Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Been thinking about the game, my old settings, and things, and I was inspired to write a short piece of fiction, please forgive this little distraction from all the "game design" talk going on

6/4/2021 - the story is back. Part 1 is here. the rest follows the last post I made on page 4

Into The Labyrinth – an episodic story for the Steve Jackson Games forums
© D. H. Austin 2018
Chapter 1
Part 1
It was late, the night was clear, and the light of the moons and stars was faint. He could not read the clues on the map, but he knew he was close.

He held the folded, heavy parchment at an awkward angle, his face close to the musty sheet of paper, but the symbols, lines, and runes made no sense now. The wall he was following had been slowly curving to the southeast away from the city. The moons overhead in the conjunction of the threen days gave only scant light and the sound of the gentle waves to his right came like a lullaby carried by the voices of sea nymphs calling his name. He had been walking, slowly, near the ancient sea wall by the coast road, where the city ended and the wild places began, alone and cold, with all that he owned on his back and only a promise of a reward keeping him going.

*Zing*

The sound was unmistakable. He had first heard it a few times in the chambers of Queen Korr’s Death Tests, the one that was designed after that one in the deserts far to the east. It was a type of light, probably cheap, crossbow favored by hooligans and thieves. But he was damned if he could tell what direction it had come from.

Brendun Mark threw himself against the sea wall to his left and held his breath. Dropping the map, he swiftly curled his fingers around the hilt of the short sword hanging at his side. He glanced left and right along the length of the wall, and that is when he noticed something that he had missed.

It was a crack in the wall, barely a few feet wide, irregular and angled just so that it created its own shadows, concealing the gap from anyone coming upon it from the direction he had been walking, but now that he was well past it, he could see it. The assassin must have stepped out, fired and disappeared back into that space.

He thought for a moment, to himself, “Brendun, you should run away. Standing here isn’t doing you any favors.”

Naturally he decided that running away wasn’t the sort of thing he wanted to do at the moment.

Taking his hand off of the hilt of the sword, he crouched, turned, and sprinted back the way he came, turned at the crack in the wall and flung himself into the dark crevices.

He would surprise the assassin. It had always worked in the past. Their kind never expected their target to turn and face them.

His groin was then introduced to a knee.

The pain was sharp, but not debilitating. In the darkness, he threw his hands forward. His fingers caught hold of the sleeves of a loose-fitting garment. He took hold of the attacker’s wrists and forced himself forward into the confined space.

Brendun felt his nose touch a soft, furry cheek. He could smell brandy and coconut, two smells he knew well, and two smells that made him sick.

In the confined space of the broken gap in the wall, Brendun and the assassin twisted left and right, each trying to gain the upper hand. Brendun had a tight grip on the assassin’s wrists, but the assassin’s legs were agile, and strong. Their grunts and short breaths were punctuated by the sounds of their bodies scrapping against the stones on each side as they both struggled. When it seemed that neither of them would get the advantage, Brendun finally spoke.

“Why are you trying to kill me?”

The assassin answered. He knew that voice as soon as he heard the first word.

“Stop searching for the Cryssalium.”

“How do you know I’m searching for the Cryssalium?” He grunted, not giving into his desire to say her name out loud.

“Everyone knows you are searching for it. Everyone knows you’re the only one stupid enough to search for it. Everyone knows you might actually find it, and that can’t happen.”

“The Queen would disagree with you,” he said as he put all his weight forward and pinned her against the back of the niche in the wall. He turned his hip, and drove the flat of his sword, still in its scabbard, against her left arm until he knew her hand was held against the rock. He let go of her wrist, drew a small knife from his vest, and brought it up to her breast. He knew her size. He knew exactly where her heart would be.

“Tabitha,” Brendun said, “we promised we wouldn’t fight anymore. I don’t believe you broke your promise carelessly. Who hired you? Why are you trying to stop me?”

“Do noth harmm her,” a cold alien sounding voice behind him spoke softly and Brendun felt the points of two slender blades against his back.

A tentacle moved across his right shoulder, extended a few inches and turned to come within inches of his face.

“I wouldh move a slow, or you couldh die.”

It had been a trap, a good one. Tabitha was always good at setting traps.

Tabitha leaned her head close to his. Her lips brushed against his as she spoke. Her words were light, almost laughing.

“Brendun, I’d like you to meet my employer. Her name is Alowthnas Gwynemidd, but she can be called Alo. She has a good reason to want you to stop looking for the Cryssalium. I’ll let her explain, if you put down the knife, or I’ll let her kill you.”

He lowered the knife and backed away from Tabitha. The points of the blades in his back stayed solidly pressed against him as he moved. It was a sign that the thing behind him had excellent tactile awareness.

The three of them emerged from the crack in the sea wall one at a time until they were standing on the street, the quiet roll of the waves against the beach making the only sounds.

When the blades relaxed a bit, Brendun turned to face the assailant behind him.

“You’re a…”

“I amh Mauli A’Anawa. Thisth is where Ih was bornn,” she spoke.

Though Brendun could see no mouth, he knew the thing was talking to him in a way that it was best he didn’t dwell on. All he could see where her large bluish-black eyes when they reflected a bit of the star and faint moon light around them. A dark hood was pulled over her head, her body draped in the folds of a green cloak.

She seemed to float where she was standing. Her cloaked form drifted a few inches to the left and then to the right, and she went on, saying, “Ifth you sayh I am thatd nameh. Ih will kill youh.”

“Agreed,” Brendun said, letting out a long breath, “no reason to insult someone paying Tabitha’s bills, or you know, holding her leash.”

His backside was then given the same introduction to the same knee his groin met earlier.

“Don’t be smart,” Tabitha hissed.

“Alright,” he laughed. “You aren’t going to kill me immediately, so tell me why? Why aren’t you killing me now? Why do you want me to stop looking for the Cryssalium? I mean, if you killed me, it’d be very hard for me to find it, wouldn’t it. This all seems strange. I don’t like strange. This is an unusual job for someone like you Tabitha, and you, Alo, is it, well, I promise no insults, I see you are sensitive about the things your kind are called, but you know there is a price on your head, right? Every single one of your kind is wanted. If the Queen’s Darrls knew you were here, you’d be dead. The more I think about it, the more I am beginning to think I really don’t want to know what is going on here at all. Why don’t we call it a night? We’ll go our separate ways. I’ll drop my interest in the Cryssalium, and the two of you can disappear in the night. I’ll forget about the both of you. Hell, it was easy to forget about one of you already, after you left me in Dainsport,” Brendun finished, and turned his head to the left bringing Tabitha into view.

Her golden-brown eyes sparkled in the faint light. He expected to see her full lips in that wide, digrit eating grin she always gave him, but instead her expression was grim, even a bit nervous.

It was her expression that did it. Whatever was going on here, if it had taken the fiendish childishness out of Tabitha’s sails, it was something beyond serious.

“Or, maybe not,” he said. “Okay, I changed my mind. Tell me why I’m not dead and why you think if I stay alive I won’t keep looking for the Cryssalium.”

The walking octopus lifted two of her tentacles in way Brendun knew as a sign of surrender.

“Ith musth not be foundh,” she said. Her cold alien voice now took on a more desperate tone. “Theh AhQueen of Kithhzjta musth noth haven ith. Ith isa noth whath sshhee thinksh ith isss.” As she spoke her words came quicker, and it became almost impossible for Brendun to understand her.

Tabitha moved toward the octopus and placed one of her own hands on the alien creature’s head.

“Shhh, it’ll be fine. We stopped him. I know him. He won’t keep the job. Besides he was never going to find it. The map he bought was a fake.”

The octopus seemed to relax a bit when Tabitha comforted her.

“Yes, it was a fake. I knew that,” Brendun said. “But, the person who faked it made a few mistakes, and the fake has clues. Clues that reveal the forger knew what she was trying to hide better than she wanted me to believe. An entrance to the Labyrinth is near. The Cryssalium is hidden in the Labyrinth. If I can find an entrance, I can find the Cryssalium.”

Tabitha tipped her head to the side. “You’re joking,” she said.

The octopus rose up on her legs, and the slim rapiers she held came up. She spoke and her voice was loud.

“Ifn you canh findh ith, takeah mee to ith. Weh musth destroya ith thish time.”

Alo moved close to him and lowered her voice. She was obviously trying to present a sort of calm that was eluding her. She took in a breath, the sound was a low whistle, and spoke as slowly as she could, revealing that if she tried she could be understood perfectly.

“Take. Me. Into. The. Labyrinth.”

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

I'm ready for more! I'm waiting to find out what race Tabitha is.

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

I have no idea. My initial impression was something lupine, like a kitsune.

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Not exactly lupine...

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

I'm enjoying it so far, I hope there's more...

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

I like it.

Maybe if there is anew forum for battle reports, it could also be for ITL fiction too? - As essentially they are very similar. (dependent on how the reports are written up of course)

I'd be happy to write up a couple of recent Fantasy Trip tales. (Both quite short as my boy and nephew made a couple of fatal mistakes early on. )

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

That was why I suggested a new sub forum - so that those that want to read the fanfiction can do so, without it pushing important rules queries out of view.

It'd be a shame it miss out on the hard work people like yourself put into writing. :)

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

While personally, I kind of agree with the point (to me, the fun is creating your own story, not necessarily reading someone else's), I feel that you are not taking into account the fact that a lot of people apparently disagree with you based on the positive feedback the author has received; this forum is for all of us, not just you and me.

Move it somewhere else, out of the house rules section? Sure. But if people want to write and read fanfic, then let them.

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Good writing. And anything that brings more feeling to a world or a play session made for TFT is of interest. As long as there is only a couple of threads about fan fiction or session reports it's ok. If it becomes more, put it in a sub forum. Let it grow organically. :-)

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Terquem, this thread already exists, so I'd like to see, er, more stuff in the thread.

MORE STUFF IN THE THREAD!

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Waiting to find out what these monsters are and more about the three main characters, especially Alo. I want to know more about Brendun and Tabitha, too, and about their past.

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Intriguing, I'm enjoying the background...

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

This getting deeper and more interesting. I like it!

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Great stuff Terquem! I like the tension between the three characters. Now I want to learn more about the other two characters as well! Keep it up!

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Lurkers are like cockroaches -- for every replying member there are 15 more you don't see.

With 702 views for 24 messages, you appear to have about 30 people following your story...

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

I've been lurking....(or cockroaching), although that sounds a bit wrong.

Enjoying the story.

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Love the story so far! Can't wait to find out more about the pirates and what is in the chest! Keep up the good work!

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Great fight scene. I am loving this story more with every entry.

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Yes. Start a new thread. I have resisted writing comments because I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the story, which I think is great. I love the characters and the setting. Keep it going!

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Great story. Keep writing please.

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

I'm really enjoying the story! Sorry I haven't commented in awhile but I'm following it again now.

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Great stuff Terquem! I'm loving the tension created! I like the way racial prejudice towards Alo makes even "simple" tasks like getting Tabitha to help in town, potentially dangerous!

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

I am enjoying the story Terquem! I frequently look under the TFT House Rules forum to see if you have written another chapter.

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Oh no! I just found this story. I really enjoyed it! Thanks for posting it. I am hoping that you post the rest of it at some point.

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

I'm late to the party, but I love this, is there more?!

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

We are eagerly awaiting your next installment!

Thanks T.

Re: In The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Excellent episode.

Now my interest is re-kindled and I can't wait for more.

Thanks for posting these!

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

I always enjoy reading your story and wait impatiently for the next installment after your cliffhangers.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

In comparison to the way some use these forums, your stories were always a welcome diversion and were entertaining. And they belonged on this forum more than the frequent comments of some regular posters, who shall remain nameless.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

I like to experience the story in an episodic format. Gives the feel of a well written post game session "report".

Keep up the good work!

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Originally posted in 2018, I am going to put this story back up (with some new edits) from the beginning. I hope you like it.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Into The Labyrinth – an episodic story for the Steve Jackson Games forums
© D. H. Austin 2018

Chapter 1

Part 1

It was late, the night was clear. The light from the moons and stars was faint and the sound of the waves against the breakwater were distant and regular. He checked the map. The marks of his deciphers were clear but the old map was difficult to read in the dim light. He knew he was close.

He held the folded, heavy parchment at an awkward angle, his face close to the musty sheet of paper, but the symbols, lines, and runes made no sense now and his hastily scribbled notes only made things worse. The wall he was following had been slowly curving to the southeast, on his left. The moons overhead in conjunction of the threen days, the smallest blocking the two behind, gave only scant light and the sound of the gentle waves to his right came like a lullaby carried by voices of sea nymphs calling his name. He walked along the ancient sea wall near the lower coast road, where the city ended and the wild places began, alone and cold, with all that he owned on his back, and only a promise of a reward keeping him going.

*Zing*

That sound was unmistakable.

He had first heard it a few times in the chambers of Queen Korr’s Test Maze, the one that was designed after that one in the deserts far to the east. The sound came from a light, cheap crossbow favored by hooligans and thieves. But damned if he could tell what direction it had come from.

Brendun Mark threw himself against the sea wall to his left and held his breath. Dropping the map, he swiftly curled his fingers around the hilt of the short sword hanging at his side. He glanced left and right along the length of the wall, and that is when he noticed something that he had missed.

It was a crack in the wall, barely a few feet wide, irregular, and angled just so that it created its own shadows, concealing the gap from anyone coming upon it from the direction he had been walking, but now that he was well past it, he could see it. The assassin must have stepped out, fired and disappeared back into that space.

He thought for a moment, to himself, “Brendun, you should run away. Standing here isn’t doing you any favors.”

Naturally he decided that running away was a bad idea. Putting his back to a crossbow was likely to be the last thing he would ever do.

Taking his hand off the hilt of the sword, he crouched, turned, and sprinted back the way he came, turned at the crack in the wall and bounded into the dark crevices.

He would surprise the assassin. It had always worked in the past. Their kind never expected their target to turn and face them.

His groin was then introduced to a knee.

The pain was sharp, but not debilitating. The assassin was holding back. In the darkness, he threw his hands forward. His fingers caught hold of the sleeves of a loose-fitting garment. He fumbled, just for a moment and then took hold of the attacker’s wrists and forced his way forward into the confined space.

Brendun felt his nose touch a soft, furry cheek. He could smell brandy and coconut, two smells he knew well, and two smells that made him sick.

In the confined space of the broken gap in the wall Brendun and the assassin twisted left and right, each trying to gain the upper hand. Brendun had a tight grip on the assassin’s wrists, but the assassin’s legs were agile, and strong. Their grunts and short breaths were punctuated by the sounds of their bodies scrapping against the stones on each side as they both struggled. When it seemed that neither of them would get the advantage, Brendun finally spoke.

“Why are you trying to kill me?”

The assassin answered. He knew her voice as soon as he heard the first word.

“Stop searching for the Cryssalium.”

“How do you know I’m searching for the Cryssalium,” he grunted, not giving into his desire to say her name out loud.

“Everyone knows you are searching for it. Everyone knows you’re the only one stupid enough to search for it. Everyone knows you might actually find it, and that can’t happen.”

“The Queen would disagree with you,” he said as he put all his weight forward and pinned her against the back of the niche in the wall. He turned his hip, and drove the flat of his sword, still in its scabbard, against her left arm until he knew her hand was held against the rock. He let go of her wrist, drew a small knife from his vest, and brought it up to her breast. He knew her size. He knew exactly where her heart would be.

“Tabitha,” Brendun said, “we promised we wouldn’t fight anymore. I don’t believe you broke your promise carelessly. Who hired you? Why are you trying to stop me?”

“Do noth harmm her,” a cold alien sounding voice behind him spoke softly and Brendun felt the points of two slender blades against his back.

A tentacle moved slowly across his right shoulder, extended a few inches and turned to come within inches of his face.

“I wouldh move a slow, or you couldh die.”

It had been a trap, a good one. Tabitha was always good at setting traps.
Tabitha leaned her head close to his. Her lips brushed against his as she spoke. Her words were light, almost laughing.

“Brendun, I’d like you to meet my employer. Her name is Alowthnas Gwynemidd, but she can be called Alo. She has a good reason to want you to stop looking for the Cryssalium. I’ll let her explain, if you put down the knife, or I’ll let her kill you.”

He lowered the knife and backed away from Tabitha. The points of the blades in his back stayed solidly pressed against him as he moved. It was a sign that the thing behind him had excellent tactile awareness.

The three of them emerged from the crack in the sea wall one at a time until they were standing on the street, the quiet roll of the waves against the beach making the only sounds.

When the blades relaxed a bit, Brendun slowly turned to face the assailant behind him.

“You’re a…”

“I amh Mauli A’Anawa. Thisth is where Ih was bornn,” she spoke.

Though Brendun could see no mouth, he knew the thing was talking to him in a way that it was best he didn’t dwell on. All he could see where her large bluish-black eyes when they reflected a bit of the star and faint moon light around them. A dark hood was pulled over her head, her body draped in the folds of a green cloak.

She seemed to float where she was standing. Her cloaked form drifted a few inches to the left and then to the right, and she went on, saying, “Ifth you sayh I am thatd nameh. Ih will kill youh.”

“Agreed,” Brendun said, letting out a long breath, “no reason to insult someone paying Tabitha’s bills, or you know, holding her leash.”

His backside was then given the same introduction to the same knee his groin met earlier.

“Don’t be smart,” Tabitha hissed.

“Alright,” he laughed. “you aren’t going to kill me immediately, so tell me why? Why aren’t you killing me now? Why do you want me to stop looking for the Cryssalium? I mean, if you killed me, it’d be very hard for me to find it, wouldn’t it? This all seems strange. I don’t like strange. This is an unusual job for someone like you Tabitha, and you, Alo, is it, well, I promise no insults, I see you are sensitive about the things your kind are called, but you know there is a price on your head, right? Everyone of your kind is wanted. If the Queen’s Darrls knew you were here, you’d be dead. The more I think about it, the more I am beginning to think I really don’t want to know what is going on here at all. Why don’t we call it a night? We’ll go our separate ways. I’ll drop my interest in the Cryssalium, and the two of you can disappear in the night. I’ll forget about the both of you. Hell, it was easy to forget about one of you already, after you left me in Dainsport,” Brendun finished, turning his head to the left and bringing Tabitha into view.

