Broken Lands

“You can’t undo it?” Sophia wasn’t a shapeshifter, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have any of the training. All of her siblings could change shape, and the first rule she was taught was to be aware enough to change back if something didn’t go quite right. It wasn’t usually a problem with completely instinctual shapeshifting, like the draconic and near-human forms the rest of her siblings had, but the moment they tried to go beyond that and learn to shift into another form or partially shift, it was needed.

She’d passed some of those lessons on to Dav, when she could. She wasn’t exactly the best at them, since the only times she’d ever changed her shape were induced by spells, and that wasn’t the same thing at all.

“I could,” Leo admitted, which showed that maybe he wasn’t quite as heedless as she’d originally thought, “But the mana’s running through me, too, like it’s running through the tree. It never leaves! So I’m stuck.”

“That’s a problem.” Sophia frowned at her brother. How did he get into this situation?

Well, by not thinking ahead, obviously. He didn’t consider the fact that turning himself into the same material as the thing carrying the mana meant that he’d also end up carrying mana.

Magical solutions weren’t going to work, not with all that semi-wild mana there. Even if she knew how to teleport someone, she wasn’t precise enough to do it with that much mana raging in the area around her spell … and, okay, she’d teleported something exactly once: a wooden block. It went about two feet in a controlled environment where she had plenty of time to set up the spellforms, a set of reference drawings, and her father watching to make sure she didn’t mess anything up. She’d also been practicing it for days beforehand.

Dav might be able to. One of his Embodiments effectively let him teleport. It wouldn’t work from the entrance, though; he had a limited distance he could cross per hop and Sophia wasn’t entirely certain about the conceptual framework of the Ability anyway. It might still be moving through space. When he had to go longer distances, he’d appear in a bunch of different places on the way there. That might work, but only if there was a clear path and Sophia was pretty sure Dav’s manasight wasn’t up to the task if he was going to move that quickly.

Teleportation of any sort was questionable, and that was before she considered the mana running through Leo. That would completely change the necessary spellform and … yeah, she just wasn’t good enough to do it. She didn’t know what it would do to Dav’s Embodiment, either, and she definitely didn’t want to risk damaging it.

Abilities wouldn’t work. Even without hearing that they didn’t work for the Archons who tried to grab Leo, that was obvious. In fact, it might well be why people thought going too close to the pillar was a problem for their Spheres; they had something to do with Ability manifestation and the wild magic coruscating across the room could overload the Ability and cause feedback or something. It was only made more likely if people believed it could happen; their belief would trigger it.

Defensive Abilities might work as long as they weren’t too badly overloaded, but a defensive Ability wouldn’t move Leo.

No, she needed a nonmagical option. She could shove him out of the way if she could get close to him; that might work. It would mean that he wasn’t touching the tree anymore. “Leo, are you holding on to the World Tree at all?”

“No,” Leo answered easily. “Just touching it.”

“And all of the mana is going through that point?” Sophia really hoped that was the case.

“Uh,” Leo sounded doubtful, but also steadier than before. Sophia hadn’t realized just how shaken he was by the whole situation until she heard him sounding better because he had something practical to focus on. “No. Most of it is, but some of it’s also going into the roots where I’m touching them with other fingers and I think some of it’s going through the air.”

Sophia really hoped she was right about this. “And there’s no intention in it, nothing holding you there or even wanting you there?”

“Uh, no.” Leo sounded startled. “The World Tree is happy to talk to Bunny, but she says I itch.”

Sophia chuckled at the comparison. That was probably thoroughly deflating his ego. Leo deserved it, after this stunt.

It looked like her guess was right. Part of the World Tree’s mana was using her brother as a conduit, but only because he happened to be there. All she had to do was remove him from that location, like taking out a splinter.

She had to remember that comparison. He’d hate it.

She could pick him up and move him, but then she’d be in the way of the mana’s movement and that sounded like an excellent way to have it run through her and do who-knows-what. It might be fine; she was half arcane dragon, after all. It might also be a problem; mana oversaturation could cause any number of things. This wasn’t mana she could easily claim, either; it already belonged to the World Tree.

She needed another answer. Maybe she could push him … no, better, pull him out of the way. A mundane rope wouldn’t carry the mana well and it wasn’t like she needed it for long. She could tie it around him and then .. uh. None of the areas close to the World Tree stayed clear of the arcing streams of mana for long. She really needed to get him out of there, but she still didn’t want to touch him.

Wait. There was an Ability she should be using: Translucent Aura. It made her less there for mana. It wasn’t perfect for the situation, but it was at least not terrible and if she combined it with the “unparalleled defense” of her Armored in Arcane Scales (which was definitely not sufficient to handle the World Tree’s mana on its own, “unparalleled” or not) and added something else to help, she’d be able to insulate herself against whatever mana Leo carried. Once he was back outside the dangerous area, he could take whatever time he needed to discharge excess mana and then shapeshift back to his normal self.

