L.i.P. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:  The Labyrinth

At the moment Linus’s foot touched the darkness, his entire body was washed over and lost in a deep abyss of nothingness, as though he plunged into a river at night.  Unlike the cold, icy river he’d been thinking about before, this sensation was warm and comforting as it washed around him.  It seemed like he was being moved with a great current as he was pushed towards a faint speck of light in the vast sea of darkness.  It was getting brighter and brighter and threatening to engulf him in its entirety, and then, then he put his foot down.

Linus’s foot was on the top of a step, and the light was just the inside of the gate.  Glancing back over his shoulder was still the outside where he had been, and the gate keeper who followed him inside a bit. 

As Linus continued inside he felt his cheeks flush in embarrassment.  Had he been swayed by a magician’s cheap tricks into thinking that he’d actually been transported into another realm?  All he had done was step through a hallucination of sorts into a heated cellar or something.  Annoyed but determined, he continued down the steps into the cellar like room, which consisted of two solid side walls and a fourth wall that had another opening with walls set on either side of it, presumably leading to the next room.  Over the passage was a small sign that read ‘The Labyrinth’.      

“The Labyrinth?”  Linus questioned as he read though sign aloud.  Wasn’t he supposed to be in a place called Perveria? 

“What is this?”  He asked as he turned around to face the man who called himself the gate keeper of Perveria.  The man whom appeared to have followed him in had instead stayed at the top of the stairs by the gate.  Given this new difference in height, there was something eerie about him as he looked down.

“This is the entrance to the great labyrinth of Perveria.  This room is the gate’s room, which is always moving due to the fact that the gate itself never stays connected to the same place in the surface world.  Gate rooms are managed by keepers like me, but I am the only one on this side of the labyrinth, which is massive.  The labyrinth is like the hallway of Perveria.  It welcomes those who travel to it, and helps to escort them to places that will fulfill their desires.”  He stated in a lofty tone. 

“The Realm of Perveria is stretched across a system of planets that are vast and diverse in their nature and inhabitants,” the man continued to explain, “with each point connected to a different part of the labyrinth itself.  In a way, the labyrinth serves as the conduit or nexus of Perveria, which is too vast to traverse in one’s lifetime.

“Unlike the whimsical realm of desires that Perveria represents, the labyrinth is steadfast and unchanging.  At no point will the pathways change or switch around, and all points will stay branched out to the parts of Perveria it connects to.  It is possible to learn it all and remember how to navigate its expanse, but you are more likely to find yourself settled into your new life in the realm beyond it. 

“However, if you decide that you must return, know that virginity is one of the keys to change, as only virgins can enter here.  This is largely because a virgin has not sworn sexual allegiance to the world in which they live, meaning that is the world where they wish to remain.  Largely unknown to the world of men, it’s for this reason that virgins were used for sacrifice or desired by deities or demons.  But that is another story.

“Of course,” he stated slyly, “that all depends on if you manage to find me in the first place.  After all, the gate remains closed because it is you who does not open it.”

At these words the two sides of the gates swung in to close with a loud metallic clang, the cogs rotating around until the doors were locked in place.  The vines which he had thought to just be hanging there started to grow and weave on their own, concealing the gate from view until it was completely buried behind their thick, teaming mass. 

“Wait!”  Linus started to cry out in panic, reaching out with his hand as though trying to stop him.  “What about –”

“I am sorry,” said the gate keeper as he started to fade out of sight, “but another future resident has summoned for me.” 

The man took off his top hat and swept it low as he bowed his body.  “I do wish you your best, and welcome you, to Perveria!”

“No, stop!”  Linus started to panic as the man completely faded from view.  Being led down here was one thing, but being left completely was another thing entirely!  Acting on instinct alone, he rushed up the stairs and started pulling on the vines, wrenching them to the side to reveal what he thought would be the gate… only to find that a wall was in its place. 

No, that wasn’t it.  The gate was gone.  To be more precise, it was as if it was never here in the first place.

He slammed his fist against the wall in frustration.  Unable to do anything more, he resigned to the truth of the moment.  He was here now, and leaving the way he came was no longer an option.  That meant the only thing to do was go forward, into this ‘labyrinth’ and go to wherever it went. 

With a sigh he surveyed the room to see if there was anything usable or helpful and there was nothing.  Without anything else to go on, he cautiously made his way through the doorway into a layered stone passageway that seemed bright, but had no lights.  Absently he reached out to the stones that were connected together intricately to form this passageway, but seemed like a jigsaw with no mortar.  What’s more, the stone was pure white, and seemed to be the source of the light, even if they were not visibly glowing.  They were also cool to the touch, but were too rough to be anything other than stone. 

