Renea had caught sight of her horrible, scoundrel brother just as the workday was easing down.

Varant was a well-lit city, and a busy one. Merchants tended to close up shop only after the sun had completely set, and then they took their time either getting home or finding their way to the tavern.

The guilds were nearby, so most craftsmen lived in a guildhouse. They ambled around, too, sometimes finishing up deals with the merchants right there on the street—their lodgings were right down the corner, after all.

As a result, even though night had fallen, this part of town—where the industrial and merchant quarters roughly met—still had quite a lot of hustle and bustle. Renea was absent-mindedly staring out the carriage window, anxiously wringing her fur cloak, when she just barely saw Ailn turning into an alley across the way.

The carriage was caught up in the nighttime street traffic, and the alley Ailn had turned down was narrow, only passable by pedestrians, anyway—so Renea thoughtlessly flung open the carriage door and chased after him.

“Lady Renea!” Reynard called out to her in a panic, but she didn’t want to lose sight of Ailn.

The knight gave chase—but hesitated a moment too long, and dismounting from his horse took another ten seconds. Reynard was a tall man, and heavily armored. Renea could duck and slip through the throngs of merchants and craftsmen in a way he simply couldn’t.

By the time he’d reached the narrow alley, Reynard lost track of her.

Renea, meanwhile, lost track of Ailn herself. She thought she’d been right on his tail, but when she’d turned a corner, she realized he was nowhere to be seen.

Worse, she’d disoriented herself in the maze of narrow alleys. Ailn nowhere in front of her, and Reynard nowhere behind, she wanted to scream in frustration.

It wasn’t exactly safe here, either. This wasn’t the worst part of town, but Varant wasn’t the kind of city you should wander alone after dark.

She had a sword, at least—Ailn’s sword. She’d only just noticed she’d been carrying it. Renea was no swordswoman, but it was better than nothing.

When she came into this world, Renea had been surprised to learn just how light swords actually were. Should she be accosted by a ruffian, she actually felt fairly confident in her ability to protect herself—not that she wished for it to come to that.

Rather, if she was having these thoughts at all, then the sensible course of action was to retreat. Awful, angry, anxious as she felt, she wasn’t going to let a bad situation turn worse out of immaturity.

At the very least, she needed to find Reynard.

With narrowed eyes, and perked ears, she made her way through the alleys trying to find her way back to the road by always choosing the widest lanes. It wasn’t a perfect heuristic, but it should eventually find her back on the thoroughfare.

And of course, just when she’d started acting with a level head, she caught sight of Ailn again.

Walking into a clearly abandoned smithy.

The bells of alarm in her head started ringing furiously. What was he doing? How could he have embroiled himself this deeply into Varant’s illicit underworld, already?

It was becoming increasingly clear what was going on. From the furtive nature of his movements, to the assurances he’d given that what he was doing was important.

Her new brother had said he was a detective in his past life. Clearly, he imagined himself some sort of hero of justice, using his extraordinary intelligence to battle crime itself. He was gallivanting around Varant as if he could clean up the city just by being clever. It was completely absurd, but what other explanation could there be?

“Of all the foolish…” Renea muttered, biting the nail of her thumb again.

Truth be told, this made her feel worse than when she thought he was gambling. It was an emotional response born of selfishness, and she understood that well; still, she couldn’t help it.

Wary of what could possibly be inside the smithy, she’d waited a minute or two after watching him disappear inside. Was there some sort of confrontation happening? The building didn’t look that large.

But there was no sound at all.

The street was quiet to the point of being creepy. If he was alone in there, it meant he was just standing there silently, in the dark building—the disturbing mental image gave her goosebumps.

Agitated, and increasingly afraid, Renea slowly crept up to the building, fretfully looking around the empty street as she did so. She almost would’ve felt better if there were signs of criminal nightlife around. As it stood, the silent, abandoned smithy screamed sinister.

Inside the smithy was… a staircase. Descending into the dark.

