by Thomas Green
In the next dome, the scenery changed, now medieval, with Lucielle displayed on a massive painting as the queen of Europe, that she factually was for the entirety of medieval history. By the paintings, here, the story started with the year 342 AD, the year she fell from grace from the Church.
The first on the wall in the hallway was a framed letter. Written in Latin, this was the letter the conclave of Vatican sent her as notification of her excommunication from the Church for the crime of murder.
The letter said that even if the victim was a fallen angel, Lucifer, murder was still a murder and she was thus stripped of all her titles, positions, excommunicated, and had a week to vacate the holy city.
Strange to read a letter about the murder of myself. I was hoping to see the reason for her murder of me, but that was most likely in the next section. Sure, Lucius said that he fell because of Vivian, but that could have meant anything.
How I now understood the vault, it was essentially her memoirs. Here, she stored everything she deemed precious from her past, and wrote down her history so she could herself remember it.
Lucielle would never admit it but being thousands of years old had to make it difficult to remember everything. And so, she chose the outer perimeter of her most secure location to write down her past, so she herself could remember who she was. And the order was a touch chaotic because she kept gradually expanding the vault without rearranging the stories.
A painting followed the letter, showing her leaving Rome, followed by wandering through Europe until she settled in today’s Great Britain.
The next painting was that of a battle, where the Briton tribes sieged Edinburg to retake it from the Romans. It was here that Lucielle first helped the Britons, summoning a swarm of flies that blinded the defending archers. A year of campaigns later, Lucielle propelled from the shadows the rebellion that pushed Romans out of British lands.
And then she moved back inland. After a century of warfare, Lucielle re-entered Rome, but this time, as a conqueror leading from the shadows the Germanic tribes.
Statues started complementing the paintings, displaying the kings who were her puppets as she battled everyone and everything for rule over Europe.
For the next thousand years, she suppressed one rebellion after another, fighting against all rulers and leaders who crossed her path, never quite getting the absolute control over Europe she wanted. We entered another wide hall.
This one, at the far end, bore a painting that displayed what became known as The Pact. Back in the fifteenth century, Europe had a vampire problem.
It came out that a high vampire caused the Black Death, and the relationship with vampires fell off a cliff. To kill them, the Church created werewolves, which led to a score of increasingly brutal wars, which together became known as the hundred-year war.
The unofficial but actual end of this war was The Pact, the moment when Lucielle negotiated a truce between werewolves and vampires, promising them peace, prosperity, and protection if both of their races swore her loyalty.
Now, over five hundred years later, I could attest to her living up to that promise. But there was one thing I didn’t know about The Pact.
On the painting, Lucielle stood behind an altar, wearing priestly robes. From the side came the vampire queen, Vivian, dressed in a black bridal gown, and from the other side, a giant werewolf in a white suit.
She married a werewolf?
I glowered at the painting, anger rising within me. There was absolutely nothing rational in the feeling. I knew Vivian was thousands of years old, I knew she was married multiple times, and I knew that all her marriages ended in the death of the husband, usually by her own hand.
But my hands still shook with rage.
As Katherine was explaining to the others what this meant, I stepped closer. The painting blurred, turning into mist, which poured down, forming two figures. The bride and the groom came to life, though he wore a plate armor with fingerless gauntlets, while she had a sleek leather armor and a dagger tucked in her belt.
Letters of light shone on the massive doorway that remained after the painting vanished, reading:
‘Gate of Fangs
Intruders who passed this gate: 316’
I glowered at Vivian. “Really? You married a werewolf?”
She grinned, looking exactly the same as when I saw her yesterday. “Lucifer, darling, now you’re someone I have never expected to see again.”
Okay, so they were also made as a copy of the real person. Perfect.
“Lucifer?” The werewolf asked, “you knew him?”
“Carnally, on daily basis,” Vivian said, still grinning, and stepped aside.
