Broken Lands

Chapter 352 – The Back Way

The news that you could not, in fact, fight the monsters you identified or failed to identify in the Library of Monsters was a disappointment, but Sophia held out hope that they’d figure out how to open that other annex fairly quickly. Tiwaz didn’t think it was the next annex opened originally, but Sophia hoped that they’d find the way. Tiwaz didn’t know what the actual unlocking conditions were.

It also didn’t know if there was a place to sleep in the Library once there was a Librarian. It thought that was possible, but it was equally possible that the former Librarian went to a home in a residential annex each night. What it did know was that the Imperial City declined as the Maze grew and took over the old city of Kestii. It was probably completely abandoned by the time Mazegate was created to act as the new entrance point to the Maze away from the continual fighting that existed near the edge of the Maze in what remained of Kestii itself. 

Tiwaz had no idea what happened to the final Librarian; all it knew was that it had only three Librarians listed, and the last one was added after the Maze became a problem but several years before the Imperial City’s decline really started. It was hard to date exactly when that happened, because it was a lot of small individual choices rather than a single event.

Only four Library annexes in over a hundred years of existence for the Library of Monsters didn’t sound good, but Tiwaz was fairly confident that they all dated to the first half of the Library’s existence. Only one dated to the second Librarian and the third added no annexes at all. It was hard to say if that was because they couldn’t be added or because they simply weren’t seen as worth pursuing.

Sophia could believe that. The Library of Monsters served its purpose with what it had. Tiwaz told them there was another annex of the Imperial City hub a better place to fight specific monsters; it didn’t have all of them, but it was able to replicate the ones it did have records of far more accurately than the Library of Monsters did, including things that weren’t necessarily recorded in the Library. It reminded Sophia of a training room back home, though the safeguards seemed a little limited and the monster variety was limited. 

Tiwaz also knew of the Eidolon and of Night Markets, though not of the Eidolon’s Night Market. From what he knew, they were annexes that were unlocked at the City level that didn’t allow someone else to take control of them. Several of the residential areas were similar, though others required an appointed manager. Every single one was a little different.

It was a lot of information to take in, and Tiwaz definitely didn’t know as much as Sophia would like. Despite that, what it did know was very useful. The single most vital piece of information was that the Librarian was allowed to leave the Library or even the Imperial City without consequences to the Library or the Librarian. There was apparently a time limit, but from what Tiwaz knew, it was fairly generous if there was not a lot of demand on the Library. That meant they could escort Marcie with them both ways and be fine.

It wasn’t until they were ready to leave that Sophia started to think about her next visit and the monsters she’d have Cliff create to cover up the coverage break they’d need to create for the creation of the refining apparatus. Cliff liked flying monsters, but skyeagles didn’t seem to do well in the underground. They also didn’t really fit. Something more earth or plant-based would work, but Sophia wasn’t sure what the right choice was. 

Thinking about plants made her think about corpsevines, but they weren’t a great answer. Corpsevines, while horrifying, weren’t really all that strong. They were even weaker when there was no real way to explain why they had bodies; she’d be limited by the creatures in the surrounding area. Unless … maybe corpsevines could take over monsters? That was a very interesting thought. If she combined it with the one that put them all into an illusion, she could explain some really

interesting things. They wouldn’t have the echo’s horns that connected to her internal system, but then again, Sophia could summon the corpsevine-animated monsters when they dropped off the raw spatial resin; from what Tiwaz said, they’d probably have less than two days after “breaking” the healing device for the Arena staff to notice, pull a group together, and come down into the underground to search for the damage they needed to repair. That was easily possible; in fact, if they came through the tunnels Tiwaz had finally connected to Mazehold’s underground areas, they could probably come down the morning of an Arena fight and have their fight before Tiwaz pulled the rune-empowered mana cube “batteries” out of the creation chamber. 

Sophia blinked at the realization that she didn’t actually need to be able to extend the existence of Cliff’s summons anymore. They could relatively easily reach Tiwaz safely without being seen without going the long way around now. Tiwaz should know that.

“You did that deliberately, didn’t you?” Sophia tried to glare at Tiwaz, but she couldn’t keep the corners of her mouth from twitching slightly. She might not like having information kept from her, but she still found it funny. “You just want the spatial resin to repair the passages! You know, all you ever had to do was ask. The problem was getting the stuff, not doing the repairs.”

“I didn’t know you had a way to get spatial resin.” Tiwaz sounded patient, which was quite possibly the most annoying response. “I planned to work with you to find a conceptual binder. I do want my other connections to my kin repaired, of course, but I did not think it would be this simple. Converting a conceptual binder to a different concept is difficult and does not always result in the desired binding. I expected your project to be the easier of the two and a decent starting point.”

“Uh huh.” It was a good explanation, but Sophia didn’t entirely buy it. 

“Your problem was also more immediate, and while I believe the additional connection through the tunnels is a sufficient solution, more layers of indirection are likely to be valuable,” Tiwaz continued justifying itself. 

