Sophia opened her mouth before she realized that she had absolutely no idea what to say to that. The kindly old merchant who helped them travel to Casterville wanted them to not only enter but conquer a place that no one had made it through in sixteen hundred years?

She did plan to enter, and she was damn well going to try to get Dav home to his parents, but she certainly wouldn't have bet on a couple of people from nowhere for something like that.

"One step at a time." The birdlike Registry Master of the Mazehold Vocational Registry pushed back his chair and stood. "Let's move to the sitting room. It will be more comfortable, and now that we've decided we're not going to fight, I want to rest my old, aching bones. If you young ones need any help figuring out how to approach the Arena staff, I recommend talking to Ebayne Taarith or his mother, Rinata. Ebayne is a wandsmith, while Rinata knows everyone in the Smiths' Cooperative. One of them will know who the Arena's craftsmen are."

The name Rinata sounded familiar. "Wasn't Rinata the person who looked over our loot when we got here? She sent us to Aloysius Sweetfire to sell some of it."

"Aloysius Sweetfire." Sebas stopped where he was and shook his beak. "And she called him Aloysius, too. She's setting you up for a real surprise. I suppose I shouldn't spoil it; he's quite a character, but he means well and he likes to surprise people almost as much as he likes explosions. He might even be a better choice to talk to than Wandsmith Taarith; he's always working on something insane and everyone expects it by now."

Sophia wasn't sure how to feel about someone who was specifically noted as meaning well and liking explosions. It sounded like a bad combination. Adding a love of surprises and that they were being set up for one didn't help.

"We'll see him tomorrow," Dav said. He moved forward into the next room, then plopped onto a cushioned seat, clearly tired. "Along with Ebayne. Is there anything we should tell them about what we're trying to do, or should we keep that quiet?"

"Quiet," Sebas answered immediately, then continued after he found his own seat. "Aloysius won't tell anyone, but Ebayne certainly would. He's just as much of a rumor hub as his mother, but without her sense of when to talk. That's all for the good if you tell him that you're working on breaking an enchantment lock and even better if you can show him you succeeded, but don't tell him any secrets. How is that coming along? I'm acting like you've already succeeded, but I don't think you said you had."

Sophia wrinkled her nose and pulled the cube out of her pocket. "I'm not there yet. I think I see how it comes together, but the lock seems to be built into the recording function, like it was designed to only record the person who it was keyed to without any way to record anyone else's voice. I think I can bypass that, but I think I'll have to do it one person at a time. I might have to do it by rekeying it to the person who uses it each time, too, which will be hard on the underlayer; it looks like it wasn't really designed to be rekeyed."

"Wait, does that mean you already know how to let someone else use it?" Xin'ri sounded exasperated.

Sophia frowned at her friend in puzzlement. "Yeah? That wasn't that hard, you just have to run a swirling mana flow over the original recognition matrix input and it fools the matrix into believing it's not keyed and reaches out for a new mana imprint. With that going, all you have to do is feed mana into …" she paused and turned the cube over, then tapped the correct side, "this glyph here and it will take the new mana imprint. That doesn't let anyone use it and it's still locked to only that person's voice; I thought you wanted it unlocked?"

It really wasn't that hard. Sophia wasn't even close to a ward expert, but this was very similar to some of the types of fixed wards she'd learned to bypass as a child. It was the worst possible way to manage the bypass, because it removed everyone else who was keyed to the ward, which made it immediately obvious that someone had tampered with it. It was just all she'd managed to figure out while they walked; the box didn't seem to be designed to work without a matching imprint and it seemed to be designed for exactly one, which was frustrating.

"I…" Xin'ri sighed and shook her head. "You have no idea how hard that is, do you?"

Sophia blinked. It wasn't … was it? "No?"

"Right, well, I think our first stop in the morning is going to be the wandsmith's shop, where you're going to … no. Where I'm going to ask about locked or keyed items we might be able to pick up cheaply. We'll see where it goes from there." Xin'ri shook her head. She sounded a bit shocked but also kind of amused. "All right. Good. Uh, Arryn, was it? You said you wanted to talk to us about living in your house?"

It was easy to agree to Arryn's terms to live in his house; they could live in the house without paying rent as long as they kept it in good shape and protected it if anyone attacked it while they were present. If they were gone and someone attacked, Arryn expected them to deal with the mess. That was how he put it, too; apparently, the protections a third upgrade Vocation and third upgrade Profession could give were significant, but also left a disgusting mess if Arryn didn't have anyone clean up the bodies fairly quickly.

Sophia was at least half convinced that the mess was a large part of why Arryn made the deal with them; he surely knew that they could find their own housing. It certainly didn't seem to be that unusual for him, from the way the Registry Master reacted.

