by Alex Knight
She came down hard on the far side, health down to eighty-seven percent, but still very much alive.
The punishers skidded to a stop on the far side of the pit and howled in anger.
“I had a feeling this one was clever,” Odditor cooed as Zelda rose and dusted herself off.
“Close one,” she said, but she was smiling. She looked directly into the camera. “Come on, Odditor. I expected a little more originality from your labyrinth. Is this all it’s got?”
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Turn right, and right again. Yep, there it is,” Thorne said, making sure Zelda always took the right-most passages as she ran through the labyrinth. Kaiden was pretty sure he’d lost track. Easy enough to do when grachnid ambushes and lethal traps were popping up every other minute.
The grachnid punishers were several turns back now and their angry cries were nothing but faint screeches in the distance.
“We’re bound for a new trap any moment now,” Zelda said, breathing heavy from the non-stop running.
“No burrows ahead,” Titus confirmed.
“And I don’t see any pressure plates,” Kaiden added. Zelda had assigned them each a role in helping her keep a watch ahead. There was too much for one person to focus on. Odditor had let them use comms to communicate, so they were going to make the most of it.
Zelda tore around another corner, then paused as the whole labyrinth shook.
Odditor let out a maniacal peal of laughter.
“Ooh, this is always one of the best parts. You know what’s coming, don’t, don’t you, stream?”
The labyrinth continued to shake and then, all at once, it was moving. All of it. The walls around Zelda slid into the ground, hissing and venting great plumes of steam and dust.
“Titus!” Zelda said as the tremors grew more severe and she fought to stay upright. “Mark the time!”
“Got it,” he said. “Just about ten minutes since you started.”
“Thank you,” Zelda said. Kaiden could tell she was distracted. Her eyes were fixed on the wall closest to her. But no, not on it; over it. It sank all the way into the ground, as did the others, and for one brief moment, the entirety of the labyrinth was one flat plane. At its center, standing tall and unchanged, was the bright red flag Zelda needed in order to win. She took two quick steps toward it, unsure at first, then broke into a full sprint.
In the distance, Kaiden could see several grachnids and other mobs which must have been roaming the corridors of the maze. He made a mental note of that. Good to know they’re not just triggered as traps but sometimes roam freely. The mobs had spotted Zelda and were charging toward her, including the grachnid punishers she’d left behind several turns ago. They were some distance away, though, and didn’t make it far before new walls rose from the ground.
Zelda ran faster, sprinting straight toward the flag, but there were still two hundred paces between her and it – and the new walls were coming up fast.
“Damn it!” Zelda cursed as she tried to cut across one more quickly-forming corridor but didn’t make it in time. The walls in front and behind her were too tall. She was trapped, back in another corridor.
The labyrinth stopped shaking as the last few walls settled into place, and then silence descended as the newly configured maze became inanimate once more.
“I think our ‘always turn right’ plan just got scrapped,” Thorne said through comms.
Zelda nodded at that but stood unmoving, still facing the direction in which she’d last seen the flag.
“Left, right, right, left, right. I think,” Zelda said, more to herself than anyone else.
“Come again?” Thorne asked.
“She counted the turns,” Kaiden said as the realization struck him. “While the walls were rising.”
“I tried,” Zelda confirmed. “Not sure how reliable it was, though.”
Thorne shrugged.
“As official navigator, I say go with it.”
Zelda took off at a sprint toward the next turn. After Zelda took it, she skidded to a stop.
“That’s going to make things a bit more difficult,” she said, then cursed under her breath.
The corridor in front of her was not a usual one. It was split. One half of it continued as normal, stretching into the distance before running into an intersection. The other half, though, had sunk into the ground. The path sloped downward until it disappeared in a cave.
“Choices, choices,” Odditor said. “But simply left and right gets so dreadfully dull. How about up and down?”
“Or backwards,” Kaiden added. “Hey, technically it’s an option!” he said as Titus gave him a look.