Her golden-brown eyes sparkled. He expected to see her full lips in that wide, digrit eating grin she always gave him, but instead her expression was grim, even a bit nervous.

It was her expression that did it. Whatever was going on here, if it had taken the fiendish childishness out of Tabitha’s sails, it was something beyond serious.

“Or, maybe not,” he said. “Okay, I changed my mind. Tell me why I’m not dead and why you think if I stay alive, I won’t keep looking for the Cryssalium.”

The walking octopus lifted two of her tentacles in way Brendun knew as a sign of surrender.

“Ith musth not be foundh,” she said. Her cold alien voice now took on a more desperate tone. “Theh AhQueen of Kithhzjta musth noth haven ith. Ith isa noth whath sshhee thinksh ith isss.” As she spoke her words came quicker, and it became almost impossible for Brendun to understand her.

Tabitha moved toward the octopus and placed one of her own hands on the alien creature’s head.

“Shhh, it’ll be fine. We stopped him. I know him. He won’t keep the job. Besides he was never going to find it. The map he bought was a fake.”

The octopus seemed to relax a bit when Tabitha comforted her.

“Yes, it was a fake. I knew that,” Brendun said, reaching down to pick up the map from off the ground where he had dropped it. “But, the person who faked it made a few mistakes, and the fake has clues. Clues that reveal the forger knew what she was trying to hide better than she wanted me to believe. An entrance to the Labyrinth is nearby. The Cryssalium is hidden in the Labyrinth. If I can find an entrance, I can find the Cryssalium.”

Tabitha turned her head slowly, dropping it to the side.

“You’re joking,” she said.

The octopus rose up on her legs, the slim blades appeared, her voice was loud.

“Ifn you canh findh ith, takeah mee to ith. Weh musth destroya ith thish time.”

She moved close to him, and lowered her voice, calming herself some, and spoke as slowly as she could, revealing that if she tried, she could be understood perfectly.

“Take. Me. Into. The. Labyrinth.”

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 2

Of the things that he had not seen coming, recently, agreeing to help a Kao’La’a woman who had betrayed him not just one year ago and a walking octopus, among the most evil beings known on this planet, had to take the top spot on Brendun’s list.

And yet, here he was, leading the two women along the sea wall, in the dead of the night, looking for a hidden entrance into the mysterious underground realm known as The Labyrinth.

He would say, “Brendun Mark, you’re getting too old for this,” if it weren’t for the fact that he was only twenty-seven, and hoped he had many, many more years ahead of him. In fact, he often wondered if he didn’t change his ways, soon, if he would actually live long enough to ever be able to say that with any truth.

Brendun lead them on. Tabitha was right behind him, her hand on his belt, not tightly, but there. He could feel it. He remembered her touch. The other one, the one Tabatha had called Alo, was behind Tabitha, and Brendun did not particularly care if that one was keeping up at all. He’d had his share of encounters with others of her kind. The ones he’d met in the past had tried to kill him, every time. They never spoke, but he had heard they could speak the common tongue, and they fought with a savage grace he knew must be treated with a healthy respect. How or why he so willingly allowed this one to talk him into joining forces with him he couldn’t quite figure out now. Maybe it was magic, a spell, probably, meant to cloud his mind, and make him ignore his own good judgment. Or maybe it was Tabitha. She had a similar, if somewhat more potent effect on him.

“Hold on,” Brendun said in a whisper, and the two women behind him stopped.

“This is it. I think, the wall stones here are not right. See, they are larger, older, and probably no one notices the pattern, unless you are clued in to look for it.”

“Can you open the door?” Tabitha asked as her hand tightened on his belt.

“I’m not sure,” Brendun said as he gently fingered one large stone about shoulder height, and then another. “I know a few types of locks that might have been used, and I have a few tools that should do the trick if I find the locking stone. I guess all I can do is try, right? Wish me…”

Brendun’s words were cut off by the swift and sharp grinding sound of the stones in front of him swinging up and away, while the ground beneath his feet dropped to a steep angle. He tried to spin, swing his arms for balance, but Tabitha’s hold on his belt got in the way. He felt himself pitching forward unable to stop.

Brendun was not a light fellow. His weight pulled Tabitha forward, and she screamed.

Alo threw two of her tentacles out and wrapped them around Tabitha’s waist.

Again, Brendun was not a light fellow, and the three of them fell onto a slick, wet stone surface.

They raced at a breakneck speed along the stone slide, curving for a while to the right, then going up a bit, back down sharply, to the left, and then in a spiral which made their sense of all direction leave them. They tumbled over each other, rolled on their sides, threw their arms up and back for stability, and collided with each other over and over again until finally they came to a slow stop in a dark chamber well below the surface.

Brendun decided that the top of his “things not expected list” needed revision.
It was Alo who got upright fastest, getting to five of her legs in a swift motion. Her cloak had gotten spun around, so that the hood was tangled in front of her among her belts and pouches.

“Myh swordhs!” She cried out. “I’hhvve droppedeh my swordhs.”

“Well, I think I found one of them,” Brendun hissed as he rolled off his stomach onto his backside and brought his left leg up in his hands. The slim, long blade of one of Alo’s swords had pierced his calf, passing clean through near the back of his leg through his baggy pants.

Tabitha got to her knees and raised a light above her head. It was a brand, a magical device which shed a good amount of light without creating any smoke.

“That looks bad,” Tabitha said, moving on her knees around Brendun until she was on the opposite side of him.

“Yes, thath is oneh of mineh. Thankh youh,” Alo said and reached for the weapon with one tentacle so quickly that she could not be stopped from pulling the blade free from the wound.

“Eiychee mama,” Brendun cried.

“It’s a bad wound,” Tabitha said. She placed a leather kit on the floor beside him and unrolled it. The kit was small, but packed with rolls of linen, needles, thread, and small tins of medicinal herbs. Tucked into the very end of the roll were two small, silver vials. “Here,” she said taking out one of the vials and pulling the stopper, “this is nacromoid oil, it will stop the bleeding.” She handed the vial to Brendun and then with a small knife from the kit she cut open a large hole in his pants. Taking the vial back from his hand she pulled the stopper with her teeth and emptied half of the contents, a thick bluish liquid, directly onto the wound. Where some of the liquid contacted the fabric of his pants it turned into a hard crystal-like patch, but when it touched Brendun’s flesh it flowed into the wound seeking the source of the bleeding and sealing around the damaged vessels.

“Where did you get that kit from?” Brendon asked. He knew she was not wearing a backpack, like his.

“It was in my pouch. I thought I might need it if I accidentally hit you with the crossbow bolt earlier.”

“Your pouch?” Brendon’s face scrunched up, “ewwww, that’s gross.”

“What,” Tabitha said calmly. “It’s clean and dry. Why, what do you think is in there?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t that where you…”

“Where I what, Brendun, Where I what? You think I have a joey in there. You? You think I have a joey, you?” Tabitha’s words came in short bursts, her anger growing.

“No, no, I just wasn’t, ahhh, sheesh, please Tabitha don’t make this awkward. I’m sorry,” Brendun said scratching at the back of his neck.

“Ifh youh twoh areh finishededh, weh areh noth aloneh,” Alo said leaning toward Brendun and Tabitha.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 3

The three of them were in a large underground cavern. The light from Tabitha’s brand illuminated an area around them out to several yards, and in the shadows just beyond the reach of the light they could make out the glistening walls of this chamber, giving them at least some idea of the size of their surroundings.

Near them there were natural columns made from the constant migration of limestone by the dripping water seeping in from the nearby sea. Each of the strangely shaped columns threw their own peculiar shadows.

The floor was uneven. Here and there they could see small puddles. Scurrying little crabs and other crustaceans were all about the place giving it a feeling of life and activity.

Brendun peered around Alo to see three short humanoid figures no more than a dozen yards away. They appeared to be a kind of goblin, but he could not be certain. He only knew that they were too short to be humans, and they were not children, though he knew that finding lost and abandoned children in the Labyrinth was not uncommon. The figures were wearing armor made from large pieces of shells, from turtles and other large sea creatures, and carrying long weapons that looked like the bones of saw-toothed fish.

The figures were hovering about, just beyond the light, and were probably trying to measure the group’s strengths and weakness before committing to an attack. This gave them a moment to come up with a plan. Coming up with a plan might not be easy, as even though Brendun knew Tabitha’s style and habits well, he knew nothing of the Mauli woman Alo. She carried a pair of slim bladed swords, that was all he knew, and right now she only had one of them.

What Brendun did know about the Octopus-folk was this – they were dangerous in every sense of the word, cunning, diabolical, relentless in combat, often learned in many skills and spells, and always on the attack. He had never known any of her kind to back down in a fight. He had run into a pair of them, once, in the testing mazes of the queen. How the octopuses got there, well, no one could ever say for certain how they got there, exactly, but those that were in the maze were about the mostly deadly thing a person could run up against when taking their shot at the queen’s tests.

“They’re measuring us up,” Brendun whispered, “Probably trying to decide if they are hungry enough to risk a three-on-three fight. I can probably get to…”

“Thereh areh sevenah of them,” Alo whispered interrupting Brendun. She adjusted one of her tentacles around the smooth hilt of her sword and moved in a little closer toward where Brendun and Tabitha were on the ground.

As she moved, Brendun noticed that two other tentacles of Alo’s were moving back and forth nervously. He recognized the behavior.

“You’re afraid,” Brendun said, and then he felt Tabitha move closer to his back.

She put the brand on the floor of the cavern, close to Brendun and then put her hands under his arms close to his chest. “Let me help you up, quick on three,” Tabitha whispered.

“No, wait,” Brendon said.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 4

“Wait for what?” Tabitha whispered.

Brendun swung his legs around and pulled his knees under him, “Why are you afraid, Alo?” He asked.

The octopus woman swayed side to side, and Brendun could see she was taking in as much as her eyes could see.

“Ihhhveeeh nhevverhhh donnnnh thisahhh befrrrr,” her words came out fast and slurred almost in one long incomprehensible sound.

“What?” Brendun and Tabitha said at the same time.

“Alo, slow down, speak clearly and precisely,” Tabitha said as she took her arms out from under Brendun’s, and reached slowly for the brand.

“Yes, we need to understand you, if we are going to get out of this together,” Brendun said. He then turned his head a little, keeping one eye on the small monsters in the shadows that he could see while wondering where the others Alo could see might be. With his head turned, he said out of the corner of his mouth, “Tabitha, where’s your crossbow? How many bolts did you bring?"

“Eight,” Tabitha answered, “And it’s about six feet away to my left. I could scramble over to it, but it might be broken. I didn’t have a lot of money, even after Alo paid me. It’s not the best of its type.”

“Well, I hope,” Brendun began to say, and then Alo, lowered her head so that her face was close to Brendon’s.

She once again proved that if she tried, she could speak as clearly as anyone.

Alo spoke each word slowly making sure to pause a moment between each, “I said, I have never done this before.”

Tabitha’s eyes grew large, and Brendun dropped his chin.

“You know,” Brendun said as he struggled to get to his feet, favoring his leg, and drawing his sword as he stood, “I was really hoping that wasn’t what I thought you said.”

Without a warning Brendun rushed, limping as he went, at the three creatures in the shadows that were behind and just to the right of Alo. Tabitha rolled away as he moved, tucking the brand in close to her, causing the cavern to grow dim.

Alo rose up, turned in place on four of her tentacles while another drew a long fat dagger from a belt around her body, and lowered her head.

Two of the small monsters moved left, away from Brendon, while the third moved toward him. The small creature was bringing back the strange, spiked weapon with both hands, but Brendun’s sword was straight out and ready, and in one clean thrust he ran the small thing trough.

The sound of small flat feet slapping on the wet floor came from several directions as Tabitha dropped the brand beside the crossbow, examined it quickly, and then went to work cocking it with a lever built into the side of the handle. She stood and drew a bolt from a pouch on her side and then felt a sting on her right leg. One of the creatures had struck her with something. The blow was not hard, but she knew it penetrated her skin.

Alo moved just a short distance backward, as the two monsters that ran around Brendun came toward her from the left, and another two came at her from the right. Her strange slip, slide, and waving movement seemed to confuse the monsters and not a single one of them managed to land a blow on her as they closed in around her.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 5

He pulled his sword out of the mysterious creature as it fell backward onto the floor. Brendun saw two situations unfolding badly.

Tabitha had managed to get to the crossbow, load it, and then get to her feet, but was now flanked by two of the monstrous little humanoids, while Alo had backed herself against the cavern wall and though she faced four opponents was managing to keep them back with fast movements of a long rapier and a heavy dagger. In another instant, Brendun knew one of them could be injured or worse, dead. These small creatures didn’t seem strong or agile, but what they lacked in abilities they made up for in numbers.

Of the two of them Brendun knew Tabitha well enough to hope that she might hold her own long enough for him to even the odds for Alo. But what was the best approach? He only hesitated a moment, and then moved. He came up behind one of the creatures facing Alo and hit the thing hard on the top of its head with the flat of his blade. The monster fell to the ground, the shell armor it wore making clinking noises that drew the attention of the other three.

But it was Alo’s reaction that got Brendun’s attention. The Octopus-girl seemed to jump, almost trying to climb her way up the wall behind her. She swung the sword wide to her right and held the dagger in close to her body as if to use it as a shield.

Brendun didn’t understand her reaction.

The monsters, stopped for a moment from closing in around her, turned to see what had happened.

Brendun drew his shoulders back and tried to stand as tall as he could. He lifted his heels to gain a few more inches. At five-foot seven inches, it wasn’t much, but he still towered over the three small creatures. One by one the three looked around. Taking clues from each other, they looked, first to the fallen one across the chamber, then to the one on the ground near them, and then in unison they all ran away.

As they ran Alo flowed down along the cavern wall until she was lying on the floor. Brendun didn’t know if she was injured or overwhelmed, and he didn’t take time to find out. Turning again, he looked to see if Tabitha was in trouble.

She wasn’t. He was not surprised. One of the monsters lay limp to one side, while Tabitha was straddling the other, her knees on the ground one on each side of the little creature while she beat against the thing’s armor with her fists.

Tabitha was a brawler of the first and most dangerous kind. Hers was the kind of attack that was best described as relentless, and deliberate. She wasn’t exceptionally strong, but she fought with determination. Her hands were small, but she was quick, and knew how to hit, and hit with all the strength she had.
The little monster below her tried to raise its arms to block the blows only to have its arms knocked aside and feel more blows rain down on its head faster than it could recover. In a moment it was over.

There were many things that needed to be done, now that the fight was over. Four monsters lay on the cavern floor, dead or dying, while three had run away and that didn’t sit well with Brendun. Whenever you let your enemy escape, you put yourself in danger from a counterattack. Reinforcements might be just around that rock, or maybe further away, but the potential for the ones that got away to return, with greater numbers, was always a possibility. He acted fast, doing the first and most important thing he could think.

“Why would you only bring eight bolts!” he shouted at Tabitha waving his arms to get her attention.

“Because,” Tabitha shouted back, “I wasn’t expecting to be going on an adventure I only needed one! To get your attention, but the shop wouldn’t sell me less than eight!”

“You should have at least bought a gross!” Brendon shouted walking toward Tabitha as she rose to her feet.

“I didn’t have money for a gross!” Tabitha’s voice grew louder as she took two steps toward Brendun.

He took one step. She took one step. Tabitha was just as tall as Brendun. They came nose to nose. Their faces were set like stone as both tried not to give an inch or back down in any way. They stared into each other’s eyes through the dim light of the brand that was still lying on the floor.

“Alo!” Tabitha suddenly exclaimed.

“Yes,” Brendun agreed and the two rushed together to where the octopus-girl lay on the cavern floor.

As they reached her, one of the small creatures, the one Brendun had hit on the head, made a gurgling sound.

“That one’s still alive,” Tabitha said as she reached into her pouch for her physicker’s kit only to remember she left it on the floor where she had treated Brendun’s leg.

“I’m on it,” Brendun said as he pulled his pack off his back and dug into it, pulling out several short lengths of light rope.

Tabitha touched Alo below her right eye, softly, and said her name quietly, “Alo, hun, are you alright?”

“Yesh,” Alo replied. “Are theyha ghone?”

Just then Brendun rolled the injured creature over causing its armor to clink against the stone floor.

Alo flinched. Her eyes rolled around, and she slinked back against the cavern wall.

“It’s just Brendun,” Tabitha said. “He is tying up the ones that aren’t dead. Alo, what is it? Why are you afraid.”

Alo rose up slightly, bringing her head up to the same height as Tabatha’s, who was on her knees. She spoke very slowly, “I know what those creatures are. They are the Fejevar. Crab eating toad-folk. They are not normally a threat to us, but in numbers they can be dangerous, and they, they…”

“I get it,” Tabitha said.

“Andhh theyhh,” she began to speak quicker, “wearah thhhe shellsss ov thhhe thhhingsss thhhheyhh eatah. Thhhe shellssss makeh ithhh shheem likeha thhhey arahe madhhe ov stonessss. Thhhe ssssoundss, thhhe sssoundsss…”

“Relax, shssh,” Tabitha soothed as she gently stroked Alo’s face.

Brendun tied the one’s hands behind its back and lifted the shell helmet from its head. It was a toad-man alright. He would have thought it a bullywug, or one of the other kinds of toad-folk from the swamps and marshes inland along the river. He didn’t know that there were saltwater types of these small, dangerous creatures.

Most of the toad-folk he had heard about were cowardly but could be dangerous in large numbers. They were known to eat anything they could catch, and would attack people travelling along the river alone, or even sometimes, if they were desperate, raid a small hamlet or farm carrying off whatever they could get their hands on. Rarely sticking to a fight to the end, he was lucky these types of toad-folk were just like the others.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 6
Brendun bent over and picked up the brand. The simple magical device would continue to shed a soft light for a good long time, now that it had been activated, and it was better than a torch in situations like this.

“Tabitha, stay sharp,” Brendun said over his shoulder, “I’m going to look around.” He kicked his pack so that it slid across the floor and ended up close to where Tabitha was kneeling next to Alo.

