Montparnasse spoke before anyone else had chance to.

‘Right,’ he said, making a beeline for the bones of the architect. ‘We should destroy this right now, while the Demon’s been muzzled, yeah?’

Nora, Merlin, and Ursa all moved to intercept him. Ursa wore an expression of mild discomfort; in the ‘muzzle’ metaphor, she was the one holding the leash.

‘I literally just got off the phone to request backup before we deal with this,’ said Merlin, with a more generous scoop of contempt in his tone than usual.

‘Yeah, but there’s not a lot of time, is there?’ Montparnasse’s advance had pivoted, almost as if he was circling them. ‘I have a specific job to do, and I’d rather do it in a polite and friendly manner, if at all possible.’

Alkahest’s fingers were curling softly around the hilts of his swords. He shot a glance to Ursa for approval. ‘We gettin’ violent, then?’

‘No!‘ she hissed. But even as she did, there was already a palpable tension in the staff room.

There was a click as the safety on Nora’s pistol was disengaged. Merlin’s breathing gained the depth it often did when he was about to recite a spell.

The others present all certainly viewed Montparnasse as a coward. One didn’t need the ability to read minds to have noticed this. And yes, it was true that he preferred not to get his hands dirty, believing discretion the better part of valour. That if it weren’t for the designs of a certain Goblin in the Caliber Institute’s R&D department, Montparnasse would be somewhere far away from here, probably with his feet up and a glass of something strong while the others dealt with the architect’s bones on his behalf.

But an oft-forgotten thing about cowardice is that it really does sharpen one’s ability to read the room.

There was a flash of turquoise power from Montparnasse’s command. ‘Alkahest,’ he said. ‘Kill them.’

The Demon’s hands tightened around the swords at his hip, and if his grin had been any wider the top of his head would have fallen off.

‘No,’ he said.

A green glint marked Montparnasse’s face. His mouth had dropped open. ‘Shit,’ he said, looking from Alkahest to Ursa. ‘He’s already charmed; shit! Ursa… no, the headphones. Same with Merlin.’

Nora had her gun already in hand. He’d been avoiding her mind because of the thing it was connected to, but… desperate times, and all that.

‘Nora,’ he said, with that same flash of power. ‘Kill your friends.’

Nora felt his presence in her head immediately, and steeled herself against the influence. She didn’t want to hurt the others, and not just because she was fairly sure they’d fight back. There had to be a way to evict him.

She thought back to when he’d last attempted to get in her head, and focused on the thing that had excised him then.

She’d been casually hacking into networks and servers for years; not even for any real reason other than boredom by now. That day, she was in the system of some Institute of Technology or something in Massachusetts. She didn’t remember why. But there was this pop-up.

It had pulled her name from her hard drive, had it? Very funny.

She rubbed her hands together, and with mock ceremony clicked ‘Yes’.

‘Augh!’ Montparnasse recoiled, staggering backwards. He clutched at his head, Psionic influence like a shattered wine glass. ‘Fine then,’ he said, marching off towards the sleeping humans. ‘It’s a hostage situation.’

If he wanted to, he could simply switch their brains off. Or telekinetically crush them. Or have them forget how to breathe. Or any other manner of bargaining-chip-demise.

Ursa slid out of the room behind him, and plucked a somber lullaby from her kalimba. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said in her best ASMR voice, as Alkahest stood once more by her shoulder, and her Sleep spell drifted through the air like a soft perfume of lavender and Horlicks and chloroform.

The spell had just enough power to affect a creature of Montparnasse’s fortitude. Unfortunately, Montparnasse was Fae.

‘Sleeping isn’t something I do, love,’ he said, and continued his advance.

‘You were asleep before we went in the labyrinth!’ said Ursa.

‘Yeah, funny, that, isn’t it?’ said Montparnasse. And then he froze mid-step.

Ursa’s arm was outstretched toward the Fae’s back. Her other hand was twister-ed on the Midi Fighter on her belt, holding down a complicated chord. ‘Making me use two spell slots,’ she grumbled.

Montparnasse didn’t respond. Ursa’s Hold Person had his jaw wired shut.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We–‘

Her shoulder demon strode up to the frozen Montparnasse and casually pushed a sword into the Fae’s shoulder.

Ursa could only concentrate on one spell at a time, and while she was Holding one threat, that meant she wasn’t Charming the other. ‘Shit,’ she said.

