Cyn’s breath came out in a gasp as she pulled back her focus, feeling a bit dizzy from the effort. She hadn’t even been aware she was holding her breath. Turning back, she saw that Hex had moved away a bit but was now stopped again to look at her with knitted brows.

“It’s Sam, he's hurt.” Cyn’s words came out in a rush as she gestured towards the dead end. “Somewhere just over there.”

The Rogue tilted his head slightly, glancing at the hedge for a moment before returning his eyes to her. “You’re sure?” He sounded doubtful, and having him doubt her after getting this far together made Cyn’s temper unexpectedly flare.

“Yes, I’m fucking sure. I am also fucking sure Spam wouldn’t lead us to a dead end.” She saw his eyes go wide for a moment at her snarl, taken aback by Cyn’s sudden anger. She then took a step towards the Rogue, causing her familiar to croak a warning. What it was warning about, or who it was even directed at she did not know, but Cyn stopped moving anyway.

“During the Trial of Agility, the entrance and exit both closed over. If we had been outside of the area, it would have created a dead end like this.” Her voice was even now, but not quite calm as it still held an undercurrent of roiling rage. “Now, are you going to help me or not?”

Hex just blinked at her a few times, and since his lack of response served only to feed Cyn’s fury she whirled back to face the hedge. Perhaps she could use her mana to destroy it, similar to the web from the first floor? She reached out, ignoring the increasingly frantic croaks of Spam. Cyn wasn’t worried. Hex had talked about touching the Hungering Hedge when he first entered the labyrinth, and it had not killed him. The carnivorous plant trying to eat her would only serve as a mana regeneration boost.

Somewhere in a detached, calmer part of Cyn’s mind, she was aware that she was not thinking clearly. She rarely got angry, often choosing to instead just ignore and walk away from anything that started to rile her up. Specifically because when she did end up angry, it historically ended with a pile of poor choices, lashing out, and regret. But it was a little late to try and re-bottle the emotion.

The forefront of Cyn’s mind was not thinking seriously about consequences or past lessons learned. Her only thoughts revolved around reaching her injured teammate, and stoking the simmering rage that had surfaced at being so blatantly doubted. Having quickly, if not entirely logically, settled on a solution to the problem Cyn was fully prepared to go through with it.

Just before she would have made contact with the yellowed leaves, mana lingering just inside of her fingertips, a hand grabbed Cyn’s wrist and yanked her back. “Damn, give a man a minute to think before you start acting stupid.”

That wasn’t the best response Hex could have given in the current situation.

Made obvious when he was forced to dodge a knee to the crotch as Cyn spun to face the Rogue again. Should have put my free points in agility. Hex quickly let go of her and backpedaled a few steps, raising his hands as if in surrender. Cyn saw his eyes flick briefly to the side of her before he spoke again, his tone having gone from annoyed to utterly bewildered. “Are you seriously going to pincushion me over that?”

… What? The strangeness of his question cut through the incandescent rage Cyn was gripped by, and she turned her head to try and figure out what he was talking about. To her horror, she found at least a dozen tiny shards of mana floating beside her, primed and waiting to be directed. The shards were significantly smaller than her standard needles, though shaped roughly the same, and were only so visible due to their pale blue glow against the dull but still warm colors of the Hungering Hedge.

Seeing them was a surprise, but the fact she could feel them was like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over Cyn, instantly draining away the white-hot wrath. The shards were definitely her creations, and now that she was aware she could feel the continuous drain on her mana pool. She had not even realized she was doing it. Not consciously, anyway. But for just a few heartbeats she had felt genuine malice towards Hex. For doubting her, for accusing her of doing something stupid, for daring to try and stop her.

Cyn quickly dispersed the mana, raising her hands to cover her face while focusing on just breathing. She could not afford to take long in recentering her emotions. Or rather, Sam could not afford for her to take long. She could still faintly feel his health, though without focusing on it the sensation was not clear. Cyn needed to get to the other side of the hedge.

