The stairs were functional, wide enough for two people to pass each other easily with a wooden handrail, but they were far less fancy than the other stairs Sophia had seen in the building. They were clearly the staff stairs, not the ones visitors would use. That meant they were headed to an area where visitors weren’t expected, the working parts of the registry. Whatever that meant.
At the top of the stairs, a hallway led in either direction but Rensyn led them to the left, past several doors marked with symbols Sophia didn’t recognize. It seemed like the strange symbol on the incinerator door wasn’t the only odd marker in the building. “Why aren’t the doors labeled with what they are, or at least numbred?”
“Tradition?” Rensyn made it sound more like a question than an answer. “If you don’t know what’s on the other side of a door, you don’t need to know. It’s also easier to teach the staff distinct symbols that are related to each room than it is to teach them to read. That can happen later.”
That sounded a lot like how a pictographic language might develop to Sophia, but she couldn’t say that was a bad thing. When you got right down to it, modern Earth had a pictographic language, too. Everyone knew what a stop sign looked like, even if the word wasn’t there, and bathrooms were often identified with symbols rather than words. When she thought about it like that, it really didn’t seem that different, and that was before she started thinking about things like brand symbols and logos.
Rensyn stopped in front of a door with a symbol that looked like the letters VR in a shield. Oddly, the letters were very high up, like there was supposed to be something below them in the shield, but nothing was there. Sophia couldn’t tell if there were scratch marks there or if she was just imagining it; if there was ever something at the bottom of the symbol, whoever removed it did a good job of repairing the plaque.
VR Shield [https://i.imgur.com/Q6IsbpW.jpeg]
Rensyn tapped on the door. When he didn’t get a response, he knocked a bit louder.
“Come in,” a tired woman’s voice stated.
The door opened to reveal a tired-looking woman in clothing that could almost have been a uniform. Her eyes were keen behind her spectacles. “Rensyn and the group that cleared the Challenge. I wasn’t expecting to see you up here today. Most people celebrate clearing a challenge with a party, not a visit to someone like me.”
The woman’s sharp eyes quickly flicked across the group, then softened as she smiled. “I’m Registry Master Jessamine, once known as the Shield of the Sun.”
A sudden intake of breath from Amy told Sophia that “Shield of the Sun” meant something. This didn’t seem like the time to ask.
The Registry Master continued as if Amy’s surprise was only to be expected. “I know who you three are, or four if I count your fuzzy mascot. I understand you asked for me downstairs?”
Sophia managed to speak up before Amy this time, probably because Amy was still off balance from the Registry Master’s title. “Yeah. We fully cleared the Leveled Challenge, and we think the corpsevines didn’t just appear again. We think they were helped.”
Registry Master Jessamine seemed to sag a little for just a split second. “I hope you’re wrong. I’ll need the whole story from you, but first, do you have any idea who could be responsible? It explains a lot of things, but there isn’t anyone I can think of that would do that.”
Sophia bit her lip, then reached into her bag. “We found a pin in the Challenge. I don’t know whose it is, but it doesn’t look like something a gardener would wear.” She held the enameled phoenix out to the Registry Master.
“Ah,” Master Jessamine said. She stared at the brooch for a long moment, then started to speak quickly. “It definitely doesn’t look like the Gardener’s, but I can’t believe - no, that’s the wrong order. I need to change and I need the whole story. Rensyn, I need you to send for the Mage-Chancellor and gather the Registry’s leaders for a formal session. We’ll need the Commander, the Head Mentor - you can sit in for that since we don’t currently have one. Johan will be attending as the Mage-Chancellor’s second instead of as the Registry’s merchant, so be sure to get Halven as well. Samuel is the Head Mage, he’s a good choice for this anyway. I’ll take the Head of Combat spot. We don’t have a Head Healer, Halven will have to cover for that since he’s basically filling the role anyway. We’ll be on the top floor.”
Rensyn blinked, then paled. “The top floor? This is that serious?”
The Registry Master nodded. “It could be. Get moving; we need to take care of this before anything else goes wrong. Oh, and don’t tell any of them why I’m calling them; you can tell them this is a new emergency if you like, but that’s all you know. Got it?”
Rensyn nodded, then looked at Sophia, then Amy. “Should I take them with me? It’d be good training.”
The Registry master shook her head firmly. “Getting the full tale from them is more important right now. They handled Lady Essia well enough, training can wait.”
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Rensyn turned and hurried away. A smile appeared on Master Jessamine’s face and she shook her head slightly. “”I wonder if he’ll remember to invite Aimiva? Probably not, but that’s just as well.”
Her next words were slightly louder. “Stay here for a few minutes; there isn’t room in my office. I need to change, then I’ll escort you upstairs.” She handed the pin back to Sophia, then disappeared inside the room that was clearly the Vocational Registry Master’s office.
Come to think of it, that was probably why there was a VR in the shield on her door. Sophia wondered if the missing symbol might have been a sun, since she was supposed to be the “Shield of the Sun,” whatever that meant.
