Exquisite Ruin (The Labyrinth #1)

Chapter 2 #2

“There’s another possibility,” Daesra says, continuing on. “That love has nothing to do with the monster in this place.”

“Never mind that you suggested it,” I mutter at his back.

“Maybe someone is using this creature, harnessing its power,” he says, ignoring me, and raises his arms to the hedges surrounding us both. “This maze is like an endless tangle of rope tying down the beast within—a binding, trapping it.”

I’d already had a thought like that, so it’s not too strange to consider. “And we have to untangle it.”

He gives a nod as if to the obvious.

Arrogant as he might be, he’s unfortunately proving himself right in some respects. Once again, the way forward takes us deeper into the maze, no dead ends in sight.

“But if this is like unraveling the knots of a binding, as you claim,” I say, gesturing at the dark stone path, “then don’t we risk freeing it?”

“That’s why we have to kill it as well.”

My mind spins, grasping for threads as if to tie myself down. “So there’s someone out there who wanted this creature trapped because they were unable to kill it for love or lack of strength, or because they’re harnessing its power, and now we’re meant to defy this someone’s wishes.” I wait for only a few taps of the daemon’s hooves, both of us weaving between statues. I’m managing walking and talking and surreptitious scrutiny with far less grace than he is. “And who is setting us against them? Whose task are we completing? For if it’s not that of”—I glance around—“the apparently divine maker of this maze, then it’s someone else. Someone who is using me to kill what someone of great power could or would not. Someone whom I pushed or irritated enough, as you say, to give me this task. A task with great risk and great reward.”

Daesra shrugs. “Maybe they’re dirtying your hands when they would keep their own clean. Which also means the maze-maker and the taskmaster could be the same. Who can say?”

You can , I snarl silently. Or at least I think he can, but he doesn’t give me any information until he wants me to have it. Which might be never .

“In any case, you would do well to beware this place’s maker,” he adds, stopping at a frame of pale stone in the hedge.

It’s not part of an emerging sculpture, I realize, when I turn to face it fully, but a window . I see what could be another dozen like it, spaced evenly in the living wall and stretching ahead of us between clambering statues now frozen in more agitated poses.

Beyond the window frame is nothing… if nothing were an ocean. Devouring nothingness. I’m looking out at a strip of beach that gives way to endless turbulent gray water under a starless sky, the crashing waves utterly relentless, annihilating, seeming to suck at the hopeless sand they beat against. I see the vague skeletons of ships poking up in the distant depths, ruins of a lost civilization. The scene steals my breath and the vitality from me at the same time, it is so striking and dead.

I’ve just seen the maze from above. There was no ocean, only passages stretching and twisting to the horizon. That view was already impossible, but this is even more so, and far beyond unsettling. It’s like a window to an entirely different world, except one I can reach through and touch.

A horribly dead world.

I blink, coming back to myself when I feel a hand on my shoulder. Daesra’s. Slow and firm, he draws me away from the window. I feel his warmth like a hearth fire against a bitter night. For a moment, I want to lean back into him, tuck myself into his chest, wrap myself in him like a blanket. Or armor.

But that would be absurd, never mind dangerous. Because he’s dangerous—I need to remember that, no matter how comforting he might appear alongside this .

“I would advise you not to dwell on the view,” he says. Only in the hidden shadows of his voice can I hear his own disquiet.

But something in me can’t help it, like a child staring at a desiccated carcass in the woods, the bones whispering a story only the wind can hear. Daesra follows, hooves clicking behind me on the smooth stone, as I hurry on to the next window. The next sea.

It is different. And the same. The view and light are from another angle, the rubble of ancient castles in the waves instead of ships, but the death is constant. I know the other windows will show the like. Other views, other oceans, but all with the same intention.

To devour. And I realize the ocean might not be the only hungry, dead thing out there. Huge shapes move within it, their backs barely breaching the surface. I should be relieved at the possible sign of life, but they seem as starved and monstrous as the rest of it.

