The air was thick and damp, each breath a pungent reminder of the horrors that lurked deeper in the twisting maze of the labyrinth. Zeek's boots scraped against the uneven stone floor, the dim light of his lantern casting long, unsettling shadows against the walls. The labyrinth had no mercy. It had never had mercy, tonight would be no different.
His gaze, blurred and frantic, darted around the darkness as he struggled to shake off the haze from his view. He needed his wits about him now more than ever if he intended to make it out alive. The corridor around him was smoky, dust and soot filled the air as the grated sounds of a scuffle in the distance seemed to be coming to an end; a victor had been decided. Despair gripped his mind as he spurred his battered body toward the sounds just up ahead.
"No…" a breath gasped out of his ragged lungs.
On his left stood a grotesque menagerie of limbs held together by only the darkest of magics; an amalgamation of all but the most unholy carved and animated in a twisted play on life and death. On the mass of faces at its core was etched the phrase SERVOS UN LILLIANUS: service in death. The faces writhed in a flurry of emotions and the limbs blossoming around them twitched.
He looked at the ground beside the abomination before him, seeing the mangled body of his companion who, just moments before, was alive and chattering; torn to pieces despite her protests and complaints, a torrent of terror caked on her face like the muddy banks of the River Styx. He took a shaky breath as he fought to keep the vomit from fountaining out his throat. Reality came washing over him like a wave threatening to drown him entirely. Just moments before, he'd been fighting by her side, numerous undead littered the floor in evidence, but something had struck him, caught him unawares. She'd come to his aid just moments after; she must have. But to what end?
He looked to his right; the door, just a few seconds' dash away, seemed to twist and squirm under his frantic gaze. His breathing quickened as he saw the handle tremble. The path behind him was covered in corpses, each beginning to wriggle and writhe as they slowly came to life. His situation was dire; the choices left to him inspired dread beyond description.
"Zeek..." groaned a voice from his left.
The faces at the core of the horror near the collapsed body seemed to all shift and contort into pained expressions revealing one amongst them with a sullen face. The cheek bones were bloated, the eyes glossy and grey, the hair, having detached itself from the scalp in droves, left the head looking more like a mannequin and less like the person it once was. The color of the hair though... Crimson. What was left of the iris revealed the color of honey in the left eye as the right had been replaced by a cavernous hole. Zeek knew this face.
"Zeek...", it groaned again.
"Who... no..." The words escaped his lips in a whisper, his hushed tone dripping in the small corridor like a broken promise. His heart thudded in his chest before dropping entirely at the face now shifting into focus before him.
Her name had once been Sarah. She had been a friend, a companion, a jesting combatant, and a confidant; it was another life. Here, what remained of her was a death mask amongst a sea of writhing faces in a cacophony of shrieks and groans and, if he looked hard enough, severed limbs adding to the flourish that made this blossom of horrors so profound.
"You," Sarah's face whistled through a patchwork grimace.
Before she could say another word, Zeek had bolted back down the corridor, the floor shifting beneath his feet. His vision was hazy, clouded by fear, sweat... and tears. This had not been the first companion he'd lost to this labyrinth of terrors. Every corner in this maze was filled with trials, traps, and all but the most intense trepidations that proved themselves fatal more oft than not.
"Mercy," Zeek whispered as he sprinted frantically. He fumbled for his knife, searching the sheath for its hidden contents. He produced a small, sweat-stained map as he continued moving. His gaze, bleary and unblinking, followed the bloodstained map in his hands. It was barely more than a scrap of parchment now, its edges curled and frayed from years of use. But it was his only hope—his last lifeline in a place where hope had long since decayed into despair. It was unlike any map he'd ever seen, and whose contents he kept hidden from the many companions and mercenaries he'd gathered to explore the dark crevices of this labyrinth. The inky surface of the map seemed to jitter in his hand as the pathways around him came into view on its surface. He looked back to see the creature behind him severing his companion's limbs to be added to its grotesque collection, Sarah's face looking on with tears rolling down one eye, and blood spilling out where the other once looked on, before being shifted further within to make room for the new head to be added to the center of howling heads and faces.
On the map, a single flower shook in the place at his previous crossroads; the name Alveria receiving a bloody red line through it before disappearing. As his path branched out, he saw shambling footprints heading toward him in a corridor to the left.
