There is a stack of flat brown boxes. Upon the side of each is stamped the word ‘IDÅSEN‘, and inside every box is the same thing, minus some variant of a screw or a nut or a washer, just to keep things interesting.
The stack of boxes is flanked by other, identical stacks. They fill the shelf they occupy without leaving any gaps at all. The shelves above are similarly packed.
After ten minutes of walking, the IDÅSEN boxes give way to ARKELSTORPs. Other than the name, the boxes are identical. Other than the boxes, the shelves are identical. Other than the shelves, there’s nothing.
⁂
Merlin led the way through the labyrinth, his companions a few paces behind. When they entered, he’d surveyed the constellations of router lights on the cavernous ceiling above, marvelling at the sheer number of them. And off in the distance, one of the routers was blinking orange instead of green.
It seemed as suitable a goal as any.
They moved through the curving corridors without comment. The three of them had all generally understood the nature of this place. Quiet as it was, they were in danger. It wasn’t a space for casual chatter.
This made it easy to hear voices – one masculine, one feminine – in terse conversation ahead.
‘…I know, but we should really eat something while we have the opportunity,’ the latter was saying.
‘No. We don’t know how long it’s been here. It might be contaminated.’ The former’s tone was more one of petulance than of concern.
‘They’re still warm!’
The owners of the voices were seated in a sort of clearing, situated at a convergence of eight aisles. ADDE chairs – the cheapest ones – circled a series of tables identical to the ones in the cafeteria, each of which was laden with a sizable platter of gently steaming meatballs.
‘Oh,’ said Ursa, recognising the pair. ‘Hi! Hello!’
The two figures whirled around to face her, as if whatever monster they were expecting would have greeted them with the words ‘Hi, hello’. They visibly relaxed as they realised Ursa was human, like them.
They were completely wrong on that point, but it certainly made them feel better.
‘Whoa, you guys work here, right? I remember you from, uh, before,’ said the boyfriend. He pointedly avoided looking at Nora.
‘We’ve gotten a bit turned around,’ said the girlfriend, with a nervous chuckle. ‘Would you mind showing us to the way out?’
‘Oh… no, this isn’t a normal situation,’ said Ursa, slowly. ‘I’m actually kinda unsure how you didn’t realise that?’
Was the vanilla-human perception filter really that strong?
‘We’re lost in an endless labyrinth, but we’ve all felt that way in Ikea,’ provided Merlin.
The couple weren’t volunteering any new information, so Nora stepped into negotiations. She at least hadn’t felt it necessary to draw her gun. Yet. ‘How did you two even get here?’ she asked. ‘What happened?’
The two shrank back, and shared a brief glance. It looked like a how honest should we be? glance.
‘Well, we were just in the warehouse and I got a text… and then the two of us woke up here. That’s the last thing either of us remembers,’ said the boyfriend. ‘Uh, what did you say your names were again?’
‘We didn’t. What did the text say?’ asked Nora.
‘I’m Ursa, and this is Nora, and Merlin,’ said Ursa. ‘What about you two?’
‘Ethan,’ said the boyfriend.
‘Alice,’ said the girlfriend.
‘What did the text say?’ repeated Nora, with a bit more volume. But she did at least wait for the others to stop talking. This was really more about getting them to open up than the answer itself.
‘Uh, I didn’t read it,’ said Ethan.
Nora gave a theatrical sigh, before nodding to Ursa, who handed the phone she’d found back to its owner. A text reading ‘FOUND YOU’ was clearly visible when the screen lit up.
‘While we’re being honest,’ said Merlin, ‘Do you want to tell us what you were doing loitering so close to closing time? Before wandering down to the warehouse, as opposed to the exit?’
Alice opened her mouth, but Ethan cut her off.
‘We were just here to look at ANKELPOPs and we got lost and now we’re here.’
He wasn’t a particularly good liar.
With outstretched arms, Ursa swooped in to lead Alice and her boyfriend off to one side. ‘If you guys don’t mind, can I just huddle over here with Alice and Ethan one second?’
