'Child, through there, lays the test,' Ayg began, her voice anxious.
Renier, his hand still clasping the hilt of his Yataghan, nodded, his youthful visage betraying a mixture of apprehension and resolve. 'I understand, Serene Ayg. Ten chambers'
Her nod was slow, deliberate. 'Precisely. The rooms will test your resolve.'
His fingers tightened upon the leathery grip of his sword. 'And the portal to Ombre Island, it's beyond the tenth room?'
'Yes. To reach Ombre Island, you must pass the challenges ahead. I will teach you how to activate it when you're there.'
'Will you be with me during the passage?'
'I will be with you, but I will not help you.'
He stepped into the chamber onto a three-by-two rectangle of green square tiles. The rest of the flooring was covered by uniform black tiles. His eyes swiftly scanned the peculiar space before him. "The way forward is not always clear," a voice boomed as he was about to take his first step onto the black surface.
He made his forward motion, but as he finished his step, unexpectedly, he was shifted back to where he started. Renier stumbled, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. 'Forward doesn't work. Let me try left,' he thought. He turned left, stepped forward, and slid back just like before. Then he sidestepped to the left. Same result. Then he tried to the right and was returned to the starting green rectangle. As he stood there baffled, he unthinkingly took a step back and, to his surprise, slid onto the black surface. He tentatively took another step back and slid forward again. 'Euh, backward to go forward.'
On his third step backward-forward, a sudden clank echoed through the chamber, and a daunting blade dropped onto where he was standing. Instinct kicked in and propelled him forward in a customary evasion. Immediately, the floor beneath him slid backward with a sly smoothness, retracting his progress and casting him back to where he had been standing, the blade slicing his back, momentarily burying itself in the floor, and then retracting back to the ceiling. Luckily, his leather armor saved him from greater injury.
He gasped, the breath sharp and bitter as he wrestled with his learned responses. 'Merde, If I'm not careful, I'm going to die here,' he thought.
He closed his eyes for a mere moment, pushing aside his instincts. Backward is forward, he recited mentally, turning left and taking a backward stride to go around the blade.
Each backward step felt like a small victory. The clanks kept coming, but he was able to control his instincts and avoid further injury.
He began to move with strange, newfound confidence, each backward step executed with a careful, deliberate rebellion against his nature. Gradually, he felt the deception of the hall becoming a reality he could navigate, an unsettling dance he had learned the steps to.
The exit, a humble archway of aged stone, loomed before him, yet Renier knew better than to succumb to the lure of triumph. With a patient, backward stride, he reached the exit, the hall behind him whispering with the silenced threats of inverted logic.
Yet, it was not the exit.
A soft click resonated through the chamber, and it seemed like reality shifted, and he was back at the green rectangle. A hesitant step backward moved him to the left, and a forward step moved him backward. Clank. The sound reverberated throughout the chamber. Hastily, he stepped backward and slid left - clank - another hurling blade, his brow furrowing in perplexity as he quickly stepped backward again and slid left, barely missing the blade.
He paused, thinking hard, 'The rules have changed.' He took another step left, and this time, he moved forward.
Renier murmured to himself, “Backward to go left, forward to go backward, left to go forward, and right to go...right.”
He crouched slightly, contemplating the tricky dance of directions. If he was correct, his next motion to the right should propel him rightward. With a deep breath, he moved – and let out a quiet sigh as he slid to the right.
Yet, the labyrinth wasn't that simple. A click sounded, and Renier took a step backward just as a group of spikes pushed up from the floor and sliced part of his boot. 'Merde, merde, I have to move fast when going to the right, or I'll get impaled.'
Swallowing hard, Renier orchestrated his movements with meticulous care, mindfully calculating each step in accord with the concealed rhythm of the hall. He glided rightward - click - then he immediately stepped left to slide forward and avoid the ascending spikes - clank - left to move forward, narrowly missing the plummeting blade.