"That can't be good," Zeek panted as he raced down a path on the map that seemed to be the exit.
No, it can't.
A bloody avatar appeared next to him on the map like a smear moving alongside his as if keeping directly in step.
"Leave me alone, wraith!" spat Zeek. "Had you not wasted time fighting over the map, you wouldn't still be here heckling me."
Silence. The red smear expanded in a bubbling sound, the map dripping red tears as blood seemed to saturate the parchment it rested upon. Zeek placed the map back in the sheath of his knife, blood soaking the inside before it ceased.
The labyrinth shifted, as it always did, its very nature alive and unpredictable. Zeek had grown used to it, if one could say such a thing. The map, however, remained constant... as long as he bled onto it. It was a vile thing, the way it reacted to blood, but it, mostly, worked—allowing him to see the labyrinth's endless corridors and rooms unfold like a grotesque puzzle. No one had ever escaped it, and he'd lost count of how many had died.
Each step felt heavier than the last, his body an aching shell of what it was when he'd started this expedition. He had stopped eating days ago; his only sustenance came from the rations he'd picked off the corpses of fallen allies. He stopped for a moment, steadying the lantern's failing flame. The dim flickering light illuminated faint markings etched into the stone walls, symbols he could not read but understood the meaning of all too well. They were reminders. Warnings. Reminders of those who had come before him.
Behind him, he heard the faintest shuffle. A slow, dragging noise—footsteps, though he knew they could not belong to the living. He did not turn to face them. The bodies of those who had once been his companions now walked the labyrinth's halls, their flesh decayed, their minds absent, their souls bound to its corridors. Once adventurers, now turned into nothing more than hollow shells of death, cursed to wander forever within the maze. They were the price he paid for each step forward. The price of progress; sacrifices piled onto the altar of his failures.
Zeek swallowed the bile rising in his throat. His mind wasn't far behind his body in its deterioration, but the thought of finding her kept him moving. Lilliana. The thought, the fleeting memory of her smile, her touch, her embrace—it was the only thing that sustained him. The only thing that kept him from surrendering to the madness that clawed at the edges of his mind. The only fuel that spurred his numerous failures, sacrifices, and doomed expeditions. She was the reason he had come to this hellish place in the first place, and the reason he'd brought so many souls within these walls, never to see them laid to rest. The endless horrors he'd endured time and time again in the name of her safe return and redemption. His soul ached under the weight of the sorrow he'd continued to carry as he raced to end this nightmare, only to begin this fiendish errand yet again. The mind was grounded, but heart was too fickle to be swayed.
Once, Lilliana had been his world, perhaps she still was. With each passing day, Lilliana became less of a memory and more of a ghost, the enigmatic source of his devotion in the cursed depths of the labyrinth. She was but a memory, twisted by the eldritch force that corrupted everything it touched.
He could still hear her voice, though it wasn't hers anymore. It echoed in his ears, distorted and filled with rage.
"Zeek... I hate you."
He winced, the words slicing through his chest like a jagged blade. He'd been a coward once, staining both his soul and his reputation as he left her to die in the deepest bowels of this accursed pit. He had to get to her. He had to reach her before the labyrinth consumed everything she had once been. Before the woman he loved was completely lost to this place, replace by an unknowable entity of whose power would rival that of only the most accursed lich-emperors.
The labyrinth was alive with its own malevolent hunger, its walls and floors shifting, changing with every passing moment. But even more terrifying were the things that crawled within it. The Eldritch horrors that clung to the edges of his vision—twisted, monstrous beings that lived on the edge of perception. They were drawn to the blood, to the death. And they had been feasting for what seemed like eternity.
He had tried to bring others with him. Adventurers. Warriors. Scholars. Mages. Rogues. All of those under his employ had all fallen, succumbed to the claws, fangs, arrows and spells of their predecessors. One by one, they were consumed by the labyrinth's hunger, each death a cruel twist of fate. And yet, he pressed forward. For Lilliana. For love. Even as every passing moment chipped away at his sanity, he clung to that single truth.
But there was something more now, something different.
In the center of his mind, he could feel it—an awareness, a presence, something that had not been there before. He had seen it on the map, in the symbols carved into the labyrinth's walls, and in the half-buried whispers he heard in the silence between the blood-soaked moments. Something was waking, something ancient and powerful. And it was coming for him, closing in with every moment he lingered within these walls.
