The wastend stretched endlessly in every direction as we walked. Although expansive, it was mostly empty, filled only with wind, stone, and sand. With each gust, the smallest pebbles became shrapnel, forcing us to seek shelter behind oddly pced boulders, waiting for the winds to relent.

  Taika had taken the lead from the outset, offering only minimal responses to our many questions. Most inquiries were met with shrugs, though she did say that long-term supplies wouldn’t be a concern.

  “You’re invited,” she repeated with a condescending tone. “Your needs will be addressed. Her code of conduct guarantees you safe passage through her domain.”

  “And we’re supposed to trust you?” Tetora grunted. “Someone who’s made friends with not one, but two demon lords?”

  “The Mistress is not my friend,” she disputed, rolling her shoulders back again. “An acquaintance at best.”

  “And that’s meant to convince us—”

  “Enough!” Aleph thundered. “This argument is now in its fourth incarnation and… ah…” He gnced at me wearily. “Poor choice of words…”

  Suppressing a shrug of my own, I replied, “No, you’re right. No need to keep bringing back something that’s going nowhere.”

  I gazed out at the rocky gray expanse ahead. “And speaking of going nowhere, it feels like we’ve been walking since half past forever, but nothing in the distance is getting any bigger.”

  “Your timing is uncanny,” Taika noted, stopping as she put her hand before her, only to withdraw it a moment ter. “Or maybe it’s just the Mistress’s warped sense of humor. Either way, we’re here.”

  I frowned, seeing nothing of note. There were no gates, ruins, or towering fortresses, regardless of whether my eyes were open or closed.

  “Is this a joke?”

  Taika smirked, then reached forward again, farther this time. Her entire forearm vanished as a strange, fractal-like pattern of light distorted the space where it should have been.

  “We’re here,” she repeated. “See?”

  I scanned the area. The ground before her was the same cracked stone we stood on, without seam or break.

  Relias, who had been silent for most of the journey, reached out carefully. As soon as his fingers brushed against the invisible threshold, they bent at an unnatural angle—not broken, not severed, just… wrong.

  “Warped space,” he murmured as he drew back, lifting his head to investigate the distance. “It must go on for miles. I would say that it takes much power to maintain something so unnatural…”

  “We should hurry,” Taika replied as she stepped through the breech and vanished.

  Tetora snarled, his ears fttening. “Damn it—” He made to move, but Aleph caught his shoulder.

  “Wait. I’ll go first.”

  Aleph extended a hand, pced it into the void, and let out a slow breath. Then, without another word, he stepped inside.

  After a few seconds, he returned through the invisible door, his eyes wild. “You should all… center yourselves before you come through. It is a bit unnerving on the other side.”

  I nodded, inhaled, and marched forward.

  There was a burst of radiating prismatic light followed by darkness. Vaporous waves of color began to stretch and twist, forming quivering globules that hovered tenuously in midair. Streaking ribbons of light and shadow wove through space, bending in and out of reality as if temporarily pulled into other incomprehensible dimensions just beyond this one.

  We stood on something solid, but it wasn’t earth. It was hard, smooth, and slightly slick, like gss, but it was an opaque gray, the absolute midpoint between darkness and light.

  A wide path extended ahead, perfectly ft at first, then breaking off into wavy ramps that twisted and curved at impossible angles.

  If Nora were here with us, she might mention something about Pink Floyd, va mps, and M.C. Escher.

  “Welcome,” Taika said dryly. “To the Mistress’s maze.”

  “Is it always like this?” I asked, trying to sound curious and not at all panicked. “With the floating goop and the trip hazards?”

  Taika made a strange face.

  If I didn't know any better, it might have been the beginnings of a smirk.

  “More or less,” she replied. “The entrance is usually static, but everything else varies.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s no way I’m drinking her tea then,” Vernie quipped as she nudged one of the floating color bubbles with her dagger, poofing it out of existence. “She’s hitting the hard stuff, coming up with something like this.”

  I doubted this bizarre creation was alcohol-fueled, but it wasn’t worth arguing over.

  Vernie stowed her dagger and extended her arm to me, palm up. “I’d feel better if we held hands. How about you?”

  Oh… She’s trying to make me feel better. I must have been wearing the forlorn face again.

  I took her hand gratefully, and the others also followed. Careful not to let out a sigh, I reached out for Taika’s hand with my other. She flinched instinctively, shrinking herself a bit as she stepped back.

  “Well?” I asked, eyes narrowing.

  “You’re going to insist on it, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” I affirmed as I grabbed her hand. “Wherever we go, we go together.”

  It was no yellow brick road, but we walked it anyway. Panes of the gray path broke, floating off and tilting to circumscribe our way forward. Every now and then, some would flicker and rise, showing us short movies complete with color and sound. While Taika tried to ignore them, I couldn’t help but stop and watch.

  “Experiment DB-02607-06-11 was another failure,” a dark mage said to his senior, bowing his head deeply. “Shall I dispose of the test organisms? We’re due for a church audit any day now, and they’re too smart for their own good.”

  The older, more decorated dark mage considered the parchment in his hands. “Do they have any long-term viability?”

