Msaka wandered slowly around the plaza, looking over everything that was offered for sale there. As he had guessed would be the case, none of it was of any immediate interest to him, and he declined all offers that were made to sell him things, keeping his tone as polite as he could. Finally, with a sigh, he walked towards the one other visible exit from the plaza other than the city gates, a street leading away to the north.

Entering the street, he found it quite dim compared to the sunlit plaza, and much cooler as well. Unfortunately, it also seemed unreasonably narrow, which left him feeling a bit uneasy. He walked along, turning down an occasional side street when one branched off, finding quickly that the place was more of a maze than anything else, with dead ends and streets turning back on themselves everywhere. Not only that, he was quite certain that at least some of the doors he was passing were just painted on.

"What were the people who designed this place thinking when they arranged it like this?" he muttered. "It's almost as if they wanted everyone to become lost!" He growled softly and continued searching for an exit from the street-maze, bothered also by the fact that while he would occasionally see someone cross a street in front of him, they were never there when he finally reached that crossing himself, and he hadn't seen a single person walking down the same street he was on the whole time either. It was almost enough to make him think that the whole area was some sort of magical trap he'd been pulled into, but there was no magic around him that he could sense.

After perhaps an hour of being lost in the streets, he spotted what appeared to be an opening into a plaza at the end of one as he passed it. Given the fact that he had no idea where he now was, he was unsure whether it was the same one he'd left, but he intended to find out. Just about anywhere seemed preferable to these city streets at the moment.

As he neared the plaza, he could hear quite a bit of noise coming from it - there were a lot of people gathered there. He wasn't quite sure, but it almost sounded like there was some sort of fighting going on as well. Undeterred, he closed the remaining distance and stepped out into the sunlight again.

It was a different plaza all right. The area to his right was filled with stalls, as the other one had been, as well as a large shop with a bellows above the door, but to his left was another building which was obviously not a shop. In the area in front of the building to his left, a large crowd was watching several pairs of armed men fight. Msaka immediately wondered what the cause of the fighting was, as the city had seemed quite peaceful so far, the calls of merchants notwithstanding.

He moved off to one side of the exit, and stood watching quietly for a while. It quickly became clear that this wasn't just open fighting, and Msaka soon realized that it was some sort of competition, as when one member of a pair scored a hit, they would stop fighting and move away so that another pair could take their place. A large number of guards were moving around the area as well, keeping the crowd away from the contestants and under control, as the crowd seemed very enthusiastic about the whole display. An announcer occasionally called out standings in the competition, though none of the names mentioned were ones that Msaka was familiar with.

Msaka sneered a little at the scene. Perhaps these people found this kind of duelling entertaining, but as far as he was concerned it was no more respectable than children brawling. He certainly would have been interested if any magical duels were taking place, but not a single contestant that had any such skill that he could sense.

Losing interest, he turned away and scanned the rest of the plaza. Business for the merchants in the area was obviously slow, with most of the people having been drawn to the contest. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be much else of interest in the plaza at the moment, the large building to his left presently being inaccessible due to the crowd watching the tournament.

He sighed. "Nothing here, but going somewhere else means being lost in those streets again for who knows how long." he muttered. He glanced up at the sky. "It will be getting late soon anyway." he thought, "I'd better find the way back to the inn."

He turned and headed back into the street he had arrived from, hoping that he wouldn't end up lost again. He did have a fairly good memory for recalling his path, something that was an inevitable result of living in a jungle. This city was an entirely different environment, and he wasn't certain that he could trust his recollections as much here.

His journey back went fairly smoothly, with only two false turns which he quickly realized were the wrong direction to be heading. It still took some time to get there, but he finally neared the exit to the plaza by the city gates.

He was taken completely by surprise when, as he approached the exit, the street suddenly split open beneath him with a tremendous crack. He flailed for a moment as he fell, managing to land on his feet, but the impact still jarred him badly, and it took him a moment to recover. He quickly threw a glance around, and saw what had happened - a square pit had opened in the street, right beneath where he had been. It wasn't all that deep, around twice his height, but the bottom and sides were smooth - there was no way he was going to climb out.

He also didn't want to take that long - the pit had obviously been created by magic, and that had him worried. The pit itself probably wasn't directly dangerous, but something worse would undoubtedly follow.

He stepped up to one wall of the pit and cast his spell of levitation. Quickly, he rose back up to street level, and was quite glad that he'd acted as quickly as he had - just as his feet cleared the pit, it slammed shut as suddenly as it had opened.

Msaka hung there in the air for a few moments, staring over his shoulder at the small crack in the street where the sides of the pit had rejoined. "If I'd still been in there, I'd have been crushed flat." he thought, shaken.

He lowered himself to the ground, and stepped well away from the area the pit had been in, then cast his spell of detection, wanting to know in advance if another attack was coming. His spell revealed only a residual trace of magic where the pit had been, however, the rest of the area being free of any sort of enchantment.

Msaka allowed himself a small sigh of relief, then hurried the rest of the way to the plaza. Not that he expected it would be any safer there, but with other people around, whoever it was who had opened the pit might be less willing to attempt another attack that would leave witnesses.

Or so he hoped.