The werewolf’s cheeks flushed and he stepped toward me. “It appears as though I have my honor to defend.”
That went both ways. I took of my hat, throwing it at Katherine, saying, “Catch.”
Automatically, she caught the hat. “Wait,” she snapped. “We need to approach this calmly and with strategy.”
“Yeah,” I said, threw off my coat, and removed the sheath together with my sword from my back, “The strategy is that I’ll make shoes out of him and you all stay the hell out of my way.” I tossed away the sword, rolled up my sleeves and stepped toward the werewolf.
He shrugged, fingertips prolonging into vicious claws. He was about fifty, gray-haired, but matched my height and was wider in the shoulders. “I have always loved duels.”
How did Lucius say it? Put down a mark, throw my physical form at the edge of reality, and teleport on the mark using Void magic. I spread my magic around, putting three dozen marks all over the hall’s floor. Since I had nothing prepared, I went with numbers one to thirty six.
The werewolf broke into a run, approaching mark twenty-four. I focused my mind, threw myself against the boundary of this reality, and used the Void teleport. Within an instant, I stood on mark twenty-four.
With a smirk, I punched at his chest. My fist hit his breastplate with a thunderous boom. The plate bent in, and he flew away as if hit by a train. He smashed into the wall on the other side.
“Come on,” I shouted, “Weren’t you going to defend your honor?”
The werewolf released a deafening roar. His body enlarged, armor popping off. In a flash, he grew into twelve feet of height, body a mixture of a man and a wolf.
Everyone else stood in place, staring at me, petrified. Perfect. The werewolf was close to mark eleven, so I focused and in a split second, I teleported there.
This time, he reacted faster, throwing a wide slash of his claws at me. I ducked under the strike with a spin, launching a low kick.
My kick hit his knee, which exploded into a spray of blood and bones, the impact not even slowing me down. This werewolf didn’t have strong enough shields to fight me.
I stepped in and punched him in the chest again. He flew away like a rag doll, crashing into the wall, right above mark four. Instantly, I soulstepped to that mark, and punched him again. I released a barrage of punches with both hands. Like a machinegun, my fists landed on him.
Two seconds later, I realized I was punching a wall, his torso smashed into blood paste that splattered all around. I turned glaring at Vivian. “Really? You married this werewolf?”
“It wasn’t his fault you were dead.” She smiled seductively. “But now that you’re here, we can catch up.” She stepped to me.
A smile crept onto my face as I let her approach. She was every bit as alluring as in reality and for a moment, my mind slipped to the time we met. It hasn’t even been a day and I missed her already.
Vivian stepped right to me, raising her arms to wrap them around my neck, rising for a kiss. Oh, I wanted to kiss her.
But I also noticed the dagger from her belt vanished.
I placed my hand on her side, as if to hug her, and fuelled aether into my palm, making it spin. That tore out a chunk from her. As her face twisted with pain and rage, I made the aether collapse, creating a miniature black hole.
> Screaming, she got sucked inside, compressed into a mere point within a second. The werewolf corpse turned into mist, the letters on the gate darkened, and the wings opened.
I absorbed the aether from the tiny black hole back into myself. As if I hadn’t wasted enough strength. I glanced at the opening gate, seeing a low-ceilinged corridor beyond.
“Let’s go,” I said and stepped forward. Since I didn’t hear any steps behind me, I turned. Everyone stood in place, frozen, staring at me with wide eyes.
Right, they weren’t supposed to see me fight like that. The reason I kept a tight seal on my strength, carefully measuring how much power to use at all times, was partly to minimize collateral damage, partly to conserve strength, but mostly not to terrify the soul out of the people around me.
But as I got angry, I forgot about all that. I smiled awkwardly. “Look, I’m only trying to get us to the vault. I promise I won’t harm any of you.”
Katherine gulped, and said, “That’s rather difficult to believe now.”
