Power of the Lost

by Cebelius

  "The water is a trigger?" Yuri asked.

  Mila nodded, the glow fading from her eyes as she said, "It seems likely."

  "There is something else," Shy said, pointing. "Look there, just beyond the tree closest to the cliff on the right side."

  Laina looked, but all she could see were dense bushes with wicked-looking thorns and the biggest red roses the minotress had ever seen.

  Yuri swore under his breath and looked around again, pulling his two-handed sword from its sheath. Asturial did the same with her even larger sword, and Marcus readied his shield and mace.

  "What? I don't get it," Laina said, looking around.

  "Those are blood roses," Shy murmured. "They only grow on or around significant piles of animal remains."

  "She means mass graves and carrion piles," Yuri said, eyes still flickering warily about. "There is a guardian here, and whatever this place is, it gets regular custom."

  He hesitated, then added, "I would bet my last token that this is a dungeon entrance."

  "I know it."

  Marcus' voice was filled with a quiet reverence as he gazed at the door set in the wall beyond the reflecting pool. Laina and the others turned their full attention to him as he said, "I dreamed of this place. This is the Labyrinth."

  Laina felt an unaccountable stirring in her as Marcus spoke, and felt strangely moved. She looked at him, only to find him gazing back. He nodded, but Laina did not truly understand what it was she felt, only that there was something important to her here.

  Yuri's reaction was a bit more pragmatic.

  "Prada, take Terry back to the wagon. Mila, you and Asturial come with me. Everyone else stay here. I will scout. Do not go anywhere alone, not even to pee."

  So saying Asturial, Yuri, and Mila moved toward the rose bush, while Laina returned to the back of the wagon along with everyone else.

  "What can you tell us about this place, Marcus?" Shy asked as they gathered around Boss. Prada had him sitting on the tailgate of the wagon with his legs swinging free. Laina tried to keep the frown off her face as she considered her man, along with the fact that right now, he wasn't who he looked like.

  "Do you have to mess with his body like that?" she asked, inadvertently cutting Marcus off as the big man opened his mouth. "Just, get out here and leave him in the wagon, that's too weird."

  "I agree," Shy said, shifting her attention to look at the sash around Boss' waist. "Knowing he isn't really here with us is disconcerting."

  Boss' body shifted and laid down, and the red silk sash that was Prada's outward manifestation slipped away from him and settled onto the tailgate. She was larger than when they'd first seen her in Volai's throne room, but not by much.

  She sounded testy as she asked, "Happy?"

  Both Laina and Shy replied at once, "Yes."

  Laina hesitated, glancing from Prada to Boss and back again before asking, "That's it?"

  "This is all that's left of me, yes," Prada said quietly. "I told you I had to use my own reserves to keep him alive. Well, in my case at least, size matters. If I were to use my Doppelgänger abilities at this point, I would barely exceed a fairy in size."

  Laina hesitated a moment, then said, "You can have some of my blood, if it'll help."

  The little crimson droplet quivered as Prada said kindly, "My rapid growth since my initial contract with Terry has given all of you a misimpression of just how much power it takes to sustain me, much less allow me to increase. Drinking your blood would hurt you more than help me, and probably compromise your ability to feed my husband. Keeping him fed and healthy is the best way for you to help me, but thank you, hon. I appreciate the offer. Save yourself for my husband — who is delicious I must say — I would rather drink the blood of our enemies."

  Laina shifted somewhat uncomfortably at that and — reminded of her earlier interruption — said to Marcus, "I'm sorry. Please, go on."

  Marcus jerked his chin toward the ax in Laina's hands as he said, "That ax came from here. The Labyrinth is the most sought after dungeon on Celestine. Those who complete it are fantastically rewarded."

  Shy spoke up, asking, "I have heard of the Labyrinth, but there is something that puzzles me. Why is it that the Labyrinth is sought after?"

  Marcus turned his heavy head to regard the dryad as he said simply, "It moves. It is also called Lost Labyrinth for that reason, and is home to Ariadne, who is called the Power of the Lost. Ariadne is a patroness for all tauren, and our affinity for puzzles and mazes is said to be a gift from her."

