Chapter 3 The Maze Returns.
Chapter three
The Maze Returns.
Percy Flores
The first thing I was aware of was the pain at the back of my head, which ached with my pulse. Then I became aware of the burning hot sensation that stung my right side and the similar pain in my right shin up to my knee. It was like one side of me had been badly beaten.
“Percy, baby?” I heard Dylan’s voice.
“Dylan?” I asked.
Why was he here? Where was here?
My mind felt groggy, like I had held my breath a bit too long and all that mattered was breathing, breathing through the pain, and the pulsing in my ears.
“Percy!” he said excitedly. Too loudly, and I flinched away from the sound. “You’re awake. You’re okay,” he continued.
“Where are we?” I asked, trying to open my eyes; it stung, and I struggled to keep them open.
It was the dark grey of twilight; the stars twinkled above me, and I realised I was being carried.
But not by Selene. Selene’s shoulders weren’t as broad, yet I was more secure when in her grip, safer.
I looked around despite the way it made my head pound.
Dylan was carrying me. He looked different.
His floppy blond hair was cut much shorter, almost like the cuts the boys would get back home in the summer, when it got too hot, and one of the old men would bring out the clippers and all the boys would line up to be sheared like sheep.
He also had the shadow of a beard; it made his jaw sharper.
“We’re in the maze of Ardens,” he answered.
The memory of running as fast as I could away from the True North rebels flooded my mind painfully. Forcing me to close my eyes.
“But don’t worry, I’m here, and I’m going to get you out of here and keep you safe,” he promised.
Keep me safe? Get me out? What was he even doing here?
“Once we’re back in Halvorsen, you’ll understand everything,” he continued.
“Halvorsen?” I asked.
What was in Halvorsen? I couldn’t go to Halvorsen; Selene wouldn’t allow it.
“Selene,” I said.
The pain in my side wasn’t mine. I wasn’t sure what other aches belonged to Selene or if the rest were mine alone. But that pain. That was what forced me down the hill towards the mansion in the first place. It was the rebels who made me change course to the maze.
“Selene needs me,” I protested. “Put me down.”
“Calm down, Percy. You’re in no state to walk. She doesn’t need anything from you. You’re safe now. She can’t hurt you anymore,” he told me.
I was shocked into a moment of dumbfounded silence before so much fury reared up within me at his words, and I began shouting and hitting his chest with my fist.
“Put me down!” I roared. “Are you seriously…after everything that happened…what is wrong with you?”
I was so full of unexpected anger. After the night of the Summer Ball, the way he stupidly betrayed me, his insistence that I was somehow under enchantments, how wrong he was proven then, but he was still riding the same horse.
“Calm down,” he said again.
I hit him harder.
“Calm down? You put me down, right now!” I practically screamed.
Selene needed me. I had to get back to her.
“I think you should listen to your girlfriend.” I turned to see who had spoken and saw an older man with dark, short hair and a face full of lines.
“Girlfriend?” I questioned, “I’m not his girlfriend,” I corrected and turned back to Dylan, “And if you don’t put me down now, I won’t even be your friend,” I warned.
The maze felt different from before, more agitated, and Dylan stumbled as the ground beneath us moved and upturned like a serpent slithering just beneath the surface.
“Not your girlfriend, eh?” Another man, younger, familiar in his appearance, if it weren’t for the green uniform he wore, the same as Dylan and the older man, I’d have thought he was part of True North.
Uniforms?
“Who are you?” I demanded, catching the eye of the older man who had walked towards Dylan.
“I’m Fredrick,” he answered, then he turned to Dylan. “You should put the girl down.”
“She can’t walk. You saw how her leg was injured,” Dylan defended, and I hated that all my whacks to his chest seemed to deter him not one bit.
“That isn’t for you to decide,” Fredrick told him.
“Dylan, I swear if you don’t put me down now—"
I was cut off by the ground rumbling, shaking violently beneath us and causing Dylan to lose his footing and release me.
I fell to the ground.
The landing hurt, and I gasped in pain.
I gripped my trouser leg; it was stained dark, and I carefully pulled the fabric up to reveal my swollen shin. The skin was bruised; such a deep blue it appeared almost black and was cracked open, grisly flesh visible, and blood seeping. What had happened to me?
The earth continued to rumble and growl, like an angry animal, before it split, and a wall, like a wave, erupted from the ground, fiercely. The younger man with Dylan screamed and ran from the wall; it was as if the maze were chasing him.