“I don’t look the like of that thing,” Thorne said, frowning at the camera focused on the deep darkness of the cave.
“Exactly why I’m choosing it,” Zelda said and jogged forward. “It looks intimidating, which makes me think it’s the route I’m not supposed to take. Unless this is reverse-reverse psychology, in which case I guess I’m getting outsmarted by a labyrinth.”
“Into the cave?” Kaiden looked at the others. “Seems risky.”
“What part of this whole thing isn’t?” Thorne asked.
Well, she has a point there.
The darkness of the cave swallowed Zelda up and for a few moments Odditor’s monitor showed nothing but blackness.
“This is not, uh, not a technical problem,” Odditor relayed to his stream. “This darkness is intentional. After all, it’s in the dark that we, that we learn to face our greatest fears. Or just get eaten by them.” As he spoke, something moved in the dark. A light, faint and small. It came to life with a soft, warm glow. Daylight, it almost looked like. Several long, curved stalagmites and stalactites were visible just at the edge of it.
Zelda stood silhouetted by the light as it pulsated and grew. No doubt in the deep dark of the cave it was a welcoming sight.
“Yeah, that’s bait,” Zelda said and turned away from it. “What else is down here?”
She flicked her shield on and its soft blue light splashed out through the dark, just enough to illuminate the area immediately around her. The glow reflected off of shiny rocks and puddles of still water. In other places it bounced from the slick surface of stalagmites and stalactites.
The entrance behind Zelda groaned, then slid shut, a wall rising to block it off.
“Well, that’s comforting. Any ideas?” she asked, frowning at her blocked retreat, then reluctantly moving deeper into the cave.
“Probably don’t go toward that pulsating light?” Kaiden said, eyes still glued to whatever it was.
“Yup, figured that one,” Zelda said. And then something moved above her.
It was small and quick, fluttering across the ceiling, visible as nothing more than a flicker of movement. Zelda snapped up toward it, hammer-gun raised.
Kaiden’s visor tried to give a readout on it but whatever it was disappeared too quickly.
“That’s not creepy at all,” Zelda whispered, but the flying creature was gone.
Right up until it wasn’t.
It returned, flapping and fluttering, and dived down right at her face. Something slashed out from it and Zelda’s health bar dropped by a percent – down to eighty-six.
“Ah!” she shouted in surprise, then pulled the trigger on an Improved Scatter Shot.
The attack blasted upwards and the cave was lit, if only momentarily, with a blinding light. In that moment, everything around her was visible.
The flying thing was some sort of bat or bird or... winged nightmare. It was all fur and claws and wings, thrown together at seemingly random angles and with no apparent up or down, face or tail.
And it wasn’t alone.
In that frozen heartbeat, where everything was alight, the camera drone revealed the entire ceiling to be covered in the creatures. They turned toward the light and screeched as one, fangs as long as one of Zelda’s fingers arcing outward. The moment passed and darkness returned.
The brief flash of light had been enough for Kaiden’s visor, though. It’d captured a good look at the creatures and was reading out their details.
Abyssal Weevile
Level: 15
“Visor just spotted them,” Kaiden reported, reading the data as fast as he could. “Says they’re called ‘abyssal weeviles.’ All around level fifteen.”
“That’s not so bad,” Titus said.
“Except there’s a couple hundred of them up there.” Zelda raised her shield.
“Quick facts,” Kaiden said, continuing to read from his visor. “Abyssal weeviles live only in the darkest caves in the universe and are fiercely photophobic.”
“Well, they’re on camera already…” Titus looked perplexed.
“Photo as in light,” Zelda said, then held her shield higher above her head.
“Like photosynthesis,” Kaiden added.
“This’ll do it, right?” Zelda looked at her shield as she backed further into the cave. She was breathing hard and it was easy to see she was a bit shaken.
“I think so,” Kaiden confirmed.
