Brand-Bound: Hallowed Be The Menu [Rivals-to-Lovers Slowburn Fantasy Romance]

The undercity was home to the oldest structures in the shrinking and fading Olde Capital. This is where ancient, unbranded humans dug to try and escape the notice of the Demon King and its minions.

Along the west wall, just off the bridge, sat a chapel in styles that predated any Cathedral of the Menu. It was the Shrine of Shamana, and the 'ground level' was a façade hiding a sprawling underground complex.

Unlike all other dungeons on the pilgrim's path, the Shrine of the cleric was available for guided tours. Groups would depart in a single file, through ancient crypts and past intentional dead ends carved into sheer stone, to the lowest level. There, cleric-aspirants would collect their rank-up material and reclass at the tomb of Priestess Mia, mother of the church.

Jelena sighed. "Stopped a few levels shy of ranking up here. Good times. Still, don't miss them. What're we doing here again?"

"Going to sneak in and try to set up a teleport point at Mia's grave," Zilara said.

Moonless night had fallen over the Olde Capital. Public parks and avenues were too large for off-season traffic in the light of day. Here in the more intimate twilight, the odd local walking about in the distance gave the sprawling city a cozy atmosphere. That the plateau grew chilly at night likewise helped.

It would be months before the first pilgrim made it to the city. Access to the shrine of the cleric was carefully controlled during the day, with visitors required a monk for chaperoning.

First rule of the thieves' guild: security was only as strong as the weakest point of entry. Locked doors with weak hinges would seldom stay closed with any amount of effort put towards burglarizing. A simple lock secured the above-ground shrine on off-hours. It was here that, after a bit of lockpicking, they would walk right in through the front door.

"Just give me a sec," Zilara said.

The lockpicks failed once, then twice. But as they were the Lockpicks of the Thief, they proved unbreakable. They could try all night, and Zilara only needed to be lucky once.

Lucky, the holy child proved to be. The simple doors to the Shrine of Shamana swung open.

"Hehe. Breaking and entering," Zilara said, pocketing the token XP that came from a successful lockpick. "Unbecoming a Paladin. But I guess you've come to terms with that since you've been porkin' Hoss."

Calaf frowned. Jelena shushed the holy child before she could further antagonize the team tank.

The gang filed into the surface shrine. There were four walls, representing the four holy classes. Dead center was a stone relief of Mia, the Cleric. It was the same kind of statue that could be found at statuary halls and wayshrine grottos. Twin stairs wound below ground behind this statue.

"The real shrine is underground," Jelena said.

There were no guards topside, though there was no guarantee it would stay that way. The crew hastened underground.

Unlike the Battletower or Fort Duran, none of the crew had been to this dungeon. They'd heard rumors. Most clerics traveled down here in groups with a dedicated guide. It didn't seem to be a combat-heavy dungeon. Still, they walked cautiously with their path marked by Zilara's illumination spell.

There would be no trace that they were ever here.

A near identical room, sans an absent statue, waited three stories beneath the undercity. Archways to the north, east, and south offered passage into a subterranean shrine.

"Hmm. Some kind of labyrinth?" Zilara asked. "What's the catch?"

Calaf pulled out a torch and brought light. "It looks much more straightforward. Like the crypts beneath any cathedral. What are we looking for?"

Zilara shrugged. "Nothing, until we get to the main shrine. There's no guarantee it'll work. But hey, we can get some of the cleric level-up material while we're here."

The west archway would lead dead ahead. Calaf took point. Four footsteps echoed off the cold stone. In the span of one footfall, only two boots stepped on the stone beyond the archway.

Calaf and Zilara were there.

"Where'd Jelena go?" Calaf glanced about. "She was just—"

"Hoss?" Zilara asked. "Uh, did we walk ahead?"

The hall was quiet and lifeless. Only a few obsidian statues of feminine figures in habits and wearing robes lined the walls. Uncannily detailed faces glowed in the low lighting. A torch and an illumination spell were the only sources of light for the group, and they were in Calaf and Zilara's control, respectively.

"C'mon," Calaf said, and carried the holy child by the hand back to the three-way intersection.

Footsteps from the north hall approached rapidly. Jelena emerged into the light.

"What was that?" asked the relic thief.

