Broken Lands

Chapter 374 – The Maze Redux

Arak slipped past the monsters in the third zone of the day like an insubstantial shadow. They didn’t even know he was there. Most people didn’t know that was possible; even if they did, they’d assume that moving through a zone without fighting would result in a complete lack of new Wisps or Thread. They were completely wrong; Arak gathered more Thread passing through a zone without being noticed than he did when he was with a normal team or an expedition. If he was noticed, he’d have to fight or run and would gather significantly less Thread.

He stepped out of the link-gate and reached for his mana compass, then froze as he saw the notification from the Guide.

Spoiler

You have entered the Domain of Plume Manifestation!

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Arak couldn’t pale when he was one with the shadows, but if he could have, he would have. He didn’t know the monster that had that Domain, but whatever it was knew he was there the moment he stepped into the Domain. 

If he didn’t know what the monster was, it had to come from far deeper in the Maze. That meant it was dangerous; maybe he could hide, maybe he couldn’t. If he could, he’d try to sneak around it; just because it knew something was here didn’t mean it knew exactly where he was. Some would, some wouldn’t. The ones that did were the most dangerous to someone like Arak, if they could also affect him when he was the shadows.

“Arak?” Sophia’s voice forced Arak’s train of thought to a complete halt immediately. “I’d swear I felt someone over there and he said he was coming.”

“I think I felt it too,” Dav’s deep voice rumbled as she agreed. “From next to the link-gate, the one in the east.”

Sophia’s Signature was feathers

. Plumes were feathers, or close enough. The Domain had to belong to her, at least in part. Arak didn’t know what Dav’s Signature was, but he was the other person who noticed Arak and Manifestation was a decent word for the odd way his Abilities seemed to work. Arak had expected it to be something more like copying or sealing, but manifestation was close enough to make sense.The fact that they’d sensed him meant that they were perceptive through their Domains. It also meant they’d managed to set up a blended Domain. That was advanced Domain work and something Arak didn’t expect of people who were new to the third upgrade. It had to be Sophia’s work; he knew she had a Domain and he thought it was her Anchor, so that meant she’d had it for years. She was probably teaching Dav how to use his; blending their Domains would make that easier if she could manage it, and she clearly could.

Even more impressive was the fact that she’d managed to blend them well enough that the Guide recognized them as a single Domain and one that was powerful enough to warn Arak about. Normally, a blended Domain was at most as strong as the weakest one involved, allowing for coordinated action and shared power, as well as reducing issues from Domain conflict, but that was all. There was no way Dav’s Domain was that strong, so Sophia had somehow managed to blend them without weakening anything.

Unless that wasn’t what he was looking at. What if he was looking at Dav’s Manifestation of Sophia’s Domain? That would be a novel way to teach Domain mechanics while also playing into Dav’s strengths. It would probably also let Sophia overlap her Domain on top of the one Dav Manifested, since they were the same thing and they weren’t innately conflicting in any way. 

That was less impressive in terms of the control it required but far more impressive in what it meant for their understanding of their Abilities and how they worked with each other. Arak would take a team of competent, coordinated people who worked well together over a team of geniuses that couldn’t work together any day. The coordinated team would sail through things that the geniuses would fail hard trying to face. 

Arak watched the duo for a long moment, then let himself solidify. He spoke from their shadows instead of shouting. “Yes, I’m here. I’m impressed you noticed me.”

“You don’t hide your aura when you’re in the shadows,” Sophia said with a grin. “I learned that one a long time ago; the aura’s harder to hide than the body, so always look for the aura. We were lucky that you arrived while I was teaching Dav aura control, though. It meant we were paying attention.”

“Paying enough attention that the Guide announced your Domain as if it were potentially hostile,” Arak said with a grin to defuse the comment. “Had me worried for a bit there. So, I assume you’ve had no trouble so far?”

Sophia shook her head. “We’re only a couple of zones in; it’s not hard yet.”

Arak nodded, then pulled out a short stubby wand. It came from the Broken Blade’s collection; he’d stolen it a few nights earlier. She probably hadn’t missed it yet; it wasn’t like she needed it often. He pushed his shadowy mana into the wand and watched it dip slowly towards the compass. That meant it was working and also that there weren’t any other tracking stones on his person. “Hand me the tracking stone, then fill this with mana. It will indicate if you have any others; I want to make sure we aren’t followed.”

It was bad enough that he had to leave a tracking stone at the Broken Lord’s door every time he found the zone, but that didn’t mean anyone else was likely to know he was tracking the place. Like the other two expedition leaders, Arak had a network of tracking stones he used to create a partial map of the Maze and to lead his expeditions to places that were either untouched, like the first expedition with the Flying Stars, or lucrative like the expedition he led back to the Tower of Aura Weight.