Renea hugged Ailn’s sword close to her body and let out a small whimper.

----------------------------------------

Still ducked among the piles of rubble, Ailn tried to glean something useful from Ceric’s conversation in one of the splintered off tunnels.

“I knew there was a cult hiding in the shadows, but to think they were underneath us all along!” Ceric’s loud lamenting voice came closer, accompanied by the sounds of something rolling and clattering. “To think my friend was a cultist… I’ve been a naive fool!”

Ceric came out of the tunnel carting a load of rubble in a wheelbarrow. Heaving it off into the heap, he rested against the wheelbarrow for a moment sweaty and winded.

It wasn’t long before his ‘friend’ was striding out of the tunnel, shouting at Ceric to get back to work. In fact, he was multitasking—giving an earful to the foreman who should’ve been managing Ceric.

“Get this fool back to work!” the merchant shouted. “I allowed Group A time, and nothing! I furnished them with equipment, and nothing! When will you knaves learn that what you get is what you put in?!”

“W-we’re trying, Geoff!” the lackey shouted. Then he grabbed Ceric by the collar of his dirt-stained yellow coat. “You already had your break, you dunce!”

“That’s Sir Geoff,” he snarled, grabbing his lackey in exactly the same way. “Carlin’s the boss, and I’m just Geoff, is it? Who holds the purse, here?”

The merchant released him violently.

“Ceaselessly, week after week, I circle back and all I see is naught but waste and squander! Group A begged for lighting artifacts! They petitioned me for new pickaxes crafted in ark-Chelon and pledged to show results!” the merchant howled. “The lot of you aren’t even utilizing the full capacity of your wheelbarrows!”

He stomped off to find another tunnel. “Fix it or you’ll find yourself moving rubble!”

The lackey’s expression twisted furiously as the merchant walked off, but he held his tongue. Then he shoved his way past Ceric as he walked back into what was presumably the Group A tunnel. “Get yourself back in five minutes or you’re starving tonight!”

Ceric said nothing, bowing his head miserably as he followed after.

It was comforting to know the pettiness of middle management transcended both world and era.

Suddenly, a voice could be heard from one of the other tunnels—loud, but not exactly remonstrative. It was more like a foreman giving directions, and Ailn could recognize it as the voice of the curly-haired man.

“Group C, all your performance metrics are down in dirt this month, so this weekend all us lot are gonna do some team-building drills,” he called out. Miserable and ghoulish groans erupted from the tunnel. “Shut it! It’s trust falls ‘till we’re best mates!”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Now that I think about it, the kind of cumulative loan Ceric had was pretty modern,” Ailn muttered.

The curly-haired man walked out of the tunnel, accompanied by… a young woman? She looked familiar, but Ailn couldn’t place her face at the moment.

Behind them was another one of the lackeys who’d attacked him at Ceric’s place—the tall one.

“You see, boss? People work better when you make them miserable without violence,” the tall man said.

“There’s that rot again!” the curly-haired man snapped. “There you go again, actin’ like you’re the one schooling me. Tuck, you dumb sop, who do you think’s the leader? Who’s the idea man, me or you? Who got the portrait?”

The tall man took a deep breath, clearly internally debating. He sighed, his face twisting with frustration bordering on pain, finally spoke.

“Boss, you know, I really don't think that was the portrait,” the tall man said. “A portrait’s, you know… a portrait.”

“What, a portrait can’t have two people in it?” the curly-haired man sneered. “It’s a painting, and it’s got that gold-eyed woman on it, doesn’t it?”

“A portrait’s when they’re sitting or standing, boss. This one’s…” the tall man paused. “One of them’s flying.”

Somehow, this analysis had the curly-haired man nearly convinced. His expression halted like his thoughts, frozen into consternation.

“This moron’s just overthinkin’ it, boss!” the young woman kicked the tall man hard in the shin. “Does he look like a freakin’ connoisseur to you?”

