Broken Lands

Chapter 353 – Dyleda with the Blade

“Ah, the Flying Stars. Please come in; I’ve wanted to meet you.” Broken Blade Amaryssa Seuvarin was a tall, muscular blonde woman with only a few streaks of gray in her hair. She smiled at them, but it was obviously a polite smile, not a true one.

“Thank you. We’re glad to be here,” Dav answered politely. 

“Please, have some food and pick a place to sit; there is plenty. If there’s anything specific you want, just let one of the waiters know and they’ll get it for you.” The Blade ushered them all into the surprisingly large room near the middle of the Arena’s seating. She waved towards a table against the back wall, next to the door, as she spoke.

Sophia took in the room on her way to the buffet. One wall was made of glass, allowing a clear view of the Arena below them, but the walls to either side held a projection of the scene on the floor at a far closer position. It wasn’t the first time Sophia had seen a video projection like that, but it was something she hadn’t seen before in the Broken Lands unless the Windows counted. 

As far as she could tell, it was simply a live feed with nothing else added, not even a way to switch views or commentary. She couldn’t be sure about the commentary, since the game hadn’t started yet, but she was pretty sure about the single live view part; right now, each wall showed the dyleda court as it was being set up from two distinct angles near the court that were also very obviously different from the one she could see out the window. It was possible there was a way to change the view, but there wasn’t anything obvious in the room like a button or control setup, so probably not.

Sophia really wanted to ask about it, but she wasn’t certain that was a good idea. Would it be rude, especially if she gave away just how limited she thought it was?

“You like the wall screens?” The Blade spoke from right behind Sophia. “They are an improved version of the displays in a few of the practice courts. I find that they give me a better view of the Arena than I can gain through the window. They’re best for dyleda, since it is played almost entirely on the ground; setting up the same sort of view for an Arena match can be difficult. Fortunately, most Arena matches do not need that level of detail.”

Sophia nodded and tried to be gracious. “Yeah, I can see how that would help. It makes everything closer.”

“Come, get some food and tell me about yourselves. I’ve heard only a little about you…” The Blade escorted Sophia over to the buffet, then very politely quizzed her about who she was and where she was from.

Sophia easily admitted that she was from a very, very long way away and that she’d ended up in the Broken Lands by complete accident. That wasn’t a secret; more than that, it was something that she’d probably be able to find out if she asked the Hilt for more information. It was likely that the Blade had already done so, in fact; Sophia made no secret of the fact that her previous home base was Izel. It was easier to keep a story straight if it was the truth, after all, and if she claimed she’d already been at the second upgrade when she arrived, who would be able to say otherwise? 

Well, the Registry Master could, as well as Ci’an’s family, but they wouldn’t. 

The only thing she really wanted to keep quiet about her time in Izel was the fact that she was the one who stole the Hilt’s broken sword from the Temple. Aric knew it was her, since he took her into the Temple in the first place, but that was covered by Marcie’s news when she arrived: Aric had completely covered for her. He’d invented a young male sand elf named Orfa who was trying to get into Aric’s team. He “didn’t know why” Orfa stole the sword and he was just as surprised as everyone else. 

It was enough to get Aric released from the “protective care” of the Temple. He warned Marcie and told her the tale as soon as he made it to the Registry library. Marcie already knew that someone had been looking for information about “Orfa,” with an inaccurate description. She also knew that Registry Master Ermine had deliberately made a scene where some Templar adherents could hear it about “a young sand elf” who skipped out without paying for his room. 

Sophia wasn’t sure what to think about Aric. He didn’t seem to understand that she wasn’t just playing hard to get, but he also made efforts to protect both her and her identity instead of revealing what happened to people who he clearly admired before everything happened. She wanted to despise him for not listening to her and getting her into the situation with the Temple, but she couldn’t. Not when he’d also done what he could to get her back out of it.

He still didn’t compare to Dav. Not even a little.

Blade Amaryssa Seuvarin slowly changed the topic from Sophia’s recent past to farther back. Sophia recognized the tactic; she was trying to get information while making it seem natural to get Sophia to talk more. The Blade might think it was a gentle getting-to-know-you conversation, but it felt more like an interrogation or maybe an interview. Fortunately, there wasn’t much to keep secret here, either. She’d learned about wards and wardbreaking from her father, who was a skilled mage.

There was no need to mention the fact that he also technically ruled five planets and was on a Path that might lead to godhood. There was certainly no need to mention that he counted both demons and dungeons as his own people. Making people understand that took a lot of context, almost as much as explaining the rest of her father’s history. Sophia was proud of her father, but at the same time it was nice to be out from under his shadow. She knew that everything she’d accomplished in the Broken Lands was her own doing, not because people were trying to suck up to her father.

The Blade just wanted to know about how to bypass item locks and wards. That wasn’t something Sophia could really help her with; she didn’t have the aura control or even magesight to see and feel what Sophia was talking about, much less the control to do something with it. Even Dav couldn’t, yet, and she’d been working on aura control with him for more than a year!

