By the time Xin'ri stopped talking about her adoptive family, they'd passed from a relatively populated part of the smiths' district filled with shops and Called wandering between them to something that felt a lot closer to a deserted alleyway. It was only a few blocks away, but the vibe was completely different.

Jax seemed to notice Sophia's attention to their surroundings. "The Smiths' Cooperative controls a large area, but only the first few streets are commonly visited by Called. That's where the shops are, and a lot of those are actually run by members of the Professional League. Past that is the work areas. We're headed to the far end of that area, near the far edge of the Smiths' control. The only people out that far are the ones who either can't afford to be closer or the ones who want more space and figure they can handle it, often former Called. It's a weird mix of the hopeless and people who are absolutely the best and can make people come to them instead of the other way around."

"Sweetfire must be one of the good ones." Sophia smiled at that. She knew that a lot of very good people made things they knew would sell, but she liked the idea of going to someone who was good enough he could pick what he made and what he didn't. The fact that they'd been sent to him to sell some unusual things only added to her anticipation.

"Maybe, maybe not," Jax countered. "I asked around a bit while I was getting directions and all anyone could tell me was that he was eccentric. Wealthy, definitely; everyone agreed on that. About half of them laughed, though, and said something like what the Registry Master told us, that I was going to be surprised. No one would tell me what they meant."

He paused, then shook his head. "I almost wonder why I haven't heard of him before. I guess I just never dealt with the people who use the odd materials; none of my previous tasks have taken me here."

Sophia shrugged. It didn't seem that strange to her; Mazehold wasn't anywhere near as large as New York City, but it didn't have to be more than a fraction of the size to be too large to know everyone. "There are a lot of people in Mazehold."

"And I should know the important ones," Jax groused. "But clearly I don't. Well, I did know Rinata and her son Ebayne. I don't know them well, but at least I know who they are."

"Then he was never important to you," Dav reassured Jax. "And you'll know him soon enough. Do you have any idea why there are soot marks on some of the walls?"

Sophia turned to look at the wall Dav indicated. It had some dark smudges, but Sophia had assumed they were dirt or worse, maybe residue from a monster, like the other walls they'd passed. Now that Dav pointed it out, though, it did look like soot as much as anything else.

"None," Jax admitted. "If it were lower, it could be from one of the waste wagons, but that goes much too far up the wall and looks almost like a vertical streak."

"It's thinner at the top," Sophia added. "Well, that one is. The one over there is wider but doesn't seem as dark."

The next few minutes of their walk revealed more soot marks and several places where the stone of the walls seemed like it had been baked; in a few places, it looked like the soot was missing because the wall had spalled and broken away, taking the soot with it.

"The damage is getting worse. Whatever happened must have been near here." Xin'ri stated it like it was obvious, and as Sophia glanced back along their path, she was right. It still wasn't something she'd have seen without it being pointed out.

"Sweetfire Armory isn't much farther, so we probably won't see whatever started this," Jax answered.

Movement in the distance caught Sohia's eye. She glanced up in time to see a bush run across the street about a hundred feet ahead of them. It was chased by something that looked like a child's ball. Sophia blinked and looked again. There was still a bush and a ball. "Uh, guys? Do you know anything about a monster that looks like a bush or maybe a ball?"

"A what?" Dav might have been the only person to ask the question out loud, but Sophia could see it on Ci'an, Xin'ri, and Jax's faces.

Sophia pointed towards the cross street where the bush disappeared, then felt vindicated when two more followed it. A booming noise, a lot like a firework, came from the direction the bush disappeared in. "I think we may have found what left the soot marks."

Three more brightly-colored balls bounced past the street they were on as Sophia spoke, followed by two more bushes. It somehow wasn't a surprise when another boom echoed down the street.

Sophia wasn't sure who started running towards the explosions first. It could have been her, but it could have been any of the others just as easily. Whoever started it, they all moved quickly to see what was going on.

When they reached the corner, Sohia was almost overwhelmed by the chaos. The first thing she noticed was a number of burning fake bushes, but those were all stationary. They did explain the soot marks, at least; it looked like the differences in soot on the walls were how many bushes burned together and just how close they were to the walls. They must have been cleaned up at some point, but that was really all Sophia could say about it.

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There was an absolute horde of still-moving bushes and a fraction as many Happy Fun Balls chasing them to explode as soon as they got close enough. The bushes looked far less bush-like now that she got a better look; instead, they were a ball of variably green fur with a face that looked sort of like a squashed cat and feet that probably belonged to either a chicken or a dinosaur.

