I was the last to wake, and when I left the coach, I found the girls all standing around a massive fruit basket and wine jar. The basket was large enough for an adult to sit comfortably inside. The fruits were an assortment of things like oranges, bananas, and peaches. There were a few others that I didn't recognize, many with what look like spines from my vantage. Snow was holding one of these with a bit of drool at the corner of her mouth.

I yawned as I walked toward them. "I suppose this means I didn't imagine a giant monkey last night." I kissed them all on the cheek, receiving them in return before I grabbed one of the spiky fruits to examine it. Snow, who seemed excited about them, called them pineapples. For some reason, a strange craving for something called Hawaiian pizza came to mind at the word. I shook off the thought before asking how someone is supposed to eat something like that while peeling a banana for Meera as she watched me with wide eyes for some reason. Maybe she has never seen a banana before, But then, why are both May and Snow looking at me strangely.

"What?" I asked as I peeled another for myself. Both only looked at each other then shook their heads before they too began picking a fruit to eat. May took a peach while Snow sat down and began working at the pineapple. "That seems like an awful lot of effort for a bit of fruit," I said between mouthfuls of banana. Snow shrugged before she popped a piece of yellow fruit in her mouth. She closed her eyes in bliss before offering some around to the rest of us. Meera took the first piece. She chewed it slowly before declaring bananas are better. Snow pinched her cheeks and smiled, telling her, "that's fine more for me."

After we ate our fill, Meera took the entire basket into her storage ring and was about to try and take the wine jar, but I grabbed her up first. Nice try there, squirt, but I think we will let momma hold onto that instead.

Meera clambered up my arm and sat on my shoulders, trying to see over the grass. "Papa, where is the big hole?" She asked as she kept looking around.

I shrugged. "I don't even know if it was even really there, hun." I watched May put away the coach and wine jug, and we headed toward the center of the cavern, I hope. Then a thought came to me are we even in the cavern? With all the mist, I can't tell anymore. "Snow, could you shoot an arrow at the ceiling, please?" Snow did as I asked, and we listened. We never heard the clatter of the arrow striking stone, but a few seconds later, the arrow landed in the grass off to our right aways.

May was the first to speak as we all stared in the direction of the arrow. "I see two possible explanations. We are not inside the cavern anymore, and we stepped into a teleportation formation without knowing. Two, we are inside an illusion formation, and we have been walking in circles while doing some trials set in place by a powerful cultivator long ago."

Meera piped in a look of excitement on her face, "Or maybe we are all asleep and sharing the same dream. She closed her eyes tightly. I want to see a dragon. I want to see a dragon." She chanted a few times before opening them, a pouting frown appearing on her face.

I patted her head in amusement before looking back to May. "Well, you know the most about this mystical stuff. What should we do? Then turned back to Meera, smiling down at her. Besides squirt, how can you dream a dragon into existence if you don't know what one looks like?" We all laughed at her wide eyes as realization struck.

A chuckle from behind us made us spin around weapons, ready for an attack that never came. In front of us was a white tiger standing not ten feet from us and eight feet tall at the shoulders. The tiger's eyes showed no malice, only amusement as she regarded our group, then a voice came from her direction even though her mouth never moved. "Well, now, it took you long enough to figure out about the formation. But don't worry, you are far from the slowest. I have come because our master has decided the next trial may be too much for the wolf child and the expectant mother. Don't worry, I will watch over them until you are done, but I will give you a piece of advice since the child amused me. This trial will be timed if you do not make it through within limits; the master will return you and your group outside the entrance you came from."

The tiger Meera and Snow faded into the fog with those words, leaving May and me to stare at the spot in astonishment. When we looked at each other, the landscape shifted, and we found ourselves standing on the edge of a cliff with a single nondescript door leading into the darkness. Over the top, a single word had been carved in loopy letters, Labyrinth.

At first, we took the labyrinth as a typical maze, and we sprinted through at our quickest pace. If we ran into a dead-end, we would backtrack and try another passageway until I stepped on the first trap. There was a click under my feet that made me look down then a shower of arrows flew from the walls on either side of us. Luckily the mechanism behind them was not very powerful and the arrows shattered on contact with our skin. Unfortunately, that shower of arrows also destroyed what little armor we still had.

May glared at me as she removed the shredded remains of her armor, revealing a tantalizing amount of skin in the process. However, when she tried to call a change of clothes from her storage ring, we found out that it had been blocked somehow. Needless to say, May was not happy. Not happy at all. Now I am traveling topless, and my mostly intact shirt was worn by May, looking more like a dress on her small form. From that point on, we made slower progress, I couldn't use my earth qi, but my air qi was able to spread out in front of us, giving us a few moments of warning when I sensed a void or hole in the corridor walls. Then we would stop and look around for whatever activated the trap. It was generally a loose stone in the floor, or a thin, almost invisible string strung across the corridor.

Hours later, we ran into our first staircase leading up into a large chamber. The moment we stepped inside, May's butterfly swords vanished along with my walking staff, making both of us curse since in front of us were two beings brandishing daggers our way. A moment later, two similar daggers appeared on the floor at our feet. We stared at the chipped and dented blades in bewilderment for a long second. When the two Charged toward us, we quickly grabbed them off the floor and got into position.

The enemies were the strangest creatures I had ever seen. They were bright red with skin that looked more like scales. Their faces were long with wide jaws, and a double row of razor-sharp teeth gleamed in the light of two torches on the walls. Behind them was a long tail swishing back and forth in rhythm with their movement. As they drew closer, we noticed spikes jutting from their backs and two horns on their heads. Their feet looked like a bird with two-inch claws that dug into the stone beneath their feet with every step.

We both relaxed as they got closer, and we could feel their lack of qi till we felt our own cultivation being suppressed until we felt like any normal human. Well, if a normal human had skin that normal iron couldn't hope to cut into no matter how strong the opponent. Of course, that's when I felt a nick to my arm. Looking over, I saw May staring at the small welling of blood from where she had just poked me. We both looked into each other's eyes and sighed. We both had the same thought; we hate this labyrinth.

Several minutes later, we both were panting in exhaustion as the two bi-pedal lizard-men faded into mist. I looked at May, wrapping her in a hug. "I will never complain about your training ever again, my beautiful teacher." She closed her eyes and smiled before telling me she told me so. After the two bodies vanished entirely, a wooden chest appeared in their place. We walked over, keeping our eyes moving in case of a trap, and carefully examined the plain wood chest for several minutes before I tentatively lifted the lid, staying off to the side after getting a warning from my wise wife.

When the lid was fully open, the chest vanished, leaving five copper discs roughly the size of a coin: a roughly hewn wooden bow and a quiver with seven arrows with rusty iron tips. Finally, a short sword with so many nicks that it might as well be a serrated blade. May took the short sword and cringed while examining it before handing it to me and accepting the bow and arrows instead. Not sure what to do with the copper discs, I put them in my shirt pocket, winking at May as my hand brushed her side.

After discussing things for a bit, we decided to stop hurrying if we fail due to the time limit, so be it. So what if we fail? We will go back to our little cave with fluffy and wait out the storm. So we took our time to thoroughly search every room for traps before moving on to the next. We ran across more lizard people, sometimes in larger groups, sometimes a single one but better equipped. By the time we made it to the next set of stairs, we had accumulated around a hundred copper discs and somewhat better weapons and armor. Instead of the rags we wore when we arrived on the floor, we had mostly intact leather armor, and we each carried a long sword of okay quality. May still carried the same wooden bow, but she had a full quiver of steel-tipped arrows now.