The tall door slammed behind us as soon as Sarah crossed over the threshold, making a louder echoing noise than I thought it would based on how light it felt when I’d pushed it open. But that sound wasn’t what startled me. The scraping sound of a lock sliding into place made me whirl around and push on the door with all my might but to no avail.

  The door had magically locked itself.

  Sarah and I were engulfed in darkness. In other words, I couldn’t see anything.

  Not wanting to assume the worst in Sarah–that she wanted to trap me for some bizarre reason–, I turned to where I felt her standing and said, “Uh, did this happen before? When you and the others in our group first found the door?”

  “It went exactly like this.” Sarah giggled, sounding way too excited for her own good. “But there’s no need to worry,” she assured me. “I think what’s in this room is just a test Professor Bilith set in place.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, fearing the answer to my next question, “What is in this room exactly?”

  “You’ll see in just a second….” Sarah wrapped a slender arm into mine and held her breath. I could feel her entire body bouncing with excited anticipation.

  I froze in the silence, losing most of my trust in my companion and feeling frustrated that she wouldn’t offer me any straight answers. But within seconds, a blaze of orange flooded my vision. I blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to the sudden blinding light, then found where it had come from. Six large torches, three lining on either wall to our left and right, burned with an uncomfortable heat. I wiped a bead of sweat off my forehead, then gasped once I saw what the torches lit before me.

  Six giant towers of stone that shouldn’t have been able to fit in the room based on the height of the ceiling outside surrounded Sarah and me. The towers cast us in shadows, thanks to the flaming torches, and made the space feel almost eerie. Shorter walls branched off the towers but were still twice my height. The walls curved and jutted this way and that, creating chaotic pathways and a multitude of dead-ends.

  “Oh, great,” I breathed. “A maze.”

  Sarah’s face lit up as she beamed at me. “Isn’t it exciting?”

  “I can think of a few more words other than ‘exciting’ to describe it.”

  The last time I had taken on a maze, or a labyrinth as the Lord Solomon AI had liked to call it, was back on my home planet. It was in the first Lord Solomon facility I had found–back when the Lord Solomon AI had insisted on testing my worth before telling me of my origin as a godspawn clone. That maze had been hellish. It had tested me in cruel ways, tricking me into thinking that a band of Nagari had killed Drayek, teasing me with impostor versions of my bullies in Edrona…. I’d hated it. But, at least I had passed that test, no matter how much trauma it’d put me through.

  I doubted Professor Bilith planned on testing us in similarly cruel and traumatic ways. As far as I knew, it was just a maze to which we had to find the end.

  “Did you and the others try solving the maze?” I said to Sarah.

  “Yeah, we did try the maze, but we kept hitting about a million dead ends.”

  I raised my eyebrow at Sarah’s exaggeration, then grunted in shock as she pulled me toward the maze entrance. I reluctantly followed her past the front two stone towers, peering up at them as we went. How had Professor Bilith set this up? It must have taken an insane amount of work and a good deal of magic. Did all of the groups have a clue that led to an insane test like this? Better question, were any of the other groups ahead of us? No one had solved the safe combination by the time Professor Bilith’s class ended yesterday. However, we wouldn’t have another class until Monday, so I had no idea if the safe had been opened since Friday’s class.

  Might as well keep trying to win.

  “Are you sure there isn’t anything dangerous in the maze?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  As Sarah and I crept further into Professor Bilith’s maze, the more distant the glow from the torches at the entrance became. I was still having flashbacks from the labyrinth in that Lord Solomon facility. All of my instincts told me I should expect something strange to pop up in any maze.

  “No, nothing dangerous,” Sarah replied. “Just a giant maze made completely from rock. Come on, we’ve got to find the end. I bet the answer to your clue is there.”

  We took two left turns, then a right, and soon we found a long, narrow corridor with more torches, smaller this time, but they provided light to our path all the same.

  “There are two paths to take here,” I said. “Do you have something we can use to drop? Something we can place on the ground to keep track of where we’ve been?”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “Good idea!” Sarah exclaimed.

  Sarah pursed her lips and rummaged through the medium-sized bag hanging from her shoulder. The orange and yellow from the flames of the torches lit up one side of her face, casting almost sinister-looking shadows on the other side.

  “Here!” She pulled out a single sheet of white paper. “It’s blank, so I won’t miss it.”

  “Perfect.” I took the paper from her grip and began tearing and palming the new little pieces in my hands. “Do you remember which way you went last time at this point in the maze? You said you had reached a lot of dead ends, so maybe we should go a different way than you did on the first fork in the path.”

  “Hmm…” Sarah tapped her chin. “Uh, I think we went left last time.”

  I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. The least she could have done was remember the wrong ways to go before bringing me here.

  “Right it is then,” I said.

