The princess was clearly terrified, but to her credit, she had stepped in front of Garrett to try and fight the monster, no doubt assuming that Garrett wouldn't be capable of such a thing. The amulet she wore was a powerful defensive artifact, but she could tell that the glow it produced that kept the shadow monster at bay was starting to dim ever so slightly.
At this point, it seemed to be a race against the clock to see which of them would be able to endure longer than the other, and unfortunately, the shadow was looking like it was going to win. More and more darkness seemed to stream into the room, allowing the monster to reform its body every time it began to burn. It hated the pain, but some strange survival instinct drove it forward time and again, as it tried to wear away the shield that surrounded the princess.
Eloise was beginning to panic. She felt like she was drowning when she heard Garrett's words, and gripped onto them like they were a life-saving rope, tossed into the water next to her. Her soul spark flared, sending a rush of energy flowing through her, but Garrett's words continued to ring in her head, helping her concentrate the energy so as not to waste it.
She could feel it flowing through her arm and into the dagger, and with a shimmer, the dagger took on the same quality as the shield that surrounded her, glowing brightly as she slashed at one of the shadow creature's many limbs. Previously, her attacks did nothing to harm the main body of the shadow monster, but now, imbued with mental energy, her dagger tore through the monster's arm, causing a great clump of shadow to be separated from the main body and disperse into the air.
The monster let out a silent shriek, trying to express the tremendous pain it felt, and Princess Eloise, though still terrified, sensed the opportunity for victory. Under Garrett's astonished gaze, she suddenly rushed forward, pressing directly into the shadow monster, as she hacked and slashed with all of her might.
Up until this point, she had been fighting completely defensively, and her sudden assault caught the monster off guard. Between the bright burning shield that covered her body from head to toe, and the glowing dagger that tore into the deep shadows that made up the monster's flesh, the princess quickly burned a hole straight through it, causing it to shrink considerably when it reformed.
Frightened by the explosive power the princess had just shown, the monster turned its attention to the interior of the room, and saw Garrett, who looked at it with a calm gaze. The shadow monster had been completely fixated on the princess, and hadn't noticed Garrett up until now. For the briefest of moments, its hazy mind considered leaping into the room to try to consume Garrett before it continued to fight the princess, who had just stumbled straight through its body into the hall.
Then its survival instincts kicked in, and it shook terribly, as it realized that moving even a few inches into the room would spell its complete and utter doom. Instead, it tried to flee down the hall, but before it could, the princess's dagger stabbed through its body again, burning up what remained of it.
A moment later, the princess staggered back into the room where Garrett sat, her breath coming in great heaves as she stared first at Garrett, and then down at the dagger she held in her hand. Her expression was incredulous, as if unable to believe that she had actually managed to defeat the monster. In contrast, Garrett's was calm.
"Well done, princess," he said, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "That was incredibly impressive. If I'm honest, I didn't actually expect you to defeat such a powerful enemy."
Still trying to get her breathing under control, all the princess could do was nod.
"Why don't you come and have a seat," Garrett said. "As I mentioned previously, a large part of my power is communication, and I'm currently communicating with people on the outside who are working to understand this mysterious artifact. Our rescue should come quickly. But until then, we'll need to preserve as much energy as we can, just in case there are more of those monsters lurking nearby."
Nodding, Princess Eloise retreated to the bed, first sitting on it, and then flopping backwards to try and rest. In her mind, Garrett wasn't suited for fighting at all, which meant that if there were in fact more shadow monsters, she would be the one who had to deal with them.
Outside of the Dreamer's Inn, a carriage had pulled up, and from it, Chief Felix emerged, followed a moment later by Marta and Ryn. They hurried into the great room, where they found a bunch of the family members sitting around. Seeing them, Obe stood up from his chair and waved for them to follow, taking them back to Garrett's office, where the mysterious artifact was sitting in the middle of his desk.
As soon as he saw it, Chief Felix inhaled sharply. His eyes glowed with a faint white light as he stepped around the desk and crouched to examine it more closely. After looking at it from a couple of different angles, he carefully picked it up and traced his fingers along the silver grooves and patterns that covered the four different sides.
The last thing he looked at was the spike. Only a short while ago, it had been covered in blood, but now it was as clean as could be, shining brightly in the sunlight that filtered through the office window. The others watched him quietly, and when Chief Felix put it down. Ryn asked the question that was on everybody's mind.
"Do you know what this is? And more importantly, do you know how to get Garrett out of it?"
"I do," Chief Felix said, scratching his grizzled chin. "At least I know what it is. As for how to get him out, that's going to be a little bit harder."
Her eyes narrowing, Ryn stared at the Chief Exorcist.
"So what is it?"
"This is called Kabod's Maze," Chief Felix said, picking the box up and looking over it as he spoke. "It's actually an exorcist tool, one designed to trap supernatural creatures, particularly supernatural creatures made from a shadow."
Noticing the frown on Ryn's face, Chief Felix hurried to clarify, "That doesn't mean it can't capture others. In fact, it's often been used to capture very dangerous individuals. But the main purpose was to trap supernatural creatures whose powers and abilities were made from a shadow, and to slowly drain them of their power until they perished. There were a few of these made, but I didn't know that any of them still existed. After all, use of Kabod's Maze has been outlawed for a hundred years, and all of them were supposed to have been destroyed. The principle is simple. The maze can only open when blood is fed to it, usually via this spike here. When that happens, the maze will open, and the person who contributed the blood can set a target. The maze will suck that individual in, trapping them inside."
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"And how do you get them back out?" Ryn asked.
Chief Felix could only offer her a wry smile.
"It's not made to let people out," Marta said, her face covered in a frown. "The goal is to permanently trap whoever is brought inside."
