Broken Lands

Sophia spent a while looking at the Spheres the Broken Lord designed and eventually decided that they were something she’d have to spend some real time on. Trying to fix them in a few minutes wasn’t an easy task. She could remove the most problematic Abilities, the ones the Broken Lord probably used to control his people, but that felt like an entirely too simple answer.

It would be fine for anyone who really liked their Sphere. That might leave them a bit weaker than someone else at their Tier and Level, but Sophia was fine with that. She might not like the Hilt or the Blade, but as far as she knew they were not innately worse than any other leader she disliked.

Sophia was more worried about the people like Mo’ra who’d been forced into a Sphere they didn’t choose. What would happen to them?

On top of that, she wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do with the 41 Broken Swords scattered around the Broken Lands. The youngest of them had been a Broken Sword for four months, while the oldest had been a Broken Sword for just over seventeen years. It was slowly losing Wisps; she could almost see them disappear. Sophia had the distinct impression that Broken Swords didn’t last all that long, which certainly explained why the Broken Lord grabbed everyone he could turn into one.

The Broken Swords wouldn’t steal Wisps or grant the Broken Lord’s poisoned Spheres anymore; that was good, but it didn’t solve the rest of the problem. Was there someone trapped in there? Was killing them to free them when she released the Wisps to alter the other Spheres really the right choice?

It didn’t take much thought to realize that it was. They were already dead, most likely dead at their own hand, even though their wills were overridden by the Broken Lord’s commands. Without someone like Xin’ri to take on the project, they’d never be anything other than an unmoving, useless hunk of metal that would almost certainly be melted down as scrap eventually. The only redeeming part of that was that any spirits that were trapped in the Broken Swords were likely mostly insensate; Mo’ra didn’t really remember her time as a Broken Sword.

Sophia doubted any of them had enough left to really recover, even if Xin’ri did take on the project, and it probably wouldn’t work anyway; Xin’ri was only able to bond Mo’ra because of her deep connection to the other woman in the past. Despite that connection, the Mo’ra of today was not the Mo’ra Xin’ri remembered. She was similar, but large pieces of her past were simply gone. She was recovering, a process that was definitely only possible because of her bond with Xin’ri.

In short, there wasn’t any way to fix the other Broken Swords. They were already dead and the best thing she could do was release them from the trap the Broken Lord put them in.

Sophia hated it. It was still the right choice.

She took a frustrated look at the Spheres, then hopped over to look at the reminder of her home again.

Where she expected to see Offer Allegiance: Pending, the line had changed. It now read Allegiance: United Realm.The reminder of home broke Sophia out of the bad mood brought on by dealing with the Broken Lord’s Spheres.

After Sophia explained what she’d seen, they spent the rest of the day exploring the Imperial Hall. The atrium was the largest single room, but it wasn’t the entire building. It was a miniature palace as far as Sophia was concerned, somehow preserved as if only a few years had passed since it was last used. Some of the food in the kitchens still looked good, not that any of them wanted to risk eating it.

There were three large rooms for performances, meetings, or maybe dances near the atrium, along with a host of smaller, more intimate meeting spaces, a pair of larger dining halls, and one smaller area near one of the two kitchens that was probably the “intimate” dining area for the Emperor. There were entire suites of rooms scattered throughout the building for the Imperial family and other guests, maybe the Council or other nobles. Some had servants’ quarters attached while others did not; some of the other rooms, like the kitchens, had their own servants’ rooms nearby. The servants’ quarters varied from plain but serviceable, with six beds in a room and a washroom down the hall, to something nice enough that Sophia wasn’t entirely certain it wasn’t for guests.

According to Ansuz, it was a completely safe place. None of them were quite willing to trust that even though they found no contradictions, so they all set up near each other in one of the suites. It was more comfortable to be close anyway.

Dinner was nice, if a bit uncomfortable when Dav asked Arak, “So. You’ve had time to think; what do you think about all of this?”

“I didn’t really think there would be much here,” Arak admitted. “I hoped it would hold the Tower’s Heart, because claiming it … well, I thought it would give me the power to do what I needed to do. You’ve…”

He trailed off, then snorted softly and shook his head. A smile started to form. “You’ve completely upended all of my plans. I have quite a few people in the Arena that are loyal to me instead of the Blade, ready for the day when we could deal with the Blade. It wouldn’t be easy; the Blade is always guarded by her people, followers of the Broken Lord that will do whatever she says. I guess I know why I wasn’t able to compromise any of them, now.”

