Chapter 15 #2
He narrowly missed smacking into a hedge wall that had appeared from nowhere. His breath was close enough to land on the dewy leaves, one of which seemed to... be waving at him. I’m not surprised. I expected this. I’m not surprised. I am not surprised. I am not—
“You cannot hide your subconscious from us, Jesstin. There’s no need to endure this. All we’re asking is for a chat.”
“I’ll bet that’s what you say to all the girls,” Jesstin retorted with a sharp pivot. He started back down the other way, but ahead was another wall, with paths to the right and left. And a sign.
Must we? It read.
He went left this time and faced another choice.
Groaning, he went right, then left again, then another left.
Even though it felt like he was fanning outward, the maze seemed to tighten around him, and each turn was smaller and more constricted than the last. If it continued, he’d be crushed.
He thought of those serpents he’d read about that could squeeze the life out of a man.
“There are no serpents in Rivenholde.” A woman.
“None save the ones watching you from the gardens,” sang another woman.
“You think you’re better?” Jesstin’s breaths grew shallower as the world shrank. I’m fine. I can do this. I will do this.
He pitched forward into a forested wall when something wrapped around his ankle and tugged his foot right from under him.
He yanked, but it didn’t let go. He barely had time to grab hold of the branches inside the leaves before both of his feet came up and out from under him, until he was suspended in the air like a plank.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
“Breathe, breathe, breathe,” a little boy taunted, from somewhere. He knew that sinister giggle. “Die, die, die.”
The surrounding leaves rustled. Jesstin’s hair blew back and up like he’d been slapped, his face melting against the force.
The sound turned thunderous, leaves all around him snapping free and lashing his face as they whipped by.
None hurt as badly as the cut Elloven had left, but the all-at-once assault caused his hands to falter and shake.
His tethered ankles felt like syrupy fire.
A bellowing roar pealed beneath him. Don’t do it. Don’t you look down, he thought, right as he did precisely that. The earth had opened into a spiral of sand and dirt waiting to swallow him whole. A scream built in his throat, but he held it with his breath.
Someone howled. Then more joined until it was an entire chaotic reprise of howls bleeding into one ghastly song.
“I will hear... your pleas... later... your pleas...” Drool fell from his mouth.
Was that blood in the swirling sand? His entire body was flush with wounds, but none of them were as brutal as the discordance of horror between his ears.
“Your... pleas.... please, please...” More blood and spittle dribbled into the void.
Every voice silenced.
Jesstin shrieked when the branches and vines holding him disappeared. He managed to cover his face before smashing into the ground with a soul-shattering thud.
Firm. Not quicksand. Not the void.
“You’ll hear them now,” said the man from earlier, less congenial. “Or not at all.”
Jesstin flopped onto his back and stared at the stars through his haze. He tried to sit and coughed up a wad of... something. His spleen? He’d believe it.
A force lifted him, and beneath him formed a seat full of plush pillows. The walls receded, revealing hundreds of souls. Most sat on cushions like his, while others hovered at the periphery of the broad, open space.
The man who had greeted him tucked his long blond hair behind his ears and smiled, like he had at the entrance.
He sat in the lounger closest to Jesstin.
“Healing you is beyond our capacity, I’m afraid, but Rivenholde is full of those who can.
My name was Edmond. Mon, they called me, and you may as well, unless formalities are more to your preference. ”
“Mon.” Jesstin’s belly pinched when he spat another mouthful of unknown gore. “Never did like formalities.”
“You don’t strike me as a man who would.” Mon smiled again. “You’re thinking this must be what happens to all those who challenge the labyrinth.”
Jesstin wasn’t, actually, because existing at all was a fully focused effort.
“Your pain is distracting you. It was so unnecessary, really.” Mon sighed sadly. “The others who come through can do nothing for us. They take the challenge with exceptional hubris, but you should hear how they beg and plead.”
Tittered laughter rippled around him. Jesstin coughed again. Morbid fucks.
“Most don’t last half as long as you,” Mon said.
“I just got here,” Jesstin said. He couldn’t open his eyes all the way. The pain was everywhere, though he didn’t think he was seriously injured.
“You’ve been here four hours,” Mon retorted. “Do you not recall taking one hundred and sixty-five turns?”
“One hundred and what?” He hadn’t been counting, but it couldn’t have been more than fifteen, twenty.
