The Arena was outside Mazehold's walls, to the east of the city. It was about as close to the Vocational Registry as possible without being inside the city walls or between the Registry and the Maze, a short detour from the direct route to the Maze. Sophia was certain that was deliberate.

It wasn't until they crested the rise where the Arena sat that Sophia got her first good view of the Maze. She stopped where she was and stared at the blatant impossibility of it. It glowed with mana, especially all of the spaces between buildings and the spire of a building that looked almost like a Disney castle, but most of the tops of buildings glowed with glyphs where they weren't covered with trees.

At least, Sophia thought those were buildings. They were rectangles spaced out in rows like buildings if she assumed the glowing orange meant streets, but they were either all flat-roofed or they had no roof at all, which made very little sense for buildings. The fact that trees seemed to grow out of them added weight to the "no roof" guess, but in that case none of them made any sense at all; if those were the internal walls, what was going on? At least half of them looked like spirals or even concentric circles, while the ones that weren't quite as geometric-looking still didn't look like proper walls inside a building.

Sophia's eyes rose from the buildings to the forest in the distance. It seemed relatively normal as long as she ignored the roads or maybe waterways that disappeared out of the Maze into the distance then seemed to continue less solidly into the sky.

A sky that was filled with stars and the aurora, even though it was daytime everywhere except over the Maze.

"It's huge," Jax said softly. "Until you see it, you have no idea how big it really is, and it's bigger than it looks once you're inside. Every visit is different. Some say none of the visits are real."

"Death is real," Dav answered without even having to think about it. "Anything else could be fake, but that much is real."

"There's so much magic there that it looks like it's not really part of this world," Sophia answered. "It's like something from a dream. Or maybe a nightmare?"

"It is like the Broken Lands." Xin'ri's voice was strained. "I'd heard that before, but I can see it now. Space twists like it does during a portal transit or when we were in the interspace conduit. The edges of Shards are supposed to be like that as well, it's why no one goes to the edge, even those who could make their way past the Wildlands."

Sophia turned away from the Maze to look at her friend. Xin'ri stared fixedly at the Arena, her gaze firmly turned away from the distant Maze.

"It's different once you're inside," Jax reassured Xin'ri. "You could be right about it being like the Broken Lands, but if you are, then when you enter the Maze through any of its doors, you are entering a shard."

Sophia thought back to the story she'd gotten from Volat about when the Tower of Kestii fell. It wasn't entirely clear, but one thing it was very clear about was that the Maze was spreading before the Tower fell. "Is the Maze still spreading?"

"Still spreading?" Jax sounded confused. "It doesn't spread at all, it shrinks. You can't really see it unless you're here for years, but I have been; I've seen how it's changed. The stories say that where the Arena stands now was part of the Maze when Mazehold was built, but I'm not sure I believe it. That would put Mazehold awfully close to the Registry."

That was a little worrying, but only in the way that anything changing could be worrying. Sophia knew the Arena was only a hundred years old, and there was no way the Maze could have covered the space when it was established. That gave a top speed to the retreat, and it was slow enough that it would be hundreds more years before the Maze could vanish.

On top of that, Jax was probably right that it never actually covered the Arena's full area; after all, there was an entrance to the facility that held Tiwaz from the Arena itself. Surely that couldn't be covered by the Maze without getting Tiwaz's attention, even if the facility-mind was on standby.

Surely.

Sophia found herself less certain about that the more she thought about it. If the Maze was only on the surface or simply created monsters and illusions or something, there was no real reason it would have affected Tiwaz. Well, other than any changes it made to the mana levels. Othala certainly noticed changes in the mana levels, but Sophia wasn't sure Tiwaz would have.

Sophia shook herself, then turned towards the Arena. It was not the monumental stone colosseum she expected from the name; instead, it looked like a collection of buildings and smaller enclosures. The main building, the one that had to be the actual fighting ground, seemed almost industrial, with solid stone walls made of the same stone as the rest of Mazehold and a complete lack of windows. It was unexpectedly large; the building might be only a single story, but it covered as much space as a mall. That made the building alone bigger than some of the villages Sophia had seen in the Broken Lands.

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There was no wall outside the building, either. That seemed strange, so Sophia turned towards Jax. "Why aren't there walls?" Don't monsters come out of the Maze?"

Jax shook his head. "Not ones that attack the Arena. They're drawn toward the Nexus at the heart of Mazehold, so they mostly avoid the Arena."

Sophia frowned. "That doesn't make sense. We were attacked by a skyeagle on the far side of the city."

Jax shook his head. "All I can say is that they don't. The only monsters you'll see in the Arena are the ones brought there to fight. Even outside the Arena, attacks are rare once you're closer to the Arena than Mazehold."