There was no tracking stone on Sophia, Dav, or Amy, but both Jaycen and Xin’ri had one hidden in their packs. That irritated Arak; there was only one thing the two of them had in common other than being on the Flying Stars team: they were both Item Anchors. He didn’t know why the Broken Blade paid such close attention to Item Anchors, but he knew she did.

It was almost galling to realize that they were more important to the Blade than Sophia was when Sophia was key to Arak’s plans. Did she really think she could adequately track Sophia through her teammates?

It wasn’t until Arak mentioned his concern to Sophia that he found out the real reason: her pack was aura-locked. No one could put anything in it or take anything out of it without her permission, which meant her or Dav. She sometimes gave other people permission temporarily, but that was it. It was great protection against thieves and people who might want to plant something on her without her knowledge, like the tracking stones.

Arak didn’t even know that was possible. It definitely meant a better knowledge of wards and magical locks than he’d ever heard of, but in a way that made sense: it was Sophia’s pack. She’d mentioned more than once that most items weren’t locked well and were easy to open, even things that no one had any luck with. If she came from a place with better wards, maybe her ability to open them wasn’t as odd there as it was here.

It did make him feel better to think about all of the people who’d probably tried to slip something into her pack only to realize they couldn’t. 

He was still thinking about that when Sophia handed the wand over to her talking rodent and had him use it. It found nothing on Taika, of course. Arak didn’t even ask why she had him try; pet owners could be odd, and Taika was basically a pet, even though he could talk.

When she handed the wand back to him, Sophia surprised Arak with a question. “Is this why you wanted to meet inside the Maze instead of heading out from Mazehold together? Do you think someone’s watching us?”

Arak wasn’t certain if he was surprised by how much more aware she was than he’d assumed or horrified by how naive that still seemed. “Of course someone is watching you. Most of the people watching you will be people who enjoy watching your Arena matches; you aren’t the most powerful team fighting in the Arena, but you might be the most popular. People love watching you fight with only part of your full kit, it’s like you’re an exhibition every time you go out there.”

“Other people limit their matches, too,” Sophia protested.

Arak smiled. It made sense that she’d make that mistake; she hadn’t been around the Arena long enough to see how it had changed over the past decade. “That was only for specific exhibitions, like a flying match, before you started doing it. Now there are several teams that limit most or all of their matches, the same way you do. That’s how you know you’re popular in the Arena; you keep being scheduled frequently and other people start imitating you. You’re lucky, you know; most teams that inspire imitators cause similar teams to form and end up with the Arena tired of it. There are a couple of other teams who can all fly, but neither of them shows the same level of versatility as you do, so they haven’t been able to limit themselves as much as you did. When you all fought from the ground against a full flight of third upgrade rainbow skyeagles about a tenday ago, for example; none of the flight teams would do that. People knew you could follow them into the sky and that you didn’t.”

Sophia flushed and muttered, “I just wanted the feathers.”

“It worked, then?” Dav cut in. “I was worried we’d look like a team that couldn’t all fly if we chose not to.”

Arak chuckled. “It might not work for another team, but you’re the Flying Stars. People know what you can do.”

He sighed. They really needed a proper Patron, someone who could guide them to true success and get them to stop risking themselves in the Maze. Sweetfire clearly wasn’t doing that, though he was otherwise doing an excellent job with them; the periodic lack of their presence had worked out far better than Arak expected in making people watch for them. At the same time, Arak knew he was benefiting from the team’s insistence on running the Maze. Maybe he’d try to get them out of the Maze for their safety once they’d dealt with the Broken Blade. He didn’t have all that many real options before then.

“Why does it matter if people see you leave with us, though?” Sophia persisted. “We go to the Maze all the time; so do you. What’s different about you going with us?”

Arak had to admit that that was a good question, if you didn’t know the Blade. The answer was the same reason he’d avoided actually forming an opposition faction in the Arena, even though leading expeditions regularly had exactly the same effect. “I don’t want to be forcibly Hallowed.”

His blunt statement had exactly the effect Arak hoped: he got the full attention of the entire Flying Stars team. “I only go into the Maze as part of an expedition, at least openly. Expeditions are primarily for aurichalc, not Wisps, so the Blade assumes I’m not trying to reach the top of the third upgrade. She thinks, or at least I hope she thinks, that I’m there for the same reason I work as a healer: to save lives. That means I’m not a threat in any way. Even so, I’m the single most influential person in the Arena who isn’t Hallowed, and some of the others became Hallowed suddenly and changed significantly. I don’t want that.”

“Then why don’t you leave the Arena?”

Arak sighed at Sophia’s ignorance. “Going to the Registry or becoming a Professional wouldn’t protect me from the Blade, and I’m not going to leave Mazehold. I have family here.” That was as much as he ever told anyone and more than he told most. It was difficult to hide his children and his relationship with their mother, but it was safer for everyone involved if he did.