Broken Lands

Chapter 355 – It’s Old

The shield over the Arena was not going to be enough.

It went up with a buzz that scraped across Sophia’s senses. She’d felt a lot of wards over the years and this was definitely a ward. It simply wasn’t one that was in good shape. She could almost hear it wavering even as it snapped into place. It leaked unstable mana in several different Affinities from the moment it snapped into place. 

Sophia didn’t manage to suppress her wince. “What is wrong with that thing?”

“It’s old,” the Blade answered. “That’s all. Why do you say something’s wrong with it?”

“Can’t you feel it?” Sophia stared at the Blade in disbelief. Wasn’t it obvious?

“Feel what?” Jax asked from across the room. “I can see the shield’s up, but you can’t feel it when it … you can feel it?”

A strangely deep howl interrupted whatever Sophia would have said. It sounded like the howl of the wind, only with more bass. The howl rose in pitch, then turned into a broad beating noise, like an elephant stomping on the air above them. 

Sophia looked out the window and up into the sky where a thin golden radiance held off the sudden fury of the mazestorm. She watched the pitch-black sky shift and waver unsteadily and was pretty sure she knew what the dominant type of magic on the storm was this time: water. The howl returned and Sophia nodded along with it; that was water moving on the other side of the Arena’s shield, scraping along its edge. The beating noise was also water, simply water thrown against the shield instead of moving across it. 

The shield screamed as it held back the watery mana. Sophia watched it shed even more mana than it had before, already strained within moments of the mazestorm’s arrival. She didn’t know how much it could manage, but the noise was not a good sign. It didn’t seem like a sign of imminent failure, either, but Sophia still didn’t like it.

“The groundskeepers have started,” Xin’ri commented.

Sophia looked in her direction, then followed her attention to the wall screen Xin’ri’s gaze was fixed on. It clearly showed a curved line of stone rising from the wall that ran around the Arena’s edge, just inside the Arena’s shield. In fact, Sophia thought it actually touched the shield itself in places. It was hard to be certain, but it certainly looked like the flickers in the shield came far enough in to tap against any irregularity on the arc of stone.

“It will be a dome, supported by the groundskeepers’ Abilities. It is one of the three great spells all of our groundskeepers must learn, along with the eight minor spells. Of them all, this is the largest in scope as it cannot be cast in pieces; only a working of multiple mages can bring about a dome.” Blade Seuvarin smiled, obviously pleased with the work of her groundskeepers. “It will not last for very long; mages cannot synchronize their mana for long. Still, it will last long enough.”

Sophis shook her head at the idea that mages had to synchronize their mana for what was obviously a preplanned spell with defined parameters. There were ways to create an interlocking spell where that wasn’t a problem or practice it enough to make it smooth, but neither of those were the primary solution Sophia knew, the solution that was used all over her home universe. That solution was in many ways simpler: a ritual spell. 

There had to be a leader if you wanted multiple mages to work together in a ritual, at least outside certain very limited ones Sophia had studied but still didn’t understand. That meant … wait. Those very limited ones did require something you could call mana synchronization, didn’t they? 

And she knew what a ritual was called, here. She’d learned that after the first and only time she did one. “It’s a siege spell, isn’t it?”

“It can be used that way,” the Blade agreed. “But don’t make the mistake of thinking that means the ones who cast it are extremely powerful. They know exactly one siege spell, this one.”

That startled a laugh out of her. Given what the Blade had implied about the ritual they were using, powerful was the exact opposite of what she was thinking. “They’re going to be utterly exhausted after this is done. Spells like that are awful, and if they’re going to hold it until it’s broken they’ll be dealing with backlash, too. Unless the siege spell handles that?”

The Blade’s expression shifted. Her lips twitched upwards at the edges, though Sophia couldn’t see it as a smile. Not really. “You know a lot about magic.”

Sophia shrugged. It was just what she learned at home. She was pretty sure her parents expected her to head off to an Academy at some point, and she’d thought about it, but she’d put it off after her mother had the vision about her being thrown into another universe. She wasn’t sure where she wanted to go; she’d thought she wanted to head to a school that specialized in delving, but now she wasn’t so certain that specializing was a good idea. She had a lot of options. “I had a good education. There’s still a lot I can learn.”

The Blade snorted. “Humility doesn’t get you anywhere. You know enough to be useful. Which brings me back to earlier; since we’re stuck here, I may as well make the offer I intended.” She heaved herself to her feet and made her way over to the table where the box sat on a red tablecloth.

