Sean was waiting by the Baha-char door. It was still open. His eyes had that focused, clear look they got just before he expected to jump into a fight. My pulse sped up.

“I need your help.”

My robe was still on. The inn dropped my broom into my hand. I jogged out the door back into the Baha-char sunshine, and we rushed through the streets, dodging passersby.

“Gorvar?” he asked.

“Stable. Where are we going?”

“One of those corrupted assholes took Wilmos out of his store and went through a temporary portal gate. There was a witness. He says he knows where the portal leads, but he refuses to tell me.”

* * *

The gate lay far from the center of the bazaar. We’d been walking and jogging for over twenty minutes, and we had left the brightly decorated streets behind a while ago. Here the air was ominous, the canvas roofs of the stalls faded and tattered, and trash littered the cobblestones. This wasn’t the fun-shopping part of Baha-char. You didn’t come to this place unless you wanted something specific you could only get here, and the grim-faced vendors gave us dark looks as we passed.

A merchant on our left, a strange creature with the shaggy body of a sloth, a massive beak, and furry tentacles instead of limbs, screeched at our approach. It was hanging upside down from the top frame of its shop, anchored by its hind tentacles, and I had no idea what species it was, which almost never happened. When we got home, I would have to look it up.

A large stone arch loomed ahead, its brown stone worn and scarred. Remnants of red banners hung from it, bleached by the sun to a dirty pink and torn to shreds by the desert wind. Tall buildings with barred windows crowded the arch on both sides, creating a long gloomy tunnel.

We strode through it. A draft fanned us, bringing a thick, potent scent, an off-putting musk. Some large animal had marked its territory here.

The musk grew stronger. I fought the urge to clear my throat. I could taste it on the back of my tongue. Next to me, Sean grimaced and kept going.

The tunnel ended, and we emerged into a round plaza formed by a single circular building. Three oversized stories high, the building stretched to the sky, offering rows and rows of balconies and stone benches. Strange creatures and elaborate glyphs had been carved into its sandy stone façade, once sharp, but now smoothed and blurred by elements and time.

The plaza itself was perfectly round, formed with remarkable precision and paved with giant triangular slabs of stone that radiated from its center. In the middle of it two stone towers rose, each shaped like a fifty-foot-tall, three-dimensional crescent. The two crescents faced each other, crowned with green flames burning in metal braziers at their apexes.

“This is the Old Arena,” I whispered.

Sean glanced at me.