A tear fell onto the letter, followed by another. Sophia didn't know why she was crying, but she definitely was. She silently turned the page to see the diagrams and instructions from her father, but they were unreadable with her blurred vision.

A warm hand on her shoulder told her Dav was there. Sophia turned and found him crouched next to her. She leaned into his chest and began to put her arms around him, notebook still clutched in her left hand.

"It's okay," Dav said softly as his arms wrapped around her. "I'm here for you."

Sophia tried to gather herself together, but it took a while before she was able to stop crying enough to explain herself to Dav. "They sent a letter. I don't know why I'm crying, it's great. They're … everything is fine at home, they're trying to figure out how to reach me, but they don't think they can open a portal any time soon. I don't know why I'm crying."

"Tears of joy," Dav answered easily. "You thought everything was fine, now you know it is, and you miss your family. I know I miss mine."

Sophia leaned against him for another long moment, until she realized just how uncomfortable she was sitting on the stone floor with her right foot going to sleep because of the position it was in. She flushed and pulled away from Dav, then stood unsteadily. "Uh, we should get going. I'm going to need time to look over what my family sent before I can do anything here."

Her gaze turned to Sweetwater as she spoke. "You will bring us back here when I'm ready, right? I'd really like to at least get a message home and there aren't many places that's possible. I think this may be better than what my family used to send their message."

Now that she thought about it, she wasn't sure when the message from her parents arrived. It could have popped into her notebook at any time, but it was far more likely that it happened if there was an easy connection to the Origin. That meant one of the interspaces, which probably meant that it happened months ago, back when they sent Lan'ti back to Izel at the end of winter. She wasn't certain she'd looked in the notebook since then, so she could have failed to notice it.

It was equally possible that it had only just arrived. While the spell to duplicate pages would work through her pack, it also ought to be able to work through an opening like the open doorways to the interspace Othala and Tiwaz had … or the "broken Window." It probably couldn't extend far from those places, but it was entirely possible that the message had only just reached her when she pulled the notebook out.

Her mother's message did seem to imply it was written after she'd been gone more than a year, so it couldn't have been waiting for her for all that long. Time in the Broken Lands was weird, but she was still pretty sure that they'd arrived in late winter or early spring, which implied that she'd been here for a bit over a year. She wasn't sure if that was thirteen m months or fifteen, but either way the message couldn't have been waiting for too long.

Yeah, she was going to keep telling herself that. She was also going to start checking the notebook more often. She didn't want to miss it if they sent another message.

She should also add more pages to it, now that she had the method.

"You'll have to explain what you're doing," Sweetwater warned Sophia, "But yes, I'll bring you back here. It sounds like you may know more than I do about what's on the other side of the Windows. I'd like to know, especially if it means being able to defend against the Window-monsters more easily. Or entirely shut them down, but that doesn't seem likely."

Sophia frowned. She wasn't quite willing to talk to Sweetwater about Tiwaz yet, but she also wasn't sure there was really any reason not to. He definitely didn't seem all that fond of the Arena's leadership, so it probably wouldn't be too bad; in fact, she was pretty sure he'd think Tiwaz ought to belong to the Professionals and not the Arena, even though he was under the Arena; the underground belonged to Professionals.

That might be a reason to not talk about Tiwaz. The facility-mind was a person and shouldn't belong to anyone.

At the same time, she knew Tiwaz wanted to be helpful and missed having people around. That was why he'd put himself into hibernation, after all. On top of that, Sweetwater might be able to help Tiwaz's goal of reconnecting with the other facilities like Othala's, especially if he had access to more of the black repair goo, and the Windows seemed to have a nearly unlimited supply. She'd checked out a few of them with Dav, but they seemed to be broken like the first one they'd repaired, which meant Tiwaz only had enough repair material for one connection at the most.

Tiwaz decided to delay the repair while they went into the Maze; he hoped they'd be able to reach the Gateways and find someone who actually knew what they were doing and could manage more than a temporary patch job. As it was, he wanted to save the repair goo he had for the connection with Othala. Sophia wasn't sure it was the right call, but it was Tiwaz's decision to make.

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It was risky, but introducing Sweetwater to Tiwaz might be good for both sides. Sophia just wasn't sure. Maybe she should ask Tiwaz if they could get back down to him?