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The rest of the evening passed quickly. They traded stories and before Sophia knew it, she was headed to bed with Dav. Once they were in their room, Dav risked using his healing Call, ready to drop it immediately if it was still a problem.

Instead, he relaxed as the glow spread through his body. "I didn't realize how much that still hurt."

"You were pretty tense," Sophia agreed. "I was worried, even though Jax said it was normal and you'd recover as long as you gave it time."

"It seems to have worked this time, at least," Dav agreed. "But I'm going to have to try again. Channeling outside elements or other magic seems like a good way to push the Ability into a Grand Talent, and it definitely lines up with what I can already do, but I'm not sure how to get there without hurting myself again."

"Take it slower?" Sophia suggested. "There was a lot of fire in that crack. I could feed you some magic and see what happens?"

"In a few days," Dav agreed. "Don't want to push it now."

"Of course not!" Sophia frowned at her boyfriend. Did he really think she was going to risk hurting him?

Oh. He was smiling. That meant he was teasing her. At least it meant he was feeling better.

Sophia sighed. "You got me again."

Dav chuckled. "Only because you make it easy. What do you think you're going to do?"

"I want to merge my current Grand Spell and Grand Ability. Maybe even turn the feathers thing into something a bit more general, but maybe not. If they could be feather-shaped and made of anything, that would work. I could see feather-shaped metal bits flying through the air." Sophia leaned back on the bed. She wanted to cuddle against Dav, but she also didn't want to poke him where it hurt and she was pretty sure that his everything hurt.

"Back to the bladestorm mage choice?" Dav shook his head. "You're thinking too small. I think you are, at least. You keep impressing people here with your knowledge of spellcraft, not your Abilities. Why don't you push into that?"

Sophia shook her head. "It's not fast enough for combat; that's what Abilities are for."

"Xin'ri's Abilities aren't fast enough for combat either," Dav countered. "That's why she has to use her staves; she makes them ahead of time then uses them when the situation comes up. The only Ability she ever really uses in a fight is the way she stores her stuff so she can grab what she needs at the time."

"That's not the same thing." Sophia knew that was a terrible argument. She also knew it really wasn't the same thing. "That's what her Sphere is about making things ahead of time. Mine is about … Feathers."

Dav yawned. "You should make it about magical feathers. That's not a huge step, but magic is everything to you. I wonder if you can make a spellform out of feathers."

Sophia wasn't sure how making them magical feathers would be any different. Weren't they already magical feathers? Sure, she could start with ordinary feathers, but once she took them into her Domain, they were magical.

Maybe that meant it was a small step, the sort of incremental approach Jax mentioned. If it was, she still wasn't sure where she was going, but it didn't seem like it would hurt to try. "The worst that can happen is that it doesn't work," Sophia agreed.

The next morning was bright and clear, a beautiful spring day. It was a little cool, but Sophia's Down Coat meant that she didn't feel it at all. Dav was clearly feeling much better, as well. Some time during the night, the healing green glow vanished, but he didn't bother to renew it in the morning.

Peaches was "asleep" in the reception room when Sophia walked out of their bedroom. She knelt down next to him and quickly ran a brush through his fur as a greeting. It was good to see him again.

The feeling of cheer lasted exactly as long as it took to get outside and look around. Despite the bright day, everyone was in a hurry and at least half of the people Sophia saw were clearly unhappy. Something was happening.

Arryn's place was only a couple of minutes' walk from the Vocational Registry, so they stopped there first. It was just like outside, a beautiful day with a lot of sad people.

Jax made his way to the attendant. "It looks like something has gone wrong?"

The young man at the desk shook his head. He looked solemn but not nearly as upset as most of the Called Sophia had seen that morning. "The Blood Claw made it back to Mazehold earlier this morning, shortly after first light. The rest of Team Red fell in the Maze over the past few days; the Blood Claw is the only survivor. He's expected to make a full recovery, but …" the attendant shrugged. "They were a full third upgrade team and one of the most powerful ones currently fighting in the Maze, all the way at fifteenth level. It's always a sad day when a peak team falls, and Team Red was popular."

"You don't sound particularly upset," Jax noted.

The attendant shrugged. "I've lived in Mazehold my entire life. Groups come and groups go. You learn to deal with it or you leave; I'd rather celebrate the map expansions than worry about what the latest top team is doing. Now, do you need anything from me?"

Jax shook his head and stepped away from the desk. He'd gotten the answer they needed, and it was a sobering reminder that others who were at the top of their game hadn't yet succeeded. Sophia thought their team was different, but was that because they had to be different if they wanted to get home or because they actually were?

There was a way home. Sophia knew that; her mother was an oracle, and she foresaw Sophia's disappearance and return before everything started. The problem was that simply because she saw it didn't mean it would happen; it only meant that it was likely. They could definitely still fail.

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