His fingers tightened around the lantern, the heat of its flame a fleeting comfort in this endless darkness.
He stepped forward again, his weary legs protesting, but he pushed on. She's close. He could feel it. He could almost hear her voice again, though it was so distorted now that he could barely make out the words.
Zeek paused, looking down at the map again, his fingers tracing the faded bloodstains. The ink had darkened over time, but it was still legible, still guiding him through the maze. It was as much a part of him now as his skin, as his blood.
The presence he felt as he struggled toward safety continued to grow, like an ominous gaze that followed him through every shadow, slithering beneath his skin, invading his senses with a force so oppressive it slowed his movements with its weight. It was HER, it had to be.
In the deepest chambers of this nightmarish place, stood a slender figure on a terrace, faced obscured by shadow, looking out over a field that seemed to stretch on forever into the darkness. It was Lilliana, her hair long and unkempt, stained with ichor, her once-white robes depicting her status amongst the highest ranks of the Acolytes now smeared with blackness and corruption. Lilliana hadn't forgotten him. Even worse, her memory of him was a corrupted caricature of what was once so precious.
Zeek could feel the hatred in her gaze, the venom in her voice... It had
shattered him. She whispered atrocities directly into his mind. Her words were laced with hatred and malice. He had to believe—had to hope—that there was still something left of her. Something he could reach, something he could save. The blood of his fallen comrades would be the key. The blood would open the path to her; he would reach her.
"Zeek…" Her voice was a cold, hollow thing, the name falling from her lips like poison as it echoed from deep within his mind.
Zeek continued his escape, his heart pounding in his chest as her voice continued to rattle venomously in his skull.
"No," she spat. "Not you. You won't escape. Not ever again. Meet your end with dignity you wretched worm. Meet your death and return as a worthy vessel of my embrace."
The labyrinth had claimed her, and in return, she had claimed the labyrinth as well.
Zeek spun, barely escaping a lunging figure from a freshly opened passage; another doomed soul eaten alive by these halls. The fiendish figure of a man's charred corpse lurched itself upright before resting its eyes on Zeek again, Grigor. With skin so blackened by dried blood and ash, he could barely make out its movements against the near-pitch-black labyrinth walls.
"You can't have the bloody map!"
A raspy, garbled chuckle escaped the open throat of the gargantuan beast that stood before him. And then, without warning, it charged. He fumbled with his pack to produce a small, glowing crystal just before the creature made impact. Its shoulder hammered his side to the tune of a soft crack alerting him to his now-broken rib. He tumbled backward, but not before it could tear through his black leather doublet with one swipe of its clawed hand.
A laugh came from the sheath where Zeek would've housed his knife. "Where is it," his mind was racing for his knife and any saving grace he could've hidden on his person. The pain from his broken rib now clouded his mind and the blood from a freshly opened gash on his head clouded his vision. His feeble hands slid down to his sides as his body began to slump. Just as the beast before him could collide with once again, he used the rest of his strength to roll away and back onto his feet in a dazed sprint. he was just meters ahead of Grigor, hearing the howling of the soulless monstrosity behind him, the most powerful new addition to the labyrinth by any stretch of the imagination.
As Grigor followed him like a dog hunting a wounded elk, he leapt through the exit to the labyrinth, breathless and heaving. He crashed onto the grassy path only ten paces from the entrance. Upon seeing this, Grigor, or whatever was left of him, stopped, his head tilting in a confused manner as it stood at the boundary to the labyrinth, unable to leave the plane to which it was tethered. An animalistic shriek came next as Zeek's vision began to fade. Grigor's body clawed at the air in front of it, snarling, before slowly sauntering back into the dark depths of its new resting place; it was of the labyrinth now.
"You shouldn't have come back…"
It was but a whisper as he crossed the threshold of the labyrinth, the Heart of Sorrows. It was her, the fleeting pieces of the Lilliana he'd once cherished, imprisoned behind the shifting maze of the labyrinth, nestled deep in its center most chamber: the Black Garden.
Zeek continued to heave before vomiting, blood and bile bursting from his throat and gushing out of his mouth forming the small puddle. As his body finally gave out, his head fell into the mud, blood, and vomit.
"I…will save you…I…promise."
His vision faded to black as his body grew cold, convulsing,
in the pouring rain.