The door opening into the labyrinth led to a set of stairs that stretched impossibly down into the earth. They were just wide enough to let two people walk down together side by side and had metal handrails to either side one could support themselves with if they tripped and fell. Which seemed to be a significant risk because the stairs themselves were stone and had patches of disgusting sludge on them I dearly hoped were some sort of moss and not the goopy entrails of some unfortunate beast that had been hunted and dragged out of the labyrinth by some enterprising students. Vaguely I remembered whenever we had to butcher lambs and felt nauseous.
I may have grown up on a farm, and I may be a necromancer whose power gravitates toward disgusting rotting things by nature, but that didn't mean I didn't find it all utterly repulsive.
My brother Matt had always joked I should have been born into a family of house servants rather than farmers, and there were admittedly times I agreed with him.
After climbing down what felt like an eternity of winding stairs, and stepping into some of the disgusting sludge on the stairs which I was reasonably confident belonged inside some sort of animal, Sylas and I finally reached the first floor of the labyrinth.
The stairway into the labyrinth abruptly ended in a rather large cavern, illuminated by strangely glowing red moss which cast unearthly green light from the ceiling. Looking up, I spotted a neat rectangular hole cut into the cavern's roof where the staircase descended from, and I faintly heard things scurrying in the distance.
Overall, it was rather dramatic for my taste.
When the five of us had gathered in the labyrinth, Rosamund, Iroha, and Mason having already arrived, Iroha immediately rounded on Rosamund.
"What is the matter with you?" Iroha hissed at her. "Have you completely lost your mind? Why would you agree to have us come down here?"
Rosamund blinked. "I'm sorry. I thought you wanted a spot in Lion Hall?" she said. "Besides, if you have such reservations about coming down here, then why are you here with us?"
Iroha didn't really have a response to that, and honestly, I didn't either.
"I think we all came down here because we felt obligated to, Rosamund," Mason said. "None of us wanted to put Sylas out after he went to the trouble of trying to get us into the hall, and after you agreed, I think we all just felt even more obligated once you said we'd do this."
Sure, yes. I thought. That all seems like an excellent excuse for how we all wound up in this mess.
"I'm sorry," Sylas said, not looking into anyone's eyes. "I wouldn't have suggested you all go out for this if I'd known this was what the second round of pre-rush would be. When Cecil said we needed to get more kids—"
"Wait," Iroha said. "Gathering us all up was how you furthered yourself in your pursuit of entering Lion Hall?"
The four of us stared at Sylas, who continued to shuffle and not say anything. After a long, hard look, Iroha turned away from us and walked away.
"Hold on!" Sylas called after her.
Iroha said nothing and turned into one of the tunnels branching out.
"In a certifiable death pit, and we've already started splitting up," I muttered to myself. "Wonderful."
It took a minute to realize I'd actually said that out loud, and that everyone was staring at me.
"I'll… um… I'll go get her," I said, and quickly jogged after where I'd seen Iroha go.
"Theo!" Sylas called after me, but I just kept on walking.
Honestly, I was sort of hopeful I'd encounter a mysterious eldritch lifeform in the labyrinth that would syphon away my magic and leave me a null. I vaguely felt like I'd read an account like that in one of my textbooks. Though admittedly it was more likely that if I encountered an ungodly abomination, it would suck my brain out through my ears or something.
As I'd previously mentioned, the things that come to inhabit labyrinths are rarely the creatures you'd want to snuggle up in bed with.
I rounded the same corner Iroha took, then paused as the entire world shuddered around me. The discordant threads of mana strung through with chittering bits of what could have been a Narrative storm around me.
Shudder… sing and dance… mend and… to be or… come to me…
The sensation left as soon as it came and I shuddered, trying to shake the feeling off me. Shoving mana and half-formed spells into the ground may be an excellent way to preserve magic as a resource, and to keep things in the school from getting weird—well, weirder than normal, I supposed—but the actual sensation was incredibly disconcerting. It did a lot to firm up my already solid certainty that none of us should really be there.
I started moving again, scanning the twists and turns of the corridors to see if I could find Iroha. It was most certainly a good idea to stay as close to the stairway as possible if we were going to stay the night, because I could only assume the random infusions of mana the school would pump into the Labyrinth would be less prominent there.
I was so busy looking for Iroha in the shadows of the labyrinth's walls that I didn't notice the odd dark spot on the ground until I had one foot on top of it. And that's when I realized it wasn't a random shadow cast on the ground but a hole.
I lost my balance immediately, plunging my foot into essentially empty air and I pinwheeled my arms, desperately trying to regain my balance.
I then fell down the hole, screaming like a little girl.
It was not my proudest moment.
***
Falling through a hole in a labyrinth wasn't like falling through a hole in the ground. Labyrinths were, for all intents and purposes, sort of their own realities. Professor Ogg had a cursory lecture on the subject during the first week of classes that had basically boiled down to "there be strange things down there."
