I wasted too much Essence here. Eirwen thought, looking over the ruins. I need to find something that I can kill and devour.
Of course, he didn't mind fighting new opponents and learning from them, since he always walked away from every fight with new knowledge of how to fight. However, he still desperately needed Essence at all times. Leviathan himself had also told him that he wouldn't lead him by the hand through every challenge and hardship.
Stone shifted beneath the bodies, pulling him out to the real world.
Eirwen stepped back as the damaged part of the nave sank slowly into the floor, carrying bronze limbs, shields and heads with it.
A new layer of black stone closed over the opening once the wreckage had disappeared. Following the repair, the wall behind him started to rise.
The Greek colonnade was no longer on the other side. In its place waited a broad Renaissance gallery with cream walls, a painted ceiling and a single corridor at its far end.
The labyrinth had exchanged one section while he fought, and the mark he had left on the white pillar was gone with it.
They truly are part of it. Leviathan said, the myriad of voices were quiter, though no less displeased. Do not waste yourself destroying every puppet placed in your path. The builders can make more. You cannot recover what you spend unless something here possesses a Soul.
Eirwen dismissed his claws and wiped blood from his mouth with the back of one gauntlet. Thank you, captain fucking obvious.
Leviathan did not answer, resting somewhere deep inside as Eirwen entered the gallery, stepping into the next section.
He moved carefully, Hydra's Choice floating near his right shoulder, close enough to intercept most attacks while leaving both hands free. For nearly ten minutes, the Renaissance gallery remained unchanged.
Faded paintings covered its walls, each showing a different city burning beneath the same red sky, and tall windows looked out on solid rock.
At the far end, a pair of gilded doors opened into a circular Roman bath with one gigantic empty pool sunk into the floor. The doors closed once he crossed the threshold, sealing the gallery away.
The bath was larger than the chapel where the trial had begun. Red pillars surrounded the dry pools, and a domed ceiling hung above them.
Eirwen crossed the room before the labyrinth shifted again.
This time, one section of wall descended and exposed a medieval gatehouse on the other side, complete with arrow slits and a raised iron portcullis.
The styles quickly replaced one another, whole rooms being lifted away and joined to different neighbours.
That made it practically impossible to draw any sorts of maps or plan a route. Once a doorway closed behind him, the room beyond it could be carried anywhere. One had to simply walk through the rooms and pray for the best.
Suddenly, Eirwen's ears picked up a scream.
The voice came through the arch to his left, followed by a heavy clang and a scrape of metal against metal.
Eirwen stopped at once, focusing closer on the sound as Hydra's Choice turned with him, point angling to where it came from.
A second voice answered the first, too muffled for him to make out the words, and something struck the floor hard enough for him to hear as well.
Other Sleepers? Did they find the same welcoming committee as me?
The corridor beyond the arch opened into a round hall beneath a painted dome.
Four young people stood near its centre among the remains of three bronze soldiers.
Eirwen recognised all of them from the chapel: The broad-shouldered girl with cropped red hair held a thick, single-edged sword in both hands, its blade wedged halfway through a bronze neck, the thin boy whose hands had been burned during the siege leaned against her shoulder, pale and breathing hard, and the small dark-haired girl stood several steps away with a narrow knife raised, while her shadow stretched across the floor and held the arms of a headless construct in place.
A fourth Sleeper, a dark-skinned boy almost as tall as Eirwen, had trapped the last statue beneath a fallen section of column and was using its own broken spear to hammer through its face.
The red-haired girl tore her blade free when she heard the footsteps that accompanied Eirwen's approach, and the others followed her gaze.
The tall boy stopped striking the bronze head and raised the stolen spear, while the dark-haired girl's shadow released the construct and gathered beneath her feet. All four looked exhausted.
None looked older than eighteen, and the smallest girl could not have been much beyond sixteen. Blood marked their borrowed clothes, but Eirwen couldn't discern any hard wounds on them.
"You were in the chapel," the red-haired girl said. She kept her sword between them without pointing it directly at him. "What that one girl that was constantly glued to your side."
"Andromeda," Eirwen answered simply, his gaze moving over the three ruined constructs, checking that none could rise. "Have you seen her?"
The girl shook her head. "We haven't seen anyone except each other. I landed close to Tomas, then we found Nia and Joel after the first wall moved." She nodded to each of them in turn, giving Eirwen the names without lowering her weapon. "I'm Mara."
"Eirwen." He pointed Hydra's Choice toward the statue trapped beneath the column. One bronze eye was still moving inside its crushed face. "That one isn't finished by the way."
Joel looked down and drove the broken end through the eye socket. Metal crunched beneath it and the bronze fingers scraping at the floor finally went still. Tomas glanced upward as if expecting the Spell to whisper, then gave a tired shake of his head.
"Nothing," he said. His burned hands trembled around the hilt of a short sword. "Are they Echoes or what?"
"No," Eirwen replied. "They're mechanisms made by the labyrinth. Just go for the joins and gaps in their body and you should be fine."
Mara finally lowered her sword a few inches. "We figured as much. Do you know where the Gateway is?"
"What kind of question even is that? Would I be here if I knew where it was?"
"Well, I suppse not..." She glanced at the three arches surrounding the hall and cleared her throat in embarrassment. Two had already sealed behind solid walls and the third led into a wide passage lined with red columns, and even that opening was narrowing by inches as stone moved across it. "We were thinking of going through there before it closed."
Eirwen looked at the four of them, then at the shrinking passage. He did not know their Aspects, how well they fought or whether any of them would become a burden. But, a party of strangers was still a party. If anything, he could at the very least use them as free Essence sources if it came down to that.
Don't think that they could do anything if I decided to simply kill them.
"Then move," he said. "The wall is about to close."
Mara studied him for another moment before nodding. She told Tomas to stay in the middle, called Nia away from the dead construct and headed for the last passage with Joel beside her.
Eirwen waited until all four were through, then followed with Hydra's Choice floating at his shoulder.
The red stone slid shut behind them and sealed the circular hall, carrying the broken bronze soldiers away into the walls.