They would have been ugly-but-cute if the first one that saw the group didn't fling itself at them, followed by at least eight of its friends, with a mouth that opened far too wide.

Sophia poofed into her feathered Domain while Dav met the oncoming horde with his sword, Jax bounced several off an enlarged version of his shield that he used to keep them away from Xin'ri, and Ci'an leapt into the air as she turned into an owl and kept rising. Sophia didn't check for Taika; she knew the chinchilla was resting in Dav's pack as he usually did during the day.

"Hidden Bush Biters? Here?" Jax sounded shocked. "What are these pests doing in the city?"

One of the bouncing balls smacked into a green fluffball and exploded. The explosion pushed another ball off course just enough to smack into Jax's shield. Sophia expected it to explode, but it didn't. Instead, it bounced backwards and let out a sharp whistling noise.

A moment later, the other balls converged on it in a stack of color that paused in place for long enough that Sophia could see they weren't just colorful balls. They actually had glass-looking eyes and dark openings where a mouth should be guarded by jagged metallic "teeth." Colored balls sprouted from oddly flexible thin lines, almost like arms, and a black goo seemed to fill the spaces between them as Sophia watched.

Unlike the bush biters, the balls did actually look cute despite their obvious aggression. Sophia didn't think that was just because they seemed to be on their side; instead, she thought it was something to do with the eyes. Or maybe it was the mouths that looked cheerful even as they also looked weirdly hungry?

Sophia tossed a simple Force Bolt at a Hidden Bush Biter. It immediately fell over, just like the ones Dav smacked with his sword. It was clear that the problem wasn't the monsters' strength; it was how many of them there were. It would be even more of a problem if they had to deal with explosions while they fought.

Sophia tried a Force Blast instead of a Force Bolt. It was more expensive, but if it worked it might be a good way to thin the numbers.

The four Hidden Bush Biters closest to the feather she started the Force Blast from collapsed to the street, no longer moving. A moment later, a Bush Biter that was a little too far away to be caught in the blast leapt over their bodies and snagged the feather out of the air, crushing it between its jaws. Sophia lost her connection to the feather as it snapped.

It worked. That was something. It was really the first time Force Blast had come in useful for the reason she picked it up in the first place, but she wasn't going to argue about that. She was, however, going to have to worry about her feathers if she traded them like she had that one.

Sophia lifted her feathers higher off the ground. She could only go so high, but rising from an average of knee height to an average of waist height would help. If she could get to the height of her shoulders, she'd be out of the way for all of the jumps she'd seen the Bush Biters make.

Or maybe not. As she thought that, three Bush Biters leapt at Jax from three different directions. One bounced off his shield, while another was sliced in two by his sword, but it was the third that Sophia had her attention on. It arced up to slightly above his head before she managed to put a Force Bolt through it and it fell harmlessly at Jax's feet.

There were dozens of the things, maybe even hundreds. It didn't look like that many at first, but they were less than a foot in diameter and Sophia was pretty sure she could have lined the street on both sides for two or three blocks with the number that swirled around them. Individually they were weak, almost harmless, but in a group this big they might well be dangerous. It certainly explained why Professionals didn't like being on the streets; what it didn't explain was why things were allowed to get this bad. Where were they all coming from?

Sophia didn't have time to figure it out right now. She had cat-sized balls of fur with teeth to deal with. She started trying to find the largest groups of Bush Biters she could. Six fell to one Force Blast, then eight. She knew she was killing them quickly, but it felt like she wasn't making any progress.

At least the explosions seemed to have stopped when the balls grouped up. The thought made Sophia turned her attention back to the pile of balls, only to find that the black stuff had nearly vanished and the balls had somehow morphed into a robot that was studded with colorful enameled balls instead of a loose pile. Weirdly, most of the balls still had faces, but they now looked far more angry than before. It was almost like they had fun bouncing around and exploding but now they were upset.

Or possibly frustrated. The robot's head definitely looked annoyed.

Maybe she was just projecting. Sophia was pretty sure that this world didn't have the technology, magical or otherwise, to create true artificial people anymore. The fact that they'd ever had that technology was amazing, but it was new during the end of the Kestii Empire and seemed to have been lost. It certainly wasn't miniaturized enough to fit in tiny exploding balls.

The robot took a step forward, swung a trip of balls away from itself that formed an arm and crushed a Hidden Bush Biter. It looked satisfied.

Or maybe she was wrong about whether or not the locals could actually make sentient creatures.

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