I felt myself falling, drifting in the golden light spinning for a second, then I slammed down into cold hard stone. There were only a few moments for me to collect myself, before rough hands pulled me up and I stared into the eyes of another player. I blinked and he grinned at me as I stumbled up onto my feet as the silver bands around my ankles and wrists glowed dimly, then vanished.

“Hey! We got a new one!” He cackled and tossed me to the side. As I stumbled across a small room, identical to the one I had entered in.

I could see there were a few people unloading the crates from their side and a grizzled old lady with grey hair was helping unpack them and go through their contents.

Everyone in here was heavily armed with an assortment of arms and armor. In the center of the room, there was one difference however.

Reflecting light and thrumming with power was a gigantic crystal that hummed and pulsed. The crystal shivered for a moment, crackling golden light cascading up and down as it began to vibrate.

As I watched, there was a flash of light and a half naked figure appeared and was sent sprawling across the ground. He stood up and gave a scream of rage.

“Second time in two weeks…” The old woman cackled.

“Where you die this time Kirk?” She inquired and he shrugged as he grabbed a robe from a pile on the ground next to the crystal and shrugged into it.

“I think it was around third circle into the Golden Maze, on the new path we charted last week. Not sure, was being chased by some sort of gibbering horror and barely made it past the wash. I fell into the wash and was swept somewhere unfamiliar when my climbing rope snapped and died when I hit the spikes at the bottom of a pit.” He said sullenly.

“Well at least we got a new shipment in, and a new fishie.” She pointed a wizened old finger towards me and I cringed a bit as the tall man stared me down.

“What’s with the collar, she a magi?” He said excitedly.

They all turned to me and studied me carefully, peering at my collar. I nodded.

“Yea… sort of. I was… a cleric but they took my statuette.” I explained, and decided not to mention my champion status. He grinned.

“Hey don’t worry, we can get that collar removed! Can you heal?!” He said and I nodded.

“Awesome! We haven’t had a healer here at the hub since Ged rage quit and rerolled his char.” I looked around in confusion seeing a lot of player tags and very few NPCs. Most of them were elderly and helping around. The players all seemed to be fighters.

“What is this place?” I asked and he laughed.

“Well, I hear the locals call it quite a few names, but everyone here just calls it the Labyrinth. It’s the weirdest dungeon in Endaria. Oh, and I’ll be letting Deidre introduce things for herself.”

“A few rules for the fresh fish.” The woman approached and sized me up.

“First… no fighting each other. You will find out what happens if you commit crimes here, it will be very painful, and perhaps final. The guardian of the great Labyrinth of Light won’t tolerate any shenanigans from you welps, and neither will anyone else here.” She pointed at the giant crystal.

“Travelers return to us here, if they die in the Labyrinth. If you commit crimes you may… find yourself elsewhere and in a lot of pain, so do not cross people here and we will get along fine.” She continued.

Pointing to the boxes of supplies, and the many guards arranged around them she nodded.

“You will be fed, and help will be given if you bring what we need to make the quota. Because you just arrived, the quota hasn’t risen yet. However, with the current surge in new prisoners it will rise swiftly, and you will earn your keep or we will just let you starve or exile you to the mercy of the Labyrinth. It’s that simple, and I’m told even you travelers eventually start working together, as death becomes harder to bear.” She cackled and turned.

“Toss her a starter pack!” She ordered and Kirk leaned over to a bin. A small leather knapsack was tossed out of a pile by him towards me. I caught it and looked inside. There was a box of rations, a canteen and a few other items.

“This is your only freebie fresh fishie! You lose it in the maze and you won’t get another unless you have credit.” Kirk stated.

“Well, I’m off to the bank. Got to gear up.” He said and bounded off running for the exit.

Deidre grinned and handed a necklace with a copper medallion to me; it had a small silver tab on it. “Press the tab to soulbind the necklace.” She ordered, and I did so.

