For a religious rite, this whole thing looked more like an end-of-year party than anything else.

Dozens of tents around a huge temple-like building carved out the wall of a huge canyon. All full of people being rowdy and, from time to time, even some fireworks.

Some were even playing at the river close by.

They had many wagons selling goods to the soldiers too, and twice that many selling alcohol. And that was only the ones I could see from the checkpoint at the entrance of the canyon...

If it wasn’t for the weird geography of this country, this situation would be the perfect chance to ambush everyone in this mess.

These lucky brats and their stupid country made of chasms and canyons. If they weren't so prone to having flying mounts, even if they were way too easy to kill, Blanchelle’s soldiers wouldn't even be able to move around.

Everyone else? Attacking this place was too much of a pain. Especially so when the other side was spread out way, and I repeat, way too much.

The religious side of things was also a problem… Not that I would care about this very much by myself. Defeating a bunch of drunk soldiers couldn’t be that hard. If it wasn’t for the fact that Prourene didn’t have enough soldiers close by, this could have been done by now.

Though it couldn’t be this simple. There had to be some trick they could pull in case of an attack, so it would be good if I found it too while here.

Anyway…

“I told you to speed this thing up!” I kept on light-kicking the confused Cal as we waited for the inspection of our cart. “Father will throw me off a cliff if we don’t deal with this white wine I bought.”

“No reason to jump off, girly. We’ve a whole night, and if yer packing as good as it looks, these will fly off. Even one of the saints is here, so this night will go far.” The captain of the guards at this entrance smiled at my antics while taking a last look at the goods. Simple medium metal armor, a cape with a haloed wing, and a friendly (and somewhat red) face. I was expecting someone gruffier considering he was forced to keep watch while everyone was partying, but I guess they have their own stash. “Booze ain’t a thing ya can have too much. We almost done ‘ere too… Nothing to report.”

He then smiled at me while the handsome dark-haired guy, now wearing some tight and less-refined clothes could only watch. Not that I could fault him since he neither understood the language nor was wearing his glasses.

Couldn’t have someone act as a peasant and use glasses…

I, on the other side, was wearing a bunch of unusually colored clothes common to merchants in this area. My hair was (sadly) dried in vinegar for a while to kill the color even further than it already was, almost to the natural dark yellow. It was still stylized and my make-up was high-class, but one wouldn’t recognize me like this right away.

It was painful to my psyche, though. My beautiful hair was taken to this point by necessity… And that without saying how the drills are gone. My natural hair isn't fit for them without treatment.

I really need to find a way to fix it later...

“I’m sure this guy hopes you’re right.” I smiled back, even though mine ended more like a scheming merchant as I reached for one of the bottles. “And here, take this one as a token of gratitude. Hope the skies will bless you, sir.”

“I say the same, girly. And real thanks fer the treat.”

No problems at all here. Everything even. If it was the festive mood or just me being lucky, things were going quite well.

From using the teleport artifact to send us close to this place to get here without a problem, all was going fine. Even entering the party ended a lot easier than I thought, and all because I could speak the local language perfectly.

Not a skill you would expect to see some practical use, right? Heck, if it wasn’t for the thing about the runes when I called Cal here, I would’ve likely forgotten about it.

“Understanding only one side of the conversation is very weird…” The mage commented in an almost inaudible tone as to not give up his nationality. “Are you sure they’re not on us already?”

“We clear, don’t worry. At least as much as we can, considering they're waiting for us.” I dismissed him while moving around a little to unlock the fake floor of the cart. “Now, to reach the temple while jumping off any place full of people... And make money while at it!”

I gave the signal and heard the muted noise of two things hitting the ground beneath the cart, so I set my mind on the next step and focused ahead.

This part of the plan didn’t have anything special about it, though. It was only selling wine that was both more well-liked and more expensive here than in Prourene until the time was right. The profits will fly, I’m sure.

If at least I had any use to it...

With use or not, some hours went by as the moon rose and the party got rowdier, but more importantly, these hours passed with us getting more popular. The cheap and high-quality wine was drawing consumers in droves, and their groupings were almost at the temple’s walls by now.