“Do you just want to control the Arena?” Dav looked doubtful. Sophia wasn’t certain why; there were a lot of people out there that were just looking for power or money.

Arak shook his head. “The Arena is not the point.”

He looked down for a long moment. When he looked up, he stared at Sophia, then nodded firmly. “The Blade is from Mazehold, though she doesn’t often admit it. She left when she was young and returned shortly after she reached the third upgrade. She was nothing like the young woman I once knew. Marice was cheerful and outgoing. Amaryssa is now; she is formal, calculating, and cruel.”

“Marice Swiftblade?” Sophia guessed. That was one of the names she’d picked out when she went through the third upgrade Adherents.

Arak nodded. “That was her name before she left. When she returned, well, that’s when she took over the Arena. To my knowledge, she has never entered the Maze; there is no need for her to.”

He looked down at the ground and clenched a fist. “The day she returned, I was in the Maze with my new team; I’d recently advanced to the third upgrade and shifted my Sphere to the one I have now. My wife welcomed her younger sister back with a fancy dinner. Imena loves to cook, so that’s how she celebrates any major event. I’m sure it went well, but that wasn’t the big news when I arrived back in Mazehold. By then, it was too late; our oldest son disappeared a couple of nights after the welcome home dinner. No trace of him was ever found. We didn’t know then what we know now.”

Arak’s gaze sharpened into a fierce glare, even though he was staring at nothing more offensive than a chair leg. “I looked into it, of course, but I didn’t find anything. It was not a good time, and it was worse when our daughter vanished a few weeks later. That time … that time I was in Mazehold and prepared. I wasn’t prepared enough, even though I thought I was. I had a very early version of the tracker made into a piece of simple jewelry for each of the children, so when Senna vanished, I had a chance. It couldn’t be tracked as far and I made the mistake of checking the city first, so all I found a tenday after she vanished was her body, buried near a copse of trees an hour’s walk outside Mazehold.”

Arak took a deep breath. His voice shook a little, but he was clearly keeping himself under tight control. “I didn’t know who took her, but the grave was enough. My little Senna was gone forever, and I could see other graves nearby. I didn’t have to dig them up to know that York was gone as well.”

He closed his eyes for long enough to take another long, shuddering breath. “I was able to find the spot where they were killed; the grass there was particularly lush. No matter how hard I looked, there wasn’t anything there to lead me to the killer. When I got back to town, I asked around; no one else had lost children. We moved deep into the underground anyway; neither Imena nor I could stand the idea of losing another child and it was obvious that our house wasn’t safe. That wasn’t a good time for us.”

He paused and shook his head. “It always makes me cry. Their deaths were so … they had amazing futures ahead. Senna was studying alchemy and York loved to bake…”

Sophia gave Arak all the time he needed. She could already tell where this was going from the way he started the story with the Blade’s return to Mazehold, but she hoped she was wrong.

Arak didn’t bother to wipe the tears off his face when he continued. “I spent a lot of the next few months watching that particular copse of trees. I am a healer, but I am a healer of shadows; I am very good at not being noticed. A few months after Senna’s death, my vigilance was rewarded when a small group of people approached carrying an unconscious man. I recognized him from the Arena; he wasn’t very good, but he’d been around for a while. He was one of the people who fought with any group that would take him while he looked for a team to head into the Maze. The other people with him looked like a team, and at their head was Marice, or Amaryssa Seuvarin as she was called in the Arena.”

Arak finally looked up. “I couldn’t save him; there was no way I could fight an entire team of third upgrade Called, even from surprise. I didn’t think I’d even be able to kill Amaryssa, so I waited. I’ll spare you the details of what she did and how I figured out why, but it was both simple and terrifying. Amaryssa can strip Thread from others by killing them. She believes that the killings are the missing step to reach the fourth upgrade.”

Sophia was not wrong. In fact, it was worse than she expected. The Blade was willing to callously kill people, including her own nephew and niece, for power.

“She gains more based on their connection to her; that’s why she killed her sister’s children. From what she said that day, they were several times more valuable than the man, even though they didn’t have Spheres yet. It was … I almost tried to kill her even though I knew it wouldn’t work. It’s been years since then, years and a lot of work to put myself in a position where I can possibly do something about her. I’ve done what I can to save those I can, but the only people I can really claim success with are my remaining family. Rumors help, but all too many don’t believe them.” Arak stood suddenly and walked away from the group. “I don’t need vengeance, not anymore. I just want her dead. Tell me if you’ll help. If you won’t, I’ll figure out how to do it without you.”