Before they reached the end of the corridor, Sweetfire opened another door and led them into a surprisingly wide stairwell with stairs twice as wide as the corridor it connected to that headed both up and down. It was clearly intended to take a significant amount of traffic; just as clearly, it had seen a lot of traffic. The concrete steps were noticeably worn, polished smooth by foot traffic with indentations where people usually walked.
That wasn’t just age, it was regular, probably frequent use.
Sophia glanced around and noticed that while there were cobwebs near the ceiling, there weren’t as many as she’d expect. The floor was also clean, without even any dirt in the corners. There was a little dust, maybe, but it was obvious that the place was both used and regularly cleaned.
The hallway was like that too, now that she thought about it. She hadn’t noticed it back in Sweetfire’s basent because of all of the people, but nowhere down here looked unused. It all looked old, but that wasn’t the sa thing. “There are a lot of people down here, aren’t there?”
Sweetfire chuckled. It wasn’t a happy noise. “More than most people think about. Soone has to work the fields, maintain the lights and the air, even keep the place clean. I may be a mber of the Cooperative, but I recognize everything the League’s people do.”
Sophia silently filled in the words he left out; Sweetfire was a mber of the Smiths’ Cooperative, talking about the Professional League that seed to include every Professional in, and maybe under, Mazehold that wasn’t in the Smiths’ Cooperative. Jax seed to imply there was so tension there, but if he knew more, Sophia hadn’t asked. It hadn’t seed important until Sweetfire referred to the sa thing.
Sophia still wasn’t sure if it was actually important. She was just passing through, after all; if everything went well, they’d only be in Mazehold for long enough to get through the Maze. She didn’t know how long that would be, but it was only temporary. Surely she had enough on her plate with that and helping Jax look into the Arena’s knowledge about the Maze?
That only helped them, anyway; knowing more about the Maze ought to make getting through it easier.
Any thoughts of the politics were pushed out of Sophia’s head the mont they were far enough down the steps that she could actually see the bottom. A tunnel stretched through the space, easily twenty or thirty feet wide, equally tall, and long enough that it vanished into the distance in both directions. The floor reached out to et it about five feet above the squared-off bottom of the tunnel, but several sets of wooden steps ran down from the concrete floor to the tunnel’s floor.
This had to be the Large Underway Sweetfire ntioned earlier.
Sophia walked forward, already knowing what she would find at the bottom of the short flight of stairs: a pair of rails like the ones they’d seen back in the Skylands. Interestingly, they were recessed into the concrete instead of being upstanding like the ones she’d seen outside. This wasn’t built as a large pedestrian tunnel, even though that was clearly how it was being used; it was definitely a subway. “I wonder what happened to the trains?”
“Trains?” Sweetfire raised an eyebrow. “This isn’t a caravan route. If it weren’t for the mazestorm, the walkway would be full of people, not animals.”
Dav chuckled. “Not that kind of train. A connected line of vehicles that carry people or stuff. People here, I’d think. That’s why the center is so much lower; they’d be tall enough that people could just step in from the raised part.”
Dav clearly saw what Sophia did. Well, that made sense; his background was closer to hers than to theirs.
“Aaah,” Sweetfire acknowledged with a nod. “You an the ancient vehicles. I’ve looked at a few, but the enchantnts are so degraded with ti that all I can really tell is that they once moved. They’re scattered around; a bunch were clearly scavenged, the rest have been pulled out of the way. The ones that weren’t used as barricades, anyway; those were incorporated into walls to seal off the tunnels and keep monsters from getting in. They still do, but not that many, usually.”
Sophia blinked at Sweetfire. She hadn’t expected a real answer, sohow. It made everything feel a little off kilter sohow. The disconnect grew worse for a mont as Sweetfire moved on into the tunnel without saying more. Dav snagged Sophia’s wrist. The human contact brought her back to the here and now.
Right. They weren’t trying to figure out Mazehold’s history; they were dealing with sothing that ca through a set of “windows” that probably led into the space between realities. That shouldn’t have been better, but it was.
It was a surprisingly long walk to the subway exit closest to whatever facility Sweetfire wanted them to see. They passed a number of other people on the way. Sweetfire stopped each ti to tell them to get to shelter, but only a handful seed likely to take his advice. The rest didn’t seem worried about a mazestorm; how likely was it that it would affect the Large Underway, after all?
Sweetfire didn’t argue with them; he simply shook his head and hurried the group forward.
It was another surprise when he took them up a set of stairs out of the tunnel. The surprise wasn’t that they’d arrived; instead, it was because of where they’d arrived. There were more stairs than usual, which ant this was clearly a common entrance and exit, and a large painted sign near the stairs said ARENA.
