Broken Lands

Sophia blinked at Xin'ri's question. It hadn't occurred to her to check, since none of the monsters were particularly dangerous; the only dangerous thing was the spell that temporarily encased Dav. She opened her Status, then paused. She was at over two thousand Wisps, which meant she'd gained over fifteen hundred since she last checked, and that was only a few days earlier.

Some of them were probably from the Arena, but that wasn't supposed to be all that many, less than fifty per fight. If that number was right, she'd gained well over a thousand from the mazestorm, more than most of the Hollows they'd worked through before Dav finally reached the second upgrade. It was more than twice what some of the Hollows awarded.

"Yeah, a few." Jax answered distractedly. His attention was on the window in front of himself, or at least on the windowsill.

"Nine hundred and sixty-two is not a few," Xin'ri insisted. "It may not be enough to upgrade my most expensive Ability, but it will work for the cheapest one, even though I also have to upgrade the slot."

Jax whipped around and stared at Xin'ri for a moment before his eyes grew distant, clearly checking his own Status. "You're right, this is far too many Wisps for a mazestorm. I gained over seven hundred, and I'm third upgrade. I should have gotten less than fifty, probably a lot less. A mazestorm …. There's a reason people enter the Maze. If hiding in a room and defending against a storm were enough, there would be no reason to enter."

Sophia knew that wasn't entirely true; there were also resources pulled out of the Maze. At the same time, he had a point; the mazestorm looked like it covered the entire city, which meant that everyone should have gained quite a few Wisps. "Are they really rare, then? I know we haven't seen one before."

Jax frowned and shook his head. "We were too far from the Maze, they break up into an ordinary storm when they're farther away if they don't go away entirely. That's what I was checking for before each time we left the underground. I think I've only seen one in that time, but they're rare just after the season changes. I wouldn't expect another mazestorm for a tenday or so, but as we get deeper into spring, they will be a lot more common. They'll get lighter again when we transition to summer."

It wasn't the most reliable answer; in fact, it sounded a lot like asking someone about the weather. Jax could tell her what he usually saw, but he couldn't tell her why. It was weird that it lined up with the weather and even weirder that it dropped just before one of the Broken Lands' seasonal transitions and then slowly rose over the course of the season. That meant there was some underlying connection between the two.

It wasn't something Sophia could solve right now, but it was something to keep in mind. She was pretty sure she knew more about world-level manaflow dynamics than anyone else in the Broken Lands, but she didn't know enough about the Broken Lands to make any predictions. They were different enough that nothing was like what she expected.

Except for when she was right, which happened just often enough to fool her into thinking she actually knew something useful.

Sophia shook her head and turned her attention back to something useful. "I got roughly fourteen hundred Wisps, I think. I'm at over two thousand now, and that's enough to do something with. Should I look into another Ability or just progress some of the ones that aren't all the way to level eight?"

"You can look, but unless it's a missing piece of your Grand Talent, don't buy anything," Jax told her firmly. "Any Abilities that don't fit will be destroyed when you form the Talent and they'll also make it harder to get there. Everything I have went into my Talent, and that's what most people do."

Sophia nodded. She was a little disappointed by that, because new Abilities were fun, but most of the Abilities the Guide offered were pretty bad. She'd expected more interesting things to show up as she leveled, but that wasn't really true. The only question was if anything appeared after she crossed the second upgrade or not.

"If I could give you some of my Wisps, I would," Dav told Xin'ri. "You should have gotten the same amount Sophia and I did."

Xin'ri shrugged. "My Sphere is somewhere between a Profession and a Calling, of course I get fewer from a fight than you do. I only get Wisps from equipment I made that I use in a fight. This wasn't a fight, but if you and Sophia got Wisps too, the Guide thought it was."

"You don't get any Wisps for making things for other people at all?" Jax sounded surprised, even though Sophia knew they'd talked about it before. Was that why Jax thought Xin'ri should be able to keep up?

Xin'ri shook her head. "Not unless I use it in a fight. I told you I always fall behind; that's why."

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"It doesn't matter," Sophia stated firmly. "If we have to wait a bit for you to catch up, that's fine. It'll all work out, one way or another."

"You don't get any from making things at all?" Jax sounded a little confused.

Xin'ri shook her head. "Not until I use it. There is a bonus the first time I use something; I think that's the Professional part kicking in, but a proper Professional makes things for a lot of people. Making things for others doesn't give me Wisps."

