Taria started down the passageway, bow drawn. She didn’t know what she would encounter but as the passage widened out, the light got brighter and brighter. Looking up, the ceiling had disappeared giving way to bright rays of sunshine and a light blue sky.
“Weird, it looked darker outside,” Taria mused. With trepidation, she took in her surroundings. The passage had transformed from a stone wall to a hard wood one covered in vines, flora and fauna.
“Makes sense,” she thought.
Following the wall around to the left and then right, Taria came to a fork in the path. Taking the left path, Taria comes to a dead end. “Must be a maze. Annoying, I hope it isn’t too complicated.”
She backtracked on herself, taking the other path. There in front of her was a body of water, dissecting the direction in front of her.
“Great, water,” she sighed. Taria had never been fond of water since she was little as it bought back memories of her brothers playing with her in the stream near their village. “They’re not here to stop me from breathing,” she thought to herself confidently. “They’re not here at all.”
With a deep breath, she dived into the water making sure to take one last look at the distance she had to travel. Almost as soon as she was fully submerged, she started to feel hands on her ankles, pulling her downwards. She screamed, petrified, but no sound came out, only bubbles of air. The darkness started to overwhelm her senses as she was loosing consciousness and she could swear that she could hear a faint child’s laugh in her ear.
Taria awoke at the entrance to the maze, dry as a bone as if she had been asleep for hours. “What?” she said aloud. She wondered whether she had been so exhausted that she had imagined the horror she had experienced. Picking herself up and dusting off some pollen that had fallen on her from the flowers on the wall, she steeled herself and made her way forward again. She again came across the lake, however this time, she shot a few arrows into the water and unsheathed the dagger she kept in the scabbard by her ankle. “Not this time,” she thought defiantly.
She stepped into the water, first to her ankles, then to her waist, then her neck. With heavy breaths, she started to swim and as there were no hands grabbing at her forcing her down, her confidence grew. Looking towards the opposite bank, she was almost halfway there now but as she was getting to the middle of the lake, arrows were shot from the walls of the maze into the water causing splashes all around her. “Shit,” she thought as an arrow struck her in the shoulder, with sharp pain causing her to stop momentarily. This pause was to be her undoing though as more arrows found their mark, one hitting her in the leg, arm, ankle and finally her chest. As arrows were continuously falling onto her and the water surrounding her, she could feel death coming for her and as the darkness enveloped her once more in the godsforsaken lake, her last thought was “Why me?”
The rays of light were roaring through the ceiling above causing her face to bask in a warm glow. Waking up from a restful sleep, Taria couldn’t believe that she was still alive as she patted herself down and pinched her arm.
“I don’t trust the lake so it uses my own fears and actions against me,” she mused. “First I’m afraid because my brothers almost drowned me, secondly I attacked it with arrows so it attacked back. What if I think nothing and do nothing?” Picking herself up and brushing off the pollen once again, she sauntered towards the lake yet again with determination. “I’m sorry water for using you so and thinking so poorly of you,” she whispered as she made to step into the lake.
The water was not a viscous material at all at that moment and Taria looked down to see her foot on solid ground as it should have entered the lake. Looking up towards the rest of the passage she had traversed and remembering where the half way mark was all too vividly, she could only see a path very similar to the passage behind her. “Strange,” she thought but relieved.
She walked through what was the lake and continued onwards to the next fork in the road. Out of the wall by a dead end, a creature seemingly made of the wood emerged. The wooden creature was shown to be humanoid in shape but composed of different animals. Its head resembled that of an owl, with large piercing eyes made from polished amber, the torso looked to be made from the trunk of a large oak tree, resilient and strong. The arms were long and spindly like the appendages of as spider, black and furry and the legs were formed out of the haunches of a large predatory animal, like a wolf or panther with long black wiry fur.
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“Who goes there?” said the beast. Instinctively, Taria bought out her bow as quickly as she could and pointed it in the direction of the creature.
“Was that you who spoke?” She quizzed.
“Yes you idiot, who are you and what are you doing in my domain?”
“You call this,” Taria gestured around her with the bow still draw, arrow in the rest, “A domain?”
“Yes, its my home, I rule over it, so its my domain. Don’t question me child!”
