"I understand how you feel," I said quietly, and Lutha nodded her head before she looked at me curiously.
"You seem like a nice girl, Galio, but what is your end plan for this all? I have heard that you have all the towns talking about supporting Hilda, and I assume that is because of you. Hard to believe half the things that I have heard that you have done. Fixing the entire town and creating hundred-foot watchtowers with walls just below them," Lutha said, shaking her head, but I grinned. That wasn't completely wrong; it was more of an exaggeration if anything, but I could see why that might be hard in mind to comprehend. "I can see that you are powerful, but why would you go to these lengths for complete strangers?"
"Honestly, your goddess, Tallia, is the one that asked me for help, and I love her. That was how it started," I explained honestly. "Once I got here and saw what was going on, it just seemed like the right thing to do."
"You seem like a good person," Lutha said as she frowned at me. "But I am not sure if you realize what you are getting yourself into."
"What do you mean?" I asked in confusion, and Lutha sighed before she leaned back in her chair again.
"My family, the Grashalor, have a bad name in the city, but that is not because we are mean. Carrie makes sure we have a bad name, so it makes my daughter look bad in the eyes of the people in the surrounding towns. They are easy to fool since they don't know Hilda, and very few of them come to the city. Even if they do, Carrie has the other families in her pockets, so they make sure that the rest of the people think that we are going to hurt them if we talk about them," Lutha explained, and I shook my head in frustration.
I had assumed that this was going to be the case, and most of the fighting would be done with words instead of fists. That was going to make this all much harder to deal with, but I wouldn't back down. This was something that needed to be done, and I was the only one that could do it.
"I see," I said quietly as I leaned back in my chair and sighed. "So what are you going to do about Hilda?"
"I have no idea," Lutha said with a sigh, and then she looked at me curiously. "But you seem like someone who might have an idea."
"Honestly, I don't know what to do. This is all very new to me, but I am going to have to start poking my nose around," I said with a sigh, and Lutha nodded her head in understanding.
"You will figure it out," she said confidently as she leaned back in her chair again and sighed. "In the meantime, do you have a place to stay for the night?"
"No, I don't, but I can always take a portal back to Northwall," I admitted, and Lutha nodded her head before she stood up from her chair.
"I will have one of the girls show you to a room then," she said as she gestured for me to follow her, but I put a hand up.
"No, not yet. While it is starting to get darker, there is still time for me to walk around and talk to people. That is the only way that I am going to figure out who has your daughter. I put in a lot of work to get her name good in the surrounding towns, and I am not going to let that go to waste," I said firmly, and Lutha frowned at me.
"Okay then," she finally relented with a sigh before she turned and walked out of the room. "But when you are ready to retire for the night, just ask anyone in the house where Galio's room is."
"Thank you for explaining things to me and offering me a place to stay for the night. Since you are so close to the reason that I came to the city, I have to ask one question. Where is the rest of your family?" I asked, and Lutha grinned fondly at me.
"Girls! Come out!"
Suddenly, I noticed movement all around the room and nearly jumped up in shock as almost all of the furniture, save what we were sitting on, started to transform into girls. I flipped my Mana Runes on and just stared around the house at all the bodies that were starting to move from strange positions. The thing was, none of it was done with magic, but maybe the props were.
Each of them were holding sheets that the girls were holding up to hide behind, making them look like perfect replicas of furniture from a distance. Something like that could be done with magic to give the cloth that appearance, but if a person got that close, they could tell that it would be fake. Still, not only did they have great physical hiding skills, but they also had incredible mental control of their bodies to hide their presence from me.
"You look impressed," Lutha chuckled, and I nodded my head slowly.
"Very," I said in an awed voice as the girls slowly came out from behind their hiding spots, some more reluctantly than others. There must have been at least thirty of them total in the room with us now, ranging from all different shapes and sizes. "Are these really all of your children?"
"No. Some of them are my partners that I made them with, and others are ones that I took in when their parents died," Lutha explained as the girls slowly walked over to us, and I frowned at her.
"You have so many of them, doesn't that tire you out?" I asked, and Lutha nodded her head as a few of the girls snuggled up against her. "Then why so many?"
Not that I was really any better, but I was just curious to know her reasoning.
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