It flashed with light. There was a medallion on it with the etching of a maze. She flipped it to the other side and pointed to a set of numbers.

“This indicates how much credit you have. A meal from the mess hall is one credit. This pack is worth ten credits, you start with fifteen credits, so you are now down to five. You have five meals until you will starve. Work and earn credit!” She explained and gave me a shove.

I felt, and probably looked very lost and in a daze as I stumbled away and she pointed me towards the far exit. My mind spun and I looked back at her.

“Is there any way to escape?” I asked, trying to keep the hopelessness out of my voice, and she cackled at me as if I had just uttered a funny joke. “No escape… well not unless you earn enough credit, but no one ever manages that!” She laughed and pointed. Now go and don’t bother me anymore!”

Shrugging, I nodded and walked wearily out of the chamber. Upon exit, I gasped as I stepped out into bright radiant light, and looked up to see that brightly lit, spotless walls like lit glass rose around me, and were hemmed in a small area dotted with buildings, and stalls filled with players. Most were heavily armed and looked like some sort of adventurers, others seemed to have taken the roles of crafters, and laborers.

There were very few NPCs, but they were scattered here and there working with the players, laughing and talking as people passed by.

“Oi! Fishie!” I heard the familiar lilt of Kirk’s voice as he laughed and called to me. I walked towards a large building made of spun and glittering white glass that had the words “Bank” over it in chiseled script. He stood there pulling items out of a glimmering box that had appeared in front of him. He cast his robe into a bin next to the bank filled with them as he pulled on a set of armor and withdrew a worn looking sword out and strapped its scabbard to his side. Reaching in yet again, he removed a heater shield, slinging it from his back by straps on it.

I blinked, trying to figure out how that chest had contained all of those items. It had to be like my magic pockets… some sort of chest of holding or something.

As I approached, he moved away and the chest vanished from the floor of the bank as if it had never been there. “Follow me… need to introduce you to someone, and then I have a… business proposal for you.” He walked purposefully through the throng, greeting players as we passed by and we moved towards a large open market with people exchanging glowing tokens. He explained that they were the hard currency form of credit. You could withdraw credit from the bank, or deposit it and add to your credit. Tokens had the value of their credit written on them in fine script, and couldn’t be duplicated.

There was a dizzying array of goods for sale all around the market, but it wasn’t really that crowded. “Welcome to your new home!” He pointed towards the strange walls around us.

“Has anyone actually made it out?” I asked and he shook his head. “Not that I’ve learned anyways, and I’ve been here for a while now. Not a really bad place, kind of fun actually.” He piped up and I frowned.

“Fighting monsters to keep your character alive is fun?” I said, and he shrugged.

“Not all of us fight, some earn their credit by crafting, others by just being useful. There are only about fifty players here in the hub at the moment, but we are growing rapidly in population, as more people are cast into the labyrinth. Seems like several kingdoms are beginning to fall in love with this method of getting rid of us players.”

“Most of the population here is actually NPCs, but you don’t see them much this far in the center. They are mostly in pocket enclaves all around the labyrinth.” he said when I asked him about what had been bugging me since I had landed here.

“Don’t mess with them though, or you will find yourself in hot shit, what the old lady said was right, you can’t be a dick and survive in here, the guardian won’t allow it. Trolls and greifers don’t last long, they get bored of being sent to respawn, or the punishment zone and just reroll their char.” He explained and I winced.

The thing was since the last update in Endaria, about two weeks ago or so I’d heard it now cost a ton of credits to get a new character.

I wasn’t worried since I could easily get a new one. My dad would have to pay but I could imagine it would become a burden. Every new character increased in cost, the price going up exponentially.

“So, what’s with the robes?” He pointed at my outfit and frowned. “They took all my stuff. How you keep yours?” He asked and when I told him he froze for a second and began to laugh.

“Man… that never occurred to me, so that stuff is like soulbound?” I shrugged. “No idea!” I grinned and he shook his head.

