The City of Stonebridge nestled within wooded hills, straddling the flowing waters of Southfall River. Magpie’s eyes followed the river from the turbulent waters glinting with late afternoon sun, through the heavy stone buildings and bridges and thick-boughed fruit trees, finally to the placid channel below the city filled with laden barges, ducks and geese. A faint hint of sulfur shared the air with the acrid scent of cider brewing.
It was an idyllic scene, and Magpie distrusted it immediately. She just knew that on those shaded cobble streets would be found the begging homeless and the orphan children, that under the massive bridge-buildings the less reputable denizens of the city would be waking, preparing for the night’s mischief.
Or, it could be a happy community where all work for the common good, no one goes hungry and all citizens are treated with justice and fairness.
She snorted. There was no reason to think cities on the Inside would be any different from her own experience Outside. She had chosen Stonebridge for a simple reason; it was the closest human settlement of any size to Averdale, only a couple hours of calm instanced travel away, perhaps eighty kilometers. She figured it would be as good a place as any to start.
She began to make her way down the narrow path of bare dirt and exposed stone, only to be interrupted.
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I knew it was too good to last, she thought. I guess they’ve finally come to their senses.
She dampened her adrenal response as best she could, and repressed the irrational urge to run into the surrounding trees and hide. There would be no hiding from whatever was to come. The Josho clan had complete control over her fate.
Within a handful of minutes, she was out of the pod and following an overly polite and entirely uninformative woman in servant’s robes. As was her habit, Magpie had her augsight following the communal cast at ten percent, just enough to know what others might be seeing. Ghostly moving images of cranes and carp adorned the walls, and translucent glowing orange and red lanterns hung from the ceiling, utterly failing to illuminate Magpie’s surroundings. She knew that if she turned her augsight higher, the dim gray halls might be well-lit and cheerful, that the depressing and utilitarian corridor would become magical, even moving, but she would never allow herself to be vulnerable for a little happiness.
A shoji-style door at the end of the hall slid to the side as they approached. The servant stood to the side and Magpie entered into a spacious octagonal room. A woman with short black hair and dark gray robes stood behind a translucent half-moon of a desk, her ageless face regarding Magpie with a guarded expression. Magpie bowed respectfully and waited for the woman to speak.
“Grandfather has a weakness for strays,” she said in a low voice. There followed an uncomfortable silence. “Still,” she said, after nearly a minute had passed, “you seem housebroken. Do you know why you aren’t swimming in the Pacific right now?”
Magpie could only shake her head. She was fighting the temptation to go cold, fighting it hard. If she hadn’t been quite sure it would make absolutely no difference in the outcome of her current situation, she was quite sure she would have given in.
“Well, you probably never will. But what you are going to tell anyone who asks is that Lord Josho believes you have karma with our clan. Don’t roll your eyes!”
Magpie was quite sure she had controlled her reaction. Project much?
The woman continued. “Lord Josho is never wrong about these things. It’s my job to make sure of it. You will help our clan. Do you understand?”
Magpie couldn’t help but stare in astonishment. There were so many conflicts between what the woman had just said and her own understanding of reality, she wasn’t sure how to twist her thoughts to find a loose end to pull on.
Don’t they know I could be from a hostile, or even friendly clan? How would they keep me from vanishing as soon as my feet hit the ground? Are these people idiots?
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Call me Renzuru.”
“Yes, Renzuru-sama.”
The woman allowed the corner of her mouth to twitch. “Someone’s trained you well. However, such honorifics are terribly old fashioned. If you were a member of my family, I might think you were being sarcastic. Since you are obviously not, I’ll take it in the spirit in which it is intended. Going forward, simply call me Renzuru.” The woman crossed her arms. “Now, tell me what you are going to do for our clan. Please think carefully. Your answer will determine so many things about your future.”
Like its length, Magpie took as the subtext of Renzuru's words. If all of her training had prepared her for anything, it was thinking under pressure, allowing her instincts to furnish the correct action or response without the interference of her panicked thoughts.
“That’s easy,” she said. “I’m going to betray the Josho clan to Sinaloa.”
***
“How long can they possibly keep that noise going?” Skria asked.
