the place. This place really is over the top. I shuddered as I thought about how I would be spending the rest of my life here in service to the church. Oh well, in the end I’ll just escape and go on a journey if I ever get to the breaking point.

The neighbouring countries aren’t as focussed on their religions, so I could just go to any of them. Maybe not to the east, that place is full of demi-humans, and to be perfectly honest they’re quite an intrinsic people. An outsider like myself, especially being human and all, wouldn’t be welcome. Such a strange people… although I guess they may not like humans all that much due to the whole slavery thing.

Now that I think about it the South is no good either. Despite not being nearly as fanatical about religion over there, they worship that moon goddess, whatever she’s called. If anyone found out I had been in service to the church of Sol, I’d become an outcast… maybe even be killed.

So the west or the north! But then again the further west you go, the more frequent shadows become, till you reach their home, the wastelands. Shadows aren’t very pleasant things. The church teachings say they’re born of the sins of all humanity; they’re twisted creatures, all savage and insane monsters with their forms never consistent.

There have been a few theories as to how they came into existence, but none have been proven. Some think they’re creatures whose soul purity was 0% at birth, others think that they were once normal beasts who became infected by some mysterious disease. Well I don’t know or care. If another shadow uprising happens, the kingdoms will just summon heroes to deal with it like they always do.

Shadow uprisings are pretty easy to predict after all, as soon as those creatures show even a shred of cooperation the kingdoms become cautious, and if a humanoid shadow appears, heroes are immediately summoned to ‘help cleanse our sins from this land’ as the scripture of Sol says.

…Why was I standing here again? Oh that’s right… my two future comrades decided being late by an hour and a half now is acceptable. I felt like bursting out in fit of anger, but contained myself, after all, I have a reputation to uphold.

Oh! Is that them? They certainly look the part. Walking towards me was a large man, slightly taller than myself, standing at 6ft5 (I’m 6ft3 by the way). He looked young, around my age… or maybe even younger? He had short blonde hair neatly cut into the style standardly used by the military and blue eyes, the colour of the sky. He had pretty good face as well, I’m sure tons of girls were always swarming for his attention. As he strode forwards towards where I was waiting, his metal armour clinked on the stone tiles… Why is he wearing full plate armour? I just don’t get some people. But it did suit him well. The pure white armour, probably made of mithril, was lined with gold and had a gold sun emblazoned on the front of his chest plate. The gold’s a nice touch, holy knights are usually just all white. He was basically what the vast majority of people would envision when thinking about a holy knight.

By his side, also coming towards me, was a young girl dressed in traditional priest garb. Are you kidding me?! She’s like 14! Compared to the giant next to her, her stature of about 5ft3 was tiny. She had vibrant amber eyes, large and innocent, in addition to similar coloured hair neatly arranged in a single braid that went down her back. There was nothing special about her garbs; just the plain old white robes all priests and priestesses wear. She seems to have a peculiar bounce in her step as she walked down the path from the church entrance leading to where I was waiting… she’s skipping? Is this going to end up as a babysitting job? If so I’m making Mr Knight over there take care of her.

They eventually got to where I was. I was leaning against a tree, arms folded, enjoying the shade and the light breeze dancing its way through the tree leaves. I put on my best smile and waited for them to greet me. It was only common courtesy for them to call out first considering how late they were. They stopped a few metres away from me and continued to chat.

The knight had a deep, manly voice slightly contrasting with his relatively young appearance, whilst the priestess had high pitched voice common in children, although hers was very clear, like the jingling of bells.

“It’s a good thing Mr Inspector isn’t here yet, right Gant?” happily exclaimed the priestess.

“Indeed Mary, it would seem he’s even later than we are. It would’ve been terrible if we had kept him waiting.” replied the now dubbed Gant.

“Well it’s ok then! I mean I can’t believe we spent a whole hour and a half chatting. You’re really fun to talk to!” said priestess Mary.

