Broken Lands

Sophia was the first to land. She bounded off the dragon, which rose into the sky in a spiral followed by the cheers of the audience. Xin'ri was next, followed by Ci'an. It took Jax a little longer; while Xin'ri had outdone what she said she could manage in three days with his boots, they were particularly bad at descending easily.

Dav circled with the dragon, then dove through the middle of the rings they'd made. He flared his wings a little ways above the ground, then shifted and dropped the last couple feet. Sophia made sure she was there to catch him if it went poorly; she couldn't forget how injured he was after the Fire Fissure in the fireflowers' Hollow.

Dav didn't need her help. He gave her a wide grin, then picked her up and swung her in a circle. '"It worked!"

Sophia grinned back at her boyfriend. "Are you telling me you weren't sure? You seemed pretty confident."

"I had to try," Dav answered. "It's a good direction to push and a single large Ability is a lot smaller than that fire fissure, and I'm fully recovered, so it was worth it. Better to find out now than not do it because I'm afraid."

Sophia hugged him quickly. She knew he was nervous; she hadn't realized he was forcing himself to move forward out of fear that if he didn't, he wouldn't be able to. "And it worked. No pain or anything?"

Dav shook his head. "It felt more like stretching, but not a bad stretch." He paused, then frowned. "I did know how to fly, though. That was strange."

"I was going to ask," Xin'ri interjected. "Why were you a bird this time?"

"Something about the magic?" Dav shrugged. It was clear he was just as clueless as Sophia felt. "Maybe because it came from the skyeagles?"

"We should get moving," Jax stated firmly. "And talk about this later. The show's over, we need to clear the arena floor for the next match."

Sophia knew they had a little time; the skyeagles' bodies still needed to be collected by the Arena staff. They'd take them to the Arena's butchery if they were actual monsters. They hadn't disappeared yet, which probably meant they were; summons tended to vanish rather than needing to be cleaned up.

She looked up and saw that her dragon was still doing aerial acrobatics to please the crowd. "Cliff, can you call her back by the time the staff is done cleaning up the skyeagles?"

Cliff sent back a feeling of amused agreement. In the sky above the team, the pastel dragon shimmered and dissipated into a cloud of mana that glowed in the same colors as the dragon. Instead of fading into invisibility the way it normally did, the light from it spun tightly and made a tight spiral upwards in the sky, then seemed to pause and condense into a large sphere. The sphere exploded into a series of meteors that fell, twinkling in the darkening sky like glowing embers that disappeared before they reached the ground.

Sophia supposed that imitating fireworks was one way to dismiss the draconic summons. It certainly seemed to be a way the crowd approved of, if the increase in noise level was a good guide.

Jax led them back to their seats.

Sophia dropped into her seat with a weary sigh. She knew she needed to watch the rest of the matches, not just head back to their rooms; that was something they'd talked about before the match. Jax and Ci'an were all insistent that they had to stay to be part of the Arena-going culture. Sophia knew they were right, even if she didn't like it, and they easily overpowered the others' weak objections.

By the end of the next match, Sophia knew the duo was unarguably correct. There was barely any time to watch the match with how many people came over to congratulate them. A few spent more time, but mostly it was people either thanking them for the good fight or complaining good-naturedly about losing money because they did too well.

Both Bai and Alley Sweetfire stopped by. Neither said much, but it was clear they'd seen and enjoyed the fight. Bai even mentioned winning his bet.

Technically, they could collect their pay for the fight as soon as all of the officially sanctioned bets and door entrances were tallied, but that would be at least two hours after the Arena closed for the night. They were going to do what almost every team did and collect their pay in the morning.

That room was busy the following morning, which made Sophia wonder once again exactly why the fight scheduler was once again napping when they went in. This time, she asked. The answer she got, that there simply weren't many teams that scheduled their fights directly with him, sounded good but didn't really answer Sophia's question. He waved off any further answers that day by telling them that they'd know what he meant if they stuck around long enough.

It was a really annoying non-answer. Sophia wanted to ask him what he meant, but she desisted after Jax set his hand on her shoulder and quietly whispered into her mind the rest of the answer: more people weren't there because only teams without a manager used the fight scheduler.

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Any team could get a manager, but Jax would rather handle everything until they made enough of a name for themselves that a skilled manager sought them out. Right now, they were more likely to find one that scheduled either low-end fights that didn't gain them much or spectacular fights that left them injured or dead than one that really wanted them to succeed in the long term. Once they had enough of a name, they could attract a promoter and manager; they just needed to get enough attention that they could get a good one.

That was close enough to the way things worked back on Earth that it made sense to Sophia. She probably should have realized that it was something like that.

