The Suggestion Box, Vol. 4: A to Z Challenge

Letter L: "The Labors of Lorelei"

*This story is a sequel to "Stained Glass Wings" in THE SUGGESTION BOX, VOL. 3: ONE THOUSAND WORDS series [ https://www.wattpad.com/388271829-the-suggestion-box-volume-3-one-thousand-words ]

Lorelei lay where she landed amid shards of broken glass. Slowly, she eased herself up to her feet. Luckily, her wings in stained-glass form were not wholly attached to her body, being representational of her own biological wings—but it would be a while before her own wings grew back to replace the glass ones, so she was bound to be on foot for the foreseeable future.

A small gasp reminded her of the reason for being here and losing her wings in the first place. Lorelei whirled around just in time to see a lithe young woman make a mad dash for the looming walls behind them, disappearing into the mist.

"Oh no you don't!" The archangel muttered, running after the mysterious lady.

She reached all of two steps past the limit of the first wall, when the fog lifted and she learned the location whereupon she had inadvertently stumbled: a gigantic Labyrinth.

She knew, from past experience, that this maze hadn't been there before. It must have been conjured by the lady with the crystal pen.

"Leapin' lizards!" Lorelei groaned.

She did her best to follow the lure of the pen's power. She could feel the latent magic of it, pulling her like a lodestone down one path and then the next.

Lightning crackled somewhere nearby, and Lorelei followed the lead of the pen right into a trap in the middle of the maze.

A lion prowled on the lawn, next to a looming larch, and the lightning she had heard appeared caught in its branches. Every step Lorelei tried to take toward the path she knew she needed to follow to get the pen, the lion would lunge at her.

"Of all the legendary artifacts from other dimensions, it had to be this one!" Lorelei complained, sitting down on the grass to muse over how to get past this challenge. Every moment she spent here was a chance for that pen to get further away, and the fate of more than just this dimension would be at stake!

The young archangel regarded the mass of electricity arcing from the sky.

"I don't want to get the lion struck," she mused, "but I do need to get close enough to the tree to liberate the lightning—I need to get control of the lion somehow!"

She trailed her fingers through the grass as she pondered.

At the sudden movement, a tiny ball of light sprang up and wavered erratically in the air. Lorelei looked toward the tiny glowing pinprick, snatching it out of the air with her hand. It stopped glowing at once, and Lorelei could get a good look at it: a delicate ladybug crawled around her palm. When Lorelei opened her hand, it lit up as it flew away once more, leaving a luminous trail as it lighted through the shadows. Lorelei lurched to her feet and followed the bug down a lane. Part of her concentration remained aware that she was leaving the mysterious lady far behind, but with one last corner, Lorelei knew she had come to the right place:

A bold leather leash hung among the leaves of the labyrinth hedge. Tugging it down, Lorelei affirmed that it was indeed large enough to fit the lion. She could only hope that she would be swift enough to restrain it in a direct confrontation, because she didn't have time for anything less.