“I too enjoyed our talk Mary, it truly is a wonderful feeling to discuss our lord, Sol with another so devoted.” said Gant.

“Yep that was really fun! And you’re really cool as well, being a knight sounds awesome!” said Mary.

They happily started to compare life as a priest and that of a knight... Are they retarded? Did they not see me? But I literally met the gaze of that Gant fellow. I could feel a vein throbbing on my forehead. Calm down and smile, calm down and smile, calm down and smile… All better. I’ll take the initiative then.

“Hello there future comrades! I noticed that you were a tad late today, I hope nothing serious caused the delay?” I began, with my signature smile plastered across my face.

“Oh!” “Hmm?” replied Mary and Gant respectively.

“Who are you?” asked Gant.

I think I’m going to burst a blood vessel. Didn’t I just make it obvious you big dolt! I mean for the love of Sol use your skills of observation! Clue one: I called you two idiots, comrades. Clue two: I have the typical white shirt, trousers and waistcoat that all inspectors have. Clue fucking three: I know you’re late to something. Who the fuck else would know? I’m quite literally the only one here and perfectly fit the image of what should be your comrade.

“Gant, I think that should be mister inspector” said the ever so observant Mary.

“Oh! You might be right there.” responded the retarded knight.

“I’m Cyne. Pleased to meet the two of you! I’ll be your third party member for this expedition and look forward to working with you both.” I said.

The two had now acknowledged who I was and introduced themselves, after which they began to continuously apologize for their tardiness.

“One apology is enough. I forgive the both of you! How could I not as a fellow devotee to Sol. But I do feel its best we move onto our journey. The carriage should be waiting outside the city gates.” I reminded them after the 6th apology.

“You truly are a benevolent man!” exclaimed retard, followed by a chirping “I think so too” from the child.

We quickly proceeded to the city gates with our luggage, loading up the carriage and quickly setting off. The journey should take a week or so. Normally it would take longer but the horses pulling the carriage were magical beasts after all. Renowned for both speed and stamina these bad boys could run day and night for the entire journey.

They’re ridiculously expensive and yet the church casually uses them for such a minor expedition like ours. This extravagant display of wealth touches my heart. To so openly flaunt ones wealth in front of others, while dangerous, is the true pinnacle of being fulfilled in life (at least in my opinion). The church receives so many donations each year that it’s no surprise that they’re easily wealthier than the kingdom’s royal family.

Although the donations are more like a tax to be honest: if you don’t pay up a decent amount to the church each year and word gets out then you’ll get ostracized from the community and receive lots of hate in general. It’s such a beautiful scheme, at the scale of which I can only dream of.

The tall walls of the city were quickly being left behind by the speed machines pulling the carriage. I gazed out of the carriage window, leisurely stretching across the cushioned seats as I admired the green fields and beautiful scenery. Mary and Gant were happily chatting to one another on the other side of the seats, and on more than one occasion tried to include me, whereupon I said something profound or confusing to muddle their little brains and get them to leave me alone.

The journey will most likely be uneventful. For the most part we’ll be staying in the carriage, only stopping twice at some well-established inns for a break. As long as nothing happens during those periods, we should be able to avoid in danger or trouble that could come our way. These magical horses are able to outrun a great deal of things. Very few beasts can compete in speed so on the road we’ll be able to easily flash past any potential issues like bandits and the like.

After two days had passed we eventually arrived at our first stop, Treetop inn. The old building was very large with a solid stone foundation on top of which lay sturdy wooden walls. The roof was tiled, something quite rare out of the city; most roofs were thatched. And at one corner a tree had seemingly fused with the walls, the top just peeking over the roof, hence the name treetop.

To be perfectly honest, this was my first time out of the city, and despite my calm exterior, I was rather excited about this whole journey. The whole experience would be a whole lot more pleasant if dumb and dumber weren’t following me around. Well what can you do? I gave a small sigh and then entered the inn.