Sidrick splashed a salve on Layla, his short break over. He ignored the book chattering away in his mind as he thought of what he'd do in their new home. Rebuilding their House would take time and resources. It would also require him to be a much stronger mage. The labyrinth had shown him how painfully lacking he was.

“I know that look,” the book said. “I don’t know how I know it, but I know it.”

“Probably our connection.”

“No, it’s my intuition,” the book quickly said. “I support your drive for power.”

“Because if I get stronger, you can use more magic?” Sidrick asked, rolling his eyes.

“My name will strike fear into the hearts of… whatever is strongest.”

“Sovereigns.”

“They will beg to read me.”

Sidrick snorted as he picked Layla up and went up to the next layer. This would be the sixth he’d be passing through. As he entered the new layer, he laughed. There was equipment here. Some abandoned campsites, it looked like.

“Thank fuck,” Sidrick said as he kicked over an empty can, enjoying the sound of it clattering across the stone floor. There wasn’t anything usable left but just seeing evidence of civilization lifted Sidrick’s spirits. If he could find a party traversing the labyrinth, they’d likely have a healer. Layla would be back to bulldoze their way to the surface.

“Something’s here,” the book whispered, its voice trembling. “Go back down.”

Sidrick was about to retort but paused. The book is afraid? He frowned deeply. The arrogant little thing was scared shitless. Were he less experienced, he’d probably say the book was just afraid of leaving home and continue onwards. But if he’d learned anything in the past few years, it was caution. The final conflicts of Yenoriha had no shortage of spies, assassins, and obscure, overly engineered magic.

He checked some of the camp remnants more closely, trying to determine how old the things were. The tents furthest from the way down were all pristine. The stakes were still embedded in the stone. Would it take too long to pack up and move? The fires nearby were still a tad warm too.

Sidrick’s frown deepened. The eery quiet of the labyrinth weighed on him.

“Let’s go,” the book whined in a hushed voice.

“Agreed,” Sidrick finally whispered, deciding to quietly make his way back. He descended to the trap layer and laid Layla down, deep in thought.

The book let out a figurative sigh. “I can breathe again. Whoa.”

Sidrick sat down and crossed his arms. “Can you tell me at all about what you felt?”

“It was like I couldn’t breathe.”

“You just said— Nevermind. Can you tell me anything else?”

“Don’t go back up.”

“Incredibly helpful, as always,” Sidrick said, ignoring the book’s prideful outburst of a reply, all sarcasm lost on it.

Sidrick reached into his satchel and retrieved the Anchor. He stared at it as he contemplated how to move forward. He’d need to get through that layer regardless of the danger.

The exit rooms never shifted...

The Anchor worked over any distance, at least in theory...

“What’s our connection’s range?” Sidrick asked.

“……….Why?”

“If there really is something dangerous up there, I’m setting the Anchor. Then I search for the monster, kill it, and come back for my sister,” Sidrick said. “And you,” he added. “If anything happens here, you let me know, I kill myself, and appear to deal with it.”

“I don’t like this plan. I think mine is better.”

“What’s the range?” Sidrick asked, ignoring it.

“How would I know??”

Sidrick groaned. He placed the anchor back in his satchel and started up the steps. The book ranted and raved in his ear as he stepped up into the next layer. He walked to the edge of the campsite room, then back to the steps. The book had been whining away the whole time. He stood beside the stairs for a while to see if the connection waned at all but there was no change. Going between layers was fine, at least.

Its range was also good enough to let him stay in the camp room. If nothing else, he could linger there and hope for a party to arrive.

His trip back down the stairs was serenaded with insults and thank-gods. It was nice to know the book cared. Sidrick just wished its affection was conveyed in a quieter fashion.

He sat back down and let his thoughts settle before pulling out the Anchor. He shook his head and took out a few vials of spider blood, forming an orb behind him. He started scratching an array into the ground, the process requiring a frustrating amount of focus. It wasn’t like he could erase the runes if one of them was slightly off.

What took him five minutes with chalk took half an hour with his ice magic. He had made it large enough to encompass a few meter area around Layla and the book.

“What’s it do?” the book asked.

“Spatial perception spell,” Sidrick said as he dipped his fingers in spider blood and started drawing on the book’s cover.

“EWWWWW!!!” it cried. “Use the silver blood at least! The siLVER ONE, SIDRICK, THE SILVER ONE!!”

Sidrick couldn’t take the book’s shrieking. He pulled the spider blood off its cover and took out the vial of silver blood. His fingers touched the book… And the blood soaked into its cover. Like it was a sponge.

He’d need to research that once he was out.

“I feel more powerful,” the book said, raising an imaginary eyebrow as it smirked. “The path to power is paved by suffering, truly. Only by tasting the blood of my enemies could I—“

Sidrick started drawing with the spider blood again, ignoring the book’s protests. He finished the array much quicker this time.

“I have been violated. Defiled,” the book said. “To think my contractor was such a vile criminal.

Sidrick rolled his eyes as he started pushing mana into the larger array. “You should be able to see through the spell. Tell me if there are any problems.”

The array glowed with a dull gray light. It had enough mana to last a little over an hour. Sidrick crossed his arms and waited for the book to spew some bullshit.

“Aiya! Aren’t I handsome? I understand your belligerence now, as I look upon your mediocre face and lacking fashion,” the book said.

“No problems with the array then,” Sidrick said, rolling his eyes as he took out a healing salve for Layla.

Mediocre. He held back a sigh. Well, he’d certainly look better after a bath, shave, haircut, and visit to a tailor. It grated on him that the comment actually annoyed him. Damn noble upbringing.

