Reward Ceremony

Being late, Francis rushed towards the city center. Having visited James at the infirmary, Francis forgot what time it was. Now he was a bit late to the ceremony. Luckily the streets were mostly empty, because most of the people were focused at the ceremony. Now that The Months of Demon was over, the church would divide rewards accordingly.

Making his way to the center, Francis saw that it looked rather packed. There were over thousands of people standing there. It was clear that it is a huge celebration that would happen. Francis tried to make his way to where Christopher and Warren were. The day before they had agreed to meet at a certain place.

"What took you so long? You missed the opening speech" Warren said to Francis.

"Don't worry, you have not missed much, just the standard "Thank you" and "Without your help it was not possible" Stuff." Christopher cut in.

Seeing the two argue about the subject, Francis could not help but smile about it. He replied to the two, "I visited James before getting here."

The two were silent upon hearing that before Christopher asked, "So how is he doing? Last I saw, he was finally breathing normally."

Francis nodded and said, "Yes, he is getting better. According to the medics it will still take some time before he will wake up. But the signs are positive."

For a moment the three were silent, before Francis spoke up ones more as he was pointing towards the stage, "Look, isn't that the Pope?" With those words, they all concentrated back to what was happening on the stage.

…

"His Holiness The Pope!" Someone introduced the pope to enter the stage.

With applauses, mainly from the believers, the pope walked towards the front of the stage to deliver a speech. His aging body had difficulties walking forward. At the front he started, "First I would like to thank you all for helping defend the kingdoms from the incoming monsters. As you know, this service cannot go without proper rewards. Therefore I would like to ask the representative of all the kingdoms to come forward."

With that the representatives of the four kingdoms were walking towards the stage, amongst all the applauses and cheers. From the Kingdom of Graycastle it was Gerald Wimbledon. For Kingdom of Dawn it was a representative of the big families. Wolfsheart Kingdom had sent a notable knight together with some knights. And lastly Kingdom of Eternal Winter had sent the Queen's youngest brother.

"The rewards will be given according to your achievements. So I hope that there won't be any problems between the kingdoms." The pope said. As he continued, "For defending the most difficult area, the soldiers of the Kingdom of Graycastle will receive the biggest reward. This amounts around 10.000 gold with extra treasures from the church's collection."

With those words, Prince Gerald walked forward accepting the gifts between the cheers of the soldiers of Graycastle. It was a rather big reward that they received. For the remaining soldiers, the sacrificed that they suffered was definitely worth the rewards they received.

The pope tried to continue, however his words were barley hearable because of the constant cheers of the soldiers from Graycastle. "The Kingdom of Dawn will receive 6.000 gold and appropriate rewards…"

…