  Without waiting to see if she’d follow, I turned down the right path, throwing slips of paper to the floor at about every six paces.

  At the first two dead ends, I took a deep breath and continued on, finding our paths of paper and taking new paths, but once we hit the third dead end, I was frustrated.

  “How big is this maze?” I hollered in the cave-like space, my voice echoing loudly.

  Sarah merely shrugged and offered no verbal response.

  After five seconds or so of self-pity and lots of grumbling, I sighed and placed two strips of paper in the form of an “x” at the head of the third dead-end path. Then, we continued on.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said for probably the tenth time after at least half an hour passed. “It feels like the maze keeps getting bigger the farther we go.”

  “At least we haven’t reached a dead end for the last three turns.”

  I nodded. Sarah was right there, at least. But where was the end to this blasted maze?

  “Look!” Sarah exclaimed, pointing a finger ahead of us. “More light! We’re coming up on another fork in the road.”

  Sarah broke into a sprint and went ahead, with me trailing sluggishly behind. I was feeling too drained to feel enthusiastic about anything. She disappeared around the bend, and her footsteps sounded distant.

  And then I heard a scream–shrill and terrified.

  “Sarah!” I bolted in the direction she’d gone.

  I slid around the corner, suddenly engulfed in orange and yellow torch-light.

  “Sar–” My breath caught in my throat.

  Sarah cowered within the shadow of a hideous beast, hands held out in front of her face as if that would protect her. The creature was covered head to toe in matted, pitch-black fur. Its fang-like teeth protruded from its foaming mouth and curved past its chin. It stood tall, towering over Sarah by at least 10 feet, and it blocked a wide opening that I could only guess was the exit to the maze.

  Professor Bilith really wants us to earn the answer to this clue.

  I shook my head and instinctively reached for the spear on my back but soon realized I wasn’t equipped with any armor or weapons. If Sarah had warned me about any of this at all, I might have been more prepared. Yes, she hadn’t known about the monster at the end, but she had known about the strange maze.

  With no other weapon, I would have to try to use my water manipulation spell, but I didn’t know if any water was nearby.

  Sarah began to shake out of her paralyzed shock, and she was just in time. The monster swung a fistful of talons her way, and she narrowly dodged the blow. But one of the talons caught a strand of her brown hair, and I winced as pieces of her locks ripped from her head and fell to the floor like falling feathers.

  Sarah didn’t seem to notice, though, as she expertly rolled far enough away from the creature to begin casting a spell. I barrelled forward to join the fray, waving fingers to cast my water manipulation spell, praying to whoever would listen that there was indeed enough water near me to cast it.

  Nothing happened.

  But Sarah was luckier than I was. A dozen translucent daggers with a soft white glow on their edges appeared over her head.

  I didn’t know Sarah’s Tier, but I could read the essence that plumed around her from her casting of the spell. I read them perfectly, instantly knowing exactly how she had cast the spell, and I knew that it was a Skill within my limits to steal.

  I went to work, drawing in only a small portion of the essence she’d used for the spell to make sure her floating daggers maintained enough strength to hurt the monster. Then, I began circling my hands in front of my chest in the same way Sarah had when first casting the spell.

  Sarah hollered a battle cry, then threw her arms out in front of herself. The daggers responded immediately, flinging toward the beast. Half of them missed, but the other half dug about an inch into the creature’s dark fur.

  The monster howled, but instead of coming for Sarah in retaliation, it came for me. I stopped mid-hand circling and cursed, dodging flailing claws and stomping feet. The creature was relentless.

  Sarah cried out again and charged the beast. I saw a flash of silver in her hand as she ran our way. As she drew closer, I could see the silver was a physical knife. She held the small weapon high above her head and slammed it deep into the beast’s thigh.

  Purplish blood from the creature’s wound sprayed into Sarah’s face, but it didn’t deter her. She grit her teeth, determined, and shoved the hilt of her knife into the monster’s flesh even deeper.

  The monster was furious now.

  Completely ignoring me, the beast threw a flurry of talons toward Sarah. She dodged most of the strikes, rolling this way and that, but soon one of the creature’s claws impacted one side of her torso.

  Sarah’s eyes widened, her mouth dropped open in frozen agony. She silently fell to her knees, clutching her wounded side.

  I continued casting Sarah’s stolen spell, a new sense of urgency providing me extra speed and strength.

  “Hey, ugly!” I shouted.

  The creature turned toward me slowly, a little wobbly on its legs from the wounds Sarah had inflicted on it. It narrowed its yellow eyes at me and growled deep within its chest.

  12 daggers that looked exactly like those Sarah had conjured flew over my head. I didn’t give the beast even a second to react before I flung my arms in front of me, commanding the 12 weapons to speed directly toward the monster’s chest.