Everything, including climbing all the way up, preparing some holders for Gis, and sneaking between the shadows, took them more than an hour, but they were careful and didn't push themselves too much, so they didn't get too tired.

Well, Nix looked like he took a small jog. Alta has definitely got out of shape during the last year. She used to climb on the city towers when she was younger, and run away from the gourds afterwords. She didn't dare to wonder what would happen in a year or two.

„I'm not even twenty!” She scolded herself. „There is no way I'll climb on a staircase when I'm thirty, if I let myself degrade like this.”

On the other hand, a librarian shouldn't even need to have that kind of stamina.

Being a librarian was fine, and the pay was not as miserable as people think, but getting enough money to reach, even basic, mana awareness would take her a decade, and two or three years more for mana channels to stabilize. Without that she couldn't even be a full time library employ. Well, that might be less than a year if she started while she was still young. Aside from that, she also liked working with her group (There was no way, she was calling them a gang.) and there is no better opportunity for her to develop her abilities practically.

They stopped, inside a small garden at the temple courtyard, to make a break. Nix said he needed to recover some mana, for the hiding them spell, but she knew it was for her, and she hated herself for it. Nix wasn't so blinded by the money like Alta or Gis, so endangering him felt twice as bad. Right now, the only thing she could do was to stay alert, and she was as alerted as she could, about the only monk they have seen so far.

When the man opened the door, behind which was the reliquary, they give him five minutes, and then decided to see if he was still there, or has gone underground. According to their Intel nobody should be there at night, but they already knew the plan was going to fail at some point in the near future. They oiled the hinges, and searched the door for any wards or non-magic traps, before entering very slowly and very quietly.

Empty.

The corridor was long. Really long. And almost all length of its walls was covered in banners depicting mythical scenes, historical events, and some abstract shapes, that she had no idea what they could even be.

Just after passing some newer ones, showing very detailed war against The Dissenters, founding of Atlaric republic, and other more recent events, they have reached few meters of empty walls, ending abruptly with the entrance to the reliquary.

“Too bad they didn’t have anything more worth putting there. Maybe they are waiting for something important to happen,” Nix whispered bitterly.

“Yes, what a shame that nothing worth mentioning happened in the last century,” she answered in similar fashion.

The lack of anything about the Skyfall was highlighted by the amount of depictions of King’s victories and other great deeds, while his biggest failure was abruptly missing. Maybe the monks were receiving some funding from him. Maybe the king himself was visiting the temple from time to time. Maybe. Alta could understand them, but she still lost any remorse she had for robbing them.

“Look around the frame,” she told Nix. “I will search the floor. This is the best place to put detection wards.”

“On it,” he said putting on his enchanted glasses.

He invested in those himself, and paid for them more than he was comfortable to admit to Gis or Alta. It made her feel a little under prepared herself.

As it appears, unnecessary.

They exchanged a long uncertain look.

“Nothing?” She asked.

“Nothing,” he confirmed.

No wards on the door.

No wards on the entrance.

That’s a wrong building. And Alta really could use Gis right now. She didn’t have to look at Nix to know he was waiting for her decision. Their group dynamic used to be simple. Lena was always waiting for someone to tell her what to do, and she would work herself to death, if she was told to. Nix and Alta were doing what Gis (or K’hal, back when they used to work for him) decided, but those used to be quite flexible tasks with a mediocre level of freedom. But some time after she learned to use her Risk Assessment properly, she has become a bit closer to Gis’s position, and she might have taken it a bit too far. Now she was in charge, without being even a bit more competent. Maybe a little bit, but definitely not enough.

“Do you think we can find the place where they actually hold it?”

“If we manage to run away without anyone noticing,” he answered sadly. He knew what were chances for that.

Alta actually managed not to start crying, but that was as far as she could go. She didn’t want to think about what just happened, or what it meant. She just mindlessly stared at the threshold. Empty mundane threshold, with nothing to stop potential thieves from entering. Or something with so advanced warding system they couldn’t even notice a sign of it. They had nothing to do here.

And so, she took a step forward…

***

Another cabinet have been emptied.

Kaihil have heard that all the potions, produced this year, were supposed to be sent for sale a long time before, but the monks seemed to have stocked quite a few of them for themselves. And not just healing potions for emergencies. He just took forty bottles of something labeled as “flesh-bending formula”, which was probably related to changing someone's appearance or even actual shape-shifting. He should check it later, but now he had other priorities. Reluctantly, he gave up on the looting, as he already took many boxes of similarly exotic potions, and even more of those rather common.

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He stopped mid-way to the exit of the storage repository. Maybe he should just take all of those? Not for the sake of having them, but to take them away from their owners. That could be enough, he wondered.

He could limit his vengeance to the basic minimum, just to keep some decency. He wasn’t even all that angry, and those people haven’t done anything bad to him. Sure, he already knew they were huge assholes, but it didn’t completely justify him. There were other ways to hurt them, and some of them were even legal. It was all true. But Kaihil didn’t like breaking his promises, and he had made someone a serious promise from the very bottom of his heart.

His conscience felt like it weighted as much as this stupid temple, but he stepped through the door, and summoned a knife to his hand.

And then he saw even more potions.

His first thought was: They must have changed the layout after my previous visit. And just after that he realized, that if this building have been changed into a storage, then there was high possibility, that the plan, he had made earlier, was currently useless.

