The dark streets were sparsely populated as I made my way back to the richer part of town in search of the temple. I hadn’t taken any special note of it before since it had such a different structure from the temple back in Pehrihnk, but I knew I had seen it at least once. The denizens of the rich neighborhood knew I didn’t belong but said nothing as I scoured the streets for the location of the building I had seen before. Almost every building around here looks like it was made in a different architectural style, I grumbled as I walked past a large manor house for the second time, It’s no wonder I didn’t pick it out the first time.

“Excuse me,” I said, calling out to a slender man who was passing by me. His eyes locked into me and I saw his hand move into some kind of gesture. “I am looking for the temple,” I said, making sure to watch in case he attacked me.

“You have no business at the temple,” the man said. Service, that was one of their virtues, I thought, That, and they accept money.

“Actually, I wish to make a donation, since I cannot become a follower,” I said, mimicking Koyl’s polite cadence and register in response to the man’s terse reply. With some hesitation, I even lowered my head slightly, hinting at a bow. The man frowned, then sucked at his teeth.

“And what makes you think we accept donations?” he asked. I reached into my money pouch and removed a coin, then effortlessly floated it above my palm. The man looked unimpressed, so I took out another and did the same. Then, with some effort, I caused both of them to orbit my hand in opposite directions, and moved them up my forearm slowly. When the coins reached my elbow, I reversed their orbital directions, moved them back down to my hand, and placed them in my palm. That used more power than I would have liked, I thought.

“I have been blessed, as you can see, and I wish to show my gratitude,” I said. “I would join, but I cannot, as I am not Luwahriy.” The man looked begrudgingly impressed and sighed.

“Down this street, take a right, then take the third left. It’s the one with the six mounds in its courtyard,” he instructed, pointing me in the right direction. “You’ll have to wait until sunrise though, but the area is quite beautiful and there are benches nearby.”

“Thank you,” I said with a warm smile.

“May you be favored,” the man said, returning the smile and then walking off.

The temple had a simple but odd design. Made of large, irregular chunks of polished black marble stuck together and trimmed with gold, its general shape was that of two prisms. The first, which contained the main entrance, was a wedge shape with a triangular front face that had ten-meter-long edges. This shape extruded smoothly back over the course of about twenty meters into the square face of the cuboid behind it, which was around forty meters on each edge. The size was imposing, but overall the construction was unimpressive compared to some of the more complicated structures in Owsahlk.

The lot the temple sat on was empty save for short grass and six half-spheres with five-meter radii made of the same black marble sat in a circle around it. Presumably decorative, the half-spheres weren't on any of the architectural diagrams, and were unremarkable except for the gold trim. When I had passed by the first time, I assumed the building was a warehouse due to its shape, but having seen diagrams of the internals I could easily picture how they fit inside. The wedge prism had a lobby and reception area, then two hallways that connected to the worship hall inside the cuboid portion, which itself had residences and other rooms above it and behind it. I suppose it's quite defensible, I thought, I can't imagine anyone being able breach this without high explosives. The thinnest of the walls are almost a meter of solid rock, effectively indestructible for the weapons the Uwrish have.

I walked around to the side of the temple’s lot and waited nearly thirty minutes for the street traffic to clear enough that I could enter its premises without being seen. Jumping over the two-meter fence using force magic, I thumped down into the lot on my feet and broke into a sprint. One of the domes provided visual cover, and due to the color of my clothing, I blended in quite well. After checking to see that nobody had spotted me, I crawled on the grass over to the door and strained my ears to determine if anyone was inside at the front desk. It was unlikely since it was the middle of the night, but I didn’t know the Rehvite schedule.

Before peering in through the front, I got up and walked around the back to examine the rear entrance, pressing myself along the temple’s outside surface to blend in as I walked. Vaozey had insisted that it wasn’t a viable entry and exit point, but I wanted to confirm it for myself. Sure enough, as she had said, the large doors that could be opened to allow for cargo loading were made of stone, and likely weighed several metric tons each. Why would they need a loading door this secure? I wondered, but I didn’t have the time to postulate.

