Broken Lands

Chapter 354 – Interrupted

The last few minutes of the game were almost as exciting as the surprise that happened shortly before the end as Wands and Wings shifted to a concerted effort to tank Golden Aurichalc’s score. Sophia found her attention pulled from one side of the court to another as fast plays, stone theft, and a higher amount of physical contact than was allowed in basketball played out across the field. Sophia was pretty sure she saw at least one Golden Aurichalc player take a Wands and Wings player down with him when the Wands and Wings player hit him from the side.

Sophia was glad they’d held off on disabling the healing system’s power source after their visit to Tiwaz. Contrary to her expectations, it definitely would have been noticed in time for whatever monsters she left to be viable, but it might have had long-lasting complications for the dyleda players. Some of those hits were hard and she was pretty sure the player that was escorted out at the last minute had either a bad joint injury or a broken bone. 

“An exciting game,” Broken Blade Seuvarin observed as the last injured player was helped off the court. “The trick near the end was nice, but it won’t work again for years. They will remember it. Of course, that may be the point; it will add a moment of hesitation while they check the stones each time they move them. Small things like that add up.”

Sophia nodded. She was not even close to being an expert at dyleda, but she could see the Blade’s point. It wasn’t one she’d have thought of, but she wasn’t used to planning out long-term campaigns against specific opponents, either. She fought monsters and they didn’t learn from their defeats, because they were dead.

There were exceptions, of course, but they weren’t something Sophia had ever needed to deal with. That was for people more powerful than she was, or than she’d been back home.

It was also for coaches, but once again that wasn’t Sophia’s area. She’d participated in a few sports over the years, but never professionally. Realistically, the time she spent in the Arena was the closest she’d ever come to professional sports, and she thought of it as more like a show than a sport. Fooling their opponents was nice but not needed if they could simply overpower them. The point was to always, always put on an interesting show.

“Now that it’s over, I have an offer for you, Sophia,” the Broken Blade started. She moved over to the food table, where a small but ornate wooden box with golden fittings and decorations sat on a deep red tablecloth. Sophia was certain neither the tablecloth nor the box were there earlier in the match; that was the table where she’d gotten bite-sized sausages in a really interesting spicy cream sauce from early in the match.

The Broken Blade gently opened the lid of the box to reveal more of the deep red fabric. It seemed to be formed into a set of small bags that held small, flat objects. She pulled one out and started to open it, but before she could do more or say anything about it, however, a wailing noise cut through the air.

It sounded almost exactly like Sweetfire’s mazestorm siren, other than being a little softer than the one in his house or the one mounted on the Registry building. In fact, it sounded almost exactly like what the one on the Registry building sounded like when they were inside Arryn’s house.

“By the broken sword,” the Blade swore as she set the pouch back in its box and closed the lid. “Did this have to happen now?”

The Blade shook her head, then turned to look directly at Sophia. “Stay here. This box is fully protected against mazestorms and … you know what? I’m just going to stay here too. This is not the time for me to head back to my usual chamber.” She whipped around, took the two steps to the door out, yanked it open, then yelled. “ART! Get your butt in here!”

Sophia glanced at Jax. He ought to know what was going on better than anyone else, but all he did was ostentatiously shrug and snag a few of the remaining snacks before returning to his seat. Sophia sighed, then made sure to grab a few of the small iced cakes for herself. They were an odd mix of spicy and sweet not quite like the combination of chocolate and chili peppers because whatever the sweet was, it definitely wasn’t chocolate. Whatever it was, she liked it and definitely wanted to see if she could find more. Maybe the Registry’s tavern sold it?

Bai would definitely know what it was.

An older man dressed in a plain gray shirt and black pants stepped into the room and spoke without even a glance around. “It’s earlier than we expected, and headed towards us instead of across the Maze to the west of us. Unfortunately, it’s weaker than expected; the sirens didn’t trigger until it was dangerously close. The ushers are opening all of the Arena gates, but there won’t be time to get everyone inside. We’re trying to get the Arena shield activated, but I’m not confident.”

“It hasn’t worked properly since the lower connections started to fail.” The Blade slashed the air with her hand. “There’s no point in worrying about it. Do we have time to get the Professionals out?”

Art shook his head. “Not a chance. If the Mazestorm was on the path we expected, we’d have time, but it isn’t and no one saw it coming.”