“Well, we have time.” Sophia turned to Amy for an explanation. “Why is it so impressive that she was the Shield of the Sun?”
“Everyone’s heard of…” Amy stopped and shook her head. “What am I saying? Of course you haven’t heard of the Shield of the Sun, you don’t know anything. There are tons of stories about her, the defense of Avre Heights, the fight against the Great Kraken of the Southern Sea, the Witch of the Golden Woods … and that’s even before I mention the rest of the Constellations! The Jester, the Blazing Fox, the Sea Speaker … they did a bunch of things, but the biggest was that they actually reached the third region of the Maze! It’s been decades since anyone else did that, and no one’s gotten past the third region since the time of the Broken Lord!”
Sophia glanced at Dav for a moment, then asked a question she hadn’t thought to ask earlier. “Just how long ago was that?”
“The Broken Lord?” Amy shook her head. “Well, it’s 1628 AS now, so a bit over sixteen hundred years?”
That was a very long time. Sophia wasn’t sure what to do with the knowledge now that she knew, but at least it explained some things. “What does AS stand for?”
“After the Shattering,” Amy answered easily. “It’s when the Broken Lord … you know, broke.”
That meant it was probably also when Kestii, the city they landed in when they first arrived in the Broken Lands, originally fell. As far as Sophia was concerned, the city wasn’t in nearly bad enough shape for sixteen hundred years of not being lived in. Sophia opened her mouth to ask exactly what that really meant, because it was clearly referring to history Sophia still didn’t understand, but she wasn’t quite fast enough.
“But enough about that!” Amy declared. “I want to tell you about the Shield of the Sun. Did you know she once fought a hydra on her own?”
No, Sophia didn’t know, but she was certain she would soon. This was a side of Amy Sophia had never seen before, a fan gushing about her favorite star. Sophia could ask about the Broken Lord later.
Feather Line Break [https://i.imgur.com/jKYxZpG.png]
“After that, she punched the Lightning Grizzly with her shield, just like that,” Amy demonstrated with her left arm. “And it collapsed to the ground where she was able to climb on its back and ride to the rescue of the rest of the Stars.”
“Telling tales about me?” The door opened as Registry Master Jessamine spoke. She stepped outside, closed the door, and headed off down a hallway without looking back. “Let’s get moving, there’s another set of tales I’d like to hear.”
Sophia rose to her feet a little slower than Dav and Amy, so she trailed everyone as they followed the Registry master down the hall and up another set of stairs. These stairs were plain, just like the previous set, but the room they led into was positively bare. The only decoration in the small room was a stone pillar in the center of the room. The walls were poorly-fitted stone with no visible mortar, except for a rectangular panel on one wall that looked like it had a border and was covered in what looked like writing from three or four different languages.
Sophia couldn’t read any of them, but the border looked familiar. It looked a lot like the border of a runescript with how it interlocked and guided the mana floating in the air, but it was incomplete. The way the mana moved supported that; it was influenced by the runes, but it didn’t actually do anything, just swirled a bit.
Dav shifted a little to the side and let Sophia get her first good look at Master Jessamine’s new outfit. It clearly referred to her title, with shield-shaped patches on the sleeves and skirt and several circular embellishments that looked sort of like a star and its corona.
Shield of the Sun [https://i.imgur.com/iT5y4BF.jpeg]
“That will do,” the Shield of the Sun announced as she turned to face the trio. “This is one of the Registry’s secrets, in case it wasn’t obvious. This is a miniature version of a Nexus Stone, which lets us control a particular selection of spells that are built into it.”
She looked around the group, then smiled softly. “They’re not exactly unknown, of course, but I’m going to ask that you not talk about it. Every few years, someone tries to steal a minor Nexus Stone from a Registry somewhere in the Broken Lands, and I’d rather no one tried that here. All they ever manage is to break them, because they have to be built for exactly the location they’re used in, but somehow no one believes that until they break it. This Stone doesn’t do much; it only covers this floor, but it does mean that no one outside can listen in on what happens here or get in here without my permission.”
That sounded more like a ward stone than a nexus stone to Sophia, but she lost that thought as the appearance of the wall changed in front of her eyes. The stone blocks became smaller squares, each with its own symbol, and the rectangle seemed to disappear. Unlike the previous pattern, none of the new symbols seemed to be magically active. She was pretty sure that several of them were words, but the entire wall was nothing more than word soup; it didn’t make any sense.
Sophia frowned and pointed at the wall. “Is that an illusion?”
“That is the reason these rooms are left mostly empty,” Jessamine stated without even turning around. “The nexus stones seem to act like part of the Maze, changing reality around them in order to achieve the effects they have. These walls are supposed to be impenetrable, so they are always walls, but that isn’t true of things that are left unattended. People and things they are carrying or using are not affected either; don’t worry about that. Nexus stones can’t cause Warping.”