I realize the sculptures’ poses are all more frantic. Almost as if they’re running away, deeper into the maze, consternation in their nervous glances and frowning lips.

“Can you imagine if those waters get in here?” The daemon’s words are less a comfort now. “Maybe the mist is but a mere taste. If we fail in the maze and we’re left swimming in that , drowning for eternity?” Daesra points out the window. “Well, eternity for me. Death might be a mercy then.”

This is even worse than the screaming face on the back of a butterfly. I feel like screaming.

“We’re in a maze surrounded by death,” I murmur, wishing I could sound less terrified.

“Like I said, beware the maker,” Daesra says, only smooth arrogance now. “Oh, look, that’s not even the worst of it!”

I move to the last window and realize it’s not a window at all, but a mirror, its silvery surface flaking. A crack runs right down the center, first cutting me in half, and then separating me from Daesra when he steps farther into the frame and I shift to keep distance between us. It’s something to distract me from my bone-deep dread of the oceans, at least. I glare at him, noticing my eyes are a vibrant green. The exact opposite of his red. Flowing white tunic to his crisp black folds. My hair like fire, his like smoke.

Seeing my own face is like looking at someone else. I don’t recognize it—I look young, perhaps barely out of my second decade. By now Daesra is more familiar to me.

“Is this supposed to frighten us as well?” I ask, trying to make my words light, but they come out threadbare. “As if what is inside us could be worse than those other views?”

Daesra’s eyes don’t leave mine. “You don’t know what’s inside you.”

“I’m not afraid of myself,” I say, willing it to be true. “This place, however…”

“You might take some solace in the fact that we’re in here and not out there. See the statues?” He nods at them. “They seem to be running for safety. Maybe that’s an indication that we have some means of protection in this maze from what’s outside.”

“While I appreciate your attempt to make them out as anything but disturbing, it strains credulity. Leastwise because we’re headed for a monster.” I shudder at a sudden thought, turning away from the mirror quicker than I did from the oceans. “Maybe these waves are driving us toward it.”

First the mist, then the butterflies, now this. And we’ve barely begun. My knees feel weak and my breath is shallow, as if that terrible tide is already lapping at my body, leaving only chill and salted earth in its wake.

“And you, unlike lifeless chunks of stone, are supposedly capable of handling it. Or so you led someone to believe.”

“But I don’t remember any of that!” I burst, spinning back to him, panic rising in my voice against my will. Any grip I have on my composure is slipping, and I don’t know what will happen if I lose it. “I don’t even know who I am! I don’t know how to properly hold my power, and I—”

“The Sadaré I knew was more capable than I could have wished,” Daesra hisses, leaning toward me. After my view of those dead oceans—and maybe even of the unfamiliarity of my reflection—I appreciate his heat, his life force, his strange consistency , if that’s what I’m calling it, and so for a moment I forget to lean away. “While I’m reluctant to give you any advantage you could try to use against me, deceitful creature that you are, it’s a mark against me as your guide to leave you in such a pathetic state.” His face is very close to mine now, his voice low. “Do you want me to teach you how to gather your strength? Only beware that I have a firm hand in my direction.”

His words are a caress against my cheek, and I hear the seductive beckoning more than the warning.

“Yes?” I say, with more doubt than certainty, but that’s enough for him.

He twists my arm behind my back, cranking my torso away from him, before I can blink. I cry out in incoherent rage and claw at him with my free hand.

“You think that’s enough to stop me?” he asks, unmoved. Meanwhile, his seeking fingers find the cuff around my right forearm, untying the rope. I try to spin away from him, but he turns with me in a perverse dance.

“Why are you doing this?” I shriek, scrabbling ineffectively at his grip, his face.

He only leans back with his long reach. “Because you need to be strong if you’re going to make it to the end. I can make it, but I unfortunately require your presence. So you will learn what I have to teach.”

