Lies & Labyrinths

She was falling. No, that wasn’t right. She was rising up.

No. That still wasn’t right.

She was falling from every

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The world was different when not held through the lens of the material world. The portal was growing, the light blinding, and everything was changing. Lilith saw the Great Hall around her, and then it shattered into a million pieces that sounded like a cannon firing through a hundred panes of glass. The distance between everything dectupled in every direction, and the portal rose high in the air, the stone square no longer up a few steps but in fact atop a pyramid of glowing runes etched millenia ago. The fog swirled, twirled, and with it came whispers as voices from the past, present and future came rushing through like a great wind. She could hear conversations she had earlier in the year, fragments of voices of her parents, the sound of a woman crying, and then a man’s voice yelling in unbridled anger. She saw a figure on a throne for the briefest of moments, jet black hair and scruffy beard, leaning against a great sword, surrounded by bodies. She saw two women, one stygian, another human, and a baby held between them.

And then that too was gone, as Lilith found herself deposited into the midst of a long stretching hallway that twisted in a corkscrew, so that the ceiling became the floor in a matter of yards. The ground beneath her looked strikingly like the stained glass of the Great Hall, the images of past magi flickering from some sort of light that seemed to be sucked into the darkness in front of Lilith, where she too felt drawn.

Lilith checked herself for any damage, finding her left arm was working just fine, and the orb was still clutched in the crook of her right. She dared not shout for fear of alerting the others who would undoubtedly be looking for her. Instead she ran, her footfalls echoing down the hall.

She was no longer on the ground, in fact, the longer she ran she found that gravity meant nothing. The path beneath her began to widen, the hallway growing into a gigantic room that flickered with sconces on all four sides. Pillars grew from the ground like trees, roots of marble spreading across the tile, ripping up the crimson carpet that had once guided Lilith to the teleporter on the right side of reality. She was no longer in a singular hall now, but rather, a room. The pillars began to intersect, creating bridges that connected walls to walls, ceilings to ceilings, and all along them waited very hungry eyes of Delta students who had just gotten themselves into place and waited for her.

Lilith stared (up? forward? down?) at the students, who all stared back. A pregnant pause hung in the air, everyone waiting for someone else to make the first move.

A tumbleweed of papers blew past.

And then the explosions began.

Lilith dove forward, finding gravity no longer worked. What had seemed forward now was downwards, and she was swimming through nothingness. There were students all about, all having the exact same idea as she: get the orb and to keep moving. A fireball went racing over her shoulder, smacking into a student who was launched into a pillar which exploded from the concussive energy. She had no idea how such things could happen and not lead to certain death; something about the astral world must have staved off such permanent things. Lilith spun herself around so that she was falling down instead of up, able to steer with her feet while clutching the orb with both arms. She could hear the shouts and jeers from her peers, felt hands brush past her as they tried to get the orb. She was nearing the end of the room, a light glowing faintly down below. Just a bit further-

The stone nearest to her suddenly swung around, smacking Lilith square in the back. She let out a loud “OUGHuu” as the air was launched from her lungs, spinning rapidly down below now. Gravity began to catch up, and soon she was tumbling faster and faster through the branches of stone, landing on the ground at a facade of the main doors to the Great Hall. She glanced behind her, witnessing the sight of dozens of Deltas hopping and hooting between the pillars, attempting to catch up like a pack of wild, magic-adjacent howler monkeys.

She remembered at that moment that these were the weakest of the students. That did not bode well for what lay ahead. Turning to face forward once more and beyond the strange gravity cluster of the Inverted Great Hall, Lilith dashed on, dreading how she would fare the higher she rose through the ranks.

Beyond the hall lay what Lilith considered to be the first true labyrinth-esque structure. The hedge maze from outside had grown into the carpet, the vine-like pattern turning to actual topiary, the sconces of the room now growed out of wall that had completely changed to hedge. For the first time, Lilith could see the sky and all that it entailed in this strange world. There was no firmament above, only a gaping black hole that appeared like a torn sheet of fabric. This was where the Feylands had once been, that mythical place of elves and free flowing magic, of everything that the fairy tales and myths had told her.

And now it was a gaping hole in the sky, that one could not see on the other side of the veil. And what was worse, that gaping wound in the fabric of reality seemed to be growing. Lilith could feel the very essence being pulled upward towards it, sucking the very aether from the air at a constant pace. This, she finally understood was the result of the missing Feylands and the calamity that had befallen Sulore.

Lilith had no time to worry about the disaster that seemed to wait above the horizon though; there were students still behind her gunning to keep up. Placing her eyes straight ahead, Lilith found the path seemed to curve down and the entire maze could be seen for a brief moment, a suspended disk of earth and grass, with the gazebo on the far edge, connecting to what seemed to be floating segments of the school scattered about. There was shouting ahead, duels of some sort playing out without the orb at all.

The path leading down began to slope at a greater speed, gravity drawing Lilith forward as her feet began to slide, the carpet turning to grass and accelerating the momentum. Lilith jumped before the bottom, finding herself soaring further than possible in the material realm, clearing over the first part of a hedge and unbeknownst to her, cutting through a portion of the maze beset with traps laid by other students.

She tumbled into another hedge wall at full speed, the orb falling out of her hands and starting to roll away. Gathering her senses, Lilith ran after the ball, mentally cursing herself for such a thing.