Montparnasse’s scream was somewhat muted by the fact that his mouth was sealed shut, but it still carried.

Alkahest couldn’t stop grinning. ‘Try to control me, would you?’ He shoved his other sword into the other shoulder. Montparnasse’s second scream was much less vigorous than his first.

‘That was the plan all along, was it?’ said Alkahest, circling to stare directly into the Fae’s eyes. ‘Sit back while I kill these fine folks, and then I lose the very thing I came here for? I thought you were supposed to be a hero.’

Montparnasse looked like he wanted to shake his head.

‘Well, I do have one more question.’ Alkahest’s grin had fallen away. ‘And answer carefully. Were you sent here to destroy the bones, like you said? Or were you sent here specifically to deal with me?’

Montparnasse’s terror seemed to grant him some measure of resistance to the Hold upon him, but by now Alkahest had an event horizon grip on his shoulders.

‘I was just following orders!’ said Montparnasse. ‘You know how it is!’

‘Yeah, I suppose I do.’

Alkahest’s mouth opened. And opened. And opened.

And then it closed, and Montparnasse no longer had a head.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Nora, bile rushing up to witness what had happened. She’d wanted to get some answers on whether Montparnasse really had intended to actually destroy the bones, or if he wanted them for something else. Said answers probably wouldn’t be forthcoming now.

Alkahest’s mouth was back to regular proportions when he turned back toward Ursa. Her legs took a step in retreat without her permission, but she steeled herself and locked them in place.

’Right. I need to apologise,’ she said, after taking a dramatically long breath. ‘I shouldn’t have Charmed you. That was shitty of me. I just didn’t want you to go and kill those people.’ She stood with her arms wide. ‘But I know it was a sucky thing to do and so I’m wide open. Take a free shot.’ And she shut her eyes.

‘What?’ said the Demon, ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Ursa.’

Ursa risked opening her eyes again. ‘Uh… you aren’t mad about the Charm Person? “Try to control me, would you”, like you said before?’

‘What you did wasn’t control; you just had me think of you a little more fondly. I might have been mad if your spell didn’t shield me from Montparnasse’s worse one.’ His head tilted to the side. ‘But as it stands, I’m thinking of it sorta like a flu jab? So… thank you.’

‘Oh,’ said Ursa. ‘I was worried you were going to, uh… well, anything would kill me right now. I’ve still got this hole in my side.’

‘You do?’ Alkahest’s eyebrows went up. ‘Well, I can start to pay you back a bit.’

He made a gesture and a thread of fluid crimson snaked from Montparnasse’s remains. Alkahest wound it around his finger, stretching it out like donut batter, before flicking it towards Ursa.

The macabre halo floated above her head for a second, then dropped over her shoulders. By the time it reached the floor, her wound had healed completely.

Alkahest breezed past as she visibly sagged with relief, and hopped onto the table with the locker. His fingers waggled in the air before reaching down to open its door. ‘Glad that actually worked this time. Now, let’s see what we…’

He trailed off as the door wouldn’t budge.

Unbeknownst to the others, while the standoff with Montparnasse was going down, Merlin had been focusing his attention on the bones. The ribs were covered in little runes, each the size of a thumbnail, laid out across the ribcage in regular intervals.

He’d also spotted what was ostensibly a USB port on the back of the skull, which had him thinking of The Matrix. That might be a way to connect to it? But there wasn’t time to do that without being noticed. Ursa had glanced at him a few times already.

So, Merlin closed the locker and whispered an Arcane Lock to it, sealing it with magic. Moments later, Alkahest had proved his actions necessary.

‘Urrrrrsaaaaaaa,’ said the Demon. ‘What did you do to the locker, Ursa?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Are you lying?’

Ursa shrugged. ‘Why don’t you come over here and ask me that?’

‘Are you flirting with the Demon?’ said Merlin, hair and hackles rising like a Ghibli animation.

‘No!’ said Ursa, very quickly, ‘I’m trying to draw his attention from the spell you cast!’

There was a pause.

‘Merrrrrrlinnnnnn,’ said the Demon.

Merlin folded his arms. ‘I’m obviously not going to open it.’

⁂

Off to the side, Nora had been keeping out of things. Not in an ‘impartial observer’ way, but in an ‘ooh, they’re about to kick off’ way. Her money was on the Fiend.

