The red wall finished closing behind them with a low scrape, cutting off the circular hall and the bronze wreckage they had left inside it.
The five Sleepers continued through a passage built from dark red stone, its floor divided by a dry channel that ran straight down the middle.
Square pillars stood at regular intervals along both walls. Each supported a shallow arch, and each arch held a green flame in a bronze bowl.
Eirwen watched closely, even if so far nothing had tried to kill them.
[Hydra's Choice] floated close to his right shoulder, while the [Vestment of the Sunken King] rested on him without any charge.
At first, Mara led. The group followed her between the green lights, the broad single-edged sword balancing across her should. Joel walked beside her with the broken bronze spear he had taken from the last hall. Tomas remained several steps behind them, holding his short sword with both bandaged hands. The burns beneath the cloth had started bleeding again, and he kept adjusting his grip from time to time.
Nia brought up the rear. She was the smallest of them, dressed in a grey shirt and loose black trousers, with a narrow knife held close to her chest. Her shadow stretched along the floor behind all four of them.
Eirwen watched the formation for less than a minute before moving past Joel. Mara had been keeping the four of them together before he arrived, and that was worth something, but it did not make her the person who should be choosing where they went or how they met whatever waited there.
He was stronger than her. He was stronger than all four of them put together, and in a place where the first mistake could open someone from throat to groin, strength was not a detail to be simply ignored.
The one most capable of surviving the first attack and killing what followed it was supposed to lead. Anything else was just stupid. "Tomas and Nia in the middle," he said. "Joel, take the rear."
Mara stopped so abruptly that Tomas nearly walked into her.
She turned, lowering the sword from her shoulder, and gave Eirwen a long look. Her face was young despite her hard jaw, perhaps seventeen, perhaps eighteen. A shallow cut crossed one cheek, and dried oil from the constructs marked the front of her shirt.
"You joined us like thirty seconds ago," she said. "You don't get to decide where everyone stands."
Eirwen looked past her rather than at the blade, knowing it was nothing dangerous to him. A hundred metres ahead, the red passage divided around a thick central wall.
Both routes were dark beyond the nearest flames, but the left was narrow, while the right had nothing really worth mentioning.
He listened for several breaths and the others waited, Mara with growing irritation and Tomas with obvious discomfort.
"Then decide something better," Eirwen said at last, looking back at her. "Tomas can barely hold his weapon. Nia is watching behind us because neither of you are. Joel has the reach to keep anything from following. Put the two injured people where they have four bodies around them."
"Nia isn't injured." Mara glanced back as she said it, and some of the certainty left her face when she saw the blood beneath the smaller girl's nose.
"Her nose has been bleeding since I came." Eirwen supressed a scoff and a roll of his eyes. Nia wiped beneath her nose by reflex and looked at the thin streak of red on her fingers. "It's obvious that whatever powers she has, it costs her. At least it is obvious to me. If you keep making her cover the rear alone, she will pass out before the next fight even starts."
Mara's grip tightened around her sword.
For a moment Eirwen thought she might continue arguing simply because accepting the change in front of the others would feel like yielding something important.
Then Joel shifted the bronze spear to his other hand and moved behind Tomas without being told. Nia stepped in beside the thin boy. Mara glanced at both of them, exhaled through her nose and faced the fork again. "Fine. Until we find the others. But we all choose the path together and try our best to keep each other safe!"
Eirwen went right, and all four followed, which made Mara's condition meaningless before the last word had finished leaving her mouth.
She seemed to believe she had willingly let him the power, but Eirwen himself knew better. He was supposed to be leading them, and he would continue doing so for as long as they remained useful enough to keep beside him.
Behind his thoughts, Leviathan's presence stirred like a brewing storm. The red-haired one believes she she still holds authority over us.
Then she is far more stupid than I thought. Eirwen slowed near the first line cut across the floor. It was no wider than his finger, but it ran from one wall to the other and disappeared beneath both.
Something akin to boundary? I'm not sure whether the other parts had this...
He stepped over it and waited until the others had crossed before continuing. She can keep them alive when I am not there. While I am, she listens.
Leviathan remained silent for several seconds before asking. And if she does not?