“Okay. Then let’s figure out where I’m headed next—”
A screech tore through the cave. Hundreds of others followed, and all at once the darkness came alive with flapping wings, slashing claws and darting shapes. Zelda covered her head, ducking and running forward as hundreds of weeviles swarmed her. Her health dropped under a constant barrage of slicing blows and she made it several paces before running smack into a wall. Her health took another blow from that and she stumbled to one side, then fell.
“I’m afraid the caves around here are, well, a bit infested,” Odditor said with an all too happy-sounding laugh.
Zelda held her shield above her, but she was a blast warden and not meant to tank attacks. The weeviles swarmed her all the more, several landing on her and sinking teeth into her armor.
“Gah!” she shouted, swatting at them to no avail. Her health was dropping worryingly quickly now. Down to seventy-six percent, then seventy-five, seventy-four.
“Enough! How’s this for light?” Zelda screamed, then raised her hammer-gun and fired an Improved Warden’s Bolt.
Abyssal Weevile assisted kill – 300 EXP gained!
Abyssal Weevile assisted kill – 300 EXP gained!
Abyssal Weevile assisted kill – 300 EXP gained!
Abyssal Weevile assisted kill – 300 EXP gained!
The cave lit up with Improved Warden Bolt’s crackling electricity and the weeviles died en masse as the attack tore through their swarm, shocking one after the other as it jumped from target to target.
Abyssal Weevile assisted kill – 300 EXP gained!
Abyssal Weevile assisted kill – 300 EXP gained!
Abyssal Weevile assisted kill – 300 EXP gained!
Abyssal Weevile assisted kill – 300 EXP gained!
There were still too many weeviles, though. As soon as the light faded from the attack they were back, swarming and biting.
Zelda fired an Improved Burst Arrow, then another. With each blast of light, the weeviles screeched and died, but the light from the attacks never lasted long. As soon as it was gone the swarm returned, seemingly endless in number.
“They are terribly determined little creatures. They just... love biting so much.” Odditor seemed positively gleeful watching the chaos unfold. Zelda, on the other hand, looked to have had enough. She’d been sprinting along the cave wall, following it away from the weeviles, though they pursued her every step.
“Toward the light, maybe?” Kaiden said, trying to figure out what to do next.
“That’s the trap,” Zelda grunted through the screeching weeviles. “The labyrinth wants me to run into whatever it is.” And sure enough, as Kaiden looked back to the pulsating light he saw the stalagmites and stalactites around it move ever so slightly.
Those aren’t rocks. Those are teeth! he realized with no lack of horror.
Meanwhile, Zelda curled up in a corner, her miniscule shield held in front of her. Weeviles swarmed around its edges, biting and clawing. Her health was down to sixty-six percent now.
“We need a plan!” Kaiden shouted. Shit. Think, think!
“I… I…” Titus cursed. “I don’t know.”
“I need a constant source of light,” Zelda grunted.
“Flame?” Thorne said. “Improved Kinetic Grenade could make some, but it’d need to catch on something to burn.”
“It’s worth a try. Go for it!” Kaiden said and Zelda did.
She lobbed the grenade up into the swarm of weeviles. They dodged around it – right up until it detonated against the ceiling. The cave blossomed in an explosion of flame as the grenade went off. The weeviles fled again, but this time hesitated in returning.
Zelda peeked out from beneath her shield to find the weeviles were no longer swarming her. And then Kaiden realized why.
A pure, bright beam of light was shining down from above. Sunlight! The grenade had damaged the ceiling! Zelda saw it too and hurried into the beacon of safety. The weeviles swarmed just outside of its reach, but hissed and fled whenever their wings brushed the light.
“That’s my way out of here,” Zelda said, then wasted no time in firing into the ceiling again, then again. With each attack, dirt and debris rained down, and with it, more daylight. The hissing of the weeviles reached a fever pitch as Zelda fired a final shot and an entire section of the ceiling came down.
