Two graced the priest with a smile.

Internally, she tried to figure out the odds she was being sacrificed to a demon. It was rather unlikely demons liked ‘pure’s souls after all. “I thank you for the praise, but what is the Labyrinth? It doesn’t sound like a natural spirit or ancestor and I can’t fathom how a spirit of place would fit in such a small place.”

The persist looked awfully pleased with himself; Rhevier shook his head in the background. All too late, Two realized she’d invited a sermon. “You’d be surprised. in the wilds you’ll find spirits of meadows and streams. A single boulder can nature a soul given time. But no, the labyrinth is not a low spirit. It is a god though not one you’ll hear of in sermon. It’s not one of our ascended ancestors. It is not something we’ve built.”

“Then what is it.” Abery voiced her confusion.

“We don’t know.” The priest cackled, his large shoulders shook with unsuppressed joy. “They’re an old one, dating back to humanity’s fall and into the mist’s of the lost ages. They are a spirit of dark places and long quiets. Mirrors and what lay behind them. Madness and Choice.“ their was a glint in his eyes. A flickering multicoloured hue cast by the firelight. “There is little we know of this god that answers no prayer, but we are certain of one thing. They give clarity of the crulelest kind, certainty of self and the choice to redefine.”

A space was left in his speech’s passing. The cavern’s silence became even more yawning, faint drips echoed loud. Two was more confused than when he started, muster her courage she spoke. “But what does that mean?”

“It means,” Rhevier drawled, “That the labyrinth can help you weave your soul into the right shape.”

That put things onto steadier footing and raised even more questions. How was first among them? Would they summon the spirit, why here and most importantly? “Is there a cost?”

The priest chuckled and Rhevier sighed. “Yes,” they said together.

The burly priest shrugged at the displeased noble.The latter spoke. “Clarity and choice, as he put it, are not simple things. You are but one part of yourself, the conscious part, but not the only one. The other pieces will be given the same opportunity.”

Blunt and brief, though, it was the notion that struck her. Two was very good at ignoring her problems. She thought of all the ideas, fears, and wants she’d condemned to death by neglect. She went very still.

The priest smiled reassuringly. “The Labyrinth will give you time to gather yourself and if you do well any changes will be centred on your essence and future cultivation. But you must convince, control or remove your uncooperative aspects.”

“And if don’t.”

The priest sighed, “there are records of extreme personality changes.”

Rhevier scoffed, a bruise twitched across his face, “and others of complete, permanent psychosis in cases of indecision. Win completely or fail with grace, I do not want to drag your quivering form out of this hole.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Two stared blankly at the pair. “That does sound rather unpleasant, teacher.” When she woke up today, she’d expected it to be difficult. Cultivation couldn’t be easy, or everyone would do it. Few would shy from centuries of extended life and the ability to shatter steel with their pinky.

What she did not understand was why life seemed to have all her decisions lead to death or some greater malady. Did fate really have nothing better to do with its time? In the end the how didn’t matter. Two let that thought flow through her then voiced the only question left. “How do we start.”

Rhevier searched her eyes she didn’t what he saw for the most she allowed herself was sardonic smile but it hardened his features into a mask of stone., The flowing bruises thickened in response he was a patchwork of writhing black and white.

He stared at the priest. The old man rumbled. “All the preparations have been made. Step into the pool, young lady. The rest is up to you.”

Two looked at the black water and approached. “Will I need the lantern?”

“No, and I think your little friend might need it.”

Two nodded and placed the lantern to her side. Its light should have penetrated the pool, but its surface remained dark and brooding. She breathed to steadier herself, in and out, a familiar rhythm. She stared at the pool, between blinks, it changed.

Or rather, something was added atop the dark surface, and her reflection stared. A dark cloak hemmed by cracked gold hung on a girl lanky and lithe. A rainbow wrought from orange flam splashed over the side, shimmered across green scales and lit her eyes. Two’s eyes were amber shades dark and glittering, coexisted in the orbs. Their colour was warm; beautiful in a way she thought ill-suited her. Her features relaxed into their natural refrain. Even now it was strange how such warm colours could be so cold.

She took a step expecting the worst. Her imagination proved insufficient. She fell as if there were nothing there.

Her heart lurched into her throat and got stuck along with her scream. She fell.

And fell and fell, until the word seemed insufficient to describe her experience. Wind screamed and every climbing wail that stretched until it was beyond hearing. Still she hurtled faster.

She’d look back and count the minutes, the number would fit on her hands yet the feeling was something she might never grasp.

The world behind her pulled away scents and sounds stolen. Like the soft then sudden jolt to wakefulness. If someone said she’d reach the centre of the world she wouldn’t have believed them. For how could anything under heaven stretch so far?

Those were the first seconds of her fall. The others took her to a place she couldn’t fathom, a down beyond depth, farther than far could ever hope to reach. Until all was black and impossible motion was rendered dull. But the black was a not a simple absence.

Nothing lived and spun without motion. Nothing could compare to the skittering waiting absence that abounded across eternity’s farthest reach.

She fell into a space yet to be filled; away from all she’d ever known and witnessed nothing, nothing stared back. It should’ve broken her, she knew that with absolute certainty, yet it didn’t. It’d take time to discover why, but the ghost of that understanding had already come to her.

There was only so much a mortal mind could hold. The vision of god came to her and slipped painlessly past an uncomprehending mortal mind. What was worse, to see a sliver of divinity and know one’s smallness. Or to see it be too insignificant to glimpse the slightest truth? Two had touched the former in Lux and faced the latter now.

It hurt, it burned and sank into the depths of her soul, it scarred. She would never forget this fall, she couldn’t. Some lessons once learned could not be discarded.

With wide eyes, she stared. The raw absence of creation smiled. The non existant expression was brighter than any she remembered. Her fall changed. The illusion of gravity flipped until she came to a lurching stop, impossible momentum cancelled. Then it pulled on her back and she spun and came to rest standing in a familiar street she’d never seen before. A screen of clouds drowned the world in rain.

A distant hill burned.