Sophia shook her head, then realized that she still held the notebook. At least she wasn't crying anymore. She tucked it into her bag, then shrugged her backpack onto her shoulders. "Sounds good. I guess we should move on. We were in a hurry, weren't we?"

Sweetwater shook his head. "We can take some time if you need it. The real hurry was to get here before my fire wall failed. Orvayne doesn't trust it, even though it's never failed if I get here in time. She had to fight one of the Window-monsters once and she's never forgotten it. I do need your help, but we can take the time you need. It's not far, so we have a few hours before it's a big problem."

"We can get going. I'd like to," Sophia answered. She needed a distraction, for a bit. She knew that she'd end up poring over the stuff her father sent that evening, but right now she wanted to focus on something else. Anything else. "What's the problem?"

Alley Sweetwater shook his head. He looked annoyed for some reason. "I can't tell you. Not yet. I can't even tell you where we're going. You just have to follow me and trust me and I can't tell you why. I hate that, but I can't. I can say that I'll tell you once we're there; that much is allowed."

Well, at least that explained why he was annoyed. Sophia would be annoyed if she had to wait to tell someone what she wanted their help with.

"It's not far," Sweetwater repeated as he headed back past where the wall of fire was when they entered. "Just a few minutes' walk. That's why this was on the way when I went to go get you; I do try to check the Window rooms whenever there's a Mazestorm, but really, it's up to whoever is the closest. Anyone else who stopped by to look would have seen my fire and know I was handling it, so it was my responsibility after that." The words spilled out as if he was trying to make up for not being able to tell where they were going.

Maybe he was.

Sophia asked a couple more questions as they walked, but all she got was the frustrating "I can't tell you yet" answer. He couldn't even say why he needed them, although he seemed less certain about that one than the others, almost as if he thought he probably could say something, but decided not to just in case.

He was correct about it not being far, at least. It was probably only a five minute walk once they reached the large subway tunnel to the exit they needed. Like the Arena exit, this one had multiple ways up to the top of the platform from the tunnel, but unlike the Arena, they were both ramps instead of stairs.

It was obvious that a lot of people came through at times, but the traffic definitely wasn't just people; there were grooves worn into the ramps that had to be from some sort of cart or wagon. The grooves stopped when they reached the tunnel floor, as if it held up better than whatever the ramp was made of. Sophia frowned at them; she hadn't seen anything but people yet, but she also wasn't here at a normal time. Maybe they were all put away somewhere.

A quick trip up one of the ramps brought them up into mist, almost like fog. It clung to the ground like the morning mist; there were no puddles as far as Sophia could tell, but the concrete floor glistened wetly where it had been polished by thousands or millions of footsteps.

"Some of the water pipes leak," Sweetwater admitted. "Especially at the joints. It's amazing they work at all, as old as they are. I repair them when I find damage, but the old pipes are better than anything I could make. The leaks might even be in the walls; I'm not sure. No matter what I do, I can't get rid of the mist. It might even be from the area beyond the door, I'm not sure."

"Beyond the door?" Sophia asked just before she realized that the lights in the distance formed a rectangular outline, rather like a door. "Oh, that door."

"Yeah, that door," Sweetwater agreed with obvious amusement. "Follow me through the door, we can talk once we're all past it."

Once they were closer, Sophia could see that she was actually looking at a pair of doors. They were made of metal and had neon runes that varied in color from a pale teal to a deep purple and rich red written on the doors just inside the door frame. The colors changed as Sophia watched, flowing around the door, but the runes did not. It took her a moment, but her Innate Communication Ability translated the runes. "Along a narrow pathway I walk; the birds and creatures of nature comfort me; the creations of Man bring me power; may I find my way through the depths of night to the safety of Home."

She was pretty sure it was a poem inscribed on the doors as decoration. Nothing else made sense.

The doors also had six rectangular sections; the fourth from the top seemed to hold the locking mechanism, but the other five each had three larger neon runes that shifted colors almost simultaneously instead of in a wave pattern like the outer runes. Unlike the words that formed the border, the ones on the door were individual words, though Sophia got the feeling that they meant more than she understood from the translation "Open Growth Sky Warm Wet Cool Verdant Loam Rich Thrive."

If the words on the door were related to the poem on its border, this had to be a place for the "birds and creatures of nature."

Sweetwater didn't seem to notice Sophia's mutter. Instead, he moved forward and set his hand on the smaller indentation on the right-hand door, near the seam. The doors hissed as they opened, sliding into the wall and out of the way.

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