XII
The stone beneath his feet shuddered violently, a deep furious groan rippling through the corridor as if the Labyrinth had drawn in a sharp breath. Dust rained down from above. The walls flexed, tightening by inches as though the passage was clenching around him.
Corin swore and staggered back, nearly tripping over Taleon’s body again as his heart slammed against his ribs.
“That was a mistake,” he breathed out. “I’m sorry!”
The Labyrinth answered in fury.
A sharp cry thundered through the darkness—high, furious, and intense. It rolled toward him not as a sound but as pressure, vibrating through his body. The floor trembled in anticipation of something large and charging directly towards him.
Then, another shriek. And another.
Three cries emanating from darkness and getting louder by the moment.
Harpies.
Corin spun just as the corridor behind him tore open and three harpies burst into sight.
They were a bit larger than Corin with wings spanning the length of the hallway easily. The Labyrinth seemed to widen its halls for them to fit their entire wingspan into as they flapped towards him.
They sharply called out his name in unison, and Corin glanced back to see their faces ragged and dripping with some sort of eerie liquid. Their dark brown feathers were coated in something even darker as they reflected the light from the golden veins. Blood.
Corin tripped again, stumbling only slightly but enough for one of the harpies to barely graze him with her wing. He bolted down the corridor, boots slipping on damp stone as the harpies had no problem flying above.
The sounds were deafening: stone cracking, sharp roaring noises, haunting whispers of his name.
His foot caught on something hard and solid, shoving his body forward. He just managed to catch himself on the wall before tumbling over. It only took a moment, but that was a moment he didn’t have to give.
One of the harpies reached out and grazed his ankle. He pressed his body forward, hoping they hadn’t gotten too close to him in his stumble. He kept running, sprinting down the hall as fast as he had ever run before.
The Labyrinth twisted again. A side hall yawned open to Corin’s left just slightly ahead without warning, stone sliding apart wide enough to offer an alternate route.
He didn’t hesitate. He threw himself into the opening, crashing into the wall, as one of the harpies reached out right where he had been standing.
Corin kept running. It took a moment for the monsters to turn down the hall, giving him a bit of momentum to escape them. Where he was going, he wasn’t sure, but he needed to get out of their sight as quickly as he could.
If he made it away from these winged beasts, he would never say another name again.
The hall marred sharply, forcing Corin to angle his shoulders and duck low. It would be too low for the harpies to comfortably fly through, but the relief that realization brought didn’t last long enough. They tore through the stone.
“Move, move!” Corin begged of himself, his lungs burning. “Go!”
Another harpy shrieked his name as the passage twisted, dipped, rose. Corin’s legs screamed. His vision blurred. Behind him, the winged beasts were slamming into the walls and each other as they chased after him. They were undeterred. Unstoppable.
Then Corin saw it. Another door appeared just ahead.
It didn’t slide against the stone this time. One second it wasn’t there and the next, it was wide and open and welcoming. It was an opening rimmed faintly with gold, light spilling through it like a held breath first released.
Once again, Corin didn’t question it. He dove.
And this time, he was lucky. The moment he crossed the threshold, the door slammed shut behind him with a thunderous crack. The impact knocked him forward, and he hit the floor hard, skidding across smooth stone as the harpies’ cries cut off abruptly as if strangled.
Silence followed.
Not the heavy, hostile quiet he experienced before, but something softer. Familiar. Safer.
Corin lay there for a moment, chest heaving and palms burning as every muscle trembled. He had never run that fast before, and his body was clearly protesting.
Once he managed to somewhat catch his breath, he glanced around hurriedly, awaiting the next punishment. But there was none. He knew this space.
He pushed himself upright.
The open air chamber stretched around him, light filtering down from the impossible open air above. It was evening light now, not the beautiful daytime as when he had left. The trinkets were still scattered along the edges. A pallet was in his direct line of sight.
The stone was smoother here. Warmer. Less angry.
It was Ariadne’s chamber.
Corin sucked in a shaky breath and laughed once—short, breathless, almost hysterical.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The Labyrinth had chased him. And, for some reason he could not understand at the moment, it had returned him to her.
Whether that was a mercy, warning, or something far more dangerous, Corin didn’t yet know. But as he rose unsteadily to his feet, one truth settled cold and certain in his chest:
Ariadne was no longer just watching him. She was part of his story.