“They didn’t try to remove it from my body forcibly though, so I’m assuming they didn’t think it was worth the trouble. Had to swear I wasn’t carrying anything dangerous in them over a truth stone.” He chuckled and once again shook his head.

“We still have no idea why they do that, won’t make any difference here.” He pointed to everyone carrying weapons and armor.

“You can’t actually hurt anyone, and the guardian can read your mind to see if your being deceitful when trying to cause trouble. I mean you can try to hurt someone but it won’t go well.” He smirked at my expression.

“You’ll find out in any case. I’m sure you were some big bad criminal type like everyone else, but like I said, this place is a no asshole zone, so it’s not too bad actually.” He grinned at me and pushed back a messy lock of his long brown hair as we arrived at a curious tent that had a glowing blue glass smithy on one side and a man sitting at a desk working on an intricate device on the other.

He was a young man with curly black hair and a dark, almost yellowish complexion. His scared and battered fingers moved quickly through practiced motions and he popped a spring out and set it to the side of the device before Kirk gave a polite cough and he looked up.

“Oh yes! A fresh fishie! I was wondering when they would catch another!” He cackled and thrust a scarred palm out to me which I shook. His player tag identified him as Taizhou. His name glowed a fading dark red indicating he either is or was formally a player killer. I took a step back and he grinned when he saw me reading his tag.

“Not into that sort of thing anymore. I just fix things now. He pointed at my collar. “And I remove those.” He grinned.

“How many credits this time Taz?” Kirk asked and Taz paused for a moment and grinned. “thirty credits!” He said and Kirk groaned. “C-mon Taz, you know I bring you the best stuff, make it twenty credits, she’s a healer! I’ll bet I can get the council to lay off you a bit if you do this for me.”

Taz thought for a second then grinned. “Twenty-five! And that’s final!” Kirk grumbled darkly and pulled out a handful of glowing tokens, counting them out and handed them to Taz.

“You owe me big time fish! You better be a damm good healer!” Kirk growled and I nodded quickly. Taz slapped a stool down and knocked a heavy fist on it. I sat down, bringing my neck level to his hands as he examined my collar.

“Not a bad model, but I’ll get you out in a second, they must have been rushed. The key isn’t heavily encrypted.” He hummed to himself as he manipulated glowing tools and began to flex and turn a rod over the collar. After about twenty minutes, that I spent nervously fidgeting on the stool he gave a chortle of triumph and the collar popped off. I fell off the stool, losing my balance as my senses swam.

The world blurred around me before it resettled and my whole body tingled slowly. Looking back up I saw Kirk and Taz both peering down at me with concern, and a bit of shock. I lifted my hands and saw that they were glowing a faint sapphire blue twined with gold for a moment before the foxfire from around me faded and disappeared.

“What… the heck was that.” Kirk said and Taz shrugged before turning back to his work.

“Donno, never seen that happen, at least not like that before.” He remarked and began to cackle like some child with a new toy as he played with the discarded collar.

“Well you feel any better?” He asked an I nodded. I still felt a bit incomplete though without my statuette, or foci as the local NPCs had called it.

“Um… I’m a cleric but I don’t have a statuette to focus my power, anything I can do to fix that?” I asked and Kirk shrugged.

“No idea, ur asking the wrong person here. I’m still figuring out Endaria myself.” We walked towards the direction of the mess hall. There did seem to be few other occupants, but for the most part the building was empty.

A few NPCs were manning a large pot of stew on one side, and on the other there were sacks of supplies, ingredients, and a set of small cloth bags.

Kirk pointed me towards the pot of stew. The old woman standing there peered at me with interest. “New fish… ah that explains why you haven’t come for a shipment.” She ladled me a bowl of stew and handed it to me, and waved a stone in front of my new necklace.

Glancing over towards Kirk, I noticed that he paying for one of the cloth bundles instead. He carried it over to the table where I sat down.