"You were right behind us." Calaf looked at the archway.

As they pondered this new anomaly, a grumbling baritone came from the high stairwell.

"This ruin does not condone my presence," said the wildman.

"Did you bail on us?" Jelena asked. "That's unlike you."

Enkidu's growling voice did not echo off the stones.

"I stepped through the threshold and found myself walking out the front gate," said the swordsman.

A light of recognition appeared in Jelena's eye.

"Alright. Stay there and keep watch, buddy. We'll sort this out."

Without another word, Jelena made for the west archway again. Nothing happened. Calaf threw her a torch, then pulled another from his Inventory.

"Curious," said Zilara.

The path was clear. Calaf and Zilara took another step over the threshold. Jelena was straight ahead in one instant. Then, in the time it took to blink, Jelena disappeared, and the branded pair found themselves in a barren walkway.

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Calaf turned. The intersection chamber was at their back.

"You two there?" Jelena said, walking back into the room. "Shrine's getting us mixed up."

"Wonder why it doesn't want us traveling together," Zilara asked.

"I think I know why," Calaf said, and then shared his theory with the group.

The shrine was split between Branded and non-branded sections. The mother of the church oversaw the mass branding of converts as a policy. Her shrine made sure branded would reach the innermost shrine. The daytime tours of cleric-aspirants would be none the wiser to this element. Only a mixed party would encounter hang-ups.

"Makes sense," Jelena said. "Okay, we have to split up anyway. Just keep pressing. Should be a straight shot."

"Be careful," Calaf said.

"When have I ever been reckless?" Jelen asked with a smile.

Calaf shot her a look, but the pair went back through the south and east wings, respectively.

The south hall carried on to the south, then turned due east. All three wings headed for the same location.

"So, just us two?" Zilara asked.

"Guess so." Calaf cast his torch upon a line of statues.

There was little order to the statues. Some wore gear that was readily accessible in the market. Others wore older and more antiquated gear from years past. All were of younger clerical figures, and all were feminine. Still, nothing approached, and the pair saw no signs of any enemies or dire-beasts. Occasional side paths offered a view of the two other halls, still in darkness.

Statues grew sparse the further they ventured.

"Hmmm. This is creepy," Zilara said.

"Just… stay within reach of each other," Calaf said. "Are you cold?"

"This is nothin'. Cold seldom bothers me, anyways," Zilara said, shivering.

Nevertheless, nothing interrupted their journey, and they found the straight passageway altering course at a thirty-degree angle northward. All pathways converged in an eight-sided chamber twice the size of the last. Unlike the chamber's smaller mirror image or its surface-level clone above, this chamber contained a grand sarcophagus built into the stone flooring.

"This is…" Calaf began.

Zilara nodded. "The gravesite of Mia, mother of the church."

Additional graves lined the back walls. Calaf investigated the leftmost one.

"Not just Mia. This is the holy bloodline," he said.

Every archpope for the first 150 years of church history sat in eight coffins, sealed tight. A chiseled effigy of each pope and popess adorned their respective tombs.

Calaf scanned the room with his torch. "Of course. The ground at the Demon Lord's Fall is lousy with pooled demon bile and miasmatic pockets. Too porous for a proper crypt."

Instead, Holy Priestess Mia had been interned in her grandmother's ancestral shrine, repurposed from some now-dead faith. The first seven generations of her heirs in the holy bloodline, those who'd been appointed archpope, at least. Many more cousins filed out into the church lands, spreading Mia's twinbrand eye pattern as a rare flourish to branch families and the like.

"Only one of the twins got to stay and serve as heir," Zilara said, betraying knowledge beyond that of a pre-teen. "The other kid got exiled. Anyway, let me see what I can do here."

Zilara knelt at Priestess Mia's tomb. Calaf scanned the graves from left to right. There was Archpope Select I, son of the Priestess and Paladin. Archpope Menuglow I, Mia's grandson by the same line. Select II, Itemcraft I, Systemmessage I and II. Figures he'd learned about in detail in the Riverglen Cathedral's orphanages, though details oft escaped him so many years removed from the prior's lessons. Why, as a former church sister, Jelena ought to—

"Wait a minute, where's Jelena?"