“Mm hmm.” Sophia completely lost control of her expression; she was definitely smiling now. That was as clear an indication of a mild attempt to get them to do what it wanted as she was likely to get. “I’m serious; all you had to do was ask. We’re happy to help make more connections; Dav and I can go through the interspace without issues and both you and Othala have helped us a lot.”

“How many?” Tiwaz asked abruptly.

“What?” Sophia glanced at Dav, then tried to guess what Tiwaz asked. “Do you mean how many connections we’re willing to restore? I guess that depends on how many there are and how quickly we can get the resin. It keeps well once it’s refined or Othala wouldn’t have any left, and we do need some recovery time and …. I don’t know. If we have enough resin, I guess we can probably do two connections a season? Any more than that and we probably won’t have the time to go into the Maze. We need to plan a few days for a conduit repair and that’s time we’d otherwise spend in the Maze.”

“Eight a year?” Tiwaz sounded shocked. It glowed brightly for a moment, then settled into a soft pulsating pattern that Sophia was pretty sure meant it was pleased. “I am not certain I will be able to refine enough spatial resin for that, but if you can manage it, my major connections could all be restored in less than two years! The minor ones would still be broken, but they do not lead to my kin, so the amount we can gain from them without a larger staff is minuscule in any case.”

“Was it a good match?” One of the food vendors called towards Bai as he left the dyleda tournament.

Bai shook his head and made his way over to the vendor. Jerome was a Professional dancer, but it turned out that selling food at the Arena was far more lucrative than dancing for him these days. When he was younger, he was a terror on the Professional dyleda court, but he never quite managed to turn it into a championship and enough aurichalc to carry him into old age. That didn’t mean he wasn’t interested, and he was almost always willing to part with one of his really quite delicious meat buns for news about the match. For a non-Professional chef, he was an excellent cook, and he wasn’t willing to sell stale meat buns. “It was awful. Two of the teams were simply hopeless; I don’t know how they even managed to get past the preliminaries. As for the others, well, you’ve seen the Robeson quartet play.”

Jerome winced. “Might as well be the Robeson duo for as much as the twins actually do. I assume they were guarding the leading and trailing buckets again?”

“Poorly,” Bai agreed. “Lucky for them, the only team worth anything was the Golden Aurichalc. They won, of course, but that means the Robesons are still in the competition.”

Jerome winced. “Do I want to know what the final score was?”

“Golden Aurichalc had more than double the score of the other teams combined and I’m pretty sure they were falling asleep on the court,” Bai stated with only a little heat. By now, he should know how badly some matches would go; there weren’t that many stable dyleda teams. There were fewer that were actually good. It would almost certainly be a competition between the top eight or nine teams, just like always. “I should know better than to hope for a good match this early.”

Jerome snorted. “They’re fine as long as all of the participants are roughly even. Golden Aurichalc, though? Any match they’re in is going to look like a cakewalk this early. I figured it wasn’t a great match when people started leaving early. Not a great day for any of us. Anyway, here, enjoy.”

Jerome served Bai two piping hot meat buns, flaky pastry filled with deliciously spiced meat. One had some surprisingly crunchy aromatic vegetables in a spicy sauce that complemented the meat beautifully, while the second was clearly a meat-and-cheese filling. They were two of Jerome’s best sellers, so the fact that he not only had some left over but had enough that he was willing to give them to Bai as “payment” for his news (and after-game advertising) was a sign of just how poorly the night’s sales must have gone. 

Bai spent a solid half hour talking to Jerome as the Arena emptied. The man was fun to talk to and he understood exactly how the game worked. Naturally, he was more interested in the earlier match that had four mediocre teams; it was actually a good match since they were bad enough to fall for each others’ stratagems. 

A few people did stop by to buy meat buns for their trip home or their family, so the advertising seemed to work as well as it ever did. 

Bai walked home contentedly. There were a lot of problems out there, but everything he could control was under control and some of the big things he’d worried about for years, even centuries, were finally improving. He might even be able to talk to Tiwaz again. That would be excellent; Bai was tired of setting his own priorities. He needed someone to consult with, if nothing else, and none of the humans were both knowledgeable enough and trustworthy enough. 

His good mood shattered in shock when he opened the wall to his charging station and found a gaggle of people waiting for him. He recognized them, but there was no way they could be here. “How did you get here? No, wait, how did you get here without setting off an alarm?”

Sophia shrugged. “You mean the ward? It’s failing anyway and it lists maintenance personnel as authorized. I didn’t even have to bypass it, just make sure the authorization encompassed us all.”

“We’d have gone home instead, but you left all of those connections off the map,” Xin’ri added. “We know they have to be here somewhere, but we figured we might as well wait and get a better map instead of setting out blindly. Oh, and Tiwaz says it will be a few days for the network connection but now that he has the physical tunnels connected he believes that’s all it will take.”