“Fair enough,” Taria walked forward.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going to beat this maze.”
“Not until you answer this riddle.”
“And why would I do that?”
“You will if you want to live!” The wooden monster attacked her swifter than she expected, she fired off a few arrows into its side to no avail. The creature impaled her shoulders with its spindly legs and lifted her off the ground as Taria let out a scream.
“Ok,ok,” she panted as blood dripped down her arms and she dropped her bow. “What’s your riddle?”
“I hope you’re ready?”
“What does it look like? I’m hanging here for my own amusement?!”
“Ok then, listen closely,” the creature cleared its wooden throat.
“I’m born in silence, yet I sing without voice, In meadows green or forests of choice. I dance with the wind, caressed by the sun, My colors vibrant, my life just begun. What am I?”
“I dunno, a butterfly? It’s born in silence and metamorphosis into a butterfly and dances with the wind and many different colours as soon as it comes out of the cocoon?”
“Hmmm that could be correct.” The monster mused as he let Taria down onto her feet.
“So can I go now?”
“If you believe the answer to be correct you can go.”
Taria stumbled up the passage following the wall which she had just been held against. She found a sandy cross roads with directions left and right. Looking left, there was only a dead end, but looking right, she could not see the way ahead. Trying to step towards the right, she was unable to move and looking downwards, she could see that her ankles had been submerged into the sand beneath her.
“Shit!,” she exclaimed. “Shit, shit shit!” Frantically she looked around for something, anything, she could grab on to to lever herself out, to no avail. Thinking about the previous trap she had found herself in, she thought, “I respect you, I will not harm you, you are part of nature.” She continued to sink slowly but picking up pace now. “Ok so that doesn’t work.” Remembering that there were more similarities between sand and water than just being part of nature, she lent backwards and let her back and her hair sink slightly into the sand. Thankfully, her feet and ankles started to lift slightly and as she levelled out, the unending plight of her situation hit her.
“How the hell am I meant to get out of this?” She asked the empty pathway.
On the other side of the quicksand, which wasn’t further than ten feet away, was a vine streaking slightly into the sand. “If I can just get to that I can pull myself out.” Taria slowly but surely began to backstroke through the sand, pausing after every stroke to make sure she wasn’t sinking further into it. After what seemed like and hour, she made it to the vine and started to pull, lightly first and then harder. She was cautious pulling harder as the harder she pulled, the further into the sand she sank. As soon as she realised that the vine was strong enough to take her weight, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes and dipped her head below the sand as she pulled herself up and out of the sand with the vine.
She collapsed on the bank of the quicksand, relieved and took a moment to see where she had landed. It looked like she had gone down the passageway she was originally meaning to but it looked like she was in another deadend.
“That blasted creature! It was the wrong answer,” she realised.
She didn’t have long to remunate on the error however, as the sand looked to be expanding towards her.
Looking around hurriedly, she saw plenty of vines at the end of this dead end and thinking quickly, she grabbed one, wrapped it around one of her arrows and shot it down the passage into the opposite wall. Miraculously, the arrow stuck in the wall and formed a taut rope across the sand. She pulled it cautiously making sure it could take her weight and hand over hand she traversed between the two ends of the rope. At the end of the rope, the passageway went into a bend whereby the sand was still prevalent. She dropped onto the sand and used the same technique as she had the first time and stroked back towards the monster.
The sand came to an end and she pulled herself up and was face to face with the creature.
“Made it back then did you?” The monster mused.
“No thanks to you, you bastard.”
“Now, now, as you’ve come back in one piece, I’ll give you another go at the riddle.” The creature repeated the riddle and stared at Taria expectantly.
Due to the amount of fauna and flora around her, Taria mused that it couldn’t have been an animal but maybe a flower.
“Flower?” she questioned.
“Is that an answer or a question?”
“Flower,” she retorted more confidently.
“You have chosen your answer,” the creature paused for dramatic effect, “Correctly.”
“Great, what do I win?”
“The correct path.” With a flourish of its black arm, the dead end behind the creature shook and groaned as the wood parted and an extra passage was revealed.
“Thanks.” Taria rolled her eyes and ventured towards the pathway, onto the further trials and tribulations of the maze.