Josh was standing outside another cathedral. This one was built by human hands with stone blocks, and consisted of an inner dome surrounded by an outer ring that functioned as a corridor leading into the centre. He had sworn to himself that he would avoid the Church of the Common Covenant, but here he was, about to invade its inner sanctums, and all to save an outlander he didn’t even know.

Happily, he was doing so as an anonymous member of a large congregation. Sir Owain had set his trap for the outlander by declaring a memorial service for the lives of the Northcrag soldiers which had been lost when the huldra had retaken the Azure Cathedral. To the best of Josh’s knowledge, only a handful of soldiers had died on the fight for the bridge. The huldra had agreed with Lady Paleyne that they would take all the other outposts using subterfuge, and the guards would be captured rather than killed, assuming they could be persuaded to surrender. The huldra had planned to hold them as hostages for the time being, before releasing them. However, the Church were carrying on as if the entire garrison had been slaughtered to a man. Josh suspected—and devoutly hoped—that their claims were pure propaganda.

A voice spoke from Josh’s left.

“Oh, I say, could I have the name of your tailor, my good sir?”

Josh turned to find a portly gentleman beside him, who sported a lurid embroidered waistcoat in scarlet and turquoise. Josh looked down at his own outfit. He was wearing his second attempt at making his own armour, which consisted of a light, supple leather jacket he’d commissioned from a tailor, onto which he had fastened an overcoat of overlapping feathers. He’d used a mix of feathers from a white goose and a species of pheasant with striking orange and brown colouring, creating a bold pattern that had garnered several admiring glances. When he activated the Stone spell embedded in the cuffs, the feathers turned into something almost like scale armour. It wouldn’t stop a serious sword thrust, but it would provide some protection from cuts.

He had also brought the staff, and was leaning on it slightly, as if he needed it for support.

To the man with the lurid waistcoat, Josh gave the name of the tailor who had made the underjacket. The tailor knew his address and would be able to contact him—maybe he would get a commission out of it. His class had upgraded itself to Journeyman Plumassier, along with a small amount of experience, and he would get his next lot of experience once he’d made a hundred journeyman-level items.

Ramina, standing on Josh’s other side, was fuming. He had eventually persuaded her to abandon her ninja mask, and wear ordinary clothing. Instead of secretly entering the Cathedral in front of them by scaling the outside and climbing in through the upper windows, they were queuing at the entrance along with the rest of the crowd.

“They would never of seen us,” Ramina said, eyeing the decorative stonework adorning the columns. “It’s nearly dark, look!”

Josh glanced around to make sure no-one was overhearing them. For someone who constantly listened into conversations, Ramina didn’t seem to have much concept of discretion.

“We want to attend the memorial service,” he said. He was scanning the crowd constantly, looking for that elusive something that might betray outlander status. Perfect dentistry, for example, or the wrong kind of haircut, or an Earth accent.

Sir Owain’s plan was to hold a private ceremony within the inner sanctum of the Cathedral, which would be conveniently free of common people, but guarded by his knights, who would intercept any suspicious strangers attempting to gain entry. Josh wished that Ramina had been able to glean more details, but her ability to listen in was dependent upon Deathless wearing the same item of clothing as he had at the ceremony a few days ago, and she had only been able to discover the broad outlines.

Ramina’s plan was to spot the intruder before they sprung the trap, identify them, frighten them off, and then follow them to find out where they lived. Even if Josh had truly wanted to turn the outlander in, he wouldn’t have gone along with it. He was planning to go as far as the frightening them off stage, and conveniently lose them once they scarpered.

However, he hadn’t realised just how thick the crowd would be, nor how the congregation would be discouraged from remaining in the Cathedral for any length of time. Each worshipper filtered into the central dome, where they would say a prayer and light a candle before departing, so Josh’s window of opportunity to intercept the unknown outlander would be short unless he could find somewhere to hide and watch the proceedings.

He was increasingly convinced that their mission was in vain, but every time he imagined the outlander in the clutches of Sir Owain’s Order he felt his stomach turn over. Maybe once he got inside and had a better idea of the layout, he would be able to think of something.

