Kire pouted when Ysaryn laughed at her comment about destroying part of the temple. “Hey, that was the day I met Ruli, and he was being a real piece of shit that time.” she muttered. “Besides, my first impression of Ziad, seems like the gods hadn’t really returned the favor.” 
“We should tell Ruli we’re going, though, right?” Gavin asked. 
Kire shook her head. “He’s devoting all his will to Envy at the moment. Divide and conquer. And besides, he doesn’t really want to go back there. Understandably.” She sighed, running a hand through her hair. “Risa is expecting a visit from me any day now, anyway.” She gave Ysaryn a small smile. “I know you don’t really back down from challenges, but thank you all the same. We look like we’re going to have a lot on our hands. I just hope we find Envy,” she murmured, looking in Ruli’s direction. She turned to Gavin. “What do you need to break the wards?”
“If we swing by Envy’s chamber, I can get everything we need,” he said, determination replacing the worry and despair that had threatened to take him over earlier. “What I can’t find there, I know how to get.” 

After Kire told Narda, Daryll, and Myka where she and Gavin were heading, Gavin asked her to Portal them into Envy’s alchemy chamber, where he quickly went through the supplies, muttering under his breath, only pausing now and then to think over the next item in his mental list. Once he had everything, he asked Kire to Portal them a certain distance from the Ziad ruins. The Paladin squinted up at the burned and crumbling walls. “Forgot how hot it was here,” Kire said, her eyes looking over the ruins, though she knew very well it wasn’t the heat that she wished to forget. She looked at Gavin, who was staring ahead, a grim expression on his face. He swallowed thickly after a few moments of silence, shutting his eyes and waving his head as if to ward off some waking nightmare. The last time he was here, he had still been in Ikegai’s thrall. It was here that he had found Kire’s hunting knife. It was before the gates where he had been taken and enslaved by the blood mage. 
“We don’t have to now,” Kire said, a hand on his shoulder. “We can go back, or I can just go in during the day—”
“We’re doing this,” Gavin said, glaring at the walls as his hands fumbled with the satchel of supplies he had brought with him. “I’m fine,” he insisted when Kire stared, about to ask again. 

With Kire’s help, Gavin walked the perimeter of the city, trying to ignore the heat as he familiarized himself with the wards again. They circled the whole city, with Kire portal-jumping them both forward now and then to shorten the time. At certain places he etched a rune into a pebble he had brought with him. Finally, when they had finished circling Ziad, they returned to the spot where they had emerged. Gavin murmured under his breath, drawing the knife he used to etch the runes, then slashed through the imaginary circle they had drawn around the perimeter with the pebbles. 

Kire looked up, feeling the sensation of the wards breaking and the signatures tied to it dissipating at the same time. “We’re going straight to the temple, right?” Gavin asked quietly. Kire nodded. Besides wanting to spend as little time and leaving as little a trace of their presence as possible, both of them didn’t want to be around the corpse of the city, seeing what had become of the remnants of carnage there. 

What was left of the temple was in an abysmal state. “So you really punched a hole through it, huh,” Gavin remarked. 
“And made it cave in on this side, yeah,” she replied. “Be on alert. We have the sun on our side, but it pays to be paranoid.”
“Can you sense the Kartaians? That thing you do with your nose and magic signatures?”
“Yeah. And a bloodlusty Kartaian’s signature is rather hard to forget.”

It was a long afternoon’s toil, sifting through the ruins. Kire had insisted on doing the bulk of it, wanting to spare the lad any more painful recollections, but Gavin’s pain, it seemed, paled in comparison to the need to get closer to finding Envy. They worked mostly in silence, and the few times they spoke to each other were in hushed whispers. Kire wasn’t sure why; perhaps it was a combination of not wanting to disturb what remained of the temple, wanting to make themselves scarce in case there was an unwelcome ear listening for intruders, or just some irrational compulsion not to let the goddess know they were rooting around in here.

When they returned to Úvano late afternoon, Kire and Gavin carried with them a badly-damaged tome, parts of a statue and candles. Kire remembered Sireen mentioning the catacombs, and she knew a longer search would yield more results. But for now, perhaps these would be enough to make Risa or Solaralai’s other worshippers more pliable. “You did good back there,” she said to Gavin as they set down their burdens. “That must have been hard, going back.”
“Y-yeah,” Gavin said, swallowing again. “I’m gonna go wash this off me, drink some water.”