Soon after we dropped down to the maze, it became clear why one couldn’t just go over it.

“It’s as cold as ice,” Aerion said from up above us. She’d volunteered to climb up the ice wall, using her dagger and shortsword as handholds that she jabbed in. “I can’t seem to break through.”

“Would you figure that!” Richard said. “An invisible force field.”

“What’s that?” Aerion asked.

“Oh, just something fictional from my world,” Richard said. “An invisible barrier made of pure energy. Made of magic, in this case, presumably.”

Aerion tried to work her way up further, but found that she couldn’t jab her weapons into the force field like she had with the ice wall. She gave up after struggling a few moments, and dropped back to the ground.

“My guess is they go up quite some ways,” I said. “And who knows? Maybe they just lead to a ceiling that we also can’t see.”

“I’d bet on it,” Richard said. “No point going through the trouble of this maze if it was so easily bypassed.”

“Then why don’t they just use that to block delvers off completely?” I said. “If they have something so powerful, why go through all the trouble in the first place?”

“That… is a fair point,” Richard replied, frowning. “Must have some reason. Maybe there’s some weakness? Or perhaps it’s too costly?”

“Costlier than extending the walls of an enormous maze?” I asked. “No, there’s got to be some other reason.”

As to what that was, I didn’t have a clue.

“Well, whatever it is, looks like we’re delving this the old-fashioned way,” I said.

“Seems that way,” Aerion said, pointing to a nearby wall. “Look. Over there.”

“Looks like someone took an ax to the wall,” Richard said. “Our friend the Viking, you think?”

“Very possible,” I said, inspecting the surprisingly shallow cuts in the wall. “Seems like he didn’t get very far, though.”

“If this is all someone with his monstrous strength could manage…” Aerion trailed off.

“Yeah. We don’t stand a chance,” I replied, taking a test swing with Light of the Fearless. To no one’s surprise, the blade hardly scratched the ice, even with both of its abilities active. “Well, guess that just leaves us with the conventional approach… With one small difference, I guess,” I said, as I stared into the wall.

Into, not at. Because these walls were made of pure, crystal clear ice, or some sort of magical ice, rather, and we could see right through them. In fact, I could see through multiple sets of walls. Whether that made things safer or more dangerous, I couldn’t say yet.

“Well, at least this won’t be a dull experience,” Richard said, tapping the wall. “We’ll never be short of a view. So, what’s the plan? Hug the left wall? Or the right one?”

“Why would you hug a wall?” Aerion asked quizzically.

“An old trick,” Richard replied. “You can solve any maze in the world if you trace one of the walls all the way through.”

Aerion glanced at me with widened eyes. “Is that true?”

I shrugged. “You can solve most mazes that way, yeah. So long as the walls touch each other, or the maze’s perimeter. That doesn’t actually work if the maze has disconnected walls, though.”

“That a fact?” Richard said, scratching his nose. “I wasn’t aware.”

“It is,” I said, thinking back to all the puzzle games I’d played with maddeningly infuriating mazes designed specifically to trip you up. “It’s especially problematic if the entrance or the exit aren’t at the edges, but rather in the middle of the maze. In this case, I don’t think we need to worry about the entrance, but that dungeon core was right smack in the middle of this radial maze, so it’s very possible it qualifies.”

“What would you recommend, then?” Richard asked, looking quite impressed with my maze-solving skills.

“Well, there are some advanced ways of solving such mazes, like keeping track of the sum of the angles made with each turn… But I figure we’re more likely than not to mess something up and get lost. I say we just etch a mark in the ice at every junction, and follow the leftmost path first. If that’s a dead-end, we backtrack and cross out that branch and move on. Worst case, we end up trying all possible routes, but I’m guessing we’ll solve this well before then. At least it’ll be nearly impossible for us to get lost this way.”

“Indeed,” Richard said. “Better than fumbling our way through. Getting lost in here would be a disaster. Could be stuck here for months. Which method do you reckon Mr. Eskil chose?”

“Which method do you think?” I replied with a grin, as did Aerion. “From everything I’ve seen, I’d be willing to bet he charged in there headfirst.”

“Which ought to give us the advantage,” Aerion said.

I bit my lip. “Only If he isn’t stupidly lucky…”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Somehow, luck always seemed to favor his type.

----------------------------------------

Our first junction came and went, and I made a marking for later. That led to another junction, and we followed the left path.

It was then that Aerion suddenly grabbed her sword, pointing it at the wall.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, readying myself for combat. “Something moved,” Aerion said, looking through the wall, to the passages that surrounded us. The translucent nature of these walls kept tripping me up. Sometimes, they were so clear that you thought the path went one way, only to run headfirst into the wall. Differentiating between our own aisle and the one next to ours was often non-trivial.

