Broken Lands

Chapter 384 – Final Check

From there, the rest of the setup for the ritual the Wanderer wanted Sophia to perform seemed easy. She turned the breastplate so that it sat with the symbol facing down, then placed the unstopped jar inside. She considered placing a ring of feathers around the breastplate, but that seemed entirely too likely to block some of the material the Wanderer wanted her to gather. A better solution was to use the feathers that floated in her Domain as the outer ring of feathers. She could add more feathers if she needed to. She had plenty in her Hoard.

Once the setup was complete, Sophia doublechecked the directions to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. You always did that when you were setting up a ritual, even one you knew pretty well. This one was easy, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t forgotten anything.

As, in fact, she had. How was she supposed to melt the jar at the end? She could break it, but the Wanderer made it pretty clear that melting it was better. Sophia wasn’t sure one of her feathers that held sweetfire would work; the fire was intense, but it dissipated quickly. She really needed something that would let her put the glass jar in a fire hot enough to melt glass. An ordinary fire wouldn’t do it, and she didn’t even have a place for an ordinary fire. 

Sophia knew someone who would. She turned towards Xin’ri. “Uh, I need to melt the jar at the end.”

Xin’ri chuckled. “I thought you might. Do you mean to soften it so that it can be shaped or do you need to actually melt it into a liquid? Those take very different tools.”

“Uh.” Sophia wasn’t certain which would be better. The Wanderer’s instructions just said to melt the container. “Either, probably? Breaking it will also work but it isn’t as good, so probably the point of melting it is to keep it all together and sort of squish it down?”

Xin’ri nodded and pulled several things out of the space she could keep her tools in. “I should have said something earlier, but you were busy. If you really want to melt the glass, we’ll need to build a proper furnace. We can do that here, but outside the building would be better; I’m not sure how well this place is ventilated. If all you need is to shape it, though, this will work. This is the brazier I use for repairs while we’re in the Maze. I mostly use it for touchup work, but it’ll work on glass.”

It looked a lot like an enchanted barbecue grill with a griddle on top to Sophia. It was one of the small “portable” ones with short legs that you sat next to, which made sense since Xin’ri wanted to carry it into the Maze.

Xin’ri pulled out a few more items - a heat-resistant apron, a pair of enchanted gloves that would protect the hands from any temperature the brazier could reach, three different tongs “for delicate work,” and a small set of different form shapes, from a set of conical rods to a group of different-sized wedges. “The brazier’s a bit of a mana hog, but it can get hot enough to actually melt glass in spots if you push it to the extreme. It’s not the best tool for that; you’ll really only have one hot spot that melts. For making glass slump, however, it’s perfect. You can even control the shape and of the heat-projection field it produces and vary it as needed …”

Xin’ri spent the next half hour attempting to teach Sophia “the basics” of using her portable brazier. Sophia was certain the overly complicated enchanting included a dozen different things Xin’ri didn’t even mention, but the one she was probably going to use involved manipulating the brazier to produce specifically-shaped heat fields from specific surfaces of a rod or a wedge. Essentially, she could make the brazier function like a portable acetylene torch or spread that same heat over a slightly wider area to heat a larger area faster.

Sophia was just starting to get the hang of how to adjust the enchantments to actually follow something when an idle wish that Xin’ri could take care of melting the jar made her realize she was being an idiot again. Xin’ri was showing her everything because she assumed that Sophia had to do it all herself.

Sophia hadn’t said anything to contradict that. In fact, Sophia had sort of assumed the same thing. The Wanderer simply hadn’t said either way, but his message only went to Sophia.

The thing was, that wasn’t how rituals worked. They were one of the ways to combine several peoples’ efforts into one effect. There were single-participant rituals, like the sand-moving one she repurposed to move water to put out the Rage Beavers’ fires, but by far the majority were better if they were done by multiple people.

Sophia hadn’t done many of those, but she did know a little about the theory. In theory, essentially any ritual could be a group ritual if either it had parts that were completely separable or duplicable. It was more difficult to go the other way and turn a ritual intended for a group into something doable by a single person, since that single person might have to do more than one thing at the same time or have conflicting roles.

Melting the glass jar was a completely separate action from everything else. It also had to happen last, after the Broken Lord’s remnants were contained within it, but that didn’t disqualify it from being separable. It might even make the ritual better, because Sophia would be able to concentrate on making sure nothing escaped the jar while Xin’ri melted it and symbolically destroyed its contents along with the jar.