The Blade didn’t move on to the others until Sophia made it clear that it wasn’t something she could easily teach. Once she did, though, the Blade went through her team one by one and asked about their pasts and desires for the future, something Sophia suddenly realized the Blade hadn’t asked her about. Sophia wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. It might mean nothing more than that the Blade was much more interested in Sophia’s lockpicking.

The Blade hadn’t gotten to Ci’an or Jax when the dyleda match started, but she stopped asking questions anyway. Her attention shifted completely to the championship match, where one of the four teams would be taking home the season’s prize.

No, Sophia corrected herself a few minutes later, not completely. The Blade was also watching the crowd, and that included Sophia’s team. Sophia wasn’t sure what she was watching for, but she was definitely watching.

A few minutes into the match, Sophia was no longer paying any attention to the Blade or even the surprisingly delicious food; all of her attention was on the match. It was exciting from the beginning, with four very solid teams: Golden Aurichalc, Wands and Wings, Fifth Season, and Summerfall. Wands and Wings was the slight favorite, with Summerfall and Golden Aurichalc competing for the next most likely to win. 

Oddly enough, Fifth Season was the strong favorite to take second; they were known for solid, competitive play without either brilliant tricks or occasional flops. From what Bai said, it was entirely possible that they actually planned to take second. The reward for second place  was enough to pay for their expenses the rest of the year and that was enough for Fifth Season’s manager to be happy. If they managed second twice in a year, they’d be sitting pretty.

Summerfall had a similar strategy in some ways, though they were the rarest of teams: one that had both Professional and Called players that competed against each other when they practiced. As long as any of the four annual competitions ended in a win, they’d be funded. As often as not, however, they took third or fourth. That could work, but it could also make things difficult; they had a harder time practicing than the other professional teams. Once in a while, they didn’t even make it into the final match, but they’d made all but one of the ones Sophia had seen.

Wands and Wings and Golden Aurichalc were the two teams who didn’t need wins to fund their practice; they were funded by the Professional League and the Smiths’ Cooperative. They both tended to be tricky and take risks, probably because they could both afford to lose and really wanted to win (or at least beat the other team). They might not really care about beating Summerfall or Fifth Season, but Wands and Wings and Golden Aurichalc met in almost every Professional dyleda championship and they had a serious rivalry. 

The game went up and down, back and forth, with the person in the lead continually shifting. One of the most exciting parts of the game was that the score could change quickly if someone actually managed to complete a year with their dyleda stones. It was a huge bump in the score, so it was something many teams played for.

They were close to the end when Sophia finally noticed something odd. Golden Aurichalc was behind in the score, but she was pretty sure they were doing something tricky; they’d been moving their dyleda stones backwards, and that made no sense. Things finally clicked when she saw the stones pass from one player to another instead of into a bucket, then slide out and around the edge of the field and into the next bucket where they joined a collection of stones the Wands and Wings players were jealously guarding while the guard was distracted by an attempt on the bucket from Summerfall. 

It wasn’t a serious attempt; instead, it was clearly designed to draw a moment of attention from across the field so that Summerfall could take control of a bucket held by Golden Aurichalc. That attack succeeded, dumping a half-dozen Summerfall stones into the bucket and advancing them a season while they recovered a single Golden Aurichalc stone and sent it to the Summerfall start bucket.

A moment later, three more Wands and Wings stones were added to their bucket, having just been recolored to their team in the previous bucket. They then waited the full time for them to register and moved them onwards without noticing that they now had cuckoos among their stones. That was even what the tactic was called; Sophia had seen it several times during other matches, but she’d never seen it pulled off so cleanly. She’d tried to figure out the rules, but they depended partly on which bucket was your starting bucket and whose stones you were moving. There were situations where cuckoo stones simply became your own stones, but there were also situations like what happened here, where you were jealously guarding your opponent’s stones and helping them score points. 

The stones didn’t look the same; they showed which team they were registered to. That didn’t mean the tactic didn’t work, and the place it was the most likely to work was exactly this one: they were moving a bunch of stones quickly and scooped them up without looking. After all, they’d had a guard on the bucket; they knew what was in there was theirs.

They found out how mistaken that assumption was when the stones finished registering in the next bucket and Golden Aurichalc got the tremendous point swing of having their stones complete their second year without being captured by another team. At that point, the Wands and Wings player figured out what was going on and fished out the cuckoos, but it was too late.

The play turned things around for the Golden Aurichalc and won them the championship. Fifth Season pulled off second place, as expected, and Summerfall barely managed to edge out Wands and Wings. Summerfall caught up only because Wands and Wings started trying to counter Golden Aurichalc instead of pushing their own points higher, but it was too late in the game for that to do more than lessen Golden Aurichalc’s new lead.