Suddenly, the cross pressing against my chest felt unpleasantly cold. Yeah, this wasn’t very Christian of me. Because I didn’t even kill the werewolf out of necessity. I wanted to kill him for personal reasons. Not Christian of me at all. “I promise I’ll control myself better from now on,” I said apologetically and meant it, lowering my gaze toward the ground.
“I’ll hold you up to that,” Katherine said, and stepped toward me. The others followed, carefully, Zhang helping Amaranta who was pale as death.
“Thought you said you couldn’t teleport in here,” Joseph mentioned when passing me by.
“I can’t teleport others,” I said, and walked through the gate, entering a crossing that led into four other hallways. The gate slammed shut behind us and the ambient light went dark, plunging us into absolute darkness.
A deep, blood-freezing roar thundered through the corridors. That sounded like the Minotaur.
Lucas 13
WITH HASTE, we all drew our phones and turned on the torches. In the five columns of white light, we studied the four exits. In the middle of them, right next to the wall, stood a pedestal with a large ball of red yarn on top.
“The yarn is a trap, isn’t it?” Amaranta asked.
Everyone nodded. Another blood-freezing roar echoed through the tunnels, louder, closer.
“We should go through the leftmost exit,” Joseph said.
I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Statistically speaking, when given an uninformed choice, people tend to choose the side that matches their main hand orientation. Since the population is mainly right-handed, most people would choose one of the two right exits. And this maze’s creator has struck me as someone who would know that and put something exceptionally nasty into those tunnels.”
Fair enough. I headed to the leftmost exist, the others following. The pathway led on and on, splitting into hundreds other paths. I always turned left when I could.
About five minutes later, another roar thundered through the hallways, this time sounding like it was coming from right behind us. I steeled my muscles, strengthening myself. With my head, I motioned the others to go past me.
Stomping sounded from the tunnel behind us. With an earthquake on his hoofs, the minotaur ran into the tunnel. He was ten feet tall, had the traditional bull head atop the body of a man, and held a single-bladed war axe. Even in the torch light, I could see the perfect six-pack on his stomach, and the bulging biceps.
I fuelled aether into my arm. An attempt to form a sphere outside my body failed, so we were once again fighting under no external magic rules. I lowered my stance so the hat would cover my eyes. With a victorious roar, the Minotaur charged.
I waited for him to come closer. The moment he raised his axe, I bolted toward him, and punched at his chest. My first burrowed into his ribcage, crushing the bones and organs, sending him flying back into the corridor, crashing into the far wall.
With a huff, the Minotaur instantly leapt to his feet, his body restoring in the process, and charged again.
It didn’t feel like I caused any damage to him at all. Okay. I ran toward him. He lowered his head to ram me with the horns. With full strength, I jumped, using the wall for support to hit him with a spinning kick. His head exploded like a rotten apple crushed by a hammer. His body jerked backward, falling on his back.
Without stopping for a second, the Minotaur leapt to his feet, charging before his head reformed, recreated from nothing atop his shoulders.
I stepped in, punched his chest quickly to stop his momentum but not strong enough to make him fly away. I approached, grabbed his shoulders, and rammed my knee into his chest on full strength. He flew away, both shoulders tearing from the sockets, remaining in my hands.
Even before he hit the wall, the arms turned to dust in my hands, and his body started reforming at a lightning speed. Okay, I had no acceptable way to kill him. “We have to run,” I shouted, spun, and did as I said.
The others sprinted into the corridor, Katherine having to carry Amaranta.
“I’ll take her,” I shouted, grabbed Amaranta from Katherine’s arms, and threw her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. The thunderous roar sounded from behind us, followed with stomping of hoofs.
As we ran, I pushed my aether into Amaranta. She didn’t protest. Much as I didn’t want to do that, I needed her functional enough to walk.
Because the only other option was me using one of the forbidden techniques I had, the one I named for Lillith the Touch of Eternity. If I injected my aether into the minotaur the right way, he would be unable to reform, but I was not doing that in front of Katherine.
