The girl dutifully followed the hand that held her as tight as the murk gripping her thighs, allowing herself to be guided through the reeds and vines. Darkness had begun to descend over the city, but she barely noticed through the glare of the sweltering sun hung high over the swamp. Its putrid humidity and its filthy fingers sunk into her skin, unyielding.
Eventually the hand stopped, and so too the girl stopped, but the ripples, they carried on through the swamp’s waters. Her eyes, caught within their walls, traced what little of their path they could discern. Choice and consequence, played out here but also there .
Only experience stopped her from looking to the origin, from looking at her . Temptation lurked, treacherous, tugged at her desperation and plied her with empty promises of knowing .
Such violent ends.
The girl squatted over the rocky shores and observed unseeing, blond hair falling walling off the world as she hunched in on herself, arms clasped tight over her knees and shivers. Great waves rose out of the depths, white tipped and ravenous, desperate to reclaim those shores that dared defy the deep. One islet stood tall, hulking—an imposing monolith to man’s hubris. A lighthouse holding vigil amongst sunken cadavers, a lone hope amidst omens. A promise that not all paths perish in the void.
How perfidious. Show the world your light, false prophet, proffered and unyielding, and pray they do not see the lies behind your empty promises.
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“Can you keep a secret?” asked the Queen of Swords. “If not, then run while you can.”
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“Labyrinth?”
A fleck in the black, one of few. The girl held onto that fleck, onto that name, as tightly as she did her knees. Labyrinth. Elle . I slowly settled into myself, force of will alone keeping the shivers in. They led to emptiness and to screams, and I had a part in this tragedy. So close and so far. I could see every wall in the maze upon the girl’s mask—my mask?—every molecule of the illusion. I could see , but to speak, to move, to hold? Beyond her— me .
Infuriating. Undermining.
And still temptation lurked, e’er the snare. I rejected it, looking there. The light’s core as well, not when that choice could change what was to come. I had seen another walk that path, seen the sadness it brought. The consequence .
I held in my body’s shivers and reached. For the girl, for me and my strings. For what others so easily took for granted.
Not June .
I nearly slipped. Nearly. I grabbed the strings, and the girl’s head and its walls twitched. Easily missed, but the fleck had been watching. “Everyone’s ready.”
Were they? Not even I could see what lay behind the curtains of reeds and vines, not truly. But I could see where the others had pressed forward. A glimpse in the mirror at a reflection both the girl’s reflection and not. Too, too often my flecks were swallowed up in the murk. Poisonous .
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No, they weren’t ready. None of us were.
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“The Princess will be saved. By hook or by crook.”
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But I had a part to play in this tragedy. I reached out. Pushed.
Pavement flowed and folded into woods, monstrous trunks that rose from the filth, their branches and roots many and mighty in the miasma and murk. Dark, dead streets devoid of travelers, their songs and ripples filled anew with clamor, with a claxon cry. The lightkeepers brought to bear their inky brushes, but where they trudged through the morass, her flecks danced upon the moonlit land.
The die was cast, the ripples in motion. It was finally safe to look, and I gave into temptation.
“Elle.”
A statement, not a question. June couldn’t have known for sure. Sixteen powers, but none fit—an educated guess. Or did some semblance of our bond remain…? I could have stayed silent, left no sign. Should have.
I couldn’t.
A wolf of steely fur stepped out of the wall. My beloved’s eyebrow twitched, but she did not stir from where she sat upon the cot, slumped against the concrete wall. She remained, even as the cot didn’t, as the concrete didn’t. A lavish bed and a cushioned headboard—nothing less for the princess.
“Come, fortunate favorite of the Queen.”
“Elle, please. This isn’t helping. Just… just get everyone out of here. Go .”
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“The Princess will be saved, or there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Keep this secret or run while you can.”
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Go.
I watched as they emerged from the darkness, from the shadows and silence into the day and the din. A horde a legion strong and legion more at its back, helmed by beast and blood, buckler and bone. The Queen’s fangs, bared .
But even fangs had foes to fear. I bound them, lashed them to chair and the tender mercies of the doctor and his drill. And as I did, I lit the way. My fleck roared its defiance beside the girl, lanced out as only she could. Four times, the bells tolled, four times. They struggled and squirmed. How mighty were the weak when the strong’s weakness they did seek?
Could I go? Answer my June’s plea? A bird screamed, perched upon its prey. A church sank into the sands, the ashes of its kin a storm to blot out the sky and the truth so loudly resounding. I saw it all, the days to come and how I would weep alone.
I rejected it. I was nothing, no one—a speck so small as to be crushed beneath the foot of an ant—in the grand sea of creation. What hope did I have to make what was to come bow to my whim?
What choice did I have but to try? To reject it all the same?
“Elle, please…”
What choice did I have but to say, “No,” the wolf refused, dressed in the girl’s timbre rather than the sheep’s wool or grandmother’s clothes.
“Might I ask you to listen to your friend?” The Tower stepped into the room, clothed in the evening sky and attended by the passed. It was not his arrival that sparked surprise in me but his deference. Such grace I returned, my wolf curtsying before the great collector of legends. “Meteor is here of her own choosing. Please stop, or I must make you.”
Who was he in the shadow of fate? I unleashed it, what is and what was. A tangled web swelled, born of the murk to trap the lightkeepers. Mighty walls, cracked yet unyielding before man. Statues swathed in lichen, precarious in vigil over the paths. Spiked pitfalls cloaked ‘neath peat and low hanging vines. Torches in rotten sconces, hung over the landscape’s oily pools and trails. Sharpened logs looming in the branches overhead.
I unleashed it, my namesake, my nightmare , manifest. And within that new world, fauna rose from the fen. Lithe wolves with glistening maws and bloodied fur. Snarling bipedals with green skin unendingly rotting and regrowing. Hunched torch bearers with thorny crowns perched between their horns. Horrific chimeras and shadows incarnate that towered over the lightkeepers. Tusked horrors with wings of skin and great, shaggy manes. Black-hearted witches with tomes and knives and honeyed words.
Come legends, come fate. The Queen was not the only one with fangs to bare.
“No. Running.”