When she’d moved a sufficient distance, the couple found her noodle arms around each of their shoulders to be quite implacable.
‘Alright, you two,’ said Ursa, with gentle voice and iron grip. ‘Let’s share, huh? What were you doing?’
Her captives still seemed hesitant.
‘You know the short guy there; Merlin?’ Ursa continued. ‘He already suspects you’re up to no good. And I’ve seen him try to burn a man’s face off for offering him an iced latte.’
This was, of course, a lie. It had been an iced cappuccino, which is impossible, and thus a different matter entirely.
Ursa heard the boyfriend gulp. Time for the finisher.
‘And out of him and Nora, he’s the good cop.’
‘We were gonna fuck in a BRANDASUND!’ said Alice, before Ursa had even finished.
Ethan went bright red.
Ursa blinked. Of course it was a sex thing. It was always a sex thing.
Alice was still talking as Ursa gestured for her colleagues to rejoin the conversation. ‘We wanted to be a bit more adventurous, and well, one thing led to another, and we’ve been staying the night in the store pretty frequently…’
‘We’re uh, kind of working our way through the catalogue,’ added Ethan.
Merlin sagged a little. ‘Well, at least it isn’t anything that’s created problems for us,’ he said. He’d been hoping for something useful.
‘There are still problems!’ said Ethan. He was growing increasingly more frantic. ‘You never explained what was going on! How did we get here?!’
Ursa opened her mouth for a retort, but shut it again as both Alice and Ethan staggered back and clutched at their heads.
Off to one side, Nora hissed at her while the vanilla humans were distracted. ‘Why are we bothering with these two if they’re not connected? They’re only going to die so we may as well just leave them.’
‘Shouldn’t we be, I don’t know, rescuing them?’ asked Ursa.
‘What? Why?’
‘Um… the sanctity of life, or something?’
‘Listen, Ursa. Those aren’t normal headaches. You remember what happens when regular people encounter supernatural shit, right?’
Realisation dawned on Ursa’s face. She mouthed the word, ‘Auditors?’
‘If they’re exposed long enough, yeah. Either that or they’ll snap and accept it, like I did.’
‘Okay, so I’ll just put them to Sleep and they can stop thinking about it.’
Merlin added his voice to the dissenting chorus. ‘And how do we explain them waking up in an Ikea car park? Or a hospital, depending on how badly this goes?’
‘Maybe they tried asphyxiation,’ said Ursa. ‘They’re both weird, remember?’
The headaches didn’t seem to be subsiding.
Without waiting for further protests, Ursa’s kalimba was pulled from her bag at a speed that would have made the most hardened gunslinger’s eyes water. She plucked out a lullaby, and before they’d even heard the music, Alice and Ethan had been put to Sleep.
They slumped to the floor while the other three watched. ‘Okay,’ said Ursa, holstering her instrument. ‘We need to find something to move them around on.’
Nora was incredulous. ‘Are we really going to drag them around with us?’
There was a little chime as Merlin’s laptop opened. ‘Allow me,’ said the Gnome, selecting a program called Tenser’s_Floating_Disc_RITUAL.hexe. ‘It’ll take ten minutes,’ he added. ‘I’m not wasting a spell slot.’
‘My Sleep only lasts for a minute,’ Ursa began, but Nora cut her off.
‘It’ll be fine. They’re vanilla humans; no magical resistance whatsoever. If anything it’ll turn into normal sleep.’
The group inspected the meatballs while Merlin’s code compiled. They were indeed still warm. When one was removed from the plate, another would appear in its place.
Ursa wondered if the tables and their contents were referenced copies of existing items in the real Ikea they’d left behind, repeatedly pasting from the same template. Like in The Sims. And the default had the plates full.
Merlin produced a small bag, and filled it with loose meatballs. ‘What?’ he said, when the others began to stare. ‘I’m sure they’ll come in handy somewhere.’
