Chapter 32

They were marched from the docks, which were large and open, with a Mediterranean feel to the little bit of flora that was visible in the simple city that the party passed through on their way to the palace. The palace itself wasn’t much different from the city that led up to it, just two stories taller and with statues out front.

Statues of the greco-roman style, Eli noticed briefly, trying not to focus on the nudity displayed.

Instead he focused on looking for any sort of hint of the floor puzzle. So far all they had was the references to the legend of the Minotaur. That would mean that this island was Minos, which had something to do with his opinion on the Mediterranean-ness of the environment.

That and the dress of the locals, who were all wearing robes right out of a recreation of The Illiad . The men, women and children of the city lined up to see them and cheered at them. They seemed to be genuinely happy to see the party, Eli thought.

When they reached the palace, they were shown into the throne room. An old man sat on a golden throne, a stuffed bull head behind his chair. The party was announced as “Lost Souls From Beyond Time and Space, here to receive judgment for their sins.”

Once the throne room had settled down, the king spoke.

“One hundred years ago, a labyrinth was created. The great heroes of the age led, chased, or dragged all of the evil monsters and spirits of the island inside and closed the door behind them. The halls were designed to be ever changing and never changing, constantly evolving and revolving, but always static. Nothing evil that enters the labyrinth ever leaves it. Only the pure of heart are able to come and go as they please. You shall enter the labyrinth and prove your virtue. Do you accept?”

Eli frowned, because he hadn’t been expecting a choice. “What happens if we do not?”

“Then you will die where you stand,” the king said, and the guards around them suddenly drew arms.

Eli frowned. None of these people had pupils, he’d noticed that long ago. He was pretty sure that meant that they were part of the dungeon, spawned in order to provide the atmosphere or be part of the challenge. But he didn’t think that it was a good idea to antagonize that many armed men, even if he and his party had gained a few levels and were stronger now than they’d ever been.

“We’ll enter the labyrinth,” he said after thinking for a moment. “What happens when we emerge?”

The king smiled.

“Why don’t we talk about that when and if it happens?” he said.

Abruptly a trap floor opened in the floor, sliding out with the sound of stone scraping on stone. A stairwell was revealed, and the guards motioned for the party to go down. Once the last party member was on the stairs, the trap door began to close.

The walls were illuminated with torches which burned despite having no fuel. Half of the party took one of the torches with them as they climbed down so that they could see better. They descended for twenty minutes before reaching the end of the stairwell.

“Well then, which way?” Erik asked Eli as they looked around the room.

Eli frowned, holding up the torch.

“There’s writing on the walls,” he said.

“I can’t read it,” Erik said.

“Nobody can,” Luke said. “It’s Greek or something.”