"That's not an acceptable answer," Ryn said, her voice hard. "We need a way to release them, or the consequences will be catastrophic."
"We'll have to do some more research," Chief Felix said, "to see if it's ever happened before." As he spoke, he glanced at Marta, who had an odd look in her eye as she stared at the artifact.
"There is another option," she said.
"Oh, and what's that?"
"Well, we could force it to outbreak."
"Outbreak? What's an outbreak?" Ryn asked, noting the worried expression that covered Chief Felix's face. "How would that help?"
"When a mysterious artifact grows too powerful, it can sometimes outbreak, merging with the world and creating a space that it controls completely. Its influence will begin to extend beyond the artifact itself into its surroundings, transforming everything around it. Outbreaks are incredibly dangerous, so dangerous that stopping them is the chief goal of the exorcists."
"Would it work?" Ryn asked.
Chief Felix immediately shook his head.
"No, and we're not trying it."
As he spoke, he shot a glare at Marta, who had been about to protest, causing her to reluctantly close her mouth. After promising to do more research about it, Chief Felix left, but not after a lively debate over who should hold the artifact. The chief wanted to take it with him, but Ryn was adamantly opposed, refusing to let it out of her sight.
Once the two exorcists had left the inn, Ryn sat down in the office with the box in her hands, examining it carefully. The more she looked at it, the more mesmerizing the patterns seemed to be, and what she found strange was that they also grew more familiar, as if this wasn't her first time seeing them. She couldn't place them, however, and with a sigh, she closed her eyes and began to communicate with Garrett, explaining everything that they had discovered.
Princess Eloise had just laid down when Garrett got the message, and after listening to Ryn's explanation, he put his mind to work to unravel the secrets of how to enter and exit this world. With Princess Eloise resting, the first thing Garrett did was create a copy of himself, to remain in position, while he stood to his feet and walked out of the room.
With each step he took, his body changed, transforming into Geller's appearance, a white mask covering his face, and his clothing replaced by Geller's three-piece suit. Out in the hall, he began to look around, until his eyes landed on one of the paintings. Unlike the painting in the room, the paintings in the hallway were shadowy and indistinct, leaving the viewer with the impression that they had seen something wonderful, but no actual memory of what it was. Furthermore, whenever he focused on a painting, it was clear that it was nothing but shifting hues of black and gray.
An idea slowly began to shape as he looked at the lights high up on the walls. Each of the paintings was positioned so that it was in between the lights, falling into the darkest part of the hallway, spaced perfectly so that none of them were touched by the pools of bright light. As he thought about it, the same was true for the painting in the room. It was at the place furthest from the lamp that sat next to the reading chair.
Casting his mind back into the room, Garrett found himself amused when he realized that the expression of the child in the painting had grown frightened. Whether the child was frightened of Princess Eloise, who was laying on the bed underneath him, or the dozens of dream flowers that had crowded around his frame hungrily, Garrett didn't know or care.
It was clear to him that the shadow monster had inhabited these paintings, hiding the majority of its body inside of the frames, out of the bright light that would constantly absorb its energy. Interested in testing it out, Garrett sent a thread of mental energy to the nearest lamp, allowing it to flash with bright light.
The reaction was immediate as the light grew, falling over the frame and into the painting. Immediately, the swirling dark hues that covered the painting retreated, pulling back out of the light to reveal green grass and what appeared to be a garden scene. Immediately, the monster knew that the jig was up, and with a soundless shriek, it flooded out of the painting to fill the hallway.
Garrett smiled mercilessly under his mask, his hand extending as his soul spark thrummed with power, unleashing a crushing blast that smashed the growing shadow back. Snapping his fingers in the air, Garrett transformed the streams of power spreading from his soul spark into dozens of petals, each glimmering with a rainbow sheen.
Darting through the air like a school of fish, the petals stabbed deep into the shadow, burning it away, even as Garrett's mental power continued to crush it to the ground. Next came the dream flowers, marching out of the room on wiggling roots, their petals vibrating hungrily as they headed for the shadow.
For its own part, the shadow fought as fiercely as it could, but every time it tried to make a blade or hook from one of its many tendrils, the petals were there to slice it apart. A few times it tried to escape, but Garrett's power locked it in place.
Within a few minutes, the last dregs of shadow had been consumed, and Garrett turned his attention to the picture that had been revealed. In it, he saw a man and a woman strolling in a garden on a blustery spring day. In the woman's hand was a bright red parasol that contrasted sharply with the green of the plants and the cloud-spotted blue of the sky.
After appreciating it for a moment, Garrett walked down the hall, until he arrived at the next painting. The black and gray shadow that covered it undulated more than normal, as if it had been able to sense the demise of its companion. After regarding it for a moment, Garrett glanced down the hallway, noting how many paintings there were, and how many shadows he would have to destroy. If he did them each one by one, it would likely take him days.
And so instead, he gave a command, and the dream flowers began to spread out. Each dream flower climbed the wall and attached itself to one of the lights. Instead of sucking the power out of it, however, Garrett used it as a conduit to allow him to begin injecting power in. Immediately, the hallway brightened, and then brightened again. Soon, the lights were burning so brightly that the pools of light they cast had spread almost twice as far.
Already, the paintings were beginning to shake as the shadow monsters they hid began to grow afraid. With a grim smile, he sent another surge of energy through each of the dream flowers and into the lights, drowning the hallway in a bright glow that gave the shadows no place to hide. The light was so bright that he had to squint despite the fact that he was wearing a mask, and the entire space seemed to shake as waves of shadow burst from the paintings. Already, they were beginning to corrode, their bodies transforming into wisps of energy that only reinforced the bright burning lights.