When she removed her hands and looked at Hex again, he was in the same spot, watching her warily. Spam gave a soft, worried warble that made Cyn reach up to her shoulder to Pet the familiar, trying to assure it that she was alright. “Sorry I … Sam is on the other side of the hedge. I don’t think he has time for us to try and find a way around, so I am going to try and create a hole to go through.”

Before she could turn around the Rogue spoke softly, “If you would wait just a second, maybe we can come up with a solution that doesn’t include you sticking your hand into the murder bush.”

“Do you have any ideas? I don’t want to end up responsible for him dying while we twiddle our thumbs over here!” Cyn was barely keeping the sparks of rage from reigniting.

“First, if Sam gets himself killed, that's on him. Not us. Second, getting yourself killed doesn’t help anyone. Third …” Hex paused for a moment, seeming to acknowledge that he was just pissing her off again, “Third, I do have an idea. I think after leveling up I can now jump high enough for you to see over the hedges. At least enough to get an idea of what is happening on the other side.”

Why the hell didn’t he just start with that? Rising anger shifted to exasperation, and she waved the Rogue over. “Let's try it. Please.”

Hex knelt next to her, and after only a little bit of awkward climbing Cyn was rather comfortably sitting on his shoulders. Spam unexpectedly climbed up to sit on her head, as if trying to get an even higher vantage point. A few deep breaths later, the Rogue jumped straight up.

Previously when they had tried this, Cyn had barely gotten high enough to see the tops of the hedges. The extra bit of height Hex could now get would not have helped much, if what was ahead of them was more of the same labyrinth. She wouldn’t have been able to see into the paths. But ahead was not a standard part of the labyrinth. Just as Cyn had suspected, the ‘dead end’ would have actually been the entrance to a trial if said trial was not in progress. In the mere heartbeat she was high enough to see into the clearing, Cyn tried to take in as many details as possible.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

First, the floor was mostly intact unlike the trial of Agility. The center appeared to have a large, round hole in it, and the entire light gray stone floor looked to have a series of evenly spaced, shallow canals leading to the hole. One of these indentations was filled with a deep crimson, and her eyes tracked the splash of color to Sam.

The Warrior was on the opposite side of the hole from Hex and Cyn, and slightly off to one side. He looked to be tied down by something she was unable to distinguish at a glance, but she could definitely take a solid guess as to why the only red canal was leading to him. As she and Hex started to come back down from the apex of the jump, Spam took the leap over the hedge and into the trial.

The three-eyed frog cleared the jump easily, though its sudden absence left Cyn feeling off-kilter. Spam had been practically glued to her since they were bonded, and had only been a few feet away at most. She had not been aware of the metaphysical connection between them, but Cyn definitely was aware of it now as she felt it stretch uncomfortably. She could feel Spam hesitate briefly on the other side of the hedge before hopping further away, towards the Warrior.

“Fuck. Looks like we need to get over that hedge, and fast.” Hex’s grim voice snapped her attention back to herself, rather than the connection between her and the familiar. She didn’t need to ask why, though, because she could see the waiting notification in the corner of her eye. Cyn felt a sense of urgency from the pop-up, something she had not felt among any of the previous notifications she had received. Maybe it felt that way because it did not fade away like normal? Or maybe it was the slight shake the textbox had, which intensified as she used Inspect.

Hungering Labyrinth - Trial of Vitality

You have interrupted a trial in progress.

Difficulty level has been increased to compensate for 3 total participants.

Cheating countermeasures have been deployed.

Yah, ‘fuck’ about summed that up. At least her and Spam seemed to only count as a single participant, since it sounded like Hex had the notification too. The line about cheating countermeasures sounded…ominous. What even counted as cheating in this instance?