There was a tap on her wrist – a message on the watch her ‘patron’ had provided. It read:

‘Nora, don’t react. I’ve got something I want you to do. Similar to our previous… shenanigans in the Institute’s computers.

‘There’s a USB in your pocket. Yes, I know it wasn’t there a moment ago; don’t worry about it.

‘I need you to plug it into Merlin’s computer. It should only take me about 15 seconds to find what I’m looking for if I have a direct connection.

‘And then once you’ve done that, I need you to plug it into the port on the back of the skull. We probably won’t see a payoff on this one for a while, but it’ll be good, trust me!’

It was followed by an emoji: (｀∀´)Ψ

Nora scoffed, but surveyed the scene. Merlin was swearing at Alkahest in some guttural language – if she’d spoken Infernal she’d know he was calling the Fiend a ‘Demonic scumbag’ – and Ursa was trying and failing to mediate between the two.

Merlin kept his laptop in a satchel whenever he wasn’t using it. And he already didn’t trust her very much, which was the correct choice, to be fair. She sincerely hoped whatever her patron had in mind would be worth it.

There came that vrrrr sound of a text on silent. ‘It’s Cepheus,’ said Merlin, checking his phone. ‘He’s outside.’ He left to let the Institute backup in, taking his computer with him.

When he reappeared, he was flanked by six nondescript Caliber Institute employees with black suits and swords at the hip, as well as the towering frame of Cepheus like a God behind a prophet. The difference in scale was almost comical.

Alkahest raised his hands as the Institute backup moved through the scene – two kept him marked, two went to the sleeping humans, and two moved to the remains of Montparnasse.

Merlin talked Cepheus through the situation as they did. With Alkahest covered, he felt it safe enough to open the locker, and soon he’d connected the skull to his laptop via a USB cable. He struck at the keys like a concerto pianist, but stopped after just a few seconds.

‘Can we huddle over here a moment?’ he asked, leaving his experiment running. ‘Out of earshot of the demon, I mean?’

He was joined outside the room by Cepheus, Ursa, and after a moment, Nora too.

Her patron had been right. It had only taken about 15 seconds.

‘I can’t gain access to whatever the bones are connected to,’ Merlin was saying as she entered the huddle with the USB back in her pocket. ‘I believe we need a key.’

‘Oh… oh.’ said Ursa, a little guiltily. ‘Look, throwing it to the Minotaur saved us at the time.’

‘Nobody doubts that,’ said Merlin. ‘But regardless, we need to go back in to retrieve it.’

Cepheus’ usually gregarious tone was subdued. ‘If that’s the case, I can’t come with you on this. It’s a Labyrinth.’

‘Would that be a problem?’ asked Ursa.

‘It’d be bad for my, uh, mental health. It’s a Minotaur thing.’

Merlin shook his head. ‘That’s not a problem, Cepheus. We need you to get those two humans somewhere safe, anyway.’

‘Oh, yeah!’ said Cepheus, brightening. ‘I wanted to mention that! Nora, good job! She normally never bothers saving people! This is really good progress.’ He noticed Nora’s glare. ‘Uh, but yeah, we’ll do the usual hot chocolate, Modify Memory combo. No problem.’

‘Um, what about Alkahest?’ asked Ursa.

‘What about him?’ said Nora. ‘Leave him out here. We’re not looking for trouble.’

‘He could be helpful.’

‘The Demon?’ spat Merlin. ‘I doubt that. Though… it would probably be best to keep an eye on him.’

‘I’ll ask if he wants to join us then,’ said Ursa. ‘Uh, not that he has a choice,’ she added, after realising they were all looking at her.

⁂

Alkahest seemed to be in extremely high spirits as the four of them headed back into the labyrinth. The corridor they followed was the one they’d exited by, and as such should lead them right back to the centre.

‘I’m just sayin’, I still think it’s possible that we could all get what we want here,’ he was just saying. ‘You get a nice, un-haunted Ikea and I get the bones.’

‘What do you even want them for?’ asked Ursa.

‘Eh, I got plans. Like I told your trigger-happy colleague earlier – you still owe me two meatballs, by the way Nora – on the Fiendish side of things right now, there’s lots of people trying to claw their way upwards.’

Merlin snorted. ‘And you’re one of them, are you?’