A sharp tug, and the rope comes loose, granting me momentary relief. His motions are sure, quick, as he loops it back around my elbow in a new configuration, pinching my arm up behind my back in a sling. It doesn’t hurt much, but it’s certainly not comfortable, and I’m frightfully vulnerable. A few more passes of his hands while he pins me in place, and I get another flash of memory, less visual and more like the remembrance of my body from before, except this time it isn’t a horrible memory. Quite the opposite. Breath hot on my neck, teeth nipping my throat, fingers caressing my skin even as rope bites down, holding me down and yet setting my mind blissfully adrift at the same time—and then Daesra cinches his knot tight, dragging me back from past sensation into the clarity of the present, and I gasp in fury.

My arm is tied like a bird’s wing against my back, trapped by a strange shoulder harness that could only be designed for discomfort—and as a painful predicament. While the rope itself doesn’t hurt much, straining for the knot is agony.

Now Daesra allows me to face him, one-armed. I’m practically spitting, sputtering, no words forthcoming.

His words are, as he regards me with something close to satisfaction. “If I cause you pain without your express wish—if anyone other than you does—you can’t use it to conjure anything unless you somehow find a way to embrace the pain. You’re only fighting me now, despite your professed desire for my instruction. So I’ve merely led you like a stubborn donkey to water with such a bridle.” He gestures at my binding. “Fancy a drink yet?”

With another cry, I writhe for the rope with my other hand, wrenching my shoulder as I do. I jerk part of the knot free, but my arm is still caught. After the initial burst of agony, my flesh and bones settle into a low, humming burn of pain, helpless against the binding. And yet I’m not helpless. My immobilized limb is just another sacrifice. Another form of surrender.

That’s when I feel it— far more than I had when gouging my arm with my nails.

Warmth blossoms. While one hand is bound, a ball of flame the size of a skull appears in my other, flaring blue and hotter than a forge. And it doesn’t fade, not with the pain and sacrifice still wrapped up in the binding. I raise it, preparing to throw it through the daemon’s chest.

He takes a step to the side, nimble on his hooves. A smile lifts the corner of his mouth. “Look at you. You’re ready to burn—with a little nudge in the right direction.”

There’s pride in the daemon’s tone, but it’s thick with condescension. I hate him more than I thought possible in so little time. Which means our story is about as deep, dark, and unfathomable as this maze.

“My strength is not to your credit,” I spit, “and I’m not some fawning novice to train!” Never mind a stubborn donkey , which I won’t even dignify by mentioning.

“Aren’t you?” he asks lightly, and then shakes his head. “No. But it’s rather because I don’t think you’re worthy, not the other way around.”

I feel the stinging slap of the words and curse myself for a fool. His regard is meaningless to me, and I have no desire to be beholden to him. But he did show me something. I’d been figuring it out on my own, but this is a leap in the right direction. Understanding of how to harness my pain—literally—and store it, begins to dawn on me.

“Trust me, the level of regard is mutual. Now untie me,” I grate, keeping my fire raised to punctuate the demand.

“You don’t want to keep that strength tapped?”

“I’ll tap it myself, under my own control. With my own intention.” I know the pain becomes much more powerful that way, even if I did grant him permission, however uncertainly, to show me how to use it. Besides, I’m still vulnerable like this if I suddenly need mobility instead of firepower, and he knows it.

Daesra smirks at me a moment longer than necessary—another moment for my hatred to deepen—and then he slides around me, keeping my summoned flame in careful view. My instinct is to pivot with him, to never show my back to him again. But I have to let him untie me.

I’m still tempted to burn him. Singeing the tip of his tail wasn’t nearly enough, especially now that I have more fire to work with. I want to turn him to ash.

But I resist even looking over my shoulder as the daemon steps fully behind me—unnecessarily close—with a scuff of hooves over stone. His broad frame looms out of the corner of my eye, his body heat palpable, his breath at my ear. I get the sense that he’s deliberately trying to cow me with his presence. But I don’t let myself fear him. I barely acknowledge him. I won’t give him the satisfaction.