And then it occurred to him. It was a feeling he knew well, a feeling that something wasn’t adding up right. Something about Alo bothered him more than just a little bit. He turned back around and came close to them. Standing over them he said, “I think I need to ask a few questions first.”

“Ihh havehh questionsssss,” Alo said. “Isss thisah thhhe labyrinth?” She spoke in her hurried sloppy way until the last and slowed down to carefully pronounce the word labyrinth correctly.

“Okay,” Brendun said squatting down and holding the brand so that it illuminated all three of them at the same time. “That sounds fair. I’ll answer your questions, and you can answer mine. No, this isn’t the labyrinth proper, I thought it might be, but it is not. I suspect where we are now will lead us to it, eventually. I think I stumbled…”

“You mean we stumbled,” Tabitha said glaring at him.

“Well, I Stumbled,” he said. “You could have let go. I didn’t drag you here against your will. You followed because you weren’t thinking ahead, like always.”

“I was trying to save your ass,” she said and turned toward him.

“My ass never needed to be saved by you. Saved from you maybe.”

Tabitha’s mouth dropped open, and her thick brown hair fell to the side of her face as her head bobbed up and down as she seemed to grow angry with him again. “Oh, oh, really. That’s how you want to be,” she said.

Alo leaned close to the both of them and whispered slowly, “Maybe it would speed things up if the two of you just copulate now and get it out of the way.”

Brendun was stunned, and only managed to make peculiar noises, while Tabitha tuned to face Alo, her eyes growing large.

“What?” Tabitha finally managed to say.

“You told me,” Alo said, again taking her time so the words came out clear, “that you knew him because the two of you used to have a physical relationship. You said you would fight all of the time, about all kinds of things, and then have intercourse afterwards to make up. You called it something, I remember.”

“You told her we had make up sex? All of the time?” Brendun said with a long sigh.

“Well, we did,” Tabitha leaned back, folded her arms and closed her eyes.

Brendun pinched the bridge of his nose, took a breath, and then said, “No, look, no we aren’t going to copulate. Let’s try to stay focused, for once, alright. Alo, I think this is an old smuggler’s lair. It probably was built in the time of the sugar embargo, twenty, maybe thirty years ago. It has good access to a long stretch of isolated beach. The sea here is deep enough for a large ship to move close to shore, drop a few small boats and sail away without being noticed. I think the caves and tunnels here might lead to an entrance of the labyrinth. It wouldn’t surprise me. Now, here’s my question. What are you, exactly? Are you some woman under a curse, some transmogrification spell? You don’t behave the way I have learned your kind normally behave. You said you were from Mauli, one of the islands in the Nua’lonalani archipelago. I’ve heard of the place. I know that octo…I’m sorry, octopus-folk come from some of the islands. Those islands that no one dares investigate, but you are different, why?”

She leaned away, turned her large head to the side, and then with two of her tentacles she drew her hood back and away. Her large head was bluish green in the soft light of the brand, and on it Brendun could see a fine spiral tattoo.

“I am,” she said, “Mauli, Mauli A’Anawa. It means the ones who lived there first, on Mauli. I am,” she hesitated even longer than normal, “an octopus creature, as your kind is like to say. I am not like the ones you may have had the trouble of meeting in the past. I’ll tell you why, if you think we have the time.”

Brendun was curious. He rested on his backside and folded his legs in front of him. Tabitha did the same, taking the brand from his hand and holding it low, below Alo’s face.

next…Alo’s tale

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 7

“I was born on a red tide,” Alo began, speaking carefully, slowly. “Were it not for my heritage, I would have been sacrificed to the great sea god, Alucaarat. Instead, I was raised in isolation, kept from others of my kind except those who among my people are allowed to be in contact with those who are untouchable.

When I was nine years old, I was branded,” she said as she indicated the mark on her head with one tentacle.

“At the age of eleven,” Alo paused, her head fell a little, and before she could continue Tabitha reached out and touched her below the eye.

“You don’t have to explain it to him,” Tabitha said in soothing tones.

“No, it will help him understand. When I, when I was eleven my rostrum was removed in a ritual designed to mark me as a slave for the rest of my life. It is because of this that when I speak too quickly, I slur and misspeak some words. It has been nine years and still my muscles have not adapted to the pain and injury.”

“I was sent to live on the island of Ka’Nahalin. It is a place where outcasts and untouchables are allowed to live out their lives. It is a harsh place. You should know that my people are, how do you say, xenophobic. We do not want any others, of any kind, coming onto our islands, or telling us how to live our lives. Our rules, our way of life, our traditions, may seem harsh, but it is only because many other kinds simply do not understand where we have been, what we have suffered. Because of our ways, many are cast out, and many, those who cannot follow our laws, are sent to die on isolated islands at the southern end of the archipelago. Some of these manage to survive, even escape their isolation, while others band together to form clans of their own. Some of these isolated clans of my people are driven mad by the separation from the greater population, driven to great atrocities, even cannibalism. Some manage to find a way off their prison islands aboard the ships of pirates, and these, more cruel, more insane even than those who live their lives in isolation, are the ones you most likely encountered here in your own country. My people, strange as they are to you or others of your kind, do not leave our homes voluntarily.”

“Still, there are others, the ones most dangerous of all. These are the ones who have been cast out in great numbers in the past. Because of conflicts among the nobles of my people, whole families of hundreds of individuals have been cast out. These are cast out onto great rafts. Twin and sometimes triple hulled great ships called Lukaloke, with sometimes as many as five masts roaming the seas with the remains of these people. They are scavengers, pirates, and scoundrels, often trading upon the high seas with other pirate peoples.”

“Just over one year ago a Lukaloke made anchor off the coast of Ka’Nahalin. It is forbidden, even for the untouchable, to have contact with the outcast people of the sea, and we assumed it was going to be a raid. But instead, the outcast people came ashore in one small boat begging for help. They had been attacked by a great vessel of the gymnagaopthians, you call them sea-elves. The sea-elves were searching for the Cryssalium. The outcast people did not have it, nor know of its location, and the sea-elves were not pleased to hear this. They stole all the outcast people’s supplies, leaving them in a desperate situation. It was the season of the southwest rainstorms, and they could not hope to reach an island where they could resupply before many of them would die. The Lord Governor of Ka’Nahalin allowed the outcasts three days to gather supplies from the island but would offer no other help to them.”

“On the second day a fire was started in a warehouse on the docks of Ka’Nahalin. I was a working girl in the Othapa, a place where the men of the island could ease their loneliness. During the confusion of the fire, I escaped my cell and stowed away on a supply raft. The outcast peoples, naturally, were blamed for the fire, and fled in fear of retaliation by the island dwellers. They did not notice me until they had sailed away from the island with the few supplies they had collected.”

“Three days later a ship sailing out of Norral, north of Galdorland, hailed the outcast peoples. I was traded to humankind on that ship for weapons and supplies, mostly ropes and sailcloth. Tabitha was among the crew of those people, and she paid for my freedom with her share of the ships goods once the ship reached port here at Bayfield.”

“I began to investigate what could have made the sea-elves believe the outcast people were in possession of the Cryssalium. I learned about the reward offered by the Queen of Kijzta for its discovery and its return to her palace, but I also learned much, much more. When we have more time, I will tell you what I have learned about this artefact and why it cannot be found. Look, our assailants are waking up.”

End of Chapter 1

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Chapter 2

Part 8

“The layout here seems simple and obvious,” Brendun said as he led the way along a tunnel. The tunnel was man made, in that it was obviously not made by the toad-folk. The ceiling was high, at least two feet above their heads. The walls had been reinforced with cheap bricks and thick timbers spaced about twelve feet apart supporting crossbeams on the ceiling. Everything was wet. Water dripped from the beams and left small puddles along the uneven floor. The water had a dense, brackish smell and he could tell it came from the frequent high waves that crashed against the sea wall above. The passageway turned gently to the right and began to slope downward. After a short distance, the tunnel opened up into a large chamber.

“Well, that answers that question,” Tabitha said as she walked past Brendun into the chamber. The remains of several pieces of wooden furniture were scattered along the wall to her left, and against the far wall sat a heavy wooden chest, marked across its face with a swordfish painted on a representation of a sail. “Looks like I might have known these people. That,” she pointed, “is the mark of Captain Rahlo Agaspando. This was either one of her hideouts, or someone managed to steal that chest from her and hide it here, and I only know a few pirates dumb enough and tough enough to steal from Captain Rahlo. From the looks of this place,” Tabitha went on, taking the brand from Brendun’s hand and walking a few more steps out into the center of the chamber, “there was a pretty good-sized battle, but when it was over the winner, if there was one, didn’t try to break the seal on that chest. I imagine that, if there were bodies, maybe both sides killed each other off, the toad-folk must have carried them off a long time ago.”

“Iha stihhl don’thh uhndersstandhh awhy youhha lhet them gohh fahree,” Alo said moving from the rear to stand next to Brendun. She had found her other sword and was holding them both at the ready.

When she moved, it was without any sound at all. A tinkle from a buckle on one of her belts, or the slight sound of her leather pack stretching as it shifted on her back was the only thing that gave her movement away. Brendun had always been curious about the way the octopus-folk were, well, arranged. He had not seen many of the regular ocean living types in his life, just one or two and those all seemed built for sliding along the sea floor trailing their head bodies behind them. The octopus-folk were not built like those creatures at all. Anyone could tell the first time you encountered one of their kind. They had eight tentacles, and large solid dark eyes, with enlarged heads, but that was where the similarities ended. Octopus-folk’s legs, long as they were, ended in a body, a torso not completely unlike any other land walking folk. The torso was slim and short. When the Octopus-folk wore any sort of cloths at all, it was usually a long “kilt-like” garment which tended to obscure the region where their bodies and legs came together leading to the belief that their legs went all the way up to the bottoms of their heads, which was obviously not true at all. Where their heads rested on their torso there was a short, thin, neck. The head, larger than an average human’s head by easily twice the size, did tend to droop toward the back, but it still stood upright. All the Octopus-folk that Brendun had ever seen wore hooded cloaks, great billowing things of heavy, dense, dark colored fabrics. With the cowl pulled over their heads, and if moving slowly, keeping their tentacles close to each other, the octopus-folk could usually slip by, in a shadowy alley way or crowded street on a cloudy day, without being noticed for what they were.

He let Tabitha explore the room a bit, even though he had earlier reminded them to stay close, knowing that this was her field of expertise. Tabitha, Brendun knew, had a keen eye for minute details, and her knowledge of the pirates and other sea travelers in the region was unmatched, but as she moved closer to the chest, he began to get nervous.

“Tabitha, don’t do anything stupid. We have time to be careful,” Brendun said as he took his pack off his back, and then turned to face Alo. It took him a moment to decipher Alo’s question about the crab-eating toad-men, and Brendun said, “I let them go for a good reason. They understand we are dangerous, and if they had more numbers, they would have already been upon us while we searched the room for our stuff. They won’t risk attacking us outright, but I bet they are following us at a safe distance, hoping something else does us in, and they can pick up the scraps. We’ll keep moving. I think we might either find an entrance to the Labyrinth close by, or an exit back to the city. That trap door was a minor setback. I still intend to find what I am looking for.”

Alo slid closer to Brendun, and spoke slowly, for his benefit, and perhaps tyring to frighten him again, “I told you that it should not be found.”

“That’s interesting,” Brendun said, taking a knee, and reaching into his pack.

“Oh, great, here we go,” Tabitha said, turning slowly and with a flip of her hair she moved quickly back to stand beside Alo. “I told you to be careful of what you say around him.”

“What, whhahht didha I sssayh,” Alo said shrugging two of her tentacles.

Brendun stood up, holding a small leather case in one hand, “You said, ‘shouldn’t be found,’ not couldn’t be found. That means you know it can be found, even if you don’t know where it is. It means that you know things I need to know. Unfortunately, now isn’t the time to get to the bottom of that. This place isn’t safe, at least not safe enough to rest, so that means we see if that chest there is trapped, and if it is leave it alone, or, if it isn’t see if we can find out why it was left here and by who. We’ll keep this short, and then be on our way. I will feel a lot better once we are back in the city, or in the Labyrinth proper. Pirate hideouts give me the willies,” Brendun shivered at an old memory.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 9

Brendun approached the large sea chest cautiously.

“I’ve never heard of any of these chests ever being recovered, and always thought they were only a myth,” Tabitha said as she rushed toward the chest, passing Brendun on the left, holding the brand over her head as high as she could.

“Stop!” Brendun cried.

Tabitha froze in place, holding one foot off the floor. It was a credit to their time spent together that Brendun could count on her reaction time and understanding of his warnings.

But almost immediately Tabitha recovered from her reaction. “Oh, would you stop being so careful all the time. I know this pirate captain’s history. She sealed her chests with magic spells, and let unwary thieves believe the spells would last for years, but the Xason resonators that she used could only store spell strength for a few months, at best. She knew this and kept it a well-guarded secret. Most of her treasure chests were small, and those were hidden on islands to the north, near the coast of the Duchies of Olwand and Sviel. Chests of this size were always mentioned in stories about her, but no one ever said they found one. She disappeared nine years ago, in a storm off the Azar Peninsula. Other pirates who were active at the time were the Fuldir Brothers, Captain Parcell of Niranel, and The Red Dawn. I don’t think this chest is trapped, and it might be the only one of its kind, probably captured by the Red Dawn just before Captain Agaspando disappeared.”

As she filled them in on her encyclopedic knowledge of the pirate captain, Brendun moved a bit slower toward her, and when he was right beside her he shifted her still raised foot to the left and pushed gently down on her knee.
“Ha, haha,” Tabitha laughed nervously. “I didn’t realize my foot was still up. Silly me.”

“Good that it was,” Brendun said. “It wasn’t the chest I was worried about. A different sort of trap is set here. It’s simple but well hidden. The floor right where you were about to step isn’t made of flagstone like the rest of the floor here. It’s made of plaster, painted to look like the rest of the floor. It has lost some of the paint, due to the water here I’m sure, and I spotted it just in time. I can’t tell what it covers, but let’s not find out. I feel it was added later, by someone other than the people who built this hideout in the first place.”

“Fhhhejevarahh,” Alo hissed moving away from the two of them.

“Not likely,” Berndum said, kneeling close to the trapped floor. “Alo, hand me a few of those pieces of wood there by you.”

Alo sheathed both swords, and then collected a few of long narrow boards from a pile that looked like the remains of a table, as she did a small water lizard scurried out from under the debris.

“Olololol,” Alo made a strange sound, dropped the wood and backed away quickly.

Brendun stood up and stepped toward her as she was backing up. He caught her with both hands, and she turned and placed her large head against his shoulder.
“It’s alright,” Brendun said feeling the upper part of her mantle. It was warm, and dry, and not at all what he expected. “This really is your first time at this sort of thing, isn’t it?”

“No,” Alo said and turned her eyes up at Brendun. She slowed her voice and looked directly into his eyes, “I’ve done things like this before. It’s just caves, wet caves, and lizards or snakes that I get a little nervous around. There was a matron in the orphanage that used to tell us stories about a group of outcasts who lived in deep wet caves. They had resorted to barbaric behaviors, wild and violent kinds of our people, and they, they mated with the snake-women, producing monstrous offspring. They were stories to frighten children, like me, and I suppose it worked.”

“I need you to not be easily startled, Alo,” Brendun said. “If you want me to help you, if you are going to help me, I need you to be ready for anything.”

He had never held an Octopus-kin in his arms before. He had thought it would be uncomfortable, but for one reason he couldn’t pin down at the moment, it wasn’t. She looked different, and she spoke differently, at times, but she was just another intelligent species, like so many that lived in this city, not as different as some, and in some ways more the same than others.

He gathered the wood, with Alo’s help, and placed the pieces in a box frame pattern on the floor around the area that was not a real floor. When he was sure he had the trap identified, and warned Tabitha and Alo of the area, Brendun approached the seal on the lid of the large chest. He unrolled the kit of small tools to one side of the chest, and then, without touching the chest at all, he brought his eyes as close as he could to the elaborate seal where the lid met the box edge.

“Tabitha, bring the light closer,” he said in a whisper, and then turned to Alo and asked, “Do you have any torches?”

“I do,” Alo said slowly, “I have ten.”

“Light three torches and place them ten feet back from the front of the chest on the ground, avoid the trap, in a semicircle, and then lower yourself to the floor as low as you can, while still being in a position to get up quickly if you need to. Tabitha, I want you ten feet to the side, on one knee, with the crossbow on the floor at your side, loaded, and any other weapon you might have ready. You both understand?”

Alo took out the torches and lit them one by one. She then flattened her body to the floor near one of the torches, while Tabitha moved away and set up her small area as Brendun had said.

“Alo, can you get up quickly from that position?” Brendun asked.

Without answering, Alo rose quickly, almost faster than Brendun thought possible, and then lowered her body back down again. “When I know what I need to do,” Alo said, again speaking slowly, “I can place my arms where they need to be to assist me in this sort of maneuver.”

“I appreciate your making the effort to be clearer when you speak,” Brendun said as he turned back to the chest. “It is more helpful than you know.”

He was not aware, as the saying goes, but Tabitha knew Alo well, and the colors that passed briefly across Alo’s face were not missed by Tabitha. Not missed, and for the moment, not taken well. Tabitha had only ever seen Alo blush once before.

Using a pair of the small tools together, one in each hand, Brendun carefully removed the seal from the chest, and then, still on his knees, moved to the opposite side of the chest from Tabitha. Drawing his short sword, he placed the tip of the blade against the gap between the lid and the box itself, and said, “Alright, I’m going to lift the lid, on the count of three. If there is a magical trap still on this chest, let’s hope the crystals have drained over time, if not, be ready for anything.”

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 10

Bracing his elbow against his knee and using his forearm like a lever, in a crouching position, and with his left arm curved above his forehead for protection, Brendun shoved the lid of the large sea chest up and away.

*Sha-POOF*

There was a short but loud sound, like a bag of flour being dropped on the floor from a great height and the room filled with fine white smoke. The smoke wasn’t toxic, nor did it obscure their vision, much, but it created a moment of chaos that was all that was needed.

