River in a Maze

The good thing about being inside the last wall was that it didn’t have an open ceiling, so nothing could peek down at us and shoot arrows.

The bad thing was that it was like a big maze in here!

Nobody had noticed when we stepped through the gates, but somehow we were transported into some big metal facility, like a big empty science lab or garage. The whole thing was sectioned off in long tunnels and open spaces. Even just eyeballing the original size of the wall from the outside would tell you that this place wouldn’t fit in there.

Each turn down a new hallway was just taking us further into this mess. It got so weird that we found a small river, leading into a room with four pillars holding up the ceiling. In the center of these pillars where the water collected, these big bubbles would float up into the roof. Like actually go into the ceiling, as if they could just phase right through it.

“Shrimp, what’s your map say about this place?” Indena asked.

-MAP UNAVAILABLE-

“It isn’t working right now. I don’t know why.”

Uncle was having the same trouble as me. Something was interfering with our maps. My motion tracker was working at least, but that didn’t do us much good when there weren’t any enemies around.

I mean, no enemies around was a good thing, but still.

We were really on our own, and if we kept walking around aimlessly, we’d get lost and tired.

I’d been keeping some breadcrumbs on the ground. Using stardust pieces, I left little glowing rods on the left side of each floor. That way we’d know what way we came from if we got turned around and saw the lights on our right. It was a trick I learned while caving in a video game.

“Oh, is that what you’ve been doing with those lights?” Emily said. “Not a bad idea.”

It wasn’t foolproof, considering it only told us where we’d been, but we got turned around often enough that it was useful.

Uncle had been carrying Marek this whole time. He periodically stopped to check on his condition, which hadn’t changed much.

“What’s even going on here?” Indena asked as we paused. “Why did we get stuck in a maze?”

“It’s a trick of the enemy,” Uncle said. “The wall's gate may have been a portal to someplace else, which we’ve clearly stumbled into.”

“Uncle, does that mean we're stuck here?” I asked.

Uncle explained that we had two possibilities. The first one was that the demons had forced us onto an alternate path to trap us here. And the second was that this is just how to progress past the wall, and there was a secret way to escape.

“If it's the latter, then there would be a path through, since they wouldn’t want their own forces to get stuck in here,” Uncle said.

Indena had something to chime in. “Back home, the roads were set up with all kinds of twists and turns. We knew where to walk because we lived there, but invaders would get stuck and lost.”

“Precisely. We're dealing with a very strategic foe,” Uncle said.

Emily spoke up next. “Alright, that’s reasonable. But we’ve been in a few choke points already, why not attack us?”

Thinking about how they haven’t attacked us yet makes me worry that there was no way out. It’s like being locked in a prison cell, why bother finishing them off if they can’t escape?

“We don’t know everything yet, but let's be ready incase they throw something at us,” Uncle said.

There were still a few paths that we hadn’t explored, so we continued searching for an exit.

~☆☆☆~

The humans were getting tired from all the walking. It had been at least a few hours since we first started wandering.

“How about a break?” Emily huffed, very tuckered out. “A ladies gotta' rest her legs, you know?”

“I’m fine.”  Indena said, actually looking a little tired.

“I noticed.” Emily rolled her eyes.

Marek was still out too.

I could have kept going, but this was becoming pretty monogamous.

Dang it! I mean monotonous!

Anyways, a rest might be nice. We managed to find ourselves back in another one of those rooms with the river and bubbles. This one didn't have stardust lights on the left side, so we hadn’t been here before.

I tested the water, finding it was safe to drink from. Indena and Emily went ahead, cupping their hands and taking a drink. Indena drank an especially large amount.

“You must have been super thirsty,” I commented.

“Yeah. Fire mages need more water than most people, since our body heat is so high.”

I didn’t know that. So does that mean other magic powers might have limitations like this My book on magic didn’t talk about it at all.

I was making a mental note of it in my head when my motion tracker was detecting movement…but based on the location, it was in the walls. Samael was hissing at those very same walls, so something was in them.

I pressed my ear up to the metal surface, listening as closely as I could to any sounds…

Scit scit scit…Scitter…scit scit

Sounded like rats. Big ugly rats.

Uncle took notice of what I was doing, and he tapped my shoulder.

“I hear rats in there.” I looked up at him.

He took a listen for himself, hearing the same noise.

“Those sound a lot bigger than rats.”

Rats can get pretty big. Could be Lizzarats. Those guys are huge and ugly.

Emily perked up at Uncle’s mention of rats. “Any chance we’re in the sewers?” she asked.

“Sewers?” Uncle raised his brow.

“Yeah. You mentioned before that these demons change the world around them, so why wouldn’t the sewers be affected by that too?”

“That would explain the river we saw earlier.” Indena commented. “But if we were in a sewers, wouldn’t that mean we were underground?”

If we were underground, that might explain why there really are no obvious exits. We’d have to go up, rather than go forward. But it's not like we saw any manholes or anything, so how were we going to go up?