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

The crew sat around a desk, breathless after encountering the final testament of Cleric Mia, mother of the church.

Jelena spoke first, her throat hoarse. "That's… so…"

"This place is cursed," Zilara said glumly.

Over by the door, Enkidu grumbled.

"These advisors that came from nowhere," Calaf began. "That can't be what…"

His voice cut out. Could it not? Calaf rubbed at the Brand etched on his arm near the wrist. Brands were already a work of devilry repurposed as a holy instrument. What was one more coterie of ancient advisors? Calaf shuddered, unwilling to follow the thought further. But if this theory were true, where are the advisors now?

The actual story was not so different from the official church doctrine. Canon didn't mention anything about the second Archpope unjustly exiling his twin at such a young age. Nothing about a cadre of twisted advisors, let alone the fact that the church grew out of a sort of Branded union that overtook unbranded society. The number of unbranded waned, and the fledgling church soon overtook all aspects of social life. Secular governance became articles of faith. Aspects of the old slave-brands became holy features desired, voluntarily, by all.

Calaf let out breath; he didn't know he was holding it in.

"If that's got you rattled, you won't like what we dug up back in the standard archives." Zilara produced two documents from her Inventory. "This one is recent. This one is ancient. Both talk about some 'amplification tower'. Apparently the Demon King had a way to restrict certain aspects of the Menu, govern levels, at the scale of nations. Certain sects of church monks and the like have been working on recreating it…"

"Where?" Calaf asked.

"Only have one of the documents, but you're not going to like it," Zilara said.

The Paladin took a deep breath. "Let me guess. The Southern Shackled Asylum?"

Zilara let out an impressed tsk. "How'd you guess?"

"Just seems like the most obvious place." Calaf shrugged.

Where it all began. Mere leagues from the place of his birth, all this time. Calaf rose and was out of the vault by the time anyone could object. They didn't even bother locking the vault wing door behind them. Guards had more important things to deal with, and by the time anyone got around to investigating the vaults, Jelena and company would be long gone.

"We're at the wrong end of the Pilgrimage Path," Calaf said. "Have been the whole time. Bede. That spire, the Southern Shackled Asylum. I think it's meant for something big."

Nobody ever discovered the purpose behind Mia and the other Shackled being made to dig (or erect?) that spire. The thought left Calaf with a chill.

Calaf let out a frustrated tsk at the head of their group. Enkidu took up the rear, with Jelena desperately trying to keep pace with her Paladin. Zilara lazily walked somewhere between these two.

That Target mark was still on Mikai's position near the front of the Demon Lord's Falls edifice. It was still moving about, indicating both that the thief was still alive and that some other force was likewise alive to prevent him from leaving.

"Well, we have to fight our way out of here sometime," Jelena said. "Shall we head back to the banquet hall?"

Fighting through the front entrance was ill-advised, but it wouldn't hurt to at least get a lay of the battle lines. They'd left the ball in utter bedlam, and the fights had just been getting started when Jelena and Calaf's party had dipped. Who knew who was fighting whom at this point?

Onward they marched.

As the party neared the banquet hall, they found their first corpse: a member of the ecumenical council. Cathedral guards were nowhere to be found, but his Inventory was undisturbed. More bodies waited down the hall.

Guards— arbitral auxiliary and cathedral sentries both—littered the halls.

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"Sounds like the new guy and the old guard are at each other's throats." Zilara knelt by the corpse.

The ecumenical council was not a legislature, like those that ruled the trade route city-states across the sea. Aside from voting for Archpope, they mostly spent their days managing the mountain of paperwork that came with operating the Church of the Menu. They had their factions and allegiances; low-level zones and especially overseas branded were often shafted in terms of representation.

To track the flow of battle, the party only needed to follow the bodies. A pair of guards—auxiliary and a cathedral knight—lay dead beside each other. A pile of bodies sat at the next intersection, and crawling out of from underneath…

A councilor, level 82, was hovering about five HP with a 'Bleed' status that would kill him posthaste. Calaf cast a heal spell on short notice, sparing his life.

"The arbiters," the councilor said with a hacking cough.

"Yes, they've gotten a few of you guys," Zilara said glibly.

"No, the true arbiters. At the gates. The lockdown…"

The councilor soon fell unconscious, the product of the head wound that had induced that Bleed status. Another cleansing spell, courtesy of Zilara, staunched the damage further.

