The trip through the ruins was far worse than Jax expected. He'd been through other ancient ruins and knew what to expect. It should have been fairly simple, the dangers limited to the damaged ceilings and whatever monsters the place could support. Jax expected both ruins apparitions and haunts; other spirits were likely and even reanimated bones of one sort or another weren't unusual.

There were only two situations that were both common and truly dangerous: a Challenge or a Lair of some sort. Challenges could be anything, of course, but were usually at least somewhat related to the ruin itself. A Lair was usually fairly straightforward, though the actual danger varied based on both the monster and what sort of Lair it was; Nests tended to have a lot of very similar monsters and a small number of older, stronger opponents, while Hollows could hold a wider range. Aeries were like Hollows, except that all of the monsters could fly; underground aeries were both strange and a little terrifying, because the monsters could often fly through stone.

None of that explained what they saw. Whether it was a Challenge or a Lair, they should have been warned by the Guide once they were into the area that was no longer perfectly aligned with the real world. That didn't happen; in fact, the map Sorleh Bhisho carried was completely accurate. It simply didn't include any of the dangers they'd seen.

Oh, there were a few ruins apparitions early on, before they were more than a couple levels into the ruin. Those were expected and not what Jax was worried about.

At first, it was simply traps. The first few traps were more like warnings than real dangers; lights that flashed in the darkness and searing fire or lightning that momentarily covered the floor were painful and would have been debilitating for a group of people before the first upgrade and possibly even people just past the first upgrade. To people who were well past their second upgrade, closing in on the third or in two cases just past the third upgrade, they were irritations.

Jax was fairly certain he was not the only person surprised. Kizru Venan was caught in one of the first lightning traps and it was very clear he had no idea it was coming. If anyone had full information on what they were getting into, the Broken Blade's enforcer should be that person.

Well, the Broken Blade's adjunct should also know. Jax didn't really trust Amaryssa Seuvarin to tell him things he needed to know, but that was at least partly his own fault. The role he had to play wasn't someone who should be trusted with secrets.

Before long, there were also monsters. Unlike the traps, the monsters didn't start out weak. Instead, they were roughly at the bottom of the second upgrade range, somewhere around level eight. It started with one at a time, which should have been easy. The first few were, but when they started to arrive just as the group triggered a trap that didn't affect the monster, things started to get more serious.

They were a lot like monsters in a Challenge; they even disappeared after they were defeated the way some Challenge monsters did. The thing was, they weren't in a Challenge. The variety was also wrong; Challenges were themed, just like Lairs, and these things weren't all that similar to each other.

Jax wanted to blame it on the Maze or the Wildlands, but it really wasn't like either place. The ignorant compared both places to Challenges, because they had monsters, but they were different in one very important way: they were real. One of the best examples of that was that in both the Wildlands and the Maze, monsters' bodies remained after they were killed. In Challenges, most monsters disappeared. Lairs varied; whatever set up the Lair was real but the other monsters in a Lair might or might not disappear when they were killed.

On top of that, the monsters were simply weird. Oh, he'd seen lightning-antler deer before; elemental alignment was really quite common for animals. Flaming flying feathered beavers was a new one, though, as was the flying feathered snake. That thing was far nastier than the monsters that came before it, with scales that could actually turn away spells and deflect axe blows. Jax eventually killed it with a knife in the eye, but it far outshone the monsters before and after it.

It was more like fighting a Summoner than anything else, if the Summoner somehow had access to an incredible number of different summons and enough mana to summon them all. For a moment, Jax wondered if they were actually fighting multiple Summoners, but he brushed that notion away; multiple summoners might have the ability to summon this many monsters, but there was no reason they'd place so few in any area. It only made them easier to get through, even with the traps.

This had to be a creation of the facility, probably connected to the fact that sanctions weren't working, but Jax had no idea what would cause it. Of course, he had no idea how the sanctions worked either, so it wasn't like that was new.

Shortly after the flying snake, they reached the first area they were supposed to check to repair the sanctions. A curtain of caustic mist filled the narrow corridor until Qua'helu Mistwalker did something that made the mist part in front of him.

"That's too far, we've passed it," Sorleh called out. "Sir Venan, can you check about two paces behind the Mistwalker?"

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Jax frowned a little as he noticed that Kizru Venan was almost exactly two paces behind Qua'helu Mistwalker. Had Sorleh waited until Kizru was next to the entrance to call it out?

If he had, did that mean that Sorleh was closer to the Broken Blade than Jax thought?

Jax hoped he was simply being paranoid. He didn't quite trust the thought, the same way he didn't quite trust anyone who worked in the Arena. Sometimes that even meant distrusting himself.

