Broken Lands

Chapter 341 – Establishing a Routine

Arryn was at the house they rented from him when they returned from the Maze. That evening turned into a celebration, with food provided by the Registry’s restaurant, drinks from Arryn, and stories about the Maze. Sweetfire and Bai both showed up during the meal and were welcomed with open arms. Arryn told a few stories about zones he’d seen in his time in the Maze, but most of the stories were from Sophia’s group.

Sophia wasn’t normally fond of parties, but a get-together of a handful of friends was completely different. She traded stories with Arryn, had a long talk with Alley Sweetfire about every single time she used the sweetfire-infused feathers, and ended the night talking to Bai about the doors she’d seen. He was shocked that she’d managed to translate anything, but she brushed it off; her achievement wasn’t anything nearly as impressive as the one made by the person he was comparing her to. She already knew Bridge; Lady M’Beja, the Mage, had somehow managed the translation without knowing the language to begin with. It was definitely too bad that Bai didn’t have M’Beja’s notes.

Sophia distracted Bai with the door she opened at the end of the trip, which led to an entirely different surprise. Bai recognized the symbol of a crescent moon with a palmprint set between the horns of the moon immediately. It belonged to a Patron called the Open Hand. He was apparently the patron of self-mastery and community, whatever that meant. Bai said that a mission that depended on getting to know the community you were helping was definitely in his style, so at least that made sense.

Bai also made the point that he was not Aeric Openhand, despite the common moniker. Aeric Openhand was also a Patron, but his title was Beastmaster. He was called the Openhand because it was how he greeted all beasts: with an open hand. Sophia wondered if that meant the Open Hand came first and the Beastmaster was named after him before he became a Patron, but Bai didn’t know. They were both Patrons by the time Bai was built.

Another mazestorm hit Mazehold five days after they returned from the Maze. It seemed to be a collection of life mana, or maybe growth was a better term, mixed with either plant mana or seeds. Sweetfire grabbed them to help deal with all of the problems it caused in the Professional districts.

Sophia finally got to see where Bush Biters came from. That was interesting, as were the mobile trees, acidic ferns, fireflowers, exploding puffballs, Spinning Seed Trees, aggressive, invasive ivy, vine beasts, mushroom men, thornspitters, and metal-edged leafthrowers. Sophia was grateful that corpsevines were not among the many plant-based monsters that appeared over the next few days.

She was even more grateful when Sweetfire declared that the cleanup was done. They weren’t the only team of Called working for the Professionals to help clear the city of the mazestorm’s residue, but it felt like it. Their Arena battles started up after a few days, so most of the cleanup work was on days when they also had a fight. The only good part was that they didn’t have to actually clear the monster remains; as long as they guarded them, there were a number of Professionals happy to handle that, and they could manage it far more quickly and easily than Sophia’s team.

Well, there was one other good thing. All of the other Professionals they helped out offered them something in return, to the point where the aurichalc they recovered from the Maze and gained in the Arena was mostly spent on materials rather than services; the services were paid for by their effort defending the city. They had a whole new wardrobe, including new armor and weapons for everyone except Dav. Dav’s equipment was upgraded, rather than replaced.

Sophia had more feather-adorned wands than she knew what to do with. The wandmaker who gave them to her didn’t ask her if she wanted them or not before he made them; they just showed up at Sweetfire’s shop with her name attached. He was apparently a fan of hers in the Arena, and he’d decided that she needed a more straightforward attack and that his wands were the right way to get there.

Well, either that or he simply wanted cheap advertising of his products. Sophia wasn’t entirely certain which. Either way, she was happy to use them in the Arena, especially as they continued doing themed battles. Sophia’s favorite was the lightning wand, but it had a distinct problem with aim. The most accurate wand made ice spikes and sent them at enemies like bullets.

It was during one of the Arena battles that Sophia discovered the actual best feature of the wands: because they incorporated feathers as part of their basic design, she could use them as plumes in her Domain. That meant they would float in the air when she was in her plumed form and she could use them as wands then, something she couldn’t do with an ordinary wand she wasn’t holding. Unlike ordinary feathers, keeping the wands in the air required mana, but they also didn’t turn to dust when she was done. They were a major increase in her spellcasting power.

It took her a while, but Sophia was eventually able to convince the wandsmith to make the most powerful ones he was capable of making. He claimed they were powerful enough that an ordinary third upgrade spellcaster would have trouble using them unless they were at the peak of the third upgrade, competing in the Maze to reach deeper than anyone ever had before.

Sophia was able to use them without any trouble. Her Core was unusually high, likely easily as large as the spellcaster that was supposed to be able to use the wand, but Sophia was certain that wasn’t the only reason it was easy. The wands had tricky mana pathways. Every single one was unique and each of them had tight points where the mana needed to be massaged. She could tell that it was possible to simply force those points with enough mana, but it would degrade the quality of the spell over time.