Now it was clear, why all of Lena’s visions said they were going to be detected.

***

Tiny lines of invisible magic threads were covering tightly the giant statue, and flooded to an unknown depth under the floor. With a shaking hand, Alta slowly inserted the spell-breaker into the stone cutting one of them. No sound. No light. And no other reaction noticeable for any of her senses. That was probably good.

“You want me to switch with you?” Nix asked.

“Just keep looking for any company,” she answered.

The monument of Tilius the merciful was warded so densely, that she didn’t think she could go back to work after losing the structure from her sight. The ten-meter statue served as column supporting the dome over their heads, and so the magic enforcing the building was mixing with all too many other ones present there. There was no way they would find the Band if it didn’t have a dedicated tablet presenting part of Tilius’s biography. It said, that he was meditating wearing that very same headband, ever since he was ten, and did it every single day until he died. Alta found the fragment, discussing how he would even use the meditation as a substitute of sleeping, especially pretentious. Someone with his level of skill didn’t even need to sleep. There was nothing heroic about sacrificing it, if his body and mind has already been rebuild so drastically, at this point in his life, as they read in some other tablet. On the other hand, it must have been very good encouragement for novices of this convent, to follow his example.

Alta intended no such thing, but she was grateful for it anyway. They didn’t even intend to look for the other artifacts in that creepy cult symbol. Even searching close to the tablet, took them dangerously too much time. If she won’t be able to pry the safe guard open, they were going to run. And everything was…

Click.

Golden rose vines started moving next to her hand, in slow wavy manner, and stopped abruptly showing leaving a small hole in their original entanglement. Looking inside she caught a glance of some red fabric.

“Are we still alone?” She asked.

“Yeah, nobody entered or left, since you started. I couldn’t miss anyone, even in those deem lights.”

“Good. Then help me, so we can run away sooner.”

“What can I do?” He asked calmly. Alta envied him his composure.

“Cut the wards when you see any sudden activity in them,” she told him handing over the spell-breaker.” I will try to pull it out with a wire.”

“Bad idea.”

“You would prefer to stay here longer.”

“No, I like your bad idea, but it is better to be self-conscious about those things,” he answered with a serious face.

She made her best to suppress the nervous chuckle, that was pressing against her insides to get out. That was a long shot, considering the level of security trying to break more wards and bypassing them using a tiny opening were equally risky. So she used her only actual advantage and turned to her Risk Assessment.

The quintessence of her anxiety was not supposed to be used like this. It wasn’t even supposed to be used in any particular way aside from existing in less bordering part of her subconsciousness, then the one it was originally in. When she was twelve and learned how to use it, she could finally buy some fruits from the market, without standing over the stall, afraid to chose an apple that her mother wouldn’t like. That was a very happy moment in her life, when she finally had some control over it, even if that was only a small step. And two years later she learned to use a mental switch to make more use of it.

Right now she was putting it to some of the limits of what it could do.

Nix could detect most of the basic enchantment activities with hie eyes alone, with those it would not be so effective.

Your own capabilities are on a similar level.

The widest part of the opening was less than two centimeters of length. A tight cavity next to it wouldn’t allow even the thinnest of her tools, there was no way to…

Stick with the bigger one, and cut the second wider, if there won’t be enough time.

She took those of her tools that could be of any use, and decided to test if the wards would even allow them in.

Start with the wire. You have a lot of it, so if it gets stuck or cut of, it is better than loosing something you have only two pairs of.

Alta continued to use her perception on an overdrive, and slowed it down, only when she finally managed catch a corner of the fabric in a loop, she has made at the end of the wire. As her mental state returned to normal, she felt tired, and not sure how long did it take her. Not more than ten minutes, but that was still only half of the job, pulling it out without activating any contingencies build into the statue, should be even harder in her opinion. She was turning to Nix, to ask him if he could manage to break a ward or two himself, when she felt burning pain on her cheek.

Going back to the reality in an instant, she focused on the corridor behind her, and seen a young novice, maybe even younger than herself, starting at her just as shocked as she was. His left hand was stretched in her direction, holding an amulet, and ready to cast some spell. Which he didn’t do fast enough, as a dart seemed to grow out of his arm, and his panic racing heart only helped the paralyzing venom spread faster. The boy’s knees haven buckled almost instantly, and Nix was already catching his limp body. The thief was moving silently as a hunting cat, even while drugging someone's body behind him.

He met her eyes, and despite his superficial composure, the panic was clearly painted on his face. They stayed silent not even whispering, as they were already thinking about the same things. Did Nix miss a snicking novice, that could not seen them from the entrance, and clearly reacted under a sudden impulse after seeing them? No way. The real explanation have crossed Alta’s mind once or twice, but she has thrown it out of her head. Then Nix has suggested the same.

“The banners?” He whispered.

That was too ridiculous.

But also too terrifying. Even if half of those stupid embroidered pictures didn’t hide anything, it still left hem with dozens of potential passages full of locals. She looked at the arrow with a tiny drop of red at it’s head, laying at the floor, and then she touched the shallow wound at her cheek. That was close. She could have been killed.

By a teenager that was younger than her when she learned to cast a structured spell, who managed to - somehow - shot an arrow without any bow. Just after seeing someone more experienced, they will be dead.

And then they heard the voices.