Zelda threw herself to the side at the last moment, narrowly avoiding the falling debris. Many of the weeviles did not and were crushed. Those that avoided the debris were left smoking and sizzling as pure sunlight beamed into the cave. What remained of the swarm dissipated, screeching as they frantically flapped into whatever remaining shadows they could find in the cave.
“Well. Well, now, that’s just...” Odditor seemed at a loss. “Boo,” he finally pouted.
“Get out of there,” Kaiden said, all too relieved to see Zelda by the light of day once again.
“Working on it,” she said, then began to climb the piled up debris from the cave-in. In no time she was back at ground level, emerging in another corridor.
“All that just to be back where we started,” Kaiden said. “Or back in another corridor, which isn’t much better.”
“Grachnid burrow, on your right!” Titus shouted suddenly.
Zelda spun, spotted it, and fired an Improved Warden’s Bolt into it before its occupants could emerge.
Grachnid assisted kill – 1,000 EXP gained!
Grachnid assisted kill – 1,000 EXP gained!
“Good catch,” Zelda said through comms and Kaiden gave the big man a slap on the back. And then the labyrinth started shaking again.
“Mark time,” Zelda said as she fought to keep her balance.
“Twenty minutes since you started,” Titus reported.
Zelda nodded at that.
“So, the labyrinth reconfigures every ten minutes.”
“I’m beginning to like today’s competitor,” Odditor said, and from inside the broadcast room, Kaiden saw him lean forward in his chair. “Let’s not, let’s not get too excited, stream, but she’s doing all right, isn’t, isn’t she?”
All the while, the labyrinth continued to groan and shake. The walls around Zelda began to slide down into the ground with long, puffing hisses of steam.
“Look for the flag!” Kaiden shouted but Zelda was already on it. And as the walls around her slipped all the way into the ground it was right there. The flag. Not fifty paces away.
Zelda sprinted toward it as the walls began to rise again. She leapt and clambered atop the nearest wall, then tumbled down the far side and into a growing corridor.
“Come on, come on. One more!” Kaiden said, bouncing nervously in place as Zelda scrambled toward the next rising wall. She jumped and just got her fingers on it, then pulled herself up and over. The wall was high enough that she took five percent fall damage as she jumped off. But she came down not twenty
paces from the flag.
“There you go!” Titus cheered.
The newly formed walls stopped moving around Zelda, leaving her in the same corridor as the flag. All she had to do was move forward and take it.
But the labyrinth wasn’t done. Something swelled out of the ground in front of Zelda. Some sort of… plant? A thick hedge sprouted up, growing rapidly like some sort of massive chia pet – if chia pets came complete with finger-length thorns. It rose faster than the walls and in less than a second it bisected the corridor, separating Zelda from the flag. Kaiden could still see the red of its fabric, though. Billowing just beyond the apparent hedge.
“It’s just a bush…” Thorne said. “There’s no way it’s that simple though, right?”
“I can think of a way to find out,” Zelda said, then stepped back and leveled her hammer-gun at the hedge. She fired an Improved Burst Arrow into the hedge. The attack tore through it, punching a roughly human-sized hole.
“Huh.” Zelda stepped toward the hole, but before she could get there, the hedge regrew and the hole swelled shut.
The new section of hedge bulged out toward Zelda, diminishing the already crowded space in the corridor. She paused at this and the camera zoomed in on her face as she frowned for a moment.
“It’s going to take more than brute force to get through this labyrinth,” Odditor said, glee in his voice.
Zelda fired at the hedge again, using Improved Kinetic Grenade this time. The explosive attack scorched the hedge and lit several fires all along it. For a moment it looked to be working, the fire burning through the vegetation, but then it began to regrow once again. This time it pushed even further into the corridor, forcing Zelda to back away as the finger-length thorns, now dribbling some sort of fluid out of them, jabbed toward her.
“The hydra hedge is a wondrous creation, is it not?” Odditor said with a low laugh. “I, uh, well, I made it myself. The more damage you deal to it, the more it grows. And those thorns, well, that’s not fresh morning dew on them, if that’s what you were imagining.”