A screech pulled Sophia’s attention away from the Blade and back to the window where she could see the Arena’s shield shudder and distort under what looked like a pounding wall of water. It rebounded and rose higher than it had been before snapping back into place, but Sophia knew that was a very bad sign. She didn’t have to know much about the ward itself to know that being pushed outside its design shape meant it was being stressed and likely damaged even more than it already was. 

The groundskeepers’ dome was halfway to the top of the arch, which was good but not good enough, so Sophia turned towards the other screen. It let her see the Professionals’ side of the Arena, which was nearly empty. As she watched, one set of doors out of the Arena after another was pulled closed as the Professionals disappeared inside; only the Arena personnel closing the gates and a handful of Called that either planned to stay in the Arena’s dome itself or who were trying to fit through the smaller Called exits were still in the stands.

That probably explained why the Professionals sat on the side with larger doors, now that she thought about it. It always made some sense, since most of the crowd was Professionals, but it made even more sense if there was an exit plan to specifically get the Professionals out. 

It made her feel better about the Arena and the Broken Blade to know that she prioritized the safety of the crowd. Sure, some of that was probably because the Arena’s income came from their bets and deaths would mean fewer bets, but Sophia didn’t really care what the reason was. They did their best to keep people safe, and that mattered.

The Arena was not the Temple, for all that the leadership followed the Broken Lord. 

Or perhaps even the Temple would have done the same. Many of the people who came to the Arena were followers of the Broken Lord; at the minimum, they weren’t openly derisive of the Patron. Keeping one’s followers safe so that they could work for you was basic; only a bad ruler didn’t care at least that much. In fact, even many bad rulers did care that much.

The Arena shield cracked. A small flood of watery mana swirled through the air and forced its way in through the crack before it sparked and closed once more. All Sophia could do was watch as the mana reshaped itself into a lion made of water that rushed towards one of the Arena staff.

One of the Called in the middle of the Arena floor jumped into the sky and shot towards the lion. He sent himself straight through its body, splashing it in all directions and halting its progress. 

The water mana didn’t go away. Instead, it pulled itself together in a slightly smaller form. This time, it looked like a crocodile, slightly longer but far shorter than the lion. 

The crocodile didn’t even get to move before three flaming arrows ripped through it from the ground. The flying Called circled and watched the water condense once again. This time, it seemed to turn into a bush, visually larger than the crocodile but far less dense. It was almost immediately smashed apart by a boulder that seemed somehow familiar to Sophia.

A moment’s search found the source. One of the other Called standing in the Arena was one of the three rock sisters Sophia remembered from the expedition, the tall one. Sophia didn’t see the other two, but even one was reassuring. 

They clearly had this under control, at least for now. Every time they hit the monster, it was smaller, and there were a lot more Called than she’d first realized. Thirty or forty people spread across the Arena didn’t look like many, but it was a lot of people to handle one monster, or even a dozen monsters. They’d be fine as long as the storm was mostly kept out; they could handle a little leakage.

The moment she thought that, the Arena shield cracked again. It didn’t heal as quickly the second time and a larger amount of watery mana slipped through the crack. This time, it all came in as ice that rapidly spread across the interior of the Arena, coating everything it touched in an inch-thick layer of hardened water. It didn’t seem to diminish the wave much as it left the ice behind; instead, it almost looked like it grew.

Sophia had seen quite a few odd things in past mazestorms. She’d even seen a couple of watery storms; they were fairly common. She hadn’t ever seen water form itself into a moving wave of ise that left a trail behind itself before. It looked difficult to fight.

A wall of fire sprang up in front of the ice wave. Sophia expected it to extinguish the fire and keep going, perhaps a little smaller, but it seemed to bounce backwards instead. Almost immediately, the fire spread to surround not only the ice wave itself but the entire iced area. “That’s someone who knows what she’s facing,” she muttered.

Once again, it was clear that the Called inside the Arena knew what they were doing and had things under control. 

Sophia turned her attention to the dome slowly crawling higher in the sky along the inside edge of the Arena’s shield. It seemed to be moving slower than ever. That couldn’t really be true; it was simply her impatience talking. While she was distracted, it had climbed three-quarters of the way from the wall to the peak, enough to muffle the keening noise from the failing Arena shield. It was now high enough that the screens that were set up to show the dyleda match could no longer see above the groundskeepers’ spell.

“Sophia?” The Blade’s voice didn’t make her turn away from the window that was now her only way to see the edge of the dome. “Oh, you’re watching the spell. I should have expected that; I can introduce you to some of the groundskeepers when we’re done here.”

“I’d like that,” Sophia admitted. “If they’re still awake. This can’t be easy.”