I looked at the stew and realized that I didn’t have a spoon. When I asked Kirk, he smiled and pointed to my pack. I opened it up and found a small compact mess kit, it had a stamped metal spoon and fork/knife combo set. It also looked like the mess tin could unfold and be either a small bowl or frying pan.

“Don’t lose that thing by the way, they won’t give you anther for free. In fact, it’s probably best to bank that pack until you get your bearings.” He advised and I nodded.

He had unfolded the cloth bag, waving his hands to break some sort of enchantment and grinned when he opened a box that revealed bacon, eggs and a biscuit with gravy steaming in front of him. “Man, this is even better than I eat outside Endaria… ahhh.” He bit into a piece of bacon with a blissful expression while

As I ate my stew, I swear it tasted like the best dish I had ever eaten. I tried to remember when I had my last meal and wondered if it was back with those nice Fendwick people.

“I take it the really good food costs more credits…” I asked and he nodded. “Five credits for a bagged meal, you can eat them here or take them with you. They are spelled to stay hot and fresh. They get them in with some of the shipments from the outside.”

He stared at me as he ate, sizing me up. “So… what weapon do you prefer? Most people know how to use a knife or a gun from their militia training, but what did you use on the outside?” He asked curiously and I shrugged.

“Don’t really know how to fight… er at all.” I said as I greedily continued my meal. He frowned at me.

“Heh, you get a deferment or something from mandatory protectives training? I didn’t know that was possible outside the domes.” He chuckled.

“I’m a Texas Union citizen, and er my circumstances prevent me from receiving combat training.” I said and he nodded.

“Well you’re the second person I’ve run into that is like that, the other guy was disabled in real life and was in the same boat.” He said and pointed to his sword.

“I know several martial styles, and I train quite a bit outside the game. You’re going to have to use something more than just your power.” He leaned back and gave me a hard look.

“I know you magic types and your power will always burn out quickly. Its best used to augment some sort of weapon or use a crystal, staff, that sort of thing. I’ve seen how the other teams with magi work.” He bit into a thick slab of bacon and looked on in envy as he seemed to be lost in the bliss of his meal.

“I haven’t been in the hub for a few days, hard to find good food when I’m running the labyrinth unless I stop at an enclave.” He grinned at me as he spoke between bites and I smiled as I finished my stew, my stomach still feeling as it hadn’t quite been satiated.

I hadn’t exactly had many meals in Endaria, I had the feeling I wouldn’t care if the meat was actually rat or something as long as I could stomach it. What did surprise me was that I wasn’t really depressed or hopeless anymore. Somehow it felt like things could be alright. I guessed it was part of Kirk’s attitude, who seemed almost indifferent to life here in the labyrinth.

“So how do I repay you? I’m assuming you need a healer or something?” He nodded.

“Well there are other healers but none have been around the hub for a while now, those groups are pushing farther out into the labyrinth and mostly work with the enclaves, not the hub.” He explained.

“I’ve been trying to go solo, mostly just gear runs, scouting, or shipment escort, trying to get credit from selling stuff to the quota council or wrangling favors from them.” He said and I nodded.

“There really aren’t that many players in the labyrinth yet to make a big difference, but I do expect that to change. Other countries are shipping their problem offenders to Dawnwatch or other entry points.” He explained and pointed around.

“Wait, there are other places like this hub?” I asked and he shook his head. “Not exactly. The Magister’s Guild, they have portals they can toss us in, but everyone still ends up here. Their main base of operations is in Dawnwatch. I was tossed from Corinth.”

“There is a war nearby Dawnwatch by the way.” I said and he nodded. “Yea we know, the Underdark has been in the area giving the League a hard time, but no one is stupid enough to attack Dawnwatch, it’s a relic from before the cataclysm, and nearly impossible to assault.” He was reading a giant slate fixed to the far wall and pointed to the text scrolling across it. “We have a news service, mostly stuff about what goes on here in the labyrinth, but new fish like you also bring us info, and we also get reports in along with shipments.”