It was like being at a baseball game, or at least what Sophia thought being at a baseball game would be like. There were vendors passing between the stands selling all sorts of things, mostly food and drinks, but also things useful for sitting in the stands. Xin'ri rented a large umbrella that would shade them from the sun yet be invisible to those above them; the enchantment would last less than a day, but it was still nice to be in the shade. They could get most of the price Xin'ri paid back by returning it to one of the stalls in the courtyard outside.

Sophia spent a few minutes trying to figure out exactly what it was with Xin'ri's help. In the end, they decided it was basically a very specialized illusion; it really did block the light in both directions like the umbrella it was, but it also projected an illusion of what it blocked. They could see the sun through the umbrella, but it was far dimmer than the real sun, more like an image. Everything else was dimmed a lot less, to the point where Sophia couldn't actually tell where the umbrella was because of how good the illusion was. Only the stem that it stood on was easily seen.

Other than that, Sophia watched the fights. She knew the others watched the crowds and even talked to some of the surrounding people, but she was much more interested in how people here fought and this was the best chance she'd had to see it.

There were even a few fights against other people, one team against another team. Fortunately, those all ended in surrenders, often with several people on both sides out before the last member of the losing team admitted defeat. It was very clear that the only thing expected to die in the Arena was monsters. Sophia knew that wasn't necessarily true in Earth's past, but it was definitely nice to know that it was true here.

The stands started to fill as the afternoon went on. About midafternoon, Sophia looked around and realized that the tighter seating was starting to fill with people who didn't have any obvious weapons; there were even a few children. "Is there an underground passage here, too?"

"There are underground passages that go a lot farther out than this," Jax confirmed. "There aren't many of the building-to-building connections this far out, because there aren't many buildings, but the big tunnels still exist. One of them connects to the Arena building, near the courtyard. We didn't go past it; it's for Professionals."

"Is that how you got down into Tiwaz's facility?" Sophia still didn't know how the Arena itself connected. They'd left Tiwaz's complex through an entirely different exit that the Arena people didn't know about, a secret passage like the one Othala opened for them back in the Skylands.

Jax shook his head. "No, if there's a connection to the tunnels I don't know about it. There probably is, but it's probably blocked off. We went down through a dedicated stairwell in the Arena staff section."

Sophia nodded slowly. With all the protections that were in place in Tiwaz's facility, it seemed entirely possible that there wasn't a connection to whatever larger tunnels existed, at least not without being opened like the one they'd used to exit. If it was a subway or something originally, it might be useful for getting people in and out, but at the same time she wasn't sure how many people actually spent time in Tiwaz's building. Maybe they all lived there.

"Now listen up, Called and Professionals! Welcome to the Arena!" The words boomed out across the entire area. It was the first time Sophia had heard them, so she looked around to try to see where they came from. There wasn't anything obvious, but she was sure there was an enchanted speaker somewhere projecting the announcer's voice.

"For today's opening fight, we have the Blue Brotherhood facing off against a Minotaur! This third upgrade beast is not only strong enough to cleave someone in two with its ax through their shield, it can use the very ground it walks on as a weapon! The Blue Brotherhood is slippery, but can they slip through the ground?"

Sophia sighed. It was all too obvious that the announcer was trying to make the fight exciting. What was really sad was that he'd succeeded, if not for the reason she thought he was supposed to. Sophia didn't really care about the Blue Brotherhood's fight, but she definitely did want to see the minotaur and how it fought. She wanted to try to figure out how her team would deal with it if they ran into one.

Sophia turned towards Jax. "Are minotaurs common in the Maze?" It wasn't a labyrinth, but it still seemed like a fitting monster.

Jax nodded. "Yeah. You'll see a fight against a minotaur almost every day. It's a bit of a surprise that they put this one first; minotaurs are usually good filler fights, but that's all."

"Maybe it's something about the Blue Brotherhood, then?" Sophia suggested.

When the fight finally started, it was clear that it was, in fact, not something about the Blue Brotherhood that meant their fight was first. The minotaur was easily fifteen feet tall; Jax confirmed that was much taller than a normal minotaur. Its ax was in proportion to it, so perhaps it was less of an overstatement than Sophia thought when the announcer said that it could kill someone through their Shield. Sophia suspected it couldn't kill someone at the third upgrade, but instantly killing someone at the first upgrade seemed all too possible.

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The Blue Brotherhood was a group of four men dressed in blue costumes. One was sky-blue and seemed to disappear into the sky after their entrance. The second wore a medium blue and hurried forward to get the minotaur's attention while the pair in a bright electric blue and a blue so dark it was almost black stayed in the back. Sophia wasn't surprised when the one in electric blue turned out to enhance his arrows with lightning and the dark one disappeared into the shadows.