  "I think that's ... the most I've ever heard you say at one time," Boss said, groaning as he sat up.

  "Tee, you should be resting!"

  Shy reached out to him taking his shoulder in one hand and his chin in the other as she looked into his eyes. "How do you feel?"

  "Probably about like I look," he said wearily.

  Laina smirked and folded her arms under her prodigious chest as she said, "You look fine, Boss. Just tired."

  He shrugged and offered her a half-hearted smile. "Thanks hon. 'Preciate that."

  Prada wrapped herself around his waist and resumed the form of a sash, and Terry patted the knot, then glanced down and asked, "Where's the ax?"

  "It's in your backpack, Husband. I put it away last night and, given all that happened after, forgot to retrieve it. Do you want it?"

  "No, just wanted to make sure I didn't leave it behind. So where are we?"

  "You brought us to a dungeon," Laina said.

  "I did?"

  He twisted to look, blinked at what he saw, then said, "Well, okay then. That's weird. The Monsoon entrance looked like an abandoned mine taken over by Deliverance hillbillies. This place looks like ... hell I don't know. Some kind of overgrown temple."

  His face twisted a bit and he sniffed, then shrugged as he said, "Least this place smells okay. Really quiet for a jungle though."

  Laina's brow furrowed as her ears quirked backward and she realized that the jungle sounds that had faded into the background of her conscious attention since she'd arrived here had at some point cut out entirely. There was a hush, as though the whole of the world were holding its breath as it waited for something to happen.

  Shy spoke, and she sounded alarmed. "Tee, I know this goes against your instincts, but you are seriously weakened and you need to stay out of this. There is a swarm of large insects coming this way. Asturial and the Kolenkos stirred them, and are running from them now. I want you to get in amongst the barrels, and let Prada protect you."

  Laina could see Terry's expression hardening into defiance, and she clamored into the back of the wagon. She set her ax aside long enough to wrap him up and lift him, carrying him bodily into the still tarp-covered front half of the wagon. She ignored his complaints, set him down in a space between two barrels, and then started stacking sacks of grain over his head as she said, "Boss, you stay here. If we can't handle this, you won't make any difference. Prada?"

  "I will keep him safe," the ruby slime said, voice full of confidence. "Be careful, Laina."

  Boss reached out and caught Laina's hand as she started to turn away. She met his gaze, her expression hard set as she expected further argument. Instead, he looked tired and, if anything, apologetic. He said quietly, "Give 'em hell, hon. I love you. I haven't forgotten the vow I owe, and that you deserve."

  Laina's breath hitched, and she nodded jerkily before stepping to the back of the wagon and dropping to the ground, reaching back to take up the Ax of the Great Plains.

  Shy stood next to her, clad now in the barkskin armor she wore going into battle. She offered Laina a smile and murmured, "That was almost too cute."

  Laina's face heated as she said, "Hush you. Fight's comin'."

  They could all hear it now: a heavy, constant droning sound.

  Yuri burst from the undergrowth, giant two-handed sword in its sheath as he screamed, "Marcus! Toss me the short sword!"

  Mila tore free from behind him, the head of her staff glowing bri
ghtly as she skidded to a stop near the wagon and began to chant.

  Marcus wasted no time on questions, reaching behind his head to pull the requested sword from his magic pack and tossing it toward Yuri, who caught it and jerked it from its sheath.

  A brilliant ball of flame lit up the forest about fifty feet away, and Laina saw Asturial's silhouette as the dragon charged toward them. Her urgency made it clear that whatever the problem was, her fire hadn't solved it.

  "What is it?" Marcus asked as he pulled his shield around and lifted his mace free of its belt loop.

  Yuri's expression was grim as he turned to face the forest.

  "Stirges."

