We set out at first light.

There were three-quarter-score of us, including Aldwyn and myself, only a bare handful left to serve with Ewan as skeleton guard. We traveled simply, bringing in tow only some meagre collection of supplies; salt meat and lukewarm waterskins, wilting herbs and tangled bandages, and wear suited for a somewhat more flexile range of climates, all ported most customarily in shoddy, fraying rucksacks.

I wielded a bastard sword.

It hung at my hip, rough and weighty, its dangling cadence nevertheless as comfortable to me as any manner of linen or fabric. I didn’t use a shield. Never. Nor heavy armor, nor great weapons, nor crushing ones. It was not my way. Entombing myself in iron felt altogether unnatural, strangling the song, leaving me deaf, blind, and dumb.

I’d based my maneuvers upon mobility, largely. After all, Ewan always said most battles were decided upon their inaugural exchange. I chose to strike first, and strike fastest.

I was rather unique, in this. Most our party elected arm themselves with shields and axes, or hammers, or shortswords. Daggers, even. Save for one of our lot, who’d brought with him in lieu of common arms a number of caving tools, none of which I recognized aside from a long grappling hook and unlit torch. And save for Aldwyn, who bore a single, mighty spear, almost as long as himself. Our choices, his and mine, were the more perilous, though. In cramped or confined spaces, we’d face difficulty.

In fairness, one of our apparati might well have been just about as good as the other. We’d no idea what to expect. There was no one way to provision.

The Maw could be anything at all.

We moved through the wood in a discordant clamour of clinking mail, snapping twigs, squishing lichen and clanking steel on steel. The forest seemed to part itself about our wake, tacitly encouraging our quest, perhaps.

Or guiding us towards our doom.

But I wasn’t afraid.

Surprisingly not. All those grim humours and eclectic nerves, what’d plagued me throughout the night before, had evaporated with the rising sun, cast off and purged by the coming dawn. I felt focused, now. I felt calm. The song thrummed inside my chest, thick and potent as never before, beating within like a second heart.

Only a hint of trepidation remained. A faint, ephemeral, nigh-invisible foreboding. An undercurrent, a leitmotif hidden in the song.

Not all of us would return from this. I felt it in my bones.

We made good pace through the thicket, and soon arrived at the Maw.

And whatsoever fantastical visions I’d nurtured of it prior, whatsoever phantasmagoria had existed in me from tales I’d heard recounted hence, of abyssal trenches and exotic ruins and golden portals in the skies, were quite summarily dispelled.

It was a simple cave.

It distended from a natural rise in the terrain, a rocky formation surrounded on all sides by dense wood, shruberry, and soil, its profile dull stone shaped in an inverted ‘U.’ Patches of green lichen dotted its exterior, some strands extending down to drape across its opening.

Within it, there was only darkness.

Our party drew to a halt.

If Aldwyn was at all ill-at-ease, he didn’t show it. He raised his hands high, and after we’d gathered ourselves before him, he spoke.

“I know the pressure on you all is enormous,” he began, slow and steady.

“I know none of us have delved before,” he acknowledged, “I know we’re not the best, not the strongest, our village has to offer. I know…” Aldwyn hesitated. “I know, perhaps, that there are those among you who might prefer we never delve at all.”

My brow furrowed, at that.

Was Ewan not alone in his concerns? Had he spoken to others?

“I know we’ve no notion of what to expect,” he went on. “Monsters, blackguards, magic. None, or all, or more. We face the unknown. And I know the unknown is very easy to fear.”

He paused for a moment, fingers idly gripping at the shaft of his mighty spear, clenching and unclenching.

“But I do not ask you, any of you, to be unafraid,” he intoned, quietly, eyes downcast. “Fear is useful. Meaningful. Fear keeps us alive. With so very much unknown, I do realize the temptation to fear may be overwhelming. I do not ask that you not fear.”

Aldwyn paused once more, licked his lips, and looked up at us.

“I ask that you remember why we decided to delve.”

He began to pace, now. Lightly. His words came more forceful, his palms waving about as he spoke.

“Why we elected it. Together. What lies before us, now, though fraught with peril, is no mere cave. No mere Maw. No, my friends. No. Not at all. It is much more than that.

“What lies before us, here, now, is no mere thing,” he insisted, then holding aloft a lone pointer finger. “It is a chance, one to be enjoyed only once in our lifetimes, I promise you that. Only once, in our lives.”

The sole finger held aloft retracted, joining its brothers and sisters down below, tightening into a shaking, white-knuckled fist which was offered towards us.

