I ran! I ran as fast as I could in the tight, ever-narrowing corridors of the maze, threatening to crush us or rather trap us somewhere behind the curtain of misshapen space that formed the walls. With my ears pressed to my head, hidden under my hands, I ran. Pressing my wings tightly to my body, and with Sage, my tail closely trailing in my wake, I ran. Calling out directions of the path I sensed ahead, I ran. Turns taken as Meneur told me, I ran. Holding my breath, hoping with all my heart for the exit to come up behind the next corner, I ran.
I ran!
“Stop!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, taking a breath of air now smelling weird as it was saturated with energy from the distorted space around us. “Dead end!” I announce for all behind me to hear, cursing in my heart, no doubt like the rest, as what I feared came to be. We weren’t trapped, not yet, but the narrow space that remained for us to move through, less than a meter and a half - more close to one, no longer gave me room to squeeze past the others to the front of my pack, at least not safely. I could no longer lead us through the maze.
The job fell on the last of us, now the first.
Having enough foresight, Meneur suggested that it shouldn’t be Pinescar, whose ability to sense the misshapings was one of the weakest of us all - Harper argued that it didn’t matter, that even she, this close to those walls slowly closing in on us, could feel them. She wasn’t the one leading us through, though. It made a hell of a difference if you could feel a turn, intersection, or dead end only when it was right in front of your nose or a few meters ahead.
Anyway, the task of leading us had now fallen to Freyde.
I could see in his eyes how hard it was for him, yet despite the burden of getting us out of here weighing on his shoulders now, he took it without hesitation, turned on his heel, and stormed out through the maze, describing the way as I had done so far, Meneur guiding his steps. In a sense, it was liberating not to bear the responsibility and just follow the rest. Yet, at the same time, I found it highly nerve-wracking and binding. I was the last one, following the others, watching their backs. The last one to get out of here, if it came to that.
Nevertheless, I ran, doing my best to put those pesky thoughts aside.
I didn’t quite succeed, though. Regardless of my squadmates running ahead of me, forging a safe path, I found myself relying on my own senses rather than blindly heeding in their footsteps. Worse, my instincts, bestial and human alike, were screaming at me to get the hell out of here, forcing me to run faster even though I was almost touching the back of Stella running in front of me. If I let them have the reins, I would push her aside, thus sealing her fate. She would be the first to find what was on the other side of the shitty space that was pressing on my senses, and Meneur running in front of her would be second as I would claw my way to the front.
Why was Stella in front of me now and not Meneur? It was a simple failsafe. Should I run into one of the walls when I was leading the pack, thus sealing my fate, she would take my place. Through her auras, she could sense the misshapings as well as Freyde. And so, watching her back while gnashing my teeth and fighting my selfish notions, I ran.
It wasn’t long before our path narrowed to a mere meter.
“Dead end!” Freyde bellowed from ahead, and I turned on my heels that instant, very careful not to touch the walls, and swiftly returned to the four-way intersection.
“Right!” Meneur navigated me.
I took the turn and ran, strangely satisfied to be back in the lead.
Time was ticking down, though, and the tension in the pack grew. Each of us knew that the moment when one of us would make a mistake and touch the misshapen space was drawing near. It was inevitable with the way the walls were closing in on us and our pace.
“Left corner!” I shouted and swallowed dry. ‘Bloody hell, that was close!’ I almost brushed my tail against one of the walls.
Not dwelling on it a second longer, as it would only sow more panic in my heart, I set off down the corridor that was now visible to the naked eye. The air was shimmering on both sides as in the summer months over the hot rooftops. Yet I dared not rely too much on what I saw, fearful that it might be a mere illusion, the misshapen space playing tricks on my eyes as it was pounding on my ears.
“T-intersection!”
“Right! If you sense a left turn, take it...it could be the exit!” Even Meneur’s so far abnormally calm voice now held a breath of despair mixed with hope. He was sure we could be close to the exit, and I really did hope he was right, only some nagging doubts in the back of my mind were telling me not to have my hopes high, that it couldn’t be that easy.
Nevertheless, my heart leaped with hope as I felt the wall to my left give way. “Opening to the left...U-turn!” I corrected myself the moment I almost stuck my nose in the misshaping. What little hope Meneur had given us was snuffed out in that instant.
“Dead end!” I yelled, halting in my tracks.
“By all accounts, we should be on the edge...” Meneur muttered, looking at the wall to his right. “Just behind this...”
“Drop it, let’s go...” Pinescar called, and we all turned back. That in itself was getting harder and harder, especially for me with the wings and tail. Okay, I admit that was a little self-centered. Meneur was a big guy, easily twice the size of me. He didn’t have it any easier than I did. And Pinescar was no less stocky than the taurus was, having the same difficulty moving through the corridors.
