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Our group was one man down and potentially trapped inside the final wall before the town. The entrance we'd come in from no longer existed, but we weren't without a shred of hope. There were paths to both our left and right, but God only knows where those lead too.

The unusual design of this area reminded me a lot of a big sci-fi facility. Unfortunately, it was the more foreboding kind where horror roamed the halls.

There were vent grates all over the ceiling, the kinds parasitic aliens enjoyed ambushing their prey from.

Freaky flickering light fixtures above us hampered our sight, giving hypothetical apparitions cover if they wanted to make a snatch for our souls.

And a constant mechanical humming in the walls could mask any potential prowl of a supernatural terror setting its sights on us.

Good going, Yalda… You managed to freak yourself out. I'm such a genius.

“Uncle…” I tugged on his shirt while he was putting his coat back on. “I'm scared.”

Uncle patted my shoulder and held me close.

“We'll be alright.” He gave a reassuring smirk, lifting my spirits. “I'll break down every wall myself if it means we get out of here safely.”

“Handsome, strong and good with kids,” Miss Emily swooned.

“Gee, I wonder who she has a crush on?” Indena rolled her eyes. “Anyways… Shrimp, what’s your map say about this place? Maybe it can help us find a way out.”

-MAP UNAVAILABLE-

She had a good idea, but it didn’t seem to be working right now. Uncle was having the same issue. Some kind of interference was preventing them from working at all, likely the demon fog of war. 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.

That meant we were going to have to find our own way through this place. It couldn't be that big, right?

“Are we going left or right?” Indena asked, turning back and forth to glance at our identical options. Both hallways seemed just as viable and spooky.

Miss Emily Pulled out a Pier token and flipped it up into the air. It landed heads up.

"We're going Right,” she said.

Uncle made sure to carry Marek on his back before leading the charge forward. I was behind him, while Emily and Indena were shoulder to shoulder behind me, just barely reaching the max width of the hall together.

There weren’t many points of reference as we walked this path. It was mostly just white metal walls and concrete with overhead lights above.

After a few minutes, we came up on a fork in the road. The hallway split off into two. In theory, the hallway to the left would lead us closer to the town, but who knows for sure.

Emily did her little coin flip, this time getting tails.

“To the left!” she enthusiastically pointed.

Thus we went left, which was just more of the same.

“I’m not liking this,” Indena said. “When I signed up to help out, I didn’t realize I’d be going into an endless fun house.”

That brought up a good question. Why did dad pick her of all people to come out and get me? Her organization didn’t seem all that wholesome, but she was distant from the more evil acting members.

“Indena, why did you sign up at all?” I asked.

“Oh, I-I didn’t actually sign up, you know…” she admitted. “A few days before I met you, there was a big tournament back home. They do it every year, mostly to get an idea of where everyone is with their training.” she waved her hand in a circle. “Anyways, apparently your dad was watching me get to the semi finals and requested I meet with him.”

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“Was it like meeting a celebrity?” I asked.

“Nah,” she shook her head. “We all interacted with him at some point, some more than others. He did a lot in regards to magical augmentations, like tattoos. I think he did some of mine when I was really little.”

Something about that bothered me. I’m his own daughter, and it felt like meeting him again was going to be a big deal. But for Indena, she just looked at him in a mundane way because he’s around her regularly. I feel like the roles should be reversed.

“So, what’s he doing working for the bad guys?” I asked Indena.

She just shrugged. “Look, if your dad was a bad guy, why would he want me to bring you back safely?”

Deep down, I knew he was doing something good for the world, and Indena was proof of that, since he trusted her, and she didn’t want to blot out the sun. It’s just, what did they have that he needed?

It was looking like everyone needed a short rest from walking, so we hunkered down in the hallway for a few minutes and continued our conversation.

“Can I get back to my story?” Indena folded her arms.“My mentor was also in on his plan. They were pretty secretive, and I’m starting to get an idea of why.”

“Who was your mentor?” I asked.

“Archpriestess Sovereignty. She’s one of the best damn fire mages out there, but with a bubbly spirit that aggravates me.”

“You…trained under a priestess?” Emily inquired in a skeptical tone.

“What’s it to you, got a problem with that?” Indena glared angrily at her. “Yeah. I might not act it, but I’m a miko, you know?”

That’s a very shocking discovery. I didn’t know much about miko, but they were pretty common in eastern cartoons I’d watch.

“Sovereignty is an interesting name for a priestess, wouldn’t you say?” Emily asked.

“All the priests have stupid names like that. Freedom, Justice, Liberty…that’s just naming a few. Only the best of us actually get those names though.”

There was a theme there, which Emily was quick to point out.

“Those names all revolve around the idea of a government run by the people.” her voice became distinctly more inquisitive. Even her eyes gained a sharper edge to them. “Can you tell me a little about how things are run there?”

“We all call ourselves the Family of Sai, but nobody’s related by blood. Patriarch Karahi is our leader, and just below him are all the archpriests. Despite the titles, each priest is elected based on a few factors, mainly if they can represent the name they’re given.”

So, if someone was the Archpriest Freedom, then they’d have to focus on embodying that namesake. I wonder what that would look like.

“That’s an unusually republic system for a cult,” Emily commented.

“It’s not a cult!” She shook her head. “I’d say those of us running around blotting out the sun might be, but we’re not even religious. It’s all about making people the best they can be, not tying them down to any set of rules by a god or government.”

It’s odd that she can be a miko priestess and not consider herself religious. But Indena was full of contradictions to begin with.

I was really curious to meet some of those people from her group that weren’t evil. Indena didn’t seem to represent their aspects very well though. And that goes double for the jerks we’ve had to fight up to this point. How could dad ever work with these people?

Marek started grunting and thrashing around in his sleep. It looked like the pain from the arrow wound was getting to him.

“We need to keep moving,” Uncle said, getting us back on track to finding an exit.

A few more forks in the road came up, and we used Emily’s patented coin flip to pick which way to go. Hopefully her luck was leading us where we wanted to be.

Eventually as we were walking, an exit came into view. With how far we’d gone, we should have been on the edge of the town. But when I saw that stupid metal silo sitting in a big open room, I realized how bad this was.

“Oh come on!” Indena kicked the silo. “Did we just go in a circle?”

There’s absolutely no way we could have. Even with how many branches we made, none of them would have looped us back to this main room. Something was off about this.

“Why don’t we try a different way?” Uncle suggested, walking toward the right most hallway again. “There were a few paths we didn’t take, and I have a feeling one of them must lead out of here.”

It was a little hard to remember which ways we were going. Not that I didn’t have it committed to memory, but everything looking like one really long hallway had a way of messing with me.

Rather than rely on memory alone, I decided to start keeping some breadcrumbs on the ground. Using stardust pieces, I left little glowing rods on the left side of the halls. That way we’d know what ways we’ve went. 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 fool proof, considering it only told us where we’d been, but it helped us narrow down which paths we hadn’t tried yet.

Sadly, we just kept ending up in the main room.

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

“It’s a trick of the enemy,” Uncle said. “The gate in the wall might have been a portal to someplace.”

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

Uncle explained that we had two possibilities. The first one was that the demons had forced us into an alternate path intended to trap us. Which would explain why it was constantly looping us back.

And the second possibility was that there was a way out, but it was super hard to find by design.

“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.

“It's just like back at the Longitude Point,” I mentioned, remembering how confusing the layout of that structure was.

“Precisely. We're dealing with a very strategic foe,” Uncle said. “Which is why I have hope that there is a way through this.”

Emily spoke up next. “Alright, that’s reasonable. But this place is one big choke point. 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 on, trying to find the correct path out of here.