⁂
Some time had passed, though the labyrinth seemed endless as ever. The sleeping forms of Ethan and Alice floated on a plane of invisible force behind Merlin. His bag of meatballs was still warm, though its contents had lost integrity and collapsed like a quantum waveform. Merlin wouldn’t learn this until he opened the bag, creating a sort of Schrödinger’s meatloaf situation.
The shelves made up the labyrinth’s halls had begun to turn more often, jerking left and right in sharp, acute angles. Fortunately, their guiding light still shone orange in the ceiling above. They were getting closer.
A sudden left turn led the group to a long stretch of corridor. Here, maybe 30 feet away, a figure in a white and black suit stood over a body on the floor. There were two swords on his belt that hadn’t been there earlier.
From the rear, it looked like Azoth Alkahest, the Demon they’d met earlier. According to Montparnasse, he’d been chasing down some monster that had snatched up Brian and vanished into this very labyrinth.
Alkahest heard their approach and spun to face them. This is a metaphor, because Alkahest didn’t have a face.
In place of facial features, the front of his head was just a massive, gaping maw lined with dripping – but very clean – teeth. In the darkness of the mouth, a multitude of coloured eyes peered out at them.
All of them blinked.
‘It’s you three!’ he said, in a totally regular voice. ‘I assume you’re chasing down our manager too?’ He nudged the body on the floor with his foot.
Nora was the first one over. Brian was indeed dead on the floor, his eyes still open.
There was a sardonic lilt to Alkahest’s report. ‘Yes, unfortunately the Minotaur got him, and he ended up getting killed. It’s a shame, I was beginning to like the guy.’
Nora stood up from the body. ‘His throat’s been cut.’
‘Yes, it’s very sad.’
‘You said the “Minotaur” got him.’
‘…I never said those two facts were directly related.’
’What the fuck?’ yelled Ursa. ‘You just killed a guy for no reason?’
‘It wasn’t for no reason,’ said Alkahest, perhaps a bit defensively. ‘He was turning into an Auditor.’
‘He doesn’t look like he was,’ Merlin remarked.
‘Well, it seemed like he was about to.’
Ursa still hadn’t cooled off, marching right up to Alkahest despite his Langolier-face. ‘You slit his throat on a hunch?’
‘Well, he was clutching at his head and I didn’t have many options. You know what they say, “when all you have is two swords, everything looks like a throat”.’
‘Nobody says that!’
‘Ok well not just that; I figured I could use his blood for something. It’s useful stuff. Shadow’s my default, but I’m trying to branch out. Anyway, we don’t have time to stand around flappin’ our gums. The Minotaur will be coming.’
’You keep saying that, “Minotaur”,’ said Ursa, not even bothering to address the blood thing. ‘What are you talking about? We’ve seen Minotaurs. We work with a Minotaur! He’s big, but he’s hardly a monster!’
‘Well, he does own a Minions necktie,’ said Merlin.
Ursa ignored him, instead watching as Alkahest sighed and closed his mouth. He smiled, with his regular face, and bent down over Brian’s remains.
‘What are they teaching their employees at the Institute these days?’ he said, mostly to himself. He jammed his index finger into the wound on Brian’s neck, withdrawing it once it had a nice, thick crimson coating.
Paying no attention to Ursa’s sounds of disgust, he strode over to a large box with a POÄNG in it, and began to draw in Brian’s blood.
‘So, that’s your world here in the centre,’ he explained, in a bad approximation of a college lecturer. ‘Right at the crossroads of all these parallels. And the further you go in one direction, the more steeped in that Alignment the world is.’
He pointed to the sphere below the one in the middle. ‘I’m from one down this way, a little closer to Death. And it just so happens that most Minotaurs are, too. But… the one in here with us?’
He pointed to a box on the shelf below. ‘It’s probably from one all the way down there.’
Ursa seemed unconvinced, but stayed quiet. It was Merlin that responded first, though not in English.
‘If this thing is real, there’s still some parts you haven’t explained. For example, why did this Minotaur seek out Brian? Did he do something to attract its ire?’
He spoke in Infernal, the most common language among Fiendish folk – Nora and Ursa just heard a series of guttural noises, far lower in pitch than Merlin’s usual voice, with the word ‘Brian’ recognisable in the middle like a spotlight on an unlit stage.