Besides, our instructor was right. Now was not the time to whine about what and what not. We could do that later. Now with misshapen space pressing on our senses, we needed to push forward, get moving, as the man said. And we did, storming back the way we came, with Freyde in the lead again.
I wanted to run, to run so badly. Yet as we took more corners and crossed more intersections, our pace slowed. We ran no longer but walked as fast as the narrowing space allowed. It was inevitable. Worse, the point where moving through the maze would be impossible for us was looming.
“T-intersection!” Freyde shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice almost drowned out in the harrowing buzzing from the misshapen space around us. The voices coming from behind the veil were so loud, so unnaturally loud, almost as if they were screaming right into my ears, and no matter what I did, no matter how much I covered my ears, I couldn’t block them out.
“Right!” roared Meneur back, and though I saw him take a breath to say more, he stopped himself. I guess he didn’t want to give us undue hope when we were all practically touching the misshapen space with our shoulders, fighting back against the effects of it.
Besides the eerie voices ringing in my head, this close to those misshapings, all the hairs on my body were bristled up; a gut-wrenching feeling was getting to the core of my bones, and my instincts went bonkers.
I mean, I had no idea what to make of them. What I felt from them, what my beast instincts were telling me, simply didn’t make sense to me, and that in itself was terrifying. Was I losing control of myself? Was I, in the face of a dreadful end, in the arms of helplessness, going wild? Not the most worrisome thought on my mind, though. Surprising, I know. For so long, I had worried about not succumbing to my instincts, and yet now I found it far worse to know that with every beat of my heart, I could...one of us could fall through the misshapen space, lost forever, who knows where.
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“Left corner!” Freyde shouted, carefully taking the turn, others following his example as the walls got so close that I was forced to move forward sideways. The end was near, and there was nothing any of us could do about it.
“Guys...guys! I think we’re out!” For me, his disbelieving shout was almost lost in the cacophony of voices flooding my ears. Yet enough had come through to make my heart leap for joy. Unless he was mistaken, we made it; we made it to the exit, out of this fucking maze, this damn trap.
“Traiana’s tits, you’re right, Pointy Ears!” Harper gushed as she, too, got out, relief oozing from her voice. Their shared joy infused new energy into my veins, banishing some of the chills the eerie voices had sown into my body.
‘Come on!’ I urged the ones in front of me in my mind, knowing full well that rushing now could be a terrible mistake. Like them, the narrowing space forced me to tread sideways and with extreme caution. One wrong move, and I could end up in some deep shit.
Pinescar got out, and I wished I was in his place, that he would be the last, not me.
The seconds dragged on for what seemed like an eternity, and I caught myself wishing Stella, moving sideways in front of me, would get out of my way. She was so slow! They were so slow! ‘Why the hell were they so slow?!’
“Oh, come on, come on…!” I heard Freyde shout as Meneur slipped from the maze’s grasp. Only Stella and I remained still in the clutches of the maze, just a few steps away from leaving the horrors of this misshapen space behind us.
That was when she flinched, then cried out like a little girl, before I watched her be pulled into the wall of distorted space. I don’t know what it was, the terror in her eyes when she looked at me, some stupid subconscious move, or the urge not to let her, a member of my pack, be dragged off to who knows where alone, but as my heart stopped its beat and with it the time, I grabbed for her hand.
For a second there, I was horrified that I had missed, that Stella slipped out of my grasp. Only to gasp when my hand closed around her wrist, already half-submerged in the misshapen space, and I felt the pull of the other side. Not thinking too much about it, I beast shift my hand and grip Stella’s tighter. I didn’t do it to get her out. There was no way I could do that, not now that I was being dragged in myself. I simply did that to not get separated from her.
Whether it was because of my heart, I didn’t know, but the whole thing took longer than I expected. The misshapen space was slowly pulling Stella and me in, washing over my skin like ice-cold water, the mist of it filling my lungs and veiling my sight. For a few seconds, I saw them, the others who got out, their mortified looks. They knew, as did I, that the two of us were fucked.
Then, as the last of me sank into the waters of space, the world around me went nuts, and I blacked out.
***
Coming back was hell. I had a raging headache, my whole body hurt as fuck, my stomach was upside down, I could taste the vomit, whose smell rankled my nose, in my mouth, and my shorts were uncomfortably wet. Bloody close to the morning I had after my 18th birthday party. Even then, I wished I had died somewhere in a ditch rather than have to suffer like this, not to mention the sheer embarrassment that came with coming to my senses.
But just as my sorry state reminded me of times long past, so did recent events start to come back to me. The labyrinth, us falling into a trap, running through a maze in a frantic effort to get out of it. And we almost made it. I saw the exit. Yet...