He was also disturbed that he had been given a quest.

QUESTS

> Killers in the Cathedral.

> - Assist the unknown outlander in killing Sir Owain, or

> - Capture the unknown outlander sent to kill Sir Owain.

> Reward: 65,684 xp (shared).

It was the first time he had seen a quest offering two separate outcomes. Neither of them were remotely palatable. Sir Owain was implicated in King Rupern’s revolting scheme to make his favourites immortal, so it wasn’t as if the quest was asking Josh to kill an innocent person. However, Sir Owain was a Hero, and therefore would subsequently be able to resurrect, which made the whole thing feel pointless. Also, killing Sir Owain would be next to impossible, given that he was likely to be the equivalent of a level 40, and had been kicking around the world of Six Spires for fifty years. The outander could be any level, but it was harder to capture someone instead of killing them, particularly if they weren’t bound by the same restriction. It was all academic anyway. there was no way Josh would ever turn someone over to be harvested of their player core—not even Varian’s gang.

It was as if the system wanted Josh to become evil.

He put aside his thoughts as he realised they were finally approaching the entrance, a grand arch leading to the outer circle. This consisted of a circular corridor lined with a series of columns, all whitewashed and glowing from the light of tall pillar candles. At various stages were shrines to the five Precepts of the Covenant, in their specific order of importance: Family, Community, Honour, Generosity, and Obedience. These underpinned all the teachings of the Covenant, and the crowd murmured a quiet prayer at each shrine as they passed.

They had to walk around the entire outer circle before admitted to the inner dome, a huge, echoing space with a vaulted ceiling that reminded Josh of cathedrals from Earth, except without a nave. It was full of a subdued, hushed murmur, the product of a thousand people brimming with religious awe.

Josh was mostly brimming with anxiety.

“Where you think the scourge is?” Ramina asked. She was surveying the crowd, and sounded frustrated.

“We need to scout for a place we can stay and watch for the rest of the night,” Josh replied in a low voice. The dome was supported by a circle of columns, but in the centre was the inner sanctum, a miniature cathedral within a cathedral. That was where Sir Owain would be.

It could be accessed from the ground floor in the centre, but there were also walkways higher up, which radiated out from it like spokes on a wheel, leading to a gallery running around the inner curve of the dome. Josh could see the figures of guards patrolling the galleries. They would be difficult to sneak past. They didn’t need to get into the inner sanctum though—they just had to just work out where the outlander was planning to do so and intercept them.

Josh and Ramina circled around the dome. As they did so, Josh flicked his eyes over every single person they passed, looking for that odd detail, that one thing that was just out of place. He hadn’t found it yet, but he would keep looking.

The sanctum was set on a pedestal in the centre of the dome about forty feet in diameter, and surrounding that was a giant circular altar, making the whole set up look like a wedding cake. The altar was ablaze with candles, to the extent that he could feel a wall of heat radiating from it whenever he strayed too close, and there was a heat shimmer in the air above it.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

There was a small door set into one side of the altar, behind which was a staircase leading up to the platform. It was protected by two guards, however, both of whom looked alert enough that Josh didn’t let his gaze linger too closely. It didn’t seem a good way to get into where Sir Owain was, so he turned his attention to the galleries. How did you reach them?

He directed Ramina to the outer wall, and found his answer there, in the form of doors evenly spaced around the wall, each one directly below one of the walkways leading to the sanctum. The doors were discreet, and set behind columns, so that they weren’t immediately obvious unless you were standing next to one.

They also weren’t guarded. This was intended to be the trap.

Josh turned around, distracted enough by this discovery that he almost missed it—lurking against one of the columns was a face that he recognised.

Here? He thought incredulously. How?

That couldn’t be right. It must be a … a doppelganger or something. Someone who just looked like .. no, it really was. He stood there, frozen, for several seconds.

He needed to distract Ramina.

“Did you see that?” he asked her.

She turned.

“What?”