Alkahest replied in plain English. If Merlin as hoping for a private aside, Alkahest wasn’t interested. ‘Nope, it and its Runners just chased him down for no reason. Maybe it heard his stupid voice and got angry.’
‘Wait, wait,’ said Nora. ‘What do you mean, “Runners”?’
‘Oh. Have you ever been to Spain?’
This elicited a tilt of the head from Merlin. ‘El Encierro?’ He noted the others’ lack of comprehension. ‘The Running of the Bulls, you philistines.’
‘Exacta,’ said Alkahest, as if he was speaking proper Spanish and not just making a deep cut reference to that one guy in Bleach. ‘The Minotaur’s got these undead things running from it. I’m pretty sure it’s controlling them, like worms on a fishing line.’
‘Right, I can’t listen to this anymore,’ said Ursa, suddenly. ‘We’re really believing a guy who’s casually all-but-admitted to murdering a civilian, unprovoked? And now he’s going on about some stupid Minotaur thing?’ She rounded on Alkahest, who actually took a small step back.
‘You know what I think?’ she said, spearing a finger at him. ‘I think that – and no pun intended here – your story is bullshit. You’re just trying to cover your ass! There’s no Minotaur.’
At this point, on another layer of reality, the DM requested that Ursa make a perception check.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ she said.
There was the sound of an approaching stampede. A mass of feet coming down the aisle they were on. A rush of wind pushed forward by something huge, something incredibly fast.
Alkahest had already taken off at a dead sprint. Merlin and Nora set off after him, with the Floating Disc and its occupants scooting along in Merlin’s wake.
Ursa, though, just backed away quite slowly. It could be argued that she’d frozen in shock, but more likely, she wanted to confirm if the threat was actually real or not.
It was.
A group of ten or fifteen humanoid figures were fleeing down the corridor toward her, each one moving quickly and erratically, like insects or startled reptiles. A cloud of dust was kicked up by their advance – Ursa watched as one of the figures fell and was trampled by the others, crushed to airborne powder – and in that cloud, mostly invisible, was something massive and unstoppable, a pair of bull’s horns jutting from its obscured head in smooth, lethal curves.
Instead of running, Ursa began to climb.
It was easy at first, the edges of boxes and the shelves themselves offered clean handholds. But the wind was picking up as the Minotaur bore down on her. Her palms began to sweat, and her arms began to ache. She was almost high enough. Almost.
Her haste had led to a less than ideal grip on one of the boxes. If she didn’t do something, she was going to fall. She was going to–
A horn. It slammed into the side of her, like a rail spike driven into the earth. She’d been gored. The force of it sent her sailing through the air with a streak of blood like a comet tail, before plummeting down to the concrete floor.
Merlin saw it happen. Nora spun to see him running back to try and save Ursa – if the Runners caught her, that would be it, prophecy or no. She went for her gun, to at least make an attempt at driving the thing back, before realising bullets would be no good against a threat like this. Instead, she reached down into the well of power that had been encoded into her soul, and fired an Eldritch Blast over Merlin’s head.
A runner was dissolved by the raw magical force. The Minotaur, though, didn’t even slow.
Merlin had reached Ursa, though. She’d lost a lot of blood, but she was still just about conscious. He lowered the Floating Disc and hauled her onto it, and the two of them turned tail to resume their escape.
The Minotaur was right behind them. Merlin could hear the laboured almost-breathing of the Runners.
Ahead, there was a fork in the corridor. Alkahest had reached it, and sprinted down the right hand path without stopping.
‘Left?!’ yelled Merlin.
‘Left!’ replied Nora.
And the pursuing Minotaur turned right, to follow Alkahest.
⁂
They didn’t see the Minotaur again. It seemed to be much more interested in the Demon, which suited the three of them just fine.
The orange router was very close now, and aside from an incident with Ethan and Alice waking up – until Nora hit them on the head with the butt of her gun, anyway – there were no further complications reaching it. Ursa had bandaged her wound and gotten up to walk again, patching up the hole in her shirt with a Mending spell.
