Spade and Joyce stood silently in a corner, watching as guildmembers scurried to and fro as they tried to conduct an investigation. Marcus and several high-ranking guildmembers stood together with an air of severity, talking in hushed tones.

"How long do you think it'll take them to figure it out?" Joyce asked.

"If they ever do?" Spade deadpanned. Joyce raised an eyebrow as a guildmember squatted down to observe the vomit before quickly backing away from the mess.

Joyce stared at the blonde mage in silent comprehension before shaking her head.

"This is taking too long," Joyce grumbled. She walked up to the table. Startled gazes swung to her and the conversation ground to a stop. Ignoring them, Joyce grabbed the poisoned wine and chugged straight from the bottle.

"Joyce?" Marcus looked at her with a small amount of trepidation. Joyce set the bottle down with a thud.

"Ok, the guy who arranged this just got poisoned," Joyce announced. "They probably had an antidote or whatever but they'll be cursed no matter what they do. Once I trace where the curse landed, I'm done here. Pay me whatever commission fee you want for this and we'll peace out."

"A Mirror Curse? That's 12th-tier magic!" One of the guild members blurted out in shock. "Wait, then what about the Poisonous Wastelands?"

"We're not doing it," Spade cut in. "Marcus, we told you our requirements literally twenty minutes ago. I know this has been a long evening for you, but we were quite clear. No interpersonal conflicts."

"But the poison-" Marcus began to protest. Spade held up a hand to silence him.

"They tried to kill us too. We can interfere to this extent because it falls under self-defense, but beyond this, it's clear that there's a conflict of interest," Spade said firmly.

"There really isn't, this was something that all the guilds and the Temple had agreed to!" Marcus placed a hand over his heart. "No power struggle or conflict of interest is at work here, we all want to remove the curse. I could swear it on my Guild's honor."

"Yeah I would hold off on that a bit," Joyce said. She gave him a sympathetic look. At his confused expression, Joyce sighed. "The curse I used just now? The recipient is in the Temple of Prophecy."

"There's no way that could be right," Marcus vehemently denied the blatant reality.

"Believe what you want, we'll be outside," Spade said. He nodded at Joyce and turned to leave.

Ignoring the arguing that immediately broke out behind them, Joyce and Spade left the building.

////////

"Aw yesssss, I toasted this one perfectly," Joyce gloated, holding up the marshmallow for Spade to admire.

"Nice," he said, evidently unimpressed. He was eating a marshmallow untoasted despite being next to open fire, like a goddamn heathen.

"Think they'll pay us?" Spade asked between bites of sweet fluff.

"Hopefully," Joyce sighed. "We might just have to chill in the forest or something until my Celestial Cartographer skill finishes up here. Do you want to go see the mushrooms? Just for fun?"

"I don't know, it could end up being annoying," Spade said. "But if you really want to go, we can go." She knew he would say that, the big softie. They sat in content silence for a bit, Joyce trying to eat the marshmallow without burning her mouth.

"Hey Marcus!" Joyce shouted into the flickering shadows as she sensed him approach, several high-ranking guild members accompanying him. Spade glared at her.

"Into my ear?"

"Sorry," she said, not feeling very contrite. She stood up, marshmallow dropping to the ground.

"Greetings," Marcus said as he stepped into the clearing. His expression was somber and determined.

"I hope you're not here to do anything stupid," Spade said as he sensed the atmosphere shift. "You know that won't end well."

"It wouldn't," Marcus admitted. "But we're not. I could hardly harm someone who saved my life."

"I am here to request your help."

"Like we said, not getting involved in interpersonal conflicts," Spade reminded him.

"Not with the Poisonous Wastelands, but with the Temple of Prophecy," Marcus said.

"Even more of a hard no," Joyce raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you hear us when we reminded you about 10 times over the last half hour?"

"None of us have been able to contact the Temple of Prophecy!"

Joyce raised her other eyebrow too. "Oh yeah? So what?"

"We haven't been able to contact them for months, people could be dying!" The blonde mage standing slightly behind Marcus stepped forward.

"Potential threats are a no go," Spade chimed in. The blonde mage glared at him angrily. Marcus quickly put a hand on her shoulder.

"Joan," he said in a warning tone. The mage deflated and lowered her gaze.

"Joyce, a lot of people inside the Temple could be in grave danger. The Temple usually has hundreds of priests and staff inside, and we don't know if any of them are still alive," Marcus said pleadingly. "We need your help."

Joyce tried not to sigh. They just had to keep stacking the humanitarian reasons on her, didn't they? "Messing with a Temple is never a good idea for people like us."

"That's right," Spade shook his head. "You know that gods and spirits actually exist, yeah? They might not physically hurt us if we anger them, but they could slap our karma all the way into the ground. Having bad luck as an interdimensional traveler is pretty much a death sentence."

It was less of a death sentence when you were this powerful, but still, bad luck incurred bad luck. Joyce only had a vague sense of where each interdimensional gate opened. They could open a gate that tore open a nuclear reactor, or accidentally topple a building, or land in a magic-sensitive zone and short-circuit all the magical items nearby. And the more people got hurt or died because of them, the worse their luck would become. Getting rid of powerful evil things could increase their luck, but only if they did it right. If they did it "wrong" or it turned out not to be the morally correct thing by the standards of the local gods, it simply wasn't worth risking their luck level. Between Joyce and Spade, they had enough luck "budgeted", so to speak, to allow leeway for a few misjudgments. But messing with a Temple was the easiest way to directly provoke whichever God or Spirit it served.

