Merdon sighed as he walked along the maze path of polished white stones. He could hear parts of the path shifting behind him, to his sides, and sometimes, he thought, in front of him. The witch was manipulating the walls as they proceeded through the labyrinth, making sure they didn't meet up by chance, and possibly just keeping them trapped within the shifting walls forever. Solitude was their enemy here and it had been forced upon them, leaving them stranded from each other and without a plan to boot. Every turn held the chance for an ambush, a trap, something to wound, capture, or even kill them. There was a desperation in his chest to return to his companions, to make sure they were safe, but most of all to find Sarel.

He didn't understand the purpose of this floor and wondered silently if the witch had changed it before they arrived. Perhaps they had triggered some kind of spell in the forest that alerted her or maybe she had done it while they slept the night before. Whatever the case was, the knight knew it was highly impractical and he doubted it was a permanent fixture in the tower. After all, the kobolds would have to navigate the maze every time they wanted to ascend the tower unless the witch teleported them herself, and with as dazed as they looked it was doubtful they could keep their attention enough to remember which turns to take. Especially without any markings along the way. Merdon was certain by that point he'd doubled back on himself at least once, and any attempt to mark the wall saw the marking erased within seconds. It was a hopeless situation he simply had to bull his way through. No matter how difficult the maze was, Merdon was more stubborn than that. His armor clanked obnoxiously as he continued down the hallways, picking paths as they arose, turning around when he reached dead ends, but never losing his determination.

On the pathway to the left, now far from Merdon, Red and Skyeyes were moving quietly through the maze. As quietly as they could with their claws clacking on the stones anyway. Naturally, they wanted to avoid any traps, and so slow going was the best pace for them, however, the clicking of their claws made total silence impossible, and the noise was beginning to drive Red mad. Every step was met with a wave of sharp kobold claws falling, to a point she was beginning to believe she could pick out the individual digits as they landed. Red was far too focused on her surroundings to be absorbing something so specific, but the sound was creating a small delirium, and it didn't help that her companion wasn't talking. Skyeyes appeared, from the couple times she glanced back at him, to be terrified. For what reason Red didn't know. Eventually, she had to stop and ask, if only to make the sounds stop for a minute.

“What's got you worried?” she asked him quietly, the sound of her voice feeling alien after the long silence.

Skyeyes reddened and shook his head. “Nothing,” he told her, but his eyes said otherwise.

The red kobold reached out and put a claw on his shoulder. An awkward move considering she was trying her best not to move her feet to do it. “You can tell me,” she assured him. “We have been through many things.”

“I … don't want you getting hurt,” he said after a pause. Which made Red laugh, a noise that echoed quite a lot through the empty maze. It was a welcome noise to her, but not so much to Skyeyes, who still looked uncomfortable.

The mage noted his discomfort and stopped, giving him a concerned look. “What's wrong?” Red asked directly. “You've been awkward like this for a while. You aren't still dwelling on Ardmach, are you?” Skyeyes shook his head at that. “So what's wrong? You have accused Merdon of keeping secrets, but you are doing it now?”

Her words set off a pang of guilt in Skyeyes' chest, and it compelled him to come clean. “I am worried about any of us getting hurt,” he said slowly. “Because … I can no longer heal.”

Red blinked and looked at him seriously. “It isn't the tower,” she deduced after a moment. A flame came to life in her palm to prove her point. “Unless she can specify clerical spell.” Traps like those she hadn't accounted for. Her flame went out and she glanced around, hoping her magic wasn't next, but Skyeyes shook his head again.

“I have lost faith in the goddess,” he told Red. “The magic of a cleric comes from our deity. Without them, we have nothing.” Skyeyes hadn't healed anyone since Ardmach, since he'd confessed to Red in the thicket that he doubted everything he'd been told by his mentor. It all clicked.

Red stepped forward and hugged the white kobold. “You will find your way,” she assured him. “We will see more about it after this. Until then... I suppose you will have to be the one who stays safe.” He was the weakest among them now, and it gave Red a sense of duty, to protect him until he could get a chance to recover from his loss of faith. Perhaps picking a new god would help, but there was no time for that. Not in the tower. They had no time for doubts and uncertainty. She would just have to operate under the assumption any wounds would be more dangerous than before.