So far, the impromptu, quasi-musical performance had continued unabated for close to thirty minutes. Over that time, the communication barriers with the Labyrinthians had eased somewhat. Lilijoy thought that the Inside might be helping, rewarding good-faith attempts to communicate with an supernaturally fast linguistic learning curve.
Still, communication barriers remained, more cultural than lexical. Entire categories of thought seemed to be missing from the Labyrinthian worldview. They had no word for tribe, or community. They had dozens of different words for the self, but no individual names. Lilijoy had taken to thinking of the boy as Lowly, as that was the self-referential label he used most frequently, though Small-Bone, Bait and Eater were some of his other favorites. The conversations, if they could even be called such, reminded Lilijoy of the time she had removed all linguistic labels relating to vision from her consciousness, the way in which the absence of language changed her ability to relate to the universe.
She replayed their most recent exchange, trying to understand.
“How many are making the noises?” she had asked.
“Wicked.” he had replied.
“The noise makers are wicked?”
“Yes.”
“Is there more than one noisemaker?”
“No.”
“How many are in this chamber?” she had tried, gesturing to Skria, Jess and the other two Labyrinthians.
Instead of replying, her had put his arms around his head, wrapping long fingers around his scalp.
There’s no way they can’t count. She pulled a few sling stones from her normal inventory, and waited for him to return from what she guessed passed for a fetal position. Once he had, she arrayed three stones in front of him.
“How many stones?”
He reached to pick one up, but she pulled it away. “I’ll give it to you if you tell me.”
He looked at her with huge, puzzled eyes. “Three.”
She placed the stone in his hand and wrapped his fingers around it. “There. You can keep it.”
He promptly put the stone in his mouth.
Lilijoy looked at him in surprise. “It’s not food.”
He nodded. “Wall bone,” he said, the stone’s presence only making a small contribution to his unintelligibility. “Keeper,” he added.
“So now you’re a wall bone keeper?”
He hesitated, before nodding. Pleased to have some kind of success, Lilijoy tried again to find out how many others were in the tribe.
“How many parts are wicked? How many.. beings, like you?”
“All.” He had nodded, looking almost pleased with his answer.
Looking back on it, Lilijoy was sure there was some underlying order to his responses. It was clear that his concept of group and individual was profoundly different than hers, certainly more fluid. She suspected that activity and function outweighed corporeal separation, that for Lowly, a group all doing the same thing was a singular entity. Where the whole ‘wicked’ thing came in, she had no idea.
Maybe they’re not supposed to make so much noise?
Still, she was sure Lowly had some way to distinguish the parts of a whole. She had left him for a moment to try with the others, who turned out to be even less helpful. Only one would talk at all, and he had identified himself as Food, Cursed and Blessed at various times in their entirely circular exchange.
“How much longer?” Jessila asked Lilijoy. She wasn’t as obviously impatient as Skria, but Lilijoy could tell that both of her friends had just about had it with the incessant cacophony provided by the wicked orchestra outside. Jessila had coiled, uncoiled, and recoiled Lilijoy’s rope nicely several times already, and was now pacing back and forth in front of the spiked bone wall, sometimes tapping it with her club as if she was trying to decide between joining the music or smashing it.
“Sorry! I’m sure I can get them to tell us what we need. It’s not like they’re trying to hide anything.” She reconsidered. “Well, not Lowly anyway.” Jessila gave her a funny look as Skria flew over.
“Are we ready?” she asked.
“No. I’m still trying to get a sense of what is waiting for us out there.” Lilijoy pointed at Lowly. “This one I’m calling Lowly. I don’t think they have names, not like us anyway.” She gestured for Lowly to join them. The young Labyrinthian pulled himself along the floor to where they stood, not bothering to get up. Lilijoy could see a bulge in his cheek where her sling stone was being kept safe.
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“This is Skria and Jessila,” she told him. “Two people.” She directed his gaze to his bound tribe mates. “There are two different people. Two bodies.”
His mouth dropped open a bit, allowing a thin stream of drool to run down his chin. Undeterred, she kept going. “There are six bodies in this room. How many bodies in Wicked?”
“Two hands,” he said without hesitation.
