by Cebelius
Besides, I beat him in the ring. If I were him, I don't know if I'd be able to pass up the chance to give me a few bruises just for that, Mila notwithstanding.
Finally though, one of his legs literally gave out on him, dumping him to the dirt. Yuri pulled his swing and said, "Okay. I think you need some healing before we go any more."
Biting back a retort, Terry nodded grimly and — using his ax as a crutch — hauled himself back to his feet. He wasn't looking forward to another five minutes, much less another four hours, but he'd take whatever Yuri chose to dish out and like it. He owed the man at least that much.
Besides, not as though I'm getting nothing out of it. Painful lessons are the ones that stick.
Hobbling toward the wagon, he saw Mila sitting with Shy. Both women had their staves across their laps, and their eyes closed. Laina was sitting in the shadow of the wagon with Marcus. She had her head down and looked to be napping. Marcus' eyes followed Terry as he approached, and he nodded once — a gesture Terry returned.
I really need to find time to have a sit-down with him, he thought to himself. Marcus pledged brotherhood to me, but I haven't really gotten to know the man yet.
It abruptly occurred to Terry that he'd never seen Marcus sleep, and it took effort not to double take at the realization as he reached the back of the wagon, shooed away some disturbingly large spiders, and reached into his pack for a bottle of Laina's milk.
He downed it and marveled as it took away his aches and pains, then sighed and returned to Yuri, only to find the tiger man had discarded his sword and stripped down to his belt and pantaloons as he said, "Your turn. Teach me some of what you know."
"You want to learn from me?" Terry asked, quirking a brow.
"Are you unwilling to teach?" Yuri asked.
"No, I'll teach you, I'm just curious why you'd want to learn. My style is practically useless outside a ring. I mean I could teach you some dirty fighting, but you probably already know all that."
"You have a way of moving that is economical, and which does not give advance warning of your intentions," Yuri said, spreading his hands. "Even when you swing your ax, I do not get the usual tells. You are a template; your body is built like mine, so I would expect to see the same sort of movement, but I do not. Show me."
Terry gave it some thought, then nodded and spent the next half-hour having Yuri perform basic movements. He thrust rather than punched due to his claws, but even so Terry saw his shoulder consistently dropping beforehand. When he swung, he always wasted a flourish as he brought his claws out. Almost all of his moves had some wasted motion, and it wasn't until Yuri had pointed it out to him that Terry really noticed how bad it was. In the ring, he'd processed it all instinctively, and the fight hadn't gone on long enough for him to have to think about any of it. Now, he saw just how sloppy Yuri's form was, and after getting a good sense of the man he said, "Everything you do is circular and slow. Do you ever actually thrust with your claws, or did you just do that because I asked you to?"
"You asked me to," he replied. "It is not a natural movement for me."
"Okay, look: when you're fighting hand to hand, you need to be fast. I'm not moving economically deliberately. I'm moving fast deliberately. I don't telegraph for two reasons. One, I practiced in front of a mirror and looked for my own tells. I worked to get rid of them, and two? The sorts of things you do to give advance warning are mostly wasted movement anyway. They slow everything down, and they're FOR show. You don't need to do any of it. For instance: when you flick your hand back to expose your claws ... why the fuck do you do that? You think it looks cool or something? Hold your hand out, open, palm facing me."
Yuri did as he was told, looking at Terry with an inscrutable expression on his tiger face. His ears were erect and forward though, and his tail was still. It seemed as though he were taking this seriously.
"Okay, now, without moving your hand at all, show me your claws."
He failed the first time, and the second, and yet again the third time. Apparently, Yuri had always, always, always flicked his wrist when showing his claws. But after several failed attempts, with his ears pinned back and staring hard at his hand, claws slid out with just the faintest evidence of a flex in his palm.
"See?" Terry said, waving a hand. "Now suppose doing it that way was your habit. Your swings would all be faster, and they would come with less advance warning."
"It does not feel right doing it this way," Yuri protested.
