When I was twenty-four, tragedy struck our family. My mom died of cancer. At the time, I was devastated even though I had been preparing for it for weeks. She knew she was dying, but instead of herself, she was worried about me.

For my birthday, she gave me a male ferret. I didn’t understand her gift at the time. Thinking it was stupid, I questioned her reasons. After all, I’ve never had a pet before.

It was only a few days before she passed away.

Only then did I realize she didn’t want me to feel alone when she’s gone, which I wasn’t. I still had a dad, a younger brother, and a grandfather. But without her, it wasn’t the same. I don’t know if my mother intended to give me a male ferret or if it was a mistake, but with her death I became the only female in our family. The ferret quickly became my best friend, though. He was the one I confided my feelings to, and I fell asleep cuddling him.

I named him Sage.

His wisdom was boundless, as he always seemed to know how to cheer me up.

Like him, I lost the rest of my family when I was kidnapped by a little flying bastard. Even things reminding me of them were stolen from me. I have no idea whether the magic, skill, or mumbo jumbo that fae used in my abduction did not allow the transfer of objects or it was having a laugh at my expense, but I appeared in the cellar completely naked.

All I have left now are memories of them and the hope that I will find a way back one day.

The first mutation was the hardest for me. I was in a very bad place then, wanting to die, but I couldn’t kill myself because of the slave collar. When Dungreen injected a second essence into my veins, I thought I was broken beyond repair.

That changed when my tail grew after this injection, and I found my lost friend in it. He wasn’t the Sage I knew, but in his embrace, I was able to fall asleep other than from exhaustion. I could confide in him my feelings, even if only in my thoughts. He shared the same pain with me, and he managed to lift my mood when I thought I couldn’t hold any longer.

Until now, I hadn’t said his name out loud, though.

I was afraid that if I did, I would lose him again, that the fae would reappear and deprive me of what was dear to me like before. It made little sense to me, though. Mutations were something I wanted to get rid of, but at the same time, I didn’t want to lose Sage.

Well, my hatred for my mutations was slowly fading, at least somewhat. So, it was time to get rid of that fear too, and this little kitsune and her tail gave me the courage to do so.

“Really?” she asked me with sparkling eyes after I told her about Sage, my tail.

“Um-hmm,” I nodded, but then I looked at her sternly. “Don’t tell anyone else. It will be a secret between us. Okay?”

She thought for a moment, her expression with her finger on her chin was adorable, then she looked at me, “I promise, I won’t tell anyone about Sage.”

“Shhh,” I shushed her with a forefinger to the lips, horrified at the volume of her voice. Just because I told her about Sage didn’t mean I wanted everyone to know right away.

“I promise!” she whispered, nodding enthusiastically.

I nodded and smiled, “Okay, Ria. Now, I'd like to see the entrance to the labyrinth?”

She didn’t question my request, didn’t even laugh at it, she just pointed to the exit, “That’s easy, follow me!”

So I let this little kitsune lead me, while wondering how her mother could let her work at that age. Eight years old, as Ria seemed to me, she should be in elementary school, not work. Especially not doing a job like this, guiding strangers around the city.

Well, I guess Enola or anyone at the front desk would let her or other kids work for anyone weird. This meant that the receptionist trusted me enough to let her work for me. I was glad, but because of that, I felt a certain responsibility for her. A responsibility I dreaded because I wasn’t even sure of my own safety in the city.

In that, Ria was much braver than I was, walking down the street as if it belonged to her. To my concern, we headed to the place I had avoided throughout my stay here. It was the noisy place in the city center, the place my sensitive ears did not like.

I should have known that the entrance to the labyrinth would be there, though. I guess I wished it was somewhere else and deliberately ignored the city center.

Well, Ria was right, it wasn’t hard to get there. Just follow the main street leading from the city gate to the city center. The same main street on which the city hall stood.

Lost in thought, trying to pay no heed to the growing noise, I almost bumped into Ria, when she suddenly stopped.

“Labyrinth Square,” she called out, her arms outstretched.

Looking ahead, I saw a vast square with even more people than in the city hall. I was baffled and terrified by the number of them. The noise they made was deafening and hard to ignore.

“Are these all seekers?” I asked Ria as I recovered from the shock.

She nodded, “Most of them, there’s a lot of merchants too.”

“Wow!” I said, stunned. I knew there would be many seekers, but not that many, and that wasn’t all of them. I didn’t dare guess how many seekers were under my feet right now. Observing for a while, I noticed that seekers moved around the square with a goal, some heading to the shops that lined the square, others to the stalls set up in it. Those who did their business at the stalls or shop either left the square or headed to its center.

