“Oh, come on!” Jelena shout-whispered, ever mindful of their location in a library. “I was so close! Church is always interfering with my love life, one way or another.”

  And I was so close to being known as a vow-breaker, Calaf thought.

  Being seconds away from a mortal blow proved clarifying, dragging the seduced and successfully succumbed-to-temptation Calaf back to reality.

  An unnaturally tall, vaguely feminine figure in body-obscuring robes stood between the would-be lovers. She readied twin daggers that would count as longswords on anyone else.

  ”It says she’s a ‘shadow of the arbiters,” Calaf said. “Assassin class. Some offshoot of Scout or Thief?”

  “Figures the assassination arbiter wouldn’t be public facing,” Jelena muttered to herself, fiddling with her gear.

  Calaf drew his shield and spear, now fortunate that he hadn’t had time to shed his armor. Over on the far side of this assassin, Jelena was mouthing something to him, silently:

  “Keep her busy while I tighten my belt!” she mouthed.

  Huh, the Squire was growing exceptionally good at reading her lips. Maybe all that time kissing familiarized him with the contours of her mouth… whatever the reason, Calaf steeled himself and readied her spear.

  “What are you doing here?” Calaf asked.

  Church arbiters were not on stab-on-sight basis with Calaf. At least not yet.

  This arbiter had jumped down from a bare section underneath the fourth-floor balcony. There was nothing there to possibly hold onto, only a bit of shadow where the lights streaming in through some open windows failed to illuminate.

  How much had she seen? Diona certainly knew that they’d discussed the contents of the restricted section. Associating Calaf both with attempted archive-thievery and with aiding and abetting Jelena in other ways.

  Rather than take the bait and start talking, the assassin rushed forward, twin long knives out. Calaf blocked.

  No twin blows ever struck the shield. Instead, Diona’s form melted down into a liquid shadow on the wall. The shadow zigged and zagged, skirting the desk, along the narrow shadow cast by some fallen books, and over into the wide-open shade cast by a hefty bookshelf.

  “Behind you!” Jelena said, nearly battle-ready.

  Calaf turned his wide, lumbering shield, swinging it in a wide arc. His foe emerged, fully formed, out of a shadow behind his back. A knife struck his shoulder pauldron, which should have been more than enough to dissipate the blow. Instead, there was a sickening crack and Calaf stumbled back. He kept the shield swinging with his still-good arm. The wall of metal batted the attacker away; she was surprisingly light, flowing like liquid or smoke.

  “Gah!” Calaf stumbled back. “It’s like it pierced right through my defenses.”

  “Calaf, drop your armor,” Jelena said. “Before she comes in for another attack.”

  “What? I’ll have nothing between me and those knives.”

  “She can pierce armor. Unequip it! Just trust me!”

  Hastily, Calaf fumbled through his Inventory and swapped out for a more basic, civilian garb. It offered little in the way of defense. Going up against an at-level monster in random traveler’s garb would be dangerous. Even suicidal!

  Again, that shadow on the wall grew into a full person, knives drawn. This time, Calaf had better maneuverability to bring his shield around.

  One knife hit the shield, while another broke through Calaf’s guard and struck his forearm not unlike that first mail-breaking blow. Only, this time, the pain proved more manageable.

  Still well off his footing, but the damage this time was negligible.

  “Good thinking, Jelena!” he said.

  The relic thief rushed to his side. Knives were drawn; bodice laced up. Jelena was ready to go!

  “I was a higher level than you before I Scoured the eye,” she said, standing back-to-back with him. “I know my stuff, Hot Shot.”

  Calaf nodded. “That you do.”

  The pair shared a smile, then they were back to focusing on every shadow in the room. Their furtive church assassin could come from anywhere the light did not fully cover.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Be careful,” Calaf said. “I have the Interface backing me up at least. A stab to your back will hurt regardless of armor rating.”

  Jelena frowned, but only just. “I’ve got more than enough skill to make up for it. For instance...”

  Another leap as their assassin dived from out near the base of a table leg. This time, Jelena’s knife met Diona’s, and she parried the assassin.

  “See?” Jelena let out a triumphant ‘ha!’ sound. “Her mail-breaker gimmick could take out some high-level dissidents if she ambushed them by surprise. But once you find out her tricks, she’s probably the weaker of the church arbiters.”

  The pair circled, back-to-back, to no response from their would-be assassin. Calaf took the opportunity to heal up a good forty points.

  “Didn’t take the bait.” Jelena shrugged. “Well, the fact that she’s been lurking around the archives and tried whacking us unawares means we’re at least onto something big, yeah?”

  Calaf saw a shadow to his right move. He turned to face it, only for two more to appear to his now-exposed left.

  There was more than one.

  All wielded the same Twin Obsidian Mail Breakers.

  “Count at least four on my end!” Jelena said. “Some sort of body double ability? Cloning? Never seen it before.”

  "They all have different names." Calaf shook his head. "Guess you can't see it. But they're called Shadows of the Church Arbiters. What does that mean?"

  All the cutthroats leapt at once. No time to dodge or block. Instead, Calaf cast Flaming Sword of Faith. His spear lit ablaze. Shadows in the room shifted to accommodate this new light source. Nominally there were more, longer shadows for the assassin to work with – but they were all situated well away from the spear-torch. What’s more, the numerous shadow soldiers melted away under the light.

  “There we go!” Jelena grabbed his shoulder. “Head for the stairs, then make for a window!”

  “No running in the library!” said a concerned librarian with a finger at their lips.

  Calaf and Jelena ran regardless, down one flight of stairs, then around the library balconies in a counterclockwise fashion, looking for an easy way out.

  “And is that a flame!?” asked another librarian, flabbergasted.

  “Pardon us, good sir!” Calaf rushed right past him.