Way too many drunkards in a huge blob right next to the most important place around. A perfect recipe for chaos, and a sign to move on.

“It's time...” I whispered to the guy by side and watched him nod before getting up. “Looks like I reached my goal here, everyone, so we’ll be closing shop now…”

Closing shop after drawing this much attention was sure to cause problems, as planned. I was the only one selling this cheap, so people were interested in it. They would get rowdy with it, of course. Though, even if I weren’t to close shop, my stock was running very low already anyway. They were complaining and booing either way.

“Don’t be like that, everyone! I mean, I don’t really want to take what’s left back home, so I was thinking of giving it all to you… Will you still get angry like this?” And then their complaints made a full turn and they started to cheer. “Be civil about it, please, and don’t forget to praise the skies.”

Stolen story; please report.

So, as Cal opened the walls of the cart, all hell broke loose.

They were having fun and drowning the area in noise, especially after someone noticed that I also had a lot of fireworks stocked. It was very much chaos after that, and in that, no one could pay attention to me.

Sneaking away after this wasn’t even an effort. Only a matter of moving through the crowd towards the small light signal I found a little later. A light sign that led me to a small crevice in the canyon, and by proxy, to where Elen and Eve were waiting.

A somewhat hidden spot that was hard to enter, probably extra so for Elen, and in the end, it wasn’t more than another cave in a massive stone wall. Or at least, that was what anyone else would think of it. Anyone who knew better and understood how temples worked in fantasy, though, would know it wasn’t that simple.

At least one of these would have a secret passage of some sort. That was what I had my two infiltrators look for while we drew the eyes even. And again, all was going as planned until now.

“Took you long enough.” She said right after I lurked inside. “And the mage?”

“He’ll be here soon. But I told him to wait around instead of entering.” I answered while hurrying to change into the second uniform we had snuck. The most pompous priest one we got, but that still had my pouch and belt under it. “He’s also there to open a path out after we’re done in case things go loud.”

“Well, it’s easier to sneak when I don’t have to hide him too, so that’s fine.” Elen gave shoulders without giving much more thought about it. “We should get inside without much problem from here. Though this path seems a little decrepit…”

“It’s a very unused path from what we could see, milady. It does go farther than expected too.”

“Getting deeper into the temple shouldn’t be a problem, I think… But let’s move on. Are you two ready?”

Both my companions nodded in agreement as I got set and fixed my hair in the right style. As it was, I could pass as an important person here without a hitch.

Trekking through the small cave wasn’t much of a problem either. An easy path that soon turned from normal rock to a more worked tiling, which made sure this place wasn’t natural, as expected. And only a few minutes later, we reached a door, or at least, what likely was one.

We kept quiet after getting there, of course, and Elen moved close to the unusual wall in silence. She moved around a little and knocked on it for a moment until she found the mechanism. Then, as we got ready for any emergency, she started to pull the wall forward, opening a path inside.

And just like that, we were inside a storage area, or something of the kind. It was almost empty, though. Very sad since this whole thing could be solved by finding this place’s supply of wine, water, or anything close to it.

Anyway, we were in the clear for now, next was…

“Time to start…” I mumbled while scouting around and trying to remember the old map we saw. “Let’s move on as planned. You two still remember the map?”

The princess and the maid nodded as I took the small canteen from my belt and moved to the door. As I did so, my feet started to bumble around as I got into the act while sipping my favorite horrible drink.

And we were soon looking like a high-priestess who drank too much and her two acolytes.

Widely known but usually ignored fact about high-ranking priests: they are pretty much nobles with a higher perceived moral standard. That goes double on countries run by churches, and triple if this country is a federation of a bunch of smaller theocratic city-states.

Two things this place is.

All in all, these guys are a little less hedonist than my world's priests and they didn't pretend to not be it. Very honorable of them.

And so, since they gave me the chance to act the drunkard for once, I bumbled around the temple’s halls until we finally found some guards. Guards who got easily startled as I bumped into them.

“You… Guard… Why the guard’s in the… in the hall. In the saloon? No, hall. The guards ain’t… ain’t to be ‘ere. They… We… Huh? Why we’re not in the hall?”