That bothered Sophia, but she couldn't put the reason into words. The way mana was managed and how monsters reacted to it in the Broken Lands made very little sense to her. It wasn't like back home and it didn't even seem to be internally consistent; from what she could tell, a Nexus both attracted monsters and repelled them!

On top of that, there was a Nexus or something a lot like it buried under the ground with Tiwaz; like Othala, he pulled his mana from below. "Wait, that's it. That's why it sounds wrong. That means there's a Nexus in the city and another one under the Arena. They're far too close to each other; they can't be separate, even here. Tiwaz has to be pulling mana from the same Nexus as the city. Does the facility actually run under Mazehold? And is that the real reason monsters don't bother the Arena? Is the mana level there lower because of Tiwaz?"

Jax shrugged. "Who knows? You know as much as I do, so maybe?"

Sophia stewed on the problem all the way to the Arena's entrance. None of the outbuildings had walls, either, but there were a number of smaller areas that were enclosed by walls. Most were just patches of dirt, while others were covered in sand or wood or stone. If anything, they looked like the actual fighting areas, except that they were too small. They'd hold the fight well enough, but they'd only work if the onlookers were willing to be pretty close to the fight and if the crowds were pretty small. That didn't fit Sophia's impression of an Arena.

"What are those walled areas?" Sophia pointed at the one she could see the best; it was a little farther away, but it was also larger than many of the others.

Jax followed Sophia's finger, then nodded to himself. "Practice areas, elimination round additional arenas, and spaces that can be rented for duels. Probably some other things I'm forgetting, but basically they're where you go when you don't expect a lot of people or want to keep what you're doing secret. Several of them are in use; do you see the red glow on the posts?"

Jax paused and waited for Sophia's nod before he continued. "That's the sign that the concealment enchantment's in use. It's nothing more than a static illusion, but that's still enough to make it difficult to observe. You can pay more to practice in a truly secure area inside the building, but most people don't. There are other enchantments with other markers, but I don't see any being used right now. It's a bit early in the day for that; early morning's for practice, not for duels or exhibitions."

The entrance to the Arena building was a simple wooden door. It had a sign nailed to it that said PUBLIC ENTRANCE, but that was the only thing about it that told Sophia she was in the right place. It certainly wasn't big enough to handle a crowd. Maybe there were multiple doors?

This time, Sophia remembered to check for wards as they entered the building. There was a weak ward around the entrance of the Arena building, but that was all it was around; it didn't extend into the walls, floor, or ceiling. Sophia was pretty sure that it was an addition long after the building was built, too.

That shouldn't have been a surprise. The building was a seriously bland version of what was in Mazehold, and Mazehold was clearly a relic of an earlier time when people actually used the streets. Jax believed it went all the way back to the Kestii Empire, and Ci'an agreed, though neither of them was certain. It seemed incredible to Sophia that people could be living in buildings that dated back sixteen hundred years; why, that would be like living in buildings built by the Roman Empire, and Sophia was pretty sure none of those survived as intact, livable buildings.

Sophia expected a reception area, where they could sign up to compete or whatever, but that wasn't what she found. Instead, it was a hallway that went to the right and left. Unlike the entrance, it did look like it was meant to handle a lot of people; it was closer to fifteen feet wide than five. Maybe her guess about multiple entrances was more accurate than she'd expected.

There was a pair of signs; the one that pointed left said AUDIENCE, while the one that pointed right said CONTESTANT. Jax turned to the right with only a glance at the signs. He knew where he was going.

It took a few minutes before they reached an open door. Sophia followed Jax in and glanced at the door. It said FIGHTS rather than something about registration, but she guessed that made sense. It was simple.

Inside the room, a man with fox ears sat on an overstuffed chair, asleep. Jax chuckled, then knocked on the door.

The foxkin jerked, then sat up straight, as if he were hiding the fact that he'd been passed out a moment earlier. "Oh, ah, yeah, huh. I don't recognize you. Who are you?"

"Uh, we're new to Mazehold?" Jax somehow managed to sound both brash and uncertain, as if he really were new and was covering it up. "This is where we sign up for fights, right? It's supposed to be good money and also some Wisps?"

The foxkin snorted. "If you can draw a crowd and win, yeah, the aurichalc pours in. I can register you at least, start you off with a team match; unknown team matches always pull some interest, so we'll set you as one of the openers for, uh."

He looked down at his lap, then sighed and searched the floor. When he found it, he picked up a book and flipped through it. "There's nothing tonight, but you wouldn't want tonight; you need time to build up a little interest. Two nights from now is good, that's about when people really start looking and you'll only get so much from an intro anyway. You are Tier Two, aren't you? Oh, and what's your team name?"

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