The lack of sound would have provided a momentary respite. But his instincts betrayed him, compelling a forward step that moved him backward and on the path of the blade. A quick step left moved him forward onto the safe square.
He steadied his breathing to the familiar four, seven, eight, calming his rapidly beating heart. Rising, he murmured the pattern, reorienting himself to the puzzle, refusing to allow fear to weave chaos into his thoughts.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Backward to dodge left, left to escape forward, and then right to slip to the right, narrowly evading the spikes, with a backward step, always a breath away from calamity. Step by step, Renier danced with death in a hall that twisted logic and reason into a perilous maze.
And then, he was at the archway again, and with a final left step, the exit, or so he thought.
Again, a soft click resonated through the chamber, and reality shifted. Renier exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, the triumph of navigating through the last room pulsing through his veins. However, the sight before him caused his triumph to ebb away, replaced by a fresh wave of tension.
Before him, the labyrinth morphed into a vast vertical chamber, where platforms hovered, suspended in a void, and a spiraling vortex of ethereal lights tantalizingly danced around them, implying an unseen pathway through the three-dimensional expanse.
Gulping back his trepidation, Renier focused on the pattern he had deciphered earlier, adding to it the new dimensions that loomed before him. His muscles were taut; each sinew prepared for a choreography that melded logic and absurdity.
He began with a purposeful stride leftward, testing the logic of this room. It moved him forward onto the first levitating platform. The green rectangle disappeared. Then, steeling himself, he stepped backward, his body moving to the left, the only choice available. Again, the platform he had just left disappeared. 'So, there's no going back,' he thought. His pulse quickened; this new platform presented two choices: forward and right. The platform on the right had no lights, while the one forward had two, one red and one green.
He took a left step and moved forward, a slightly unnerving sensation that was becoming eerily familiar. He inhaled, focusing on the pattern, mentally plotting each subsequent move. 'The lights tell me how many connections a platform has, but what is the meaning of the colors?' he pondered.
The platform he was on presented three choices. On the left was a platform with three green lights. The forward platform had seven green lights and one red one, and the one on the right also had three green lights. He pondered his choices. 'If the lights show connections, then the color must show the correct path. That should be red?' he speculated.
Taking a leap of faith that he was right, he stepped left and moved to the forward platform. This platform had no connections on the left or the right, but in front, eight platforms shifted from left to right once every heartbeat. Only one of them had a red light. 'I have to time this right, or I'll get stuck with no way back,' he thought.
He counted as the platforms shifted. One cycle, then another, and once again, unsure when to step. "Here we go," he yelled, trying to give himself courage as he stepped left and slid, but he misstepped and midslide as the platform with the red light slid past him, he lunged to the right and landed teetering on the edge and finally falling forward onto the platform.
He threaded his way through the platforms, following the red lights until he had to stop, perplexed. The following platforms had all green lights except one that was blue. 'Blue has to be it,' he surmised.
The platform with the blue dot had connecting platforms on two sides. Renier found it puzzling. 'It had three lights, so there should be three connections.' He could feel he was missing something. Then he looked up, and sure enough, about five meters up was a platform with three green lights. 'No way forward,' he thought, estranged. 'Not up, maybe down?' Sure enough, as he looked five meters down was another platform with one red light. 'Up or down?' he asked himself. 'With the contrariness of this place, I bet you go up to go down,' he deduced.
'Quand faut y aller,' he thought as he took a deep breath and jumped upwards, expecting a leap toward the next platform. Instead, he glided elegantly downward, landing softly with a slight bend in his knees.
As he followed the lights towards the exit, Renier found himself engaged in a mesmerizing yet perplexing ballet through the chamber that defied the norms of reality. Upward leaps, downward crouches, and steps in all directions melded into a strange dance that took him through the platforms, each move a calculated gamble in this enigmatic game of directions.
