Broken Lands

Sophia carefully transcribed the third revision of the letter into the space she had available. It was definitely shorter, since she cut out everything that was just her thinking as she wrote. The only problem with it was that it made her sound more certain about some of it than she really was. It all made sense, she just couldn’t prove it.

Okay, she did say that, but still.

Sophia carefully cut the completed message and its attendant runescript out of the page her brother sent, then pushed mana into it to send it off. The original message arrived some time while they were in the Event, so it should be fine to send it off now. It shimmered in place, then vanished, just like the previous ones.

She chuckled at the thought that she was opening up exactly the same sort of connection she’d told Xavier not to let Uncle Althyr create, but this one was small; a letter was far smaller than a fully-grown dragon, after all, and as far as she could tell the letters had never been noticed while Leo definitely was. Of course, Leo probably ripped through some of the structure around Arcatiz, while the letters could slip through the cracks.

Sophia tucked her supplies into her pack, then headed out of the tent. They were about to start on the Treasure Challenges, as soon as everyone was ready; she’d just taken the time while everyone else finished eating to do the final copy of her letter.

They each headed to the treasures they’d decided to start with, then Notii told them all to begin. The space was large enough that they couldn’t all hear him, but Sophia passed on the cue from the Lifeweb to the rest of her team across Dav’s mindlink. Realistically, they could just as easily have started when they saw the timer start to tick down.

Sophia’s first pick was the Event token. It gave her the same three choices it had the first time she looked at it: Find, Carve, and Control. With no idea what they meant, she picked the first option.

Sophia floated above a circular maze with stone walls on a desolate plain that seemed a lot like the moonscape of the Meteor Pillars Event, except that there were no Pillars. A mechanical bird with metal “feathers” that glowed with the magic they held flapped in place a short distance ahead of her. It tilted its head away from her and took a good look with its right eye. “Wait and watch. When the ceiling forms, you may land at the entrance. Find me; if you exit the structure before you find me, you have forfeit.”

Sophia was suddenly uncertain if she was looking at a mechanical bird or a mechanical Archon. She didn’t feel a connection to it through the Lifeweb, but she wasn’t certain she would. Perhaps she should consider it a mechanical Archon until she learned otherwise.

The Archon nodded, then dipped a wing and dove towards the ground. Sophia’s vantage point shifted smoothly to follow it, and she saw it enter the only opening in the side of the maze. It left a glowing but fading trail behind it as it wound through the large area, sometimes crossing its own path and often taking turns that she didn’t expect. It moved much faster than a walking pace, faster even than most birds could fly, but it still took several minutes to trace out the path.

The glow faded away as a roof made of glass formed over the top of the maze. Sophia started to descend towards it, clearly guided rather than falling. It wasn’t long before she touched down at the entrance, the floor she felt below her having merged with the ground.

She didn’t have a good enough memory to follow the bird’s path. She knew it finished the maze about a third of the way around the circumference to the right and closer to the middle than the edge, but that didn’t tell her how to get there. The maze wasn’t simple enough to memorize the path.

Sophia was certain Dav could have done it, though, so that was clearly one of the possible ways to complete the Treasure Challenge.

She moved forward until she was just inside the maze. There was a feather on the floor, clearly a deliberate mark that the bird had been there, and the dust on the ground was rippled by the wind of its passage. Sophia was no tracker to follow those traces easily, but she could see that much in a spot where she knew to look.

Ci’an could have managed to follow those traces, so that was clearly another way to finish the Challenge.

Sophia could probably brute-force it by heading to roughly where she thought the bird ended and then searching to find the right passageway. It would probably even work, though it would probably also be slow. The risks there were getting turned around and not easily being able to get to the area in question. It was also entirely possible that there could be long stretches of the maze that just didn’t connect with each other, and she couldn’t be able to figure out she was on the wrong path unless she could track the bird.

A full systematic search of the maze would be more reliable but even longer. That was probably the solution for anyone who didn’t have any tricks when they searched for the bird, which was not that unlikely. Most Spheres didn’t have tracking or memory Abilities, as far as she could tell.

None of those took advantage of Sophia’s capabilities, though. Her greatest capability was her ability to see and manipulate magic, and magic left a trail. It might not be much, but if the bird deliberately left magical traces the way it seemed to have deliberately left physical traces, she could follow them.

She focused on the area for a moment, then grinned as she saw mana hovering in the air. It traced the wingbeats of the mechanical Archon. It was fading as she watched, but it looked like there was plenty of time. That was a very good thing, since she doubted she could run as quickly as it flew.