Skyeyes didn't like feeling so helpless, but Red's reassurance felt genuine. His mind refocused on the task at hand as they began to walk again. He recalled something he'd read before and told Red about it. “I have heard that if one wishes to find the way out of a maze, they should stick to the left wall.”

The mage paused and looked at the left wall. “It could work,” she admitted, “If the witch does not alter the maze as she did to separate us.”

“If not, we could be stuck wandering here forever.” Skyeyes paled at his own words. “We have no alternative plans,” he pointed out. “Doing something is better than nothing.”

Hesitantly, Red agreed and moved to the left side of the hallway. They would be stuck either way, but at least Skyeyes' idea of hugging the left wall was being proactive. She started to think about ways she could be more proactive as well. There might be a spell which would let her move the stones herself, or maybe there was an artifact nearby that powered the maze rather than the witch herself. Even with Skyeyes powerless, he was doing more than she was. That was how she felt at least. It spurred her to keep thinking about their situation and find any way out she was capable of, which gave her a good distraction from the return of their clicking claws.

Skyeyes' trick was new to Red, but it wasn't news to Sarel, who had implemented it from the moment she was sealed in the maze. Her claws made no noise as she walked, calmly but swiftly, like the thief she was, her arm outstretched to touch the wall physically as she moved. She had figured out, much like Merdon, that the maze could repair itself, but she had keener senses than her fellow travelers. Even compared to the kobolds her eyes were sharper. So when she left little threads of her pack, innocently disguised as adjusting the weight, they stayed on the floor, and she knew. She had passed one thread at least twice, and they never landed in the exact same way. The thief was crafty, and her craftiness kept her spirits high.

The witch watched the blue kobold from her orb with a scowl. Her gaze was abandoned from the other three, for the moment, as her plan failed to faze the blue one. Merdon, the Kobold Whisperer, was vengefully stalking the hallways. He would surely apprehend the first kobold he came across and demand the secrets of the maze. Their priest was useless, she had overheard, and the fledgling mage was no more a bother to the witch's might than a pup was to a knight. This thief, however, being completely and utterly unaffected by her trap was setting her teeth on edge. It felt like she knew something the witch didn't, and she hated that feeling more than anything else. She turned away from her scrying orb to check her things; easy to find in the well-kept bedroom at the top of the tower. Ingredients for a spell or two, a quick reference in a tome, and she turned back to the orb. Sarel continued on her merry way in the maze, and the witch made it a point to stop that by any means necessary. Including a personal visit.

Rounding a corner, Sarel stopped and frowned as she came face to face with the red-headed caster. Her claw dropped to her dagger, but the witch was faster with a spell than the thief was with a blade. The dagger flew backward, clinking off the wall and skittering down the hallway Sarel had just come through. Her eyes darted back to it, judging the distance, her legs tightening, prepared to leap for it. It was a risky jump with the witch still watching with her hand held out. In fact, Sarel wasn't even sure the hand was necessary. She had seen some magic cast without any kind of guide before, without any kind of sight. Mages were dangerous foes not to be taken lightly, and she'd been ambushed readily. Whatever move she made, it had to be made quickly, with certainty, and when the witch wasn't as focused as she was now. Simply put, Sarel needed to stage a distraction.

She raised her arms in a sign of surrender and stopped looking at her dagger. Its position was memorized in her mind's eye. The corner would give her some cover from any spells, or at least most spells she could think of, all she needed was to distract her opponent. Which left her with the one thing she was faster with than anyone else. Her mouth.

“So, this is how you do it?” she asked quickly. “You ambush kobolds one by one? Can you not take on more than that at a time? Or are you as scared as the Whisperer says?” A little rage, stoke the fire, impair her focus.

The witch sneered at her. “Far, far from it, kobold,” she replied. “I could take on villages of your kind, were I to not care about casualties. Your human 'friend' seems to be the same way, judging by what he did in Ardmach.”