“The windows are under the Arena?” Sophia had to ask. That made her wonder if they were supposed to be monitored by Tiwaz. The ancient facility-mind was also under the Arena, or at least had an access point that was, and he had a whole set of interspace conduits there. More interspace conduits seed likely to be related if they were close enough. It was always possible that his facility was part of a complex, but if so she didn’t know about it.
Then again, she wouldn’t. Tiwaz didn’t talk much about what he did before he went into hibernation; mostly, they talked about how to fix things. Sophia knew he was a communication nerve center of so sort, but that was really all. She’d also picked up that Othala was the main experintation and prototyping area, but not what the other places Tiwaz talked to did.
A way to monitor so of those places made a lot of sense.
“Yeah,” Sweetfire agreed. “All of the official connections co through the Large Underway.”
Sophia didn’t miss the emphasis on the word “official.” She just wasn’t sure what it ant, if anything, other than that Sweetfire suspected there were unofficial entrances. Of course, she already knew that there were, at least if the complex really was part of Tiwaz’s facility. Not only had Jax co down one that the Arena used to run their ergency healing setup, they’d exited through another. That one didn’t even co out near the Arena, but was still under Tiwaz’s complete control. He’d opened it the sa way Scout opened the hidden exit from Othala’s facility.
“How do you know the windows are open?” Dav’s voice cut through Sophia’s musing about the connections between Tiwaz and whatever they were about to find.
“I killed two of the window-monsters on my way back to my shop,” Sweetfire answered. “I thought I said that. I should have.”
Sophia was pretty sure that he’d just said that windows were broken by the storm, but she could see how that could happen; he knew what windows being broken ant and he was in a hurry. “Does that an there are more monsters loose?”
“Only if they broke through the sweetfire wall I set up while I went to get tools,” Sweetfire answered with a grin. “And you four, as well. That’s why we had to hurry back; it’ll hold for a while, but not forever. It should be fine when we get there, though; there really was ti for us to swing by the Aquarium if we had to. It’s not that far out of the way.”
Sophia raised an eyebrow at Sweetfire. She wasn’t the one who’d said they didn’t have ti; why was he justifying himself to her?
Sophia shook herself. That wasn’t important right now. “So what should we expect? What are the monsters like?”
“The two I killed were oversized wall-lizards.” Sweetfire held his hands about two feet apart to indicate the lizards’ size. “I didn’t see anything particularly special about them, other than their ability to walk on the walls. They should be mid-first upgrade; most monsters that co through the Windows are. I didn’t give them a chance to do anything; I just set them on fire.”
Sweetfire tapped his fingers on his leg for a mont, then added, “The only thing you really need to know is not to let them engulf you. So of the creatures that co out of the Windows can do that, then imitate you. They won’t have your Abilities, but killing a Window-monster wrapped around soone without hurting them is difficult, especially since we have to do it quickly to keep them from suffocating.”
Sophia didn’t like the sound of that. She was pretty sure she could prevent it with her Plu Shift, but none of the others had an easy way to prevent it other than killing the monsters first. At the sa ti, if they were only in the middle of the first upgrade, that shouldn’t be too hard. In fact, unless there was an actual horde, it ought to be easy.
“That’s why you said you could do it alone,” Sophia realized. “You’re what, third upgrade? Even if you have to use your Happy Fun Balls to kill them, you don’t really need us.”
Sweetfire nodded with a smile. “People forget how strong Professionals can be. We don’t get the sa fighting Abilities that you Called get, but we’re the ones who make your gear. Needing tools isn’t the sa as being helpless. This was a bad mazestorm, but I’ve never seen so many Window-monsters from a single storm that I’d be in trouble. I can take care of it, but that would drain . I think it’s better that we all fight and conserve my strength and my Happy Fun Balls for later. I’ll let you four lead once we’re past the sweetfire wall.”
Sophia nodded. She’d seen that back ho; yes, the people with combat Paths could fight more easily, but the really dangerous people were often those with other Paths. Not only could they get others to handle the fighting, they could prepare ahead of ti. A good warding specialist, soone who could make wards instead of breaking them the way Sophia did, could be the difference between survival and death in a dungeon even if those wards were all they could do.
“Here we are,” Sweetfire announced monts before Sophia saw a literal wall of fire ahead of them. It filled the sterile concrete hallway from one side to the others. The fire seed to dance as she watched, weaving around itself in a yellow and red pattern that almost looked like it was choreographed, even though it clearly wasn’t.
“Nothing’s erged,” Sweetfire stated firmly. “If sothing had, we’d see a black residue. It only lasts a few hours while the creature’s alive, but it’s an easy way to tell if you’re near a Window-monster. Is everyone ready for
to take the wall down? There could be several waiting on the other side.”
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