Young Writers Society

Taber tilted his head. He wasn't quite sure what half of the words that Boris used meant, but he had a rough idea of what Boris was talking about. "Ohh," he said, nodding his head. "Yeah, I used to work in a hospital? And they didn't want me waking up patients or tripping over stuff and causing a mess and things like that, so I got pretty good at sneaking around. Maybe a little too good?"

Tasha, in the meantime, was working very hard to keep a straight face through all of this. The dynamic between the two reminded her of her own relationship with Evron, Thana, and the others--filled with banter, verbal sparring, and icy glares. It promptly ended with Maahes' approach (admittedly to her disappointment, though at least he was out of James' hair), and she watched the man a little warily. James was comfortable enough with him so she was willing to tolerate him but if their last encounter was anything to go off of, she wasn't particularly trusting herself.

Kratzer, in the meantime, offered his hand to the scarlet-dressed Auryon and led her out onto the dance floor with the smallest of smiles beneath his mask. She couldn't help but return it, falling in beside him and leaning her head against his shoulder. "I'm glad I didn't kill you."

"As am I, schatz," he agreed with a chuckle.

"Well," Rendra said, setting her empty wineglass down on a nearby table, "I think it's time for the puzzle to begin. But hmmm..."

"Hm?" Kartiel repeated. He gave her a questioning look as he put his own wineglass down. It was only partially emptied, but neither he nor Rendra drew attention to it.

"How should we start things off?"

He blinked.

Then realization set in.

"You don't have a plan?" he hissed.

"It's not that I don't have one," she said. "It's just more on the fly - I've got the bare bones."

He resisted the urge to groan as he glanced back out at the sea of people. She didn't have a plan. Of course she didn't have a plan. Part of him was suspecting that was why she had asked him to help her with the masquerade; she could only plan out so much of an elaborate scheme. If it wasn't for the fact that she had a high success rate, he doubted she would have been allowed to be so carefree with everything she did.

"Whisk them off into the second puzzle," he said. "I can begin the spell whenever you want me to."

She crossed her arms. "Yeah, but we're not going for the confusion of the last puzzle. We don't need it - this one will confuse them enough as it is. Maybe I can just tell them the teams and the rules, and then we can bring them into the puzzle?"

...Why did he even bother trying to make suggestions?

Rendra grinned and gave him a pat on the shoulder before slipping into the crowd. He trailed behind her, wishing he still had his wineglass with him as they reached the center of the room. It was a good prop, and a good distraction from this whole situation.

The magic that had cloaked them - a combination of Rendra's illusions and a few spells of his own - fell away. Attention shifted among the crowd. He could give her credit for that; Rendra had a knack for the finer details, even if she lacked overall planning skills.

"It's time for the second puzzle!" Rendra announced. Before anyone could even try to butt in with an interruption or objection, she hurried on into the next part of her announcement. "Don't worry - you're not solving another murder. This time, you're trying to get out of a maze. There's a twist. You're doing it in a group this time, and we picked them. Kart, want to reveal the groups?"

He gave her a look that bordered on a glare before turning away, irritated that she had used that name.

"Team #1 is Auryon and Second. Team #2 is Apophis and Taber. Team #3 is Tasha and Maahes. Team #4 is James, Vala and Evron. Team #5 is Damascus, Boris and Raiden. Team #6 is Eremia and Asteri. Team #7 is Lorcan and Kratzer. Team #8 is Thana and Mira."

"You could have said that with a little more emotion," Rendra whispered, her gaze never leaving the group before them.

He didn't give a response - he was too busy beginning to mutter the words to the transportation spell under his breath.

"In about a minute, you'll be whisked off to your respective parts of the maze. It's up to you guys to figure out how to get out. You're not able to work with other teams to solve the puzzle - it goes against the rules of the maze. You also can't kill or harm anyone, unless it somehow benefits the completion of the maze - and it can't be considered 'useful' because your group members were annoying you."

She gave them a grin.

"Good luck!"

And with that, the groups were magically teleported off to their respective places in the maze - leaving Rendra, Kartiel and a handful of extras in the main room.

"Ready to go watch the show?" she asked, turning back to him. "I already have everything set up - the only thing left is to pop the popcorn in the microwave."

He gave a nod. "It'll be interesting."

"I can't wait to see who solves it first!" Rendra cheerfully exclaimed. He followed her over to the door, not even giving a glance back in the direction of the room as it went dark behind them.

