After contemplating for quite some time, Eirwen chose the straight passage.
It was the only one that did not immediately descend into water or pass beneath an arch covered in strange, screaming mouths.
That was not much of a reason, but it wasn't like there was anything better to work with.
He dismissed the claws and began summoning [Hydra's Choice].
Silver sparks gathered around his right hand as he crossed the hexagonal chamber.
The Memory took several seconds to form, first as a pale outline and then as a thin silver longsword whose surface caught the green fire.
By the time Eirwen stepped beneath the third arch, the weapon was solid in his grip.
[Vestment of the Sunken King] remained around him.
Thin light glowed between the plates of his armour. [Weight of the Deep] had collected hundreds of small jolts from his claws scraping through the transport tube, and the stored force sat inside the armour like power waiting to be unleashed.
He had stopped braking before reaching the Memory's true limit, but he had not left himself much room.
A few solid impacts would be most likely enough to fill it.
The corridor continued for nearly two hundred metres before opening onto a colonnade large enough to make the fortress chapel feel like a small barn.
Pillars of white stone rose on both sides, each wider than a house and crowned with bronze figures bearing the ceiling on their shoulders.
The ceiling itself was almost lost in darkness and what little Eirwen could see had been painted a deep blue and scattered with gold, an artificial night sky trapped far underground.
A road of black tiles ran between the pillars toward a distant stairway, while the spaces beyond them dropped into shafts so deep that the green flames burning along their walls became tiny points of light.
No railing guarded the edge.
Wind moved somewhere below, slow and cold, carrying the sound of water through the enormous hollow.
Eirwen approached the nearest pillar and dragged Hydra's Choice across it, leaving a bright line in the white surface.
It was good to leave a mark in case he somehow managed to wander back here.
Suddenl, the stairway moved before he could even reach it.
Eirwen stopped as the steps sank into the floor and a wall rose across the far end of the colonnade, cutting off the route ahead.
For several seconds there was only white stone in front of him and a deep grinding beneath his boots.
Then the wall divided and drew apart again.
The stairway was gone. Beyond the opening waited the nave of an enormous Gothic church, built from dark stone and lit by the same green flames as the chamber behind him.
The change was abrupt, but possible to understand if one wasn't stupid: Greek columns ended at the threshold, black flagstones began on the other side, and the labyrinth had exchanged one complete section for another.
Eirwen stopped beside his mark and looked up at the rearranging structure.
Where the hell are we? He asked. This place seems to be ridiculously gigantic…
Leviathan did not answer at once.
His presence stirred somewhere behind Eirwen's thoughts, vast and unpleasant, and for a moment the green flames seemed to grow violent.
Then the myriad of voices replied all together. I do not know this place, child. I have never walked these halls, nor seen the power that moves them. A pause followed while the wall behind Eirwen settled into silence. The structure is human though. Many human hands, from ages that should never have touched one another. They gathered the shapes of temples, courts, tombs and palaces, then enlarged them until they resembled the domains once held by gods. It is an imitation of greatness.
You said so much, yet none of it was useful! Eirwen moved again, following the black tiles into the church that had assembled in front of him.
I know that men do not spend this much labour without wishing to hide, protect or imprison something. Leviathan's reply echoed inside his mind. Ask the bald servant who cast you into it if you need directions. I am not going to guide you by your hand through every challenge.
Eirwen ignored the last part and entered the church.
The nave ran straight ahead between two rows of black pillars. Narrow stained-glass windows occupied the right wall, though there was no light behind them, while pointed arches on the left opened onto the same lightless gulf he had seen beside the colonnade.
Nothing moved for the next several minutes.
That stillness gave him a moment to see the absurd size of the thing.
The ceiling hung so high that the ribs of the vault vanished into darkness, and the altar at the far end looked small despite being taller than the fortress chapel.
The labyrinth appeared determined to use every style humans had ever built.
Eirwen kept Hydra's Choice low and walked near the centre of the nave, far enough from the open arches that a moving floor could not quietly carry him into the abyss.
Twice he stopped to listen.
He heard stone grinding somewhere beyond the walls and, once, a faint metallic rhythm that ended just as quickly as it appeared.
There were no voices and no sign of Andromeda's mirror or Raijin's lightning.
The only tracks in the dust belonged to him.
But after a moment he noticed a strange silhouette.
A bronze statue?
The first one stood in a recess at the end of the nave. Eirwen had noticed it from a distance and dismissed it as another piece of decoration.