Guilt clenched my insides. I should not have ever written that technique down, much less for my daughter. If I didn’t return from this, then she would see that technique in the book, and an eleven year old girl did not need to know how to permanently cripple or kill any being that crossed her path.
We passed through a hallway and re-entered the room with the yarn. Great. So, we verified the maze was circular and the exit wasn’t on an edge.
Joseph led the way, surprisingly quick on his feet, and grabbed the yarn before entering the second hallway from the left. He dropped the yarn’s loose end and unrolled it as he dashed. I ran into the hallway last, seeing the minotaur breaking into the room, almost on us.
I pushed a lot more power into Amaranta, whirled, and tossed her ahead. She spun midair, landing on her feet. The minotaur was almost to me. I shifted my weight, jumped, and kicked him in the head. This time, it didn’t splatter, only caving in, him flying away from me.
I was running out of strength and we were only four gates in. In spite of how I liked to present myself, my power wasn’t endless, and this heist would meet a very unfortunate end if I ran out.
Followed by the minotaur, Joseph led us through the corridors. A dozen turning later, we ran into a wide hall.
In the middle stood a pyramid that missed its apex. Dozens of rail-like lines covered the structure, complemented with symbols. At the corners were pieces of the apex, one in each, attached to pyramid’s walls. Sideways from the pyramid stood an obvious control panel covered with hieroglyphs. And above the pyramid shone:
Gate of Mind
Intruders who passed this gate: 297’
Well, this was a puzzle if I had ever seen one. The idea behind this trial became clear – solve the puzzle while fending off the immortal minotaur.
“Joseph, solve that,” I shouted and threw my phone in his direction. They could use all light they could get while I stopped by the exit from which the minotaur would come. I fuelled aether into my eyes, making the world’s colors flip to my vision.
I couldn’t kill the minotaur, so I had to use the minimum amount of strength to get him off me every time he came. Too bad I was never good at conserving my strength.
Amaranta came to my side, drew the compact spear from behind her belt, and swung her arm, letting it form into a full spear from the b
aton. “This will be easier with two of us.”
Until she gassed herself out and needed me to fuel power into her. “You should help the others with the puzzle.”
“When it comes to puzzles, I’m dumb as a bag of rocks.”
I focused on the approaching Minotaur. We fended off the first charge with ease. Too bad I didn’t bring a hammer. My sword, Amaranta’s spear and Katherine’s sword were all cute but the most damaging attack one could use against a regenerating opponent was a strong hit with something blunt.
Though even after the punch, he almost instantly regenerated and was back at us a few seconds later. To conserve my energy, I used only minimalistic moves, the lowest amount of strength necessary. Amaranta did the same, mostly distracting the minotaur with the spear to help me land what would normally be the killing blows.
During the free moments, I watched how Joseph and Zhang struggled with the puzzle. The concept was deceptively simple – on the control panel were buttons, which made the rails attached to the pyramid change their location or angle or both.
Next to these buttons were four colored ones, each of which made one of the pieces of the apex move on the rail as far as it could. The obvious goal was to get all four pieces to the top.
And Joseph didn’t do bad, quickly getting the four apex pieces to somewhere around the pyramid’s middle.
But then he pressed a button to rotate some of the rails, among which was one that held an apex piece. The control panel went dark, and the pyramid slowly reset to the default position with the four pieces at the base. Awesome. By this point, I was punching away the minotaur for the fiftieth time and started seriously feeling the exhaustion.
Not just the physical one, that one had been with me since the digging, but also the mental exhaustion. And that one was trouble because without magic, I was a regular human and the Minotaur was far from weak.
After a moment of arguing, Joseph and Zhang started again, making the rails rotate before having the apex pieces move. By the time I reached my two-hundredth minotaur kill, they made it to three quarters of the pyramid.
