Broken Lands

Chapter 357 – To the Windows

It took a while to escape the Blade’s offer with promises to think about it. The delay was mostly because they had to wait for the mazestorm to pass, but that didn’t make the Blade’s repeated offer any easier to listen to. At one point, she even opened a couple of the pouches to reveal fragments of a broken sword.

Sophia knew better than to touch it. Touching it would reveal that she was already Hallowed by someone other than the Broken Lord. Unfortunately, keeping her eyes off of the fragments was equally difficult. She couldn’t escape the thought that she might be looking at fragments of what was left of a person.

A dozen half-baked ideas flashed through her mind of ways to steal the broken sword, but Sophia dismissed each one as soon as it appeared. They were all somewhere between pointless and counterproductive, usually both. The only way she was going to get her hands on those fragments was with the Blade watching, and the Blade was more powerful than Sophia. Sure, her entire team probably could kill the Blade, but that was a bad idea in so many different ways that Sophia didn’t even want to start listing them. If nothing else, she didn’t know that the Blade deserved death.

The Blade didn’t seem to recognize the horror in Sophia’s stare; she seemed to see longing instead. At least, that was what Sophia assumed the Blade saw; she couldn’t think of any other reason the woman was continually drawing attention to them and talking about all of the powers of the Hallowed of the Broken Lord. She even extended the offer to the rest of the team and mentioned that the Broken Lord could make gaining Wisps easier.

Sophia already knew about that, just like she knew that he could make gaining Wisps harder. Los’en knew a great deal about the Templars, more than Sophia thought they wanted him to know. Hallowed of the Broken Lord couldn’t spend their Wisps themselves; they had to use a Hallowing Blade, and the Hallowing Blade would distribute some and steal the rest for itself and for those who the Broken Lord wanted to advance more quickly, a lot like what the Wanderer did for Sophia, Dav, and Ci’an. 

It could also steal some from everyone who touched it without being Hallowed. Los’en suspected that was the reason for the light show when Sophia touched the sword: it attempted to steal from her but the fact that she was Hallowed by the Wanderer prevented it. Sophia wasn’t as certain of that as Los’en was, because something about that didn’t seem quite right, but she couldn’t say for certain that it was wrong, either.

When Art finally opened the door again to let them know that the Arena was clear and the Called were leaving, Broken Blade Seuvarin reminded Sophia that the offer was open and could be taken at any time before she or the rest of her team reached the third upgrade. It was open even if they had a failed third upgrade; if that happened, it could “repair” her Great Talent and replace it with a Hallowed Great Talent.

Sophia didn’t trust anything the Broken Lord might “give” her; she was certain it would be a trap. She wasn’t dumb enough to say that, but she knew she wasn’t a great actor. Despite that, the Blade didn’t seem to realize anything worse was going on than Sophia’s obvious discomfort at repeatedly turning down an offer of help she was too proud to accept.

Sophia could only be grateful for that. She doubted the truth would go over well with the Blade.

The Flying Stars headed across the Arena building to the Professionals’ exit. They hadn’t used it, but they knew where it was and it was definitely the fastest route to the Windows. The sooner they got there, the better, even if they had to pay the Professionals to let them through.

When they got there, the double doors were closed but not otherwise secured; it was a way to safety, not a wall to keep things out. That was at the building’s exits to both the outside and to the Arena itself, all of which were certainly still secured and probably actively guarded as well.

When Jax opened a door, a bored voice met him. “Two leaves per Called, no cost to Professionals.”

“They don’t have to pay, and you should know that,” a woman’s voice scolded from a short distance down the fifteen foot wide hallway that waited on the other side of the doorway. “That’s the Flying Stars, they’re one of the teams that does post-storm monster cleanup. Sweetfire’s team.”

“Oh, right,” the first voice answered. “I didn’t look.”

Once Jax moved past the entrance, Sophia was finally able to see the two people who waited on the inside of the doorway. The first voice was a young man with light brown hair, probably in his late teens, while the second voice was a dark-haired woman with a few strands of gray revealing her age to be probably late forties or early fifties. 

Both were dressed in simple leather armor and carrying both a sword and a baton. The armor had a sigil on the upper left of the chest that Sophia recognized as belonging to the Professional League, which meant they were probably Professional guards. That made sense; other than Called, guardsmen were the most likely to be able to defend against monsters that tried to sneak into the underground, and City Guard was a type of Profession. They were also good choices to collect payments from Called, since many guardsmen had the ability to temporarily disable Called Abilities as long as they were within their area of authority. Mazehold wasn’t like Casterville; it didn’t neuter its Called. That didn’t mean there weren’t ways for the Professionals to deal with them; it was simply harder.