As he neared the conclusion of the chamber, he could see the familiar arch. Renier, with sweat beading his brow and his breath a steady, controlled rhythm, made the final leap, passing through the exit.
His feet touched the solid ground of the corridor, and he paused, heart hammering in his chest. 'A few scrapes, but not dead yet,' he mused as he walked towards the next room, feeling strange at the normalcy. But, the labyrinth was far from conquered.
Renier stepped cautiously into the second chamber, his heart hesitating between bravery and fear. A path led from the entrance for some thirty meters to split, a shimmering portal on each side. As he stepped forward on the path, a voice said, "Backwards or forwards, left or right, redo what has been or embrace that which might. But know that here you can never come back."
He reached the portals, and in each, a scene showed. On the left, you could see a road that led to a town. It looked familiar to Renier. 'It's Hisn-Mansur when I arrived.' On the right, the back of a young man of about 16 could be seen. He had flowing, long blonde hair. He wore a gray silk hanfu, a blue dragon embroidered on one sleeve, and a yataghan strapped at his waist. He was on a horse, and a city could be seen in the distance.
'I can go back to before the thieves,' he thought. He would avoid the stay at the Inn and the attack, and then he remembered the warning. 'If I go back, I can never come here again.'
He stepped through the portal that showed the young man, and after a couple of seconds of disorientation, he found himself on the same path again, two portals about thirty meters ahead.
Once again, two choices were presented. On the left was Gazi, giving instructions on how to fight with the Turkish style. He remembered that day; it was just before the Ebon came. On the right, again, the back of a young man of about twenty, he was on top of a wagon looking down a long road in front of him was a train of wagons, and in the distance, there were snow-covered peaks.
'I can warn Gazi and the rest of the Pasha's household, but the Ebon would still find me,' he took the portal on the right again.
Once more, two portals appeared at the fork in the road. The left showed Don Santino; he was talking to someone in the kitchen of his old house. The right had a view of many martial artists practicing their techniques. Further was a young blonde man in his twenties, sparing with a woman of about the same age.
Again a hard choice. He could save Don Santino. They could hide before his uncle's men came. 'But what about the future? It said I can never come back.' Again, Renier decided to go forward and took the portal on the right.
The left portal showed a man and a boy on the deck of a galley, watching as it approached a dock in the port of Venice. The man had his arm around the boy's shoulder and was talking to him.
On the right, the scene was a town in flames. Ebon soldiers were attacking and killing people. A solitary man stood against them, a glowing yataghan in his right hand while a beam of white crystal shards shot from his outstretched left palm. The woman from before lay on the ground to his left, bleeding.
Renier crumbled and sat on the ground before the portals. Tears streamed down his cheeks. 'I can save my father!' Minutes turned to an hour and then to two. Renier sat, unable to move. His heart told him to save his father; his mind told him he couldn't really change the past. His uncle would find them eventually. He cried because of the pain but also the impotence. 'I hate you, Ayg!' he screamed, livid at having to relive these memories. And then he thought, 'The last portal, nooooooooooo!' a throaty agonizing cry. 'It'll be my mom,' he feared.
Emotionally drained, he walked through the portal to the right, dreading what he would see.
The left portal showed a beautiful statuesque blonde woman with bright blue eyes; she played with a child of about ten. Renier recognized himself. He stood, not moving, his eyes glued to her image. The tears continued to flow. But he forced himself to look to the right. A tall man of about thirty floated about one hundred feet off the ground. A yataghan was in his right hand. A shorter man of about the same age was on his right; he held a bow. On his left was the same woman; she was older, but just as beautiful. Her hands emitted a menacing red glow. About a kilometer ahead came a stampede of thousands of vile, deformed black beasts. Behind the horde, in the distance, was a city. So many fires dotted the cityscape that the sky had turned red. Its many skyscrapers crumbled as they watched.
'This is what I will face,' he thought, preparing his heart to take the step he knew would haunt him. With all his willpower, he stepped through the portal into the unknown future.