Boris looked upon Rendra with weary gratitude for his saviour, for she had brought distraction. Finally, a distraction.

Then the teams were announced, and Boris retracted his gratitude immediately.

He'd already put Damascus through strife and trouble aplenty, and now, now he had no choice but to put him through God knew what else.

Boris’ sole comfort was in Raiden, whose presence turned a disquieted duo into a respectably ramshackle trio.

Despite his dread, he knew that he would have feared for Damascus, and Damascus for him, wether or not they were in each others’ sights, perhaps more. Perhaps this was for the best.

He stared absently at the plentiful ruffles on Raiden’s vast, all-consuming skirts, and hoped to God that they would not get him killed.
_____

They found themselves standing on cracked, dry earth before the edge of a spacious temple courtyard, paved with stone tiles, each side of the yard lined by a row of classical greek pillars, and statues of the gods scattered about the floor haphazardly in a way that was incongruous with the mathematical placement of the pillared columns, which lead the eye from the courtyard up to the elevated temple ahead with satisfying deliberation.



But far more incongruous was the fact that the stone was no colour that it was natural for stone to be, but neither was it painted, it was made from bright blues and pinks, contrasting with the harsh, black, empty space that this little pocket of something seemed to inhabit all on its own. The origin of the light they could see it with was a mystery.

Pieces of the statues’ faces and limbs jittered in and out of shape, out of existence, looking for all the world like they were built with building blocks, knocked out of place, and reconstructed by a restless and easily amused deity.

Past the courtyard, there was an elevated temple, which presumably was to lead them into the rest of the labyrinth. It was too elevated for anyone to see what was really up there, until they climbed the steps.
Whatever awaited them up in that temple, it was the only way to go.

Boris did not trust the convenience of the empty, unguarded courtyard. He gingerly stepped forward to test it, and quickly darted back when he saw the tiles jitter the same way that the statues did.

More tiles ahead jumped up and down, apparated and disapparated, in an erratic, uneven wave.

Boris squinted at the tiles ahead, and let the scene play out for a few rounds, mapping out the pattern in his mind. He turned to his companions.

“There is a rhythm to this,” he said calmly. “With some trial and error, we can solve it.”

He let another wave pass by, and crept after it, making a carefully calculated route in time with his anticipation of the pattern.

He passed by Hades, and Ares, but when he made it to the statue of Aphrodite, the rhythm lost interest in itself, and changed its mind.

The tile beneath his foot shuddered, propelling him forward, where his head smacked into Aphrodite's stone feet with a hard thud.

The building blocks eroded further underneath his feet, causing him to drop a few centimetres where he knelt on the ground, and clutched at his head, waiting for his senses to stop blurring in and out.

“Mütterficker…” he growled.

He might have used a harsher curse, had he noticed the ground begin to reconstruct around him. Surely he would notice in time to save himself. Probably.

"What?" Eremia shouted. She had gone all this way and all this trouble to find the hosts of this masquerade, only for them to appear out of nowhere, propose a new event, and pair her with her enemy. Slamming her staff on the ground, she pointed its tip at Kartiel and Rendra. "I am not about to work with-"

A light breeze ran through her hair. Blinking, Eremia looked around her to find that she was standing on the middle of a wooden bridge that stood just above what appeared to be an enormous corn maze. Thick rows of maize rose up as far as she could see, covering the ground in a layer of green and yellow. She could almost swear that the corn clustered together whenever she stared at it; it certainly looked impossible to walk through.

Fortunately, on either end of the bridge, paths branched off through the maze. In the distance, she could even see other bridges and towers rising into the sky. One of the towers, in particular, looked a little strange. It was like the sky around it had warped ever so slightly, or she was looking at it through a distorted mirror. That had to be the way out.

It was right about then that Eremia heard the shuffling of leaves. Turning the other way, not only did she see her staff pointed at Asteri's face (eugh, he wasn't going to let that go anytime soon), she saw the maize moving. It churned up the ground in front of him, fanning out to swallow up a path and then squeezing back together to open up another one.

"What magic is this?" Eremia said, slowly lowering her staff.

"I don't know," Asteri said, irritation seeping into his voice as he looked at the expansive maze around them. The only time he had dealt with mazes was in video games; it wasn't like he was regularly leaving the house. He wished they had grouped him with anyone but Eremia - he knew it had to be intentional, but it still annoyed him.

