On their third “day” in the labyrinth, the group left the room of waydoors and ventured deeper into the labyrinth. Dan used his mana to scout their path, their first and only choice being to head back the way they came. After a few stern assertions that he truly did not know what the dwarf meant, the others had let the questions drop.
“Which way next, oh wise Leader?” Fa Lian asked with the most over the top expression of piety she could muster. The questions may have stopped, but the banter had become needles to Dan at this point.
“Surely,” Hyun Soon bounced into the conversation, “you know better than to ask questions of our dear Leader. Shame on your family, Fa Lian.”
“That would be basically everyone we know!” Xiaomei chimed, causing all three to fall into laughter. Dan didn’t find it funny, each joke was, to him, a sharp poke which he had no defence from. He moved his mana away from the group, focusing his senses through the magic and avoiding using his actual ears.
To the three, it was a joke. A throwaway line from an impromptu comedian.
To Dan it was a threat. It was a sense memory of a danger somewhere in the future, one that Dan frustratingly felt he should know more of. Why him? Why was he being singled out by the powerful each and every time? Until Dan could answer that, he was lost amongst beings that could tear him apart with little more than a thought.
The frustration continued to mount, causing Dan to make a decision he normally would not have thought twice about ignoring. “Hey, something up ahead.” The group fell into regimented quiet, a silent chorus of nods was their answer.
Dan slowed his pace, crouching before the next bend in the hall and waiting. As Hyun Soon reached him, the two bumped fists. Dan pushed his mana out with the contact, colouring his own mana with Hyun Soon’s orange flame. For a while Dan had thought that he had taken mana, but he had come to realise that it was his own mana that was being used, in ways that he normally couldn’t.
Dan and Hyun flared their mana at the same time, twin pairs of gauntlets and armguards wrapping up their arms. “A fight?” Hyun Soon asked, the excitement obvious in his voice. It didn’t have to be, but Dan nodded that he was right. Dan’s mana was rolling through himself comfortably, the shadow noticed on it before now completely unseen. Behind the boys, two other bonfires of power ignited. In Dan’s senses, Xiaomei became a mass of mostly blue lines, while Fa Lian seemed to dim - the shadows of her somewhat sinister magic very evident.
‘They didn’t need Dan’s scouting mana to tell them that whatever was in the next room was large. The thudding whack of whatever it was stomping around began to feel increasingly ominous. Dan clenched his jaw as he felt his mana being brushed to the side. Dan pressed more mana outwards, almost competitive due to the inefficacy his mana had recently shown.
Raffyal had been an enigma, something about the dwarf’s own mana had been anathema to his own. Dan hadn’t asked about it. What Dan’s mana did was invasive, he was well aware of that and usually kept it to himself. However, to have it actively pushed away or even destroyed was beginning to wear on his patience. When it came to Steel Fever, the living metal monster which had nearly been the death of him only days before, the void-like nature of it in Dan’s sight had been problematic, too.
Stood before a similar problem yet again, Dan realised he needed a solution. Raffyal may have been the best chance of that, with his talk of needing a “shell” as though it was an obvious step along the path to power, he would know more than Dan could guess at. Without him, Dan had two options. One option was to try and inspect the soul stone within himself and draw answers from it. There was some part of Guan Shi Ai lying still and annoyingly silent whenever Dan probed it.
Option two was the most prescient, as that was the route of experience. Dan had to agree with his mentors throughout the years, experience was the best teacher. Experience in the forest of Sasin had taught Dan how to manipulate his mana, something he had thought himself incapable of before that. Experience battling and losing to Guan Po Daiyu had taught Dan to finish a fight. The experience of having his mana sight stolen, obfuscated or otherwise impeded had sharpened Dan’s use of it and, so, he concentrated.
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The creature within the room was prowling. The space itself was one of the larger room they had seen, much larger than the room of waydoors. The rooms of the labyrinth were massively different from its halls. While the walls of the labyrinth are a grey, dull stone, pockets exist of different stranger spaces. This one seemed to replicate a cave, complete with stalactites, stalagmites and the smells of stagnant water.
“It’s big.” That was all the description Dan could give, though it felt shockingly inadequate. “We don’t have to go this way, there was a fork a few turns ago.”
“No, we go this way.” Fa Lian spoke firmly. “Apologies Leader but my brother wouldn’t have taken an easy path just because he could, so neither will I.”
