Broken Lands

Chapter 337 – The King’s Tomb

Sophia invited the rest of the team inside her tent once Arak left to talk about the offer and about his suggestions for combat improvements. She wasn’t surprised that he’d already talked to the others; she was more surprised they’d chosen not to interrupt her dinner with Dav so they could all talk at once. 

The discussion didn’t take long. No one had any real arguments about Arak’s notes; they were all minor things and half of them were things that were already on Xin’ri’s list of equipment to replace or improve. They couldn’t do anything about those until they were back in Mazehold, but it would be easy enough then.

Sophia found it very convenient that Xin’ri was happy to manage all of their equipment needs, even the stuff that she sourced from other places instead of making herself. It made Sophia’s life a lot easier. Xin’ri apparently thought it made her life easier, as well. Sophia didn’t entirely understand why, but she wasn’t about to complain.

They spent a little more time talking about the offer of a small expedition, but in the end they decided it was something to revisit when they were all third upgrade. It seemed like a good idea to have their first trip deep into the Maze be with someone who knew the Maze well, but the notion that you could find things you’d been to before ran counter to what little any of them knew about the Maze. 

It wasn’t mentioned in the notes from Registry Master Jessamine’s time challenging the Maze as the Shield of the Sun and it wasn’t something Jax had ever heard of. Naturally, that made Jax even more interested: it had to be one of the secrets the Arena knew about the Maze, and that was his mission. He needed to find out exactly how it was done. The more you knew about what you were heading into, the safer it would be. That could be the entire secret, in fact.

Sophia doubted it was the only cause. If it were, a lot of people would have to know how to do it. On top of that, it only helped if you’d been there since the last Mazestorm, and Mazestorms were pretty common. They didn’t hit Mazehold every day or even every tenday, but they happened regularly over parts of the Maze. 

They were common enough, in fact, that Sophia wondered if the Arena had some way to predict them. Seasons mattered, but beyond that, Sweetfire didn’t know when they would actually happen or where they would go. Since they were potentially deadly if you were caught in one, that might be what Jax was looking for, the reason the people of the Arena survived better than those of the Registry. 

Something like that wouldn’t stay secret for long, though; too many people would know about it. The only way Sophia could possibly think that it could be secret was if someone limited the information and only told people when to go into the Maze. Unfortunately, Jax didn’t know of anything like that either. Maybe they’d find out once they returned from the expedition.

The next morning, they entered the King’s Tomb. King’s Tomb was a series of interconnected catacombs, but they were far larger than Sophia expected. She thought catacombs were normally tight spaces filled with bones; these were indeed filled with bones, but they had corridors that were fifteen feet wide and twenty feet tall, tall enough that a series of sarcophagi were placed along the corridors on alternating sides and still didn’t block the expedition’s movement significantly. 

The corridors twisted, split, and rejoined seemingly randomly. Statues near each junction animated when they came near and tried to stop them. The first few groups were small, but by the fifth turn, there were seven statues that attacked as soon as they could see the expedition and more joined them as they fought.

Since the Flying Stars were all, as far as Arak knew, second upgrade, they were placed in safer positions near the center of the group. It made Dav and Jax feel pretty useless; Dav was only really able to use his healing, while Jax had nothing he could do at all most of the time. While he did have a light beam he could attack with, there were enough people between him and their opponents that he wasn’t able to use it unless the opponents were unusually large. Most weren’t. The small light-shields he could make didn’t reach far enough to protect the front line, so he eventually just waited and watched for when the statues sent something at the people closer to their group.

Ci’an’s Nightowl Abilities got a good workout, while Xin’ri revealed a few more of her less frequently used items: the ones that could help others, even if they were at a higher upgrade than she was. The primary one she used was a very minor boost to how quickly her targets could move. It holistically affected everything they did, so it seemed to them like their enemies were moving a little slower. It was impressive to Sophia; that sort of magic was a specialty of Time-based mages back home, and even a tiny effect like that was difficult to achieve.

Sophia couldn’t come close to being able to use Time magic the way Xin’ri was, even with a spellform designed for it. She could get that same boost on one person without too much trouble, but it was mana-hungry. There was no way she’d be able to maintain it on twenty people the way Xin’ri was. Sophia guessed that was the benefit of enchanting the item ahead of time; it was easier to use, just like an Ability. It also had to cost less mana.

All Sophia could do was maintain her boost that made killing the animated statues easier. That seemed even less useful than Xin’ri’s boost to Sophia; animated statues just weren’t that hard to kill. All you had to do was disrupt the magic animating them and they would freeze or even fall apart. The rest of the expedition seemed to like it, at least.

There was a surprisingly large group of people at the rear of the party that checked each sarcophagus as they passed them for treasure. They’d been assigned there with only a few guards by Arak Shade before they started, and Sophia knew they’d find out what the group recovered once they were in the next link. 