‘Not exactly. I don’t want to climb the ranks so much as level the playing field. For everyone, I mean. There’s too much of the Archdevil seated atop a throne literally made of his underlings. Thing is, if those underlings stopped acting like crabs in a bucket for a minute, they’d realise that together they’d be more than a match for any Orcus or Demogorgon.’

‘What are you, some sort of Union rep?’ Nora laughed as she said it.

Alkahest didn’t. ‘Actually, yeah, that’s a pretty good way to put it. I’m trying to convince my contemporaries of the power of collective bargaining, you know? Learned a lot in Manchester back in the 80’s. Though, Thatcher’s response,’ he spat the name, ‘goes to show if you’re going to strike, it should be at the neck of whoever’s on top.’

The concept of a united force of Fiends was perhaps less utopian than Alkahest was making it out to be, but it was obvious he believed in what he was talking about.

‘I’d make a lot of speeches and stuff,’ he said, barely pausing for breath. ‘Used to think I could use the Importance Taste thing as a rhetoric device – like, “I can tell how important each and every one of you is” – but for that to work I’d have to lick everybody’s face. And you do not want to be doing that in a room full of Fiends.’

‘Wait…’ said Ursa. ‘You said the 80’s. How old are you?’

‘Few centuries. Why?’

‘…No reason.’

The Labyrinth’s central courtyard looked the same as before, with the same curated gravel and statues of the Muses.

Could Muses be involved in whatever was going on here? Outsiders, when arriving in the Earth at the centre of the axis, would sometimes take on the shapes of old stories like clothing. Or some said it was the other way around – the old stories came from the influence of Outside, even before the Trinity Test opened the gates proper.

Still, these were just statues. Not even necessarily meaningful ones, right? The chains binding the redacted one at the centre, for example, wouldn’t have bound her at all, had they been real. If she’d tried to stand, they’d simply fall away.

Under Merlin’s inspection, it turned out this statue wasn’t quite as censored out as they’d initially thought. What had looked like the first mark of the chisel was actually a letter L.

‘Maybe I should be making a vlog of all this,’ Ursa wondered aloud.

‘Oh, are you Youtube or something?’ asked Alkahest. ‘Gimme your handle, I’ll click the bell.’

Ursa was embarrassed, but could not in any way ignore the prospect of a new subscriber.

Merlin had scaled one of the walls on the edge of the courtyard, after much effort. He was surveying the labyrinth – from these walls, he could see the whole span of the place. ‘It’s… it’s a circuit board,’ he breathed. He could see clusters of shelves laid out like capacitors. The courtyard where they’d found Ethan and Alice was an isolation gap.

He could also see the route the Minotaur was travelling. He began to consider a plan.

Below, while the others were otherwise occupied, Nora hissed a message to her watch. ‘So, when is this payoff you’ve promised? While we’re here, or later?’

‘Later,’ was the reponse.

‘So do I need to be doing all this now?’

‘The sooner the better.’

Merlin had climbed down and was gesturing for another huddle. ‘Okay, I can track the Minotaur. We’ll need to not get gored, and find the USB key. Any ideas?’

‘Well, if you know where it’s going to be, you could lie down in front of it and grab onto its leg,’ suggested Nora.

‘And get trampled to death?’

‘Only if you’re slow.’

Ursa made as if to put a hand on Nora’s shoulder, then thought better of it. ‘I’m starting to see why you have that reputation of yours,’ she said.

‘Yeah,’ nodded Merlin, ‘And no friends.’

Ursa nearly clouted him. ‘We’re her friends, Merlin.’

‘Meh,’ said Nora.

‘…I don’t care what either of you say; we’re friends,’ said Ursa, ignoring Merlin’s smirk.

They’d figured out something close to a plan by the time they arrived in the Minotaur’s path. Based on his previous success, Alkahest would run and distract it, trying to keep it on longer and less turbulent corridors so the others would have an easier time on its back.

Nora planned to use a Lightning Lure to lasso onto the beast. Ursa and Merlin began to climb the shelves on either side, preparing to leap onto the Minotaur’s back when it came close enough.

And that would be soon.

A cloud of dust was coming towards them, kicked up by the runners heralding the bull’s approach. Alkahest had just about finished his stretches. Ursa was fairly high up – based on her past attempt at climbing over the Minotaur’s approach, she was probably just high enough.