Back at the front door, I pushed on the stained-black wood and found that it wasn’t even locked. Peering inside, I saw that none of the hanging lanterns were lit, and it appeared that nobody was inside the lobby. Closing the door behind me, I crept inside and lit a small ball of light magic near my feet so I wouldn’t step on anything important. Along the whole back wall behind the reception desk was a tapestry made of gold and silver thread depicting the triangular symbol from the mark of ire, as well as two ant figures. It would have been convenient to see this earlier, I grumbled to myself.

Picking randomly, I entered the left door in the back of the lobby and walked across the hallway it led into, viewing yet more tapestries with strange symbology made of expensive-looking materials as I went. When I reached the door to the worship hall, I pressed my face to the floor to look under it, and saw that there were no lit lanterns inside. Only after waiting for another two minutes and hearing no noises did I feel comfortable enough to open the door and create a small light.

The hall itself was more sparsely adorned than the other rooms, but no less impressive. Nearly thirty meters tall by thirty long, it made up the majority of the internal space of the temple. Like Vaozey had indicated, there were twenty-four long wooden benches on the left and right sides, allowing it to seat several hundred people at maximum capacity. The benches faced inwards to the center of the room at around a twenty-degree angle, and at the far end of the hall was a large podium on an elevated stone platform.

But where are the- I began to think, but then I spotted what I was looking for. At the back left and right of the hall were two spiral staircases that led into the rooms in the upper parts of the temple. I was about to approach and examine the hall in more detail when I heard muffled human voices coming from the staircase on the right. Time to go, I thought, letting my light go out and dashing back into the hallway, closing the door behind me as quietly as possible.

In the pitch darkness, I had only my memory to guide me, but thankfully my mental image of the hallway was accurate enough that I didn’t run into the door to the lobby. Peeking under the lobby’s exit door just to be safe, I saw nobody standing outside, so I exited into the yard. Fifteen minutes of stressful waiting later I jumped the fence back into the street. Though I was fairly sure nobody saw me or was following me, I made a number of random turns and took a long path back to the middle of town. By the time I arrived at the inn, it was dawn.

“I feel like shit,” Koyl complained. When I arrived back at the inn I found him sitting at a table with a full plate of food in front of him, barely eating. “It took an hour to clean up all the vomit,” he continued. “Did you really have to use my new shirt to wipe it up?”

“It’s a gambeson,” I corrected, “and would you have rather had to clean all the bedsheets? It was your fault anyway.” I asked. Koyl groaned and rubbed his head.

“I can’t figure out what’s a memory and what was a dream,” he mumbled. “I know my znahdeyvtih is gone, but the rest… Gods, my head feels like I’m being punched over and over again. What did I say to you?”

“You were not coherent, but you did speak about Yaavtey,” I told him. Koyl involuntarily tensed up at the mention of his torturer.

“I did?” he asked, looking at me nervously.

“You quoted him, quoting from the book of Rehv,” I said. “You said he bragged about using them for their money.”

“I don’t remember any of that,” Koyl muttered, frowning and rubbing his left eyebrow.

“Why didn’t you mention this earlier?” I asked. I tried to phrase the question to sound non-confrontational, but Koyl’s reaction told me it didn’t work.

“I don’t remember it,” Koyl repeated. “I can… I can remember saying that, but I don’t… I don’t know. I might have made that up because I don’t remember it at all. That whole time in the room, I don't remember much of it. Not the details.” Trauma-based memory loss, maybe? I wondered. It wasn’t common in warbreed, even pseudofemales, but it happened occasionally. Since the creators had a term for it, I assumed it could happen to them as well.

“Are you still coming with me tonight?” I asked. Koyl looked at me, then sighed.

