As it turned out, smuggling Sophia back to the others was easy. All it took was a borrowed delivery wagon and a hooded cloak and Sophia was back with them. The wagon went right by the Temple, since it was on the main entranceway to that part of Izel, but Sophia didn’t see it; she was hidden behind a stack of boxes full of fragile glassware.

  Naturally, the moment Sophia arrived, Taika insisted on putting an illusion on Sophia so that she looked like a different type of elf, with branching dull brown horns, bright green eyes, a more tanned appearance, and slightly altered face shape.

  That was when they realized that the delivery wagon and cloak weren’t necessary. It was also when they realized that the entire worry about Amy being recognized was silly; Taika could have put an illusion over her to make her look a little different. It was possible to see through illusions, but why would anyone bother to go through that much effort for everyone walking down a crowded street?

  The entire situation could have been avoided if they’d just thought to take a simple precaution ahead of time. It made Sophia mad at her past self, but it wasn’t like there was any way to change it now.

  No matter how many times Amy asked why she went into the Temple, the past couldn’t be changed. Sophia glared daggers at her friend when she asked for the fourth time. Sure, she used different words, but it was the same question. Why did she keep going?

  “I’m not sure anymore. You were too close to the Temple, I was afraid someone would recognize you if Aric pulled attention to you.” Sophia raised a hand before Amy could repeat her earlier counterarguments. “Yeah, I know there are other wolfkin in Izel and yeah I know I could have just waved goodbye and said I had to catch up with my team and it might have looked weird but probably no one would have thought much of it, but I didn’t.”

  “You don’t have to be so hard on the girl,” Los’en said with an annoyingly amused smile as he walked into the small attic bedroom that they’d been told to wait in. “Sophia was trying to help, she just got caught up with going along with the crowd.”

  Los’en’s attention shifted to Sophia and he winked at her. “I do think asking why people are going inside is a good idea next time, but right now we need to talk about something else. Did you really steal the entire Broken Sword?”

  “Uh.” Sophia blinked at Amy’s uncle; how did he even know that? For that matter, how did he even know she’d gotten caught up in the crowd? He wasn’t there when she told the rest of her team about it. All he should have heard was what she told Dav before the wagon was sent, that she’d escaped from the Temple and was pretty sure she was being hunted. Most of their talk was about where she was and how to get together safely, not about what she did. Los’en was already gone by the time she arrived. “Um, I grabbed everything that was on the table. It didn’t look like a whole sword. The Wanderer said to take what I touched and I wasn’t sure exactly which bits were important so I took them all.”

  “How are you keeping them from finding it?” Los’en looked a little more serious, without losing his grin. “I helped set up the protections on this place, so I know it wasn’t designed to hold something like the Broken Sword. I’ve seen three search groups go past without even a hint that they saw anything.”

  “It’s in an isolation bag,” Sophia admitted. “Wrapped in the cloth that was on the table. It barely fit back into my backpack, but that was the best I could do.”

  She frowned. She really should talk about the limitations of the isolation bag and make sure they didn’t need to get it out of Izel or something. “The isolation bag will block its mana; I think it protects against a few other things, but they’re all pretty general since the bags are supposed to be used mostly on old artifacts from before the Terror War, so it’s all passive stuff. I used one on a corpsevine piece back in Casterville; in that case, it was mostly so it couldn’t sense anything outside. I’m not sure it was needed, but I’m still glad I took the precaution.”

  Sophia paused and thought through everything. “Being in my pack will help, everything in my pack is somewhere else, it’s there so any detection method has to work through a static connection. I know there’s magic that can trace that sort of thing, Aunt Ita can do it. I can’t, but I’m not very good at divination generally. I think a connection is the easiest way to find it, and the sword is linked to the Broken Lord somehow, isn’t it?”

  “If you believe the Hilt, it’s the symbol of the Broken Lord’s power,” Los’en agreed. “They’re hunting it with more fervor than I’d have expected. I know it’s used in their Hallowings, but I always thought that was showmanship. A Patron doesn’t need a symbol to offer a Hallow.”

  Sophia nodded.

  “So far, they haven’t hit on something that will work, but I bet they’ll keep looking.” Los’en hesitated for a moment, then continued. “My Patron slipped me a message while you were distracting the Broken Lord and his Hilt. He usually has to piggyback them on Feat notifications to avoid alerting the Broken Lord, but this one came without anything else.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “I got one too,” Dav said. “It was strange, because it didn’t say anything about the current situation; it was just advice about a couple of my Abilities. It was almost like the Wanderer had a message ready to go for me and sent it when he had the chance, rather than writing something new.”

  “I didn’t,” Amy complained. “I’ve never gotten anything from Aeric Openhand other than the offer of a Hallow.”

  Los’en shook his head slightly. “That’s the Openhand’s way. None of his Hallows ever get direction from him.”