She didn’t heal herself, though. This was certainly an odd choice, since as far as health went, on a scale of 1-19 she was sitting at a cool 1.
The journey was narrated under Merlin’s breath. ‘It should be directly above the next aisle over. We just need to turn here and then double back, and– seriously?’
They’d turned to see what clues the orange light might hold, and instead found another familiar figure in the middle of the aisle, directly under the router they’d been using as a guide. His arms were pointed up toward it, with waggling fingers on the ends.
He noticed them and dropped his arms. The light on the router went green.
‘You son of a bitch!’ said Merlin.
‘We thought there was some kind of goal here but it’s just you?’ said Ursa.
‘Fuck,’ said Nora.
Montparnasse flashed them a viridescent smile. ‘It’s nice to see you lot too,’ he said. ‘How’d we even get separated? I tried to find you mentally but with those earphones and the, uh, thing connected to Nora, I couldn’t get a bead on your heads.’
‘What were you even doing?’ asked Merlin.
Montparnasse looked blank for a second, then followed Merlin’s gaze up to the now-green router above. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I was trying to get a phone signal, or internet access. I thought maybe I could telekinetically press the WPS button, but it just wasn’t working.’
‘The light was orange for hours!’
‘Yeah, I didn’t have any other ideas.’
‘What were you even hoping to achieve with an internet connection?’
Montparnasse grinned again. ‘Alright, you’ll like this. I wanted to check the plans, and see if the guy that built this place was a Wizard or something. A regular haunting couldn’t make something like this. Might explain how it came to be if whoever built it was doing weird magic while he did.’
He looked as if he were expecting applause. Instead, Merlin opened his laptop to show Montparnasse the building plans. ‘Look. Look! The plans are wrong, but they don’t have a bloody labyrinth in them!’
‘Wait, you have internet? Oh damn, ok, Google if the builder was a Wizard!’
‘You can’t just Google if someone is a Wizard,’ said Ursa.
‘You could if you were on BlinkedIn,’ said Merlin, typing away. ‘See, just a regular architect.’ He peered closer at the screen. ‘…Who disappeared nine months ago. When this store opened.’
Of course.
Things were just growing more complicated. But they needed to get out before they could get to the bottom of everything.
‘Montparnasse, you’re Fae,’ Merlin thought aloud. ‘Can you sense nature and fresh air and the like?’
This earned him a thump on the arm from Ursa, though without much force on account of her lack of blood. ‘That’s racist,’ she said.
‘He was generalising about Wizards a minute ago!’
‘I’m Fae, and you’re being racist! This isn’t Greggs.’
‘I’m Fae as well! And you could tell where the air was fresher before! I saw you!’
‘You’ve internalised it then. I’m sorry to hear that.’
Montparnasse shook his head, though. ‘I can’t, I’m afraid. There are others in the court who would be able to. But I’m not an Elf, and I’m not from anywhere close enough to Chaos for that.’
Stepping from behind her companions’ argument, Nora waded back into the interrogation. ‘That’s something. Why you? What made your Queen send you to deal with this? You did nothing when you encountered the Minotaur. You’re a coward by your own admission. What exactly did she expect you to achieve?’
The smile on Montparnasse’s face faded, just a little bit. ‘That was… incisive, Nora. But you’re right that I’m not the most action-oriented individual. I’m really more of a delegator.’
‘As in, you let others risk their lives without getting your hands dirty, and then step in at the last minute to purloin the reward?’
‘Yes, exactly that,’ said Montparnasse, casually. ‘The Psionics I’ve got at my disposal do lend themselves to such an approach. And it’s very important that I don’t mess this up, or there’ll be big consequences for me, so…’
‘You said before that this was your chance to prove yourself to your Queen,’ said Ursa, breaking away from Merlin’s reddening face and blue-ening language. ‘But you’re already being given jobs by her. What do you have to prove?’