As Eremia slowly lowered her staff, he took the initiative to push it away from in front of him. Then he strode ahead of Eremia, wasting no time in heading towards the maze. Sure, the thing kept merging every time he looked at it. And, sure, he had no idea how he was supposed to solve one outside of a video game.

But he definitely wasn't going to stand around with Eremia.

"It's like Greek Steven Universe," Raiden remarked, walking around the little patch of earth they were on. He reached the edge, staring down into the void, while Boris played about with the tiles or whatever. An endless void. It seemed the only way was through the psychadelic temple. He stared off into the distance. Sniffing the air, his face dropped.
"Aww man, now I'll never be a maize runner..."

Boris had gotten himself into some trouble. Raiden was simply watching the man dance around and somehow make it all the way through, right up until he got near the apparently Aphrodite statue. Oh, crap, the floor was going to reform and trap Boris inside! ...or at least that's what it looked like. Nonetheless, Raiden cupped his hands to his mouth.
"OI! BORIS GET BACK!!"

"Get back!" Eremia called, running after him. She grabbed onto his shoulder strongly enough to make him slow down without pulling him back. "It is hardly a safe or stable maze, and I cannot imagine that either you or I have much experience wandering within one. We need a strategy."

"My strategy," he said, shaking her hand off of his shoulder and stubbornly marching forward, "is to keep going and face whatever shows up. It's just a maze - call me optimistic, but I think I can handle an overexcited magical bush or two."

Eremia held out her hand in front of her. Of course he wouldn't cooperate. Of course he'd be stupid. Of course he'd put them both at risk. What a selfish idiot.

"I am sure you would think that, yes," she said. A few seconds later, she realized it sounded a little meaner than she'd intended, but it'd already been said. She started to wonder if he wasn't the only one being unhelpful.

He came to a stop and spun around.

"Do you have a better idea?" he asked. "You said we need to make a strategy, but what other strategy is there? I can't just stand around and wait for the maze to disappear! My friend's out there somewhere, and it's my responsibility to get us back home. I'm going to find a way through this maze and any other puzzle Rendra throws at her, even if you're too afraid to face it head on."

"And I have a boyfriend out there," Eremia said, trying to keep her voice neutral as possible. Irritating as he was, at least he was honest (for once) about why he was so bothered. "But I would not like to be smacked by ears of coin for the next hour, so I would rather that we be more judicious about how we handle this maze. Is it possible, for instance, to bypass it entirely?"

He stared at her.

"...What do you mean?" he asked, slowly glancing back in the direction of the maze. It stretched out for a fairly long distance, and there was no easy way to get around it - he couldn't see a clear path around the perimeter.

"I use wind magic," Eremia said. "It would not be impossible, ideally, for me to travel over this maze. Nor would it be especially difficult to bring you along with me, assuming you do not have your own means of transportation."

The only thing James found comfort in was that there were rules against murder, but that didn't mean that some of them might not die by accident.

He hoped quietly in his heart that no one would get hurt as Rendra listed off the groups and rules. He was grouped with strangers and the respective friends of his friends - who, to him, were nothing more than names and faces. He figured that was expected of them, to put them with people they were unlikely to get along with or didn't know very well. All he could do was hope that they could -

Mid-thought, their surroundings changed suddenly. The enclosed air of the ballroom, with sweaty dancers and perfumes, was exchanged with open, crisp clouds. They were in... the sky.

They stood on a metal platform that pierced through the clouds around them, as if they were standing on some kind of building that stretched to the heavens. Leading out from the platform was one sole passageway that led into the thick puff of clouds ahead of them. They could not see beyond a few feet into the cloud, and from there, it all looked like mist. From the other four sides of the platform, three more pathways stretched out into the cloudy mist before them.



Each pathway looked the same in structure. It was the same metal pathway (suspended in the air by what, he didn't know) with bars of metal railing on either side.

James had never considered himself to be someone with a crippling fear of heights, but not knowing the stability of the very platform and pathways they'd be walking on made him wary.

Though falling to his death would be a more graceful way to go, he had... something to live for this time. Tasha, namely. Maahes too.

He looked over at Vala and Evron to address them.

"Well, it doesn't look like we have many ways to narrow down our options. It may be best to just choose a path and stick to it."