“Yes,” he replied. I grunted involuntarily out of surprise. “You thought I wouldn’t, didn’t you?”

“You are not exactly in optimal shape,” I told him. “It would have been understandable had you chosen to remain here.”

“Yeah, I’m useless, but I’m more useless if I do nothing,” Koyl replied dejectedly. “It’s not as though staying away will fix the nightmares. If I want to get out of here and get to Kahvahrniydah, going with you helps my chances. The worst that can happen is that I get killed. I'm not fighting though, I'm there to swipe valuables, that's it.”

“Good,” I nodded. “Now, go back to bed and sleep. I’m going to meet our mutual friend and confirm our meeting location. I’ll get you up just before dusk and explain what we’ll be doing.”

“You did what!?” Vaozey shouted, her voice echoing down the alley. Like the last time, it hadn’t taken me long to find her. If I make this quick, I can get six hours of sleep at the inn, I thought.

“I scouted the interior of the building to confirm your information since there were no people present,” I said. “I took precautions to ensure I wasn’t detected.” Though they probably wouldn’t have worked if there was any advanced technology in the building, I thought, It was possible that there were sensors inside, but the lack of immediate security response indicates otherwise. The entire topic of how the Rehvites knew about me was maddeningly absent of useful information.

“Are you seytoydh poymawpjhoyjh?” Vaozey snapped, drawing looks from some of the slum dwellers walking by the alley we were standing in. “What if they saw you? What would you have done?”

“Killed them and fled,” I answered. Vaozey’s eyes narrowed, and I could tell she was grimacing under her mask. Well, maybe just fled, I thought, it would have depended on the distance.

“And set the whole building on alert!” Vaozey yelled. “They might have canceled the aotkeylawtz ceremony if you got caught, do you realize that?” Yes, but I would rather have botched the operation safely than gone into a near-total unknown, I thought, I have no desire to repeat the intel mistakes I made with Yaavtey.

“Koyl and I will not be attempting to save you if you are overwhelmed during this operation,” I said, ignoring the outburst. “To reiterate, my objective is to obtain information and attempt to distract the Rehvite warrior you mentioned during planning. I make no guarantees of success in the latter, but I will give it my best effort. Koyl will be trying to steal objects of value.”

“That’s about what I expected,” Vaozey grumbled, rolling her eyes. “Koyl is actually coming?”

“Where and when are we meeting up today?” I asked. Vaozey had mentioned the sewer grate we entered through before when telling me about the plan, but I wanted her to give me the location directly so there would be no misunderstandings.

“An hour after dusk at the sewer entrance we met at before,” she said, stating what I had already assumed. “That tunnel leads to another grate near the temple. The walk will take about half an hour.” I mentally mapped out my route, then nodded.

“Got it,” I said, “we’ll be there.”

“You had better be,” Vaozey grunted. “Koyl can stay home if he wants to. Oh, and if the Rehvites know we’re coming I’ll make your night as unpleasant as possible, so I hope you’re as sneaky as you think you are.”

I managed to get Koyl up just after dusk with a bit of coercion, and after I explained the plan to him we headed out to the meetup point. Koyl was disgusted by the prospect of entering a sewer, but once he saw Vaozey jump down he seemed to become more determined to proceed. After replacing the grate, I lit up our way with light magic, much to Vaozey’s annoyance. We didn’t talk much as we walked through the tunnel, the tension in the air keeping Koyl from chattering like he usually did.

Vaozey made multiple stops at refuse piles to get bags of gear. One of the piles contained balaclava-like masks for Koyl and me, which was a welcome surprise. We had both brought long strips of cloth to wrap our faces in but the masks were far better and less likely to slip off. Once we reached the exit grate nearest to the temple Vaozey signaled for us to stop, then pulled out more equipment from a hole in the wall. The largest piece of gear she withdrew was a large waterskin filled with a chemical of some kind.

“Why are we stopping now?” Koyl asked nervously.