“Oh, by the skies… I mean, this is not the hall, sister.” One of the guards spoke after giving a momentaneous glance to his companion. “This place is the inner temple. The hall and the other dignitaries are to the other side…”

“No, it ain’t. I’m sure. You won’t trick… Confuse? Convince? You won’t send me to the wrong place!”

The two guards shared a stare and a glance at my two companions while I heard them sigh. I could also imagine the two on my back shaking their heads at the situation, worsening the expression of the guards even more. It was making me feel bad for them considering these guys were the ones forced to stay quiet when everyone was partying.

Such a horrible job to have during a festival. Not that they looked too bummed by it...

“Our high-sister went a li’l overboard, my good sirs, so she’s… Hmmm… Unfocused, y’see?” Elen spoke in what I had to believe was the right language (I still hear all as English, so yeah), which seemed to get a little reaction from the guard. He even wasted a little moment to exchange a stare with his partner as she went on. “Yer help would be appreciated on this…”

Now that I think about it, what language the mercenary was using that day? I never thought about it, but I couldn’t be sure anymore since I now knew that both Elen and Eve were fluent in all four of them.

They were polyglots like me, though it didn’t have much value now that I had language cheat online. I guess that’s another useless skill to the set…

Back to the subject, though. I feel my luck ran out.

It even made me lose focus on the talk after I noticed so, but these guys were weird. I could be overthinking it, but their stare exchange was some signal related to Elen’s words, and how calm they were in this situation was weird too. They looked annoyed, of course, but I could see it was fake.

What a pain.

“Ay! I’m fine. Yes. Fine! And this is… This is what?" I broke into a mumbling chaos before they could continue the conversation. "Oh! This is the right place! I’m sure.”

“Calm down, sister. What if we took you to the right place?” One of the guards focused on me and then turned to the side as naturally as possible while calling us to follow. “It’s right this way like your companions there will agree. The Saints and the Hero are waiting there too, so…”

And there was the last straw.

Though I wanted my trick to work and somewhat wanted to see what this trap was, this guy gave his setup away.

As I said before, this was the worst job around. No guard in the universe would be so ‘on guard’ (pun intended) in this situation. But the real giveaway was on the ‘saints’ bit. I mean, there should be only one saint here other than their 'hero', and even the people at the entrance said so.

Again, it could be me misreading the situation, but I wouldn’t like to risk it.

So, to my secondary plan…

“Ey, big boy… Can you… Guh!” In a sudden move, I bent forward and held onto the shoulder of the closest guard, even touching a little of his neck under the armor, who panicked a little at the possibility of being soiled by a drunkard. A panic that lasted a single moment as he was soon to recover and didn’t react to it more than a little, but a moment was enough.

I was touching under his armor already. By the time he noticed something was wrong, the small glow of the spell hidden under my bent body was the end. And before he could react, a very concentrated lightning spell took the first guard down as the second got his skull punched to oblivion the next moment.

Glad they catch up fast.

“What the hell was that?!” Elen exclaimed while looking at the guard taken down by the rushing maid after my ‘signal’. Her voice wasn’t even that loud there, but I could see she was surprised with the sudden plan B.

“Proper explanation: I don’t know. Better explanation: they were up to something.” I said while looking around to be sure no blood was on me. “It felt weird, so I didn’t want to risk it. That’s all there is to it, I guess…”

“So it’s as you suspected… Should we take the safe option then? You already spread that wine around, so we should be fine.”

“Reasonable, but I feel we have a chance here… Since they think they have us, this should be the best chance to get things rolling.” That was my answer after thinking for a moment, and I even added a little extra assurance. “I don’t think they’ll give a second one if they find out we escaped, though… We won’t get these guys out otherwise.”

“Should we hide the bodies, milady?”

“A little. Only enough to buy us some minutes until we can get Cal.” I held my chin and turned to the path we came from. “Can I have you deal with it, Eve? We’ll find the best way to reach the saint and see how it goes.”

“Understood, milady. I’ll be sure to reach you.”

“Keep the comms going.” I touched the little trinket I made for the both of us. “Let’s go.”

With my last words, the other two also nodded and then me and Elen started to rush away through the corridors while Eve rushed to the door.