The curly-haired man’s expression went back to normal, and he shook his head back and forth. Then when the young woman put her hand on his shoulder, he broke out into a relaxed smile.

“Listen, Tuck. What’d I tell you just today?” the curly-haired man asked. “What am I tryn’ to tell you, all the damn time?”

“...To shut up?” the tall man replied, looking irritated. He looked like he wanted to kill the woman.

“I told you we gotta get the low-hanging fruit. I brought you into this ring because I thought you were smart. I thought I could teach you something,” the curly-haired man said. “But you’re never learning!”

“You tell him, boss,” the woman grinned.“He’s a slow one! I say kick him out.”

“Go ahead,” the tall man growled quietly to the woman. “See how well this ring works.”

“Tuck’s intimidating me, boss!” the woman ran behind the curly-haired man’s shoulder, making as if she were weeping.

“Shut the hell up, both of you.” The curly-haired man started turning a nice looking piece of vellum around in his hands, trying to make sense of it. Then the tall man sighed and turned it right side up for him.

“See? That’s why I brought you on. To handle the fine stuff for the big thinkers,” the curly-haired man said. “We synergize. It’s a win-win.”

“That’s his core competency, boss,” the young woman said. “Handlin’ the boring stuff. You’re the one who’s gotta do all the blue sky thinkin’. How’d you ever come up with this scheme, anyway?”

Taking more stock of the chamber, Ailn noticed some rods poked through the ceiling—likely for surface testing.

Scattered on the floor were… mallets and chisels, it looked like?

The old craftsman Ailn had seen at the tavern came out from one of the tunnels, carrying a cumbersome, heavy block of stone. Setting it down near the mallets and chisels, he got to work immediately. Guess he wasn’t a leatherworker, but a stonemason.

“Boss, I’m telling you we gotta go back to the cathedral,” the tall man tried to explain. “We don’t have the painting.”

“Just what made you such an expert on art?” the curly-haired man hissed. “We’ll go back to the cathedral once we can safely hit up the reliquary.”

“The portrait’s not gonna be in the reliquary,” the tall man said. He was starting to get desperate.

“Fret not, you whelps!” the old craftsman declared. He had a greedy smile, even as he patiently worked on the heavy block of stone. “Once we’ve taken the bishop’s riches, we’ll have enough coin to buy any painting we wish outright. You needst expand your thinking, Tuckerson. With my skills, this group has achieved a perfect paradigm shift.”

Ailn quietly groaned. For multiple reasons.

At any rate, he had a rough picture of what was going on now. It wasn’t pretty, but frankly it could get a lot worse than this. The important thing was, given what Ailn had seen and surmised, Ceric didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger.

Probably.

That was good enough. There wasn’t anything Ailn could do for him right now. He’d come back as soon as he could—with knights in tow.

For the moment, he’d just have to wait until the staging chamber was empty again. Then he could make a clean exit.

That’s when he heard a girl screaming in the direction of the tunnel’s entrance.

----------------------------------------

To Kylian, Ciecout’s story sounded stranger and stranger.

“A portrait of her?” Kylian asked. “I don’t understand. She asked to be buried with this portrait, but it wasn’t of her own creation?”

“Supposedly, the artist of this portrait was her closest friend,” Ciecout explained. “Ele…Elenor? Elenor Lithel… Frankly, I can’t even bring her exact name to mind.”

“Why would it be priceless, then?” Kylian asked.

“Because supposedly no one has ever seen it. Save Noué, and the artist herself. The enigma of it all has captured the curious spirit of all who claim to love art,” Ciecout said. “As no other portrayals of Noué exist—no one has ever seen her, either.”

“It would be stranger if there were,” Kylian said thoughtfully. “I hardly know the names of the artists who’ve made much-lauded paintings. And I’ve never even questioned what they’d looked like.”

“And I believe it would have been the same for Noué, had she not manufactured the mystique around the portrait herself,” Ciecout said. “It was, allegedly, a portrait drawn from life—Noué sat as a subject for her friend to paint.”