It might overcharge it early on, but after a few dozen uses the wand would be useless. Properly shaping the mana ought to mean that she could get hundreds of uses out of each wand. For some wands, like the light-ray wand, it also meant that the spell the wand encoded would reach farther; extra power helped, but properly forming the spell was better than more power.

Somehow, the days turned into weeks.

Sophia finally found the time to go through everything the Guide offered, and what she found was disappointing. There still weren’t any new spells worth learning, even though she’d seen a lot of different effects in various Abilities by now and some of them should have been available as spells. It was like the Guide didn’t actually know what to offer her, so it didn’t bother to update its selection. It was annoying.

In fact, the only new Ability she found that was worth the Wisps to buy and upgrade was something she was already doing manually. It wasn’t there the last time she went looking, which made her wonder if it was there because the Guide saw what she was doing and repackaged it for her.

Okay, it wasn’t exactly what she was already doing, but it was close enough that she still felt justified in her suspicion.

Feathered Evocation

Draw out the power hidden in a feather to create a related effect. Destroys the feather used. Multiple feathers may be consumed for more complicated effects.

It was the last line that made it worth picking up the Ability; Sophia hadn’t figured out how to combine multiple feathers’ effects yet, and that was going to be necessary if she wanted to manage anything beyond the simplest attacks with elementally infused feathers. For now, her new wands could handle the simple attacks; she needed to become better than she was if she really wanted to get through the Maze.

It still wasn’t easy, but it gave her something to work on.

At the same time, she tried to figure out Arryn’s suggestion of looking at the word “plume” differently to avoid being limited to feathers. It wasn’t easy at all. Feathers were concrete, solid; a plume wasn’t. It didn't click until she paid attention to the way her mana moved when she pushed her aura through someone else's. That, too, was a plume, a plume of mana. That was something she could work with. In fact, it was perfect; it was, in a sense, also her domain since it was her aura.

She controlled her aura. She controlled her domain. She was her aura and her domain, and she was her mana as well. That was the reason she could turn into magical feathers. They were her domain.

They weren’t real feathers. They were simply feather-like apparitions of mana that formed because they were how she visualized a plume. She wasn’t certain how much that mattered, but it felt important.

That was something Sophia was just going to have to keep working on.

What she didn’t find was the Ability she was actually looking for: a way to save powerful mana other than fire in her feathers. Given her new understanding of her plumes, maybe what she really meant was that she wanted to be able to save powerful mana in a mana pocket that preserved its affinity?

Was that what Firewater Plume did?

It seemed likely. Maybe she could push what it could hold the same way Dav was altering his Call to be able to capture and reflect spells safely. Sweetfire wasn’t just fire, after all. The fire dominated it, especially the way she used it, but she could probably already capture heat mana. Could she use the Firewater Plume to capture … say … molten rock?

It was worth a try.

They paid their first “solo” visit to the Maze shortly after Sophia started experimenting with hot air, boiling water, and molten rock. It was a same-day visit where they only dealt with a single zone, to see what it was like. One day was all they had available in between scheduled Arena performances, but they were tired of not doing what they’d come to Mazehold for. They were well-equipped and had some experience with the Maze; now they needed to put that preparation to the test.

They were all pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to deal with the animated clay men; at the outskirts of the Maze, where they were only second upgrade, and that meant they were brittle and easily broken. They tended to explode like poorly-made pots on a too-hot fire, but that did nothing worse than scuff their armor and dent their shield.

Well, there were a few scratches left on Dav and Jax from the first one, but Dav’s healing fixed them quickly.

The clay men each left a single aurichalc leaf behind. From the way it was anchored in the middle of the chest, Sophia was pretty sure that the story behind it was that it was what powered them, but it was clear that wasn’t actually true; the aurichalc pieces were completely intact and all had about the same amount of mana left, no matter how hard the clay man fought or how quickly it was destroyed.

Sophia tested out her wands on the clay men and was quite disappointed to realize that the lightning wand was nearly useless. The ice shards and flamebolt wands worked well, but not as well as the Firewater Feathers that held Sweetfire. It sometimes took her a second attack to kill a clay man, when the Firewater Feathers made them explode almost immediately. Even so, the wands let her fight more effectively than her Force Bolt did. She only had so many of the Firewater Feathers and she’d have to be careful about them later.

As with most zones in the Maze, there was a final larger encounter in front of the exit to the link. There were four larger clay men and a group of the smaller ones. Sophia handled two of the big guys with one ruptured Sweetfire Firewater Feather each; there was no reason not to use them, after all. She could always get more from Sweetfire, and they only lasted so long. It only cost mana, and it was mana she could spend outside the Maze.

And just like that, they had a routine. Practice, training, monster clearance, and Arena fights were most of what they did, but they started to schedule one and two-day Maze visits. Weeks turned into months and then they celebrated the second anniversary of Sophia and Dav’s arrival in the Broken Lands before they realized that much time had passed.