“I want you to imagine that.”

Aldwyn’s tenor shook.

“I want you to imagine what this will mean, for your lives. For your childrens’ lives. For your grandchildrens’ lives.”

It shook with a fierce passion.

It shook with a frenzied desperation.

“I want you to imagine the bounty. Imagine no longer fretting over the size of your kindreds’ meals, or your own. Imagine no longer having to see your wives weep over departed sons, or husbands, or daughters sent off to work far from home. I want you to imagine a life spent comfortably with the people you love.”

Aldwyn glanced downwards, gaze tracing fleetingly his own clenched, outstretched fist.

“I want you to imagine the glory,” he breathed.

“Imagine our village, put on the map. Imagine our houses repaired. Renovated. Imagine great rails connecting us to the big cities, bringing new trade, new tradesmen. Imagine being elevated in Cell Uther’s esteem, becoming protected by branches of a great noble House, protected from all that would seek to do us harm.”

Aldwyn’s face had flushed. His breaths came as gasps, his disposition, for once, anything but composed.

I saw his fear. I saw his anger, his melancholy, and his hope. It was startling, almost disturbing. I could see, now, why Ewan’s plea had missed its mark. And yet, for some reason, I’d never imagined such raw emotion might make for itself a home in the otherwise kindly old man.

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“No, my friends,” Aldwyn murmured, eyes shining. “I do not ask that you have no fear.

“Only, that you remember why we are here.”

A roar arose.

It birthed quickly, frantically, inheriting much of the very selfsame frenzy torrid in Aldwyn’s entreaty. It bore forth from my lips, as well, joining in the impromptu chorus of those around me. Cheers and shouts and hear-hear’s swelled up from all of us, borne together in a single moment of wonderful possibility, one in which we forgot our leachy mail, and rusted steel, and fraying rucksacks, in which we were transiently and awesomely immortal.

Aldwyn took no time at all to bask in our shared delight, instead nodding seriously, and leading us forth into the apparent darkness.

Or, not so apparent.

For, rather strangely, the prior pitch-blackness proved far from absolute, and torches commensurately unnecessary. The interior of the cave was thick with that same lichen as its opening, but here it produced a faint luminescence, thereby permitting us to trivially navigate it.

The cavern twisted and turned as we followed it, but it wasn’t long until we happened upon a great double door that blocked the way forward. It was set within the rock itself, crafted from the same material, patterned with an intricate design.

Chiseled altogether too perfectly upon its unnervingly-smooth surface were what I could only describe as two positively massive…

Well…worms.

Except, they were too angular for worms.

Too angular entirely, covered up in sharp crystals that seemed to glow sea-green in the occult lichenlight. The creatures had no apparent mouths, or tails, no discernable points of inception or termination at all, really, and each followed the other, nebulous tip to nebulous tip, together forming a flawless circle upon the door.

And within this ring was written a single phrase in the common tongue.

In Search of the Source.

We regarded it dumbly.

The words, though individually recognizable, meant nothing to me in sequence. The rest of the party murmured softly, perhaps unsettled, shifting shoulders and scratching helms. Aldwyn reached out, tentatively, and placed his hand upon the petrified script.

With a great, grating roar that made us jump in our boots, the doors rumbled slowly open.

And the murmurs magnified.

All that passion, all that fury, all that fervor what Aldwyn had so delicately, so painstakingly invigorated in us stood now face-to-face with cruel, cold, unflinching reality.

With magic.

It was one thing to hear stories of the arcane from afar, to bear witness minor cantrips performed by mundane magicians by grace of triflingly enchanted items, but now we were up close. Now we saw it in the flesh. A door that moved on its own was neither so eldritch nor so alarming. It was a piddling thing.

And yet, somehow, it made the whole endeavor real.

It cemented in actuality the fact that our lives were no longer in our own hands, that we were poised to lay ourselves at the profoundly dubious mercy of an entity so ancient, so ascendant, so divine, that it defied our comprehension entirely.

And behind this mammoth, occult, antediluvian door was…

Another door.

But it was a single one this time, and humble, not overmuch larger than the breadth and depth of a single man, and made out of seemingly-normal, if lavishly-embossed, timber.

“Steady, gentlemen,” Aldwyn said, voice clear over the clamour, calming it at once. “We push forward.”

With that, we opened the wooden portal and set forth into the Labyrinth.