Sophia nodded to herself. That would work. “Xin’ri? I have a better idea. Can you melt the jar when I hand it to you? You can get everything else ready while I do the other steps. I’m not sure if we can wait or not, but it’s probably best if we melt the jar soon after I close it.”

Sophia already knew what she’d do. She’d enclose Xin’ri and her brazier in a ring of feathers, just like she planned to do for the breastplate. She could move the jar from one to the other safely. “I think you should wear more feathers while you do it, for the symbolism. I can handle everything else.”

“It’s too bad Mo’ra isn’t here,” Xin’ri said quietly, “but I’m happy to help you get rid of the Broken Lord.”

Guilt spiked through Sophia for a moment. She hadn’t thought about what happened to Mo’ra for weeks, probably since before they entered the Maze this time. She certainly hadn’t thought about what it would mean to her when the Broken Lord was gone.

The guilt wasn’t for removing the Broken Lord; that would be a good thing for Mo’ra and the Broken Lands. Instead, the guilt was for the fact that she hadn’t thought of the woman at all. She was just someone who lived at Arryn’s place with Xin’ri; she didn’t mean much to Sophia. Xin’ri was a friend, however, so Sophia should have thought about what removing the Broken Lord would mean for Xin’ri because of what he did to Mo’ra.

Not that she had any idea how the Broken Lord managed to do what he did. She’d seen no indication that being Empress gave her any control over people the way a Patron could grant Hallows, and the Broken Lord did more than that. He used the Spheres he gave to deliberately change and control people.

“I think what we’re doing now has something to do with how he did what he did,” Sophia tried to reassure Xin’ri and herself. “We can try to fix everything he broke after he’s not in the way.”

“Is there any way the rest of us can help?” Dav asked. 

“Maybe.” Sophia frowned. “Not with fixing things, at least not until after the Broken Lord is gone. I think you can help with the ritual, though. More people trying to get the Broken Lord contained should help.”

They’d provide additional Intent and take the load off her. The question was how to tie their efforts into the ritual. There wasn’t really a separable step they could take, so it needed to be duplication. The best thing to duplicate was the hard part, and the hard part in this ritual was definitely going to be forcing the Broken Lord into the jar. 

Sophia was planning to use her Domain to herd the Broken Lord to where she wanted him. That was basically what the Wanderer suggested. To get the others to help, all she needed to do was to give them a way for their auras to support hers. 

Integrating them into her Domain, like what she was teaching Dav to do, was one option. If she wasn’t relying on her feathers, it would have been a good option for at least Dav, but while he could affect their joint Domain when they merged auras, he couldn’t actually move the feathers. He’d tried; he could affect the plumes of magic but not the physical feathers. It might work or it might not work.

On top of that, Dav was the only one of her companions that could help if they went that way.

No, the better option was to integrate them another way. She was pretty sure she could make them mobile feathers for the purpose of the ritual if she had them wear a handful of plumes spread across their bodies, sort of like ritual attire (though in this case they could wear their normal armor underneath it). Their auras ought to increase the strength of her own locally, which would let them shoo the Broken Lord’s remnants towards the jar by walking around the space.

Sophia sighed to herself as she realized what she was going to have to do. It was positively cliche, but sometimes the cliches existed for a reason. “Everyone can help. I need you to wear some feathers, more than we do for the fights, and station yourselves around the edges of this place. Well, not inside the area with Ansuz … no, wait, two of you should be in that area, at the opposite corners. Listen to what I’m doing, then when I signal you, start walking around the outside of the room while concentrating on either what I’m saying or on how the Broken Lord deserves punishment for what he’s done.”

Sophia needed a couple of people who were fairly evenly strong with their aura handling for the area where Ansuz was. That made it easy. Dav’s aura was stronger than anyone’s other than Sophia’s and she wasn’t certain about Arak’s. Taika had the opposite problem; even though he was third upgrade like everyone else, his aura was smaller. “Amy and Jaycen, you’re the best two for inside the glass with Ansuz. You two will slowly make your way to the door, then go outside and join the group circling the main room. I’d like everyone evenly spaced, more or less, so … Jaycen, please stay at the door until Amy’s far enough in front of you. Oh, and everyone should move sunwise. That will fit the ritual best, for both the passage of time and the orderly process it’s invoking.”

“Can we really help? We aren’t siege mages,” Arak protested. 

“Of course you can,” Sophia countered. “This is a ritual with a lead celebrant. Everyone needs to do their part, but you don’t have to understand my part; all you have to do is know your part. I have to bring everything together.”