Through the smoke Brendun saw three figures, all human, one female and two males, dressed in the garb of sailors, and brandishing weapons. They were all about the same height and same build, all alike in features, too alike in features.
“It’s a summing spell!” Brendun shouted.

“How in the world?” Tabitha cried.

Brendun rolled away from the chest, and came to a kneeling position a few feet away, with his sword in his right hand. He hoped the summoned fighters had been delayed as much by the distracting smoke as he and his friends were and took a moment to draw a long dagger from his right hip, hanging low off his belt, with his left hand. He had dropped the tools he had been holding, not at all concerned with where they ended up on the floor. The dagger in his left hand had been a trusted weapon for many long years. It was old, older than his sword by five years at least. His father had given it to him when he first left home, at the age of fourteen. It wasn’t a sharp knife, but it had a strong blade and a fine point. If anything, it would make his defense stronger against at least two of the weapons he saw.

The first figure he could make out held a cutlass in his right hand and had a spiked buckler strapped to his left forearm. He was standing about twelve feet from Brendun, facing toward where Alo had been crouching low to the ground. The second figure, just a few feet behind the first figure and to Brendun’s right was the female figure, and she held a long pole with a small gaff on the end. The last figure stood further away from the first two, and again off to Brendun’s right, and this fellow was holding a pair of small axes, one in each hand. From what he could make out, the summoned fighters were not wearing any armor.
Somewhere inside the chest, Brendun knew, there would be one or more Xason resonators, or often also called a Jackson’s Kit. These small square devices were built from fine silver and specially tuned crystals, with spring driven gears and fine clockwork mechanisms that could cost a fortune to have made. These, part magical, part mechanical, devices could be charged with a wizard’s strength. It would be the power from these devices that summoned these warriors here, and as long as those devices had stored energy within them, these warriors would remain.

Magic, in the world as he understood it, was powerful, dangerous, complicated, and usually short lasting, because all magic spells drew their power from living things, and the drain of that life energy could not be sustained for long. A living, breathing wizard might be able to throw down some fire spells, or even lift a person off the ground for a short while, but eventually the power to maintain such magic exhausted the spell caster, and if not managed carefully these types of spells could even knock a wizard unconscious from the effort to manifest such power. The most wondrous of these spells of them all, in Brendun’s mind, where the spells that summoned creatures into existence out of nothing. These summoned beings had the appearance of being alive, even acted as if they were living beings, but it was impossible to draw the magic from them. Brendon had never been told why that was.

A wizard might create an image of something, or even manage to infuse the magic with talent and strength to create an illusion, something more convincing than a mere image, but a summoned thing was real. A summoned creature had flesh and blood. It could fight and was under the complete control of the wizard that summoned it, even to the point of fighting to its death without a second thought. The only drawback to these summoned creatures was that they required large amounts of power, strength from the wizard who summoned them, to keep them materialized in this reality.

He had never studied this magic. He didn’t know from what realm, world, or dimension these kinds of summoned warriors came from, but Brendon knew that as long as they were here and if the proper alignment of the Jackson’s kits was maintained, the spell that had been triggered would run its course, and in this case it was clear the spell trap was made to summon these warriors to kill anyone who was around the chest once the spell was activated. These summoned pirate warriors would fight until they were all dead, Brendon and his friends were dead, or the power in the resonators was exhausted. He could risk trying to find the devices, which were hidden in the construction of the chest somewhere, and if he could find them quickly enough, he knew how to safely disable them. But that would mean that Tabitha and Alo would be outnumbered. There was no way for him to know how skilled, strong, or smart these summoned warriors were. They could prove to be vastly beyond his or the other’s skills, but even if they were only average warriors at all, he knew that taking time to search for the resonators was not an option. He was going to have to fight, and Brendun only hoped he and his friends could survive long enough to run the chest out of strength or kill the pirates before they killed them.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 11

Things began to happen faster than Brendun could track. To his right Tabitha took the crossbow off the floor and in the same motion triggered it sending the bolt flying low at one of the summoned pirates. Brendun spun his head to the left to see if he could find Alo and as he did, the pirate in the middle saw him through the mist, turned on her heels and came at him.

He had no time! He shouted a cryptic warning, “The Floor!” And then he brought his other foot up under him until he was rocking on his heels crouching low. He thought for a moment of dropping the sword, afraid it would be of no use against the long-handled gaff, but then he had an idea.

Brendun moved at the pirate coming toward him and waited until she drew the gaff to one side in a telling motion that she was aiming for his legs, probably meaning to trip him in the first attack, putting him at a disadvantage right from the start. He leaned far over toward that side and struck the gaff with the sword shoving it back. Her body was twisted already, and the blow loosened her grip on her weapon. One of her hands came free of the gaff and the end hit the floor before she could bring it forward.

He was trying to decide if going left, to help Alo was more important than dealing with the pirate in front of him when out of the corner of his eye he saw the octopus-girl rise quickly off the ground with both of her swords ready. She lunged at the pirate near her, and Brendun had to shout again, “The Floor!”

This time the warning sank in and Alo, with an agility far beyond anything Brendun knew the girl was capable of, seemed to leap off the ground in a fluid extension of one, two, three, then four tentacles each one following one after the other, until she sprung completely over the section of the floor that he had marked out with pieces of wood.

Alo landed in a flawless reverse of the same motion which took her off the ground, to the right of her attacker and beside him. Her swords flashed in the torchlight and ribbons of red blood splashed away from the man’s arms. He tried to outmaneuver the octopus, by stepping quickly to his left, and that was his demise. Brendun only had a moment to watch as the man disappeared through the false floor. The pirate Brendun was tangling with had recovered her weapon and was taking a defensive stand close to him, waiting for him to make the next move.

The pirate’s scream, from the pit trap he had stepped in, came well after he had fallen, or it seemed that way to Brendun.

Once again, the woman in front of him took a widespread, two-handed hold on the handle of the gaff, this time bringing it over her head for a powerful downward smash, but Brendun took that opportunity to leap at her. Dropping the sword, relying on the dagger and his brawling skill to hopefully catch the pirate of balance and drive her to the ground, Brendun threw himself at his attacker.
He had no idea what situation Tabitha was in now, nor could he afford to take his eyes off this pirate as his full weight slammed into hers, to see what Alo was doing now. The woman did not drop the gaff but brought it down behind Brendun’s back in a vise like clamp at his shoulders. This kept his dagger arm from being able to extend out far enough and as he brought his arm in the dagger only struck the pirate’s belt and was stopped. Then he felt them both falling to the side as she shifted her hips.

He fell on top of her, the gaff pinning his shoulders to her waist. She wrapped her legs around his hips and quickly brought the gaff up to the back of his neck pulling in with such strength that Brendun blew out his last held breath before he had any chance to prepare.

Brendun felt his eyes close and saw bright lights behind his eyelids, blinking and growing in intensity. It was an experience he knew well. The pirate had not only managed to get his breath but had clamped down hard enough to pinch the blood flowing to his brain. It would not be long before he lost consciousness and with one last effort, he pointed the heavy dagger up and forced his arm to extend. The blade pierced her flesh and went in far enough to strike her lung, he knew, but it was not going to be enough?

Suddenly the woman below him went completely limp. The gaff swung away from his neck as her hands lost all strength. Brendun pitched his weight to the right, staying as far away from the opening in the floor as he could and lay on his back gasping for breath. When he opened his eyes he saw Alo with her body low over the pirate woman’s chest, both swords buried through the woman’s breast.
In another instant the summoned pirate’s dead body vanished.

“That was too damned close,” Brendun stammered. Looking up at Alo, he tried to get to his feet, and reaching out a hand as he stumbled, he said, “Tabitha, give me a hand, will you?”

There was no response.

He rolled, instead, onto his hands and knees, and turned his head in the direction where Tabatha was last kneeling on the floor. She was still on her knees. Her expression was blank, except for a slight smile. She was holding her right shoulder with her left hand. Her shirt was completely covered in blood. Tabitha’s eyes closed, and shell fell forward onto her face.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 12

“Tabitha!” Brendun shouted, as he watched her fall, and then he remembered, the third pirate was still somewhere around. He had foolishly forgotten and now the only thing he could do was shout another warning to Alo as he scrambled to get to his feet.

“Alo, the other pirate, do you see him?”

Alo spun on her tentacles, drawing her swords upward as she moved, and then slid sideways across Brendun’s field of view, moving quickly to his right and toward the open chest.

“There, ohhhffer that wwwayhhh,” Alo said, pointing to the left.

The third pirate was still holding the two, small hand axes but had moved in a semicircle out and away from Tabitha until he was standing nearer to the pile of rubble on the far side of the room. It was two against one now, and those were never good odds for a fighter with small weapons. He must have gotten the jump on Tabitha, and now Brendun wasn’t sure his friend was even still alive.

He fought the urge to run to Tabitha’s side, and take her up in his arms, tell her everything would be all right. They had had many close calls together, the two of them, many scrapes, bruises, and hurts of every kind were shared between the two of them, even caused by each other in fact, but knowing she was lying on the floor bleeding heavily was tearing Brendun’s heart into pieces.

He took one step to his right, and without looking away from the pirate, Brendun whispered to Alo, “There’s just no way that there’s enough strength in that chest to keep this pirate here for very long. All we should have to do is move in opposite directions, keep him confused and on the defense and eventually he should return to whatever world he was summoned from, but we need to get to Tabitha, quickly, so I don’t know what else to do but take this guy head on and see what he’s…”

Before Brendun could finish, Alo charged across the room as fast as six limbs could propel her forward. She caught the pirate by surprise and slashed with one rapier, while stabbing with the second. The summoned pirate was just too slow to put up any kind of defense and as quickly as Alo’s blows struck, he was disappearing in a vapor that vanished almost immediately.

With that, Brendun turned and threw himself on the ground sliding toward Tabitha until her head was in his hands. He gently lifted her by the sides of her head, feeling her thick, silky hair between his fingers. She was still warm, and for that he gave a soft whispered thank you to the gods.

“Tabitha, Tabitha, sweetheart, open your eyes, Tabitha, say something, Tabitha?” Brendun spoke to her in a tone that he had not forgotten, from a time when they were much closer than they were now.

She did not respond, and he leaned his ear down close to her lips. He could feel her breaths, but they were slow and shallow. He pulled his knees up under him and raised her slowly until he could see the wound on her shoulder. It was large, deep, and bleeding, but thankfully it was not spurting out blood into the air, which told him the blow had missed arteries, and again for that he was thankful. It didn’t look like the sort of wound that he felt should have taken Tabitha out of the fight, and as he tried to get one arm around her back, to support her slight upper body, he discovered the real reason she had fallen.

Tabitha’s back was wet with blood as well. The pirate somehow had gotten behind her before she had time to get on her feet and slashed a long wound across her back below her ribs. She had lost a lot of blood in a short amount of time, and Brendun wasn’t sure there was anything he could do to help her. The thought that she was going to die in his arms overwhelmed him and he felt the sting of hot tears fill his eyes.

“The kit!” Alo said as she came up behind Brendun. “Shhhe ahas thhhhe healinah kit, inah hhhherrrr pouch.”

“Yes, the healer’s kit, how did I forget?” Brendun said choking back his grief. He reached down to her waist, and gently felt around for the fold where her pouch was hidden.

“Keep trying mister, it’s a bit lower than that,” Tabatha spoke with heaves of her chest.

“Tabitha!” Brendun scolded, “Stop scaring me to death, I’m looking for your pouch, not a good time.”

“Good times don’t come cheap,” Tabitha coughed.

It was an inside joke, a thing from their past that once would have made them both laugh out loud. He remembered those times, and emotions ran over him threatening to shut down every thought he had.

“She’sssh ahhlivvhe,” Alo exclaimed, and dropped low to the ground beside Brendun. She wrapped the two of them together with three of her tentacles, raising the swords up and out of the way and pushed her mantle hard against them.

The warmth of Alo’s body gave Brendun renewed strength and purpose. His fingers found the opening of Tabitha’s pouch and as if he had never forgotten how to do this, as if it was only a day since they last saw each other, and not a year, he wiggled his hand gentle back and forth until the muscles of her pouch relaxed and his hand slid inside. He found the kit easily and pulled it free. With one hand still behind Tabitha’s back, he unrolled the leather on Tabitha’s stomach, quickly ran his hand over the contents and then recognized the bottles that held the sealer. The same liquid she had used earlier on his leg to close the wound from tumbling into Alo’s rapier.

He raised the first bottle slowly, giving it a gentle shake. It was half empty, and he dropped it, grabbing for the other.

“I don’t know if there is enough to do the job,” he said more to himself than to the others.

He looked first at Tabitha’s back, and then at her shoulder. The shoulder had stopped bleeding heavily, but was oozing still, while her back seemed to be the worst of the two. “Help me roll her over,” he said to Alo, and then put the bottle of sealer in his teeth.

Working together Alo and Brendun rolled Tabitha onto her front side. Alo moved quickly to reposition Tabitha’s arms as they worked.

Brendun took the bottle from his teeth, and said to Alo, “Hold her head to the side, and watch her mouth, in case she begins to vomit.” And then he leaned close to Tabitha’s ear, gently brushed her hair away and placed a kiss right where she liked it best, saying, “Tabitha, this might sting.”

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 13

With the fingers of one hand Brendun stretched out the fabric of Tabitha’s shirt and holding the last bottle of nacromoid oil he pulled the stopper from the bottle with his teeth and quickly poured all of it out along the gash on Tabitha’s back as carefully as he could to avoid any of the chemical being wasted on her cloths.

He braced his body against hers expecting the reaction to the stinging oil to cause her to spasm uncontrollably, but she did not move. Tabitha lay limp on the floor, with Alo cradling her head. Again, Brendun leaned his head far to the ground and placed his ear near his friend’s lips, listening, feeling for life.

“She still alive,” Brendun let out with a sigh as he straightened up, “But she won’t last very long, even with the oil sealing that wound. She’s lost a lot of blood, and I think she’s in shock. We’ve got to get her out of here, as fast as we can, and I don’t know how to do that.”

“Thhhherressssaa sssohhhmeonneha hhinnn thhheha ssssity wwwhhhoa cahhhannnn hhhelpaha, wwhhhhee…”

“Alo, Alo,” Brendun took the girl’s free tentacles in his hands and pulled her to him, making her release her hold on Tabitha’s head, “Listen to me. You must concentrate. Slow down, I don’t understand you when you get excited like this.”
The octopus-girl pressed her head against Brendun’s shoulder and began to cry.

“I am sorry,” she said between sobs placing out each word with a measured breath between them. “There is a man-being in the city that can help us. He has helped us before if we can reach him in time. I know the way. Can you carry Tabitha by yourself?”

“Yes, yes I can,” Brendun soothed the girl with his words. “But that will mean that you must lead the way. I’ll be right behind you, but I won’t be able to help you if we are caught off guard, until I can set her down safely. Do you understand what that means?”

Alo pulled out of Brendun’s grip and rose to her full height. She slid across the floor to where the brand was lying, took it from the ground in one tentacle, and with two others drew her swords, turned back to Brendun and said slowly, “Where should I go?”

“That’s the spirit, Alo,” Brendun stood and looked around the room. He first went to the torches, still burning and shedding some light all around, and with his foot he stomped out two of them, picking up the third he went to the chest, the sea chest that was the cause of the problem they now had to face.

He looked into the chest and was disappointed. It was mostly empty. He could even see the bottom of the chest through the few items lying in it. A couple of bags, small, but made of heavy material were near one corner of the box, and by the lumpy shape of them he could be certain they were filled with coins. Near them was a pile of gold and silver chains with various trinkets and amulets of precious stones, fancy carvings from whale teeth, and other moderately valuable trinkets, baubles, and other small things he could not recognize. Laying a little way from this small pile of treasure was a jeweled handled sabre, in a leather scabbard lying across what looked to be a small empty leather satchel. At least that was convenient, Brendun though. Everything except the sabre would fit easily in the satchel, and he quickly gathered the treasure and began shoving it into the bag. That was when he noticed a slim, leather-bound book in the satchel. He did not take the time to examine it, but just shoved it aside, and continued to fill the bag with everything that was there. He slung the satchel over one shoulder, stuffed the sabre into his belt, and then turned.

“We’ve found a decent treasure here, and I only hope it is enough to pay for the healing Tabitha needs and leave us enough left over to buy some better gear. When we get out of here, and we will in time, I can feel it, we will, we’ll rest up a few days and try again. Now let’s find the pirate’s regular escape from this place. It can’t be far. There, head down that passageway across the way. I’ll be right behind you. Keep the brand high and try not to be in a hurry. Slow and steady wins the race. I always say,” Brendun said, throwing the last torch down and stomping it out.

Alo led the way, while Brendun picked Tabitha up with both hands, cradling her close to his chest. He remembered how light she was, and he was thankful she wasn’t wearing a chain mail shirt or any sort of breast plate that he would have had to leave behind, but of course she hadn’t dressed for this sort of thing, and neither had he. Armor would have made the difference in Tabitha’s condition right now, but now was not the time to second guess her, or trouble himself with bad decisions he had already made.

They moved slowly through a twisting passageway of natural stone and earth shored up in several places with bricks and timbers. Someone had put some serious work into this little hideout, and it had not been too long ago. In this damp environment, the wood would have rotted away in ten years or more, unless it had neem maintained. Twice the passageway opened into larger rooms, empty, except for broken furniture, probably the work of the toad-folk.

It seemed like a long time had passed, too long Brendun worried, when quite unexpectedly Alo came to a stop.

Brendun’s breathing, by this time, had become labored, and he had missed what Alo had heard at first.

Speaking slowly, Alo said, “Do you hear that?”

Brendun closed his mouth, took a few deep breaths in and out through his nose, and listened. Ahead of them came the sound of tools striking the walls, and muffled chatter.

“Let’s hope they’re friendly,” Brendun said.

They moved forward, slower even than they had been moving before, and then a light appeared from around a corner, to their right.

“Alo,” Brendun whispered, “Can you peek around the corner and see what is there?”