When I managed to block the noise destroying my ear canals, to some extent, I realized what was bothering me when I looked at those people. Unlike seekers in the city hall, these were armed and in armor.

“What are those shops and stalls selling?” I asked my guide while I watched the armed seekers enter the shops.

She looked at me strangely and shook her head, “These are not shops. These are company buildings, their headquarters!”

“All of them?” I asked, pointing to the buildings lining the square. There must have been dozens, maybe hundreds of them, it was hard to see the other end through those people. That is if the square has the other end. From where I stood, it seemed more hexagonal.

Kitsune nodded, “All of them. Some larger companies own several buildings, though.”

“Oh, is that a condition for a company to own a building here?” I asked, forgetting for a moment that I was talking to a little girl and not to Enola, the receptionist.

“No,” she shook her head. “The smaller ones don’t have them.”

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I didn’t see the entrance to the labyrinth, but if it was on this square, having headquarters here was definitely an advantage. Maybe a form of prestige too.

“... and those stalls?” I asked, pointing to the countless stalls in the square.

“Merchants trying to buy labyrinth materials from seekers, or to sell them armor, weapons, potions, food ...” Ria told me, and paused. “I had a great steak here once.”

Her dreamy expression made me want to taste the steak and buy it for her too, but I didn’t have the money to waste, and if I have learned anything in my life, it will be that in places like this, the prices of goods are exorbitant. So for one steak’s price here, I would buy two or three further in the city.

“Okay, Ria. Where’s the entrance?” I asked firmly, resisting the temptation of good food.

The little kitsune reacted quickly. “Korra, Sage, follow me!” she commanded, turning on her heel toward the center of the square.

Ria had my admiration because she fearlessly made her way among seekers, some of whom were twice her height, while I struggled with the anxiety their presence aroused in me.

Looking ahead, as I tried to follow the kitsune, I scanned my surroundings for something that might look like the entrance to a labyrinth, an ancient building, gate, maybe even a portal. However, I was surprised again when we arrived at the entrance, which did not look like I had imagined.

There was a huge circular hole in the ground in front of me. Well, it wasn’t a deep hole, only two to three meters, which was obviously the depth at which Fallen’s Cry, the labyrinth, was. At the bottom was a flat circular area at least two hundred meters in diameter, at first glance formed by a monolithic slab. Stairs led down to it around the perimeter, at the edge of which Ria and I stood. I felt like I was standing in a stadium, except I’ve never been to one.

Football was not my favorite sport.

Or maybe like in an ancient Roman theater that I wasn’t in either. But below, it looked like a stage whose actors were seekers. I took a few steps down, descending closer to the show. Seekers entered the stage in groups of various sizes, only to disappear a moment later in a flash of white light. Sometimes they disappeared right after entering the black monolith. Other times they walked a few meters to the center before stopping, and then the flash appeared.

Looking longer, I noticed that they not only disappeared in this way but also appeared, I suppose, returned from the labyrinth. These returning seekers immediately left this stage.

At first, I didn’t notice it. My gaze fixed on the flashes announcing the seekers’ arrival or departure, but the monolithic floor was not as monolithic as I thought but interwoven with something that could only be runes. Before the individual parties disappeared, runes glowed white for a brief moment, only to go out shortly afterward.

I did not see any designated places for teleportation, nor a pattern in where people left and came. Everything seemed random, and if there was a pattern or some order in this chaos, I didn’t see it.

But apparently, it somehow worked.

Fascinated by the chaos, I only now noticed the statue standing in the middle of it all. Made of the same material as the labyrinth, it merged into the background, but now that I knew about it, I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

It was hard to guess from this distance, but when I compared it to the seekers near it, the statue must have been three times the size of a human. It was a statue of a woman brought to her knees in battle. She was wearing armor, damaged by a fight, pierced by several arrows. One broken protruded from her chest, the other three from her back. The blood that gushed from these wounds ran down her armor to the ground, glowing with the same white light as the runes on the black floor into which it seeped.

With her helmet lying at her knees, still holding a sword in her hand, she cried hard, her tears glowing the same white color as her blood streamed down her cheeks. The statue of the woman seemed alive, almost as if it had just frozen in time, screaming at heaven in grief but unheard. It was a very heartbreaking scene, which, without realizing it, made me cry too.

I took a deep breath and wiped away my tears, wanting to ask Ria who the woman was, just to find her behind me in horror, trying to grab my tail.

“Come on, Sage?” she said pleadingly as my tail escaped her again. “Just a little hug.”

