“First rule of the Labyrinth, don’t get separated.” I punctuated my point by pointing at Kan’on, the most likely of the trio to go off on his own to be a hero.

“How strict is this rule?” Kan’on asked, faced scrunched up in displeasure.

“Very. Although you’re strong enough that you might be able to just muscle your way back out, but let’s not test it.”

The scout we’d borrowed led us through the forest, the fading light against the trees casting long, thin shadows. The smell of old green things and loam permeated the air, giving the forest a sense of age and life that I hadn’t noticed while sticking to the edge of town.

I kept my attention and senses spread out. There shouldn’t be any reason for anything to have poked its head out of the Labyrinth yet, but after fighting what amounted to Inculid assassins I wasn’t about to take any chances. That would likely be my main job, shutting down their void tunneling ability before they could get the jump on us. And stealing their tricks for myself.

“Has anyone here other than me been in the Labyrinth before?”

Kayla and Jass both shook their heads and I nearly facepalmed. Kan’on nodded, but I didn’t trust his skewed danger senses enough to gauge whether he made it to the second strata or not, where someone like him would have been in real danger.

“On a ‘normal’ excursion, there are enough crawly, bity things running around that you’ll likely be overwhelmed… and then eaten. Because everything wants to eat you down there.”

“Why would anyone want to go in then?” Kayla asked. “Seems more sensible just to steer clear of the place.”

“For sensible people, you’d be absolutely correct, but I haven’t met a truly sensible person in years. There is also the concern that an entrance pops open right next to your settlement, like what happened right here. What do you do? Move away? Pick up the town and scoot over the mountains? No, you stick around, send a purge party every few weeks, and reap the rewards of having an entrance nearby. And lots of people die.”

I lapsed into silence, letting the scout lead us through the dense trees. On their individual merits, I’d only trust Kan’on to avoid or overcome the challenges of the Labyrinth. Jass was powerful but burned too fast and too bright. He’d leave himself a vulnerable, burned out husk if not careful. Kayla was an unknown, untested as far as I was concerned. She’d shown some skill with her glyphs, but only in comparison to some top ranked fighters, nobody like Kan’on or Jass.

“The second reason, of course, is greed. There are things down there that you can’t find anywhere else. A single pound of deep iron is enough to buy yourself a small mansion, and if you’re skilled enough to turn it into deepsteel, you’ve set up your poor little family for the rest of their lives.”

“Aren’t you wearing deepsteel armor?” Jass asked.

Leave it to Jass to point out that I was not one of those sensible people I spoke about. At least, the people who had put the armor together weren’t anyway.

“We need to pick up the pace, we don’t have much time left before the sun sets and whatever they’re sending out this time clears the exit.” Sidestepping the question, I followed my own advice and picked up the pace, but I swore I could feel Jass’ laughing eyes on the back of my head.

The scout led us out of the forest onto an escarpment where the recent landslide had scoured away all signs of life, leaving only exposed rock and earth in its wake. Midway down, the black maw of the Labyrinth entrance exposed. With a few words of thanks, I sent the scout back. No sense in him lingering this close to nightfall.

I scoured our surroundings and the entrance with my sense of the Flow, examining the currents for any signs of ambush. The Queen’s presence pushed at me in those familiar undulating waves, but it didn’t overcome my own newfound techniques for handling the currents. The more I experienced after my little run in with the presence after that battle, the more I realized that I haven’t even begun to touch the new scope of my power, and that scared me a little. Too much of the unknown, too quickly.

“Let’s take a break. We should be good for a while at least. Best to rest up before jumping in.”

“So, if this entrance is such a pain in the ass, why don’t they just close it? Dump some boulders onto it, drop some dirt into it, whatever?” Kayla sat on a nearby boulder, examining the gaping scar in the rocky face left behind by the landslide.

“They can’t.”

“What do you mean, ‘can’t’? Everything they need is sitting right here.”

“I mean they can’t, like literally can’t. Once an entrance has been found or opened, nothing can close it. If you dump rocks in it, you’ll find that within a day it will have cleaned it all up.”

“What, like little cleaner bugs appear and dig their way out? Seems unlikely to me.”

“No, like the damned Labyrinth itself will just absorb it, or move it, or vanish it away. Nobody really knows. Most people who think about these things would say that it’s alive. I hold to other theories that many others would agree with too.”

A new Labyrinth entrance had been the beginning of the end for me, opening up of its own accord under my castle. Ilfid had poured out, swarming my holdings and the countryside, slaying everything in sight. I’d investigated for years, after the fact, piecing together clues. There was not a single doubt in my mind that the Labyrinth had its own consciousness, or at the very least controlled by something old and vast.

“You can’t just say you have your own theories and then not say anything. Spit it out.” Kayla had stopped her intense examination of the entrance and turned her hidden eyes to me instead.

“Fine, fine. It’s a Deep God.”

Behind me, Jass burst out laughing. “You mean a Deep God created it, right?”

“No, I mean it itself is a Deep God, or at least the physical manifestation of a Deep God.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. The Deep Gods, whatever they were, are long gone, if they ever really existed at all. This is common knowledge stuff. You could ask any random guy on the street, and they’d probably tell you the same thing,” Kayla said.

“Leaving aside the fact that most citizens can’t even tell their ass from a hole in the ground, anyone who has spent any time at all studying the topic would have come across the theory at some point.”

“Fine, what evidence do you have then, oh wise teacher.” If her face had been visible, I had no doubt she’d have disgusting smirk showing.

“You can’t tunnel into the Labyrinth, from anywhere. Even if you stand thirty feet away from an entrance and dig straight toward it, you’ll never find it. The only way in is through an entrance it has created for itself. Same for trying to dig your way out. If you try to tunnel out, you’ll just find more Labyrinth.”