So when I fell through the hole in the first floor of the Labyrinth, it was like falling deeper underground for all of three seconds before the universe shuddered around me and it became more like landing in a cusp of dead trees in the middle of nowhere.
I hit the ground face first, tasting blood as my lip split open, and my brain rattled around my skull. I tried sitting up, but my head spun and I had to count to ten twice in a row before I felt confident enough to climb to first my hands and knees, then my feet.
Fortunately, aside from a few cuts on my face and a throbbing head, the fall hadn't hurt me that much.
Unfortunately, I'd somehow fallen even deeper into a certified death trap and a glance up showed that whatever I'd fallen through was hidden among the other shadows on the ceiling.
Wonderful.
Common logic dictated that I had two options before me. First, I either stood there and waited for someone to come along and rescue me, which given the fact that none of us were actually supposed to be in the labyrinth and I doubted Sylas or the others would bother coming after me if I failed to return, as a freshman alone in the labyrinth for several hours is likely a dead freshman, that left me with option two. Option two being I had to find a way back to the first floor on my own, probably having to avoid all sorts of nasty things on the way.
I approached one of the trees that made up the landscape on the floor, only to see they were less like trees and really more like fractaling crystal pillars rising out of the ground and branching at odd intervals. I placed a hand on one and it felt cool to the touch and smoother than glass.
I grimaced.
I'd been hoping to climb up one of them to get a look around where I was from a higher vantage, maybe even see if there was a way back to the ceiling and whatever hole I'd fallen through.
Everything around me looked the same, all gloomy crystal-tree things and an overall air of ominous smoke. Very dramatic and a bit too spooky for my taste.
Reluctantly, I reached out with my arcane senses to see if I could detect any threads of Narrative or mana, something I could follow to see if there was anyone else down here. It was possible Iroha had fallen through the same hole in the ground that I had, and if she did, I imagined that we'd have a better chance of getting out of there alive together.
I hadn't really expected to find anything.
Or if I did, I thought it'd feel like the rest of the labyrinth, a disjointed mess of Narrative and power forced into the earth at random moments.
But I… felt something.
A sort of slow pulse, like a heartbeat of mana. It wasn't even a strong feeling, more of a disparate thread just brushing up against my awareness. But it was there. Buzzing in the background like a fly at a picnic.
And I didn't have any better leads on where to go, so I followed the thread of mana back to its source. It wasn't a terribly distinct thing, and I had to focus to follow it. I stopped several times to get my bearings, and more than once to dart behind a tree, choosing to rely a bit more on my stealthier instincts and disliking the idea of wandering about in the open with not a care in the world where any would could see me skipping by.
It didn't take long for the feeling of the mana to grow strong, pulsing more quickly and being far easier to detect. Sadly, that was also when the noxious fog of the labyrinth started becoming thicker. Which I did not interpret as a great sign.
I prodded my channels, and they were still relatively full since I'd used the grimoire to gather mana that morning for classes. I hadn't refreshed my stores since then, but I'd probably have enough to fire off my one combat spell a few times or maintain my stealth Working for a good ten minutes or so if it was just me.
Inwardly, I wanted to kick myself for not bringing the book. If I had it with me, I could be a bit more free with my use of spells. It would be rather nice to gather my stealth Working around me, as opposed to just relying on good old-fashioned ducking behind things and hoping no one saw me.
Honestly, though, I supposed it would probably do to acquire another conduit for regular use. I was worried about just how compatible I was with the grimoire, which, as a necromancer, probably meant it held some sort of unfathomably dark and twisted secret I was probably better off not knowing. That left the question of where exactly I'd find a new conduit though, which, given the monstrous dog thing patrolling the mausoleum probably—
I'd gotten a bit lost in thought as I wove between the crystal structures and felt rather stealthy as I popped in and out of clods of noxious fog. I liked to think that was why I hadn't seen the slick transparent cord until I'd walked right into it.
It stuck fast to my clothes like glue coated it and I reflexively tried to pull away from it, only to find that it held faster to me. Without thinking, I tried pushing off it with my hands, only to get them stuck as well and make the strange cord vibrate even more strongly.
"Bollocks," I said.
I swore again, pushing away at it even harder, and considered firing off my one combat spell to see if that would untangle me.
And that's when I first heard the noise.
It was a chittering sound. The kind you might hear when someone's sharpening a knife against a whetstone, quick and slick sounding. I didn't like it one bit and tried pulling against the cord again to find purchase on it.
The noise came again, louder and above me.
Chills raced down my spine.
I looked up and saw the biggest fucking spider in the world. Eight long black legs, the size of a horse, and a mouth full of bristling knife-like protrusions, I could only assume were some sort of mandible.
I screamed, immediately abandoned all pretense of trying to conserve mana, and fired off my combat spell into the thick cord, which I realized were probably part of the spider's web.
My Working collided with the thick spongy cord of webbing and promptly vanished. Then the giant spider was on me.