There was a bar for the door, while the windows actually had a small crank next to each of them to close the exterior shutters. That was enough to tell Sophia that they were definitely designed to be closed during a mazestorm; she didn't know Sweetfire well yet, but she knew him well enough to know that he'd prefer a magical solution to a simply practical mechanical one unless the mechanical one worked better. Of course, if the mechanical one worked better, he'd go with the mechanical one.

There was every reason to believe that the mechanical solution would work better in a mazestorm. The chaotic stale magic could do anything to an enchantment, but affecting a sturdy physical closing system would be harder. It certainly wasn't impossible; it was magic. It was less likely, though, which made the hand-crank better.

They searched the rest of the building, at least the part accessible from the interior, and determined that the only windows were the ones in the large entrance room that Sweetfire both lived and worked in. There were other rooms, but they were clearly only used for storage and the few windows they once had were all filled in with stone.

There were air vents, but they all had individual covers and there was a pulley system next to the forge with an actual sign on the wall that said it was for the exterior vents. More accurately, it was an arrow with the words "Open Exterior Vents" next to it; closing them was as simple as pulling on the other chain.

Even so, they almost missed it; no one had thought to look for such a thing. It was only the sign that made them take a second look. It gave Sophia the feeling that Sweetfire didn't normally have anyone in his space when he wasn't there and it simply hadn't occurred to him to mention what they needed to do.

The overall setup made a lot of sense; that way, one person or a small group could guard the only entrances while staying in a single room. If they were overwhelmed, the stairs down to what Sweetfire called "the Undercity" would serve as a nice secondary chokepoint. It was weird for Sophia to realize just how much of Sweetfire's setup served the purpose of defense as well as living; the room he lived in was large enough that everything could be moved to the side and still leave enough room to fight, while there were no other vulnerable entrances other than the back way out, which shouldn't be vulnerable to a mazestorm.

Sophia never wanted to have to live in a place where you were always worried about attack. She'd much rather be back home, where she was safe at night and only had to fight when she chose to enter a dungeon. Her time in the Broken Lands was an adventure, but seeing that she'd always have to be on guard if she stayed made her miss home.

She didn't think she'd have been able to say that before she left home. She remembered feeling stale and bored with the very well-known dungeons. She was also never able to find a group she really clicked with; everyone knew she was her father's daughter, and that meant they either wanted her to handle everything on her own or ignored her because they thought she wanted to handle everything on her own.

At least, that was what she thought was going on. It was hard to be certain, and there were probably more options than that. None of them meant that she had a team there like she did here, though. That was one of the great things about the Broken Lands. Maybe she could take them with her when she went home?

Sophia continued to daydream about the future as they moved the furniture out of the way in case they had to fight. It was easy to plan out a future that could be fulfilling with her friends and team around her; they could travel across planets the same way they traveled across the Broken Lands. Sure, Dav needed to check in on his parents and Jax needed to figure out the trick to the Maze, but they could do those things first. Amy didn't have anything tying her down, not really, and Xin'ri had even less. Taika and Cliff wouldn't care, either. They didn't need to have an overarching goal other than travel and adventure. That itself was a goal.

When they finished clearing the space, Xin'ri reminded everyone that Sweetfire invited them to look in the back and to look but not touch. It was clear that she'd been anticipating that ever since he gave the invitation. After a quick check outside to see that the mazestorm hadn't arrived yet and was in fact still at least ten minutes away, they headed back to the "back room" to actually look at what was there instead of checking it for possible entrances.

Sophia expected the back room to look like her father's armory, full of stuff he'd picked up on his travels that hadn't yet been handed out to someone else to use. She was both right and wrong; it was, indeed, full of stuff. The difference was that the majority of the stuff wasn't weapons, armor, wands, and trinkets that would help in a fight. Instead, Sweetfire's back room was full of … well, stuff.

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Oh, there were a few things that she thought were probably weapons, even if they were nothing like the relatively simple physical weapons most modern Earthlings preferred. They reminded her more of steampunk contraptions with all sorts of moving bits and pieces, some of them physical and some of them magical. They weren't particularly surprising in Sweetfire's collection, but Sophia didn't think she'd want to use them.

The three suits of armor were a different story. They were all simple and in fact looked almost incomplete, but Sophia could see lingering fiery magic near the incomplete bits. This was either Sweetfire's own armor or it was something he'd made using his fire Affinity. Sophia suspected that they were designed to either effectively increase your Shield amount or more likely to hurt anything that dared to touch you.

