by John Bierce
Talia snickered at that.
One of the mages touched an amulet to the dome shaped shield over the stairwell down, and an oval door opened in the shield.
Godrick went first, and had to duck through, but the rest of them passed through just fine.
Hugh was last, and he could feel a crackle behind him as the barrier shut.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Twists and Turns
Hugh had never seen the second floor of the labyrinth before, though he’d been far below it. He’d technically been on the second floor too, but he’d been unconscious then. It looked remarkably different from the first— the walls were still stone, but instead of the square granite tunnels of the first floor, limestone walls arched overhead. It was tall enough that Godrick couldn’t reach the ceiling even with his hammer in the center, but he’d have to crouch if he wanted to move closer to the sides.
Hugh and Talia, as the shortest members of the party, had considerably more room to maneuver in the tunnels of the second floor.
Unlike the other floors they’d seen, there was light down here that emanated faintly from this floor’s spellforms. It was dim enough that they’d need to resummon light cantrips to read by, but they could maneuver down here well enough without them.
The spellforms on the walls weren’t carved in stone. Instead, finger-thick streams of water flowed, twisted, and interconnected across the curving arch of the tunnels, in a constantly shifting, gravity defying web of spellforms.
The whole floor echoed with the gentle sound of water.
“It’s beautiful,” Hugh said.
The others nodded.
“Doesn’t make it less dangerous, though,” Sabae said. “You’ve read about this floor. Stay alert.”
The second floor had a number of peculiarities all its own. The passages shifted and changed far more rapidly than any other floor, and the main stairs down were never found in any consistent location.
That didn’t mean the floor was impossible to navigate, though— in many ways, navigating it was a fairly direct process. The water in the spellforms tended to flow away from the exit, so you could find it without too much difficulty, so long as you stayed alert.
The dangers of the second floor were numerous, however. The monsters that dwelled in the thicker aether down here were far more numerous, powerful, and aggressive than their upstairs neighbors. The traps down here were much more likely to maim or even kill, and there were other, unique hazards to the floor.
The liquid spellforms frequently varied in width and volume, but sometimes they would begin to massively expand. When that happened, you had only minutes or seconds before a flood of water would pour through the tunnels, dashing you against walls, dazing you, and usually separating you from your party. Drownings were rare, given how short-lived the floods were, but they were hardly unknown.
Other times, the spellforms would begin to peel away from the walls, forming liquid webs of spellforms stretching across the corridors. They didn’t pose any threat to life or limb, and would reform when you passed through them, leaving you just a little wetter, but the monsters on this floor seemed to be able to sense when you did so, so it was best not to walk through them.
There were also deep pools of water in many of the intersections of the tunnels, as well as even larger caverns with pools approaching the sizes of lakes. Dangerous creatures often dwelled within them, so apprentices were advised to stay away, but many other explorers and mages specifically sought them out— this floor was the first where items of real value started to be regularly found.
Rare, aether-sensitive freshwater corals glowed in the depths of the pools. Exotic fish found nowhere else lurked in the depths, and mysterious objects were often found half-buried in sand at lake bottoms.
Of course, now Hugh knew that all the residents of this floor were just inhabitants of other worlds that had slipped into the labyrinth when it overlapped their world, permanently or temporarily.
Most of the dangers of the floor could be handled easily enough if you stayed alert, but that was the trickiest part of the floor— something about it calmed and soothed you. It was easy to relax, to forget your fears. It was a subtle danger, by all accounts— it’s not easy to fear peace.
On this floor, however, you needed to, because if you were relaxed here, you weren’t nearly alert enough.
They found the current in the spellforms easy enough, following them down the tunnels. Within a few twists and turns, Sabae had lost all track of which direction they were going, but she just focused on following the current upstream.
The light was dim enough that she was relying on her water affinity sense as much as her vision to tell which way the current was moving. Hugh, oddly, seemed to be moving much more confidently in the dim light than the rest of them— perhaps he was using some sort of cantrip to help him see in the dim light?
Godrick’s hammer definitely gave them a major tactical advantage— she was still in shock at how easily it had let them pass through the first floor— but the dead silence it had created for them had been more than a little creepy. Here, at least, the sound of water was always present.
It reminded her a little of the waves in the harbor at Ras Andis. Most children had preferred playing there at low tide, when the ships sat on the sand at the bottom of the cove, but Sabae had always preferred high tide, when the water was several building heights higher, lapping at the lowest tier of the city.
Sabae saw a flicker of color out of the corner of her eye and shook her head. She’d known about the soporific effect of the floor, and it had still managed to mess with her head.
The flash of color had vanished, but several more were approaching along the walls. As they drew closer, Sabae saw that they were tiny brilliant red and yellow fish swimming through the strands of water that made up the spellform.
“Look at that,” Sabae whispered.
The others seemed to wake up from a daze when she spoke, and she realized that they’d fallen prey to the floor as well. She felt a brief flash of irritation, but dismissed it. She hadn’t done any better, and lecturing them wouldn’t help.