“I can,” Eli said. He nodded towards the others and began shuffling in his backpack, in which he kept his books and notebooks. “Hold up a torch for me so I can take notes.”

~~~~~~~

They spent an hour just in the large circular room at the base of the stairwell. Eli sighed as he sat back after having read the last of the pictograph etchings.

“Okay,” he said to the others. “So here’s the thing. We’ve been lied to.”

“You don’t say?” Jose said bitterly, but Eli ignored him.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“This labyrinth isn’t a century old. It’s much older than that. The people living up on top didn’t build it, they found it. They’ve been exploring it for centuries, but the problem is that it’s so dangerous that the heroes they send inside keep dying before they return. That’s why they’re searching for outsiders to explore it for them,” Eli explained.

“Okay,” Luke said. “But if it’s dangerous why not just leave it alone? Why poke the bear?”

“Because if they don’t sacrifice someone to the labyrinth at least once per year, then a monster escapes. It might be a low level weakling that their guards can put down without trouble, but it might also be one of the elites that can raze half the island alone. One human sacrifice buys them one year. We just bought them fourteen years of peace,” Eli explained.

“Okay, so what are we going to do about it?” John Sr. asked.

“Clear the floor,” Eli said. He motioned around to the various archways. “There’s eight passageways. We need to clear the boss out of six of them to advance by beating the elites. I think that’s actually probably going to be the hardest method, so let’s hold off on that for now. The easiest method would be to simply determine which archway leads to the floor king and defeating that one.”

“What if they’re too strong for us?” Peter asked. “Being the king implies that it’s stronger than the rest.”

Eli nodded. “Challenging the others without knowing what we face is means that we might challenge the king anyway. It’s better to challenge him at full strength when we know what we’re facing than it would be to challenge him sixth and be exhausted after having already cleared most of the floor.”

The others considered his logic for a moment before accepting it.

“Okay,” Elaine said. “So which direction do we—”

“The other option is the floor puzzle,” Eli said, interrupting her. “Which won’t be easy, but I think I’ve figured out how to solve it.”

The others looked at him.

“Okay,” Sophie said. “How do we do that?”

“We escape the labyrinth,” Eli said. “That’s it. We don’t have to kill anything at all. Not unless we’re cornered. We just have to find the way out.”

“Yeah I vote for that method,” Jose said eagerly.

His wife and daughter kicked him, and he jerked in surprise. “What? I’m not undermining him, just letting my preference be known.”

Eli nodded. “Yeah. And the thing is, escaping the labyrinth might be the most lucrative method as well. We got five times the amount of experience on floor six as we did on floor five because we solved the floor puzzle. I think we should focus on doing that if and when we can.”

The others agreed with him with various amounts of enthusiasm, but that still left them with the question they’d started with.

What direction did they go? There were ten to choose from.

Eli explained that they were each labeled, presumably with the form of the boss and/or the enemies that they would find along the way. In order going clockwise, there was a Man, a Spider, a Scorpion, a Snake, Griffon, a Skull, Minotaur, a Harpy, a Hydra, and a Chimera.

The group spent some time deliberating before they selected the man’s path. Their reason was rather simple; even if the man depicted by the bas relief label of the passageway depicted the boss and they’d be forced to kill him (Or perhaps her), they might be able to interrogate the boss first and get another clue as to how to escape this floor.

The second vote was the Minotaur passageway, since this scenario seemed to be based upon that myth after all, but Eli thought that solution to the puzzle was too easy and obvious. The Minotaur might very well be the floor king, but the solution to the puzzle lie elsewhere, and he argued successfully that they should pursue the puzzle before they tried for the clear.

Gabri was strangely silent as he looked at the walls around him. Occasionally he could be heard muttering something under his breath, but his normal snark was absent. When Eli asked him what was wrong, the faerie shook his head.

“Nothing, nothing. Just … the archetypes are all here, but only the archetypes. Where are the lessers?” the faerie asked.

“I have no idea what that means, Gabri,” Eli said.

“Exactly,” Gabri said. He shook his head again. “Have you seen anything in the dungeon that doesn’t belong yet? Anything that has shaken your beliefs, or which you found utterly alien? Anything which you do not comprehend?”

“I don’t comprehend magic. I might be able to use it now but I don’t understand it on a fundamental level the way that I do electricity,” Eli said.

“Exactly! I mean, look at that!” the faerie said, pointing towards the bas relief of the spider. “If you asked a faerie about magic she’d be ‘oh yeah we have magic!’ But spiders? Spiders!? You don’t find Spiders outside of dungeons! Why does the sight of spiders not drive you mad, Eli?”

“Um, because they’re everywhere on Earth?” Eli asked.

“They’re what?” Gabri asked, his voice squeaking.

Eli grinned. “Oh yeah. Literally everywhere. I mean, they can be anywhere at any time. They spin webs and—”

“That’s a lie!” the faerie said. “You’re just trying to scare me.”

“No really,” Eli said, and they marched through the dungeon, arguing about whether or not spiders were really real and present on Earth.

In the end Eli gave up and agreed that they didn’t really exist, all while planning on catching one to show Gabri when they returned to the surface.

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