Broken Lands

The spectacled man frowned and set down his pen. He glanced from person to person before his gaze settled on Sophia. "You must be that elf. You can truly unlock items when the user has died?"

Sophia didn't like being called "that elf," but she supposed she'd have to put up with it for now. "I'm Sophia, and yes. I can almost always key them to someone else, at least, which is enough."

"Show me." It didn't sound like he believed her or the rumors about her.

Sophia deliberately looked around. "On what? What do you want me to unlock?"

"And how much are you going to pay for it?" Xin'ri asked. "Sophia's not going to help you out for nothing."

Sophia glanced at Xin'ri, puzzled. Wasn't the entire point of this to show off the fact that she could unlock items, to try to use that to learn more about the parts of the Arena's staff that Jax didn't know well?

The man across the counter huffed like he was annoyed, but it was a weak noise. His expression was flat again by the time Sophia glanced back in his direction. He reached under the counter and pulled out a metal gauntlet.

It was odd; despite being a metal gauntlet, it looked like the glove part ended at the first knuckle, like a fingerless glove. The portions of the fingers that were there had an odd cracked pattern filled with an electric blue that reminded Sophia of lightning. The knuckles were covered with golden gems, while the back of the hand looked like some sort of impressionistic vine or maybe kelp in copper on a blue-green background. The glove was lined with black cloth that continued onto the inside of the fingers. The more Sophia looked at it, the more she thought it was really a fingerless black glove with a metal back.

The salesman glanced around the room like he was searching and walked over to a bin. After poking around in it, he came up with a colorful cuff bracelet and set it next to the gauntlet. It was far simpler than the glove; it was a wide metal cuff, smooth on the inside with an outer pattern of silver-colored raised metal that swirled around blue and orange gemstones or possibly cut glass. "If you can unlock the glove so that it works for the next person who puts it on, you can have the bracelet. You'll have to do it twice, once to prove it and once to let someone else wear it."

Sophia shrugged internally. If she could do it once, she could do it twice.

"What do they do?" Xin'ri asked the question before Sophia could. "The bracelet has to be useful for us, and there are some items I'm not going to let Sophia unlock."

Sophia shot Xin'ri a dirty look. Did the foxkin really think Sophia was so useless she couldn't make her own decisions?

Xin'ri noticed the look and chuckled. "Some items are better left unused; others, you don't want to use. Most crafters don't make either, but there are times … and then sometimes the magic goes a little wrong."

Sophia deflated a little. She hadn't really thought about it, but it was true enough; there were items that existed simply to fool whoever tried to use them. There were also items designed to harm their wielder. Trick items weren't common, but they existed; damaging items were pretty rare, as were "cursed" items that could cause a wide range of other negative effects.

At least, that was true back home. She hadn't even thought about whether those things would exist here. A gauntlet glove thing was probably not terribly likely to be one of them, though she could just imagine how horrifying it might be if it was a "cursed" item. She liked having two hands.

If it really was a curse, she'd be able to see it; that was something her mother had insisted she learn. True cursed items looked different from others. The problem was that there were detrimental items, even damaging items, that weren't actually cursed. Creations that didn't work like they were intended to were sometimes cursed, but they more often fell into the "not cursed but detrimental" category.

It wasn't a problem back home. As long as you shopped at the reputable places, everything with negative effects was clearly marked and even when dungeons gave out items, they never gave out purely detrimental items. Sometimes they could hurt their user, but that usually meant they were being misused. That clearly wasn't the case here; the Registry shop and Ebayne's shop seemed like places that would clearly say what they knew, but she wasn't so certain about this place. It seemed a little sketchy, and the guy whose name she didn't know seemed even sketchier, now that she thought about it.

"Hey, what's your name?" Sophia blurted out.

The man froze in what looked like surprise. "Paul Sestrin." He bit his lip and seemed to debate with himself for a moment before he gave the obviously polite question he didn't actually care about. "And what's yours?"

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"Sophia." Sophia didn't give the rest of her name. It wasn't necessary and she really didn't feel like sharing it. She hadn't met anyone here with the same name, so Sophia was plenty.

"It's nice to meet you." Paul's smile didn't reach his eyes.

"So what do they do?" Xin'ri repeated her question without saying her own name.

Paul looked down at the two items on the counter. "The glove is a lightning gauntlet; it adds a lightning effect to any weapon used while wearing it. It is unfortunately a left-handed glove, but that only limits the number of people who would want it; it does not lower its value, which is quite a bit higher than the amount of mana directly invested in it because of its overall utility. It is essentially an additional passive Ability that the user does not have to possess that applies to any weapon used with the left hand, including those gripped with both hands."