When Montparnasse spoke, there was a new edge to his voice. ‘Everything. My very purpose is to serve the goals of… of Queen Titania, be they the smallest desires or the largest designs. Every action I take should be to prove myself a worthy member of her court.’
He smiled again, though not at any of them. ‘Of course, right now I think she’d be quite upset if she knew what I was doing.’
‘Then… why don’t we make a deal?’ said Merlin. ‘We work as one. Neither party harms the other, and we pool our resources until we find the source of this haunting.’
Montparnasse considered this for around a second and a half, then held out a manicured hand, side on. ‘Deal,’ he said, and a little ball of light appeared in his palm.
‘Wait, wait,’ said Nora. ‘Not until we find the source. Just until we get out of here.’
Montparnasse retracted his hand as they adjusted the terms.
‘No attempts to read our minds, headphones or no,’ added Ursa.
‘Okay. And… we get the glory for completing this,’ said Merlin.
The others both squinted at Merlin. ‘I don’t think that was an issue until you brought it up,’ said Nora.
‘I just don’t want him trying to downplay our contributions to the Queen of the Summer Fae,’ Merlin groused. ‘I’m networking.’
‘An equal split of credit, then?’ said Ursa. ‘Market it as a collab?’
When Merlin finally shook Montparnasse’s hand, the agreed upon terms were:
- Neither party would harm the other for as long as they were in the Labyrinth.
- Neither party would attempt to influence the other through magical means.
- If danger presented itself, each would attempt to protect the whole group to the best of their ability.
- Afterwards, credit for any achievements would be equally split in the ensuing reports.
Of course, they no longer had a goal to head towards. Ursa tried to climb the shelves again, despite her wound, but found that they stretched up to an infinite, uncrestable height. Which was annoying.
⁂
It had been a further hour of wandering the Labyrinth, with only a ten-minute pause for Merlin to refresh his Floating Disc. The jagged corridors had now begun to flow in smooth curves, and the radius of these curves were getting smaller.
They were nearing the centre.
It made sense to try for the heart of the Labyrinth; if it spread out infinitely in all directions, then the only goal that could possibly be reached was the middle.
The Minotaur was conspicuously absent. Monsters in Labyrinths were supposed to prevent prisoners from finding the centre; that was practically the whole point. Apart from when they were supposed to chase them into traps, of course.
In fact, they hadn’t seen the Minotaur at all since they’d seen it chasing down…
Footsteps ahead of them, advancing at a rapid click. A single pair, thankfully. It was -of course – Alkahest. He was wearing his game face again, maybe so he could take deeper breaths while he ran.
‘Move, you stupid bastards!’ he shouted, without slowing. ‘It’s got my scent or something!’
They doubled back and ran the way they’d come, hoping to ditch Alkahest but not finding any suitable side passages. And then, a dead end.
‘That’s not possible,’ said Merlin. ‘We retraced our steps!’
It seemed the Labyrinth itself was against them. Or possibly against just Alkahest.
‘What did you do?’ growled Ursa. ‘Why is it chasing you specifically?’
Alkahest’s maw came face to face with Ursa’s eyes, and the maw blinked first.
‘I… think it’s the same reason it went for Brian.’
‘Explain.’
Alkahest closed his mouth, and his human face looked sheepish. ‘I’d rather not.’
Nora shoved Montparnasse forward. ‘What’s he hiding?’ she asked.
‘It’s a key,’ said Montparnasse, quickly, before hesitating.
‘And?’ said Nora.
‘And he took it from Brian when he killed him,’ finished Montparnasse. ‘Sorry, Azoth.’
Alkahest curled his lip at him, but winced as Ursa bore down on him again.
‘Give it here,’ she demanded.
‘No. It’s important.’
The wind was picking up.
‘Important how?’
‘I don’t know yet. But I can just tell; it’s a talent of mine. I can, uh, sort of taste how “important” an object is.’ Alkahest thought for a moment. ‘Or a person.’
The sound of a stampede was getting louder.
Ursa held out her hand. ‘Give it here,’ she said again.
‘What if it’s the way out?’