“There wasn’t anything about them in the guides,” Talia said.
“They’re probably new to the labyrinth,” Hugh said. “They probably slipped in from some other world, somehow managed to survive here.”
“Where do they find food in the spellforms, do yeh think?” Godrick asked, bending down to get a closer look at the fish as they passed.
“They probably use the spellforms to move from pool to pool down here,” Sabae said.
“There’s a lot more fish coming,” Hugh said nervously, looking down the tunnel “I don’t think that’s a good sign.”
A lot more was a gross understatement. The spellforms were flooded with the tiny fish— there were so many they’d begun falling out of the strands of water, flopping on the floor.
“If we get eaten by a school of minnows, I’m never talking to any of you again,” Talia said, pulling a pair of daggers. One was Talia’s familiar magic dagger, but the other looked suspiciously like it was carved out of bone.
“Armor up, Godrick,” Sabae said, and began spinning up her own armor. She almost drew on the water around her to do so— water armor had proven more mana intensive and less mobile in most situations than wind armor, but it was also significantly harder to penetrate.
Considering they were under potential threat from fish, however, it might not be the best idea to surround herself with their element.
Sabae had her wind armor most of the way spun up when the leading edge of the school reached them, but to her great relief, they simply flowed on past the apprentices. She began to let her wind armor dissipate.
Godrick, who had only covered his torso and one arm with his stone armor, let out a sigh of relief. “I guess that was…”
He froze, sniffing the air, then his stone armor rapidly resumed assembling itself. “Something’s chasing them,” he hissed. “Someth
ing foul.”
A few seconds later, Sabae caught the sound of something striking stone. She cursed, and spun her wind armor back up to full speed, readying her buckler on her arm.
The creature came into sight around the corner a moment later.
It was a bird, but it was unlike any bird she’d ever seen before. It towered over them, its head nearly scraping the ceiling in the center of the hallway. Its beak was longer than her leg, and it looked like it was meant to tear and shred at meat. The bird’s wings were vestigial things that fluttered close to its body. Its talons looked sharper than swords, and Sabae seriously doubted her armor’s ability to fend them off.
The bird was dragging its beak along the wall, scooping up the fish by the dozen, and spilling even more on the floor, where its talons smashed and shredded many of them.
The stench hit Sabae a moment later. The bird reeked of rotten meat, blood, and urine, even through her wind armor. She could hear Hugh gagging behind her.
None of that was the worst part of the bird, however. The worst part were the feathers.
They didn’t hold to a single color— they shifted between colors constantly. The colors were each and every one vile, however— a yellow that reminded her of pus, a blue that made her vision waver and feel like a migraine was coming on, and a mottled orange that somehow tasted of rot to her eyes. The colors didn’t shift smoothly, either— they jerked and twisted, tore viciously into one another, and flickered in and out in eye-aching patterns. The color of bruises was devoured by a grey that made her insides itch somehow, and Sabae had to look to the side before she vomited.
It was a little better when she could only see it through her peripheral vision, but it still hurt to look at.
Abruptly, the thing’s smell seemed to roll away from her, and she breathed in a sigh of relief and sent a nod of thanks in Godrick’s direction.
That motion, unfortunately, finally drew the bird’s attention towards them. Its beady black eyes glittered in the low light as it cocked its head first one way then the other to get a better look at him.
Then, with a vicious, ear splitting shriek, the bird charged them.
Talia blasted bolts of dreamfire at the creature, but as soon as the purple-green flames approached it, the hideous colors of its feathers seemed to reach out into the flames and disrupt them. The colors of the feathers dimmed for a moment, but quickly returned to full strength.
Hugh’s attack had a bit more effect— one of his warded slingstones slammed into the bird’s hip, detonating with a sharp crack. The creature stumbled, and a splatter of blood and feathers went flying, but the bird didn’t stop.
“Aim at its feet; I’m going in high!” Sabae shouted. She detonated her wind armor around her feet, sending her blasting towards the creature’s head.
It didn’t even hesitate before trying to impale her with its beak in midair, but Sabae twisted her body and windjumped using one arm, sending her just out of the way of the strike, and slamming her shield against the bird’s head.
Before the shield had even struck, Sabae was already flooding it with mana.
She’d spent months training to use the shield properly— a process that had involved dislocating her shoulder and breaking her wrist more than once during training before she figured out how to control her body and her wind armor to keep the impact and the sudden halt from injuring her. The medical wing had not been pleased about her repeated visits.
The bird, however, was definitely not prepared for this. It might massively outweigh and outmuscle any of them, save for maybe Godrick in his armor, but the full force of of Sabae being propelled by a windjump was more than the bird was prepared to handle.
The instant the shield struck, it glued itself to the head and beak of the bird, and the trajectory of Sabae’s flight just yanked the bird over. One of Hugh’s slingstones detonating at its feet sent it toppling completely over, and it hit the ground with a thunderous crash.
Sabae’s windshield collapsed on hitting the ground, and she quickly stopped channeling mana into the shield as she pulled it from the bird and rolled away. She immediately began spinning her wind armor back up, hoping she could get it up fast enough.