It was a little taller than him, shaped like a soldier in a crested helmet, round shield and layered cuirass.
Green corrosion covered the folds of its skirt and the muscles of its bare arms.
The spear in its right hand pointed toward the ceiling, and its face had the blank, idealized features of a statue made to represent a true, masculine warrior rather than any particular man.
Eirwen slowed when he came within twenty metres.
The figure had no scent, no breath and none of the pressure that surrounded a Nightmare Creature.
Even his sharpened senses found nothing alive in it.
Then its bronze eyes turned inside their sockets and fixed on him.
The statue stepped from the recess with a grinding scrape. Its spear came down so quickly that the tip crossed half the distance between them before Eirwen finished moving.
He twisted aside and raised Hydra's Choice.
Silver immediately struck bronze with a hard clang that travelled through his whole arm.
The spearhead slid along the blade, missed his cheek and punched into the marble floor.
Eirwen followed with a cut across the statue's forearm.
The sword left a bright groove in the green bronze, but the arm did not slow.
The construct tore its spear free and drove its shield into his chest before he could move away.
The blow threw Eirwen backward.
[Weight of the Deep] swallowed most of it before anything in him could break, adding the impact to the force already trapped inside the armour.
Blue light flashed between the plates as he landed and slid several metres across the marble.
He stopped well short of the open edge, but the armour had tightened around his torso.
There was less room inside it now!
Eirwen rushed forward before the statue could hide behind its shield again.
He cut once at the exposed knee and then at the side of the helmet.
Hydra's Choice scored both surfaces without passing through either.
The bronze was simply too thick.
When the statue thrust again, Eirwen released the Memory and sent it circling close to his body. The silver blade knocked the spear aside on its first pass, moved behind his shoulder and turned to face the next attack.
It was a crude imitation of Andromeda's [Aegis Mirror], but it freed both of his hands.
Black metallic liquid flowed over Eirwen's fingers and hardened into ten dark claws.
He stepped inside the spear's reach, caught the weapon arm and tried to rake through the bronze.
The claws skidded over its surface without finding purchase. Solid plates resisted them as stubbornly as they resisted Hydra's Choice.
The little gap, a seam of sorts, at the elbow was different though, which he immediately noticed.
Eirwen drove his fingers into the narrow gap, clamped his other hand around the statue's wrist and pulled in opposite directions.
The bronze arm held for a moment, then tore apart with a shriek that filled the nave.
Copper wires snapped inside it, and thick black oil sprayed across Eirwen's chest as the forearm came free with the spear still in its hand.
The statue swung its shield at his head, but Eirwen ducked, stepped past its left side and buried his claws behind the knee before ripping it backward.
The leg folded the wrong way, spilling another stream of oil, and the construct crashed onto one knee.
Its shield scraped across the floor as it tried to turn.
Eirwen planted a boot between its shoulders, hooked both hands beneath the rim of its helmet and pulled until the neck split open.
More copper wire stretched from the dark cavity, then broke.
The head struck the marble and rolled toward the edge while the body continued clawing at the floor with its remaining hand.
Eirwen crushed that hand beneath his heel and waited until the fingers stopped moving altogether.
He straightened and waited, the green flames shifting in the wind.
Oil pattered from his claws and somewhere deep beneath the hall, stone continued to grind, but the Nightmare Spell said nothing.
There was no announcement in his ear, no rush of Essence or anything else that came after killing a Nightmare Creature.
Seriously? He thought, staring down at the pieces. Not even a miserable Dormant Beast?!
Leviathan's presence moved faintly through his mind. It possessed no Soul. What reward did you expect for breaking a mechanism?
How the hell was I supposed to know it's not a Nightmare Creature? They come in all shapes and forms! He groaned, kicking the carcass.
The absence of a Soul was obvious before you struck it. I assumed you had noticed. Leviathan replied and Eirwen could just imagine the tall man shrugging and waving him off.
A sudden loud sound pulled him out of his thoughts though.
The recesses along both sides of the nave opened.
Bronze scraped against stone in a long, overlapping chorus and four soldiers stepped out on Eirwen's left and five on his right, identical in construction but not in equipment.
Six carried spears and round shields. Two held short leaf-shaped swords, while the last bore a heavy bronze mace with a head formed like a clenched fist.
They turned toward him at the same time. Their blank eyes caught the green fire, and their feet fell into a shared rhythm as they moved away from the walls.