The Rogue spoke again while swinging her down from his shoulders, “Quick, pull out any potions with additional effects. Let me see if any of them could be useful.” As Cyn pulled out potions and put them on the ground, Hex had single bottles appearing and disappearing rapidly from his hand. While she was still taking potions out of storage, having collected quite a few from puzzle boxes by now, the Rogue threw a bottle over her head at the hedge.

The bottle didn’t shatter on impact, but Cyn turned around in time to watch as the hedge moved. It grabbed onto the potion the instant the glass had made contact, a thin vine snaking out to wrap around and pull the potion further into the hedge. Once it had disappeared she could hear the crystalline sound of glass breaking, presumably being crushed, and nothing else happened for a few, long moments.

Then, as Hex and Cyn watched, the hedge went up in flames.

The fire was almost white in color, and rapidly spread to engulf not only the dead end but the surrounding hedges. Flaming vines shot out from the plant, frantically writhing along the ground and in the air, and forced the pair to defend themselves against both flora and fire. The unorganized and desperate movements made it fairly easy to cut away or deflect any attacks thankfully, and since the fire did not appear to be giving off heat they were not getting proximity burns either. The only injuries suffered were lacerations anywhere the hedge vines did manage to get ahold of them.

Clearly, Cyn had been very, very lucky when it came to what effect the potion she drank had given her. Immolation would have been much worse than just floating around.

The burning bush burnt out almost as quickly as it was engulfed, leaving behind charred-looking stems and sticks and allowing them to see into the trial beyond. The previously gray stone had changed to a shimmering black, reminding Cyn of obsidian, and the new floor made the streak of red still flowing from the Warrior even more apparent.

Spam too was clearly visible, its bubblegum-pink body hopping circles around the large man. Cyn couldn't hear it from this distance, instead she could feel the familiar’s frantic warbling. It wasn’t quite a sound inside her skull, but came close.

Not willing to hesitate another moment, she ran forward through the remains of the hedge. The charred remains crumbled at even the softest touch, no longer a suitable barrier, and allowed Cyn to enter the trial proper. She made a beeline for Sam, and as she got closer it was more clear what was happening to him.

When Cyn got the initial glimpse into the trial, she was able to tell something had the Warrior tied down. Now, she was able to see what exactly it was. They were vines, seeming to grow straight out of the stone around the canal that circled Sam, a canal which also had an offshoot to the center hole. If not for the small crimson flowers, she would have said he was tied down with barbed wire. The gnarled vines looked like dull steel, and were covered in thorns. The thorns varied in size, from barely large enough to break skin to almost as long as one of Cyn’s fingers.

The vines had wrapped around his arms, legs, and torso, with the one wrapped around his torso snaked close to his neck. While Sam was bleeding from basically everywhere the vines touched, it was the largest of the thorns doing the bulk of the work bleeding him out. Especially one wrapped around his thigh, which she was fairly sure had hit an artery based on the red stream flowing down the plant and into the canal. How had he not bled out already? Cyn could only speculate it was because of his stats.

As she ran closer, Cyn passed by the large, center hole close enough to glimpse inside. Not that there was much to see, the swimming pool sized hollow was roughly half filled with a dark, opaque liquid she could only assume was blood. Gross.

She was almost to Sam when she saw her familiar stop hopping just long enough to spit a whole-ass glass bottle at the Warrior, who was obviously unable to catch it with his limbs tied down. Cyn saw it bounce off Sam’s head and join a few other bottles on the stone, all filled with a bright red liquid she would associate with health potions. Where is Spam getting potions from?

Sam’s head had been angled down, but when hit with the potion he glanced up and angrily exclaimed, “Would you stop it?!” The Warrior’s voice was weak, matching what Cyn was feeling about his health points. Raising his head also made him take notice of her, shock filling his face followed by alarm. “Behind you!”

In the same moment, she also heard Hex yell from somewhere behind her, “Cyn!”

Cyn didn’t have time to react to either warning before she was grabbed around the waist and roughly yanked backwards.