“In the next corridor?” I asked, keeping my eyes peeled.

“Can’t be sure,” Aerion replied. “Could be the next one, or the one past that.”

“Well, we all know how impervious these walls are. We should be safe,” I said. “But let’s stay alert, shall we? Just in case it was in our own. We all know why this maze is here, and it’s not to give people a fun challenge.”

The absence of any massive serpents or dragons had been bothering me. More than it should have. There were no great guardians here. Just us… and a seemingly empty maze. Which meant that the enemy here was of a different sort. Smaller, perhaps, and considering our proximity to the dungeon’s core, undoubtedly more lethal.

A final boss, of sorts.

I got my shield out, and we traveled from then on with me leading the group, Richard in the middle, and Aerion bringing up the rear. Everyone was tense. Everyone was ready for battle, primed to activate our Blessings and weapon abilities on a moment’s notice.

Which was good because we soon reached a dead end.

Now, in a normal maze, you come to a dead end, there’s nothing there, and you backtrack. Simple. Easy. Just a little time-consuming.

This maze was nothing like that. It was occupied. By three giant men, all dressed in ancient plate armor.

Except they were made entirely of ice. From their armor to their weapons to their flesh. Just like our surroundings. Just like the serpent, everything was ice.

“Richard!” I yelled.

“Already on it. They do have hearts. Stopping them now!”

“Aerion?”

“Activating [Reave].”

The warriors, who’d been standing like frozen statues, began to move. Ice cracked and shattered off their boots, as if they hadn’t moved in so long they’d fused with the ground, and they leveled their spears at us, marching forward without a sound.

Three muffled cracking sounds emanated from somewhere inside them, which halted their advance. Their heads turned to one another, and against everyone’s expectations…

They laughed.

And then they charged, as if to prove that they couldn’t care less that their hearts had just been pulverized.

Aerion and I, however, were there to meet them. Aerion shot straight past the leader and laid into his buddies, while I took the leader’s spear stab head on with my shield.

I felt like I’d been pummeled by a rhino, and staggered back from the impact.

The ice giant was there to exploit that moment of weakness, moving in with his spear for another strike.

But then something odd happened. He faltered, removing one hand from the haft of his spear to clutch his chest.

Confused, he looked down, then up at me, and finally to Richard, who wore a smug grin.

“Didn’t see that comin’, did ya? How about this?”

Richard extended his arm and formed a fist, and the giant barked out a groan, stumbling.

“Whatever you’re doing, keep it up!” I shouted as I activated [Light of the Fearless] and [Shadow of the Fearless], and sliced into the giant’s spear.

It sliced cleanly in two, with the tip clanging to the ground. Distracted by the pain, the warrior failed to move back far enough to dodge my next blow.

I traced an arc from his shoulder down to his waist, cracking the ice that formed his body.

A minimized System Message scrolled by. Odd… I’d just defeated the guy. They normally only minimize in the middle of a fight.

I opened it up and glanced at it.

Congratulations! Dominion has increased from 48 to 49. (Max: 83).

A rumbling roar shifted my attention.

It shouldn’t have been possible. The Warrior should have died.

With a wound that would have ended most beings of flesh, the giant carried on, grinning at me.

With speed I hadn’t expected, he grabbed my blade, cracking the ice of his own hand. He clutched my sword so tightly, I didn’t have a hope in hell of freeing it from his grasp.

He pulled the blade to his chest, bringing me along with it.

“You cannot win,” he said, voice raspy and low, almost lost amid the succession of cracks that emanated from the wound my blade had caused. “They will take everything from you. Your life. Your soul…. Your hope.”

I frowned. I’d expected some sort of death threat, or promise that he’d come to haunt me from beyond the grave. Something a cliché antagonist would say.

But… His expression of anguish, and his pained words… It sounded almost like a plea.

“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.

“You will see. You will see…”

And with that, his body shattered. He fell to his knees, dropped the shaft of his spear, and when his head hit the ground, it broke free from his neck, rolling to a stop at my feet.

“Remember…” he said, eyes flashing with a burst of light before his head also cracked, leaving nothing behind but a mound of ice.

When I looked up, his buddies had met a similar end by Aerion’s hand, and she’d reverted to her normal state.

“Okay, what the fuck was that?” I asked. “And what the hell is going on here?”

I didn’t get an answer because at that moment, cracking sounds erupted from all around us. From the ground and the walls, we were surrounded by a cacophony of breaking ice.

“I’ve got a bad feeling,” Richard said, edging closer to me.

“Richard… I think you’re right,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

No sooner had the words left my lips than forms emerged from the walls.

Forms made purely of ice. Warriors… Just like the ones we’d just killed.

Dozens of them, all blocking our way out.