She went for another dive, trying to catch him, but I turned, and she, instead of my tail, hugged my waist.

“Aww ...” she whimpered in disappointment and looked at me. “You woke up sooner than I expected! I haven’t had time to hug Sage yet!”

“So you knew ...” I asked, but didn’t finish the sentence. She knew what? That the sight of the statue makes me cry, feel grief.

Ria avoided my gaze guiltily, “Maybe...”

More than angry at her, I was worried about why it had happened to me, wondering if it was some kind of mental attack. But I noticed nothing.

I looked down at the girl, “Ria, I’m not upset, but please tell me what happened. How did you know I was going to cry?”

“Everyone who looks at her will cry,” she said, shrugging as if it were an everyday thing.

I had to admit she was clever. She knew what the sight of the statue would do to people, what it would do to me, and she deliberately didn’t tell me. Instead, she wanted to use it to hug my tail. One could almost say that Sage had a mind of his own, but the fact that he dodged the little kitsune’s attempts was more my own subconscious reactions associated with my perception and domain.

Even so, I was glad to interrupt the flow of mana to my tail. On the way to the square, I tried to wave my tail as much as possible to vent the remaining poison from his hair so that Ria could hug him later. I didn’t expect her to try without my permission, though.

“Okay,” I said slowly, trying not to be angry with the girl and thinking. “Who is that woman? Why does the sight of her make people cry?”

“I don’t know why, but her name is Traiana,” said kitsune.

Wait! Traiana, like the swear word? That Traiana?! I almost asked Ria about it, quickly realizing that I didn’t want to teach her to swear.

“If you want, we can go see her,” Ria suggested as if it wasn’t a problem, but I saw one, the black platform interweaved with runes between the statue and us.

“Is there a safe way to her? Won’t that floor move us into the labyrinth?” I asked worriedly, pointing to the disappearing seekers. I had my doubts about my survival inside, but I was terrified to see what would happen if I showed up there with a little kitsune.

She shook her head, “You have to be a registered seeker for the labyrinth to let you in.”

Oh, so the registration Enola was talking about wasn’t just filling out the form, I thought it would be. The city hall, or the lord, respectively, had a way of controlling the labyrinth entrance. However, I doubted that this teleportation platform in front of me was their work, I have seen nothing so intricate in the city. They just had to have a key, so to speak.

I agreed with Ria’s suggestion and pointed to the statue, “Lead the way.”

The little kitsune did not hesitate and headed down the stairs to the platform. I followed.

When I stepped on the black floor, I felt strange. It was nothing caused by the platform, but the realization that I was standing on something thousands of years old and who knows how big. It was a strange anxiety that I felt as I looked up the stairs and imagined that there was an entire city up there, standing on what I was standing on right now.

I followed Ria across the platform while watching the ground closely, expecting the runes engraved in the black monolith to light up at any moment, moving me into the bowels of the structure.

To my relief, that did not happen, and I arrived at the statue of Traiana in one piece.

Daring not to look at the statue of the crying woman, I asked Ria. According to her, the statue only affected people once an hour, which made me wonder if it has some kind of cooldown. However, it was safe for me to look at her now, so I looked.

Up close, the statue was much larger and even more life-like. Despite kneeling, Traiana’s statue was almost three times taller than me, and it was not on any pedestal. Standing next to her, I saw her tears were actually flowing like real tears and dripping from her cheeks, but they never reached the ground as they dissolved in the air before reaching it. In contrast, her blood flowed from the wounds to the ground, seeping into engraved runes.

She almost seemed like a trapped goddess whose blood fed the labyrinth. That or some perverted fountain.

I walked around the statue, looking for the nameplate, as was the custom with statues on Earth, but I didn’t find any. I was about to ask Ria how she knew the woman’s name when I noticed the inscription engraved on the back of her helmet next to her knees.

[Traiana]

It was a simple hand engraving, without any glow, but that itself said a lot. The engraved name on it meant that she wanted those who found her body on the battlefield to recognize her no matter what happened to her, that she went into battle ready to die. But now, as she was dying, she shed tears for those who had fallen before her, for her friends.

To my dismay, it wasn’t just my guess, and for some reason, I knew the meaning of the statue. I blamed the same magic, or whatever made me cry earlier. It scared me because I had no idea what it was, I didn’t feel any mental magic, nothing that would affect me, yet when I looked at the statue from so close, two words kept appearing in my mind. It was not like a system notification but rather as an echo or like a tune you can’t get out of your head, two words.

Fallen’s Cry.