With that, the discussion moved on to their next fights. This time, the fight scheduler let jax book three, one on each of the next three nights. Two of them were what he dismissively referred to as "filler fights," fights that took place in between the headliners to give the crowd time to place more bets, grab food, or use the facilities. Jax told them all that these were necessary; if they did well in filler fights, it made it a lot more likely that they'd be offered better fights even before they had a proper manager. It would also make finding that manager easier.

The third fight was another opening fight. It was supposed to be a very different fight; instead of fighting skyeagles, they'd fight a single summoned cyclops. The cyclops couldn't fly; it was intended to be the reverse of the normal fight, with them all in the sky fighting a single enemy on the ground. The cyclops would be able to hit them with both rocks that would be added to the arena by the summoner before the fight and the power of its singular eye; they were expected to respond from a distance.

Fights with odd restrictions like that were apparently huge draws for the crowd and also significant sources of betting, since it added another thing to bet on: whether or not the team would completely follow the rules. The fight scheduler did explain that while their pay would be reduced if they broke the "stay in the sky and attack from a distance" restrictions, there would be no further repercussions, at least not often. Some teams that regularly broke fight restrictions were quite popular, partly because people had to wonder if they'd obey them this time. A team that never obeyed them would stop being given those fights, but that was all.

That made it clear that it was all about the betting. As long as they were popular enough that people wanted to bet on their fights, the Arena would happily schedule them for fights.

Sophia sat on her questions until that evening, when they were back at Arryn's home. They were busy enough that she actually forgot to ask them until they sat down to dinner. "So, Jax, who are you looking at to be our manager?"

Jax laughed. "I have no idea. I know who the best teams are, of course, and I can find out who their managers are, but I'm not sure we want one of them. The best teams don't change."

"That's not true," Ci'an objected. "The Constellations became a lot more powerful while they were here. They were barely third upgrade when they arrived; they were at the peak when they abandoned the Maze."

"I haven't looked into them," Jax admitted, "But if they're like other teams, a lot of their Arena fame came after they abandoned the Maze. The top teams have to be available to fight and can't afford to be recovering, so they just don't go. We have to if we're going to learn what the Arena knows about keeping people safe in the Maze."

"And also to advance," Dav added. "Sophia and I want to make it to the Gateway that's supposed to be in the center of the Maze, too. It's our only way home."

Sophia nodded. It might not be the only way, but it was the only way they'd found that seemed likely. She was less interested in getting home than Dav, but she did want to make it home eventually. "We have time."

"It's going to take time," Jax said firmly. "It took me a decade to go from second upgrade to third, and I was unusually fast; I didn't get stuck at the peak of second trying to form my Grand Talent. It only took me a year."

Sophia definitely didn't want to spend a decade in one place gathering Wisps. It sounded dreadfully boring. It was supposed to not feel that way when you were doing something you actually liked, though, so maybe it wouldn't be that bad. The Maze actually sounded interesting, sort of like getting to walk into a different dungeon every day.

So maybe it wouldn't be that bad after all.

"Do you think it will take us that long?" Sophia asked anyway. "I'm told we made it to the first upgrade unusually quickly."

"It took me ten years to reach the second upgrade from when I got my Sphere," Xin'ri commented. "I'm slow, but I think I can still say that one year is unusually fast."

"You're not even that slow," Jax disagreed. He sounded almost angry. "It took me eight. Your former parties were ahead of you when you joined them, weren't they?"

"Ah, I'm not sure. They were the same upgrade as me," Xin'ri said sadly. "I couldn't keep up. It wasn't even close."

"I'd bet they were. They had you make stuff for them then abandoned you without ever giving you a chance. They used you to get cheap stuff, cheaper than from a Professional, then abandoned you when it would take any effort at all." Jax clenched a fist, then relaxed it. He'd tried to make the point he was making to Xin'ri before, but Sophia wasn't certain he'd ever brought up the other team members starting out ahead before. If he had, she didn't remember it.

"Maybe?" Xin'ri sounded doubtful, but it was still the first time Sophia had ever seen her not disparage her progression speed. She seemed to be fine about everything else, but she had no confidence in how fast she could advance her Sphere. "I guess I'm the one with the advantage now, since I'm not new to the second upgrade."

"You'll probably beat us," Dav encouraged her. "Sophia and I have tons of Abilities to level. I hadn't really realized just how punishing that was going to be later."

Sophia gave a thumbs up gesture. There really wasn't much to add.

"It changes at the third upgrade," Jax told them. "Everything changes then. I've tried to describe it, but you really only understand once you're there. That's how it was for me anyway."