“Then the shield had better work.” The Blade closed her eyes for a moment, obviously thinking. Her fingers wiggled in the air as if they longed to do something. When she finally opened her eyes, she nodded decisively. “Very well. Confirm the artifact keepers are setting up for the shield, then prepare the groundskeepers; they need to be ready to create an earth wall before the storm gets here if the shield doesn’t go up. Keep them available even if it does; I don’t like how often the mana lines have failed recently. Don’t let them trigger the shield until the mazestorm is within a hundred yards of the building. Fifty would be better, if it’s moving slowly.”

Art nodded, then darted back out the door, leaving it open behind him. The Blade chuckled, then shouted after the man before she closed the door. “And shut the doors behind you.”

“You can predict Mazestorms?” The words fell into the silence left after the door clicked shut. Sophia leaned forward as she anticipated the Blade’s answer.

The Blade snorted. “Not me. One of the Professionals who works for us is a weather witch; he can influence the weather as well as predict it, at least to an extent. Most of what he does is make sure the sky over the Arena itself is clear enough for the evening fights or warn us in advance if it won’t be. He’s been trying to predict Mazestorms for about five years now; he was getting pretty good at it until a year or so ago. About half of his predictions have gone sideways since then.”

If the Blade was telling the truth, predicting Mazestorms was a powerful tool but it wasn’t the reason Arena fighters were more likely to survive the Maze than those who weren’t. Bai was certain the discrepancy went back more than twenty years, not five, and while it varied some over that timeframe he was certain it was at least that long. He couldn’t say for certain if it was longer than that or not because that was when he started collecting enough data to see the pattern. His guess was that it was even older.

Sophia was going to have to ask Bai if anything had changed more or less five years ago and again in the past year with his numbers. It was possible there was something he hadn’t picked out because he didn’t know what times to look at.

The single year number worried Sophia a little. That was roughly when they arrived in Mazehold. If it was actually a few months longer than that, it would line up with when they repaired the interspace conduit between Othala and Tiwaz and woke Tiwaz up. It would also line up with when they broke the Arena’s healing setup the first time, but Sophia didn’t think that was relevant. The fact that mana was now demanded by Tiwaz and also ran to and from Othala seemed a lot more relevant; that was enough mana movement to potentially change the local manascape in small ways, and if mazestorms were anything like real storms, changes to the manascape could affect all sorts of things about them the same way the land and atmosphere affected ordinary storms.

In other words, the mazestorm they were about to see impact the Arena while there was still a crowd in it might be partially their fault. “What can we do to help?”

The Blade barked out a single laugh. “Not a single thing, unless you can repair a failing millenia-old artifact in twenty minutes. By the time you get there, probably more like ten. There’s nothing I can do now, either, so just sit down and eat something. I’d turn the screens off if I could, but everyone who’d normally do that is dealing with the crowd. It’s a better use of their time.”

As much as Sophia wanted to say that she could fix an artifact, the truth was that she couldn’t. Something as simple as slipping through a ward was easy; wards always had ways inside or at least detection thresholds. If you didn’t, something as simple as a breeze that carried a little dust would set them off. Even one that was limited to living things could be set off by an ant, so there had to be more to them. That made them vulnerable.

Repairing something that almost worked properly because it was old and failing was completely different. Most of the time, it was also the wrong answer; if one part of an enchantment failed, other parts were probably close to failure. A temporary patch simply meant it would fail somewhere else soon. 

Worse, mazestorms weren’t something Tiwaz was familiar with. That meant that whatever shield the Blade was talking about couldn’t be original. If it really was over a thousand years old, it probably came from the years after the Tower fell, like the hacked-together healing setup. It kind of made sense when Sophia thought about it; if you were going to have a place where people could come and be healed or where they retreated to when there was a monster attack, it only made sense to be able to protect the space. The top of the Arena was a giant opening, which made it a huge weakness.

A giant shield like that would need a lot of power, wouldn’t it?

Suddenly, the stack of mana-holding blocks in the creation chamber made a lot more sense. They’d always thought there were too many for healing setup. They’d assumed it was inefficient or maybe that it was buildup from years of use without a good measure on how much was actually there. Both were probably correct, but the main answer was probably different. The main reason there was so much mana being “stored” in the creation chamber was that the shield over the Arena also used it. 

Sophia found herself even more thankful than before that they hadn’t broken the setup again. She wasn’t sure she wanted to ever break it again, now that she knew what it was used for, but she also knew they didn’t really have a choice if they wanted to keep Tiwaz secret; it had to be broken in order to use the creation chamber for anything else.

If only she knew how to actually make a real mana storage device. If she could do that, maybe they could route the mana some other way.