Broken Lands

Chapter 375 – The Broken Lord’s Link-Gate

The first thing Sophia learned after they left the zone where they met was that Arak Shade didn’t expect to complete their trip on this visit to the Maze. He could sneak through almost any zone without fighting the monsters and escape from the ones he couldn’t sneak through, so he’d already scouted the Maze, but the routes had changed due to mazestorms several times since he last had to locate the link-gate that held the Broken Lord’s door. 

That didn’t change the fact that it was well into the part of the maze that was known as the Deep Maze because it held monsters that were well into the third upgrade. It wasn’t as deep as some teams reached, like the one the Shield of the Sun belonged to, but it was deep enough that Arak didn’t think they’d make it until they were a few levels higher. Sophia decided to prove him wrong; while levels helped, she knew her entire team fought far better than anyone else she’d seen in the Arena; they had to if they wanted to take on third upgrade monsters with the restrictions they usually imposed on themselves, especially while they were still only at the second upgrade. The problem was with Arak’s expectations, not the Flying Stars.

The days that followed were filled with fighting and exploring. They defended villages, dug bandits out of cave systems, killed an entire tribe of boar-people that ate humans, charted a mountain pass, forced their way through a wetland where a river met the sea, killed mobile shadow-monsters that roamed around a strangely modern-looking urban residential area after dark, and found three more areas that seemed to be part of ancient Kestii, among many other things. 

None of the three city annexes were immediately useful, unlike the Night Markets; the Hall of Judgement, Enchantment Court, and Lost Inn were all in a state similar to the Library of Monsters, where they needed to be activated and then have someone brought in to manage them. They were all far too deep inside the Maze to bring in a Professional, but they did each provide a single access token when they were activated. 

Arak grumbled after each one. He’d seen things like them in the Maze before and thought they were dead end zones. He’d never managed to unlock one. Of course, he’d also never really tried. There were rumors about places like that, but no one had ever managed to make anything useful of the Tasks. The description they gave him of the Library of Monsters seemed to annoy him even more than the fact that they were able to figure out the initial Task and get the token in only a few hours per zone. 

All three of the zones had issues like the error in the description of the Library of Monsters. Something had clearly gone very wrong, something the Guide didn’t seem to allow for and wasn’t able to fix.

Sophia spent the time she wasn’t fighting listening to Dav and Xin’ri talk to Arak. He wouldn’t talk about his family, but he had no such issues talking about the Arena and the Blade. She got to hear dozens of stories about his life in the Arena. 

Arak Shade was from Mazehold. Like many of the children of Mazehold’s Professionals, he chose a Vocation and left the city for several years. Unlike most, he returned after he was well into his second upgrade. When he returned, he found only temporary teams and eventually joined the Arena. He was not good at fighting in the Arena, not because he was bad at dealing with monsters but because people who moved through the shadows never got the attention the more impressive Abilities did.

Instead, he started as one of the monster trappers. Eventually, he expanded his ability with his shadows beyond moving through them and capturing monsters. With his Grand Talent, he managed to transform his shadows into something that could heal and jumped over to the healer’s section. 

Despite that, he never stopped going into the Maze with Arena groups, which eventually turned into leading expeditions himself. They needed healers and having the leader cover that role was often useful, especially since he had many of the other coordination Abilities that made leading an expedition easier. He didn’t have any large-scale boosts for the fighters, which was the preferred Ability type for expedition leaders, but he was successful enough that it was easily overlooked.

Sophia was certain he learned a lot from the Flying Stars, as well. Neither she nor Dav had anything to hide other than their Hallows, and they seemed to be the most interesting to Arak Shade. He also listened to stories from the others, but Ci’an and Jax stayed “Amy” and Jaycen” and Xin’ri didn’t mention Mo’ra at all. None of them talked about the Broken Swords or the events in Izel or Tiwaz and the other facility-minds.

Sophia guessed she and Dav did have more to hide after all. It just wasn’t their past before they reached the Broken Lands, which was what Arak seemed the most interested in.

By the sixteenth day in the Maze, Arak was confident they were close to the link he was looking for. Unfortunately, the zones seemed to skip past it, so they moved in circles for that entire day and most of the next. The first zone on the eighteenth day, an underground passageway filled with third upgrade lava worms, got them closer than they’d managed on the two previous days, close enough that Arak was concerned they’d skip right past the link he wanted again, but there was only one link-gate from there that led in the right direction. 