Alo nodded her head and slid quietly ahead. Reaching behind her with one tentacle she placed the brand on the ground as she went.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 14

Brendun held his breath as he watched Alo move silently forward. He watched the ground, taking note of the almost mechanical precision with which Alo moved each of the five tentacles she had on the ground one after another. She came to a stop, and Brendun shifted his eyes upward, taking in the almost human-like form of the octopus-girls body, concealed mostly as it was by her long cloak.

It still struck him as odd how many people were still confused about exactly how the octopus-folk were, well, to put it bluntly, arranged. Many times a poster, wanted posters most often, would appear around the port city identifying octopus-folk who were wanted for terrible crimes, and most of the time the charges were trumped up or even completely false, because blaming the silent, mysterious, unfriendly octopus-folk was the easiest thing to do, but those posters almost always got them wrong, and mostly no one cared how wrong the pictures were. The octopus-folk, or as Brendun had just learned from Alo, Mauli, as she called herself, were not even close to being like the water living creatures that most other folk associated with them, that is, actual octopuses. Alo had a body, not a human body exactly, but it was similar, and much smaller. The upper part of this body, what Brendun called her mantle, was shaped like the upper torso of a human, with no arms. Alo’s head, which was disproportionate to her body, but not grossly so, sat on a thick, short neck and when covered by the hood of her clock, in the shadows, could be taken for a regular person’s head, but with perhaps a full head of thick hair. Alo, of course, had no hair, and Brendun could not recall ever having seen any sort of octopus-folk with hair at all, even though some wanted posters drew hair on wanted octopus-folk, to make them look even more frightening. Brendun had no idea how the inside of a Mauli was arranged. He could not figure out where their stomach might actually be, because where the waist of a regular human folk started, on her, on Alo, this was where her legs began. Alo’s legs, or tentacles, were both arms and legs, and they were thick, flexible, and strong. She could raise as many as five of her tentacles into the air, he had seen her do it, and balance on just three, but he had been able to tell from watching her that she preferred to have five tentacles on the ground, leaving three for her to use as arms. If not for the tentacles, and the slightly larger head, Alo would be a slim, normal looking human girl. Getting to know her over the past few hours had told Brendun that indifference to what she looked like at all, in many ways, Alo was just like any other, frightened, but determined, human girl.

He hadn’t realized he had been thinking about her in such a far-off way, and when she appeared next to him, he was startled.

Alo spoke slowly. “It is a group of Turturons” she said in a whisper. “It looks like a working party. They are dressed for hard work and have tools for working the hard rock walls ahead. There are nine of them.”

“Turturons,” Brendun exhaled, “we are, indeed, in luck. I know a few of them, and I know that as folk go, they are usually not dangerous. Quick, let’s let them know we are here and see if they can help us find our way out.”

Alo retrieved the brand from the floor, sheathed her swords and lowering her height just a bit, drifted to the side to let Brendun take the lead.

Brendun moved ahead feeling the strain of carrying Tabitha beginning to take a toll on him. His legs burned and his back ached, but he was still a long, long way from giving out or giving in.

When they rounded the corner of the wall Brendun looked across the chamber ahead taking a moment to try and make eye contact with as many of the working Turturons as he could. His eyes fell on a fellow with muddy-brown hair, braided in a thick twist that was over his left shoulder and hanging down in front of him to his belt. Brendun smiled and sighed in relief. The turturon’s eyes grew large, and his head tilted back in surprise.

“Brendun Mark, Kud zok man, what are you doing down here?” the turturon said.

Turturons were another strange folk of the city. They were about the same height as common dwarves, and built thick like dwarves as well, but they were a reptilian race. Their arms and legs were stout and shorter than they should be for their size, and their skin was a thick, tough hide of small scales. Most Turturons were green or brown, but some were mottled in different colors of blue, green, brown or black. They had a shell on their backs, covering them from just above the shoulders to about mid-thigh, narrow, and rounded, with a slight flip upward near the edges. The shell and reptilian skin gave them the appearance of turtles, and that is where the name of their kind came from. Unlike the Mauli, or at least from what Brendun could tell from meeting Alo, Turturons did not mind the name, and he did not know if it was a name they called themselves originally or if it came to them some other way, but Turturons were not like Mauli, not like octopus-folk.

They were gregarious, often to a fault, hardworking folk who were well known for their knowledge in building, mining, and tool making crafts. Most Turturons were well employed in the city, and often worked for some of the major labor guilds. They did not tend to like being in positions of responsibility or leadership, but preferred humble jobs that kept them busy all workday long, and in their private lives they were quiet, reserved, and respectable.

Perhaps the thing most striking about Turturons was that their faces, which were almost human like in every way, were very much alike from individual to individual, making it hard to tell one turturon from another, by just their face alone, but Turturons had thick, course hair, often worn in braids, or tied in bundles on the tops of their heads. Each turturon took unique pride in the length, cut, and knot style of the hair on their head, and it was this feature that Brendun recognized right away when the fellow spoke his name.

“Thomas,” Brendun said to the fellow, “I am so glad it’s you. I’ll be quick about it my friend, I’m lost, and in trouble. Do any of you happen to be carrying any Stanley Clark’s Snat Oil Liniment? My friend here is in bad shape.”

It was about then that the rest of the Turturons, who had been working at the walls in the large chamber with picks and spades, noticed that Alo and Brendun, carrying Tabitha, had stumbled into their midst.

“Ah, what now?”

“Great Kud, is she alive?”

“Oh, the poor dear.”

The voices of some of the Turturons overran each other while they closed in around Brendun and began reaching out to help him lower Tabitha gently to the floor.

As soon as Brendun mentioned the need for liniment, half the Turturons in the group began searching through backs, some on others backs, some on the floor.
Thomas pushed through those of his friends near Brendun, to stand close to Tabitha. “Aye, she doesn’t look good. I hope we can help you, Master Mark, but I don’t think anyone brought anything like Stanley Clark’s with us. We might have some lanolin balm, or some tincture of willow bark, for aches and pains, but I don’t think we have anything stronger than that.”

“Anything, at this point, will help, Thomas,” Brendun said.

“Why are you down here?” Thomas asked, putting emphasis on his question.
“I was, I mean, we were along the sea wall, on the coast road, and got in this trapped wall situation that dumped us down here. Next thing I knew we were facing some toad-folk, and after that we ran afoul of another trap. That one injured my friend, Tabitha. Tell me Thomas, is there a way out of here, close by.”
“Oh, for sure and for certain lad. Here,” Thomas stepped to the side, and moved one of his friends out of the way with a gentle hand, “You see that wall over there, and the passageway at the end. That leads right away to a wide stair, a wooden stair, which leads up to the old Fauldor’s Hall.”

“Thank you, Thomas, thank you so much. We need to be on our way,” Brendun began as he took a knee in preparation of lifting Tabitha again. “Wait, did you say Fauldor’s Hall? The old secret gambling hall that was run by Dorn Fauldor? The one beneath the Bench Board tavern, on Ferry Way?”

“Aye, aye, that is the place. This fellow, some fellow by the name of Captain Terring I think, bought the Hall from old Lady Peabody, Dorn’s sister, and hired my crew to open these chambers. I had no idea the place stretched all the way out to the coast road, and toad-folk and traps you say. That’s going to be on the extras list for sure and for certain.”

Brendun turned to Alo, “How far is your friend from the Bench Board?”

“Alo moved out from the shadows behind Brendun, and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know the city. Tabitha did. I relied on her to get around and stay out of trouble.”

When Alo exposed herself to the curious eyes of the Turturons, their reaction caught her off guard.

End of Chapter 2

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Chapter 3
Part 15

Brendun carefully lifted Tabitha from the floor, ready to get moving up and out of this place as soon as possible when he saw the curious turturons moving in on Alo.

To her credit, she did not immediately react in a hostile way, but Brendun could tell the close little folk where making Alo nervous.

“Owww,”

“Ahhh,”

“Vervee,”

They made strange sounds as they gathered around her, and finally one of them, one young female with thick reddish hair in a tight braid worn pulled over her shoulder and hanging down across her ample chest, was the first to say anything else.


“You are, Nadin, or Thavin, yes? From the noble’s barge? You are one of the outcasts?” she said. Her voice was deep, and her words carried a tone of compassion.


Another among the turturons, an older man, standing behind the girl, pointed his arm from where he stood, indicating Alo’s forehead, “She has the brand of the untouchable.”


There were other sounds of sympathy, surprise, and curiosity from the turturons. Finally, as Brendun noticed Alo’s quivering, and the slight lifting of her sword arms, he had to ask his friend to put a stop to the curious, but not threatening behavior, before Alo lost control.


“Thomas, please, ask your people to give her some space. She is young, and inexperienced.”


Alo shifted in a slow slide to the side, away from the gathering little people, and came close to Brendun.


“I can speak for myself,” she said, speaking slow, loud, and clear. She turned in place, a graceful pirouette, bowed to the Turturons, and then rising, she lowered her arms, and said, “I am Mauli A’Anawa. This is where I was born. I am neither noble born nor of the warrior class, not a Nadin or a Thavin. I am the slave of the girl, the one this man carries. My name is Alo Tanas Gynemid, and I am not your enemy.”

Her words had a pronounced effect on the Turturons, who all took turns bowing, placing one hand against their forehead, and saying softly, “We welcome a friend of our people.”

Brendun leaned toward Alo and whispered, “Well done,” and then turned away, toward Thomas and said, “Thank you, we’ll be on our way now.”

“When you get to the stairs,” Thomas said from behind Brendun, “be careful. We’ve set up some planks on the steps, on the right-hand side, to make it easier to get the wheelbarrows up and down here. Good luck Brendun Mark.”

Alo followed Brendun as he walked away from the turturons. It was only when they reached the bottom of the stairs going up, back into the city, back to where they might get the help they needed that Alo said, quite innocently to Brendun, “what do you think she meant by ‘the noble’s barge’?”

Brendun had to stop. He thought about the question for a moment. He tried to imagine what that simple comment could mean, but it couldn’t mean what he thought it meant. There had not been an octopus-folk barge in the harbor, here, in fifteen years, and when that happened it almost started a panic that nearly emptied a third of the city. It couldn’t be happening again. Twice he opened his mouth to say something to Alo, anything that might answer her question, but he couldn’t put the words together in his head. It would have to wait, “I don’t know,” he said at last, and keeping to the left of the stairs, Brendun began the long climb up to the cellar of the Bench Board tavern.

As they climbed Brendun decided it was time to find out what ally Alo had in the city.

“Once we reach the old hall below the tavern, we’ll make Tabitha as comfortable as we can, you tell me who you can trust in Greenwall, and how to get to them, and I’ll go fetch help. I’ll want you to stay in the hall, for now, until I know it’s safe to enter the tavern without drawing too much attention to you.”

“Iah don’thha knowww wahhere he isah,” alo said from behind him.

Brendun stopped on the stairs, turned his body around and said, “You said you knew the way. Tell me slowly what you mean. Do you know where your ally is or not?”

For the first time Brendun registered a slight bit of frustration from Alo. She let out a strong breath, which lifted the skin on her face toward her neck, and then said, very slowly, “I could take us there. I remember the landmarks, but I do not know what they are named. If I tried to describe them to you I could very easily get it wrong.”

She straightened up, moved another step closer to Brendun and putting her face near his she looked right into his eyes. Her mouth flap lifted at the corners in what could only be a smile, and in a very different sort of way, her voice going up an octave with a bit of laughter dancing around each word, she said, “You will just have to trust me, and I will lead us there.”

Alo, with her impressive agility, and mobility, moved up on to the planks on the right side of the stairs, all the while keeping her face toward Brendun, and then moving each arm quickly she went around him until she was above him, then turned her whole body around and started quickly up the stairs again.

He watched her progress, and after checking on Tabitha one more time, headed after Alo as quickly as he could, thinking to himself, “I haven’t died, yet, maybe I’ll survive a walk, at night, through Greenwall, with an octopus, seems like it’ll be a piece of cake.”

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 16

They reached the basement of the old Bench Board tavern. The basement had once been a gambling hall but it had fallen into disrepair after one of the previous owners of the tavern failed to license the place properly. In his youth Brendun had been a runner for the hall. He could still remember the smell of the Hall Boss, Gurd Oventroh, a cantankerous old half orc fellow from the eastern counties, somewhere beyond the White Mountain. Mister Oventroh would take anything of value from patrons wanting to gamble on games of cards, dice, or spinning wheels and it was Brendun’s job to run those items upstairs to the tavern owner to be exchanged for cash. You see, Mr. Oventroh didn’t like having to keep piles of junk in the Hall. He always told Brendun he liked to keep the place clean, orderly, and professionally presentable.

The old Hall was a mess.

Low sided wooden boxes were all over the place, filled with tools, buckets of hardware, nails, hinges, and plates of iron, as well as pallets of flat, large stones, used to shore up the walls below, no doubt whenever places where discovered that the natural stone was not solid enough. There were tarps lying along the walls with small open sacks sitting haphazardly near them or on them, personal belongings were scattered from the sacks here and there, while some of the tarps had small rolls of bread and plates with half eaten apples, and the rinds of ripe melons. The turturons had turned this place into a combination storage room living quarters for the project they had been hired to complete.

He went to one of the tarps, one that was cleaner than most of the others and laid Tabitha down. He found an empty sack nearby, rolled it up and placed it carefully under Tabitha’s head. Brendun put his hand on her check. It was cool, but not cold. Tabitha was still alive.

“Look,” he said to Alo who stayed close by him all the while, “I’m going to go up and see what the crowd is like in the tavern. If we’re lucky there will still be enough of a crowd that we can sneak out, but if we aren’t lucky, if it is well past sunrise, then it might be a bit harder to get out of here without drawing attention to ourselves. I sort of lost track of the time, a while ago, so I’m not holding out hope for us being on the lucky side of things yet again.”

“I’ll stay with Tabitha until you return,” Alo said slowly.

The stairs to the tavern were located at the corner of the large room and Brendun, relieved of the weight of carrying Tabitha, hurried up them taking several steps at a time.

The door at the top of the stairs, if he remembered and if the tavern owner hadn’t changed the floor around too much, should open into the kitchen, which was long and narrow. Both the stairs to the hall and the main tavern room itself were located at one narrow end of the kitchen, in opposite corners. He had no way of knowing how many of the kitchen help might be working, but if he were quick and quiet he could easily slip by and have a look out into the common room.

When he reached the door Brendun could hear the busywork of several people and he could smell the distinct aroma of yeast, and rising loaves of bread. This immediately put him in a foul mood.

It was early, probably at least an hour before sunrise, and that meant the tavern would most likely be close to empty. On the one hand, those that might be hanging around might be too drunk to notice anything, but on the other hand, anyone not too drunk to notice anything were sure to notice them, if they tried to pass. He had to think of a solution, but for now he pressed on with his plan to at least check the room out.

Brendun cracked the door to the kitchen and saw three portly men hard at work. The men were chatting to each other and they were not facing the door. Moving fast, Brendun slipped through the door leaving it open only just slightly and dashed across the short end of the kitchen until he was standing a step well into the tavern’s main room.

The room was packed, wall to wall, with people. It was a shock to him, not just because there were so many people here in the wee hours of the morning, but also because he could tell that something was not right.

All through the crowded room people were grouped close together, either sitting at tables, packed all around with folks leaning in intently and speaking softly, or against the walls in smaller groups, their heads held close together. No one seemed to notice his arrival from the kitchen, and instead of heading back immediately Brendun drifted to his right slowly trying to pick out conversations he could overhear, trying to find out what was going on. As he came up along the side of four middle aged women, each holding a wooden wine cup, he tried to look away from them, give them the idea he had not noticed them, hoping they would take no notice of him either. He fixed his gaze across the room, at no one in particular. The crowd in front of him parted, as people moved with deliberate hesitation from one spot of talk to another, and there, sitting in a booth, he saw them.

Four robed and hooded man like creatures, of the sort that he could not help but recognize as octopus-folk, were sitting, each apart from the one another, not engaging among themselves or with anyone else, just sitting, alone, but together, and this was not right.

It did explain, somewhat, the behavior of the crowd, but at the same time it did not. The octopus-folk at that table were not going out of their way to keep a low profile, hell, they were sitting in a tavern for Gluf’s sake, a well-lit, well established, popular tavern. Why and more importantly how, was all that Brendun could think

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 17

A group of seven or eight men and women, including a couple of dwarves, moved in front of and toward him. Brendun turned his eyes away and down and let the group pass by as an excuse to be moved further to the right and up against a heavy wooden column supporting the ceiling over him. He rolled around the column, casually, until he was right against the corner of a table in another booth. This table was crowded with at least a dozen folk. The people in the booth were quiet, intently listening to a young man Brendun recognized as Willian Paldor, an apprentice to Simon Drandury, the grocer who kept the market stalls at Garden Street and Fountain Row.

Brendun, appearing to be just another citizen of Greenwal, leaned onto the table to better hear what Willian was saying.

“And then when the harbor master was escorted to the citadel,” Willian was speaking quietly, but there was a note of excitement in every word he said, “captain Juel of the merchant district watch went out to that ship and spoke to them octopuses herself. She’s the sister of my master’s wife, don’t you know, and well, master Drandury sent me right away from the shop to tell his wife what he had heard from the first mate of the old Kerrytown ferry. My master’s wife, Elizabeth, she drags me by the ears back to the number nine pier and from there we watched all night for her sister to return. I saw it myself I tell you, I was right there when it happened. The captain returns on the pinnace with that octopus noblewoman, and her whole retinue. Two dozen of them, I counted. Half of them went right to the citadel with the captain, and the others moved out into the city. They were unarmed, and I know those four in the corner were among them. The captain was telling everyone to spread the word that no harm was to come to them, and that they were under the governor’s protection, carrying a message for the queen herself, they were, something awfully important, and if you ask me, not good news at all.”

A short, elderly man, who Brandun did not know, leaned across the table and asked Willian, “How many are out there on that ship, you reckon?”

A dark dressed woman at the far corner of the table leaned forward slowly, and her eyes were up, looking directly at Brendun. At first, he thought he knew her, by the shape of her chin and her thick eyebrows, but when she spoke her voice was not familiar. She looked at Brendun, never taking her eyes off him, but she spoke to the group at the table. She spoke in a husky voice for such a small woman and Brendun was sure, by the voice he knew he would have recognized if he had ever heard it before, that he did not know her.