He’s a distraction I can’t afford, besides. I need to focus on the maze. It’s something much bigger than me. Much bigger than him .

My arm comes free, bringing a wash of warm relief, then stinging needles as my blood returns. I show the daemon my side. A statement of indifference but not vulnerability or overconfidence. I resist rubbing my wrist and meet his eyes unflinchingly.

“Tell me how this is possible. Please,” I add, after an intentional delay. “This power I use through pain.”

“Since you said please ,” the daemon says sardonically.

He brushes by me as he starts forward again, nudging me harder than he had the last time, taking the lead and continuing down the passageway. I have the urge to trip him, but the thought of his hoof potentially crushing my toes stops me. Instead I follow him, swallowing a snarl, wondering if he’ll even answer me. I hate that I have to ask him, but he’s my only source of knowledge for the time being. Besides, I wouldn’t mind hearing someone’s voice in this strange place, even if it’s his.

He surprises me by speaking a moment later, just long enough to leave me waiting—an intentional delay in payment for my own, most likely. “Aether is the power you are using. Well”—he waves his hand at me as I hurry to catch up to him—“that you’re transmuting into more comprehensible elements like fire and air, because it doesn’t belong to this realm. It’s the fifth element. The first element, actually, but humans are so full of hubris, counting ‘their’ elements first.” He nods when he sees me glance at my palm in surprise, where I’d summoned fire. “Yes, lowly mortal, it’s not only power granted by the gods, but also their very breath that you’re using so readily. You remember the old saying, ‘I gasp with effort and gain a breath from Heaven in return.’ No?”

I glare at him, careful to dodge a running statue as I do. “You know I can’t remember.”

“This is like talking to a child,” he murmurs. “Fortunately, I’m brimming with patience.” He doesn’t need to look where he’s going to avoid the statues, casually picking at his long black nails as he walks. “Aether isn’t really conceivable in the mortal realm. It’s neither hot nor cold, wet nor dry, hard nor soft. In the realm of the gods, it’s their air, what they live and breathe. In the mortal realm, it most easily transmutes to fire. But one can do anything with it, if they know how. It’s pure potential. Meanwhile, the gods themselves are limited in how they can use it, defined by their indelible boundaries.”

“Boundaries?” I ask, flexing my sore arm.

“Strange to think of them as confined , yes, like you in your pathetic flesh?” As he passes a nearby statue, frozen in motion, he flicks its shoulder with a surprisingly loud clink.

His nails must be strong—a thought that makes me shiver as I imagine them pressing into skin. My skin aches in anticipation where he gripped me before—not out of fear, but from something more eager. I shake myself in disgust. It’s one thing to be intrigued by pain, quite another by him .

“But what makes the gods so pure traps them,” he continues, “their immutable natures. The god of rivers, or of the seasons, or of the harvest—rather specific, no, with distinct boundaries? There are ways for them to try to circumvent their limitations, of course, but they by and large have to play by certain rules that we don’t. Within the realm of their abilities, they have strength beyond a mortal’s wildest dreams. And yet in the mortal realm, we’re freer to use aether however we want—provided the appropriate offering is made.”

“If aether doesn’t exist here, how can we use it at all?” I frown, knowing I should know this, frustrated that I don’t. “Why is pain the doorway?”

“That’s a long story involving the gods, and I hate talking about them. I’ll stick with my next-to-least favorite topic—witches.” He grins down at me, once again too close, his clean, musky scent washing over me. I flush as I realize my body is tipping toward him, and I pull myself away. I want to lean into his warmth, even his strength—but only so I can imagine it as my own, I tell myself firmly. “Simply consider pain an offering for which you are granted aether in return. Some of you even enjoy the self-affliction—those who don’t bind others to suffer on your behalf.” He waves down at me. “And so here you are, drawing on the breath of the gods by offering up your blood. Hence, leeches .”