“We’re headed to the Windows,” Dav announced. “Something often comes through after a mazestorm. We’ve never come down this route, though; which way do we need to go to get to the large underway?”

The woman guard gave them directions, then waved them past the checkpoint. 

Sophia’s mind wandered as they walked. The easy way the guardswoman said they were Sweetfire’s team stuck with her in a way other things hadn’t. There were a lot of inconsistencies about the man. He claimed to not really like people, but he knew everyone and everyone seemed to know him. He lived alone, separate from everyone else, but one of the gathering points for safety during mazestorms was directly below the main access point from his residence and he created robots that could protect people.

And now his name was enough to get them past a Professional checkpoint without paying the usual underground access fee for Called - because guards of the Professional League

recognized them. Sweetfire was a member of the Smiths’ Cooperative, not the Professional League, and Sophia was pretty sure the underground city was divided between the two. Why did Professional League guards recognize them and know both their link to Sweetfire and that they were supposed to be there to help clear out monsters?Sophia was really beginning to think that there was more to Sweetfire than they knew. She was still pretty confident that the reason they’d been sent to him was innocent; he was incredibly interested in the fireflowers, especially the ones she’d trapped in firewater feathers. It was simply that he was also more than that.

She didn’t have long to think. The large underway that Sophia still thought of as a subway turned out to run almost next to the Arena, and the entrance to the Windows was only about fifteen minutes’ walk down the large underway. It was definitely good to know that this was the side of the city it was on; Sophia had thought it was closer to Sweetfire’s place.

Unlike their first visit but very similar to past visits, there was no wall of fire blocking off the entrance. There also weren’t any obvious goo monsters or goo trails in either the entryway or the large entrance room, but the third room they entered had two giant caterpillars that dripped black goo. A third squeezed out of a darkened Window as they watched.

“These explode,” Xin’ri warned the others. “Or, well, they spit the goo at anyone who comes close and will collapse if they spew out too much. Sweetfire says it’s the easiest way to kill them, but it’ll mean that we won’t be able to recover much of anything from them.”

Sophia shook her head. That wasn’t going to work at all. “We need to stay away from them then? How are we supposed to kill them?”

“Fire doesn’t work well. Rock shards would, but that has the problem of getting the stuff we want all over the floor and contaminating it. The easiest way would be if we had those enchanted vials Tiwaz talked about.”

Sophia snorted. Xin’ri could dream about having those vials all she wanted; they didn’t have any. Sure, it sounded nice to have a magical item that would suck the exact stuff they wanted to collect out of the goo monsters while leaving the “contaminated” bits behind, but they didn’t have any. Tiwaz didn’t even have the design for them, although he did have several different analyses. They were imported through one of the Gates, so the supply dried up long before the Tower fell. As far as Tiwaz knew, the last vials were probably tucked away somewhere because they couldn’t be used away from the Gates, but without any idea where that was they couldn’t even see if they’d survived the centuries.

Sophia doubted they had. Enchantments failed under sustained stress, and the vials sounded like something where at least part of the enchantment was always active. The interior of the vial had to be maintained, after all.

“We have the vials you located,” Sophia reminded Xin’ri. “You said they’re standard and should work for long enough to get the substrate to Tiwaz even if we can’t manage the pure separation of the original vials. Tiwaz can handle it from there. But we still need to know how to kill them; I know we planned to cut them open and scoop out the goo.”

“While wearing heavy gloves,” Xin’ri agreed with a frown. “None of us need to be warped, even if you think that you and Dav are safe from it. That won’t work on the caterpillars. We need to capture them and prevent the eruptions or capture them as they happen in something that won’t contaminate them. Which means … I know. Jax, Taika, you two can make light and force walls. Just how much can you shape them?”

The answers were, respectively, “not much but I can put out several at a time and stack them” and “as much as you need as long as it doesn’t have to be too big.” Both answers were perfect for what Xin’ri had in mind. She could surround them with water to discourage them from moving until they were ready for each one; water ought to be recognized as “environmental” and not trigger the assault. 

Jax and Taika built a catch-funnel, with Jax handling the larger outer portions and Taika linking them together and creating a sort of a bowl in the middle to hold the goo without allowing it to become contaminated. Sophia would then send a feather at the monster to trigger it and then scoot the feather away from it while the monster poured out its substance. Xin’i would then have Taika create an opening in the “bowl” he caught the goo in to load it into the vials.

It was essentially their own home-grown version of the ancient purpose-made vials, with a few extra steps because they didn’t have the right tools. With luck, it would all work out.