He splashed Layla with the healing salve before standing. “I’ll explore for half an hour, then head back.” He gave the book a serious look. “Stay vigilant. Call me if anything at all enters your perception. Check in every ten minutes or when I ask. No bullshit or I will throw you into a furnace and leave you there.”

“U-Understood.” It paused. “How will you tell time?”

“I’ll count and guess,” Sidrick said. Their clock had been lost on the forest layer and his watch was with one of his corpses on the bottom layer. “Feel free to count yourself too, just in case I pass out.”

“This is a terrible plan.”

“I can’t think of a better one,” Sidrick said as he stabbed the Anchor into the floor. Its copper arrays spread out slower this time. The number three glowed at the Anchor’s center.

Sidrick gathered an orb of spider blood behind him and started toward the stairs. He paused on the first step and looked back. “Stay safe.”

“Worry not. I am invincible.”

“Why do I bother,” Sidrick muttered as he started climbing.

#

The new layer was far more manageable. Sidrick was almost pissed off with the disparity in difficulty. He had to remind himself that it was a matter of magical advantage.

A limb extended from his orb and stabbed through a dog-like creature with smooth white skin and two spear-tipped tails. Its saliva was corrosive, its teeth and claws like razors. Unfortunately for them, ice magic was just fantastic at dealing with flesh and blood. Spatial perception also warned him about any surprise attacks. He could stab them around corners or block them off with an ice wall.

While the dogs were the most notable monsters he’d seen, there were plenty of dangerous things hiding in the dark. If he lacked the sphere of perception, he’d be dead.

If he had more than rudimentary space magic, maybe the trap layer would have been simple too. But with the hidden runes… Well, completely bypassing a layer’s unique danger was not always possible. He recalled one labyrinth on Yenoriha whose every layer had a different environmental extreme. Sub-zero on one layer, then the center of a volcano on the next.

Thirty minutes passed all too easily.

As Sidrick headed back, he wondered if the book was just exaggerating. Maybe one of the beasts created fear with mind magic. The passive strength of a soul mage’s mind and spirit was enough to brush it off, if that was the case.

Still, his gut just didn’t sit right despite all the reasons it should. He had a feeling this layer had some hidden trick.

The traps had been a tangible danger, a solvable problem. They had a clear cause and effect.

Subtle malice was much scarier.

#

“How’s it look?” Jonah asked Vivi, knocking on the barrier blocking the stairs to the fourth layer. They had encountered several on the way here, Vivi dispelling each one. It had still taken far too long. The Fae had turned what should have been a very quick mission into her whole day.

This barrier seemed a lot more powerful, however. It was a bright bubble with white mana swirling within. Hedwin had to look away after it made Quantify go nuts.

Vivi looked away from her diagnostic array. “It’s incredible work. Spatial type, so almost definitely Fae. Mana disruption won’t work. It…” Vivi tried to find the words. “It pulls space together into an extremely dense pocket, increasing the distance attacks have to travel to get through. So if you get past the outer shell, your spells still have to pass, well, the equivalent of a mile to breach the second shell. Probably more. There are a lot of different effects too, but that’s the basic gist of it.”

“Fucks with my head a bit,” Jonah said, sighing as she crossed her arms. “Fucking space mages.”

“We’ll have to find an alternate route,” Hedwin said.

“We don’t have time to find a teleport book or anything else. Too many variables,” Jonah said. “We’ve already spent too long here.”

“Sorry…” Vivi said.

Jonah shook her head. “You’ve already saved us hours of hitting spatial barriers. Actually, you being unable to dispel it gives us a good idea of what we’re actually facing.”

“Royals,” Hedwin growled.

Vivi gave him a questioning look.

“They’re extremely hard to kill and a death sentence to anyone below archmage,” Hedwin explained. “They typically use space magic and an unnamed affinity. It… I can’t explain it. Like soul magic but deeper.”

Hedwin got a distant look in his eyes, remembering trials long past.

“They don’t scare as easily as other Fae. I remember fighting one before travelling,” Jonah said.

Hedwin broke from his thoughts and looked at her. “It should run if you show off a little.”

Jonah shrugged and looked back at the barrier. “Let’s break this bitch down, I guess.”

“I would like to inform Ede Alonse of what’s going on,” Hedwin said. “I can head back myself.”

“He probably knows already,” Vivi said.

“With a Royal involved, who knows. I don’t take chances with—“ He tensed. “Anchor down.”

“Both of you to the walls,” Jonah said.

Hedwin and Vivi immediately complied.

Jonah raised her hand. A white flame flickered over her palm. The air in the room started swirling toward the flame. It grew from a candle to a fireball, then shrunk again before repeating the process. It grew stronger and denser with each cycle. The vortex of wind howled as Jonah’s magic swelled. The flame screamed with power, a star in the palm of her armored hand.

Vivi’s barrier armor slowly melted from the heat, requiring her to constantly maintain it. Hedwin had doubled the thickness of his armor.

Jonah pressed her flame against the barrier. The outer shell broke immediately. The inner layer lit up with Jonah’s flames, their multicolored glow dancing across the room.

Jonah’s mana burned at a terrifying rate, her spell not meant for sustained casting. Even her armor was beginning to heat up. This would leave her weakened for hours, maybe even a day or two depending on the barrier’s toughness.

She trusted Hedwin and Vivi to finish the job if she couldn’t.

Better to suffer mana poisoning than lose a traveler.

#

Sidrick reached the exit room without any issue. The labyrinth hadn’t shifted, nor did any new beast show itself. He would extend the exploration by an hour for every successful trip. Layla was needing the salves less and less, but he’d still figure out some way to administer them while away. If only the book had a use aside from triggering traps. Part of him just wanted to rush but the feeling in his gut hadn’t faded.

He glanced around the exit room, almost expecting to find a creature watching him from the shadows.

Nothing appeared.