I reached through the Flow and pulled a waterskin from my cubby. Taking a swig, I waited for Kayla to say something, but her body language said ‘contemplative’ and not ‘smartass’ like it had been. I pulled out a few of the rations that Orleander had provided and passed them around to the others with the waterskin. Best to be fully fed before taking the plunge.

“That’s the main thing. There are others, like the resources found down there can’t be found anywhere else. If you find deep iron right at an entrance, you won’t find it six feet away in the same patch of rock. That’s what makes the deeps damned stuff so expensive. Same for all the other stuff that can only be found inside. I’ll not even get into all the other ways it messes with reality.”

I let that percolate in their brains for a while as we sat in silence munching on the rations, which surprisingly weren’t flavorless mush. They weren’t gourmet either, by any stretch.

When everyone had finished, I shoved all the leftover trash into my cubby. No reason to pollute the place.

“If what you say is true, about the Labyrinth being a Deep God, then there should be other, similar evidence for other Deep Gods then, right?” Jass said.

As unassuming as the guy appeared on the outside, moments like this where he got right to the heart of the issue with clarity demonstrated the man’s sharp mind. He had been completely wasted as a dog soldier, not that he’d had a choice in the matter. Or maybe he did; he sat right next to me after all.

“Yes, there is. At least one more that I’m sure about, but nobody else would agree with.”

“What is it then. I’m with Kayla on this, just spit it out. You’re like a stodgy old geezer sitting in a tower dangling magical knowledge over the starving peasants.”

I snorted at the imagery but decided to humor them. “What you think of as ‘Magic’ is a Deep God.”

Kayla snorted and Jass just shook his head. Kan’on, on the other hand, looked contemplative. Even if he couldn’t see the Flow, the lessons I’d given him would have opened the door for him to discover interesting things he would not have otherwise learned. Intent and willpower affected the Flow as much or more than any rune did and he had experienced first-hand the dominating power of mine.

“Magic is just a tool. Glyphs, runes, rituals… it’s all just the same thing repackaged. We command it to do things, it doesn’t command us.” Jass sounded very sure of himself, but I sensed a kernel of doubt, sprouting in the back of his mind.

“You only say that because you can’t see power the same way I can. Everything is connected to everything else. Not just some things, everything. And it does command you, you just can’t see how. There is communication, cause and effect, and imbuing will, most of which you’re completely blind to. You think that the rune you draw is just an expression of your own power, but it’s not. It’s a combination of the Flow accepting the intent and imposing the intent of others.”

We lapsed back into silence. While the others sat and absorbed my wisdom, I took control of my senses once again and examined the entrance. The Queen’s power flooded out, breaking against the wall of my own influence. Now that we sat almost right on top of the entrance, I noticed something interesting; the Queen’s mental tendrils only extended out from the hole in the mountainside, and nowhere else, confirming my own beliefs about the nature of the Labyrinth.

I snaked my own filaments down into the open fissure, searching for the edges of the tunnels that led to their own, separate space. It didn’t take long to discover; my newfound scope of power made the task laughably easy where before I wouldn’t have even been able to tell those edges existed at all.

The entrance tickled my senses, similar to the effects of the Inculid’s void tunneling. Is that where they’d gained the ability, by observing the Labyrinth? They’d already shown themselves to know more about the Flow than me, what other abilities did they have, what other tricks could I steal from them?

More importantly, what did it mean for my void space? If I were as powerful as a Deep God, could I create my own sequestered world? As I sat there ruminating on my impossible fantasy, my senses washed over something else, something familiar.

I snapped my eyes to the entrance, searching for what I knew would be there. The deep shadows of twilight obscured the entrance, but I spotted the sneaky bastard anyway. Sitting in a shallow gash at the edge, just peaking over the lip, was a familiar faceless black carapace.

“We’ve got company. They’re watching us, the little teleporting guys we fought. That means that one of the big boys is nearby too. Stay sharp, we’re about to have a fight on our hands.”

“What’s the plan?” Jass asked.

I looked up at the last of the dying light streaming through the trees. They likely waited for full darkness to descend, which didn’t give us much time to prepare, if there were any preparations to be done.

“Kan’on is our point man. Jass is on rear guard. Kayla, you’re on cleanup. I’ll take the center and try to keep them from jumping around too much. When their commander shows up, the big guy, we’re going to have to gang up on it to end the fight before it gets too ugly. At least we know they’re waiting, and here I was this whole time thinking that there would be an ambush.”

Reaching into my cubby, I pulled out the hated sword, grimacing at the need to use it in the first place. I equipped the new shield in my other hand, effectively covering the gap left by my missing chest armor. The others also prepared, staying calm and quiet.

I stood up, stretching out my overtaxed body, and prepared myself mentally. The others mirrored me, starting to spread out to their designated positions.

Just as the last of the light disappeared over the horizon, I felt a rent open up directly overhead. Too late to stuff the bastard back into its hole, I dove forward out of the way of its descending deepsteel weapons. Kicking back as hard as I could, I knocked the falling Inculid assassin back a few steps to give myself more room.

“Shit!” I felt other, less defined rifts opening around us and the others, already alerted by my eloquence, reacted immediately.

Letting my mental tendrils drift out into the impromptu battlefield, I kept my eyes locked onto the black carapaced creature in front of me. It circled around me, wary, but I knew it wouldn’t be able to help itself, and sure enough I felt it reach through the void, trying to open a new rent.

“Not this time, asshole!” I whipped the newly formed rent with my tendrils, preventing it from using its void tunneling tricks, and rushed the deeps damned bug. Time to put my new leg to the test.