Sarel held back a flinch. Show no emotions, betray nothing. “He did that for us, for kobolds. What you do is for yourself. Anyone could see the difference.”

“Is that what you think?” the witch asked. She chuckled after a moment. Not what Sarel was hoping for. “I do this so your kind can forget the terrible things humans have done to them.”

“And what you do is better?”

“Better than what they've done to you and many others,” she shouted. “You were in Ardmach, tell me. How many did you see trapped in those despicable pits? Being forced to take care of primal urges, stripped of all their dignity.”

Sarel scoffed. It was true what she knew to be happening to kobolds in the hands of slavers was bad, however... “That excuses you removing their dignity as well? Their names, their minds?”

“What do their minds matter if they're a burden?” the witch countered. “If they are so downtrodden they cannot function?”

“How many are like that?” Sarel asked, continuing her verbal assault of the witch's moral high ground. “A dozen? Perhaps a few more. I doubt it,” she huffed. “Red has broken free of your control on her own, and she is not broken.”

The witch drew herself up taller, trying to appear mighty. “She remembers nothing of her life before this tower, and even then she remembers little of this place. Were she to remember it would break her!”

“Would it?” Sarel asked with just enough sincerity. She didn't care, the witch was a threat to her kind, and to Merdon, but her question packed just enough weight to make the witch falter. She shrunk back down and eyed the blue kobold. “Tell me,” Sarel insisted. “Would it really? Or is that just what you tell yourself to keep sleeping at night?”

The split second of doubt and hesitation was what Sarel was waiting for. It was clear the witch did not interact with humans who disagreed with her, she was never forced to confront her own opinions, especially not from those she proclaimed to be helping. There was enough of an opening for Sarel to dive to the side and roll into her dagger. She expected the witch to follow and, as she rolled, she flung the dagger backward. Her guess was dead on as the red-haired mage came around the corner, but her focus was back. With a flick of her wrist, the dagger dropped dead onto the ground and Sarel was snagged, suspended off the ground. Nothing for her claws to latch onto, neither feet nor hands, and a mystic pressure on her throat kept her from shouting a warning to the others if they could even hear her. They were all trapped, ready to be picked off one by one, but she'd given herself the best odds of winning.

She floated closer to the witch, whose cold face said more than any more words could have. There weren't going to be any more questions, no more talking her way out, and no more weapons either. For someone who proclaimed mercy to kobolds, Sarel would have sworn her death was imminent. Instead, they descended into a portal on the ground, something the witch cooked up no doubt. The moment the portal closed the maze fell apart. Every wall came crashing down with a loud cacophony of grinding and slams. Stone against stone echoed across the floor as it was left without any walls or rooms what so ever. Several kobolds were visible now, previously trapped, and looked around just as confused as the intruders.

Merdon saw Skyeyes and Red quickly, they were quite a distance apart, but he didn't see Sarel. His heart skipped a beat as he called out her name loudly. The kobolds at the other end of the room looked at him, but they didn't budge. They weren't Sarel. He started covering as much of the floor as possible, while Red and Skyeyes quickly caught on and started searching as well. In the end, Skyeyes approached Merdon with Sarel's dagger in his claws.

“She's … gone,” he said. “I found this over there.” He pointed towards the far right wall. She'd been so far away from where Merdon was standing.

“The witch took her,” Merdon growled, reaching out and taking the dagger. Red nodded, agreeing with his guess. “She's going to pay.” Again, Red nodded.

She looked around and spotted the stairs. “We should proceed as fast as we can,” she told him. “Lest we give her time to spring another trap on us.”

Merdon tucked the dagger away in his bag and set his shoulders. He started moving towards the stairs to the next floor at a hastened pace. This wasn't just about freeing the other kobolds or making sure he wasn't hunted for the rest of his life. There was a piece of revenge on his mind now and Merdon had learned not long ago how dangerous he was when he let his emotions carry him. It didn't seem like a bad idea at all anymore.