Everything happened so fast and so strangely cartoonish, like the strips in a newspaper, that it almost wasn’t real.
One moment, he was trying desperately to outmanoeuvre the wall that moved through the earth like an angry sea creature, and the next, he was…
squished, smashed between two walls like a bug.
The only evidence that he had even been there in the first place was a discarded shoe and blood leaking from the cracks.
“The Gods have mercy on us, does Ketos dwell within the sea or beneath the earth?” Fredrick gasped.
“Don’t look, Percy,” Dylan demanded, having crawled to my side and trying to turn my face away.
“Enough!” I shouted at Dylan, pushing his hands away from me. “Why are you here?” I demanded to know. “Why are you in Ardens, in this maze?”
“We’re here for you, girl,” Fredrick answered. “You’re something special, apparently, and we’ve been sent to get you out of here and to safety.”
“You knew of the attack from True North?” I accused.
“We got intel about a week ago that something was planned,” Dylan answered.
“We didn’t know it would be on this scale,” Fredrick continued, “But we’re here for you.
Saw you come in here, and we blew a hole right in the side to get to you.
Bloody stupid thing to do. That boy you just saw splattered tried to warn us.
Said only death was waiting for us in here.
We should have listened.” He shook his head and looked away from where his dead friend was.
“Listen, Percy. This is just a maze. It’s just an enchantment,” a bird cawed loudly above us. “See that,” Dylan smiled, and it was almost like I remembered, carefree, boyish. “That’s how we get out of here: we follow that crow, it’s guiding us to the centre,” he explained.
“And a path to freedom will open,” I said.
“Exactly.” He smiled.
I shook my head. The maze was angry. It wouldn’t let us reach the centre.
“It’s angry,” I said, “I don’t know how to explain it, but I think I can feel the maze, sort of.
Before you decided to blow a hole in it, it was quiet and peaceful, like it was protecting me.
Now, it’s upset. It never moved like that with me, alone.
The walls appeared slowly, carefully, turned me around gently,” I explained.
“Why do you think it's upset now?” Fredrick asked.
I shrugged. “Might have something to do with blowing it up,” I suggested.
Was the maze sentient? Was it thinking? Did it really have feelings? Was it even truly alive? How far did inter-coven magic go to create a truly living monster?
“You think we’re not getting out of here?” Fredrick asked.
“We just follow the crow!” Dylan said angrily, pushing himself to his feet and helping me to stand. I wanted to push him away, but I knew I couldn’t stand or walk on my own. Not with my leg in the shape it was, I could hardly put any weight on it.
“That hasn’t been working for a while now. We need to try something different,” Fredrick replied.
“Have you got a better plan?” Dylan asked indignantly, and I knew he was upset at being questioned; it was in his tone, in the way his back stiffened.
“No, but maybe Percy does,” Fredrick suggested and set his stare on me.
I nodded.
“Sasha, a Petra witch, told me that the maze was created by inter-coven magic. That it was Petra and Flores’ magic that made the maze. She said,” I hesitated. “She said we could control it, her and me, together,” I explained.
“There’s no Petra witch here,” Fredrick replied softly.
“No, but I am Flores, and I think — I think maybe I could control it. I mean, it didn’t seem to have a problem with me before you lot turned up.
Maybe I can, I don’t know, speak to it with my magic.
Maybe I could calm it enough that we could follow that crow to the centre and then receive a clear path out? ” I suggested.
Fredrick nodded. “It’s worth a try,” he agreed.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Percy, you’re injured. You can hardly stand, and now you want to try to use your magic? It’s too dangerous. I won’t allow it. You could die,” Dylan protested.
“You won’t allow me?” I questioned, astonished. “Since when have I taken orders from you? Since when have you had any authority over me and my magic and what I can and can’t do?”
“I’m the captain of this mission. Everyone is under my authority here.
I know you might not like it, Percy, but I’m not just a servant student, I am the Lord heir of Viridis, I have standing, and I’m not just a foot soldier in this war,” he told me sternly.
“I need to make decisions; sometimes, difficult decisions, but decisions that keep the most people alive and push forward the cause of The New Foundation. This isn’t a game.
And you’re an asset that we can’t risk losing,” he continued and lowered his voice almost pleading, “I can’t risk losing you,” he finished.