Mibbet was so close, so very close to finishing when The Maze shifted again, forcing her to turn. on the positive side she managed to turn on time, on the negative however wherever the hell she was headed now was deep inside The Maze. Another twist, then a practical hairpin bend and Mibbet was beginning to suspect the damned place was messing with her. Behind her she could hear the cheering as a winner was decided. But that wide passage that was behind her before? It wasn’t a passage anymore.

As if that wasn’t bad enough the passages were following up behind her, and Mibbet was a smart enough cookie to realise that if the passage was closing wall to wall behind you as fast as you moved slowing down or stopping were most likely not good outcomes. Unless your life’s goal was to become frog Princess jam, not an aspiration she really held.

As they flew on Rosalind desperately scanned for potential escape routes from their current dilemma. But upwards was only ceiling, and neither her nor Mibbet were particularly keen to see who would win in a her vs ceiling contest. That game was totally rigged.

Below was only floor, and they had already seen first hand that The Maze could be rather mean to those who set foot on their surface. So that left only one real option, full speed ahead, and pray to any god who happened to be paying attention that the route would either lead them out, or at the very least wasn’t some kind of endless corridor.

At least The Maze seemed to be doing one thing to show it wasn’t completely malicious. The colours and patterns on the walls were varied, and in some places it even opted to show pictures. Which had the side effect (intentional or unintentional,) of heavily implying they were actually headed somewhere. While also providing at least a brief break for a brain fried to a crisp by the sheer tedium that was flying in a practically never ending line.

Another small mercy was granted to them too, that every once in a while the route they travelled twisted and turned (sometimes really harshly, meaning either the maze just liked messing with them, and really wanted to keep them both on their toes. Or it did actually have a genuine destination in mind for them. Though where that could be they had absolutely no idea.) Mibbet did not like this one little bit, when she was a tadpole she had once been caught and put in a jar, luckily to be released a few short hours later when the child who had caught her was caught herself trying to smuggle her catch of the day into the house, by a mother who was definitely not encouraging of their young charges burgeoning interest in the field of herpetology.

This had that kind of feeling to it, like being watched by something completely beyond their control that could completely change their fate with a single simple move they could never truly comprehend. (You would have though that given their personal experience with gods, demons, and dragons. Alongside international politics that they would have started getting used to that feeling by now. But the situation is very different indeed when your guards and your friends couldn’t get to you to help than when you are alone in that mess by choice.)

The alien feeling of observation was frankly creepy, and they suspected yelling “a little privacy here” wouldn’t really cut it in this situation.

“At least I didn’t need to use the loo before the race started” Mibbet muttered to herself, “because I really wouldn’t want to right now.”

The passage still hadn’t changed after all this time, well not outside cosmetic stuff anyway. Leaving Mibbet decidedly nervous whatever was going on here was definitely messing with her, when everything got messy.

Suddenly The Maze started taking ridiculously sharp twists and turns practically endlessly. You got out of a right turn, sharp left, you finally got the hang of the never ending barrage of side passages? Good for you now have a practically vertical down right out of nowhere with a wall behind it. Manage that? I really hope you like zig zags because you have ten or twelve sharp zig zagging turns in a row, and given the passages closing behind you? You better not zig where you should have zagged, or your next move will be a splatter.

Then the passage started pushing her forward even faster, pushing her poor broom to the absolute limit. It almost felt like it was herding her. But why the hell would it want that? Last Mibbet heard sentient labyrinths had use for neither sentient frogs, or kidnapped Crown Princesses. From that it was a fairly safe bet that it probably didn’t have a use for both in the same body, so maybe there was some other intelligence at work here. Yeah actually that did kind of make sense, and was infinitely preferable to the other potential reason that she could think of. Being emergency rations for some kind of monster, beastie, or big bad had never really appealed to her. So there were only two ways to figure out which answer it was. The former being to charge back the way she came and dare The Maze to crunch her, that really didn’t sound like a particularly appealing plan, so maybe try plan a before rushing straight to plan z.

If she wanted to figure out what was controlling The Maze then whatever the hell it was would be bound to show itself eventually. So as per usual Mibbet opted for a ridiculous plan, and let herself be herded down a dizzying array of twists, turns, loops, and zig zags. Until at last she saw a light at the end of the tunnel, literally. Hoping to the gods that said light didn’t turn out to be a fireball she plunged on. Before flying free, and crashing into a wall of foliage.