"There's an easy answer to that," Dav said firmly. "Use more things. Can you make things we'll be able to use afterwards?"

Xin'ri shook her head, then glanced towards Sophia. "I don't think so, but if Sophia's willing, we can try. Normally, if I use something, the enchantment on it doesn't work for anyone else."

A creak echoed from the back room. Everyone turned to look as the door Sweetfire disappeared into opened again and revealed that the craftsman had returned. He looked out of breath and a little disheveled, but otherwise fine. "Oh, good, you're still here."

Sophia wanted to ask where else they would be, but that was just the snark talking. There was a more important question. "Is there a problem?"

"Yeah," Alley Sweetfire rasped. "I need some of you to come with me while the rest of you activate as many of the Happy Fun Balls as possible. This storm was unusually bad; it broke some of the windows. Those of you who are coming with me, grab as many Happy Fun Balls as you can carry."

Sophia glanced at the bins full of exploding sentient bouncy balls and estimated how much space was left in her pack. There ought to be enough room, even with the stuff she'd added over the past few days. "Do you need them here or would taking all of them be better? I think I can fit them all if a couple of people help me dump them in my bag."

Sweetfire's gave seemed to sharpen. He glanced from Sophia to her backpack, then back again. "Dav, Jaycen, can you help her while Xin'ri, Amy, and I activate as many as we can? It's simple enough; you just have to feed them some mana. Any mana will work, though sweetfire works the best of course."

It turned out there was a little more to it than that, but Sophia only caught snippets of the explanation as she loaded up her bag with little bundles of explosive joy. There was less space available than she expected, but that just meant that there was a bin of Happy Fun Balls that didn't fit.

By the time they filled Sophia's bag, Sweetfire had changed his mind. Rather than leave someone behind, he showed them all how to turn the Happy Fun Balls on and had them each activate a few, then stuff the rest in whatever bags and pockets they had available. Taika ended up buried in Happy Fun Balls, grumpy about the disturbed nap but not upset about sharing his pocket. Even though Sweetfire saw him, he didn't ask about the rodent.

He was in too much of a hurry to stop and think about strange things. He didn't even ask how Sophia's bag could hold as much as it did; he just accepted it and moved on.

Less than fifteen minutes after Sweetfire emerged from below, the reactivated Happy Fun Balls were out the front door and Sweetfire was opening the door to the underground for their team.

Jax stopped at the entrance. "Are you sure we should go below? I thought the Professionals didn't want Called down there."

"It's faster than going above ground right now. Come on, we need to hurry." Sweetfire didn't explain more than that; he just vanished down the stairs.

Sophia was the first one through the door after him. "What's going on? What's bad enough you need us and the Happy Fun Balls?"

Sophia could hear noise rising from the bottom of the stairs. It sounded like people talking, but it was fait enough that she wasn't certain.

"Some of the windows were broken," Sweetfire repeated his earlier partial explanation. "The former Called in the underground are hunting what they can, but until we have everyone gathered together, there are too many who are trapped in their safe spaces. The Happy Fun Balls will help pull the monsters out and away so that we can get ahead of the problem. I don't want another grass weasel infestation."

Grass weasel infestation? Sophia wasn't sure if that sounded silly or terrifying. It mostly depended on whether they were weasels that hid in the nonexistent grass below ground or weasels made of grass. A plant-monster that looked like grass in the shape of a weasel could be pretty scary to anyone without the tools to deal with it, and that meant they were probably dangerous for Professionals as well as children.

"I could take care of that without your help," Sweetfire admitted. "It would be a little slower, that's all. I need your help for something else."

They reached the bottom of the stairs before Sweetfire could tell them what the "something else" was.

The stairs dead-ended in an unfinished room that looked like a concrete basement to Sophia. It was poorly lit, but she could still see that it was roughly forty feet long on each side. The wall opposite where they entered had two openings, but a quick glance to the side showed only one doorway to the left. The right-hand wall held three openings; two seemed to head up while the one in the middle looked like it went deeper into the ground.

She could also see that the room was full of people. Most were sitting, but enough were standing or milling around that she could tell that there weren't really any proper lanes in the crowd; it was just people getting past the people on the floor as best they could.

A knot of people waited at the bottom of the stairs. None of them actually stepped onto even the lowest step, which was odd enough that it got Sophia's attention. If she were waiting at the bottom of a flight of steps for someone, she'd often climb the first few steps to talk to them a little earlier. In a near inversion of that, the people waiting at the bottom of these stairs actually backed up to give the entire group room.