She glanced down at his fingers to make sure he had the same number as she.
“That sure is a lot of noise for ten people,” Skria said.
“Are the bodies stronger than those bodies?” Lilijoy continued, gesturing to the other two.
He shrugged. It took some more back and forth, but finally Lilijoy felt like she had a reasonable grasp on what awaited them. It seemed that only a few in the tribe were ‘Highest’ or ‘Big Bones’. He also kept saying ‘Horrible’, which made her a bit nervous. She thought that, maybe, Horrible wasn’t part of ‘Wicked’, but she couldn’t say for sure. It did seem that there were no bodies in ‘Wicked’ as big as Jess, which she took to be a positive sign.
That established, the three decided on a plan.
***
Confused Lowly Keeper’s skull ached. At least Eater was gone, thanks to the round wall bone he kept for Strange Not-Only-Afraid Talker. Strange seemed mighty, probably beyond Wicked, though Confused Lowly Keeper feared that after Horrible ruled they would become Bait. He only hoped that Wicked’s correction would not involve him. He sucked harder on the wall bone to keep Eater away, and did his best to ignore the filled heads in case there was a Rule.
Lowly wanted to stay low, but Strange was moving him through the Old Ones and giving him something like Rules. His skull had ached ever since Strange Not-Only-Afraid Talker had touched him and just briefly he had been… Stranged? His thoughts didn’t make sense any more. He was more terrified than ever that he might be Ruled, but also, inexplicably, interested in what would happen next.
Bait shuddered with guilt. He was too small to join the Old Ones, and soon he would be rolling in the darkness to keep Food safe.
“Okay Lowly, I’m going to make the stump go away. Just try to tell Wicked we mean no harm. I’ll be right here to keep you safe,” said Strange Not-Only-Afraid Talker.
“Lilijoy,” he replied. He wasn’t sure what the sounds meant, and trying to make them with his mouth almost caused him to swallow the wall bone. But it seemed to mean something to Strange, some Rule that he could follow to keep the fear at bay. He understood that Strange would Keep him, but apart from that he didn’t understand anything.
Abruptly, the large foreign blockage disappeared from the channel through the Old Ones. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. Terrified Lowly Keeper broke the floor water Rule, even as a wave of redemption swept through Wicked. In seconds silence was restored and Wicked was gone, even as Strange pushed Terrified Lowly Keeper along, allowing its large forms to emerge behind him.
“Go on, tell Wicked we come in peace,” said Strange Not-Only-Afraid Talker. There were other words from Strange as well, just as nonsensical. “That’s a lot more than ten,” Strange said in its high voice, while its low voice grunted and made unrecognizable sounds. False Lowly Keeper felt his body rebel against his senses, felt onrushing darkness and the pain of limbs attempting to move every way at once. He fell to the floor, his body trying to empty itself, the wall bone dropping to the floor with a dull cracking sound.
***
Lilijoy paused in shock for a split second as Lowly fell to the floor, convulsing and heaving.
Was it something I said?
Her concern for the young Labyrinthian was overshadowed by the sight that had greeted them when they entered the new space. Thirty-eight Labyrinthians stared at her in the light of Jessila’s glow-moss, their pale eyes blinking against the light. Many held hand drums of ribs and skin, others were slowly lowering carved bone whistles from their thin lips.
Lilijoy took advantage of that frozen moment of time to assess the situation. The Labyrinthians were a diverse bunch in appearance, with different colors and degrees of scaling, ridge patterns and facial structures. A few had hair in patches on their head or bodies, and several had breasts, or something like them. Many of them had extensive body ornamentation, with spikes of bone of various size thrust through ears, brows, chest and arms.
A quick Scan gave their levels as between three and ten.
Jessila pulled herself to her full height behind Lilijoy, recovering from the awkward stoop-crawl she had assumed to pass through the bone spikes, and the group before them gasped collectively. Lilijoy thought fast, reassessing their plan since Lowly was incapacitated. Now that she could see what they were facing she felt relieved that the individuals of the tribe were weak. If necessary, she thought that the three of them could wipe out the entire group, though she very much hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
There was also ‘Horrible’ to consider, whatever, or whoever that was. Horrible seemed like something more than a chief or leader, as far as she could tell. Lilijoy wasn’t sure if it was a god that these people worshiped, something tangible, or both. Her internet memory kept returning to various versions of King Kong, furnishing the fear that Horrible might be some kind of apex predator that permitted these people to exist within its domain. She didn’t want to commit to a fight they could probably win, only to find out it was the merest tip of the iceberg.