“Never mind time. You know it runs differently in the kingdom than Rivenholde, and it runs much differently in the Infinitum. But here, in the in-between, it finds itself... well, in between.” Mon laughed at his own joke. “You shouldn’t squander time you can’t quantify.”
“Then show me the exit, and I’ll happily get the hell out of here.
” Jesstin was calmer than he’d been when he’d first landed on the magical pillows, and now he was wondering if the other challengers had been through the same test. If they’d been told the same things. If he was too stupid to see the trap.
“You are not stupid,” Mon said kindly. “And this isn’t a trap.”
“So what do you want? A friend?”
“Think of the time, Mon,” said a young woman to his left. “We’ve already ceded too much.”
Mon sighed. “Some of us were necromancers in our most recent lives, necromancers who were conscripted against our will by Ryquin, who subjugated us, mentally tortured us, and then sent us to the netherworld to do his bidding, knowing we were not strong enough or skilled enough. Neither he nor Acheron are good men. They both need Aelloven but for opposing purposes, and this conflict in intentions will lead to tragedy if you, Jesstin, fail to decide the outcome yourself.”
It took some effort, but Jesstin sat straighter. “Why do they want her?”
“We wasted so much time while you were fighting the labyrinth,” Mon said with a pointed glance at the woman to his left.
“But I will tell you something Aelloven herself does not know but her brother, Gennady, does. Then you will know we are being truthful, and you will know we are not here to trick you, but to implore you.”
“To do what though?”
“Come to the netherworld, just as Ryquin asked.”
Jesstin uttered an unflattering sound. “Now you’re suggesting I give him what he wants?”
“You’re the only one who can come to Infinita Mori without dying. And you’re the only one who can leave while still living.” Mon’s shoulders softened. “You would not be giving him what he wants unless you do as he says.”
“Is he the one who cursed the netherworld?”
“That was another, many years ago. But Ryquin wants to make it permanent.”
“Can he?”
“We don’t know.” Mon’s mouth twisted to the side. “With your help? Perhaps.”
“Sounds like you don’t know much at all.”
They were all staring at him in hopeful anticipation.
They almost looked innocent, but how many men and women had they lured to their deaths to prove a point?
The little boy he’d asked about the maze was among them, but he was too tired to be surprised.
He’d never seen such an elaborate and confusing manipulation.
“And if you don’t know, then why would I go to the netherworld?”
“Tell him,” the woman on the left urged.
Mon shook his head and tilted it upward for a breath. Did the dead breathe? Did he care? “Aelloven has learned that the man she believed was her father, Wilder Hawthorne, was not.”
“I was at the bizarre feeding frenzy when they told her.”
“Her real father is dead.”
“And?” Jesstin shrugged.
Mon glanced at the woman before continuing. “Esmeray is not her mother either.”
“Horseshit. They all look alike.”
“We see what we expect to see,” Mon replied.
“She is not Esmeray’s daughter, not by blood.
Acheron, Aelloven, and Gennady were born here and sent to another curia when they were barely out of swaddling.
Esmeray came for Aelloven and on a whim took Gennady too.
She could have taken Acheron as well but did not, for reasons unclear to us.
Acheron was eventually returned to his family when they deemed him—”
“No more,” the woman beside him said abruptly.
Jesstin had known Esmeray Hawthorne his whole life. She hadn’t always been present, but she had always loved her children. Her addictions started from her inability to protect them. “You realize how utterly ridiculous this sounds... right?”
“It would not if you knew why.”
He had half a mind to leap off the cushions and make a run for it. The throbbing had subsided, and the cuts were no longer screaming at him. But he wasn’t ready to stand, let alone run. “Why? Why would she kidnap someone else’s children?”
Mon held a long, solemn silence. “To keep Aelloven from Taven Considine. And to save her from what’s about to happen.”
“What’s about to happen?” Jesstin practically screeched. Bloody hell was he tired of everyone speaking halfway!
“Everything will become clear in the Infinitum.”
Jesstin stumbled off the settee, crashing to his knees in an ungraceful dive. He climbed back to his feet. “You’re no different from Ryquin or Estelar or the others. You’re just less...” He scrunched his face and flapped a hand. “Less alive.”
“Come to the netherworld, Jesstin. Come to Infinita Mori. We must withhold some information, or you’ll see no incentive.”
He passed an incredulous gaze over the stoic crowd of ghosts. “Why would I do such a stupid thing? For a history lesson, of all things?”