  “Figures,” Amy grumbled. “Even when advice would be useful.”

  Los’en chuckled. “Don’t complain too much. The Beastmaster’s additions to the Nightowl Hallow are exceedingly useful. I know you’ve seen the records.”

  “They still cost Wisps,” Amy muttered grumpily.

  “Everything does,” Los’en agreed. “Which is why the Broken Sword is so important right now. Well, one of the reasons.”

  Sophia frowned quizzically at Los’en. “What do Wisps have to do with the Broken Sword?”

  “You know that you don’t get Wisps from dealing with other people, whether that’s in a positive or a negative way, right?” Los’en started.

  “Professionals do,” Dav objected.

  Los’en shook his head. “Not exactly. Professionals get Wisps from time and from using their Professions. No one’s entirely certain how that works, but it’s slow. Slower than any Called, even the ones that only get their Wisps from defense missions. I guess that does mean they get some from dealing with people. That’s what I mean, though; I’m talking about Called. If you fight someone, you won’t get Wisps. If a group of people tries to attack a city, neither side will get Wisps. There also won’t be a Nexus defense mission. That’s just not how it works. You know that, right?”

  “Vaguely,” Sophia admitted. “I’m not really sure about Nexus defense missions though; how can that happen in Izel when there isn’t a Nexus?”

  “There is,” Los’en said. He sounded surprised. “Why would you think there isn’t?”

  Sophia unhesitatingly threw her friend under that bus. “Amy said there wasn’t, and anyway the mana density is higher here. Isn’t it lower in Nexuses? Amy said that was why it was lower in Casterville.”

  Amy’s uncle chuckled. “It’s more complicated than that. Nexuses can take several forms. One of them is called a Safe City; that’s what Casterville is. Izel isn’t a city at all; we don’t have a City nexus, Safe or not. Izel is built around an Empyrean Font Nexus. Most Fonts in the Wilderness, but Izel was conquered by our Clan centuries ago. It’s huge and powerful, as well as connected to the sky, so we’ve used it as a Challenge hub ever since. We have to defend Izel far more often than Casterville needs to beat off monsters; that used to be difficult, but we’ve pushed the Wilderness far enough away that it isn’t anymore.”

  That kind of made sense. Amy probably meant there wasn’t a Safe City Nexus, except she called it a City Defense Nexus. Sophia supposed that “Safe City Nexus” made sense for Casterville, though honestly it didn’t seem that safe to her. What had she called Izel again? Or had she used a name? Sophia couldn’t remember one; all she could remember was that Izel was centered on the crystal at the center of the cave.

  “And that’s why you’re upset that the Broken Temple is here, but why did you have to wait so long to deal with them?” Dav seemed to be putting the pieces together faster than Sophia was.

  “I don’t know,” Los’en admitted. “We wouldn’t be dealing with them now if I didn’t push for it. Everyone else seemed content to wait for it to become a problem we couldn’t deal with. There were always other things that were more important; the Broken Temple’s Hilt could always be reasoned with. Until I proved that he couldn’t.”

  “What changed?” Dav paused, then elaborated. “That is, why do you think the Hilt asked something you wouldn’t give this time? Did you just push too many times or was there another reason?”

  Los’en gave Dav a tight smile. “I finally found something he couldn’t overlook, something that seemed small to everyone else. The Broken Lord hated the Tower; that’s why he broke it, at least according to the Hilt. That means the old symbol of the power of the Tower is anathema to them, even though it’s really common here; a ton of old jewelry was made in the form of the Tower. All I did was have some new pins made in the old design.”

  That sounded an awful lot like continual pushing to Sophia, but she supposed she couldn’t blame the man.

  “It’s also not going as well as I expected,” Los’en admitted. “More Called are fighting for the Temple or just ignoring the fight than I expected, even after the Registry was attacked. I didn’t expect that, and if I had I’d have thought it would push people away from the Temple. It didn’t.”

  “We’d ignore it if we could,” Amy contributed. “That’s what we wanted to do. I wanted to finish getting access to Night Owl before things erupted and get out of here. What are we going to do now?”

  Los’en rubbed his face. “I wanted to keep you out of it too, but that’s not a choice anymore. Not after Sophia stole the whole Sword. I still can’t believe you had the balls to do that.”

  Sophia shrugged. She didn’t think she deserved that much credit for the bad choices that ended up with her inside the temple of an enemy, even if the choices she made on the way out turned out well. She just wasn’t quite willing to say that.

  “If you want, I can take the Broken Sword from you and try to deal with it, while you hide. I’ll find a safe place for you to hide or see if I can get someone else to escort you to Lan’ti.” Los’en shook his head with a gentle smile. “That’s not what I want to ask you to do, but I mean it. I’m not going to keep you here if you want out.”

  Los’en’s understanding of the world is a bit more nuanced than Amy’s is. Of course, he’s also seen a lot more of it.