Sophia dropped her backpack on the ground and started going through it. Rope was easy; she still had some nylon climbing rope and carabiners from the trip into Cliff that started everything. The first thing that occurred to her to use as a larger protection was her sleeping bag, but it had one very large problem: it was enchanted. That wouldn’t do at all.

A little searching later, she found a small plastic tarp. It had a few holes since they’d used it to keep them dry when they took a lunch break in some of the links in the Maze, but it was probably as good as anything else she had in her bag. If it was damaged by the mana, it wouldn’t be a huge problem. It wasn’t really replaceable, at least not with the same thing, but that was fine; the only reason she still had it was that it could be squished to take up almost no room.

Well, that and Xin’ri liked to use it when they had salvage that was a little too large for any of her containers. That didn’t happen often and hadn’t happened at all since they got the Arcatiz, but they could definitely find something better than a tarp if they needed it for that.

It was honestly pretty terrible as far as insulating against magic went, but at least it was a single piece. That would help. It was really more about the concept of separation than actual insulation; she definitely didn’t have anything that would actually stop magic in her bag. If she did, it probably wouldn’t go in the bag in the first place.

Sophia threaded the rope through the tarp’s grommets, then paused. Did she want to throw the tarp over Leo or drape it over herself? Either way would work about as well as the other at blocking magic.

It would be easier to move if she wasn’t wrapped in a tarp. That was a good enough reason. That meant she needed to loop the ropes so that she could toss the tarp on Leo, then tug and have it envelop him. Hm. She’d like to have all of the grommets threaded, but she really needed to criss-cross it a few times to spread out how she pulled him and that wouldn’t be easy or fast to tighten, would it?

No, it was better to have the first pair ready and do the rest once she was there. This would be so much easier if he could move and help; she had harnesses that just needed to be tugged into place. Unfortunately, he couldn’t.

Sophia ignored Ivorha’s question about what she was doing and gathered up the tarp and the rope. Dav could handle him.

She checked the closest ward. It was more complex than the ones in Mazehold, but that didn’t mean it was better. It could handle more power and had a secondary restraint section as well as the primary alarm, but the authentication was awful: all it required was a mana pattern, and it did that by displaying the pattern it needed and asking the token it was looking for if it matched! All you actually had to supply was a positive response, which meant a short burst of mana at the right time in the sequence.

Someone probably thought they were being clever by putting the comparison in the token, so that it didn’t have to stay in the high-mana environment. It might well make it last longer, but it meant the security was essentially nonexistent. Worse, the later next three wards were set up the same.

Oh. Sophia recognized that kind of setup from one of her father’s descriptions of things not to do. Similar wards with different authorization patterns stored on a token was an easy way to give different levels of authority by modifying a personal token. It worked well for that purpose, but it made both the tokens and the wards easy to crack.

Sophia stopped and turned to face Ivorha. “I’m glad you tried what you could. I’m also glad no one got themselves hurt going in farther than I should. You should stop being concerned about talking up your wards though; it’s obvious they’re only intended to stop people who don’t know anything about wards. That’s a lot of people, but against someone who knows how wards work, they’re about as effective as closing a door. I’m pretty sure I have a way to fix this, so please, wait a few minutes until I get Leo out of there.”

Ivorha gaped at her.

Sophia didn’t wait for him to recover. “Dav, be ready to pull us back here if I signal you. I don’t think I’ll need it, but the spaces are going to be a lot tighter once I have Leo. And they might go a bit crazy if I’m right.”

“I can only reach about a third of the way across the room in a single step. Unless you want me closer?” Dav trusted her to know what she was doing. She really appreciated that about him.

Sophia frowned. She’d hoped for more, but at the same time she had to wait for a clear path anyway. That would be easier if they were closer. She triggered the wards’ authorizations, one after another, then asked, “Can you mark how far you can reach? In the dust maybe?”

Dav concentrated on the room for a moment, then reached out about fifteen feet and brushed away some of the dust that covered the floor. He didn’t get any closer and his arm didn’t stretch; instead, he just did it, as if the space in between didn’t exist. The mark looked right at the distance, but she knew that when she was close it would be ever so slightly smaller than it should be for the part of his hand he used to brush away the dust. It made sense when you saw it until you thought about it, sort of like picking something up out of a picture.

Actually, now that she thought about it, that might be something he could do if he wanted to. She had no idea how or why he’d pick up such an Ability, but she couldn’t call it impossible.

Sophia shook off the thought and compared the location of the line in the dust to where Leo stood. It was just over a third of the way and just beyond the wards, where there was a lot less wild mana. She wasn’t sure she’d need the lift, but she was certain that having it available was better than not.