Sophia moved forward slowly, watching the space around her in case it was trapped in some way. She didn’t really expect it to be, since there was no need for that when they were supposed to be getting rewards, but it was possible there was something.

After a couple of minutes, she relaxed a bit and started moving faster. If this place was designed well, it would either not have traps or there would be something early on in the maze, to let you know you needed to be careful. Honestly, she didn’t really expect anything; the maze was big enough that just getting to where the Archon finished would take a while, even if you knew exactly the right path to follow. If there were traps, it would be all too easy to end up in the multi-hour range for completion time, and Sophia was pretty sure that wasn’t going to be necessary. It didn’t make sense for something like the Event token, not when its own description said that its effect could be delayed if needed and all it would give them was a notification. It just wasn’t that costly an item for the World Tree.

A few minutes later, Sophia reached a spot where the mana-trail wasn’t entirely clear. It seemed to go in more than one direction. She looked at it carefully and decided that the problem was simple: this was one of the places where the Arcon’s route crossed itself. She could save time if she turned and followed the correct crossing. If she picked the wrong one, though, she’d end up back here later, after doing the loop. She needed to be able to tell which way was the last way the Archon went.

She couldn’t tell. Oh, she could tell that the path she was on and one of the others was older than the trail that crossed them, but she couldn’t tell which way the Archon was going as it flew; the mana-trail didn’t preserve enough of the wing movements and there was no noticeable fading.

Okay. That could still work. If she took one of the newer paths and it was right, she’d be ahead of the game, having cut off a loop. If she took one of the newer paths and it was wrong, she’d end up back here after having completed the same loop the Archon did, just like taking the longer path. All she had to do then was take the other newer path. She definitely didn’t want to get turned around and do the same loop more than once.

The walls all looked the same. Sophia was certain that was deliberate, but it raised the question: how was she going to keep from taking the same wrong path more than once?

She needed to mark her way. She had some options for that in … … the pack that she hadn’t brought into the Treasure Challenge. Figures.

Well, she knew the air here would hold mana; that was how she was tracking the mechanical Archon, after all. What if she sent some of her mana into the air? She didn’t even have to cast a spell, just push out enough mana to say that she’d already been down a particular path.

Sophia marked the path she’d come from, then checked. Yeah, that ought to work. She also marked the path she picked, because that way she’d know not to pick that one if she came back to the intersection. It ought to work.

A couple of minutes later, she came to another intersection. This one was unmarked, so she did the same thing. It happened again soon afterwards, but the fourth time she came to an intersection, her mana marks were there. That let her know that she’d picked the wrong direction the first time she reached that intersection, but she was actually grateful for that; it meant her marking method worked and she wasn’t just walking in circles.

She marked the unmarked newer path next to the floor, just in case, then headed down the route.

It took time to make her way through the maze following the Archon’s trail, but it was really kind of relaxing. All she had to do was follow the path. She moved quickly, not running but still faster than a walk. It was easy enough to follow the path, now that she was used to it, and she only had to pause when she hit intersections to check for other crossing paths.

When she reached the mechanical Archon, it was simply resting in the middle of a hallway, waiting for her. She stopped in front of it and saw it nod before the world faded away and she was back in the Treasury, holding a now-solid Event token. A glance at the Treasure Challenge’s screen showed her that she’d taken 28 minutes to complete the Challenge, which was well below the average, so this one must have been easier than normal, as she expected.

Or … maybe that was because she had a way to make the Challenge type work for her? An average time didn’t mean that was what an average Challenge took, and having to do the search the long way would probably have taken a lot longer than an hour.

Eh. It wasn’t worth wasting time on. She’d find out as she did more Challenges.

That did bring up one other question, though; she disappeared and reappeared instead of stepping through a portal or something. Was the whole thing an illusion or did it teleport her? Either seemed possible, and it was worth a quick check. If they were completing the Treasure Challenges in a separate space or an illusion and their bodies were still here, it would be far safer.

That was worth checking, and Dav’s first Treasure Challenge was in the same room as hers. She glanced over there and didn’t see him, which meant that either it was somewhere else or he’d finished faster than her. That seemed entirely possible if he got something that matched his abilities well, so she peeked into the next room.

Dav was there, touching his second-priority Treasure. His eyes were closed, which answered the question. It was all an illusion. She passed that information along the mindlink, then stepped back and moved over to the item he’d selected first; it was also high on her list, so she might as well pick it next.