"Sure," Kizru Venan agreed. He turned to his left without asking Sorleh which wall he was supposed to check and ran his hand along the wall. It only took a couple of passes before he seemed to find what he was looking for, but he pretended to search for a full minute after that before he spoke. "There's something here."

Kizru ostentatiously tapped one of the blocks with his right hand as he set his left hand flat against the wall. He seemed to concentrate for a moment, but Jax was too far back to tell if he actually did anything or if he was simply listening to the sound his knuckles made. He frowned and seemed to press harder on the wall with his left hand.

Kizru was pushing hard enough that when the wall suddenly slid to the side, he stumbled forward a step into the newly-revealed room. He waved Thera Sandelf forward with the light so that they could all see, then stepped to one side as Thera and Sorleh got to work.

Jax stepped into the doorway and took a look at the room. Calling it a room was probably overstating things; it was really more like a small hidden nook, barely wide enough for both Thera and Sorleh to work side-by-side. There was no real room for anyone behind them, either; the floor space was probably about two feet deep and five feet wide. Inside that, there was a small ledge covered in stone blocks. Beyond that was the artifact they'd come to find, an octagonal spiderweb of soft blue light set into the wall above the stone shelf.

The spiderweb seemed to pulse faintly as Jax stared at it, but that was probably his imagination. At least, he hoped it was; when magical items visibly showed changes in their mana to people without mana sight, it usually meant something bad was happening. He definitely didn't want to be anywhere near an explosion triggered by something strong enough to resurrect people who were recently killed.

Maybe he should have thought of that before he agreed to join an expedition to find and repair the source of the sanctions.

Jax mentally shook himself. He was being a scaredy-cat; he'd taken risks before and this one was necessary. There was no way he could find out what was going on without some risks. His goal was to find out what was happening in the Maze, but things seemed suspicious enough here that perhaps he should change his goal. Figuring out where the sanctions came from might well be more important than whatever secret the Arena staff knew about the Maze.

He couldn't quite bring himself to believe the theory that the reason they were more likely to survive in the Maze was that they were ambushing and killing their competition, even if he didn't have a better explanation than that old rumor.

"It seems to be fine," Thera Sandelf reported after a few minutes. "The problem must be deeper."

Jax didn't miss that her report went to Kizru instead of himself, even though he was the nominal leader of the group. He simply watched and stepped back when the two repairmen moved out of the nook; he might be the nominal leader, but everyone knew Kizru was the true leader. They were probably supposed to hide it a little better than that to keep Jax in the dark, but it wasn't like pretending to be stupid was new.

The traps and monsters after that seemed to concentrate on ice and snow, with a few water-throwing monsters and dangerous fogs added into the mix. They were completely capable of fighting their way through, but it definitely wore away at everyone; even those who weren't injured were quickly chilled. Fortunately, there were long stretches of corridor without traps where the monsters didn't return after they were killed for the group to stop and recover.

If they'd brought a true healer, it would have helped. Even a shield-healer would have been good. They didn't have that, so they had to wait for recovery to happen on its own and use mundane supplies to patch up the small injuries that got through their shields. Jax was grateful none of them were hit with truly debilitating injuries. His arm and Zarth's eye were enough.

They continued moving through the old ruin, checking other similar-looking nooks as they went. Each one was fine, which confused things; Sorleh and Thera took more time at each one to investigate, but each time they decided that the "conduit" that looked like an octagonal spiderweb of soft blue light was in excellent shape.

After the next nook, the monsters seemed to shift again, to lightning-based attacks. That was enough to confirm Jax's theory: the monsters were definitely connected to both the facility and the sanctioning. Otherwise, they wouldn't change after each nook. It was enough to make him wonder if there was actually a problem or not; the sanctions were definitely working, but Jax was beginning to seriously doubt that that was the point of the facility they were in. No one built something this big and deep to do something that only affected the surface.

One more nook after that, everything was snakes. Hawks came next, starting with one that oozed a sticky black goo that acted like a corrosive acid on their shields and drained mana as well. That one required a lot of time to recover from.

It took them four days to make their way down the sixteen sets of stairs, following the trail of two or three conduits per floor that were necessary for the sanctions to work. The only area that was easy was one that seemed made entirely of spirits; they were weak to Qua'helu Mistwalker's Spirit Strike.

"That's the last conduit," Sorleh announced as the door slid shut in front of the nook. "All of them are functioning and all of them are capable of carrying mana."

"Yet they're all empty," Thera Sandelf added. "Which means the problem is deeper, but there aren't supposed to be any conduits past this point."

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