This did make sense, though Kylian wasn’t sure if this was enough to make it nearly as valuable as ‘The Saintess and the Wolf.’ It seemed to him that revealing the painting at all would immediately devalue it.

“Are there any written accounts of her appearance?” Kylian asked.

"Why, that’s precisely the thrill of it," Ciecout declared with a gleam in his eye. "Supposedly, when inspiration struck Areygni, it was unmistakable. In the fervent moments of creation, her eyes would shimmer with a golden hue, and it would appear as if her irises were made of gold themselves.”

Ciecout gestured to the sarcophagus, which itself had eyes fashioned from gold.

“As in, they physically appeared as such?” Kylian asked. He was trying to get a grasp on whether or not this was simply a verbal flight of fancy from the highly engaged Ciecout—or, even from the world of artists and critics who wished to gild their tales.

“Many of the accounts take pains to note they aren’t speaking in metaphor,” Ciecout said.

“She had a sitting portrait done… ” Kylian muttered to himself, thinking, “—and had the portrait buried with her, never shown to anyone but the artist and herself. I can’t fathom why, except that she sought postmortem attention. And you’re certain this piece exists?”

Ciecout hesitated.

“Father Ciecout, you’re certain this piece exists?” Kylian asked, in a more censuring tone. “You’re surely not enlisting the Azure Knights to protect art of dubious existence.”

“I do not have confirmation, per se,” Ciecout said in a hesitant and weasley tone, “but… I believe I have something close.”

“...Is it even possible to be ‘close?’ It’s a static fact,” Kylian raised an eyebrow.

“Most historians agree it exists,” Ciecout said, averting his eyes. “Beyond that, all records of donations to the cathedral are rigorously kept—and ‘The Lady and the Wolf’ was donated alongside another ivory-framed portrait, notably unnamed.”

“If you speak truthfully, then I suppose that conjecture is sound,” Kylian said, hesitantly.

He was surprised that the cathedral had faithfully kept its records from centuries past, and that Ciecout had been able to locate them. Kylian gave investigative credit where it was due.

“And… there is another reason the painting is so priceless,” Ciecout said. He looked sheepish, as if he were about to undermine his own argument, rather than strengthen it. “Rather, a reason why it would be a specific target for theft.”

“Which would be…” Kylian prodded him to go on.

“That, supposedly, the portrait holds the key to her wealth, and a hint to the vault containing the last hundred pieces of art she ever made,” Ciecout said.

He delivered it very well, even though it was precisely the kind of myth that always struck the ear as rubbish.

“I must admit, that aspect of the myth seems childish,” Kylian said, speaking in a gracious tone, “but it isn’t as if it weakens your other points.”

“But I am almost certain it is true, and this treasure exists,” Ciecout admitted.

Kylian sighed.

“If you simply wish for me to protect the painting, it doesn’t really matter if—” Kylian started.

“It is a known fact that Areygni’s reclusive habits only grew more extreme near the end of her life,” Ciecout interrupted Kylian. “Childless, her vast wealth vanished after her death, and at least three of her peers have attested to this vault’s existence!”

“...Certainly, that all sounds reasonable,” Kylian said.

Ciecout seemed unhappy with this lukewarm acceptance. Kylian had given the sort of response that allowed neither continued proselytizing, nor enthusiastic camaraderie.

Kylian had no wish to extinguish his enthusiasm. Nor was he oblivious to the fact he was doing it.

He simply didn’t know how to respond in a manner both honest and gratifying to the priest. Just when Kylian was wondering if he should try and fake interest in a tale that could, at best, be called apocryphal, something astounding happened.

“What the hell… it’s locked? Hey! I heard voices! Open the door!”

“Please open the door!”

Just over a week ago, Kylian had indirectly witnessed what could only be called a resurrection. But now that was the second most shocking moment of his life.

Because from the sarcophagus, Kylian could hear the voices of Ailn and Renea.