“Across the other side … you see that column there? I saw someone try to hide behind it. They were studying the doors,” he lied. “It looked suspicious—”

“Let’s go check it out!” she interrupted.

“If you circle around from the left,” he suggested, “and I do the same from the right, then we’ll trap them in the middle.”

She immediately split away from him, and began pushing through the crowd towards the opposite wall.

Josh let her get far enough that she was out of his line of sight, then went up behind the person who was still lurking against the pillar and studying the door that led to the gallery above.

“Admiral Ackbar says it’s a trap,” he said. The person stiffened, but didn’t turn. “Hello, Rachel.”

This did make her spin around. She was wearing a skirt and tunic of a course linen weave with a worn scarf over her head. It was peasant grab which, as a fourteen-year old girl on Earth, she wouldn’t ordinarily have been seen dead in. He was unhappy to note that she had shadows under her eyes, and her face looked a little thinner than he remembered.

When had he last seen her? She had interrupted the gaming session, and Timothy and Ben had tried to get rid of her in the most suspicious and clumsy way possible. It was Josh who had let her in on what was going on, who had allowed her to listen in to their conversation about the mysterious person or organisation abducting gamers of Spiralia Online.

“Josh, you numpty!” she said. She was trying to look tough, but her voice wobbled slightly. “What are you doing here?”

“I was going to ask the same of you! When did you get here?”

“Here, like, Dendral?"

"No, here in Six Spires," he said irritably.

"I don’t know … several weeks ago?”

“How long after I did?”

She glared at him.

“I came right after you, you absolute moron. Like, seconds after you!”

Josh cast his mind back to the dream he’d had of walking out of the house and through the woods into a light.

“What happened?”

She scowled. He couldn’t see a character sheet when he focused on her. She must still be under level 10.

“Wait," he said, "That's not important right now. We need to get out of here.”

She looked stubborn.

“You can. I’ve got a quest.”

No, no, no, no, no! How did you persuade a belligerent teenager that she was about to do something monumentally stupid?

“Sir Owain?” He asked. “They already know about it. Someone warned them. This is a trap. You know what they do to outlanders here?”

“Yeah.” But her eyes flicked away.

“They cut them open and pull out whatever it is that gives you a class. It's called a player core. And then they put it in a noble so they can be immortal. And you die permanently.”

He hadn’t meant to say it so brutally, and felt guilty when her face whitened, leaving two spots of colour high on her cheeks.

“Look, if you have a quest you really need to do, I can get you in when he’s not expecting it.” Mentally he crossed his fingers. There was no way he was helping Rachel target Sir Owain—she couldn’t mean to kill him surely? But he had to get her out of here. “I know one of the other Seven Heroes. I’ve already been inside the Order’s headquarters. It’s just, you know, tonight is a really bad time.”

She bit her lip.

“I’ve got lodgings in Dendral,” he said encouragingly, and quickly gave her the street address and room number, just in case they got separated. “We’ll go there, and I’ll tell them you’re my sister or something—” he intercepted another glare and held his hands up in protest, “—sorry, but just pretend, okay? And we can compare notes.”

She chewed her lip some more.

“Okay,” she said ungraciously.

He breathed out in relief.

“Great. I need to find the person I was with. Oh, and she can’t know you’re here, by the way.”

Rachel looked at him suspiciously.

“What, is she, like, your girlfriend?”

“No, she’s the daughter of someone from Earth, she was born here, but…” he hesitated, “she’ll probably turn you in. For the reward. I was trying to find you—not that I knew it was you, just that it was an outlander—so I could warn them. Er. You. But she was the one who found out tonight was a set up.”

Rachel was giving him a can you believe this guy? sort of look.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll think of an excuse, and then we’ll head off. Er. But try not to let her realise that we know each other.”

“Okay.”

Rachel followed him through the crowd, just far enough back that it looked like she was by herself. He was the one who spoiled the effect by repeatedly checking behind him to make sure she was still there.

He didn’t see Ramina in the crowd near the column he had sent her to investigate. Instead, he saw her standing furtively outside the door, looking around her.