  11

  Frustrated Pursuit

  Euryale soared. She fought. She screamed and dove, always striving to stay just far enough away from her sister to fire arrow after arrow at her hateful face. Stheno wore a black mask that Euryale now recognized as a dryad's mask, but unlike the elegantly simple mask Shy had crafted, Stheno's was shaped into a virtually perfect replica of her own face in ebon wood. The mask seemed alive. When Stheno shrieked, the mouth mimicked her movements. In any other context it would have been impressive. Still, the dryad mask offered no protection. Arrows passed through it, which served Euryale well. Despite her excellent aim however, many of her shots missed, both due to their aerial maneuvering and her own rage.

  The two of them traded injuries, but unlike Stheno's slashes — which healed immediately — Euryale's arrows stayed where they stuck until her elder sister could remove them. Still, of the two of them Stheno proved quickly that she was the far better flier, and eventually a well-aimed slash completely removed Euryale's arm just above the elbow. When it reformed, her bow was already dropping uselessly to the ground far below.

  Screaming her rage, unmindful of the stone furies dropping all around them, Euryale allowed her sister to close and willingly took a sword in her guts as she grappled her sister, wrapping up her wings and folding her own. Her hair struck, injecting poison everywhere it could reach, while Stheno did the same.

  The two howled imprecations at each other in Greek as they plummeted, but before they struck the ground a massive energy wave blew the both of them away.

  Tumbling in their frantic flight, both of them seared and blackened from the blast as though struck by a bolt from Zeus, they crashed into a tumble of felled trees on a ridge high above and to the south of the road.

  Agony tore at Euryale, but pain was something she had long since learned to ignore. It was meaningless, a distraction, a physical symptom with no sickness, no real consequences. Nothing could truly harm her. Of course, the same was true for her sister.

  Their tumble was arrested as the two of them fetched up against a cliff wall. Fortunately for Euryale, Stheno struck it first and her head popped like an over-ripe pumpkin as it slammed into the rock, while Euryale was only dazed as her head struck stone already coated with the gore of her sister. As she pulled her head back though, Stheno's face seemed to follow her out of the rock, reforming with impressive celerity. Euryale noticed that as it did so, the mask seemed not to come with it. Whether destroyed or simply no longer visible though, Euryale didn't care. Before her skull was even fully closed, Stheno was slashing at her sister with brazen claws as she shrieked, "This is pointless! Why do you not simply yield!?"

  "Because you're a cheating! Lying! BITCH!" Euryale screamed, punctuating each word with a vicious closed fist. Her first strike dislocated Stheno's jaw. Her second crushed her sister's cheek, and her third shattered Stheno's ocular orbit and ejected her left eyeball, which Euryale caught and ripped cleanly from her head before popping it in her brazen fist.

  Of course, it made no difference. Stheno's face restored itself as her sister shrieked incoherently and buried her claw in Euryale's guts, then clenched her fist and twisted as she ripped intestines out in a spray of gore.

  The two fought on, inflicting devastating wounds on each other, shrieking and screaming in pain and rage. They tumbled to the ground, wings flailing, snakes striking, injecting lethal poisons that burned and faded as they tore chunks of flesh from one another.

  Piece by piece, Euryale destroyed her sister's armor, tearing away her breastplate before grabbing one of Stheno's breasts and tearing it off while Stheno slid her claws into the side of Euryale's throat and ripped it out, briefly exposing her spine.

  The two gorgons fought on, doing unspeakable things to one another, all the while screaming in rage and pain.

  Finally, Euryale managed to duplicate a move she'd seen Terry make in the pit with Asturial. She wrapped her legs around Stheno's arms and torso and locked one of her arms around her sister's neck as she hauled backward with all her might. Stheno made choking noises as she struggled, her wings beating furiously at the ground. Her snakes struck Euryale's arms, legs, sides, and breasts, but Euryale endured the poison as she hissed, "Thomas was to be ours. You stole him away and left me alone! A thousand years and more you left me alone! We swore, we would never, ever, leave each other, ALONE!"

  She screamed, tightening her entire body as she listened to Stheno's gurgling. Her hair was just long enough, and she sank fangs into her sisters eyes and clung there, pushing poison into Stheno's brain as she hissed, "Now I finally have my own love, MY VERY OWN, and you think you can take him from me!? FUCK YOU! I'll hold you here until the Styx runs dry! I'll never let Thomas use you against MY MASTER!"