“I gathered where you were going with that,” I snap. It’s still odd—and even unnerving—to associate pain with power, but so be it. No wonder some of us start to enjoy the feeling. I gesture back at him. “And where do you come in, daemon?”

He smirks. “Maybe I’ll tell you if you ask more nicely.”

But I already know the answer. Or at least I’ve guessed it, based on what little he’s given me. “Daemons are demigods gone astray—rather, outside of their divine natures. Demigods only have powers granted to them by their divine parentage, some aspect of that god’s. Which make daemons something like witches, then—we both possess the ability to reach for aether in our own way.”

Daesra shrugs, though I can sense his irritation in the stiff line of his shoulder—only more proof that he doesn’t like me having any information that he didn’t give me. “Daemons are far superior to witches.”

“You still use bindings and pain, like we do, to surpass your limitations. And yet you call us leeches, when you possess far more capacity to draw blood than we do, with your immortality.”

Endless capacity, I think. Endless pain . The thought might be repellent to some.

To me, it’s intoxicating.

He pauses to allow me to squeeze through a tight space between two statues—we’re amidst a group of them struggling against each other in their more frenzied flight down the long passageway. His seeming gallantry only heightens my wariness. I refuse to show him fear, but I’m also not foolish enough to show him my back any longer than necessary. I wait for him to catch up before we both continue down the corridor together, the daemon shifting slightly ahead. He obviously enjoys leading as much as he does doling out bits of information for me to follow like breadcrumbs. To always maneuver for the upper hand.

He gives me a sly, knowing smile as he resumes his explanation. “A demigod might be able to manipulate water, for example, or make flowers bloom, deflect swords, or possess strength five times a normal human’s, but nothing else. They’re forced to obey someone else’s nature.” He gestures at the indifferent sky above. “But thanks to the taint of humanity, demigods have a choice , unlike their divine parent, to reach beyond. To bind that godly part of themselves to unleash their full potential, like a witch would bind their flesh or that of another human in exchange for aether. But, as I said, superior.”

This time, when Daesra flicks a statue, it bursts into rubble.

I leap away involuntarily, but he merely keeps walking. I wonder at how fine the chunks of stone are, how much power that little demonstration would have required, and then I follow the daemon ever more warily. Grudging admiration seeps up from somewhere deep inside me. I wish I could bury it, even if it’s only for his strength, not for him .

“You mean corrupting your nature,” I say. “At least witches haven’t bound their souls to become such.”

“And you’re so much better?” He scoffs, his tail lashing once behind him. “If I’ve corrupted my nature, you’re still corrupting aether along with me. I would say we’re the same, except I’m stronger. Being weaker isn’t a virtue.”

It’s my turn to shrug. “As I see it, I’m just using the tools given to me as a mortal. You’re using your already unfair advantage to imitate us and gain excess power that you don’t even need.”

His red eyes narrow down at me. “Back when I was still afflicted by the limitations of divinity, I had my own challenges to face.”

I sneer. “Only with some godlike ability to help you, yes? Which?”

He clicks his tongue. “I’m not telling that story again. I won’t repeat myself so soon.”

“But when did you—?” I falter.

“Ah, you’ve forgotten our past conversations? Not my constraint to overcome.”

My sudden anger burns as hot as my flame did. “Do you find the constraints you’ve set upon your own soul bearable, daemon?” I’d much rather deride his dark bargain than be jealous. I wait for my words to register; the only indication is a shadowing of his eyes. I smile. “It must be agonizing, such a binding on your deepest self. Tell me, how does it feel?”

“Pain is power.” He smiles back at me coldly. “And I love how you presume to judge me, without even knowing who you are or what you’ve done.”

I refuse to take the bait, so he can’t refuse to answer my questions. The explanation of how aether functions must not have offered me any advantage at this point, which is why he gave it so freely. Not simply because I asked nicely—begged, more like.

