It really was as simple as that. Sophia put the gauntlet on, held a weapon to show that it was covered in lightning, then took it off and reset the catch. Paul had her them unlock a few more items. He tried to argue them down to one item in payment for each two she unlocked, but Xin'ri and Jax wouldn't accept that: if he was going to give them items he couldn't easily sell, it had to be one for one. They walked out of the Artifact room with a pile of stuff that Sophia wasn't sure any of them actually intended to use. Maybe they'd be able to sell it.

They wandered around the Arena for a while. By now, they weren't the only people there; there still weren't many, but when they walked back by the Fights room, another team was talking to the scheduler. Sophis tried to get a mental map of the building, but most of what she noticed was that there were an awful lot of doors that weren't open to the public. They were labeled like any other door, mostly useless labeled like Entrance FT6 or Wayby FR14, but they were fully shut. Jax quietly muttered that they went to hallways, but he didn't think there was anything notable behind them; he'd explored everything he could back when he was the Blade's assistant.

Sophia tugged on the handle of one of them and it didn't move, so she looked more closely. There wasn't a physical lock; instead, there was a ward that looked significantly more complicated than any she'd seen. It also looked old, which made her look at the door more carefully. It wasn't old, but the doorframe was. The stone doorframe was blackened near where the door sat, as if it had been burnt, but the wooden door was undamaged.

There was only one reasonable explanation for what she saw. "This is original, isn't it? This is over an old Kestii installation, so was probably built by them, that would explain the ward. Hey, Jax, can you open the door?"

It didn't open when he tried, which meant that either it was looking for something hidden in his old Mask or it was looking for a physical key of some sort. Sophia didn't remember anything like that in the gear they'd left to be found by the next group the Blade sent down, but it could be almost anything. She'd have to ask Jax about it when they weren't standing in a hallway where anyone could walk up to them.

They moved on, but Sophia kept an eye on the doors as they passed them. Most had the ward, but some didn't. Interestingly, it seemed like all of the rooms open to the public, including the fight scheduler, the artifacts room, the infirmary, and several of the doors that led to the actual arena, were included in the ward. The doors were propped open so that anyone could get through, but that only made the ward easier to examine.

There were food stalls set up in a courtyard outside the actual Arena entrance. They were doing brisk business when the group reached that part of the building. The smells made Sophia's stomach growl and remind her that breakfast was a long time ago now.

After a quick meal of mystery meat on a stick, Jax led them around the courtyard. There were at least a dozen different entrances; half of them were blocked by closed doors. They passed four open doors that Jax said led to private viewing rooms, then reached a door with a man sitting next to it. Jax handed over five coins with a leaf symbol, one per person, and they were waved through without comment.

"It's just leaves at this time of day," Jax explained once they were through. "It'll be flowers in the evening, for the main fights, but this should get you some idea of what happens here. One of the reasons that this is so cheap is that it's supposedly just practice, but sometimes you can see a famous team fight. I'm pretty sure the opponents are all summoned at this time of day."

With that, they stepped out of the cool hallway into bright sunlight. Sophia looked up and saw that the roof of the building was simply missing. The walls were jagged and it looked almost like it had been torn off. Scorch marks were visible, as well.

In front of the damaged walls, there was some obviously newer seating. It was also predominantly stone, but it didn't match the stone of the walls. It was chunkier, but it also looked more polished. That made her realize just how rough the stone of the Arena really was. It looked a lot like concrete rather than proper stone, but the seats were definitely stone even though they were smoothly made, as if molded.

Unlike a modern stadium, or even the ancient ones Sophia had seen pictures of, the seats varied a lot. There were entire sections that looked normal to her eyes and sections where there were clusters of seats that were spaced farther apart and surrounded by an even wider gap between seats. It didn't look like the missing seats had been removed; it looked like they were never there in the first place. It was almost like having a private viewing box, but without the walls and glass around it. There were a lot of them.

Jax led them to one of the smaller seat groups as he explained the etiquette. "If you come here alone, you're expected to sit in the tight area. The spots like this are for use by teams, especially teams that will be fighting on the floor later."

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"They don't just wait in the wings, or I guess the hallways?" Sophia asked.

Jax shook his head. "Nah, that's why there are easy ways to get to the floor from the stands. Anyway, people want to watch what's happening. That's the point of being here, after all. Sure, you get a portion of the Arena's proceeds if you fight here, but the real money's in the betting. Knowing the team you're betting on is important."