Terry shrugged and said, "Yuri, unlearning bad habits is key. This is a bad habit of yours. You're a master swordsman. Did it feel natural to you when you first picked up a sword?"
"Yes, of course," Yuri said without the faintest traces of uncertainty. "I was born to wield a blade."
Blinking and somewhat taken aback by the answer, Terry said, "Well, if you can't take my word for it, look at your results. If you want to learn how to fight effectively with just your hands and feet, you have some bad habits to break first. As you are, I think the effort might be wasted. When are you ever going to fight without a sword?"
Grinning, Terry added, "Aside from when a minotress pulls a crossbow on you."
Yuri's ears laid back and something in his eyes hardened. Completely ignoring the joke, he said, "There is no certainty in life, but I think there may come a time when I need every edge. Please, teach me. I swear I will take these lessons seriously."
"Likewise," Terry said with a shrug. "Teach me how to not get myself killed with my ax, and I'll teach you how to brawl. Fair warning: a lot of what I know will do you no good."
"So you say," Yuri said with a meaningful glance over Terry's shoulder. When he looked, he saw the man had been looking at Asturial.
"I saw your fight with the dragon, and it seems to me that what you know may be more valuable than you think."
Terry was frankly skeptical, but he didn't press. Asturial had been fighting him without her magic, and without being able to simply kill him to get what she wanted. Terry had been able to go all out and he had still been beaten to a pulp.
If Yuri wants to over-value my skills, fine. He's no dummy, and he's not going to start trying to fight monsters bare-handed just because I teach him a trick or two.
A distant roar caught Terry's attention, and he recognized it because he'd heard something like it before.
Yuri confirmed it for him a moment later when he said, "A dragon. The natives here were not bluffing."
Terry glanced over at him and said, "You don't sound worried."
"I will be worried if she finds us, not before."
Yuri turned and lifted his chin at the reflecting pool and the door beyond as he added, "We need to enter the Labyrinth. Out here, there is no escape for us, unless you can teleport us again?"
The tiger man looked askance at Terry, who held up his hands and said, "I ... don't think it works that way. After we got here I looked at the death seed, and as far as I can tell it's just a normal walnut now. I get the impression that whatever was stored up inside it is gone."
Yuri shrugged and tilted his head toward the door again as he said, "Well, that reduces our options to one. Asturial will not be able to stop a full-fledged dragon war body while she personally has only a proxy, and the spell she erected to keep the natives from finding us again declares our essential hostility. The Labyrinth is one of the most famous dungeons in the world, Boss. Do you know why?"
"David Bowie lives there?" Terry asked, knowing as he said it that Yuri couldn't possibly understand, but needing to say it anyway just to ease the tension a bit.
Prada laughed at least, and actually sang a bar from Dance Magic aloud in a perfect imitation of the man himself. Terry snorted and shook his head as he waved a hand at Yuri. "I'm sorry. Well, no, I'm not — that was funny — but, but please, tell me why the Labyrinth is so famous."
Yuri was gazing down at Prada's sash with one ear half-twisted down and the other forward. Terry got the impression he was bemused more than irritated. When
no explanation was forthcoming, the tiger man said, "The Labyrinth moves. Whenever someone finds it and enters, it moves. No one knows where it will go, but since we do not know where we are other than that we are in hostile land, we cannot be any worse off."
"That is so not true," Terry said, scowling as he started ticking his fingers. "We could wind up in the Twilight Zone. We could appear at the bottom of an ocean, or at the top of a mountain where the air is too thin to breathe. We could wind up on a deserted island. We could-"
"Enough prattle," Asturial interrupted as she stepped up along with Laina and Marcus. "The Labyrinth logically cannot benefit from going to a place that cannot be reached. Because that is so, wherever it goes will be somewhere we can escape, provided we survive the dungeon itself. The fact that a dragon is so close and has been contacted so readily bodes ill for us, Terrence Mack. My spell was designed to stymie mortals, not the eldritch. It will hold for some little while, but if she is searching diligently for us we do not have much time. We should flee."