“We are peaceful,” she announced.
The Labyrinthians ran, scattering back down the hall as fast as their feet could carry them, some of them nearly scaling the walls in their haste. Drums and whistles clattered to the floor as they disappeared into the darkness.
“That was easy,” Skria observed.
“Very fast,” Jess added.
Lilijoy knelt next to Lowly, who was no longer convulsing, though he was shaking like a leaf.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did I ask for too much?”
He whimpered.
“Let me see if I can help.”
Lilijoy pulled forth her Healing mana, blending it with Charm, as she had for her friends at the start of the Labyrinth. His body was severely undernourished, with dozens, if not hundreds of old injuries poorly healed, concussions, broken bones and bruises, torn ligaments and partly ruptured tendons. She was shocked to see something like this on the Inside, where healing was typically rapid and complete.
He must have been beaten almost continuously for most of his life. No wonder all he had was fear.
She kicked herself for not finding this earlier. When she had used Two Minds One Self, the pain and hunger had been there, but subsumed within his fear.
“I’m going to take a few minutes and heal Lowly,” she told her friends. “Maybe we should release the bug guys? They might tell the others we mean no harm.”
She left them to do it, or not, and devoted her attention to soothing Lowly’s body and mind as best she could. She could only marvel at how often his bones had been broken, and at how closely the Inside paralleled the Outside in all the medical details. She still wondered why Guardian bothered with such a high degree of verisimilitude, though now she figured it had something to do with Rule Two and the whole ‘degree of repository detachment’ issue.
Is Guardian aiming to build a reality that could stand alone? Or is it just experimenting to learn more about the reality in which it finds itself?
Whatever the reason, her Healing skill, now at the Journeyman level, was showing her many more details, a blend of magic and anatomy that was fascinating. She could see earth mana at work, sustaining and repairing his fractured bones and water mana in his blood. She couldn’t help but wonder what she might see if she built a microscope, or used other Outside scientific tools.
While she worked on his body, she also did her best to heal Lowly’s tortured mind. Without a good ability to communicate, she was careful not to do anything too ambitious. It was already tricky, guessing to what extent Insider’s minds were modeled on Outsider consciousness. Throwing in the different species and culture made her reluctant to do more than take the edge off his near constant state of panic.
After a few minutes, she sat back, having done what she could.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Eater misses the wall bone,” he said.
Does that mean he’s hungry? Is he Eater when he wants to eat?
She didn’t have any food on her, and the idea of getting him one of the skull bowls filled with bug guts turned her stomach. “Skria, do you have any fruit on you?” she called out to her friend.
Skria dropped down from her perch on the bone wall. “I always have fruit,” she said. “Let me see… for him, I assume?” She reached into her inventory, which took the form of a small bag on her hip. Lilijoy could just make out a hint of diamond mana as the fruit was withdrawn. She had experimented with her own inventory, observing the magic involved with the transference of objects into and out of the pocket space. The mana involved was nearly identical to that of Nandi’s boon, and to the color of her own joyful anticipation.
She still wasn’t sure if that similarity was something… real, or some byproduct of her own arbitrary assignments of sensory impressions to various mana types. As usual with such things, she kept an open mind, but had decided to take it on face value for the moment. Spatial mana, diamond mana and joyful anticipation were connected in her own mind, and that was enough for now.
Her experimentation with inventories was limited to observation only though, so far. She could see the mana, but had been unable to affect it in any way.
“I think apple is best,” Skria said, handing a small red one to Lowly. “It’s very boring, but that’s probably a good thing.”
Lowly looked at the round, red fruit with confusion and a little alarm.
“It’s food. It’s for Eater,” Lilijoy explained.
He sniffed it, then attempted to cram it whole into his mouth, giving Lilijoy memories of her first food bar. Fortunately, he wasn’t able to get it past his jaw.