"The Arbiters are here?" Calaf grimaced. "Alright, we're leaving."

A single Arbiter was a high-level threat that could not be ignored. A tag-team could seriously hinder the party. All four of them working together could doubtless take on every faction currently duking it out in the Demon Lord's Fall combined.

The walls felt narrower. Like they were closing in. That miasma that had amplified Cleric Mia's grief and hardened her heart was meant to be invisible, but Calaf almost felt as if he could sense it hanging in the air. A fog. A constant pressure.

The group made for the latrines, the position they'd infiltrated from in the first place. A stealthy exit would allow them to bypass all the fighting, which still ran in an arc from the front hall towards the back of the jaw. The latrines were well off the main route, with the ritual pools in a bile or spit gland off to the edge of the edifice.

They bust the latrine door down to find someone already in there. A pompous thief had one foot in a garderobe.

"Aha! Church dogs! Let this be known as the day you almost captured the great phantom thief Eliwood!" cried the figure.

Jelena scowled. "We ain't even with the church!"

"Have you even stolen anything?" Zilara asked.

Eliwood cast his 'steal,' ability, taking another thirty gold or so from the party's coffers. The self-proclaimed phantom thief lifted his other leg to dive down the latrine pit… and fell right through at an odd angle, hollering and shouting as he bounced through the drainage chute, then out into the open air of the Fellmarsh.

"Well, that'll summon every guard outside, whether he survived or not." Zilara wrinkled her nose.

The message was clear: 'I'm not going out there.'

"Well, back to the banquet hall," Jelena said. "Hurry, there's got to be some exit that hasn't been plugged up yet."

Mikail's Target designation remained in the banquet hall. That's how the party knew the battle had not yet abated.

When they arrived at the hall, they found it caked with the blood of the slain of all kinds. A few counselors here, random guests not high-level enough to survive the melee there. Many others were injured and everyone still standing was panicking. That 'Fallen Cleric' had lassoed a few more people and set them on fire to fuel their odd blood-magic. Burning skeletons remained after this ritual, standing and alight. At first, there was no sign of the heretical mage, but then a hooded, translucent wraith took off through the halls and out of sight.

"What kind of power is that?" Zilara frowned. "Never seen that class before."

There, near the exit, performing hit-and-run tactics against a line of shields, was Mikkail and his party.

"None shall pass until the Arbiters arrive." Yelled a guard captain.

The crew keeping the front door on lockdown were cathedral guards, loyal to the council. Wherever Breakspear was, he was as trapped in the Grand Cathedral as the rest of them.

"What do we do?" one of Mikail's junior party members asked.

Mikail looked back and noticed Calaf's party. The thief scowled, though Calaf did not have his weapons or shield out. Then, Mikail pulled out an Item Calaf had never seen before.

A snaking rope flew at dangerous speeds out of the non-space of Mikail's Inventory. It slipped through a perilously narrow hole in the roof of the Demon King's mouth. The back-end auto-equipped itself to Mikail's arm and anchored itself around his waist. With a start, Mikail flew up and away so fast it was surprising he hadn't broken his back. The target designation flew with him, far out of bounds of the Demonhead and out over the swamp. At such speeds, he'd be splattered against the Olde Capital's walls by night's end. Live or die, for a brief moment, the thief was the fastest creature ever recorded under the Menu.

"He left us!" wailed a junior party member.

"Panic!" cried another.

"That rope would sure come in handy right about now," Zilara quipped. "Just need to remember to pack four…"

Jelena had already turned around. "Only way out is up."

"Hmm?" Calaf tilted his head.

"C'mon," Jelena waved him over. "Let's go! Plan C's formulating as we go."

By now, Calaf knew better than to doubt Jelena's many ramshackle backup plans. He looked to the panicking, abandoned party of would-be rivals and the many panicking civilians beside. Then he looked to the shield-wall of Paladins beyond, each one a higher level than he was. They weren't about to attack, but they also wouldn't let them pass.

"Follow us if you want to live," Calaf said, donning his Fort Duran banner-spear on his back.

They still didn't have a plan. But doing nothing would get both Calaf's party and these bystanders nowhere. He most certainly couldn't save them all.

But he had to try.