  “No fire spells in the library!”

  “The whole building is made of wood!”

  Calaf held his fire-spear out over the balcony ledge. Spell-fire was clean all things considered. Few embers would fly off the tip down to the shelves below.

  “These books contain hundreds of years of documentation,” said that same gobsmacked librarian.

  “We’ll be out soon, old man!” Jelena jeered.

  No signs of the assassins. It appeared Calaf’s makeshift torch had saved their bacon once again.

  “Don’t bother with the stairs down to the first floor. Or with trying to make a break for the exit. It’s the perfect chokepoint,” Jelena said as the pair ran.

  “Where should we go?”

  “Window.” Jelena pointed to a carved-out opening bereft of glass that they had a relatively straight shot for.

  “Will this work?”

  Still dashing, Jelena nodded. “I make note of escape routes in every building I walk into.”

  The pair made their approach. Calaf could see shadows gathering in his peripheral vision.

  “Another advantage to swapping out your armor?” Jelena began.

  “Yes?”

  “Less fall damage! Now, jump!”

  With Jelena half-dragging Calaf along by the hand, the pair took a flying leap out of the wide window, itself a carve-out of the gargantuan tree.

  Maybe the church assassin reached out to grab them at the last minute, only narrowly missing their collars. It would’ve looked more impressive that way, but Calaf did not look back to confirm. Instead, the pair flew, then fell, onto a tangled mass of tree branches carefully cultivated into walkways and stairwells.

  The pair fell about on top of each other, Calaf trying his best to shield Jelena from the fall but mostly just taking some paltry damage himself to unclear benefit to Jelena.

  “Did great!” she said, hand batting his shoulder.

  “Ah!” Calaf grimaced.

  That was the shoulder that had been injured in the church hunter’s opening attack.

  Enkidu was never hard to find, and indeed heard the commotion with his preternaturally good ears and rendezvoused with them back at ground level.

  The group of four was out of town within thirty minutes. They traveled south and west, along the path back to Riverglen.

  Night was spent at a campsite with ample light. They manually gathered wood and kept the fire going rather than trust an Interface-compatible party camp, which Calaf had some copies of thanks to his leftover campaign rations.

  “Doubt we’ll be pursued,” Zilara mused as the sun began to set. “If some church cutthroat was guarding the archives just waiting for potential dissidents to even discuss verboten material, stands to reason they wouldn’t leave those archives unguarded for long.”

  Fair enough. Even so, Enkidu would be keeping watch for the night. He settled into a quiet repose as the night advanced and the moon rose in a slender crescent.

  “Dissidents, huh?” Calaf stared into the bonfire, kicking at some dirt as he sat on an oversized log.

  It was impossible to hide his name from that assassin in the Interface. Not without a spoofing ring. And he’d been a little too preoccupied to equip any rings considering he was on top of Jelena with his lips buried in her neckline at the time of the attack.

  “Hey.” Jelena gave his now-healed shoulder a supportive squeeze. “Don’t worry about it. So what if she blabs? Church arbiters have warrants out for Enkidu and I, dead or alive. Doesn’t stop us from traveling unmolested. Mostly.”

  Jelena’s eyepatch was off. She let her once-branded eye air out on occasion. So when she looked at Calaf warmly, it was with one eye a natural rusty red-brown, another scarred and with a purplish tint.

  “T-thanks.” Calaf rested his hand atop hers. “Still, it doesn’t seem like I’m going to be able to maintain our… détente? And my good standing with the church simultaneously.”

  “Is that what you’d call it?” Jelena giggled.

  Calaf rolled his eyes. “You know. Our…”

  “Whatever this is?” Jelena nodded. “Sure. I hear you.”

  The pair looked into the fire for some time. Jelena scooted a little closer. Then:

  “I’ve been meaning to ask this for a bit. But…” Jelena took three quick breaths.

  Her Scoured eye was cloudy, with a scar running from her eyebrow to her cheekbone. The actual remaining utility in the eye was ambiguous, but it didn’t seem out of focus and mostly followed her good eye. The faintest remnants of a Brand were still visible, partially milky but reflective in the firelight.

  “Do you want to… maybe?”

  Calaf leaned in. “Hmm?”

  Jelena steepled her hands, glancing every which way. “Maybe… want to...” again, she exhaled. “Travel with us? Like, together? Wherever we happen to go?”

  Over against a tree, Enkidu let out a neutral grunt.

  During a brief pause to process all that, Calaf breathed out sharply through his nose.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Yes!” Jelena pumped both her fists. “Yes. I was hoping.”

  “But.” Again, Calaf breathed in. “There is one thing I need to do first…”

  Calaf went on to explain his purpose in heading back to Riverglen. He could not exactly just run off to into the arms of a wanted criminal wily-nilly. His nominal-fiancée was off manipulating wayward faithful and potentially administering a monastery full of muted, punished victims of the church back home.

  Even if he was on the church’s hit list, even if he was rapidly growing beyond blind faith in the Interface and the Church of the Menu, there were some things he was honor-bound to do.

  Jelena Turandot took Calaf’s explanation in stride. It helped that she was also a former sister of the church, surely.

  “Go do what you have to.” She winked her Scoured eye. “We’ll wait for you north of Granite Pass. Keep farming those Pandemonium Wisps so Zilara can level up.”

  A great mental weight was lifted from Calaf’s shoulders. Belatedly, he had the thought that maybe neither of them was the spurned party in this equation.

  His traveling companion seemed to sense his trepidation. “Relax. Many things though I may be, homewrecker is not one of them. Go settle accounts, Hot Shot…”

  “Thank you.” Calaf said with a nod.

  “That’s the you I like, after all...” Jelena winked her bad eye once more. “… Hot Shot.”