“Put your masks on. Have to assemble this,” Vaozey said tersely, pouring liquid from the waterskin into one of the devices she had retrieved. It was a glass bottle with a pointed bottom that had holes drilled along its widest point. Vaozey filled a second identical device, then put some kind of fuses in the top of them along with corks in each hole to keep the oil from spilling out. It’s obviously a throwable incendiary, I thought with a small smirk of satisfaction, I just don’t recognize the exact design. That smell though, it’s almost like jet fuel.

“So I told you I’d explain the weapons, and here they are,” Vaozey said, holding up the two filled bottles. “I’ve been trying to think of a good, appropriate way to remove these people from my city for a very long time. I wanted to poison them, but the logistics of it just don’t work out when they don’t share food and drink in the temple. At one point I thought about trying to collapse the temple on them but it’s just built too damned well. Can't even use the tunnels because none run underneath it. I tried a bunch of thing, and failed every one of them.”

“So you’ve gone with incendiaries for this attempt,” I said. “I assumed as much. It's the obvious choice for dealing with crowds.”

“I heard a fun little tale a few weeks ago from a friend who heard it at the docks,” Vaozey continued. “Apparently, in Vehrehr, there used to be this group of criminals. Real zteyyseytz, did all kinds of bad shit. Had a fortress for a hideout that made it nearly impossible to get rid of them, not that the guards cared much. Then one day they pissed off the wrong guy, and that guy decided to kill them all.”

“Oh,” Koyl blurted, mirroring the feeling of recognition I was having.

“You know what this guy does?” Vaozey asked rhetorically. “He doesn’t try to kill them with a sword or a mace. There’s no way one person can fight that many people. He doesn’t try to collapse the building on them, it’s a fortress after all. Doesn’t even use poison, because that would be too hard and too slow. No, he locks them all inside their base and turns it into a furnace. Kills every one of them to the last man.” That’s not entirely accurate, I thought, there was poison in that molotov.

“You know we’re going to be in the temple, right?” Koyl asked.

“Now, that story might have been embellished a little because the guy at the docks was also selling this,” Vaozey said, ignoring Koyl and holding up the waterskin. She dripped a few milliliters of the liquid onto the ground, then looked at me and gestured with her eyebrows. Putting my foot near the liquid, I ignited it and watched as it burst into smokeless flames after throwing off dozens of sparks. “I have no idea what it is, but it burns for a very long time, and it’ll ignite if you so much as look at it wrong,” Vaozey said. The flames continued to burn, showing no signs of stopping.

“It’s burns slow like tar, but it doesn’t smoke, and those sparks…” I said, trying to figure out what I was looking at. “I’ve never seen anything like it. You bought this?” I would almost believe this is a nanomaterial if not for the fact that it’s impossible, I thought, or, rather, highly unlikely.

“Paid a grand total of zero ngeyt for it,” Vaozey laughed. “So, boys, don’t touch the oil unless you want to have a bad time. I’m going to be dumping a bunch of this in the lobby and lighting it to keep everyone inside. That’s why we’ve got thirty minutes. Should be more than enough time.” Koyl and I looked at each other, then at the sputtering flame that was only now beginning to die. Well if it worked before, it could work again, I shrugged.

Once the streets were clear Koyl, Vaozey, and I ran from the alley we were waiting in into the temple’s lot. Light could be seen through the cracks around the entrance door, but nobody was patrolling the courtyard. When we reached the door, I opened it and let the other two inside. A smiling woman behind the reception desk, dressed in black, moved to greet us before halting midway through her first word.

“Excuse us miss,” Koyl said, walking forward with his typical fake smile. “We’re here for the ritual?”

“Uh, you-” the woman stuttered. I saw her eyes dart for what was obviously a hidden weapon, and before she could even move a throwing knife sunk to its hilt in her eye. Her shocked expression, frozen on her face in death, loosened only slightly as she collapsed.

