THE RELIC GUILD (and other stories) Updated regularly.

CHAPTER ONE: The Great Labyrinth (part 1)

Marney glanced up at the sky as she ran. A thick blanket of clouds obscured the stars and blurred Ruby Moon to a smudge of dull red. The stench of mould filled her nostrils. The air was warm and humid, dampening her skin, promising heavy rain. Already a fine mist of drizzle had slicked the cobbles beneath her boots, and glinted as it clung to moss growing on the black bricks of the high walls flanking her. Surrounded by miles of intersecting alleyways, with only moonlight and shadows to guide her, Marney blocked the pain of her burning leg muscles and headed deeper into the Great Labyrinth.

Tonight, she searched for a denizen lost among the alleyways: a young woman with bad people on her tail, assassins more accustomed than their prey to the kind of danger lurking in this monstrous maze. The girl would only find despair in the complexities of the Great Labyrinth. However, on this occasion, her would-be assassins had more to deal with than a straightforward killing. They had an empath on their tail.

As the alley came to a cross junction, Marney paused in the shadow of a buttress. The alleyways of the Great Labyrinth did not differ from each other much: roughly five paces wide, twisting and curving in seemingly impossible ways, with pairs of opposing buttresses every fifteen paces or so. Usually, cobbled ground and mossy brickwork were all that could be seen for miles on end; but across this junction, standing further down the opposite alleyway, were the remnants of a makeshift camp.

A canvas sheet, damp and covered in mould, had been fashioned into a crude bivouac. The top edge was studded to the brickwork. It stretched diagonally down to roughly the centre of the path, where it was held to the ground by heavy weights. There were a few metal storage containers close by, piled on top of each other, rusty and full of holes. Beside them lay a glow lamp, smashed and useless.

A few rats scurried around the improvised camp and into the bivouac's triangular opening. Marney could see the dark shapes of heaped bundles inside. She knew it had once been the shelter of a treasure hunter, someone who had died of his own greed and stupidity, probably decades ago. The camp appeared deserted, but maybe deceptively so ...

Marney summoned her empathic magic.

Her awareness shifted, falling out of sync with the world of dark, cloudy sky and misted night air. She could no longer smell the damp of her hair and clothes. Detached now from her intuition, Marney focused on a single moment, a single space, and her magic reached out.

The mossy bricks of the alley walls and the slick cobbles became insubstantial as her senses searched for revealing signs: the emotions of an assassin hiding around the treasure hunter's camp. But the only emotive response was the otherness of rats existing within their simple-minded routines. No ambush awaited her. Marney didn't know whether to feel relieved or offended.

These rodents weren't the only kind of creatures dwelling in the Great Labyrinth; there were monsters too, especially here where the maze twisted and turned like the arteries of a black heart. If she had a mind to, Marney could be the worst monster of them all, yet the assassins had left no trap. Perhaps they didn't perceive her as a serious threat. She was only one old woman, after all ...

Marney stopped searching. Her restored awareness once again registered the damp air and foul-smelling alleyways. She took the left alley at the cross junction, leaving the camp behind, and resumed running.

The girl Marney was trying to rescue was known as Peppercorn Clara. Barely eighteen, she was a whore rumoured to have a libido as spicy as it was insatiable. The story was that Clara had killed a client halfway through a job. The man had been a disreputable sort who wouldn't be missed, and according to Marney's information, Peppercorn had been forced into a corner and had no choice but to defend herself. Marney believed that somebody, somewhere, had benefited from the murder of Clara's client. These assassins were on a clean up job.

Marney cut a right and then a quick left. She skidded on damp moss, righted herself and sped down a long alley that stretched straight ahead into the gloom.

Time was running short, and Marney was behind in the chase. Clara was too far away to contact mentally, but her fear left emotional footprints that led clearly through the alleyways. Unless Marney could head her off, and fast, Clara would flee too deep into the Great Labyrinth, to the places where assassins would be the least of her problems.

Between the alley walls, in the little niches and hidden corners of the giant maze, there was a peripheral place that both inhabited the real world and did not. The denizens of Labrys Town called this place the Retrospective; and there pockets of dead time existed – remnants of long gone civilisations. These epochs were a treasure house of forgotten artefacts and secrets, or so it was said. But only the greed of treasure hunters, or insanity, could drive a person to search for the Retrospective. For within that twilight realm dwelt many terrible things.

Manifested as a horde of ghosts, they snaked and weaved through the very fabric of the Great Labyrinth, like tendrils of dark history, remorseless aspects without good or reason; monsters, phantoms from nightmares with names only mentioned in whispers, or upon the pages of secret books. The wild demons of the Retrospective slept with one eye open, always ready to swallow the unwary.

And Peppercorn Clara was heading straight for them.

As the light of Ruby Moon shone brightly through a gap in the clouds, Marney reached the end of the alleyway and cut a sharp right. Somehow, she didn't see the assassin until it almost was too late.

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