The Minotaur had found them. It barrelled toward them like an oncoming train.
‘Now, Alkahest,’ said Ursa, with menace in her words.
Alkahest sucked in a deep breath, and then gingerly he retrieved an unremarkable key from his pocket. It looked like it was for a locker, or a desk drawer.
As soon as it hit her palm, Ursa flung it toward the oncoming monster.
The cloud of dust and ashes hit them.
And they were all still there when it cleared. The Minotaur was gone. So was the key.
‘I’m glad that worked,’ said Ursa.
‘You weren’t sure?!’ started Merlin, but Alkahest talked over his protests.
‘Listen. Ursa. I really did think that key might be our only way out of here. But I realise–‘
‘Oh god please don’t make this awkward,’ said Ursa.
‘What? I’m trying to say thank you!’
‘I know. It’s awkward.’
‘Ugh. Fuck you, then.’
He walked away in the only direction that was available to him. The effect was diminished somewhat by the others following him, as it was the only direction available to them, as well.
⁂
And soon, they came to a circular clearing. The floor here was a clean white gravel of the type one might find in a Zen garden. The path sloped a little as they entered the heart of the Labyrinth.
On the far side, there was a door, waiting for them. It was already open. A stone hallway, like the one that had brought them here to begin with, stretched away on the other side.
Other than that, there were no shelves, or boxes. Instead, the courtyard was filled with statues.
There were ten of them in total, nine of which stood freely around one in the very centre. The centre one – black marble where the others were all white – had chains carved into it. They looked terribly fragile.
Merlin and Ursa recognised the iconography on a few of them. They were feminine figures, each holding a different object; one held a shepherd’s crook, another a scroll, another a tragic mask. And sure enough, there were names chiselled in near the base of each.
‘Thalia‘, said the one with the crook. The ones with the scroll and mask were labelled ‘Clio‘ and ‘Melpomene‘, respectively.
‘Muses?’ said Ursa, circling them like she was admiring a gallery installation.
Each of the nine muses was represented in the clearing. The chained one in the centre, though, didn’t have a name.
‘No, it looks like it used to,’ said Merlin. He indicated a gash in the statue where a name might once have been. It had been chiselled off.
Nora, though, had ignored the statues, heading for the door without a word. The others, Fae and Fiend included, followed along, leaving whatever mysteries were in that room behind for the moment.
The door led to the store proper’s Living Rooms section, with callous disregard for Euclidean geometry. The other doors to nowhere were all closed now, except for…
‘Ha,’ said Nora.
The crooked door from earlier swung open. Whatever room was beyond it was pitch black.
Nora looked around at the others. ‘Right. Who wants to go in first?’
‘We’re out of the Labyrinth now, so I’m no longer obliged to work with you,’ said Montparnasse, a bit too quickly. ‘So I’ll hang back here.’
With a brief glare at the greentoothed Fae, and a less-brief stop to deposit Ethan and Alice on a nearby sofa, Merlin strode up to the doorway. Being a gnome, his eyes worked quite well in the dark, though it took them a moment to adjust.
He needn’t have waited, though. As he set foot inside, there came a clunk from somewhere above as the halogen lights turned on, revealing the familiar beigeness of the staffroom.
The damp patch had swollen to a full, bulging blister, yellowing paint peeling from it like a sunburn. It couldn’t have been natural. It looked like a pregnant beluga embedded in the ceiling like Han Solo in Carbonite.
There was a little retching sound before Ursa spoke. ‘That’s… gross,’ she said with a grimace, trying not to breathe though her nose. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t–‘
Merlin shot the thing with a Firebolt.
It popped like a boil; fluid like sour milk spewing from it with a sloshing gurgle, and a metal locker was carried out on the tide of it to slam onto the table below. It had viscous lumps of that same amniotic custard stuck to it. It smelled like disease.
‘See, I knew that key was important,’ said Alkahest, apparently unfazed by the grotesquery. ‘If we’d kept it we’d have been able to get that open.’