She moved past Dan before he could reply, though he wasn’t sure what he would say. He had wanted to hit something, but the reality that whatever this something was could be lethal had stopped him in his tracks. Hyun Soon’s smile was larger than before, grunting an agreement to Fa Lian’s words while Xiaomei was simply quiet, voicing no assent or dissent. Instead she removed the cord around her waist, the red and yellow crystals glimmering with potential energy.
Without a word of complaint, Dan once again fell in with Hyun Soon before the two turned the corner and made their way into the room as quietly as possible. The bulk of the creature was hidden in the dim light of the place, and the two boys split up, taking a stalagmite each and waiting for the girls to join them.
“What is that?” Fa Lian hissed as she ducked behind the same pillar as Dan. Dan risked a glance around, and saw only the back of the beast. It was furred, with powerful back legs of a feline and what looked like a mane. A strange, knobbled tail with a tuft at the end flicked and Dan threw himself back behind the cover. Dan had never actually seen a lion before, but this is what he imagined one would look like. It was about eighty feet away, though Dan felt the monstrosity would likely cross that distance in a heartbeat.
“Are lions ten feet tall?” He whispered back. “If not, I have no clue what it is.” Unsatisfied with his answer, she peeked around Dan and looked for herself, quickly shooting back behind the rock. “Did it see you?”
She shook her head, but across the short distance, Hyun Soon was not so lucky. A deep growl filled the room, sending a spike of primal fear shooting through Dan, an ancient part of his brain screaming at him to run. He did as his body told him, but not the way it desired. Using that nervous, frightened energy was the essence of combat as far as Dan was concerned.
“What are you doing?” With slow, uncomfortable sounding enunciation, the creature spoke. Dan looked around the rock again and saw the creature looking directly at their group. The element of surprise completely lost, Dan took the time to analyse the being before wishing desperately that he hadn’t.
As though someone had taken a child’s drawing of a face and put it onto the body of a massive lion, the monster’s face was like a melted wax figure. It had humanoid features, objectively, but none were in the right place or the right shape. What Dan had seen as a mane of matted hair was more like thick pieces of nail, like the quills of a porcupine. The tail which Dan had seen before was now raised. The tuft Dan had imagined at the end was actually a vicious looking stinger, aimed directly for them.
“I ask no question twice.” The thing said, an air of finality obvious in its tone. Every syllable was slow, and an animalistic growl sat threateningly in the air when it finished. Dan looked across the gap and saw Hyun Soon and Xiaomei with unsure expressions. Hoping desperately that he wasn’t making the wrong choice, Dan acted first.
“We are trying to find safety!” Dan shouted, taking control. With a quiet, mana infused warning he told everyone else to stay where they couldn’t be seen. Then he dispersed the mana on his arms and stepped out from behind the rock. If he appeared armed, negotiating passage without combat would be impossible. “We mean you no harm, and apologise if we have offended you.”
“Offended?” The creature burbling. It had far too much skin on the face, and it spat its words out viciously. “No offense from presence, no” With each word, the creature seemed to need to ponder the next. Large, sharp teeth could be seen as it spoke, a forked tongue bouncing around behind them.
“I am Guan Ah Dan. I escaped to the labyrinth and have no riches to offer.” When consorting with a being of magic, monster or no, Dan knew that it was wasest to be honest. His muscles were tense, an aura of mana still buzzing around himself to stay ready for a potential assault. “I wish only to pass through this place without a fight.”
“More than you though, human cub. An escape was it? A scattering of rats, was it?” Each word lowered the danger felt in the creature’s growl, though Dan kept his guard up. Large predatory eyes were focused on him, two sickly looking yellow and green orbs with a slice of black pupil. Dan was strangely confident under the gaze, as though experience guided him here, though he didn’t know why. “Why should a manticore help a rat?”
“Not a rat.”
Dan flinched hard, focused as he was on the manticore. He had not expected Fa Lian to interject, and neither had the monster. It sank back onto its powerful haunches, a flutter of clicking where its mane shivered, strong muscles pulsing underneath.
“Oh? Not vermin? You stink of rotten mana, yet not a vermin it says?” The manticore moved, shifting its bulk around a large pillar of stone and lifting itself up, pulling with what Dan now noticed were humanoid hands. They appeared so unnatural on the creature’s body that Dan struggled not to turn away when he saw, so he was watching as the manticore lashed out.
A massive tail ripped through the air, whistling as it sliced through the air straight for Fa Lian’s throat.