“Do you feel that?”

  Elijah narrowed his eyes, concentrating on Soul of the Wild. However, no matter how much he focused on his senses, he couldn’t feel anything. Or rather, he felt far too much. It was like trying to feel the rain while submerged in a lake. Intellectually, he could know it existed, but he couldn’t really feel it.

  So, he just shook his head, saying, “Still no.”

  Hu Shui said, “It’s beneath us.”

  Then, he knelt, running his hand along the floor. Like the rest of the chamber, it was made entirely of seamless gold. It also emitted a massive aura of ethera that flooded the atmosphere that served to conceal whatever Hu Shui felt. Frustratingly, Elijah was the only one who couldn’t sense it.

  “It feels like the moment before an explosion,” Benedict stated.

  Hu Shui snapped his fingers, excitedly declaring, “That is exactly what I was thinking! It’s as if…as if the atmosphere is holding its breath.”

  The two exchanged a few more metaphors – or similes, Elijah allowed – but they didn’t say anything that helped him to understand what they meant. He said as much, then asked, “What does it mean, though?”

  “I want to find it,” Hu Shui answered. “We can follow the trail.”

  “Do you really think it’s that important?” Elijah asked, looking around. They’d left the arrival chamber behind nearly a day before, and in the intervening time, they had made almost no real progress. The Aureum was a tangled mess of corridors that made the previous maze seem like a child’s puzzle by comparison.

  It didn’t simply exist on a flat plane. Rather, it was a three-dimensional labyrinth that lived up to the Primal Realm’s name. If Elijah wasn’t mistaken, the entire moon-sized sphere – which was where he assumed they’d ended up after taking the Godroad – was honeycombed with halls, corridors, and vertical shafts. He’d lost count of the number of dead ends they’d faced, and he believed that there were many more in their future.

  When he’d tried to lead them back to the initial chamber, he’d failed to find the way, ending up even more lost than before.

  “I think it is,” Hu Shui replied.

  Benedict agreed, “This is as good a plan as any other. I don’t know how else we’re going to figure out a way through this place. We could keep going for years and not find a viable path. Even Elijah’s supplies will run out at some point.”

  Elijah looked back the way they’d come, then forward along the corridor. It was much narrower than most – maybe five feet across and only ten feet from floor to ceiling – which meant that he couldn’t utilize his full suite of forms. Shape of Spores might fit, but not comfortably. And there was no way that he could take on his dragon form without getting stuck.

  Shape of the Scourge could manage, mostly because of its stance, but Elijah had chosen to remain in his human form.

  “Lead the way, then,” Elijah consented, waving Hu Shui forward.

  The Astral Duelist did just that, stepping past Elijah. He moved slowly, kneeling every so often to place his hand on the floor. For his part, Elijah waited impatiently. He didn’t like going at such a deliberate pace. Instead, he preferred to move quickly and decisively.

  He suppressed those thoughts, staying alert as Hu Shui led them forward. For a few hours, nothing changed, save that they progressed to a few different corridors. The first turn was left. The second, right. Then, they went up a vertical shaft only to find themselves on an entirely new floor.

  The corridors all looked similar, though not identical. The biggest difference was the size, which ranged from only a few feet wide to sprawling halls that could accommodate even Elijah’s dragon form. However, the other difference was probably more important. The engravings on the walls, most of which were etched with silvery metal, were obviously meaningful, though no one in the party could figure them out.

  Then, suddenly, there was a surge of ethera.

  Hu Shui disappeared just before the walls slammed together. Elijah leaped forward, pounding his fists against the gold surface, but he was only rewarded by a dull thudding sound.

  “What just happened?” Benedict asked, breathless.

  “I don’t know. You felt the surge, right?”

  Benedict nodded.

  “It must be a trap,” Elijah reasoned. He might have panicked if he hadn’t seen Hu Shui teleport. However, he was well aware that the man’s powers had a very limited range. If that trap extended more than a hundred or so feet, Hu Shui would have been crushed.

  “What do we do?” Benedict asked after a few moments. “Do we turn back?”

  Elijah shook his head. “Just wait. It might –”

  The walls separated, revealing an unchanged hall. It took almost thirty seconds for them to return to their previous position, but even then, Elijah didn’t see the end of the trap. Not until Hu Shui poked his head out from around a hidden corner nearly forty feet down the corridor.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Elijah let out a sigh of relief, then made to step forward.

  Hu Shui held up a hand, shouting, “No!”

  “What?” Elijah asked, his voice echoing.

  “We don’t know the interval. Just wait.”

  Elijah nodded, then settled down to do just that. He sat cross-legged as one minute after another passed them by. Hu Shui didn’t move, and neither did Benedict. Meanwhile, Elijah turned his attention to Soul of the Wild. The atmosphere was still too thick for him to feel anything worthwhile, but what really surprised him was how little vitality there was in the air.

  It shouldn’t have been surprising, given the artificiality of the labyrinth.

  After three minutes, the walls slammed shut a second time. In this instance, it took much longer for them to separate, and to Elijah’s shock, they crashed back into place almost the second they separated. Without delay, they did it again. And again after that. Seven more times before, at last, the walls settled back into place.

  Elijah waited a few more minutes, but nothing happened. Just before he headed down the corridor, the walls repeated the pattern. “Oh, come on!” he complained, his impatience getting the better of him.