“I was told by the pilot of the Sarah Jan, that there are over two hundred of their kind aboard that ship. They are wanderers among their own kind, outcast, merchants who trade for their survival with only other ships at sea. That they came into our city, our port, can only mean one thing. They are in need of something that they cannot get anywhere else. I believe they are lying about having a message for the queen and are only here long enough to get what they want. We all remember the last time one of their ships dropped anchor here.”

Her words were filled with malice, malice and fear.

Brendun was only twelve the last time an octopus-folk ship sailed into Greenwall. There were riots in the streets near the harbor then, as many of the octopus folk from the ship tried to enter the city illegally. He was too young to know the truth at the time, but he had been told by some of the adults he knew that the octopus-folk who were trying to get into the city were all criminals, and that the ship was a prison at sea. His mother had told him, before she died, that she thought she had heard the octopus-folk were escaping from a slave fleet, and that they only wanted to get to somewhere where they could live alone, among themselves, peacefully. Whatever the actual story was, was the story his mother had told him, but when many of the most dangerous of that kind of folk slipped into Greenwall’s shadowy and more lawless places just the same. He would always remember the wanted posters for “Greg-Half-Eye” and “Jack Nine arms” two of the most notorious murderers Greenwall had ever known. Both were convicted of their crimes, both were hanged by the neck until dead. Which, for their kind took a long, long time. Brendun avoided the Jury Quay for six weeks when he was fourteen, because he heard their bodies were still quivering in the gallows there that summer.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 18

Lost in his thoughts for a moment, Brendun had missed something else the woman in the corner was saying, but he already surmised that he had stayed in the room too long. He was beginning to get that familiar tingle in the neck, when the hair begins to get stiff and he was sure that if he did not get moving again someone here was going to recognize him.

There were just too many people in the tavern for the odds to be in his favor. He knew it. It was just another bit of good luck that the person who did recognize him was someone he knew he could trust. Kenneth Fraddle.

Kenneth was a few years older than Brendun. When Brendun first travelled to the capital to take a run at the dungeon tests, Kenneth was a regular guard in the Counting House of the Queen’s Sheriff at Millton, the city north of Bayfield, the very northern border of the kingdom itself, where the many wind driven mills were built to grind all the wheat brought into the city on the Queen’s ships and keep the waters of the bay beyond the dykes of the city.

Greenwall, was on the western coast of the Hakkru peninsula, on the Bayfield Sound. It was connected to, but south of the city of Bayfield and it was a city of rain and almost constant winds. The soil was dark in the fields east of the city, but there the farmers grew wine crops, fruits, and rare nuts. Wheat came from the south and west. South of Greenwall you crossed the Bay of Norr, while to the west of Greenwall and Bayfield, across the sea, you would be in the City States of Leran, a place ruled by tyrants and thieves.

Keep going south and east from the city of Norral, in the Bay of Norr, and eventually you would be in Acklaj, the capital city of the kingdom of Kijzta, and the palaces of the Queen of the House of Korr and her family. It was there that Brendyn had taken the dungeon test of the Queen. It was said the dungeon test were modeled after the first kind of these tests in a kingdom far to the east, farther than Brendun had ever dared travel, in a land of dry desert sands and fierce nomadic tribes. Greewall was about as far north and distant from the capital of Kijzta as a place could get, but even here the Queen of the House of Korr kept track of everything and everyone coming and going across the Sea of Ses Elran, whether they were her subjects or not, and the Queen had been keeping her eye on Kenny for a long time. That was how the queen came to know Brendun.

The dungeon tests had been set up long before Brendun was born. The architects, engineers, and wizards of the House of Korr had chosen the ruins of the old Lavinar Abbey as the place to construct the special chambers, traps, and battle rooms for the dungeon test in Acklaj. By the time Brendun was old enough to be allowed to take the tests, rumors were that the dungeon tests had passed four hundred ninety-seven and killed two hundred twelve. As a young man of seventeen, Brendun was stronger than most, agile, and quick minded. He entered the dungeon test with two friends. All three of them survived. His friends, Roger and Fran, were sent west to join the Queen’s Darrls in Fasminir, Brendun was selected to go to Bayfield and joined the Door Guards in the counting house of Millton. His first assignment was as Kenneth’s Dogsbody. Kenneth, on the day Brendun was assigned to the Counting House, had been promoted to Captain.

Three weeks, and several unbearably dull assignments later, Kenneth was dishonorably discharged from his post, opening an officer’s position in the Counting House for Brendun to take. You see, Kenneth was a hard man, a brave man, and a handsome man, but he was not a smart man. Kenneth liked women, wine, and betting on horse races. He had enough sense to choose fine wines, and usually picked the right horse in any race, but the women he chased, well, that is where Kenneth’s failings came to the surface and after a disastrous breakup with a tool master-maker’s wife, Kenneth was no longer a favorite of the Queen.

Brendun moved up to Second Lieutenant, when Gabrielle Dolon took the Captain’s office. And Kenneth? Well, Kenneth moved to Greenwall, after all, even if he wasn’t all that a Queen’s Man should be, he still had his good looks, his winnings from the ponies, and even now, more than ten years since that time, he still had his strength.

A large, clean, and well-manicured, hand appeared out of nowhere below Brendun’s chin, took his shirt in a tight grip and pulled Brendun away from the table. He didn’t dare reach for the knife tucked in his belt, for fear of drawing attention to the scene, but let himself be dragged quickly away from the table. The crowd was so thick that at first Brendun didn’t get a good look at the man who was rough handling him. He could only tell that the man was tall, broad shouldered, and had long dark brown hair under a wide, fancy, brown, felt, three-cornered hat.

He was suddenly spun to the left and forced against a section of the tavern wall between two windows, the only clear spot around, and that was when Kenneth’s smiling face, ice blue eyes, and large front teeth came into Brendun’s view.

“Kenny!” Brendun said with joy.

“Dun-man, my boy, what the hell are you doing here,” Kenneth’s words came fast, and he sounded troubled.

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 19

“What are you talking about? Kenny, please, I don’t have time for one of your little games. Let go of me,” Brendun whispered back.

“This is no game Mark! Whoever it is that put a price on your head is very good at keeping secrets. Secrets even my old friends in the militia don’t know anything about. Damn it, Dun-man what the hell has that enormous brain of yours gone and discovered now? Is it a working portal to the Neverfields of Loon, the secrets of Odalabar, the location of the Eight Crossed paths? Whatever it is and I swear I warned you about this, years ago, you have made enemies, serious enemies. Now are you coming with me or do I have to drag you out of here unconscious over my shoulder,” Kenny said.

Unconscious! The word hit Brendum like a cold slap in the face. Tabitha was dying, if not at death’s door already.

“Look, captain, please, I need help. I have two friends in the hall below the kitchen, do you know it?” Brendun asked as he relaxed his hands.

Kenny nodded.

“Alright then, two friends, one is in a real bad way,” Brendun went on, “she took a cut across her back and nearly bled to death, but I think I was able to save her in time. She is unconscious, barely hanging on as we speak. I need you to help me get them both out of here without drawing too much attention to us.”

Kenny dropped Brendun and turned to face the kitchen at the back of the tavern, “Right,” he said with the conviction of a well-trained soldier, “lead the way. I’ll be watching our back, but I’ll be close behind you, move.”

Brendun followed Kenny’s order as if not a single day had passed since the last time he had to shine his captain’s saddle. He moved quickly, but not so quickly that he seemed out of place in the busy tavern, and Kenny followed just one step behind. As they moved, Brendun’s focus was straight ahead, while Kenny swept the room from side to side looking for any sign of trouble. People in the tavern were deep in conversations, but here and there a face would move toward them. Eyes would glance their way, and then look away. Brendun could sense the room taking notice of their passing but took comfort in knowing that anyone seeing the old captain knew better than to get into his business.

They made it through the kitchen and then the door to the stairs without the cooks taking notice, and then Brendun quickened his pace, flying down the stairs, calling out behind him in the dim shadow, “There are boards here on the left, be careful, stay on the right going down.” The light of the brand could be seen glowing below and in moments the two men were in the old hall.

Alo was bent over Tabitha, and with her back to them and Brendun knew Kenny would not be able to tell what sort of being she was right away.

“Alo,” Brendun shouted, “I’ve brought help. Kenny, there, on the floor, my friend, please be careful. If you can carry her the other one and I will move a little way behind you. I don’t think anyone will give you any trouble and the two of us need to stay hidden from as many eyes as possible.”

Brendun was quick at planning, and he knew Kenny would trust his plan. What he wasn’t prepared for was Kenny’s reaction when Alo stood up and turned around.

“What the hell is she doing here,” the big man growled as he drew a long knife from a scabbard on his belt.

“I don’t have time to explain. Please Kenny, you have to trust me.”

“I trust you, Dun-man, with my life, but you better talk fast, or your friend,” Kenny said with a sneer, “may be in worse shape than the furry one soon enough.”

“Her name is Alo. She is a friend of Tabitha’s. I am doing her a favor. Is that good enough?”

“Tabitha,” the big man said in surprise. “The Tabitha,” he put away the knife and walked quickly to where Tabitha lie on the floor. With a swift clean motion he scooped the small girl off of the ground and turned, “this is the one and only Tabitha, and that eight-legged freak is her friend, and you are helping them.” Kenny shook his head vigorously from side to side. “I don’t even want to ask what sort of a mess you are in Dun-man, but if you are helping Tabitha and one of them folk from the barge, I know you are in too far to ever see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Thhea bahhrge, ahaghain whithhha bahhrge,” Alo began speaking and then quickly slowed her words when Brendun shot her an angry glance. “The barge,” Alo said slowly now. “What is the meaning of that?”


“Alright, I know we don’t have a lot of time,” Brendun said walking toward Alo, “but I’ll tell you what I saw above and what is going on. But I’ll tell you as we go. Just make sure you are well covered by your garments and keep your head low and your cowl pulled completely over your head. I don’t want anyone to see you.”

“Why are you worried?” Kenny asked. “The folk from the barge are being allowed to walk all over the city, free from harm, under the governor’s protection. She should be fine.”

Now things started to get confusing for Brendun. The appearance of the other octopus-folk meant there was a chance Alo was not telling the truth, that her whole story was a lie. He didn’t want to be true, but the fact that her kind were not known for their honesty whenever dealing with humans or others meant he was overwhelmed with an urgent sense of doubt.

Moving slowly, so as to not startle either of them, Brendun moved around and behind Alo, and then swiftly put his arm around her neck, squeezing tight just below her mouth flap, and with his free hand he took one of her tentacles in a soft grip.

“Alo, I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you are lying to me. Did you come here on a barge recently? I need the truth.”

She moved so fast that Brendun was almost unable to see how she moved at all. In an instant she was free from his grip and at least a full step away from him, but even though she had gained an advantage she did not draw weapons. Her Tentacles came up in a sign of surrender, and her voice came slow and pleading. “I know of no barge. I came here with her. I am telling you the truth. I am not like my kind. I know you have reasons not to trust me. I don’t ask for your trust. I ask for you to trust her. You loved her once. She loves you still. I need the both of you.”

“Well, I’ll be go to hell in a painted coach,” Kenny said. “I’ve seen enough to regret my choices already, but damn if that ain’t the stuff. This Tabitha, I really am sorry I never got to know her. She seems to have the power to disarm the smartest and craftiest of people. She must be hell in the sack.”

At the same time, and with the same sound of lost opportunities, Alo and Brendun both said, “She is.”

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 20

“Wait, what?” they both said after an awkward pause.

“You two should take a moment, later, and compare notes,” Kenny said, “but for right now, let’s clear up this whole barge situation. You,” he added turning his eyes toward Alo, “you did not come here with the barge, yes? Then you might want to know that a noble-woman, a walking octopus of your kind, sailed into the harbor. She claims to have information important for the safety of the nation, so I hear. The way I see it, you should be fine just walking out of here. You might be noticed, but right now, the people in this city are too worked up over that barge to worry about a little thing like you.”

“Kenny’s right,” Brendun said, and lifted his hands, palms together to his forehead, “I’m sorry for doubting you, Alo. Forgive me.”

“No, no no, thiisssthcan’tbehappening. Notth nowwwa,” Alo became visibly shaken. She closed the distance to Brendun and put a tentacle on his shoulder, took a breath, and then tried to calm down. “I am sorry as well. But, I cannot go up there if there are others of my kind who might see me. I still have the brand. They will know I am not with them and will wonder why I am showing myself publicly in a human-kind city. No, no, there must be another way. Brendun, I must find the Cryssalium, or stop anyone else from finding it. If there is a noble, an outcast prince or princess, here it can only be because they have finally learned what I learned a few months ago, and I was afraid that others would. When we have more time, and we are safe, I will explain. I promise, but for the moment, please help me get out of here and get Tabitha the help she needs.”

Kenny pushed Tabitha between Alo and Brendun, forcing himself into their space, and scowled, “Is there something wrong with your ability to talk?” He asked Alo, and then turned to Brendun. “This is what this is all about then. You, Brendun, Dun-man, you have taken a job to recover a thing legend says holds more power than the Nine-Jeweled Crown of Kalodar. Are you finally, truly, out of your mind? First, I think we all hope it doesn’t really exist. Second, if it does, why would it be in the labyrinth, and third, are you finally, truly out of your mind?”

“I cannot speak well at a normal speed,” Alo began to say slowly, but Brendun cut her off.

“We aren’t wasting anymore damn time!” Brendun barked.

Kenny stepped back, and Alo dropped her tentacle off Brendun’s shoulder.

Brendun went on, quickly, “Look, here’s the plan. Kenny, you go ahead of us. Make sure you are seen by those four other’s like Alo, and by the way, try not to use the “O” word around her. I’ll explain later. We will follow when I know it is the right time and trust me I will know. Alo, you pull your hood around as close as you can and keep your head down. I’ll be in front of you so keep a hold of my belt and stay as close as possible. Once you reach the door, Captain, go left toward the pier, get away from any street lamps, and wait for us. Alo, if we are followed, I’ll send you ahead and do what I can to interfere with anyone who intends to give us trouble. Captain, once we, or Alo, reach you, follow her. She knows of a safe place, and a safe contact in the city. She can lead the way but is not sure she can describe how to get there, so stay with her at all times. If I don’t find you by tomorrow, assume I failed, don’t come looking for me. Get Tabitha to help as quickly as you can. Do you both understand?”

“How do I know I can trust him?” Alo said to Brendun slowly.

It was Kenny who answered, “Oh, lass, lady eight, Alo, he called you, look, Brendun Mark has only three maybe four real friends. I’m not sure I’m one of them, but if this is his plan to get this Tabitha girl to someone who can save her, he is going to do everything he can to make that plan work, and if he trusts me to take her, he is probably more desperate than he is letting on, but given that, I think we need to get going. I give you my word that if I never see Brendun Mark again, I will follow you, for her sake. For his sake in knowing what she really means to him.”

Kenny turned away and headed for the stairs, and Brendun followed, pulling at Alo.

“Conceal yourself,” Bendun said over his shoulder. “When we get to the kitchen, let him get almost all the way across the tavern and then follow me, move as I do, and don’t get separated. If I think we have a problem, I’ll let you know and draw attention to myself so you can slip out. Go left out the door. The Fisherman’s pier is that way. The street here should be well lit by the oil lamps, but the pier is usually dark, so the men who work the boats can sleep on the pier if they want. Just find him. Get her to help.”


“You will be with me,” Alo said. “I need you.”

“I hope you are right, but please, Alo, if I tell you to go, you must go. I can, usually, take care of myself.”

“You?” Alo said clearly, with a laugh. “You can’t even avoid an ambush from a frightened A’Anawa and a hot headed Kanulaoa.”

“It was a lame ambush.”

“She could have killed you.”

“If she wanted me dead,” Brendun began, then watching as Kenny made his way across the tavern he saw what he expected to see and changed the subject, “look, there he goes, and he is getting a lot of attention, just like I thought. Quick now, follow me.”

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 21

Kenny pushed his way across the tavern with no regard for the spectacle he was making. Practically every eye was on him as he made his way right in front of the table with the four others of Alo’s kind. With what Brendun could tell was a deliberate bit of theatrics, Kenny even stopped, in front of that table, shifted Tabitha in his hold, grunted, and then went on. It worked.

The four octopus-folk followed the big man with their eyes, turning in their seats to watch as he approached the door. The crowd parted giving Kenny the space he needed as he came close to the door, and a short pudgy man moved to pull the big door open for Kenny.

This was Brendun’s moment. He rushed into the tavern, staying far to the right, near the wall, with Alo holding him by the belt and moving perfectly in step behind him. Kenny cleared the tavern door and the pudgy man stood for a moment holding it open, looking after Kenny and shaking his head in confusion. Brendun and Alo reached the open door before anyone noticed them at all, and it was a surprise to the pudgy man when they slipped through the door just as he was about to close it.

Brendun paused, slipping back against the tavern wall, out of the light of a nearby street lamp high on a wooden pole to his left. He pulled Alo next to him, turned to look back at the tavern door, then turned again to see Kenny striding purposefully toward the docks. Something didn’t feel right. Brendun Turned back to the tavern door, and then pushed Alo toward the street, “Go,” he said. “Catch up to Kenny, don’t hesitate. Take Tabitha to safety. I have a bad feeling.”

At first, Alo resisted, but then Brendun scowled, “Go, now.”

She slipped away and hurried to catch up to Kenny.

He waited a moment, and then another, watching the tavern door. Time seemed to slow for Brendun. He began to feel the ache in his leg from the injury of the rapier. His back grew stiff and sore from the long carry of the wounded Tabitha. The aches and pains cried out for his attention, and he still managed to push them aside as he kept his eyes on the door, waiting, and watching. As time went on and nothing out of the ordinary happened, Brendun began to feel as if he had made a mistake. Still, Brendun could not shake a feeling that something had slipped by him, or someone.

In the past few minutes he had seen and heard so many things that, at first, he had dismissed as irrelevant to his search. The barge, the warning from Kenny, the strange young woman at the table, how was it connected to the Cryssalium? How was it connected to him? He let out a long breath, and finally decided he had waited long enough. Brendun turned and ran for the docks.