Marcus probably didn't know all that, but the serious looks on Spade and Joyce's faces seemed to say enough.

"Then, could I ask you to please, just take a look at the situation? If you judge that it truly isn't something you can get involved in, I won't push it any further," Marcus pleaded in a weary voice. "And I will still pay full price for your troubles."

Not one to refuse easy money, Joyce shrugged. "Taking a look should be alright?" she said to Spade quietly. After mulling it over for a bit, Spade gave a nod of his head.

"Fine. We'll look, but only look. That's all we're agreeing to, and we do not guarantee any further actions," Spade agreed. Marcus visibly sagged in relief, a look of gratitude on his face.

"Thank you, truly. This means a lot to us," Marcus said. Spade nodded for Marcus to lead the way. At the guildmaster's command, Joan opened a portal spell and the group filed through.

Stepping out onto a well-paved road lit by floating orbs of light, Joyce squinted at the temple in the distance. None of the lights were on, but she could tell it was meant to be a majestic structure. Joyce activated her Night Vision skill to get a better look. It was built like a Greco-Roman temple, except for the fact that there were giant relief carvings of mythical beasts on its walls and pillars. A large pool surrounded it on all four sides, with four long pathways of white stone-like material just above the water that led into the temple.

Nothing was outwardly wrong with the temple. It just looked like a fancy museum that had closed for the night. Joyce used a Celestial Insight spell, turning on her Descriptor skill as she waited for the spell to finish up.

Temple of Prophecy, in service of Mithrina, Goddess of Wisdom. The system proceeded to show her the temple's blueprints, with red dots representing the people inside. There were hundreds of red dots scattered throughout, some of them moving around slowly.

"Yeah, the people are still inside and still alive," Joyce told Marcus. If they were dead the dots would be purple to show where the corpses were, a convenient and morbid function of the Descriptor system. Thankfully, there was a distinct lack of purple dots.

"Thank the spirits," Marcus' eyes filled with happy tears. Joyce turned her attention back to the Descriptor screen. From what Joyce had gathered so far, this world had a polytheistic religion with spirits for almost everything, and gods and goddesses that ranked a bit higher. The Goddess Mithrina was the protector of this particular area.

Joyce tapped on the Help icon. "Why is the Temple not responding?" she asked.

Temple is closed as an emergency response under State of Emergency declared by the Head Priest.

Joyce waited for the system to elaborate. It didn't. That was the annoying part of the skill, it could tell you anything you thought to ask of it, but only if you did.

"Why did the Head Priest declare a State of Emergency?" Joyce asked patiently. "Stop crowding me, I'm working." She glared at the guild members who were standing as close to her as possible. They backed up a bit.

The Head Priest declared a State of Emergency to prevent people from leaving the Temple. Joyce waited. The system really liked dramatic pauses. In order to prevent information from being leaked.

That was probably all she would get from this question alone. "What information?" Joyce thought that she really deserved an award of some kind for being the most patient mage alive.

An acolyte discovered that the Head Priest had lost the Goddess' Blessing for withholding information about the lifecycle of the Glowing Crown Mushrooms. Oooh, so some conspiracy stuff going on, probably Bush did 911 levels of stuff to boot. Joyce really shouldn't get involved.

"Why'd they try to kill us anyway?" Joyce couldn't resist wanting to know why someone would try to kill her when she'd only been here for two days. Sure, she was capable of making powerful old men froth at the mouth after ten minutes of interaction, but she'd never set foot in the temple before.

The Prophetess released the Goddess' will without the permission of the Priests and took refuge with the truth-bearing Acolyte in the Temple's Chamber of Truth. That didn't sound good. In fact, it set off every instinct in Joyce's head to leave before she got dragged into a really annoying and complicated situation. But at that moment, the Celestial Insight spell finished up. Celestial Insight was a 30th-tier spell, which was the lowest tier needed to proactively check what was up with the gods instead of waiting for the gods to communicate first.

The Goddess Mithrina has rescinded her Blessing of the Temple's priests and issued a Quest to the Interdimensional Warriors. Oh no. Oh nooooooooo. Joyce groaned as Spade shook his head. It was a Quest of all things. They could refuse, but it would cost them pretty much all the luck they had budgeted for making bad calls.

The spell continued in a mercilessly unaffected tone. Retrieve the Prophetess and truth-bearing Acolyte from the Chamber of Truth and reveal the falsehoods of the excommunicated Priests.

Joyce walked closer to Spade and buried her face in his coat. He patted her consolingly. "Don't cry, I also want to cry," he said.

Reward for the Quest: Celestial Blessing of Luck. Increased tier of Celestial Cartographer skill by 10 tiers. Joyce immediately straightened, any trace of despair gone from her radiantly smiling face. A Celestial Blessing would increase their luck by incredible amounts, not to mention that a 10-tier increase of Celestial Cartographer would allow Joyce to expand the dimension-mapping radius to 7 dimensions rather than the current 3. That made her life a lot easier.

"Yeah?" She asked excitedly. Spade looked at her with a more restrained expression of glee.

"Yeah," he agreed. They turned to Marcus in unison.

"We're going in," Joyce said. "But don't blame us if we blow your mind."

"Know that whatever you end up learning, your Goddess wanted you to learn and that we have no responsibility other than carrying out Her will," Spade added. Without waiting for Marcus' agreement or dealing with the large man's tearful exclamations, the two proceeded towards the Temple at a determined pace, speedwalking fast enough to send up gusts of wind and dust.