  Two more cycles, and he chanced it. That was a mistake, because after only two steps, the walls closed in. He only managed to avoid being crushed by vaulting backward. When he did, he collided with Benedict, and the pair ended up sprawling on the floor in a tangle of limbs.

  Once Elijah had extricated himself, Hu Shui had returned. That was when the experimentation began. Over the next few hours, they established the pattern right down to the second. In addition, they came to realize that the walls would close due to some sort of proximity sensor.

  “It takes a little less than a second-and-a-half for them to come together.”

  “Can you cover that much ground that quickly?” asked Hu Shui. The question hadn’t been aimed at Elijah. Instead, it went toward Benedict, who was the least physically capable among them.

  “There is no way I’d make it,” Benedict allowed.

  “Shit,” Elijah muttered, his hands on his hips. He looked back and forth, then said, “I’ll carry you.”

  “What?”

  “Or more accurately, you can ride on my back. It won’t be comfortable, but we can make it work,” Elijah said.

  “Can you cover that much ground in less than two seconds?” asked Hu Shui.

  Elijah nodded. “Easily, but I’ll need to get a head start so I won’t have to rely on my acceleration.”

  “Timing it will be difficult.”

  “I’m open to other suggestions that don’t end with me getting turned into a pancake if I make a mistake,” Elijah pointed out.

  As it turned out, no one had any other solutions. So, after waiting until the cycle was set to repeat, Elijah retreated a little less than a hundred feet down the corridor, then shifted into the Shape of the Scourge. Once he’d taken on that form, Benedict climbed on top of his back.

  “Don’t squeeze my spines so hard.”

  “Sorry. Not much of a dinosaur rider.”

  “Yeah. I’m fairly sure nobody is. Just don’t fall off.”

  Then, he crouched low enough that his much shorter arms could reach the floor. His back claws clicked against the golden ground as he steadied his breathing.

  “Now!” shouted Hu Shui, his voice echoing down the corridor.

  Elijah took off, though he didn’t immediately push himself to full speed. He’d tried that a few times, and to his disappointment, he’d failed to gain traction. In those instances, he hadn’t fallen or anything, but it had slowed him down considerably. And right now, he couldn’t afford that.

  He accelerated smoothly, though he knew he’d need a much longer stretch to reach top speed. Still, he hit the trapped stretch of the corridor at more than a hundred miles an hour. However, the second he reached the halfway point, he felt an incredible weight descend upon him.

  Ethera swirled, and he almost fell. Only by instinct did he push back against it with his Mantle of Authority. The sudden disappearance of that pressure very nearly made him stumble, but he barely managed to keep his feet. Even so, he reached the end of the corridor only an instant before the walls slammed shut, and he smashed into far wall, then used it to redirect down the adjacent corridor.

  Having reached safety, Elijah skidded to a stop.

  Hu Shui teleported next to him, and Benedict climbed down, his legs unsteady.

  “I don’t like that,” he breathed.

  “Then you’ll have common thread to discuss next time you meet Sadie,” Elijah grumbled, returning to his human form. He didn’t have a tail in that shape, though his lower back still sported a wound that he quickly healed via Wild Resurgence.

  Benedict remained silent, largely because, if he had his way, that would never happen. For all that the Warlock possessed plenty of power, he clearly had no interest in confronting Sadie. That was probably smart, because even if he had a few extra levels over her, she would tear him to pieces in a one-on-one fight.

  If he had a little time to prepare and summon a powerful minion, that would probably change, though there were no guarantees. The fact was that Sadie just had more experience in battle, so she knew exactly where her limits lay. Meanwhile, Benedict had gained most of his experience by constantly killing comparatively lower-level creatures, and while he was good at that, it wouldn’t really prepare him to fight someone like Sadie.

  In any case, they had survived the trap, so after a few moments, during which they collected themselves, they moved on. It wasn’t long before they encountered another trap, which they overcame the same way. Elijah didn’t enjoy sitting still and working on the timing, but he knew there wasn’t much choice in the matter. So, he accepted it as a necessity.

  The next trap after that differed only in that it came from above, rather than from the sides. Functionally, that didn’t matter, though. There were three other varieties – one with spikes, another with a disappearing floor, and a third that flooded the area with such dense ethera that it became solid. Elijah suspected that if he found himself frozen inside that block, he would die.

  Probably.

  Certainly, Benedict and Hu Shui would.

  Fortunately, overcoming those traps required no new strategies, and they began to find a decent rhythm. In doing so, they also made good time, and Hu Shui kept a running commentary concerning the thread of ethera he was following.

  Then, at last, they reached another massive chamber.

  “I think this is directly under our arrival point,” he revealed.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “It’s all just space,” he answered, as if that was enough.

  “I’m more concerned with that,” Benedict said, pointing to the center of the room. There stood a roiling ball of fractured ethera. Downward flowed the densest river of energy Elijah had ever beheld, and above it splintered nine jagged currents that went in separate directions.

  “Not me. I’m looking at those doors,” Elijah stated. There were nine of them, each flooded with those fractured flows of ethera. “I don’t think I’m telling anyone anything they don’t already suspect, but I think that’s where we’re meant to go.”

  “But which one?” asked Hu Shui.

  “Just a guess, but probably all of them.”