Merlin, though, was having trouble. He just didn’t have a long enough reach to make his way upwards with any speed, and now the Minotaur was upon him.

Nora watched with interest, weighing up her options. Yes, she could probably give Merlin some assistance – a literal leg up. But in doing so, she’d miss her opportunity to properly aim her spell. And as Merlin had noticed, the Minotaur was upon them.

She elected to ignore him. Her Lure was more important.

Merlin, realising the predicament he now found himself in, decided to go with Plan B: he would lie down flat and try to grab a leg. He would be the first to admit Plan B was not a very good plan.

Alkahest took off running. Nora loosed her spell but missed completely, and the Minotaur and runners crashed over her like a wave of boots and hooves.

Merlin, knowing he wasn’t dexterous enough to roll his way through the oncoming tide, elected instead to simply grab onto the first thing that tried to crush him underfoot.

Above, Ursa leapt from her vantage, digging her fingers in the Minotaur’s fur to prevent herself bouncing straight off it. It was wet with something that reeked of oil, but she held on regardless.

Nora clambered to her feet, wincing at the pain. It was incredibly tempting for her to just sit down for a while. Maybe she could assemble one of the flat-pack chairs?

After a moment, she set off to follow in the Minotaur’s wake, partly because she had a job to do, and partly because the chair she’d picked was missing too many screws.

Atop the Minotaur’s oil-slick shoulders, Ursa managed to open her eyes. The shelves towered up on either side, and she could just about see Alkahest ahead at a fork in the path. He turned left, and the Minotaur barrelled after him, with Ursa clinging on for dear life.

A new burst of ash blew up at her as another of the runners was crushed underfoot. The prospect of Alkahest was apparently driving the Minotaur into a frenzy, like a carrot on a stick. But Ursa didn’t know anything about what that was like.

Still, if the Minotaur was running fast enough to catch its runners now, maybe that was a good thing? She looked down to check how many were left.

What she saw was less than ideal, though more in terms of quality than quantity.

There were about four runners remaining; the others having been crushed to powder by the Minotaur’s need to catch Alkahest. One of them, though, had a recognisable uniform and build.

It was Brian – or Brian’s body, at any rate – animated as another runner, after being left behind in the Labyrinth. Ursa probably would have felt quite guilty, had it not been for the more pressing fact that Merlin was clinging to his back.

Merlin had grabbed onto the first leg that had stamped down on him, and clawed his way upwards like a cat on curtains. When he realised what he’d done, it was far too late to switch to a less perilous course of action.

Perhaps it was the extra weight, but Brian was slowing down. The Minotaur would absolutely catch him, probably in just a few seconds, and when it did both Brian and Merlin would be combined into a sort of chalky paste.

This would be bad.

Ursa needed to slow her mount. She crawled closer to the thing’s head, Shadow-of-the-Colossus style, and struggled out of her jacket. She whipped the thing over the Minotaur’s eyes and heaved.

There was a thunk, as if a Gnome had leapt from the back of an undead runner and landed on a nearby shelf. Ursa looked back to see Merlin’s head poking out from behind a boxed ÄPPLARÖ. In a glowing Mage Hand he held a small, silver key he’d lifted from Brian’s belt.

That was a relief. All Ursa needed to do now was get down.

Merlin hopped to the floor with the USB safely in his pocket. It wouldn’t take very long to reach the centre again, now that he knew the general layout. Before that, though, he’d need to reunite with Ursa and Nora.

The latter turned out to be quite simple, as Nora came trotting down the corridor just moments after he’d dusted himself off.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘Got the key. I suspect Ursa will be rejoining us shortly, as well – she’s only got to retrace the Minotaur’s steps. Then the three of us can be out of here.’

‘The four of us, you mean.’

Merlin blinked at her. ‘Ugh, don’t tell me you’re enamoured of the Demon too?’

‘Fuck off. We came in with four, we’re leaving with four. Send him a Message.’

‘Nora, he’s a Fiend. I don’t think you realise how treacherous they are.’

‘Treacherous like the kind of people that leave their allies behind?’

‘He isn’t our ally.’

Nora had a knife in her hand. ‘Message him, Merlin. I won’t ask you again.’

‘No. And I’m glad you’re agreeing to stop giving orders.’

The knife moved. Merlin lowered his arms from their defensive positions, and saw a fresh, cardinal cut on his forearm before he felt the pain of it.