"They did tell you they'd be contacting a dragon," Terry pointed out, irritated both at having not seen that bit of logic regarding the Labyrinth for himself, and having Asturial — of all people — pointing it out to him.
The dragon showed no trace of emotion as she said, "I thought they were bluffing. It is common practice among mortals to claim high affiliations to protect themselves from my kind."
"Cute. You realize what that says about your kind, right?" Terry asked.
"Yes. We are powerful," Asturial replied as she folded her arms under her breasts, either missing or ignoring the bite in Terry's tone.
"They, are powerful," he corrected, purely for spite.
That hit home, and her arms dropped abruptly as her face twisted into an ugly expression, but whatever she might have thought, she said nothing. Terry didn't even try to suppress the schadenfreude as one corner of his lips twisted up.
'That was unnecessary,' Prada said inside his mind, her tone one of frank chastisement.
Not for me it wasn't.
'Do try to remember that she is, at least nominally, our ally.'
As Prada's thoughts sank in Shy and Mila joined the group, and Shy set her hand on Terry's shoulder as her thoughts joined Prada's in his head.
'Don't antagonize her, Tee. She has been helpful.'
His half-smile turned into a scowl, but kept his peace as attention turned toward the reflecting pool. The very idea of the dragon being here still filled him with a simmering anger.
Of course she's helpful. Now that she can't take what she wants by intimidation, or murder.
Prada's irritation spiked. He could feel it almost as an itch in the back of his mind as she thought, 'Do you remember watching DragonBall Z when you were a child?'
Sure. It was my favorite cartoon. I loved that shit.
'Who was your favorite character?'
Vegeta. Duh.
'And ... HOW did Vegeta meet Goku?'
Terry thought about that, and the blood drained from his face. Forgetting to keep his thoughts to himself he raised a finger at nothing and said, "That's not fucking fair!"
He froze as he realized that everyone in the group was now staring at him with expressions ranging from surprise to amusement.
Prada didn't say anything, aloud or in his head. He felt her smug satisfaction though. THAT came through loud and clear.
"Are we going to get an explanation?" Yuri asked.
"It's Prada's fault," Terry said shortly. "Anything I do that makes no sense? Just blame her. Saves on questions."
Laina snickered, covered her mouth when Terry shot her a look, then kept right on laughing behind her hand.
"I caught about half of what was going on," Shy said with an arched eyebrow that told Terry she would be getting an explanation later. "For now, I think we should trust that it would make no sense to any of us."
Nodding toward the door on the far side of the pool, she asked, "How should we proceed? You mentioned that this pool was magical?"
That last was directed at Mila, who nodded. "It is obviously a trap of some sort, but my magic cannot tell me more."
"I have the answer to that," Yuri said. "I spent some time searching around, and I found this."
He led them to the base of the pillar closest to them on the left, and pointed to a small brass plaque that read:
You have come to face the Labyrinth; only the strong may enter here.
To step within one must fight and win, only then will the Sphinx appear.
"Well, so what?" Terry asked. "We step into the pool and fight?"
"It does seem that way," Yuri replied.
When Terry took a step toward the water though, the tiger man stopped him.
"Not you," he said, nodding to Marcus. "Him. Draw arms everyone. We do not know the nature of what we face."
Marcus unlimbered his shield and took his mace from his belt as Terry pulled his ax and most everyone else drew steel. Terry asked, "Aren't we all going to step in together?"
"I doubt we will be allowed. 'One must fight and win.' Marcus will go. Of us all he is the most likely to survive whatever comes, now that Euryale is no longer with us."
Asturial coughed meaningfully, and Yuri glanced at her and asked, "Was that an offer, Lady Dragon?"
Marcus paused at the edge of the pool and everyone turned their attention to Asturial as she said, "I am a part of this group, whether entirely welcome or not. When it is obvious that I am best suited to a task, I should perform it. I have no objection to Marcus, but sizable as he is I am his better in terms of both strength and battle prowess. I have magic at my disposal. I am the most powerful warrior in your complement. Easily. I will go."