  The first one spread his hands uncertainly. “Their accelerated growth limits their life expectancy… We didn’t bother with any reproductive tests due to a ck of physical enhancement. We pn to focus on other animal traits in subsequent experiments.”

  “Don't forget to include the human aspect; we need them to be intelligent enough to communicate. In the meantime, I’ll take care of said specimens,” the elder concluded, setting down the parchment. “As for your next task....” He paused, wrinkling his nose. “Consider a proper self-fumigation before appearing again in my presence. Dismissed.”

  After the younger left, the old dark mage sighed and raised his arms. “I did not surmise a stench even worse than that of a human could ever present itself.” He then disappeared in a cloud of bck smoke, the telltale demonic buzz echoing before the scene faded away.

  Relias inhaled sharply as we broke off holding hands. “That depicted the inside of the dark mage tower… millennia ago!”

  Taika sniffed. “Really? That one’s new to me, though. Usually, they show their successful experiments. You know. Of us hybrids.”

  A failed experiment with animals and humans that left a lingering stench…

  “Skreethi?” I asked, looking toward Relias. “Was he talking about the origins of Skreethi?”

  “N-no. It must be lies,” he replied, though his face did not follow through with rejection of the thought.

  Aleph and Tetora exchanged a long, troubled gnce.

  “They’re failed hybrids…” Aleph murmured. “Created kin without proper Purpose.”

  “And of human origin!” Tetora excimed. “Yet that dark mage was just going to kill them!”

  With my temper fring, I asked, “Why did the demon save them?”

  Before anyone could reply, another grey pane floated before us, showing a voluptuous woman with two sets of horns and long, bright orange hair. She wore a long emerald dress that hugged her curves tightly before cascading down to the ground in gossamer yers of delicate iridescence. “They’re vermin,” she objected. “Filthy, nasty, smelly vermin that dare to disobey me!” She sneered, tapping her fingers on her forearm. “It was a mistake to bring them here all those years ago. They refuse to attack humans. Why, they can’t even carry a simple pgue!”

  The scene shifted as my anger intensified. “They’re intelligent, however,” a very young and handsome man replied, appearing to be looking straight at us. “And even tools like them can be used to our advantage, Mistress. It’s only proper to discard them once they’re no longer useful.”

  She replied with a long, self-suffering sigh, “So be it, Ambrose.” She tilted her head, a crooked smile crawling up the left side of her face. “Consider them a gift for your faithful service and do with them what you will.”

  “I am overwhelmed by your willingness to indulge me, Mistress,” he replied with a deep and graceful genuflection.

  The smile disappeared from her face. “Just get them out of my territory,” she snapped crisply. “I won’t abide it smelling like rotten garlic any longer.”

  The rge shard turned gray again and sluggishly returned to the area from which it had come.

  “In the end, he only saw others as objects to take advantage of,” Raedine muttered between my ears. “Do not misbel Ambrose as caring—he used his appearance and charm to add us all to his temporary toolset.”

  Is he the type to harm Nora?

  “I don’t believe he has anything to gain at this juncture,” she replied. “But I would not put it past him during a moment of desperation. He traded his humanity for immortality, so I don’t believe he has any limits anymore.”

  “Why are you showing us this, Ambrose?” I asked aloud. “Were you hoping to have us point fingers at each other? Maybe even break up the party down human and hybrid lines?”

  “Why, I was rewarding you,” came the ghostly reply, his disgust evident. “Even I didn’t think you’d come to rescue your companion. It seems you really are different this time around.”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “But you do, don’t you, Raedine? Why don’t you tell her how you left me to rot all those years ago?”

  Unbidden, my aura fred, and to our collective shock, it jumped forward, taking on a hazy, humanoid shape.

  “Raedine…!” Relias gasped as the spirit, cd in translucent armor, shook her fists in anger.

  “You speak lies, Ambrose!” Raedine’s ghost accused, shouting towards the uncaring prismatic sky. “You fled the party in the dead of night, leaving nothing but your cowardice behind!”

  “The Mistress’s agents took me, and you were instructed to meet with her should you wish me returned,” Ambrose said from everywhere and nowhere. “Yet you deemed my life unworthy, abandoning me in my hour of need!”

  The edges of Raedine’s spirit prickled. “No such instructions were ever given, Ambrose!”

  Relias held up a hesitant hand. “Ambrose…” His voice wavered. “We thought you left us of your own volition. Your personal effects had been scorched into the earth. Given your argument with Captain Wisewarden the evening before, we assumed…”

  His breath caught, and his eyes widened as something dawned on him. He took several staggering steps backward as he clutched at his robes, his face drained of all color. “Goddess, forgive us all!”

  Ambrose’s voice ripped through the air like a thundercp.“Shouldn’t you be asking my forgiveness first?!”

  The flooring beneath us fractured with a deafening series of cracks, spiderwebbing outwards. Even as we tried to run, the ground gave way, and we plummeted into a thick, clinging darkness.

  I reached out instinctively, only to grasp at nothing. Inky tendrils wrapped around my limbs, coiling as they pulled me into their deep abyss. Although I tried to call out, my voice was lost, swallowed by the void that had taken me.

  Euphridia