~

~~~

~

The first room was…bizarre.

Granted, I’d not delved before, so I’d no true idea what to expect of it. The stories I’d heard hence varied to such a degree and were so often embellished that it tended difficult to discern lies from reality. But, whatever I’d expected, it most assuredly wasn’t this.

Upon passing through the wooden door, we’d somehow transitioned from a dark, dank cave lit by glowing moss to what appeared a gentile manor. But this wasn’t like the ‘manor’ house back in the village, that one which served as Aldwyn’s home.

Oh no.

This was a proper manor.

This looked just like what I imagined such a construct might be, when built in the right way, for the right purpose, to serve a wealthy Aristocrat well as their homestead.

The whole place was lavish beggaring belief.

The bones of the house, the ceilings and the floorboards and the spaces in-between were wrought of thick, rich, lacquered oak which gleamed as if freshly polished, embossed with blooming flowers, floating petals, and complex vagaries of still life. Silk curtains shrouded the windows, opulent canvases crept like prismatic spiders across the walls, and plush armchairs sat decadent in the corners of each room, looking as if they’d just be absolute heaven to fall into. A vast fireplace lit the one end of the room, its logs biting and snapping eagerly at open air.

The manor was entirely empty.

No servants swept the floors, set the tables, or tidied furniture. No chef to staff the kitchens, no steward to tend the hearth, and no butlers whisked about, collecting and adequately stowing away our overgarments. Everything seemed freshly arranged, as if our arrival had been anticipated…

But there was no one here.

Picturesque, but deserted.

The only humanoid thing in the whole manor was a rather striking set of surely bespoke armor, on display just beside the fireplace. Trimmed with gold and studded silver, this empty knight grasped tight an exquisitely engraved greatsword in its gauntleted hands.

In fact, gold was in, or on, just about everything.

Gold inlaid the paintings, lined the chairs, wove throughout the curtains, crawled through seams in walls and floors. The dining table was lined with gold. The vases resting upon it were burnished gold. The silverware, despite being named as such, was gold.

I was half tempted to try and bring some back with me.

Several of the men apparently had the same idea as, after gawking, they immediately rushed forward and began bagging everything not tied down. They didn’t notice the wooden door swing softly shut behind them.

But I did. Aldwyn did, too. He frowned.

“Alright, that’s enough!” He called out, the men reluctantly arresting their pillaging efforts in response.

“We need to figure out where to go before deciding what we’re going to bring with us. Gold is worth nothing next to crystals, anyway.”

He splayed his arms out wide, gesturing in direction of the various rooms, doors, and archways just out of sight.

“Everyone spread out,” he ordered. “Search for the way forward.”

His eyes narrowed.

“And stay sharp. Just because we haven’t noticed anything, doesn’t mean there isn’t danger here. You keep your weapons close, your wits about you, and you don’t get weighed down.” His last comment was directed very obviously towards the looters, who had at minimum the decency to appear embarrassed, though not so much so as to return their bounty to its proper place.

With that, we spread out and began to search the entire house, noticing first that it wasn’t overly large.

Though far eclipsing any of the cabins back home, with ceilings as tall as several men and at least equally as broad, the entire structure composed itself of just two floors. The first floor consisted of the entrance hall, kitchen, dining room and living room. The second floor included only one absolutely giant bedroom, complete with a massive poster bed.

Strangely, there were no bathrooms in the place.

On either floor. In fact, the entire house seemed sealed off from the outside. Lifeless. Hollow. There was no food in the kitchens, no water flowed from the tap either, and though there were windows on some of the walls, nothing could be seen outside them save for darkness.

The more we searched, the less of use we found, and the more we happened upon…peculiarities.

Candelabra, affixed to walls instead of ceilings. Paintings hung upside down, or sporting some scenes so abstract as to be incomprehensible. The places at the table were set all wrong, cutlery in the center and dishes off to the side, the plants resting within the opulent vases were all dead or dying, never having been watered.

It was as if the building’s architect had heard stories of humans, but secondhand, garbled, having received a warped idea of how they actually lived. There were no sheets, or blankets, or covers on the bed upstairs. In fact, there was no furniture in the bedroom at all. Instead, the room was packed to the brim with pillows of every conceivable shape and size.

Most concerningly, though, was the exit. Or, lack thereof. Even after hours, we were no closer to finding it.

This house was a fucking tomb.

The only door in the manor was the main one, and it was closed and locked up, tight as a drum. Axes and hammers, when taken to it, left not even a scratch, the bespoke timber somehow harder than steel. The windows were no different. The furniture within the place wasn’t quite so sturdy, however, leading many no doubt expensive items to be forcefully and aggressively disassembled by irate men-at-arms.

Helping our situation not one bit.

We were going to have to find some other way out.