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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ConnorSB" data-source="post: 1328948" data-attributes="member: 14273">I finally got around to writing more. Here's an update for Alex and Alexandra again."Scouting"The plan was simple- scout first, and later that night do the job. It was Sunday, and the High Temple had just finished morning services. As the crowd flowed out from the main auditorium and into the temple grounds, the two thieves strode in, like salmon swimming upstream. Only the spawning ground was full of blackmail material, and they were going to steal it. On the outside of their dress, both twins wore the charms and fastenings of the Queen of the Winds, but underneath were the charms and fastenings of the criminal underworld- a necklace of charm against detection, a bracelet of protection against mind reading, a tattoo of the unnamed god of thieves- a vertical dagger with four lines of various sizes crossing it.Aside from charms, Alex and Alexandria wore the standard church-going garb of the elven populace, drab white and blue, the national colors.The interior of the High Temple was an airy affair. In the many round rooms, the domed ceilings arched thirty, even forty feet up, with the chambers never more than half as wide as they were tall. The corridors were similarly spacious, three paces across with ribbed ceilings almost as tall as those in the rooms. The floors were plain tile, scuffed with use. The walls were usually wooden, magically sealed together so that there was not one seam in the whole building. There were no doors either, as they prevented airflow. And there was airflow- you could not walk anywhere in the High Temple without feeling at least a breeze. In any case, it was not wood that prevented entrance to a place, it was the temple guards that barred admittance.All this Alex and Alexandra noticed as the strolled through the halls of the temple. After an hour of wandering, it was Alex that noticed something promising. Near one of the Temple’s side entrances, only a few rooms away from the outside, two guards stood at the mouth of a particularly noticeable hallway.It was noticeable because its walls were not the seamless ones of the rest of the temple: they were bookshelves. Peering past the guards, Alexandria noticed that the hallway opened up after twenty feet, and she caught the faintest glimpse of a staircase downwards before one of the guards shuffled and grunted, and her focus pulled back to him.“Can I help you?” he asked. The guard was dressed in white: white leather over white cloth, with a pointed white leather helmet. His buckles and other fixings were blue.“Why, sure!” Alex stepped forward and stared the tall elf straight in his blue eyes. “My sister and I are, umm, traveling students, studying the great architectural marvels of Espania.”“Well,” said the guard, “there is plenty of architecture besides what we are guarding. Perhaps you’d like to see it… elsewhere.”“But,” exclaimed Alexandra, “this is the only piece with bookshelves!”The guard looked at her. “… and?”“Well, um… books are heavy, and need support. Thus, the walls around them must be reinforced, all that weight you know, and well, the architecture is different in this corridor.”“The corridor that I’m guarding. So move along, before I make you move.”“What’s so important back there, anyways?” asks Alex.“Records. Now move.”“All right, all right,” the twins sigh. They look at each other and laugh, and then move on.Once they had turned a few corners, Alex leaned over and whispered to his sister.“That’s definitely the place. We’ll need disguises.”“I already thought of that, dear brother. Father Arem of this very church is meeting me at the Fox and Fowl at sunset.”</blockquote>

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