His teeth clenched. Heat sparked from his fingers as the trickle of blood reached them, and he sent a point-blank Firebolt straight toward Nora’s face.

Somewhere else, lurking below the axis of worlds with our story at the centre, the Alignment Death took notice. The two were in a place firmly under its influence, and as such, their actions had further-reaching consequences than either intended. On a purely Cosmic scale, both Merlin and Nora drifted just a little further into Death‘s field of vision.

‘Hey guys, what the fuck?!’

Ursa had indeed rejoined them. She’d turned the corner just in time to see Merlin’s Firebolt erupt in Nora’s face.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Nora, with a stream of blood coming from one nostril.

‘Yeah,’ said Merlin. ‘…I’m going to message Alkahest. Tell him we got the key.’

A feature of the Message spell is that only the recipient can hear what’s been sent. A feature of Merlin is that he can speak Draconic. This feature is one that Alkahest lacks.

Alkahest’s reply to the consonent-heavy Draconic sounded out of breath. ‘Uh, I don’t know who this is, but, does this mean I can stop leading the Minotaur around?’

Merlin replied. In Draconic again.

‘I hope he’s doing okay,’ fretted Ursa. ‘What if he’s gotten stranded? Merlin, can you try another Message?’

Merlin considered. He really did think it’d be best if they left the Demon here, but seeing Ursa shift her weight from foot to foot… well, there was no accounting for taste.

‘Alkahest, it’s Merlin. We’re back at the centre. If you duck into a shelf…’

After a few minutes, a tired and ash-coated Alkahest emerged from the labyrinth, feet crunching on the gravel in the central garden.

He marched straight up to Merlin and dropped into a deep bow. ‘I have to apologise,’ he said, still bent double. ‘I was absolutely certain you were going to leave me in there. I misjudged you.’

They returned to the Staff Room, key in hand. Cepheus and the others from the Institute had gotten Ethan and Alice out without them going all Auditor, which was a blessing. All that was left was getting answers.

Merlin reopened the locker and mentally prepared himself. Chances were, there’d be defenses on whatever system was built into this.

Nora stood tense at his side. Ursa was back beside Alkahest, who had sat himself down and begun extracting clouds of dust from his clothing. Cepheus blocked the doorway like a stone before a tomb.

Merlin plugged the USB into the back of the skull. The runes on the ribcage began to glow with a soft, sickly luminescence. The sockets of the skull came alight with the same. Merlin held it Yorick, and stared into its lambent eyes.

⁂

In computing, a firewall is a security system that monitors and controls traffic based on predetermined security rules. A firewall typically establishes a barrier between a trusted network and an untrusted network, such as the Internet.

In Technomancy, there’s a similar concept called a Conjurewall. A Conjurewall is a security system that establishes a barrier between Technomantic yeggs and the arcane systems they attempt to breach.

It takes a high degree of magical fortitude and years of study to even properly visualise a Conjurewall, let alone attempt to breach one. Were a mundane hacker to encounter a system under such protection, they wouldn’t even know what it was that kept them at bay.

Merlin, though, did.

In the skull’s eyes, he could see a virtual copy of the labyrinth’s zen garden, much larger in scale; the statues alone were 15-20 feet tall in this facsimile.

He took a step, felt the gravel under his boots. He wasn’t alone.

‘I take it this is your work?’ he asked.

The architect – or some vestige of him – stepped from behind the massive chained statue. ‘Well, I did have some…’ and here he looked up at the statue, ‘…Inspiration. This was all for her, after all.’

‘What’s the purpose of this system?’

The architect smiled. ‘Now if I could tell you that, it wouldn’t be a very good security system, would it?’

‘Fair,’ said Merlin, and blasted a Witch Bolt through the architect’s chest.

‘Lopodite…’ coughed the architect, as the Conjurewall collapsed.

⁂

Merlin’s fingers tapped away at the ribs. They were a keyboard. The skull was the display. He could see everything.

He’d been right, back in the labyrinth – the whole thing was a computer. The Minotaur was a side effect of the labyrinth being made, but an intended one – the labyrinth itself was designed to lure or pull people in, and when the Minotaur killed them, that was the fuel it ran on.

The bones were the heart of this process as well as its interface, and if they were to be taken to a new location, they’d convert it into a labyrinth over the course of nine months.