It rolled right to the feet of the Beta known as Alm, who stopped it with one foot.

There was no reasoning or lying out of this one. Just one mage against another, albeit more fraud-wrought, mage.

Alm took a step back, removing his foot from the orb to be able to actually fire a spell, twisting both hands behind his back and then bringing them forward in a heavy concussive blast of wind. The proximity to the orb magnified the strength of the blast into a hurricane force gust, launching Lilith backwards. She tumbled head over bottom down the path, summoning her silver dagger and stabbing it into the ground to hold onto some semblance of control while her body flailed in the air. The spell ended and Lilith landed with a heavy oof, the wind knocked out of her and leaving her breathless.

Three betas ran past her as soon as the wind subsided, stopping only to check that she was not still in possession of the orb, one taking the time to smash her face into the earth. Lilith climbed back to her feet for the second time in under a minute, gritting her teeth as she wiped the dirt and a loose twig free. If they wanted to play dirty, so be it.

The four Betas (two boys including Alm, and two girls) were in a deathlock of a struggle. Dogpiled atop one another, each scrambled to grab hold of the orb, and as they did, their powers negated. Lilith came dashing over the group, shouting “I GOT IT, I GOT IT!” as she did, then tripped, sending a metal rolling down the way.

All four glanced up, then ran after it, not once considering that this supposed orb seemed to be made of a silver material. The first that grabbed it lifted it high into the air, then blinked, looking down to note it was rather… hollow.

This of course was due to the fact that Lilith had shaped her dagger into a sphere and sent it tumbling on purpose. A chorus of explosions and whistles echoed up ahead as the trio dogpiled onto Alm, the sphere-shaped dagger disappearing as Lilith recalled it. She leaned down, scooping the real Feyline Anchor once more into her arms, and elected to run the opposite direction.

The hedge maze grew taller, bramble branches forming a canopy ceiling, blotting out the sky. The path split into three directions, more like an actual fork than a supposed fork in the road (which had always really just struck Lilith as a Y in the road more than anything resembling an eating utensil). She listened to the sounds at each one. The first, on the far left, was eerily silent. The middle, more noise. The right, a sound could be heard like a low growling with the faint sound of a scream being carried on the wind.

Lilith ran to the left, footprints sticking to the mud and leaving a strong indentation. She then hopped backward into each step, making a move to head into the third path while leading a trail for her pursuers to end up lost in. [48]

The middle path was full of leaves, though Lilith had not seen a single tree since she arrived. A nonexistent gust of wind picked up a handful, blowing them down the path ahead, forming an optical illusion. There was at least one student here; she could see how the leaves had hit an invisible object, falling in a pile where two shoe-shaped prints refused to have anything land inside. That was fine by her, she too had an invisible spell. Pulling back her arm, she threw the spectral hand forward in the shape of a fist, hitting the figure in the stomach as she ran past. She jumped up, landing on what she assumed to be the back of the bent over student, forcing them into the pile of the leaves while pressing on.

More paths lay ahead, more twists and turns, before running into a dead end. She knew her chances of doubling back were not going to be successful, and so she made the only choice that seemed to make sense: She began to climb. Swinging her dagger above, she cut through the canopy of bramble and escaped on to the top of the path, seeing she was more than halfway towards the gazebo. She took the time to look in every direction, witnessing lightning bolts, blasts of water, and even falling avalanches of snow forming about as the students all seemed to be clashing with one another to get further into the labyrinth. Lilith had wondered what the point was, but all of a sudden it had clicked; all of these students were struggling to get further ahead, fighting over the middle ground as if their life depended on it. If only they would unite! But it was impossible to get the middle class to unite, especially with lower classmates that they could turn their ire towards. Even if they outnumbered the Alphas 3-1 together, they'd eat themselves alive for the opportunity to be better than the lowest.

Clearing the gaps with well placed jumps along the way. She landed at the exit, having bested most of the betas, finding Emily waiting tentatively with her staff outstretched, circling the area and checking for any unexpected visitors.

“Emily!” Lilith shouted, running to her friend. The druid flinched but then relaxed, running to hug her friend tight.

“Lilith!?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s happened to you? Are you okay?” Her friend said, who first hugged her, then placed both hands on her face to check if she was wearing a changeling mask.

“Y-es, what are you doing?”

Emily took a step back, conjuring up a sheet of ice for reflection.

Lilith gasped, blinking as she looked herself over.

Her hair was no longer a curly brunette, but a deep straight golden blonde. Her eyes had changed to a sparkling blue, and her ears… Lilith turned her head in both directions to confirm that they were, indeed, pointed.

“I look like an elf.”

“Yeah, you do.” Her friend said, dropping the spell and glancing down at the orb. “You’ve got it!?”

That snapped Lilith from her stupor of confusion. “Yeah, we gotta keep going. Who knows how long it’ll take the others to realize, we’ll have to figure out the elf thing later!”

Grabbing her hand, Emily turned and all but dragged her past the gazebo and towards the building that most resembled the library.

Neither happened to notice the gazebo’s teleporter begin to glow, and the shape of The Knave materialize precisely one week to the second, just as promised.

Footnotes

[48] They would in fact run into another ambush party not more than two minutes later following this course, leading to bruises, chipped teeth, and sprained spellcasting fingers