It was an interesting fight, because the minotaur seemed to be able to sense where they were all the time and kept swatting the dark one out of the shadows by making the stone they stood on rise into the air and hit him, often while he was also attacking the distraction. Quite a few of the archer's lightning arrows struck home, but there were several times where a bit of stone flipped into the air just far enough to push an arrow off course.

The minotaur seemed to lose track of the sky-blue flying brother in a way he didn't miss the other three. It made Sophia wonder if he had some way to sense through the ground as well as move it.

It was an odd fight. The Blue Brotherhood wasn't making any real progress, but neither was the minotaur; they were just wearing themselves out on each other. The even odder part was that only three of the Blue Brotherhood were fighting; the sky-blue one hadn't done anything since his initial appearance.

A lightning arrow flew up into the sky. It looked like a wide miss until it exploded, clearly a signal of some sort. The minotaur didn't notice; he was busy dealing with the medium blue brother who seemed to have stretched around his arms and legs and was pinning him in place. Sophia wasn't entirely certain how that happened; one moment, he was hounding the minotaur, nimbly dodging each ax strike and striking the minotaur's calves and knees; the next moment, he was gone but a long strip of something in his blue was wound around the minotaur's legs in at least a dozen loops which quickly tried to tie its legs together and rise to wrap up its arms.

Sophia's first thought was shapeshifting, but a glance around the field told her that definitely wasn't it. The same medium blue was present on a man with a sword halfway across the arena next to his shadow-stepping brother. It looked like the dark blue man pulled his brother through the shadows and well away from the minotaur while the medium blue man used some sort of Ability to temporarily restrain their enemy.

Two more lightning arrows were deflected by the minotaur's stone creations and Sophia started to see the brothers' plan come together: the lightning and dark brothers were the distractions while the medium blue brother tied up the large enemy. Sophia suspected that all three of them were also continually trying to wear away at the minotaur's Shield to set him up for a large single blow. The lightning archer sent a signal when everything was ready, which should mean that the sky-blue brother was ready.

Sophia searched the sky and almost immediately found a dot that was brighter than the rest of the sky. It continued to become brighter and brighter until it resembled a meteor, but it didn't fade away into the distance; instead, it grew larger and larger until it smashed into the minotaur.

There was a flash of light, then Sophia could finally see that the "meteor" that seemed so large right before impact was actually a javelin, thrown hard enough and from high enough that it became white-hot as it fell. That certainly explained why they had to hold the minotaur in place; the thrown weapon couldn't be adjusted if it moved after the javelin was released.

A moment later, the minotaur fell on the javelin. It looked like the javelin actually had missed its intended target, at least by a little. The entire side of the minotaur's throat was missing, along with part of its jaw. Its spine was also severed, which was probably the true killing blow. Sophia wasn't certain if the head or the chest was the original target, but she doubted they'd aimed for the neck.

Whatever they'd aimed for, they'd succeeded.

It took a couple of minutes for the sky-blue brother to make his way back down to the arena grounds. When he did, he looked like he was utterly exhausted and faking being full of energy. At least, that was Sophia's interpretation of the manic smile.

While the announcer talked about the "awe-inspiring" fight, Sophia leaned over to Jax. "We're supposed to be competing for flashiness against that?"

Jax chuckled. "People will be talking about that finisher for weeks, but it won't really affect the odds too much even if it does add a new bet to offer. It takes too much setup to be practical against anything but a single slow-moving massive enemy. Also, did you notice how the crowd was acting before the archer sent up the flare?"

Sophia frowned. Her attention hadn't been on the crowd; it was on the fight. "No?"

"Well, let's just say that they won't be using that finisher often even if it is impressive when they do." Jax looked down towards the arena floor where the javelin still stuck out of the stone it had thudded into at the end of the fight. "It's a long, boring setup. Some people enjoy watching the footwork, but most people are here for the bigger effects. The only really big effects in that fight were Dark Blue getting knocked around by the stone floor. It also gave very little to bet on as the fight progressed."

Sophia turned towards Jax. "Huh. Do you think we'll do better?"

"An entire group flying around in the sky of the arena fighting birds? You with your multicolored wings alone will do better than they did. I expect we're going to be a common opener." Jax paused, then grinned widely. "Which is just fine with me. It'll attract attention and let us choose some of what we fight. Those are both good things. If we're lucky, maybe we can even swing an Arena escort for a trip into the Maze. That would really be a good start."

Sophia could tell that Jax was thinking more about his mission to uncover how Arena groups stayed safer in the Maze more than he was about getting the rest of the team the Wisps they needed to get to the third upgrade and truly be able to challenge the Maze, but he was right. A trip to the Maze with people who could fight the monsters there and knew how to survive ought to be good for both goals.

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