She was going to have to talk to him about getting an effect like that added to her own armor. She probably couldn't wear the armor in here, because it was probably intended for someone at the third upgrade, but she could see if her armor could be upgraded. It dated back to when she got it repaired and upgraded back in Izel, after all, and that was back when she was only first upgrade.

That made the lack of weapons she'd want to use worse, but when you got right down to it, Sophia only barely used weapons anyway. Dav's grew with him, Taika didn't use weapons, and Xin'ri made her own and had just made a sword and shield for Jax as well. That meant that the only person who really needed a new weapon was Ci'an.

She didn't use it when she was in her Night Owl form, but sometimes it was better for her to stand back and attack with her bow. Getting a new one would have to wait until Sweetfire was back. Ci'an hadn't seen anything she liked more than her current bow as they wandered Mazehold yet, but they also hadn't stopped in at a bowyer's.

There were a bunch of small pendants, necklaces, rings, brooches, bracers, wands, and other small objects stacked neatly in bins near the armor. Sophia couldn't tell what any of them were; they weren't labeled. She might be able to figure something out if she pulled it out and carefully examined the enchantment, but even that was only a chance and Sweetfire had asked them not to touch anything. She'd have to ask about what all of it was when he returned, but she had a feeling that it was examples of the sort of things he intended to give them as their Patron.

Well, sell them. He had said they'd have to pay; they just wouldn't have to pay until they had the aurichalc to cover it. It didn't seem like a huge difference to Sophia; they could just wait until they had the aurichalc if he didn't loan them the stuff ahead of time. Jax said they were doing pretty well at the Arena, certainly more than they needed to cover their housing and food costs.

Despite the large collection of trinkets, the armory section of the room took up only about a tenth of the floor space. A similar fraction was occupied by Happy Fun Balls; most of them were neatly sorted into bins by color, but quite a few lay scattered on the floor near the bins, as if they'd hopped out on their own then failed to return. One bin held scorched Happy Fun Balls that were almost certainly ones that had exploded that Sweetfire hadn't yet repaired. Sophia suspected there would be more of those soon.

Another section held stone blocks or tablets. Just like the trinkets, Sophia had no idea what any of them did, but she noted they were there anyway. Her guess was that they were single-use enchantments, but she could easily be wrong; she'd never seen anything designed quite like them before. Stone was usually used for longer-term enchantments and wards, but it wouldn't be on such small pieces, pieces that looked portable.

As portable as stone tablets ever were, anyway.

The next two sections were filled with books. It wasn't just bookshelves, either; even the space between the shelves was filled with boxes, and the two boxes that were open had more books. One of the stacks of boxes that wasn't open had books sitting on top of the box. To the side, there was a chair. Its seat didn't hold any books, but there were books under the chair and also off to the side, where it looked like Sweetfire had set them down and forgotten to put them away afterwards.

The books made Sophia curious, so she went closer and checked out the titles. Only a handful of the books even had titles on the spine, unfortunately; most of them were either unmarked or had notes like "M14-3 Iron" inked on the book cover rather than a proper title. The ones that did have titles were all things that were only somewhat interesting to Sophia, like On the Properties of Glass and An Elucidation of Aurichalc Ore: Infused, Depleted, and Enhanced. She could certainly see why someone like Sweetfire would have those books, but she suspected that they'd only be a good sleep aid for herself.

The next section, oddly enough, was cooking supplies. Sophia recognized some of what was there and was certain the rest would be at least somewhat familiar if she took the time to examine it.

Before she could, a loud THUMP from outside announced the arrival of the mazestorm. Sophia blinked, then realized that her noise-deadening spell must have ended while they waited on the storm. She hadn't noticed, because the siren in the roof stopped before the spell did.

The first sound was like something large but soft hit the side of the building, but that was quickly followed by a series of smaller noises, almost like rain … or maybe sand. Sophia wasn't about to check, but she knew she hadn't seen a significant amount of water-like mana in the mazestorm. If she had to guess, she was going to guess sand.

Another sound, like hail or maybe rocks being thrown at the stone wall, added itself to the mix. This time, Sophia was going to guess that it was gravel. She hoped that the building would hold up to being sandblasted.

Sophia turned towards Jax. "Is this normal?"

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