The last fight of King’s Rest was against a huge group of animated statues led by a statue of the King, or at least a statue wearing a crown. It didn’t look very difficult from Sophia’s vantage point, but it was certainly very flashy. That fight was the first time Sophia really noticed the cost of boosting everyone’s attacks with her feathers; it actually took more mana than she could passively recover. It still wasn’t a problem, but it was a reminder that nothing was free.

The link-gate out of King’s Rest had only two phrases recorded, and they each translated to a single word in English: Waypoint and Stairs. Arak sounded surprised by the choices when she told him about them; they were apparently unusual options, because they were both unusual if his guess was right. The Waypoint node sounded a lot like one he’d seen a few times that was a navigational challenge, while Stairs was about resisting an aura that increased as you climbed. Both were suitable for large groups, but neither was perfect.

There was one other thing the two had in common: neither one could be effectively scouted. Whoever went into them would not be able to return, which meant Arak had to choose which way they went almost blindly.

He was still happy to have a good chance to know what was coming, even if it wasn’t the choices he wanted.

When they emerged from the catacombs into the light of evening, Arak had them set up camp and distribute the findings from the King’s Tomb. Each sarcophagus held at least two aurichalc leaves; many held flowers instead of leaves. A handful of leaves were also found scattered among the bones disturbed by the fights, and a pair of suns were in the king’s tomb.

Beyond the coinage, there was a wide variety of treasure. Most of it was gold, silver, or gems, but there were two actual magical items in the king’s tomb itself. They were a flat plate and a small bowl, both etched with patterns Sophia didn’t recognize. She might be able to figure out what they did through experimentation, but Xin’ri would be a better choice for that. Xin’ri chose not to put herself forward; the two items would be identified once they were back in Mazehold by Professionals who were experts at identifying goods from the Maze. 

All of the treasure would be divided among the group once they knew how much the various acquisitions were worth. Sophia’s team was promised a full share, since they effectively contributed to the battles that brought in the treasure; anyone who contributed usefully got the same amount, whether they were on the front line or in the back picking up treasure. Arak had tried other arrangements, but they simply led to arguments, so he’d settled on that simple structure. It didn’t completely eliminate conflict over who got what, but it did help to reduce issues during the expedition.

In the morning, Arak announced that they’d be heading through the right-hand link-gate, because it led towards the center of the Maze. He also mentioned that he expected that they would only complete two or three more zones before they headed back out, because they were nearing the safe point in their supplies. He also gave them a choice to think about: they could return through a different route than the one they’d taken out if they agreed to leave even earlier. He seemed confident the answer would be no, but he made the offer anyway.

While they waited to see if the scouts would return or not, Arak explained the choice to the Flying Stars. Returning along the path they’d already taken had two main benefits. They knew what they were going to face and some of the zones would be safe. It depended on what the setup was; the Floating City’s festival wouldn’t happen again on this visit to the Maze and the King’s Rest was already cleared and pillaged, but the undersea monsters weren’t even close to being cleared out and even the Hunger might be back. That was also the drawback of repeating the same areas; the rewards they’d found were gone.

Returning along the same path was normal, because it was both safer and faster. It meant you could push deeper into the Maze, where the monsters were harder and the rewards were usually higher. The only people who usually left by a different route than they came in by were those who worked their way around the edge of the Maze, and they usually left at either the first or second exit they found; you never knew exactly how many zones it would take to reach the next exit, even on the edge of the Maze. 

Even the groups that planned to leave through a different exit sometimes took their original route back. Bad luck with your links could force you deeper into the Maze than you wanted to go, and if that happened the only way out was back. It was clear that Arak was explaining this because he expected them to be one of those groups while they worked towards reaching the third upgrade.

Sophia took the chance to ask a question triggered by their speciation the night before. “Is there any way to learn what’s in the past before we head into the Maze to take that outer route, or which entrance we should use? Can we ask other people when they come out?”

Arak paused as if he were surprised. He tilted his head slightly to the side, then answered, “You can, but your ability to read the doors is probably more useful if you gather a list of the common outer zones. You don’t want to follow someone through a known path, because the best rewards will be gone. Groups that challenge the borders have a system where they mark the doors and link-gates they have used so that others will not take the same path; those markers disappear with each mazestorm, so it works. If it has been a while since the last mazestorm, you may have to travel a significant distance around the Maze to find a new entrance, but it’s worth it.”

That raised an obvious question. “We used the entrance closest to the Registry. Why was it fresh?”

Arak smiled. “That entrance is only used for expeditions and collecting monsters for the Arena, and everyone knows that. Smaller groups do not use that entrance, because we do not mark the entrance or which link-gates have been used. We took a different link-gate than the last expedition, and that one was soon after a mazestorm.”

That sort of made sense. Sophia still wasn’t sure that people never tried to sneak in to the closer entrance, but she guessed it wasn’t really worth it. Right after a mazestorm that reset that entrance, all of the nearby ones were probably reset as well. All the Arena expedition organizers had to do to keep the entrance from being worth using was make sure an expedition left soon after each mazestorm, before the other nearby entrances were all used. Sending in a monster-collection group might be enough, too.