Sophia's attention was drawn away from the talk about betting and what sorts of bets you could even place on fights against monsters that the combatants were expected to beat down to the floor of the Arena, where a group of four had just stepped out into the middle. One of them had lightning dancing in her hair; another left a trail of smoke behind him as he moved. The third looked like she was in a movie poster or something with the way her hair streamed behind her, even though there was no appreciable breeze, and the fourth left a trail of darker stone behind him, like it was wet. It was very clear what the group's theme was, based on the obvious Signature abilities they displayed.

There was no announcement before the start of the fight. That had to be part of what Jax meant when he said it was "just practice," even though it was clearly something you could pay to watch.

The four elemental fighters were roughly what Sophia expected when she saw them, though seeing the Water controller create walls of water that the gigantic boar they were fighting ran into hard enough to injure itself was kind of funny. It did sort of answer a question Sophia hadn't realized she had, though: why was it special that they could fight a flying monster?

None of the four elementalists, even the wind one, seemed to be able to fly. The windy one could float, but all she seemed to do with it was extend the distance of her jumps, not actually move freely around the sky. Sophia wasn't certain if they were second upgrade or third upgrade, but if they couldn't fly now she wasn't sure how they'd figure it out.

It wasn't like the Maze had a lot of stable Challenges the way Izel did, and that was how Dav picked up the floating Ability that turned into Unreal Space's gravity manipulation. He couldn't exactly fly with it, but he could get pretty close, closer than the wind user did.

The group after that one seemed more traditional at first, but when they started fighting it was clear that they were all manipulating metal in one way or another. That was enough to make Sophia turn towards Jax to ask, "Is there a reason the groups seem to all be themed on similar Abilities? Wouldn't a diverse set of Abilities be better?"

"Aren't they diverse?" Jax waved at the group below. "One specializes in being the wall, another throws daggers that he can direct at a distance, while the third uses a spear and the fourth … well, I'm not sure what he's doing."

"A powder of some sort," Sophia answered. "I'm guessing it's actually metal shavings. He's directing them at the wolves' eyes and ears. He's managed to blind a few of them, at least temporarily."

"It's not really any different than our bird theme," Jax suggested. "It's a way to stand out and be memorable. The shield-man and the spear-user can probably fit in any group; you're just thinking of them as metal because of their heavy equipment and what the other two are doing. The dagger-thrower could look like something other than metal, too, on another team. I'm not even sure if that is their theme."

Sophia frowned and took another look at the group. Jax was right; she was only assuming that the cloud of stuff the fourth guy was moving around was metal shavings. For all she knew, it could be dirt. She doubted it, but it could be. "Is there any way to tell?"

Jax shook his head. "Not without announcements or recognizing the team. That's why some teams wear costumes, too; I think we probably will at some point, but at first we're going to depend on your feathers."

Sophia shook her head. She could understand that this was supposed to be entertainment, but she still didn't quite get why being recognized was so important. "Why should we care so much about it?"

"It's how we get paid," Dav interrupted Jax. "We get a cut of the entry fees based on how much people bet on our matches, and people are more likely to bet if they care. Being distinct is one of the few things we can do to change that. We also need to make the fights visually interesting."

Maybe she should have paid more attention to that discussion on betting after all. Sophia couldn't really bring herself to care enough to make Jax go back over it. "Ah. Well, I guess that explains it. And we're trying to fit in so we need to make ourselves stand out. Wait, that sounded wrong."

Dav chuckled. "Yeah, that sounds about right. Hey, Jax, is there any way to find out what the next fight is? Is it posted somewhere?"

Jax shook his head. "The bookies know who's on the schedule for this segment, but not what order they'll be in. As long as you're on the schedule, you can line up over there to ask for a specific enemy." He pointed at the far end of the field, well away from the action but near where each of the teams stepped onto the field. "You get to fight in the order you get there in. A lot of teams come early so they can get more fights; there isn't much to be made here since the crowd's thin and admission's only a leaf per person, but if someone on your team is healing after a trip to the Maze or you're down a person … it's a good place to meet people who might fill in the team or just make the cash to pay for food."

Jax's words made Sophia more grateful than ever that Dav had his healing Call.

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