Ursa fully had to lean against the door frame; nausea filling up her head as well as her stomach. Just as she thought things might be improving, the smell proved too much for her, and she ended up being sick on the floor outside.
Alkahest actually stopped his I told you so-ing to follow her out. ‘Whoa, hey, you okay?’ There appeared to be genuine concern in his voice. ‘Should I, uh, hold your hair back or something?’
‘It’s fine,’ said Ursa, between heaves. ‘It’s fine. God, this happens every time we go out on a job.’ She was running out of guts to chuck, which was good. But the convulsions had caused the wound in her side to reopen, which was bad.
There was another loud clunk, this one echoing out as if a bell had been struck. The door of the locker swung open of its own accord. Merlin lowered his hand, having just cast Knock.
There were bones inside, with a jamlike coating of the fluid slowly oozing off them.
‘Ugh,’ said Merlin.
‘Oh,’ said Montparnasse.
‘Ah,’ said Alkahest, drawing both his swords and beginning to move. ‘I believe that’s what I came here for.’
‘Put those away,’ said Ursa, straightening up to her full height beside him. As he turned to respond, she hit one of the glowing buttons on her Midi Fighter. She kept it buckled to her side in a makeshift holster for quick access, with a wire hooked up to a speaker in her bag. It was similar to Nora carrying a pistol, she supposed.
A chord rang out, arcane power threaded between each of the notes that made it up. Ursa cast Charm Person on the Demon before her.
Slowly, with the same air as one who’s forgotten why they came into the room, Alkahest sheathed his swords.
‘Give them to me,’ said Ursa.
‘You can’t just have them, ya bastard,’ said Alkahest, but he smiled as he said it.
Ursa didn’t smile back. She’d been sure he’d been moving towards the still-sleeping Alice and Ethan. What was that he’d said about blood before?
Back in the staff room, Merlin was mid phonecall with the Caliber Institute. Or, rather, he’d gotten through directly to Cepheus, who was at home, in bed, with his wife. It was 4 in the morning, after all.
‘We need backup right away,’ Merlin was saying, looking from the locker with the remains in it to Nora, who’d drawn her pistol and was eyeing Montparnasse in the corner. ‘We’ve secured the cause of the hauntings, but there are others here that want it and we need assistance.’
Cepheus still sounded groggy, but his words were serious enough. ‘Sure thing, Merlin. I’ll have – stop that, Emva, it’s a work call – people out to you for support and extraction as soon as possible.’
The phone beeped as the call ended.
‘We could just destroy it now,’ suggested Nora.
‘No!’ said Ursa and Alkahest, at the same time. Alkahest politely gestured for her to continue, so she did.
‘If this is the reason that Labyrinth is down there – if it’s the Architect or whoever – destroying it might cause it to collapse. And we need answers; there’s the question of whatever the hell was sending those texts – I don’t think the Minotaur had a phone, do you? And what was the deal with all the routers? And the weird statues? Not to mention how this guy ended up in a locker to begin with!’
‘We don’t need answers, we need to deal with this,’ said Montparnasse, stepping forward. ‘Let’s just–‘
‘You don’t get a vote,’ said Nora, pointing her gun at him. ‘We’re out of the Labyrinth, remember?’
Montparnasse stepped back for the moment, but he wore a familiar smile.
‘How long before we get our backup?’ asked Ursa.
Merlin shrugged. ‘The Institute is what, 10 minutes away at this time of night? But it depends on who’s actually on hand. How long before your Charm wears off?’
‘Just under an hour now.’
‘So,’ said Nora, punctuating her words with pistol gestures. ‘We’ve got a load of bones we can’t do anything with because it might ruin our only way of getting to the bottom of this. We don’t know when help will arrive. Ursa’s whole left side is bleeding. We’ve got about an hour, or until Ursa loses concentration from lack of blood, before the Demon realises he doesn’t have to play nice. There’s a grinning psychic in the corner just waiting to betray us. And we’ve got two potential Auditors napping in the next room over. Does that about cover it?’
Merlin and Ursa nodded.
‘Great. Average workday, then.’
Roll History 