The bird had started climbing back to its feet when Godrick’s sledgehammer slammed into its side, sending it sprawling. The bird let loose a pained, ear-splitting screech.
The stone mage, completely armored in stone and looking like someone had brought a statue of a suit of armor to life, reared back, bashing the creature a second, then a third time.
When he reared back to hit it a fourth time, the creature twisted onto its back faster than Sabae would have thought possible. The talons of one foot wrapped around the handle of the sledgehammer, stopping it in mid-swing. The creature’s other foot shot out almost faster than Sabae could see, slamming into Godrick’s armored chest.
Sabae could see the stone actually crack, and Godrick went flying back towards Hugh and Talia. Sabae cried out, thinking that her friends were about to be crushed, but Hugh and Talia fell upwards against the ceiling, crashing into the flowing spellforms above them and sticking there.
Part of her wanted to laugh at how many situations Hugh solved with levitation cantrips, but most of her was feeling utterly terrified as her cry drew the bird’s attention, and as she realized she could smell the creature again.
She’d mostly spun her armor back up, and she detonated it around one leg to send her skidding along the floor away from the bird, just in time to dodge its beak, which fractured the limestone floor when it struck.
The bird recovered faster than she thought possible, and lunged for her again. She just barely dodged by blasting herself backward across the floor.
Just when it looked to be ready to lunge again, the bird froze in place and screamed— louder than it ever had before, enough that Sabae thought her eardrums were about to burst. It cut off as soon as it had started, however, and the stench of burning meat poured off the creature.
It collapsed to the ground, and Talia rolled off its back, holding a dagger that was burning almost too brightly to look at. Spellforms on her gloves and jacket were glowing brightly as well, and Sabae could see a hazy heat shield emanating from them, protecting Talia from the dagger.
The back of the bird was charred to a crisp where Talia had dropped from the ceiling and stabbed it.
Talia, apparently deciding she wanted to be sure it was dead, stabbed it again. This time, a blast of flame tore out of the dagger, ripping a wing and part of the torso off the bird.
Sabae took a shuddering breath and stared at Talia.
“Dragonbone dagger,” Talia said cheerfully. “Works even better than expected.”
Godrick, thankfully, was only bruised and winded— the outer layer of his armor was apparently designed to break under strong enough blows, which apparently provided better protection than just making the whole thing as sturdy as possible.
Talia tried to act confident and relaxed, but she was still on edge from the battle. The bird’s feathers had been packed with dream mana, and it had shrugged off her dreamfire with terrifying ease. She was insanely lucky that her dragonbone dagger had been so effective, and she knew it.
The terrorbird— Godrick had claimed naming rights, since he’d been the only one injured, however lightly— had been far more dangerous than anything they should have encountered on this floor. It had been at least as dangerous as the massive crab they’d battled in the depths of the labyrinth last year, and even with how much more powerful they were now, it had been a close call.
It wasn’t so much fear of the terrorbird that had gotten under her skin— though you’d have to be a fool not to respect that thing— but the helplessness she’d felt for a moment when her dreamfire failed. She was terrified that she wouldn’t be able to help her friends.
She’d felt that fear before, of course— as wonderfully effective as dreamfire was, there were creatures that could withstand it and defenses mages could use against it— but
it never got any easier.
Bonefire was even more destructive in many ways, but using it in cramped tunnels with her friends around was an awful idea.
The dragonbone dagger, though, had worked beyond her wildest expectations. It had cooked the terrorbird from the inside out— she probably hadn’t even needed to shed the excess heat inside of it, she doubted it had even survived the first strike.
Though she still would have had to shed that heat somehow. It would linger for ages before it dispersed otherwise— that was one of the two big downsides of using her abilities on dragonbone.
Well, that and the fact that she could only safely use it with clothing enchanted to protect herself from the heat.
It took them almost an hour to make it to the center of the maze. They were attacked three more times after the terrorbird— once by a swarm of flying carnivorous fish that Sabae knocked out of the air with a gust strike, and that Talia then slaughtered with a rain of dreamfire; once by a slow-moving armored creature that they hadn’t even gotten a good look at before Talia turned it to seashells with dreamfire, and once by some sort of vicious lizard-wolf whose back Godrick had broken with his hammer.
Hugh also detected and disarmed a half-dozen traps, though he gave most of the credit for detecting them to his spellbook.
They also survived a couple of the flash floods common to this floor— they caught one with enough forewarning to escape into another hallway, while Sabae managed to part the second around her, sheltering the others behind her until it passed.
Talia had to admit, it had been a really impressive sight.
Standing with the other mages at the exit to the third floor was a familiar figure— Artur himself. The big mage wrapped each of them in bear hugs in turn when he saw them— Talia was pretty sure she’d come close to suffocating from her hug.
“Ah’m glad yeh made it fine,” Artur said. “Yeh’re the fifth group ta get here, and ah’ve heard some real horror stories from ‘em. Somethin’s got the labyrinth all good and riled up today.”