Then she pulled the door open and went inside.

He cursed under his breath.

“What is it?” Rachel asked.

Calculations flickered rapidly through his mind. It was one thing for Ramina to be reckless. She wasn’t an outlander. She was under the Marquis of Silbury’s protection. She was the daughter of a Pirate Queen, who was presumably a powerful figure in world politics. She might get into trouble for crashing an operation of this nature, but not serious trouble. Wouldn’t she?

Josh, on the other hand, would definitely be in serious trouble if he was caught. He was an outlander, even if he was disguising it. On top of that, he now had Rachel to consider.

“She went through the door!” he answered, his frustration rising. “She thought—well, never mind what she thought. Thinking isn’t actually her strong point. She’s going to trigger the trap.”

“Well, just leave her then,” Rachel said irritably, which struck Josh as callous, even if he had been thinking the same thing.

Ramina had only just gone through the door—maybe he could call her back. He nudged it open. Beyond was a stairwell leading up, and he caught a glimpse of Ramina flitting up them, in the process of wrapping her ninja hood around her head.

For fuck’s sake.

He took a couple of steps inside.

“Ramina!” he hissed, as she disappeared around the curve of the stairwell.

He heard Rachel give a shout of protest, and then the door slammed shut behind him. He whirled around and tried to pull it open, but even as he did so he heard the snick of a key in the lock. Shit! Sir Owain’s men had closed the trap, and Rachel had risked herself to warn him, which meant they would try to capture her. She was fourteen, and not even level 10! He had to get back and make sure she was okay.

He hit his palms against the door in frustration, but it was solidly built and opened inwards, so he wouldn’t be able to break it down. He could try to cast Heat on the two hinges, but he hadn’t brought anything he could hit them with to make them deform—even supposing Heat was capable of such a feat.

A distant ring of metal on metal alerted him to the fact that there was a fight going on upstairs. Ramina!

Josh hesitated, but only for a moment. If he could help Ramina fight off whoever was attacking her … maybe he could save her first, and get her help in saving Rachel. Cursing her for her stupidity, he instantly cast Stone on his feather armour, and Hide on himself, then ran lightly up the stairs.

Several turns above him was a landing, with four figures scuffling in a fight. One was Ramina, now disguised by her ninja hood. Two were squires of the Order—SirKorey and TheAxeMan—and the third was Raicheous. Ramina had a long knife and a buckler out—where had she hidden them?—and she was ducking and weaving as if she knew how to use them. But she was fighting one versus three, and she was only just holding them off. If she was good enough to take Raicheous one on one, maybe Josh could distract the others for her.

He ducked back into the stairwell and hastily pulled his own hood out of his pocket. He’d hoped not to need it, but the three Order members would almost certainly recognise him. He also regretted wearing such a noticeable outfit. Even as he shoved the hood over his head, he heard Ramina yell, and a clattering sound as something dropped and skidded across the stone flags. It sounded like Ramina’s buckler.

“Get the binders on her,” Raicheous said fiercely, then with satisfaction, “That’s it.”

It was too late. Josh couldn’t hope to fight three members of the Order by himself, all higher level than him. He would have to stay hidden in the stairwell and try to escape when the coast was clear. Rachel was the priority now, not Ramina.

Then it occurred to him that Ramina knew who he was, and where he lived. What if she was pressured to name her accomplices?

She wouldn’t do that to him.

On the other hand, she often had stupid ideas, and she didn’t know Josh was really an outlander. She might even not think she was putting him in any serious danger by giving his name or his address.

There was nothing he could do about that. He’d seen the fight between Varian and Mistrz. He didn’t have a chance against two level 16s and a level 32. No, he should stay hidden, wait for an opportunity to rescue Ramina, free her, and together they could get Rachel. Or, no, he should go after Rachel first, then come back for Ramina, and hope he was in time.

He was still trying to decide when TheAxeMan appeared in the stairwell, and started clattering down the stairs.

Except Josh was standing directly in his path and the moment he moved out of the way, his would lose his Hide effect, and TheAxeMan would see him.