“You bite it,” Skria said, making exaggerated biting motions with her sharp teeth.
Lowly pushed the fruit against his top row of teeth and pushed on it until they broke through the skin. Then he moved the fruit back and forth for a moment, his eyes widening as the flavor entered his mouth.
“Do you think he likes it?” Skria asked Lilijoy.
It was difficult to tell at first. Several times he repeated the process, puncturing the apple with his teeth then bringing it down to look at it suspiciously. Finally, he brought it up and began sucking the juice from the holes he had made. His eyes rolled back in his head and he shuddered several times.
“Either he likes it or it’s poisoning him,” Lilijoy replied.
“Could be both,” Skria said.
After observing Lowly and his fruit for a few more moments, Lilijoy decided he was probably okay. Jess emerged from the tight passage through the bone barrier, shaking her head.
“What?”
“Freed the others,” she said. “They’re fishing now. Like nothing happened.”
“These people don’t make any sense,” Skria said.
“They do seem to have strange priorities,” said Lilijoy. “Should we continue?”
The hall was similar to the first part of the labyrinth, plain stone walls forming a rectangular corridor about twenty feet across and ten feet high. The floor was completely level, and ran exactly due west. Aside from the discarded musical instruments there was no sign of any habitation.
“Where do they live?” Lilijoy wondered out loud. “It’s strange that there’s absolutely nothing here.”
Skria and Jess could only shake their heads, similarly confused. “It must be farther down, where they all ran off to,” Skria finally said, as they began to make their way.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Jess added.
A few times, Lilijoy glanced back at Lowly, who was still entranced with the apple. She had mixed feelings about leaving him behind, but knew there was no way he would be safe coming with them. She had a very strong sense that their journey through the Labyrinth was far from complete.
It wouldn’t be much of a labyrinth with only a few turns. Rosemallow sure didn’t think small.
Still, she felt bad about leaving the little guy in a place that was so obviously cruel. Struck with an idea, she told the others to wait while she ran back to Lowly. There was no way to explain to him what she was going to try, not really, but she did her best.
“Lowly, I’m going to try and bring you to a different place,” she said. “You’ll be safe, no more pain. Just don’t leave the room. There will be lots of things to discover. I promise I’ll bring you back when I can.”
She pulled out her diamond mana and fed it to the Boon. Then she navigated back to the cavern she was using for storage of potentially useful items, reached out to take Lowly’s arm, and pushed, watching as Lowly shrank to nothingness in front of her and grew as if coming from a great distance into her Trial space. He was so engrossed with the apple, he barely noticed, which was for the best.
So… I can do that. Huh.
Lilijoy had thought about using the Boon to banish enemies, perhaps to dump them into the lava pools of the vast cavern. Every time she had the thought though, she had known, just known, that it wouldn’t work, that aggression and the urge to harm were antithetical to the mindset she needed to use the Boon. This was different. She wasn’t sure if she was doing a good thing, not really, but she was excited to find out.
“Can you do that to us?” Skria asked from behind her. She and Jess had followed her back.
“Probably. If you wanted.” Lilijoy couldn’t tell if Skria was curious or afraid.
“You put him in your Trial place?”
Skria and Jess knew the broad outline of Lilijoy’s ability, though she wasn’t sure if they really grasped the immensity of the Trial. “Yes. In the cavern where I keep stuff. He’ll be safe there, I think. It’s pretty far from anything dangerous.”
“And you can take him out again?” Skria sounded like she was having trouble wrapping her head around the concept.
Lilijoy took a moment to check her diamond energy. She had yet to figure out any way to quantify its usage, as there were many interconnected factors involved. Her mood and her purpose and feelings about what she was doing interacted with the size and qualities of any given object she was attempting to transport. Sometimes, if she overused the ability, she would feel drained and unable to use it again for hours, even days. Other times it felt like she had an inexhaustible font of energy she could use at will. Until she couldn’t. It was enigmatic and a bit infuriating.
“I think I could, pretty soon anyway. If I had a good reason.”
Jess shook her head. “Your power is weird,” she said.
Lilijoy could only agree.