“Seyt,” Koyl swore, “so much for not killing.” I walked over to the woman, chopped her head off in a single swing of my sword, and pulled the knife out for reuse. We had made surprisingly little noise, and peeking through the back double doors revealed that nobody in the lecture hall was any the wiser to our entrance. I reached behind the desk and found a crossbow, then used it to bar the handles of the entrance door so nobody else could enter behind us.

“Good idea, they might try to run through the fire,” Vaozey said. She walked up to the door beside me and gestured for me to stand back, then began dumping the entire remainder of the waterskin on the floor. Koyl and I backed up to the right hallway door to avoid getting any oil on our feet. Vaozey, on the other hand, seemed unconcerned. Once the waterskin was empty she joined us, and we walked entered the hallway.

“You’re not going to light it?” Koyl asked. Vaozey, who was wiping her feet on the rug, pulled out a small flint and steel sparker from her waist.

“I’m getting to it,” she said. She tore off the oily section of the rug, set it ablaze with her sparker, then threw it into the lobby, somehow avoiding lighting herself on fire. Well if they didn’t know we were here before, they do now, I thought as a wave of heat blew by me, roaring loudly. Vaozey laughed as though she heard me, then pulled out two bottle incendiaries from her bag and set it down in the hallway.

“What are those?” Koyl asked. “I mean, I know what they look like, but why the holes?”

“Just watch,” Vaozey grinned, uncorking the drilled holes in the bottles. She looked at me, and I lit the fuses on each with magic, then she swaggered out into the worship hall while Koyl and I remained back to stay out of sight. Koyl was practically vibrating with tension, the soft clattering of his teeth audible to me even over the flames. I, on the other hand, was scanning the room for anyone who might be the warrior I was supposed to find.

There was mild panic in the worship hall, evident by the rumblings of hushed speech that only grew louder once people saw Vaozey. A bald old man, the high priest presumably, stood resolute behind the podium and glared daggers at her. “Why are you here, detested?” he croaked, in a voice that sounded very much like Vaozey’s. Judging by what I know, he must be at least eighty years old to have an appearance like that, I thought.

“I have a question for all of you,” Vaozey announced loudly. “Do you believe in Rehv? Truly, and fully?” The room went silent, then murmurs started again. “I ask because I want to know if you’re just using it as an excuse to kill and maim for fun, or if you’re going to die screaming for a god who isn’t going to save you.”

“Leave us in peace!” a woman yelled back. “Rehv has no love for your kind and has already denied you his gifts! Is that not enough!? We disobey his teachings to allow you to live among us! Now you repay our generosity with threats and violence!? Ridiculous!”

“So it’s generosity then?” Vaozey asked, the calmness in her voice sounding more ominous than rage would have. “In that case, I will returning the favor to you seytoydh zeyngshgowyeyl lawmzao scum. I know you all like fire very much. In fact, I experienced your love for it firsthand during the initial pogrom you ran on us five years ago. The ‘Cleansing’ as you call it, though we have a different name for it in the slums. I was so touched by your actions that I’ve decided to show you the same kindness you showed us back then. I even made sure this fire was lit with magic, though not my own since I am a worthless detested who lacks the gift to do such a thing. Since I've put so much effort in, I really hope you enjoy it just as much as I did!”

Having spoken her final words, Vaozey flung the bottles diagonally to her left and right, adding lateral spin to them with her wrists. About a quarter of a second into their arcs, the spinning bottles began to spew oil out in all directions, sprinkling fluid onto everyone within ten meters of their flight paths. It didn't immediately ignite, but I suspected she had accounted for that.

“Shit,” Koyl hissed, then the bottles landed on the stone ground and shattered. The fuses ignited the remaining liquid, that liquid’s ignition created sparks, those sparks showered the people nearby, and those people burst into flames. The sparks from the people igniting touched others beside them, and soon enough the whole room was on fire.