And the machine was predicting the future. Running calculations with so many branching data points as to seem like an itemised list of each individual atom in all of creation.

But Merlin couldn’t see the outputs. They were being sent somewhere else, somewhere he couldn’t see. The same went for the inputs – someone was using this machine to plot their course, but… towards what?

‘I don’t think it’d be wise to destroy this,’ he said, gradually rising from the trance of data. ‘If we remove it from this location it’ll be dormant for a few months; that should give us enough time to–‘

There was a different USB in the back of the skull. He blinked as Nora snatched it back, and once he recovered from his astonishment his face went bright red.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?!’ he exploded. ‘Do you even understand what the hell it is you’re playing with here?! What are you doing?!’

Nora seemed to have frozen up. Her hand had already secreted the USB in a pocket though, which also served to hide the message on her watch that read ‘Now, Nora’.

‘She’s trying to help, isn’t she?’ said Ursa. ‘Nora?’

Nora’s mouth was suddenly dry. She needed to say something. Anything. She lied to people all the time. Why was she having so much trouble responding?

‘I need info too. You were just staring at it, and I know you don’t like to share.’

Merlin looked ready to hit her with another Firebolt. ‘I don’t share things if they aren’t important. This is. What did you think you’d gain by messing with this?!’

‘I told you, information. You really expect me to sit back from something like this when my prophecised death is about a “malfunction”?’

‘Yes! I would expect precisely that!’

There was a tense moment where neither of them spoke. Instead, Alkahest rose to his feet and said, unheeding, ‘Damn. It’s as powerful as I thought it’d be, then?’

Nora scowled at him. ‘You knew what it was, and didn’t tell us?’

‘I had my suspicions,’ said the Demon. ‘But it wasn’t important to inform you all just yet.’

‘Well we know what it is now,’ said Merlin, turning the irradiance of his anger to this interruption. ‘And you are not taking it.’

‘Is that so?’ said Alkahest, reaching for his weapons, maw growing wide and sharp.

And then he smiled, with a normal mouth. ‘Okay. I can respect that.’ He bowed again, not just to Merlin but to Nora and Ursa. ‘I don’t have to lick your faces to tell the three of you are going to be a big deal.’

Ursa blew up in a sudden fit of coughing.

Alkahest stopped before the Minotaur-covered exit. ‘Cepheus,’ he said.

Cepheus nodded, and slowly stepped to one side. ‘Demon.’

‘So what’s the plan with the, er, bones?’ asked Ursa, in an attempt to smooth things over.

‘We take it to the Institute,’ said Merlin. ‘Cepheus should hold it until then; some people might be after it for their own ends.’ He didn’t move his eyes from Nora as he spoke. ‘Even if they don’t know why.’

Nora held his gaze, and didn’t move.

Cepheus took the locker to the 4×4 he and the Institute employees arrived in. When it crossed the threshold into the store’s car park, the multiple doors into the labyrinth all slammed shut.

⁂

Merlin bumped into Nora as they were leaving. His hand went for the pocket with the USB in, but she’d been expecting such an attempt and moved it to an inside pocket.

Neither of them acknowledged this.

‘Hey, where ya going?’ called Ursa, as the others stepped into the cold morning and made to head off in separate directions. ‘We could ride in the 4×4?’

‘I’d rather walk,’ said Merlin. ‘I want to have a think.’

Nora whispered a message to her watch before responding. ‘I’ve got my bike,’ she said, without looking at Ursa.

‘Oh,’ said Ursa. She got into the car alone.

‘Sooo you got caught,’ read the message on Nora’s wrist. ‘But this was still a success!’

‘Fancy next time giving me something a little easier to execute?’ said Nora. ‘What am I meant to say to stop the others being suspicious of these things?!’

The message she got back read: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

‘Bellend,’ she said to it. Why should she go along with its ideas, if this was the result?

With his beanie pulled down over his ears in the cold, Merlin walked home in a roundabout sort of fashion. He avoided the main roads. By the time he’d reached home, he’d made up his mind – he needed to look into Nora, and whatever it was that had her ear.

He made himself some coffee.

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:

1. Neither party would harm the other for as long as they were in the Labyrinth.
2. Neither party would attempt to influence the other through magical means.
3. If danger presented itself, each would attempt to protect the whole group to the best of their ability.
4. 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.’