  Euryale's elbow slipped off Stheno's windpipe and folded itself more tightly around her throat, and her sister was able to gasp and say, "My Lord, will ... find me!"

  By now Euryale had pushed so much poison into Stheno's eye sockets that the milky overflow dripped down her sister's face in a parody of tears. Euryale's tears on the other hand, were very real, because she knew that Stheno was right ... Thomas would find them, eventually. Still, she could keep her sister here until then, for neither of them could ever truly defeat the other. Neither needed to eat, nor to sleep, nor even to breathe, though weariness would eventually make their efforts against one another pitiful.

  Then something unexpected happened. Something that neither of them had ever been able to accomplish against the other. Stheno's struggling got rapidly weaker, then ceased entirely.

  At first, Euryale thought it was a trick. She pulled her hair back and watched as Stheno's eyelids slipped closed over her restored eyeballs, but she did not otherwise move. A minute passed, then two, and finally Euryale dared loosen her hold, ready to cinch it tight again at the slightest sign her sister was faking.

  She wasn't.

  Stheno was out cold.

  Euryale shifted her sister's body aside and stood. She was all but naked. Her dress hung from her belt in tatters. There was no blood, of course — their immortality did not allow them to bleed for more than the instant their wounds were inflicted. Stheno was likewise all but stripped bare, but though her apparel was shredded she showed no other signs of having been in a fight. Her snakes hung limp, and the only evidence of life was the slow rise and fall of her chest.

  As she stood over her sister, Euryale struggled to understand what had just happened. It seemed to her that some sort of magic must have been cast, but who might have done such a thing? Her snakes fanned out, but there was no one in any direction.

  I must find some way to contain my sister before she wakes, Euryale thought, glancing around.

  The cliff that had ended their aerial tumble was a few feet away, and as she looked, she saw the dark mask Stheno had worn.

  Must have fallen away when her head popped.

  She picked it up and put it to her own face. The mask sank in just as Shy's had. She felt no other effects, and was relieved. When she returned to her master, she didn't want to inadvertently turn anyone to stone. Now that her sister was without it, any searchers that found her would be ... unable to report their findings.

  Smiling viciously, Euryale grabbed her sister by the snakes and began dragging her along as she searched for something, anything, that might b
e conducive to holding Stheno captive. The fact that she still had her hoard with her — kept in a mystic belt pouch taken centuries ago from some long-forgotten dungeon delver — gave her options, but she had nothing that would do the job on its own. Manacles needed to be secured to something. Any rope she used, her sister could eventually break.

  Still, the manacles would do in the short term.

  She glanced around at all the felled trees, some of them thicker around than she could reach, and abruptly felt like an idiot.

  Ten minutes later, she had her sister splayed with her back against one of the largest downed trees, her feet just above the tangled root mass. The manacles were silver and laden with enchantments. They would not rust, and only the most powerful of magics would break them. Best of all, they had but one key. Euryale secured her sister in such a way that she could not turn her brazen claws on the wood, and chained her legs spread wide to keep her from shuffling up or down the bole.

  The tree itself was leaning at about a 60 degree angle against a tangle of other debris, and as she finished locking the chains and rounded the bole, she saw her sister's snakes stirring with signs of life.

  Euryale smiled, took off and hid her new mask, and pulled a knife from her hoard. She crouched in front of Stheno and waited, her ice cold blue eyes glinting.

  When her sister's eyes opened and her lips parted to scream, Euryale jammed the knife vertically through her throat, bisecting her voice box. She angled the blade to pass her spine and slammed it deep into the wood behind Stheno's throat, anchoring the blade in place.

  As Stheno's green snakes writhed and struck blindly in her pain, Euryale backed away about ten feet and showed her now speechless sister the key.

  She then cleared a space on the ground and set the key upright in the dirt so that anyone would be able to see it. Stheno glared at it, and her, with baleful, murderous eyes.