“Let’s carry on, shall we?” I suggest, moving around him, showing him my back more confidently than before, if only because it will irk him. I rebind my arm as I navigate through the statuary and increasingly leafy hedges. I lace my limb to the front, this time, in a much more natural sling, but still too tight for comfort. I understand how now, and my hand moves with quick precision and forgotten practice. My other bindings are still tight enough to fuel my fire, but immobility is even better. More of an offering, more aether in return.

I walk swiftly, half hoping to stay ahead of the daemon, but he matches my pace without difficulty. For a while, we walk in silence, only the clack of his hooves echoing on stone. My free arm swings; the other tingles and aches dully.

I have to pause and blink when the way forward changes almost before my eyes, strange angles materializing between the hedges as we get closer. The path splits not side to side, but up and down. Two sets of black stone stairs bend in opposite directions, leading out of sight within walls of greenery.

I don’t need Daesra to tell me which way to go. The words come to me unbidden.

“Forward and always down,” I murmur.

We already learned the forward part, but he was right—I can feel the pull downward as if in my bones.

“But not the only key,” he says, apparently needing to sound more knowledgeable than me at all times. “That may work when there’s a middle path like before, or a downward path like now, but what happens when we’re presented with only two choices, such as left or right? Or what if the only way down is a deadly drop?”

A less comfortable thought nags at me. “Why down ?” How is perhaps the better question. This place is already impossible, and I’m only scratching at the surface.

He nods down the stairs. “All of this, I believe, is built layers upon layers over something deep and dark. The only true way forward is down.”

“Ah, like that well you threatened to abandon me in with broken fingernails?” I say it casually; I don’t want him to know how much his little speech frightened me. How much it reminded me what it feels like to be helpless.

He faces me, his expression bright. “The very same! You learn quickly—when you listen.”

I grit my teeth and don’t answer him, instead starting down the steps. When they level off into a new passageway, the only indication that we’ve descended is that the hedge walls stretch taller. When I look back, trying to see where the other set of stairs rose, there’s no sign of it, only that grayish sky above. My stomach lurches queasily as my eyes try to make sense of the shift in reality. Can the maze change behind us—or even before us, based on the choices we make?

The hedges are not only taller as we move forward, but more overgrown, overtaking many of the sculptures, whose poses are more disturbed—running, stumbling, grimacing over their shoulders as they flee, even the animals. Sometimes, the maze’s stone occupants are only evidenced by a pale hand or face or pair of horns emerging from the greenery. Our steps become more muffled as the black stone beneath our feet becomes blanketed with moss.

“Is it just me,” I say when I can’t help it any longer, “or are the walls starting to look a bit smothering?”

“Personally, I wish certain other presences were less smothering,” Daesra says, “but now that you mention it, they do look hungry.”

Especially where the greenery is literally swallowing the statuary. While the vines and flowers wreathed necks and heads before, now they’re strangling, suffocating. Mouths open in silent panic, eyes rolling back in their sockets.

That’s when I hear the cry. It’s plaintive and pitiful—an animal noise, but one so desperate it plucks a string I didn’t know threaded through me. My head jerks toward it like a puppet’s. The sound seems to have come from up ahead—a hidden turn in the hedge that I can see only when I’m looking directly at it. It’s less a fork and more an offshoot. Not forward.

And yet something in me shifts, something forgotten and deep, stretching and yawning, awakening fully, and then my feet are moving in the direction of the sound.

“That’s probably a trap,” Daesra says. “Never mind the wrong way.” And then I hear his muttered “Fool” behind me when I don’t stop.

He doesn’t follow this time, when I turn the corner.

“If you don’t die,” he calls, “I’ll be waiting for you up ahead.”

The words make me pause for a moment. His willingness to help me only extends so far, of course. Perhaps it’s unwise to go off without him. And yet his intentions, never mind the quality of his help when he deigns to give it, are entirely dubious anyway. I have no reason to trust him. Maybe I should be relieved to get free of him.

When I hear the desperate cry again, there’s no hesitation within me. I run toward the source of it—and away from Daesra.