He reached Kenny and Alo before the two of them had had time to begin worrying that he had gotten separated.

“What now?” Kenny asked.

“We follow, Alo,” Brendun said, and leaned close to Kenny to check on Tabitha. “She is getting hot, now. I don’t like this. I mean, it might be a good sign, but I don’t know. I’m not a physicker.”

“It’s not,” Kenny said. “Let’s get moving. Alo, where is the place you are taking us? Is it here in Greenwall, or more toward the center of the city, in Midtown, Millton, or further north? We need a Plan. Bayfield is huge. I know the best routes through the city, but I need to know what part of the city we need to get to.”

Alo looked around, “Ah, ah, allhhhriggg thh dohhk isssah hhea ahhn thhh.”

“Damn it girl!” Kenny growled. “Speak right. What is the problem?”

Alo shuddered and seemed to shrink away from Kenny. Brendun moved between them, keeping his back to the big man. “It’s alright, Alo. I know you must be scared. I am to, so slow down, you know, like you know how. Where are we going?”

She rose up, turned and looked northeast, “The way is toward the sail maker’s shop, that way,” she pointed with a tentacle, “then left, toward a green, with a gazebo, a large gazebo, and then past a lane with fountains, at the one with the robed woman, right, and into a narrow way with tall red brick buildings. He has a shop there. He teaches magic, I think. I never spoke to him. Only Tabitha went inside. She made me wait in the shadows between his shop and, and, a glass factory, I think,” Alo said as slowly as she could, pausing to make each thought clear.

“Marten Horne!” Both men said at the same time.

“Yes, that would seem about right,” Brendun said, starting off in that direction, staying in the deeper shadows of the street that lead away from the docks toward midtown. “It must be Marten, the dwarf apothecary. His place is next to Gandowils Glass, convenient for him, he always boasted about the rent and the access to the bottles. Let’s hurry. I know him. He might not like to see me, but I think we will be alright.”

The three of them made their way through the taverns, boarding houses, merchant stalls, and fish monger’s shacks of Greenwall, toward the large center street of the lower parts of the city. Here it was called Cooper’s way, while to the north it became Ambassador Row, or Fountain Way, depending on who you talked to. The street was lined, down its center, with decorative fountains, statues, and small parks. At the south end of the street, where Greenwall officially ended and the midtown of Bayfield began there was a large city park, Wrier’s Green, they called it, after Edmund Wrier, the great poet. There was a large gazebo there, just as Alo remembered. From the green, it was easy to get to Ambassador Row, then to the statue of Gewynn Trintoll, the woman who formed the first city council of Bayfield, with the governor’s permission of course. At her statue the east road, Crafter’s Street, and the west road, High Street, came together and formed a large intersection with Ambassador Row. It wasn’t that far, but it wasn’t as close as Brendun was hoping it would be. It would take almost an hour. Even at this time of the morning, before the sun was up and the streets began to fill with people. He only hoped Tabitha would make it just a little longer.

End of Chapter

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Chapter 4
Part 22

They reached the physicians workshop before the sun was over the eastern mountains.

Now, there was nothing more he could do but wait.

Brendun did not have a close relationship with Marten Horne, the dwarven apothecary. He had had dealings with the dwarf before, a few times at most, but, given the dwarf’s reputation and thriving business, it was no surprise to Brendun that Marten did not recognize him. Luckily, the dwarf knew both Tabitha and Kenny well.

He took only the time they could spare explaining the situation that led to Tabitha’s injuries, and when Brendun thought he would be challenged getting the dwarf to accept Alo among them, he was relieved to learn that Marten already knew about the Mauli girl. Marten was not a fellow who was ready to consider, without much evidence, one of the octopus-kin in any business transaction, but he was ready to let his reluctance take a side seat, as they say, until he knew more. Kenny was a great help, convincing Marten to trust them, all, and for that Brendun was in the big man’s debt once again.

So Brendun, Kenny, and Alo were shoved out of the operating room once Tabitha was on the table, and while the physicker did his work, they were left alone to wander among the rooms of Marten’s shop and home.

It was a three story, red brick building, with a high, slate roof. The first and second floors served as both his daily working spaces, small laboratories, bottle sorting rooms, and research libraries, as well as the front of the business itself, with a counter and long plaques on the walls listing all the remedies, liniments, tinctures, and services Marten would be willing to provide the customer seeking his expertise. The third floor was posh, by most standards, and showed that Marten did well, in his transactions. On the third floor there were four small, but well appointed, private bedrooms, a kitchen, pantry, and grand sitting room, along with two separate spaces for taking care of more private, often urgent body needs.

Brendun and Kenny kept to the first floor, and were not bothered by Alo’s request to seek some privacy. While she was away, Kenny took the opportunity to question Brendun about the girl, and he dug deeply into Brendun’s answers always being quick to remind Brendun that octopus-kin, all their kind, could never be trusted, ever. Brendun found it difficult to convince Kenny that, even if that were true, Alo had proven her loyalty to Tabitha, if not to him, more than enough times to earn his trust.

The two men had made their way through the first floor of the shop, with Kenny doing a lot of the asking, and Brendun doing what he could to tell Kenny just enough to keep him from becoming suspicious of things Brendun didn’t want him to know. They found themselves in a small library, with a large desk and padded chair. Books were stacked on the desk, and filled the book cases along two of the walls, while a third wall had a small fireplace, which was now unlit, and above the mantle a large, elegant, framed map of the Bayfield Sound.

Brendun studied the map, taking in the islands off the coast, the closer of these islands were home to many hundreds of old fishing families, and were reached by the ferries that worked from the docks at Greenwall, and the modest, but accurate rendition of the streets of Bayfield city itself; the northern, smaller, and much newer part of the city, the part called Bayfield proper, the older Midtown part, where most of the merchants and travelers stayed, it was a place of comings and goings that made it the busiest part of the city, the north eastern inland farms of Millton, and finally the southern part of the city, the part most people called Greenwall, where the ground was flat and the beaches filed with tide pools, marshes, and estuaries scattered with hovels and homes of the poorer folk. There was an old story that said the lands beyond the old sea wall were once much higher. Now covered often with the thick kelp of the deep sea of Bayfield Sound that washes up in storms and with the higher tides of the Threen days that easily sweep over the old stone wall. The green wall that gave the part of the city that name, used to be further from the sea, they also said, but time and tides have changed all that. The stories said that there was an ancient citadel here, southeast of the wall, a vast, pre modern town, with temples, and colossal stadiums where brutal and deadly games of death were once held. Below this mythical, ancient city, the stories went on to say, was where the Labyrinth was hidden, but every major city in Kijzta could make that claim. The Labyrinth was everywhere and nowhere, a place of unimaginable treasure, mysterious monsters, and deadly traps, and most of all, dozens, if not hundreds, of Gates.

Brendun could touch the map, it wasn’t set so high on the wall above the mantel that it was out of reach, and he traced the line of the sea wall from the docks near Midtown, past the popular beaches toward the southern city limits, and paused his finger at the place where he thought they had found the secret entrance to the old pirate or smuggler’s lair.

“You’re just not going to tell me everything, are you, Dun-man?” Kenny asked.

Brendun kept his focus on the map in front of him, looking, looking for any clue the map maker might have known, and possibly tried to hide. It was something Brendun had gotten used to doing. The maps, all the maps he had ever seen in this part of the world, were made by mapmakers, cartographers, who must have studied from the same masters. They all were clever, or often thought they were, and making maps that seem innocuous, but held hidden details, was a common pastime among them.

“Brendun, Brendun Mark, don’t be like you are,” Kenny said. “I’m your friend, or I was, last time I checked. If you are in over your head, I can help.”

Kenny’s tone was even, and he spoke with unmasked sincerity.

Brendun knew the big man was not letting this go. “I took a job, captain,” he said, “and it is not one I want to bring friends into without thought. It isn’t the money, because the money would be, will be, good, good enough for plenty of friends, but it is the danger. I know you can handle danger, but this one, this one has danger in it that even I’m not sure I was right to take."

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 23

“Fair,” Kenny said. “But, at least take into consideration what I’ve told you. There are rumors you are being hunted. Are you? I won’t ask you to tell me why, if you are, we’ve both been there before, but if these rumors are true, it is the sort of hunting that is often fatal, not just to take you out of the action for a while, or lock you up until a husband has cooled his heals. These rumors, the ones I’ve told you about already, they aren’t the only ones. I started hearing things a week ago that I dismissed, at first. Dun-man the dogsbody surely isn’t stupid enough to risk failing the queen herself. People just don’t do that, and live to talk about it. And the rumors say you are looking for something, that if found, would make the queen more powerful than she already is, maybe more powerful than the kings and queens of the Bright Islands. So, don’t tell me what you’ve gotten yourself into. I don’t mind. No, really, I don’t. Just try and lose me. Dun-man, Brendun my friend, I’m on you like stink on a Dreer. Till it’s over now, you understand, till it’s over.”

“It’s got to be close to where we were,” Brendun muttered aloud.

“Did you listen to what I said, Mark.”

When Kenny stopped using his favorite nicknames for him, and addressed him by his last name, Brendun knew he had to answer the man.

“Yes, I listened, Kenny. I listened to everything you said. I could lose you, you know I can, but I don’t need that trouble any more than what I’ve swallowed with the Mauli and my ex fiancée,” Brendun said, still looking at the map and slowly moving his finger down the image of the sea wall. “I am looking for an artifact for the Queen. I don’t intend to fail. I did not know I was being hunted, and I hope that that particular rumor is out of proportion; given how I ran into Tabitha tonight and she said she was looking for me to stop me from searching. Tabitha hunting me does not give me too much pause.”

Kenny coughed a fake cough, punctuating it with a particularly colorful word known to offend church going folk.

“Okay,” Brendun said with a chuckle, “point well taken. If she wanted me dead, she would have killed me easily. So, okay, yes, maybe a little pause, but everything worked out alright. The girl, the Mauli girl, she is the one who hired Tabitha so I sort of see why the rumors got spun out of control. An octopus-kin hiring a known ruffian, and often suspected assassin, to hunt me, would have caused a lot of people to start whispering my name.”

“Brendun,” Kenny said, “If I had heard a rumor that Tabitha was hunting you, I would have put down a bet she would find you before sundown and leave you in the Teldageri Fountain with your pants tied around your head. I didn’t hear Tabitha was hunting you. I heard the Green Tilted Hand was hunting you, and the Order of the Rampant Griffin, those kooky wizards out in Sarall, and the Winterrest Guild, just to name a few. Every organized crime outfit, every secret society, every bounty hunter with enough balls to think they can take you down within five hundred miles is said to be looking for you, and there is no price on your head. No, there aren’t any, ‘this much dead or alive posters to be found’. These people want you dead.” Kenny slammed his fist straight down on the top of the desk beside Brendun, and said, “Damn it Brendun, this isn’t funny. You know I’d put my life in front of you in a heartbeat, not a second thought, Dun-man, and I will do it. Are you really going to let me do it not knowing what you got yourself into?”

Brendun felt a chill run up his spine. He didn’t have the faintest idea what Kenny could possibly be talking about. It didn’t make any sense. Was he just trying to scare him? No, Brendun knew the big man wasn’t that sort of man. He wouldn’t lie, casually, just to get information out of Brandun. This was as serious as Kenny ever got, and at the same time that Brendun was struggling with these thoughts his finger felt a dimple on the sea wall where there shouldn’t be a dimple at all.

Brendun froze.

“Brendun, I’m sorry,” Kenny said. “Brendun, my friend, Dun-man, my dogsbody, my hero, I didn’t want to frighten you, but I’m frightened for you, for me, for both of us and anyone else who gets involved with you now. I don’t know if you know how much this frightens me. I’ve faced a lot of things that wanted to hurt me, wanted to kill me in fact, but I got a bad feeling that these people don’t just want to kill you, they are going to stop at nothing until you are dead, and that means they will kill anyone who gets in the way. Why? Just tell me why?”

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 24

“Kenny,” Brendun said as he kept his eyes glued to the spot on the map under his finger, “I promise I will tell you everything, but right now I need your help. Look in the corner of the map and tell me if the map notes mention anything about a labyrinth?”

Without a pause Kenny moved to Brendun’s left side, and leaned in close to the large map on the wall. “It says here,” Kenny said, “below the scale and mapmaker’s mark, known entrances to the labyrinth, but there is no symbol or mark.”

Brendun switched his right hand for his left, freeing it and the reached over to the map notes in the lower left corner of the map with his left hand. “Where, exactly?” he asked.

“Here,” Kenny took Brendun’s finger and placed it on the words.

Brendun slid his finger left and then right along the ink and then let out a breath saying, “I’ll be go to heck. It is right there.”

It was an indentation in the surface of the map, small, and not made by accident. The shape was vaguely diamond shaped, with the top point of the diamond shorter. If it had been drawn on the map, instead of imprinted mechanically, it would be one part of the mapmakers personal mark, which was shown next to the name, Loren Wou, a name Brendun did not know. The mapmaker’s mark was the same diamond encircled by the compass rose of the Cartographer’s Guild, famous for having an elaborate arrow pointing a bit to the right of north but with no cardinal marks and the initials LW, written to the right of the mark.

Obviously the mapmaker knew there was an entrance to the Labyrinth along the old sea wall, and hid the information in the form of an impression that could not be seen with the naked eye but only felt. The location of the entrance, on the map, was in the same general vicinity as the trapped wall that sent them; Brendun, Alo , and Tabitha, into the more conventional hideout below. He had to get back to that wall as soon as possible.

“Kenny,” Brendun said still studying the map, “You say you’ve heard of the Cryssalium?”

“Yes, why?”

“Good,” Brendun said. “That will make this a bit easier, for me. I’m looking for a Cryssalium, for the Queen. There is a reason, I don’t know the reason, to believe one of them can be found in the Labyrinth below the old citadel. Since few people have experience with the Labyrinth, and I’m one of them, the job was offered to me. If I find it, and return it to the Queen, I will be paid five thousand dollars. I’ll pay you five hundred to help me find it.”

“You don’t know what a Cryssalium is, do you?”

Brendun looked to his side, at Kenny and realized that the question had come from someone right behind him.

Brendun turned, quickly taking his hands off the map. Marten, the dwarven apothecary, was standing right there, between Brendun and Kenny, and the large desk just a foot away. Brendun had no idea how the short fellow had managed to sneak up on him so quietly.

The dwarf was staring at them, and had his hands clasped behind his back, looking up at the two of them. His bald head reflected light from the lamps on the walls in the room, and his wide dark beard concealed his mouth so that Brendun could not tell if he was smiling with curiosity or frowning in the frustration that a stranger was getting familiar with one of his belongings.

“I’m sorry,” Brendun said. “I was admiring your map. It seems new, and well made. Is it an original?”

“Haha,” Marten laughed, showing his teeth as he opened his mouth wide making a hole between his thick mustache and beard. “Nice try. Changing the subject, a simple and sometimes effective means of distraction used on the unwary. Tell me, Mister Mark, do you know what a Cryssalium is? Have you been shown one, or an image of one? I imagine if you do not know what a Cryssalium looks like, it would be reasonable to assume you don’t know what one is either.”

Marten Horne’s manner was direct, professional, and not confrontational in the least. He was a maker of concoctions, by trade, and a part time physicker with a reputation known throughout the city for fairness, thoroughness, and intelligence. Brendun considered misleading the dwarf, making up a story that he hoped would give the fellow a reason to let it go, for the moment, but with Tabitha’s life on the line, and too many mysteries piling up like cord wood, Brendun took a different approach.

He stepped away from the map, crossed the small room to stand on the other side of the desk, raised his hands, and said, “Look, Mister Horne, I don’t know what it is, exactly, but I was given enough information to make me feel I could identify one, if I found one. I was told to keep the job a secret, but no one told me anything that would make me believe searching for it would bring about all the trouble that seems to be surrounding the thing. I want to thank you. I don’t mean to drag you into anything you think puts you at risk, and if I did, I am sorry. I needed help, and Alo brought us to you. How is Tabitha? Is she going to be all right?”

Keeping his hands behind his back, Martin turned slowly as Brendun moved. When Brendun finished, he stood still, for a moment, and then clapped his hands in front of him hard, “All right then. Apology accepted,” he said.

“First things first,” Marten continued, “Tabitha will be fine, but not any time soon. She is still unconscious, and I suppose she will remain that way for at least a few more hours, if not a few days. She was in a deep state of shock. Her injuries were, or would have been life threatening. The sloppy application of the nacromoid oil helped, but complicated the surgery. Who was the idiot who dumped all that oil into her wounds? I want to speak to that person as soon as possible.”

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 25

Brendun’s mouth dropped open in surprise. What had he done wrong? He was sure he did what was right; after all it saved Tabitha’s life.

“That was me,” Brendun said.

“Well,” Martin said coming closer to Brendun, “alright then. Let’s start at the beginning. Macromoid oil is best used sparingly. Only a few drops are needed to seal a bleeding wound. You see, the oil, derived from a particularly nasty variety of necromancy infused fungus, expands significantly when it comes into contact with living tissues, while it contracts and becomes rigid, brittle, when it comes into contact with inanimate material, or non-living organic compounds, such as clothing. It seems as if you used an entire bottle of oil on the wound, which was not only wasteful, but complicated the necessary repairs to the blood vessels that were damaged. It will also prolong her recovery, by a few days at the minimum, possibly a few weeks, while her body processes the oil naturally and removes it. Son,” Martin said taking Brendun’s hand, “you did the right thing, and I understand why you didn’t, perhaps, know how to use the oil. I can make it, but I’m not supposed to, not in the city anyway. I don’t know where you got it, but if you have anymore, remember this. A few small drops, hold the bottle directly over the bleeding wound, and tap, do not pour, until a few drops enter the wound, then wait a few moments, a breath or two, and if the bleeding doesn’t stop, apply again to the same location. The oil will spread out as it becomes more viscous when it contacts blood and then as it reacts it speeds up the natural clotting property of blood. Usually, a few drops are all that is ever needed, and a second application is guaranteed to stop bleed unless it is the most severe arterial bleeds.”