Then I kill her before she gets in my way. Eirwen stepped around a shallow crack without changing pace. If the others make the same choice, I kill them too.
I need the Essence anyway, and maybe I could get a useful Memory or an ability out of them. He shrugged inwardly.
A cold approval moved through Leviathan's presence. Good. If they refuse the protection of greater strength, theirs should not be left to rot. Nothing of the exchange reached Eirwen's face. He continued down the right passage at the head of the formation, listening to four sets of footsteps follow his own.
The red passage opened onto a raised circular court.
Pale stone replaced the dark floor at a single clean boundary, and a smooth wall enclosed the space on every side. The wall rose high enough to hide whatever lay beyond it, its upper edge disappearing into the darkness that served the labyrinth as a sky.
There were no doors behind the five Sleepers once the red passage sealed, no statues or anything that had been in the previous rooms.
There was only a broad stone basin that stood at the centre of the court, filled to the rim with clear water, and one large arch broke the opposite wall.
Tomas stared at the basin with cracked lips, but he stopped when Eirwen lifted a hand.
He went to it alone, and smelled the water first. There was no unusal smell, or well, any smell at all.
[Hydra's Choice] dipped into it without suddenly melting either.
He dismissed the floating Memory, touched one finger to the surface and placed a single drop on his tongue. If the labyrinth had poisoned it, his Flaw would either remove the damage or force him to bite his tongue off before the poison could do anything to him.
The drop was cold and almost tasteless. Eirwen waited while the others watched him, feeling for numbness in his mouth, a tightening throat, a change in his heartbeat or the first involuntary pull of Essence toward an injury. But nothing at all happened.
He drank three measured swallows from his cupped hands.
The water was simply water, it cooled his throat and settled cleanly in his stomach. Even if it was poison that took time to start working, it would still trigger his Flaw, so he knew for sure that it was clean.
"It's safe," he said, stepping aside.
Mara did not waste time questioning how he knew. She brought Nia and Tomas forward first, keeping one hand on the smaller girl's shoulder while both drank.
Joel remained facing the walls until Eirwen told him to take his turn, and Mara filled the empty leather flask at her belt before drinking last.
While the others rested, Eirwen studied the court again.
The labyrinth had been moving around them without an end since they arrived, yet this section had not shifted once.
The arch ahead remained open, revealing a broad stair that descended through the wall instead of another moving room.
A safe area? He thought. It might have been a place meant to let them recover between encounters. It might also have been bait, but either way, they had drunk, and nothing had happened.
Eirwen summoned [Hydra's Choice] again as he approached the arch.
The steps beyond were wide enough for four people abreast and descended in a straight line, their pale stone worn smooth at the centre. A smell of rot climbed toward them from below.
Joel left the stolen spear leaning against the basin, then called his own Memory. Silver sparks wrapped around his left forearm and became a tall rectangular shield marked by several old dents.
Eirwen put Joel at the front of the group, Mara beside him, and Tomas and Nia behind them.
He walked six steps farther down than the rest, close enough to receive help without allowing the first thing at the bottom to reach the weaker two through him.
The stair ended beneath an arch and opened directly onto the sand of an enormous Roman amphitheatre.
The arena floor stretched more than a hundred metres from end to end, an oval of pale sand enclosed by a low stone wall. Tier after tier of seats rose beyond it until the highest rows were difficult really see.
There was no roof in this section, just a vertical shaft of darkness that continued beyond the upper ring.
Four green braziers burned at equal distances along the inner wall and cast long bars of light across the sand.
Nine shapes occupied the seats in front of them.
At first they resembled women crouched beneath ragged cloaks, their heads bowed as quiet sobs passed between them.
Then the nearest lifted its disgusting and ugly face.
It was narrow, grey and almost human, with wet black hair hanging around hollow cheeks. The resemblance ended when its lips pulled apart toward the ears and exposed several rows of fine teeth curving inward.
Long wings had grown where its arms should have been, each layered in greasy grey feathers.
A starved woman's torso narrowed into the hips and legs of a carrion bird, and black talons gripped into the stone they were on. Eight more heads rose around it.
The largest creature remained on the highest railing behind the others. Two smaller black eyes opened beneath its human pair, giving it four unblinking points of attention, all fixed on Eirwen.