The second zone was a complex of islands that floated in the sky connected only by gigantic dandelion seeds that floated from island to island even with the weight of a person added. Each island had a giant plant monster that they had to fight before it would send out the seeds they could ride to another island. Sophia had never been quite so grateful that she could fly.

She was even more grateful that it was the last zone before they reached the link that held the link-gate covered with the symbol of the Broken Lord. 

Arak walked up to it first. Sophia gave him room while he poked and prodded the link-gate until he backed off. It almost looked like habit, as if he didn’t expect the door to let him in but he still felt like he had to try. He gave up fairly quickly, stepped back, and waved Sophia forward.

Sophia walked up to the door and triggered her manasight just in time to see the locked door shimmer out of existence as the link-gate activated. She laughed as she recognized the way the lock opened: it recognized her authorization from Tiwaz or Othala. No, on second thought, it was probably authorization from Ansuz. He was the one who told Isaz to give them that crystal and come see him behind a door in the Maze that either bore the symbol of the Kestii Empire or the symbol of its betrayer.

The Broken Lord.

Exactly the symbol that was on the link-gate in front of her before it opened.

“How did you do that?” Arak managed to sound both thrilled and annoyed at the same time. “I’ve tried everything I can think of to get through that link-gate and there’s never a response.”

Sophia wasn’t sure how to explain that she’d gotten through the door by being authorized, so she fell back on the easiest answer: a half-truth. “I don’t think I can explain it and even if I did, I don’t think it would work for you.”

She glanced back at the rest of her team. “Come on, let’s head on in. I want to see what’s behind that door.”

Dav was the first one through. It was always him or Jax; Jax’s shield was useful and Dav didn’t need a shield to protect himself against most things for the few seconds it took him to get out of the way and let others come through the link-gate.

This time, it wasn’t necessary. They stepped through the link-gate into a wide stone courtyard. It looked almost like the most common form of link-gate, except far larger. The pathway was more like a boulevard and both sides were lined with overgrown hedges. Ahead of them loomed an imposing structure that had clearly seen better days. Cracked stone walls rose three feet into the air while dirty or fogged windows looked out on the decaying courtyard. Damaged gold leaf flaked from the door frames that surrounded the faded paint that still mostly covered the ten-feet-tall pair of double doors a few steps above the walkway. Nothing jumped out towards them, but Sophia expected it at any moment.

The obvious route was forward, so they made their way slowly towards the mansion. It was silent, with no sounds of life, but Sophia also didn’t feel any death. There were a few signs of remnant magic, but it was all faded and dull; nothing was active, not even active enough to trigger if it was a trap. She kept her eyes open and aura extended, but it was like the world around them slept.

It reminded her of winter, even though it was warm and the hedges looked healthy and green. 

The right-hand door creaked open easily when Dav tugged on the handle. It was dark, but the moment Dav stepped inside, light seemed to blossom from the ceiling. It looked like natural sunlight, but it couldn’t be; the windows were not even close to clear enough to let that much sun in.

The doors opened onto a humongous lobby, maybe even an atrium. It was at least forty feet wide and over a hundred feet long and it extended from the floor to the glass-paned roof at least sixty feet above. There were several seating areas and what looked like a number of reception areas, but the focus of the room was at the far end, where a pillar of many different colors of crystal threads wound around each other rose from the floor to the ceiling. It was wide at the base and the top and in the center was an opening where the crystal looked cracked. It was separated from the rest of the atrium by a glass panel that seemed to focus the light from the ceiling on the crystalline pillar so that it sparkled with light as well as mana.

Sophia knew exactly what it had to be, even though it didn’t look like any of the other facility-minds she’d seen. That had to be Ansuz, but an Ansuz that slept and did not speak. 

It also had to be the place the Heart of the Empire Isaz gave them belonged. It was a long way away, but Sophia was confident that the opening was exactly the size of the two-toned chunk of crystal. 

“You dare to enter my home?” A voice roared from the left side of the atrium. It was loud, supported by mana and almost shouted even before that. It came from near one of the clusters of chairs, where a man in heavy armor stood. It looked like he’d been slumped in the seat a moment before.

“This place needs to be fixed,” Sophia retorted. “We were asked to come and we came.”

“No one may enter my home!” The armored figure shouted, then pulled a sword from the scabbard at his side. Like the symbol on the link-gate, the sword was broken about halfway down the blade.

Sophia had the distinct feeling that they were about to fight for the right to complete Ansuz’s request. She hoped it would be only the single enemy; while her group could handle large groups, they were far better at dealing with smaller numbers of more powerful enemies.