She glanced up at the gargoyles and added, "Besides, it is fairly obvious what the nature of this challenge will be."
As she spoke, her eyes shifted back to Terry, who couldn't quite keep the scowl from returning to his face.
"Do you want my shield?" Marcus asked.
Asturial quirked a brow, then smirked and shook her head. She lifted a hand and chanted for a few moments and a breeze picked up around her, swirling into a vortex made visible by kicked up debris with her at its center. It only lasted a few seconds, then faded away. Spell complete, she drew her immense slab of a sword and with a short, sharp exhalation, stepped into the water.
The reaction was immediate.
Blue, translucent light shimmered into existence, filling the gaps between all the pillars and sealing the reflecting pool away from the rest of the clearing. Terry pressed one hand to it, and it felt like solid glass to him.
Within, Asturial waded forward without a trace of concern, her tail moving in heavy counterpoint to her hips.
Atop the stone pillars, the gargoyles began to move, stretching their wings and flexing claws. The sound of grating stone was loud in the sudden stillness. Terry could see that though they were moving, they still seemed made entirely of rock. They hadn't turned to flesh, they'd simply started to move.
Jesus. Living statues? Six of them? How is one person supposed to survive THAT?
One of them seemed more eager to fight than the others. It screamed a challenge and leapt down from its pillar, landing with a tremendous splash in the water before hurling itself forward as it charged the dragon.
Asturial swung her sword up, then brought it down as though it were a willow switch. Terry would have sworn that he saw the enormous slab of metal — easily a foot wide, a few inches thick, and over six feet long — bend under the strain.
The gargoyle's head shattered as Asturial's sword made contact, then its chest exploded as that sword kept moving, pelting the dragon with debris she made no effort to dodge. She checked her swing so perfectly that the blade didn't even touch the water, though the wind she'd generated with her swing sent out a small wave that crashed against the cliff wall at the back of the pool before rippling away.
She glanced around, waiting for the others.
The other five gargo
yles froze. Then they looked at one another, then back down at Asturial. None of them left their perches. Instead, one of the two closest to the cliff wall looked up at the blank stone and said, "NOPE! Get down here Sphinx! We're done!"
That was a spell effect? Terry thought, directing the question at Prada.
'She is an aeromancer, among other things. I do not know the exact effects of the spell, but I suspect she did something to ease the passage of her movements.'
Why wasn't she that fast when she fought me?
'It was against the rules to use magic, remember? She followed the rules.'
The casual power Terry had just borne witness to was humbling. If she had used a spell like that before her fight with him, it would have truly been all over for him. He would have had absolutely no hope of victory, because his only slight advantage would have been completely overturned. He thought back to every presumption of superiority Asturial had made, and realized that it was all true. In any real kind of fight, he'd have stood no chance at all.
Did she hold back when I attacked her with the Rod?
Prada answered. 'It is a certainty. She was unwilling to kill you, even with her own life at risk.'
Terry refocused as the cliff face above them changed. Two long apertures opened, or rather simply appeared, centered above the door at the far end of the pool. They had wooden shutters with horizontal slats. Between them was a third opening, this one about four feet wide and eight tall. A woman stepped to the edge of the cliff and then leapt lightly down the forty foot drop to land in the pool without so much as a ripple.
The translucent blue shield vanished as abruptly as it appeared, and Asturial turned, showing her back to the newcomer in an act of brazen disregard as she stepped back out of the pool and, without waiting for anyone, said, "You're welcome."
No one was looking at her though, least of all Terry. His attention was entirely focused on the newcomer.
The sphinx was — if Terry had to sum it up in a word — exotic. She had large, erect ears that dominated the sides of her face, which seemed otherwise almost entirely human. She was olive-complected and her eyes were a bit large, greenish-gold, and slitted like a cat's.