The three passageways were roughly equidistant. If anything, Jelena should have had an faster time of it with no need to turn. As soon as Calaf thought of this, a flurry of footsteps approached fast from the west.

Jelena ran in, panting heavily. She slid to a stop just past the threshold.

"Safe!"

"Are you okay?" That got Calaf's attention. He approached Jelena, the graves of archpopes past forgotten.

"You guys didn't run into those things? I've been dodging shades since I left the view of the western shrine." Jelena stood up straight and steadied her breathing. "Going to stock back up on ammo."

"What were they?" Calaf asked.

"Remember those wraiths from the Deepwood archives?" Jelena adjusted her eyepatch. "Those things again. Torch only made the shadows longer this time. Dumped it to cover my escape, but, well, couldn't exactly see where I was running."

Calaf glanced down the darkened hall. Nothing stirred. Even so, his neck hair stood on end, visions of those library shades etched into his memories. The shades appeared to be a church security protocol. Perhaps they would not be active within the shrine during the day. Or perhaps they would lurk in the halls to accost people who wandered during the tour.

"Aw, man." Zilara stood, then turned around. "This isn't going to work."

As Zilara would go on to explain, there was a form of anti-magical barrier upon the tomb to prevent meddling.

"Had a feeling about that," Jelena said. "Enkidu probably wouldn't be able to use it anyway, if getting exiled out the front door was any indication. Who knows where he'd be thrown out at?"

To say nothing of the shades that stalked the halls. Hostile territory was seldom a good fallback position.

While Zilara's Teleport placement was a bust, the trip was not without merit. An offering shrine from the previous day's modest tour group of off-season pilgrims sat at the feet of Mia's coffin. Offerings came in the form of spells.

"Never did like this sacrifice practice," Jelena said, nose wrinkled. "Buying another copy of your best spell and offering it as a donation. And Myriad Holy Blessings? Some pilgrim's carrying moneybags around."

The middle scroll was by far the most valuable. It conferred a status boost Calaf had been blessed to receive once before that stacked a shield that could block pretty much anything. Its requirements were far too steep for Calaf to ever actually use. Zilara, maybe one day.

Calaf pocketed the Barrier spell and Greater Heal into his Inventory. The way clerical spells leveled is that mid-level Clerics would be using these regularly around level 40 or so. Paladin-aspirants, however, would typically gain the stats required towards the end of their careers.

"Stealing from a shrine?" Jelena let out a fake gasp. "Such brazen disregard for the Holy Menu!"

"Guess you're rubbing off on me," Calaf managed.

"Eh, let's keep Myriad Holy Blessings in the offering plate," Zilara said. "The monks who clean this place up won't suspect theft if we leave the most valuable item there."

They were done here. Though that left the matter of exfiltration…

"Don't tell me I have to go back through that gauntlet," Jelena said.

"One sec. Might have something."

Using the Menu, Zilara scanned the back wall of dead archpopes. An unlit sconce, one of only three in the room, stood just to the left of Archpope Systemmessage I, fifth pontiff of the Church of the Menu. Zilara selected this, and the sarcophagus transformed into a set of stairs with nary a body to be found.

"Systemessage's body was lost to the Fellmarsh," Calaf said. "Looking for a passage through the northern glaciers. Good call."

"I didn't even know that," Zilara whistled. "Just noticed the activation prompt in my Interface."

Before they left, Zilara took two Consecrated Incense Offering Urns, the rank-up material of the Cleric-path. They sat heavy in the interface, so she traded one with Calaf to lighten the load.

Stairs beckoned. They would just have to ensure the secret passageway closed itself off to cover their escape.

As it turned out, the 'escape route' was not so secret, more a side passage for the still-sleeping monks to better access the well-protected shrine. Calaf, Zilara, and Jelena climbed up into a modest wardrobe, spartan even for a monastery.

"Do me a favor and take this, would you?" Jelena pointed to some Items tucked away in a cubbyhole.

"Just in case we need to do another sneaking mission," she added with a grin.

"Bet you're just nostalgic," Zilara said.

That got Jelena chuckling too loudly, considering they were still in an occupied church outpost. The trio swiftly made their leave, doubling back through the undercity to find where the shrine had spat Enkidu out.