It was an interesting contrast of cool walls and warm air.  Perhaps this was a way for people to regulate their body temperature.  After all, he came in from the cold.  While the warm air was better than freezing to death outside, it was a little too warm for his comfort.  Luckily there was plenty of space in the passage way that he could choose between hot, warm, and cool.

Leaving the musings about the temperatures to his thoughts, he quickly began to approach what looked like the end of the passageway.  The stones of the curved ceiling seemed to slant upwards, and the walls seemed to open up into a larger foyer.  Perhaps there he would find something that would tell him where he was or needed to go. 

At first he sped up in eager anticipation of discovery, but soon he slowed as an overwhelming feeling crept into every fiber of his being.  It looked like the floor ahead dropped violently, and the ceiling rose beyond what could be considered a foyer.  In fact, it didn’t look like the entrance to a room at all.  And soon he knew why.

Instead of the room he initially suspected, the hallway reached a dead end as it opened into a vast expanse he could only assume was the reason they called the labyrinth a central point to the realm.  Although it looked like he had emerged from a tunnel to the outside, he could tell there was nothing natural about this place.  On the edge of a cliff-like terrace, the vastness of the labyrinth spread out like a giant maze beneath him, with twisting white-bricked walls making the view look like a colossal rat maze.  The sky was a tall white formless ceiling of haze, while there were no walls to either side.  The expanse of the labyrinth started from the stairs that descended to his right and into a single path.  The white wall prevented any straying from the path, though even at this vantage he couldn’t tell if there was anything outside of the walls, like there was no reality outside of them. 

All around the labyrinth he could see pockets of what looked to be outside areas.  One of the brighter looking ones was the first one he would reach after venturing down the path, and it looked like a good place to get some help.  He dimly took note that the center – or what he thought could be the center - of the labyrinth seemed brighter and friendlier, as the farther removed seemed to increase in foreboding. 

No matter.  He had as much as a first glimpse into this strange world as he could record in his mind, and it was enough to know that his first stop was so close.  Surely there would be something he could discover there.

With his mind set on his objective, he entered the walled stairway and proceeded forward, down into the heart of this maze.  Once there, he walked briskly, shedding his coat and tucking it under his arm.  It was true that the walls of the labyrinth controlled temperature, but it seemed to be even warmer down here, and he was producing enough body heat from the exercise alone. 

Knowing what was ahead of his path made it easier to move faster along it.  In no time at all it seemed like he was to the pocket distortion he had observed earlier.  Getting closer to it, he could see it was more than just a bright splash of in this sea of white.  The ground, neither brick nor dirt, just substance that he had been walking on until now, seemed to fray and turn to a sandy, nutrient deprived soil.  While the wall continued on the farthest side, the wall ended abruptly into the colored portion, like it had eaten its way into the labyrinth.  In fact it seemed like a spherical distortion that came into the labyrinth, but was separate from it. 

Moving closer to it now, Linus could see something much farther beyond the colored region.  It was like a glimpse into a frozen television screen, as everything on the other side was still and frozen in place.  He saw a variety of things that seemed like a town center not far away, and people that were positioned in ways that looked like everyday business.  The sky was blue, not white, and the ground went from a sandy color to a nutrient rich dark color.  There were no cars; rather it looked to be a throwback to a medieval society from the animal carts to the simple tunics the people were wearing.  All in all it was a very strange picture, as it seemed to have such depth to it.  It was more of a glimpse into another world than he thought was possible.  

Surely it wasn’t possible to be something more… but then he couldn’t see the glass or the front of it.  It looked like continuous space into a frozen world.  But that couldn’t be right.  There had to be something more to it than that. 

Stretching out his hand, and waiting for his fingers to bump into something solid, he got closer, shuffling his feet farther into the sandy soil as he reached out to touch what should be the glass, but nothing got in his way.  He moved a bit more, and there was still nothing.  He already noticed that his fingers were beyond the point where the wall would be if it continued on, so it wasn’t a mural.  Maybe if he leaned just a bit more…

Suddenly he had shifted his weight too far forward, couldn’t get his footing in the sandy soil and pitched forward thinking he’d slam right into a wall or a plane of glass, imagining the shattering and the pieces as they rained into him.  Yet he felt nothing of the sort as he fell instead right onto the ground.  The blow wasn’t much, as the loose sand was soft, but he felt foolish for having done so. 

Before he could muttered about his failure as a human being, he felt something was off.  The temperature normalcy within the labyrinth wasn’t consistent anymore, and a breeze blew air across his face, laced with a variety of smells.  Unsure of this new development, he looked up and saw to his astonishment, that the people and everything that had been stationary before were moving.     

“What the…?” He muttered to himself as he stood up. 

This was getting stranger.  This wasn’t the labyrinth, it was something new.  Perhaps it was here that he would find his answers.