I kind of wished that when I opened my eyes, I would see Sergeant Pinescar standing over me, either with a smile on his face or pissed off. Honestly, I wouldn’t care if he praised me for a job well done or shouted me down if only he’d told me it was all part of his training, that he wanted to push us and see how we’d react in a crunch.
But no matter how hard I tried to ignore everything around me, deep down, I knew that wasn’t the fucking case.
A whimper escaped my throat as I rolled onto my side just as a groan sounded to my right. “C-c-can y-you let go of...my hand?”
My ears perked up, and I opened my eyes, expecting a harsh light to cut into them; instead, I snapped awake into the gloom of an obscured sky and found Stella lying next to me. She didn’t look any better than I felt.
“Y-your hand!” she grunted again with effort, finally bringing my attention to my hand. I was still gripping hers tightly as if both our lives depended on me not letting her go, basically crushing her wrist.
I let go, making my beast hand shift back. “Sor...” I uttered, stopping short as my voice caught in my throat. “Sorry, Stella...how are you holding up? You look like shit, you know.”
“S-s-speak f-for yourself,” she retorted, then burst out coughing, not sounding good at all.
She was right, though. I was a mess, too. But she seemed much worse off. At the corners of her mouth were not only remnants of vomit but also some blood, and some was coming out of her nose and ears, too.
“A-are you...able to heal yourself, or do you need a healing potion?”
No doubt she seemed in need of one, but why she was so much worse off than me was beyond me. I mean, it hurt so much to think, to put together some kind of coherent thought. Yet...I didn’t see having much of a choice.
And so, gritting my teeth and whimpering in pain, I pondered. Did the whole pulling through the misshapen space thing affect me less than it did her? A few things came to mind. I was a Guardian. That may have played a role, or the fact that I had already traveled the space between worlds. That one was a bit of a stretch, though. There was teleportation magic on Eleaden. Seekers like Stella then traveled daily, using the teleportation platforms of the labyrinths. By all means, she should be used to that. But on second thought, this was not traditional controlled teleportation, and we might actually be glad we got through in one piece and together.
Perhaps that’s why she was so messed up, because I grabbed onto her and tagged along when I wasn’t supposed to. I may have been the one to blame for her miserable state.
“Come on, Stella, talk to me!” I said as I struggled to lift myself up on my hands to get a better look at her and our surroundings. I certainly wasn’t in the best shape, either. However, my regeneration seemed to be making quick work of the damage I sustained during the passage. Actually, that might have been one of the reasons I was better off, too. My massive constitution and damn good regeneration. Plus, we could have been lying here unconscious for who knows how long.
“K-keep your panties on, K-Korra! I am not dyin-ng,” she said and coughed up blood. Very convincing. “Fuck! T-this place is messing with my auras. I can’t g-g-get them to work p-properly.”
Her auras? As I understand it, they were basically a form of magic. She used mana to run them, just in a different way from the mages. Thinking that, I gave it a try myself and attempted to create a layer of mana around my hand, only to remember Idleaf as I took control of my mana. And so, instead of working my magic - if a mere mana control could be called that - I sent mana to the rune on my side, calling the spirit.
It flared up immediately; only Idleaf didn’t show up as she usually did.
“Stella?” I asked since she was strangely quiet and to take my mind off the fact that Idleaf may have had a harder time hearing my call than I had hoped.
“For the f-fuck’s sake, Korra. I am t-trying...just give m-me a little time...”
“Are you sure we have it? I don’t know about you, but I have no fucking idea where we are...”
Seriously, all I could tell through my domain was that we were lying on a piece of rock, and looking around didn’t tell me much more. We seemed to be on a cliff, high above the forests below us, which burned in the distance, the smoke from it shading the sky, forming black clouds above us while black flakes of ash descended upon us. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the voices of people, the voices I had heard all the time in the maze. The voices, the roars of the beast, and the sounds of battle.
“A-all right...fuck it, a-a healing potion it is...” Stella grumbled and coughed again. Whether it was her pride or an effort to conserve our limited supplies, given our situation, she deemed it beyond her current strength to safe. “...a l-little help here...”
“You seriously expe...” I stopped myself short when I saw how, despite her best efforts, she was unable to hold her hands up, let alone hold a bottle of healing potion. Without a second thought, I mustered my strength, sat down next to her, took the bottle from her, uncorked it, and carefully poured the contents into her mouth.
“Are you good? Is it working?”
“It w-would seem so...”
“Great,” I breathed in relief and sent mana into the rune on my side again, this time even more of it. The rune lit up, heated up, yet Idleaf didn’t show up.
“You’re wasting your time and mana, little Guardian.”
Startled by the voice, I sprung to my feet, and despite the pain and resistance of my body, I put myself between the owner of the voice and Stella, ready for whatever was to come. Or so I mistakenly thought. Seeing the woman blew my mind and took my breath away. Standing in front of me was Traiana.