It was a fairly comprehensive response, as far as Sophia could tell. There was only one thing he'd left out. "And it protects its user from the lightning?"

Paul nodded. "It does; indeed, it offers limited protection against any lightning-aspected attack, though full protection is only available if the attack solely targets the hand wearing the glove."

She didn't understand why the glove was keyed to a particular user. It ought to be possible to create that effect for anyone who put the glove on. Maybe it was a theft-prevention measure? Sophia didn't think that would be very effective, but she couldn't be sure. Maybe thieves here had some way to find out if an item was locked to a particular user.

Several of them could use the glove, though it would obviously be more useful to some than others. Sophia was pretty sure that it would be the most useful to Jax, since it would automatically apply to his shield and he really liked using his shield offensively as well as defensively. Protection from lightning on a shield wouldn't be useless, either.

It was too bad that the item Paul was offering was the bracelet, not the glove. "And the other one?"

Paul nodded and smiled slightly. "The cuff is a Shielding Band. It increases the amount of Shield the user has by five. It doesn't seem like much, but it can be the difference between life and death."

"That ought to take a lot of magic." Xin'ri sounded skeptical. "I've tried to replicate Shield, everyone has, and it takes an incredible amount of mana to do it, far more than it's worth. Why aren't you using it for whatever you use to give second chances?"

Paul shook his head. "It doesn't contain that much mana. No one's been able to figure out how it works, but that happens with some items from the Maze; they just don't make sense. Anything that interacts with the Guide and comes from the Maze tends to be like that, far less powerful than it should have to be. It's not even locked; you just have to Attune it to use it."

"And that's why no one wants to buy it for what you think it's worth," Jax filled in. "No one wants to spend an Attunement slot on something that gives five Shield, not if they're headed into the Maze. Sure, it might save you … but having something that's always useful is a lot more likely to save you. Which is why you're offering it to us; you think we're still looking for things to fill out our Attunement slots, since we're just second upgrade, so it'll be useful." He snorted softly. "You're right, too. Sophia, are you willing to unlock the glove twice?"

Sophia shot a glance at her Status, which still listed the contraceptive amulet she'd attuned back when she bought it from Arryn. It sounded like she was going to have to replace it before they entered the Maze, so she added "some other method of contraception" to her mental list of things she needed. It was something she simply hadn't thought about since she got the amulet.

After all, why should she think about it? What she had worked and she hadn't even come close to filling up her Attunement slots. At least she had time; she had quite a bit of room, and she wasn't the only one. Dav's had been full for a while, with his armor, but he had room now since his armor no longer outleveled him. She knew Jax had room, too; he only had the things Xin'ri had made for him plus the wand they'd gotten from Ebayne, and the wand didn't take a slot. She wasn't as sure about Ci'an or Xin'ri; they could both have their slots full and she wouldn't know. Taika probably didn't have anything attuned at all, but he certainly couldn't use the bracelet.

"I can try," Sophia answered absently as she picked up the glove. On an initial inspection, she didn't see any sign of a lock; she could see a slight enchantment, but it looked like one for moving something, probably the electricity that covered the weapon. When she turned the glove over, the palm held another piece of the enchantment, but it was also incomplete.

Sophia frowned, then looked inside the glove. At first, all she saw was the other side of the palm's enchantments and a piece of what had to be the lightning resistance enchantment, but when she looked up at the metal part of the glove, she saw what she was looking for: a spellform baked into the glove's enchantment that she recognized. It was by far the worst identification setup she'd seen in the Broken Lands, and that was saying something. It was almost like the creator deliberately made it easy to reset with no concern that someone else might take advantage of it.

Once she put it like that, it seemed all too possible that that was exactly what happened. Everyone here seemed to depend on the Guide's Abilities; she hadn't met anyone else with spellcasting skills that didn't also use at least some Abilities. Arryn was shocked that she was a "siege mage" at a low level; that probably meant there were Spheres that gave similar Abilities at higher levels or upgrades. If no one knew that manipulating mana without Abilities was possible, how would they learn?

Sophia shook her head. There had to be other people who knew how to use magic without Abilities. Sure, they were really convenient and she didn't often need her spellcasting, but she had it and it gave her a level of flexibility that her Abilities couldn't. She'd learned most of it as a child younger than sixteen, the earliest age for a Vocation. Surely other mages taught their kids.

Sophia pushed a thread of magic inside the glove and flipped the latch up. She waited a moment for the old mana signature to dissipate, then looked up at Paul. "It's done. The next person who puts the glove on will be able to use it."