Marten let go of Brendun’s hand, turned to smile at Kenny, and then said, “Keep your eye on this one, captain, he seems eager, and a bit rash, but a likable fellow nonetheless.” Still facing the big man, Martin then walked toward a bookcase on the wall to the right of the fireplace. “Now about that Cryssalium. I have one book, I know, that may be important to you.”

Alo’s voice came from the doorway behind Brendun, “Youaahhh tolduhh ahhhimm aboutah tthhhhh cryssalliahhhum!” She spoke in her hurried, anxious, and sloppy way that told Brendun the Mauli girl was upset. He turned and put up his hands again.

“I haven’t told him anything,” Brendun said.

“That’s because,” Martin said as he turned away from the books and went, instead toward Alo, “he doesn’t know anything, obviously. Now, you, young woman, it seems something is wrong with your ability to speak. I have heard you speak before, when Tabitha thought I wasn’t aware of your attempts to hide in the alley behind the building, and I have noticed your speech comes and goes, at times easy to understand, and at others, not, like just now. Tell me about the problem. Perhaps I can help.”

The dwarf’s kindness and sympathy surprised Brendun, and he could see it took Alo off guard. She stood as still as he had ever seen her stand, and spoke to Martin.

“It is nothing you can heal, sir,” Alo said slowly and clearly. “I have, was, it was,” she tried to say.

“Don’t be so sure,” Martin said. “Come with me. Let me take a look at the problem, in private. Let me see if there isn’t something I at least can recommend.”

“There is,” Alo hesitated and then raised her head, “Nothing to see. I was marked by my kind as a slave. My rostrum was removed. That cannot be healed.” She strained every word, taking a good moment to speak each one as clearly as possible.”

“Hmmm,” the physicker touched his beard gently with one hand, “so you say. I understand. Healing is out of the question, yes, but have you considered a prosthesis?”

“Ahhawhathh?” Alo said in a rush of air.

“Prosthesis,” he said. “It would be an artificial rostrum, much like false teeth in humans. I am sure I can fashion one, if I know the proper measurements and the condition of the muscles in the area. I am familiar with the basic anatomy or your kind, but an examination would be proper. Why, I once served as a surgeon on a galleon out of Port Yathur. I’ve performed surgery on Mauli, Aulini, and Fathuli. Come now, don’t be self-conscious. There is no need to suffer. If it is something that you think would improve your life, maybe open up your diet to foods you haven’t been able to enjoy, why not let me see what I can do, and I would love the opportunity to help you.”

“Why?” Brendun asked, not realizing he was only thinking it, and did not mean to say it out loud.

“Because it is a kindness to be repaid, master Mark,” Marten said. “I owe Tabitha much. More than I can probably repay just by helping to save her life. She has done more than that for me. A friend of Tabitha’s is a person I would care to know well, and not turn away for any reason.”

“I cannot pay you,” Alo said as her head fell, her words again measured and slow, “I have nothing. I relied on Tabitha for everything.”

“Here,” Brendun said as he removed his pack, “we have money, and jewels, jewelry, trinkets, and more. Look, here, a third of this is Alo’s share.” He took out the satchel he recovered from the chest in the pirate lair and dumped the contents on the desk in the room. “And, there is also this,” he said taking the bejeweled saber from his belt.

Kenny moved to stand behind Brendun, and whispered in his ear, “That was a dumb move, Dun-man. Not like you at all to show your hand so soon.”

“No, no,” Brendun said to Kenny, “It’s fair and square. She saved our lives when we got lost in a pirate lair under the streets near the sea wall, south of the docks. We, we all, can claim a share of this. One third each, that’s what I think. Marten, take what you need for Tabitha’s care, and whatever Alo needs I’ll help with that too.”

“Now it’s my turn,” Marten said. “Why? Is she that important to you? Does your quest for the Cryssalium rely on her?”

“No. Not at all, actually, I just think I’m stuck with her, and Tabitha, and this sack of muscles,” Brendun said as he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at Kenny, “and well, if I could understand her when she gets excited, that’s going to go a long way to keeping me from losing my mind.”

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 26

“Alo, let the physicker take a look,” Brendun said with a shrug, “maybe he can help.” Brendun was taking a risk, he knew. He only learned so much about her, in the short time they were together, but he relied on what he knew about Tabitha. If Tabitha took this octopus-folk under her care, there was a good reason, a very good reason. Tabitha didn’t take to strangers, not right away. Brendun had learned that, the hard way, but once you earned her trust, Tabitha was true to a fault. There was practically nothing that would set Tabitha against you, once you earned her friendship, well, practically nothing, and that didn’t include what happened once you became more than friends. So Brendun thought putting it out there, offering to help Alo in this way was a risk. He wasn’t sure he knew how she would respond. He certainly didn’t know enough about the ways of her kind. She might consider it an insult, but she might not. All Brendun could hope was that if he knew anything about Tabitha, at all, and Tabitha had become Alo’s friend, then maybe she might think he was a friend as well.

It seemed to him that Tabitha and Alo had become friends and possibly more. It wasn’t in him to judge Tabitha. He spent a good four years with her, maybe the best four years of his life, and when things had ended, he knew where the blame rested. But Brendun knew that at this point his search for the Cryssalium wasn’t going to be something he could just sneak away to get back to, disappear, and forget the past twenty four hours. Tabitha and Alo had been searching for him, to stop him, or so they said originally, and then there was Kenny, who had heard enough around the city to worry that Brendun was in over his head for maybe the last time. This had gotten bigger, bigger than just one of those simple find and retrieve an old artifact jobs, like so many he had done in the past. Something was different. The differences he hadn’t puzzled out just yet, but he decided he was going to need their help, or at least need them near until he got more information about the whole affair.

He meant what he said, at least he was honest about the treasure, and Brendun waited to see what Alo would do.

“Alrighttah,” Alo said, “I wihhhil lhhheeetah you seeah bhhuuut, noht heaah. Lahtaherah. Innha prahvate.”

She spoke quickly, again, and Brendun could tell she was nervous.

“That’s settled then,” Brendun said, hoping that everyone forgot what was being talked about before.

“Yes, good, it is settled,” Marten agreed, “but, it seems we forgot to finish. You, young Mauli, Alo, if I may call you that, are also interested in the Cryssalium. This has got my curiosity. Tell me, do you know what it is?”

Brendun looked at Alo, but he knew immediately she did not see what he was trying to tell her with his eyes.

“No,” Alo said. She took in a breath, and said slowly, “I know what it can do, and why it would be dangerous to have one, let alone hand one over to your queen, but I have never seen one.”

“You, Brendun Mark,” Marten turned to Brendun, “do you know what you are looking for? Do you at least know as much as Alo knows? I wonder.”

“I don’t know what it is, or what it does,” Brendun was again honest, hoping it would be the right decision. “I only know that it will be in a box that is sealed with magic that I can’t defeat, and that the box will be marked with this image,” he said taking a folded parchment out of his pants pocket.

He shook the parchment until it unfolded and showed it to the three of them.

Alo gasped.

Kenny seemed to not know what he was looking at, but it was Marten that had the most to say.

“That is very disturbing,” the dwarf said and went straight to the desk in the room taking a small key out of his pocket as he went.

“Yesterday, I received a large advance on a request for specific ingredients, potions, poultices, and liniments. This box,” he said as he unlocked the right hand drawer of the desk and removed a large wooden box, “bears the seal of the Queen’s accounts and was more than generous. The letter inside the box, signed by the governor herself, was specific in instructing me to take the utmost care in selecting and preparing the items on the list. The list itself was sealed in this envelope, which has the same image.” Marten held up a large parchment envelope.

The image was of a stylized Mauli-folk, with tentacles fanned out all around. The Mauli wore a five pointed crown, and the center point bore a three bladed sword.

“I was told,” Marten went on, “that this is the crest and seal of the Mauli Queen who calls herself Aonawydd. She rules a vast sea going population of Mauli outcasts, and it is her barge that is in the harbor as we speak.”

“The barge, right, people in the tavern were all spun up about it. Big news I suppose, and taking audience with the governor, so I heard,” Kenny said.

“Yes,” Brendun said as he turned toward Alo. “You know this symbol, Alo. You told me a story about being marked as untouchable, below even an outcast, you said, scarred and maimed as a slave for life, but you know this image, why? How do you know this?”

Alo raised her head high and then lifted two tentacles, and then said as slowly as she could, “I do not. I have never seen that before.”

“You’re lying,” Kenny said, tensing up.

“Yes, she is,” Brendun added, “but she isn’t doing it because she means to keep us in the dark. I’ve been able to learn a little bit about you, Alo, in the short time we’ve known each other, but you don’t lie easily, or with any confidence. You’re afraid. I can tell you are afraid, but why? There isn’t any reason to be afraid, Alo, as long as Tabitha will vouch for you, you have my trust and for what it’s worth, my friendship. If we can help you, we will. I don’t have any plan to expose you to danger.”

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 27

Alo shrunk. Her head dropped forward, and her body seemed to shrink as her tentacles closed in against her, she spoke slowly, “You already have,” and then she turned away from Brendun and raced out of the room.

“Go after her!” Kenny shouted. “She knows something and she is keeping it from you to protect herself.”

Brendun turned and was about to go when he felt Marten’s hand on his arm.

“No, let her go. Give her time,” Marten said. “A lot of things are happening and she must be overwhelmed. The image you showed us is related to a Mauli who she must know, that is easy enough to deduce. It will reveal itself in time. For now, let her think about what her next option will be. Tabitha hasn’t told me everything about the relationship she has with this young girl, but what she has told me is enough to convince me she isn’t going to leave, and she isn’t going to do anything to bring attention to herself. She must not have been prepared for the Mauli Queen to come here. She must have been convinced she and Tabitha could work together on whatever it is they needed to do, without interference, and obviously that isn’t the case anymore.”

Marten gave Brendun’s arm a gentle squeeze, and then moved away. “Yes, let her have a few moments to collect herself and think. It’s always a good idea to think, when you feel overwhelmed.” He moved, again, toward the books in the study in the bookcase on the wall. “For instance, let’s look at your situation, Brendun Mark, adventurer, explorer, and finder of artifacts stolen, lost, and forgotten. Yes, I know who you are, at least as much as anyone who lives in the city and likes a good tale told in the taverns when spirits are high can know. You present yourself well, always in control, always on the moment, so to speak. It shows a cool head, and a commitment to collecting the facts, but here you are, in my study, completely unaware of what it is you are looking for. You are chasing an instrument that few of any understand at all.”

Marten took a slim but large book from the shelf and handed it to Brendun. “This,” he said, “is the tale of Wehrin the Bard. It’s a children’s book. I used to read it to my son. In the tale, Wehrin, the young woman who sang the sea to sleep, is given an instrument, and the story says it was a Cryssalium. She played the instrument and by doing so was able to control a gate on the cliffs above the sea. But, it is just a children’s story. Nowhere in the tale does it mention how the Cryssalium was played, or what sort of instrument it was. Now, in this book,” Marten took another, smaller book, from the shelf, “The Cryssalium is said to be a device that came into being long after the creators of the gates had vanished from the world, which hardly makes any sense, because the explanation, given about the nature of the Cryssalium, is that it allowed the person who knew its secrets to control what would be on the other side of a gate. Think about that for a moment.”

Brendun took both the books and sat down in a chair in the corner of the room.

“No one has ever known who or what the creators of the ancient gates were, where they came from, or what their purpose was,” Marten went on, running his fingers from one book to the next as if he was trying to recall if any of them would help. “Most scholars agree that even what we know them by, the by many different words or names, it wasn’t a word used by them at all but something that was assigned to them by the earliest of those to ever record the experience of the gates left behind by someone or something lost to the dawn of time itself. It is the gates we know, or at least they are what lingers in our world to remind us that something made them, put them here, and gave them a power not anyone understands. But that is where the Cryssalium comes in.” Marten stopped, made a sound of frustration, and then went on, “I used to have another book here, but I must have loaned it away years ago. Anyway, the Cryssalium, some have written, is a device, or instrument, or who knows what, exactly, that has the ability to manage a gate.”

“That is nothing special,” Brendun said as he flipped through the large picture book, balancing the other book on his knee. “I have more than one gate key myself. I even have a universal key that I know can open almost any gate known, at least so far as my experience can prove. Opening a gate shouldn’t require a special instrument like this, unless it is some sort of special gate I’ve never heard of.”

Marten laughed, “The great Brendun Mark is confused. I suppose I need to slow down. Brendun, lad, I didn’t say open. I said manage. With a key, even a universal key of poor quality, a person with the right talent can get a gate to open, but as everyone knows, going through a gate is a risk. You better hope that what is on the other side isn’t ready to eat you, or melt the flesh from your bones, and if you are lucky, getting back through that gate won’t be too much trouble. But no, a Cryssalium is not a key. It is an instrument that will give the user the power to decide what will be on the other side of a gate. Nothing I have ever read, or heard about, can explain how that is even possible, but if it is true, if it is what a Cryssalium can do, it can change a gate from being a dangerous mystery, to a portal under your control. If you knew the secrets of a Cryssalium, you could go anywhere, be anywhere, be, well, be the most powerful person in the world.”

Re: Into The Labyrinth - a work of fiction
 

Part 28

The last thing Marten had said before Brendun left the dwarf’s shop was that a Cryssalium could make someone the most powerful person in the world.

Days crawled by. Brendun moved through the city with Kenny, sometimes staying close together and at other times keeping just within sight of each other, for mutual protection. The goal was to find out about the octopus queen, why she and her barge were here, what she wanted, and how her presence was connected to the search for the Cryssalium.

It stayed in his mind how Alo had seemed defeated the last time they spoke. He had tried to bring up the subject, but she would not speak to him. It was uncomfortable, but Brendun knew enough to give her the space she wanted and not force the issue. Each day he would visit Tabitha, to see how she was coming along, and each time, Alo was there. As soon as Brendun came in the room, Alo left in silence.

Marten had said that there were a few occasions when Alo had asked him if Brendun was asking about her. It had a feeling of those times when he was still a young teen and talking with friends about each other was a skill that took great care to master. Marten told Alo the truth, that Brendun was sorry for any trouble he had caused, but he also told her it was best to talk to Brendun directly. Clear the air, he told her and be ready for what came next instead of second guessing what had already been, but Alo would have none of that, only saying to Marten that from now on, Tabitha would speak for both of them. And Tabitha wasn’t awake.

She continued to improve. Tabitha’s color came back. Her fur grew heavier again, instead of the thinning and stiffness it had developed right after her injury. She had lost some weight and her face had thinned, only a bit, and she had looked awful, or so Kenny was quick to say each day until Brendun reminded the big man that she could probably still hear everything that was being said, and Kenny had better hope she didn’t remember his criticism. It wasn’t that Tabitha was vain, she was not, not even in the slightest. She did not like people talking about her looks. There are many strange looking folk in the world, Brendun knew, from those that are difficult to look at to those that you find it impossible to not look at, but among them all the anthropomorphic Kanulaoa were among the most attractive.

It was fair to say that it was her beauty that first caught Brendun’s attention. He first saw Tabitha on the streets of the city during the high festival days of Long Winter. She was wearing traditional sailing garb, but with a thick wool coat that had a fur trimmed hood. The coat was long, and pulled tight around her small waist. The bright white fur of the hood seemed to frame her face in a way that took his breath away. Her dark brown hair coming down to a point on her forehead accented her hazel green eyes and golden brown complexion. He noticed her large eyes, full lips, and small dark colored block shaped nose and in that moment he fell in love.

Brendun Mark was in love with Tabitha. He knew it. His feelings for her, the love he felt, had never gone away, but it had been a strange thing, for Brendun, to learn that even if you love someone you can grow to understand that being together isn’t always what is best for either of you. They had different ideas about how to solve problems, different ideas about what mattered. She had a short temper, and he had a tendency to think that his mistakes where not a big deal. They came to a point where every job was complicated by one of those things, her temper, or his mistakes, and eventually the love he had for her wasn’t enough. They parted, as friends, almost, with a promise to not get in each other’s way, and a promise that if one, or both, of them could not keep the first promise, anything goes. For Brendun, that meant staying far away from Tabitha because getting in her way had been the last thing a lot of people ever had an opportunity to do.

Then they were in each other’s way again. But instead of her putting him down, hard, she had gone easy. He still didn’t understand why, and until Tabitha woke up, he wasn’t going to be able to ask her to explain.

Almost a full week passed by, the threen days, the monthly occurring conjunction of the worlds three moons, had ended and finally Tabitha woke.

She took some water, a little soft food, and complained about the pain, but seemed to be in good spirits. Brendun told Tabitha all that he and Kenny had learned about Aonawydd, the Mauli Queen, which was not much. The official reason for her “kingdom” coming to call was to offer a treaty of peace on the seas regarding her fleet, and all aligned under her banner, but the rumor was that she was had come to ask for an audience with the Queen of the House of Korr herself. She spent two full days in the governor’s residence. In that time, it was being said, she dictated a formal letter requesting some kind of favor from the Queen, and in exchange she pledged her fealty to the human kingdom.

Nothing like this was known in the history of relations between the different octopus-folk and the kingdoms of the world, though it was well known that some kind of relationship has existed, because it was not uncommon to encounter a walking octopus in one of the dungeon tests of the Queen of Korr. Tabitha took the information with feigned interest, asking only a few questions, and when Brendun finally came to the point, the point of what his intentions were, she took a hard stand.

“If you plan to keep searching for the Cryssalium, without me,” Tabitha told him, “you won’t find it. When I’m strong enough we are going to look together, and Alo is coming with us. If you want to bring the big muscle, that’s fine, but if you think you can take off without me, you are making the second biggest mistake of your life.”

Brendun held her hand, smiled at Tabitha and said with a laugh, “And what was my first biggest mistake, Tabitha?”

“Letting me send you away.”

His laughter stopped. He didn’t think that was funny at all. “I didn’t let you do anything,” Brendun was serious. “It was my decision to –“

She didn’t let him finish. With all her strength she pulled him down to her, and kissed him lightly on the lips. “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it,” she purred.

End of Chapter 4