Chapter 6 – Trial

After his time spent on the ground in front of the Relic wall of hell, Rain stands up and dusts himself off, then slowly surveys the room again. The Echo takes the opportunity to make itself heard.

[Hopeful, may the Relic of your forgotten god serve you in your quest for glory. The Labyrinth awaits...let your soul guide you to its Temple.]

He rolls his eyes at the Echo's message. For one, because he doubts that most Marked would willingly subject themselves to this for "glory", and two, because the Echo just confirmed his suspicion from earlier. His patron deity is the source of the Relics.

'I wonder if other deities give their Marked useful Relics...'

Eventually, Rain shifts his focus to the Echo's other comment, about letting his soul guide him to a Temple. That's pretty in line with what Aron warned him of – his goal is some kind of Temple in the Labyrinth, and his Mark can point him in the right direction. 

'Sure...but how do I activate this Mark's sixth sense?'

Rain takes a look around as he ponders that question. His gaze falls on the four channels of water that flow away from the central column, as though in four cardinal directions. Each water channel passes though four corresponding exits, beyond which dark black hallways can be seen. 

'So, I've got four different options to enter the Labyrinth. They may meet up or swap directions later, so I could pick wrong, but it's safe to say that I should start with the one that faces the Temple.'

Aron told him that his Mark should heat up if he's on the right track. So, Rain takes some time to walk around the room, standing in front of each of the Labyrinth's entrances. He can't really feel any difference on his first lap around, so on the second lap he starts walking back and forth in front of each entrance, toward and away from them. He also tries closing his eyes and focusing on the sensation of his Mark. Eventually, it's faint to the point of being questionable, but Rain swears that his Mark gets slightly warmer near one of the entrances. 

'Whelp...it's better than picking one at random, I guess.'

With that cheery thought, Rain lines himself up in front of the entrance in question, does one last check to confirm that Ideal Protection is still covering his torso, then steps into the Labyrinth. 

*****

What fees like several hours later, Rain is delightfully bored. Upon first entering the Labyrinth, he walked at a snail's pace, wouldn't turn any corner without peeking around it first, and agonized over every little sound he made. The soft leather shoes of his new outfit don't make much noise, but he spent the first twenty minutes in the Labyrinth frantically learning to walk in a way that suppressed any sound at all. He was convinced every time he made noise that some horrible Fel was going to lurch around a corner and kill him.

Alas, after maybe two hours with no booby traps, no Fel, and no sounds except the water streaming along the sides of the Labyrinth's corridors...Rain chilled out some. Now, he's still suppressing any sounds from his footsteps, and keeping his eyes and ears sharp, but he's walking at a brisk pace without corner-checking, and his heart and mind are much calmer. 

As for navigating the Labyrinth, Rain started with a relatively simple strategy. Whenever he came upon a branching path, he'd keep heading straight if possible, in the direction the original entrance faced. If he could only turn left or right, he'd pick the opposite direction of the last time he made such a decision. After making such a left or right, he'd take the very next path that put him back heading straight. Anytime he hit a dead end, he'd double back and continue this decision making process as though that path never existed. The goal of all this? To keep him traveling in as close to a straight line as possible along the direction that his Mark first sensed the Temple. 

However, not too long ago the Mark on Rain's chest started having more of a reaction. He's obviously still far from the Temple, but the effect is enough that he can more or less tell what direction the Temple is in at all times – no need to close his eyes and focus. 

'At least I know that my original guess about the proper entrance was the correct one.' 

Still, a full understanding of the Mark's value as a guide is...so critical. Sure, the Echo gave him that advice about it, but the wording was incredibly vague. Without Aron spelling it out for him beforehand, he never would have been able to choose the right entrance based on his Mark. What makes that especially scary is that, as far as Rain can tell, those entrances lead to completely separate parts of the Labyrinth. They don't reconnect. 

Keeping that in mind, it's no wonder that almost all Marked died in the early days. Without advice like Aron's, 75% of them would have picked the wrong entrance from the start, and the other quarter would have been wandering around aimlessly. Even if they were lucky enough to pick the right entrance, and perceptive enough to pick up on the changes in their Mark, they'd have to travel in the right direction long enough for the reaction to become noticeable. There's a lot of ways to die before then, and plenty after, too, probably. 

'I'll have to thank Aron profusely if I make it out of here...'

Returning his attention to navigation, Rain notices that the reaction of his Mark is clearly strongest, not in a forward direction, but slightly diagonal to his path thus far. Forward and left. Noting the needed redirection, he changes his strategy to only take left turns at left-right branches, instead of alternating left and right turns. After several more hours of walking, the pull of the Temple seems to be directly forward again, and Rain returns to his original strategy. 

He pauses to drink some water from one of the small aqueducts on the side of the corridor, worrying about his pace while he does. Growing more confident in his navigation, and emboldened by the lack of danger so far, he decides to continue his journey jogging instead of walking. Less than an hour later, he comes to sorely regret his recklessness. 

As Rain is approaching another turn, he suddenly feels the floor give ever so slightly under his descending foot. Before he can fully evaluate the sensation, however, he feels a gust of wind run through his hair, and sharp pain assault the side of his calf. At the same time, his chest armor slams against his torso like a truck, knocking the breath out of him as he's thrown several meters back across the corridor. 

As he slides to a halt on the Labyrinth floor, wheezing pitifully, he hears the faint clang of metal behind him. Then, he passes out. 

***

When Rain regains consciousness sometime later, his first awareness is of a searing pain in his calf. Sitting up on the floor with a groan, he groggily moves to inspect his aching calf. To his shock, his pants are torn along the inside of his lower leg and saturated with blood. A shallow gash is visible on his skin under the torn pants. Rain's eyes widen in surprise as he takes in the sight of his injured leg, and recalls his last moments before passing out. 

'What the hell happened to me...?'

Looking around cautiously, trying to gather his bearings, he notices the gleam of something metal a couple meters in front of him. Scooting forward on the floor to inspect it, while grimacing at the sudden flare of pain in his calf, his eyes finally make out the details of the object. He feels a cold sweat start to form on the back of his neck as he identifies it. Sitting in front of him is something resembling the bolt from a crossbow, but it's huge. The metal head is almost six inches long and serrated, while the body of the bolt is almost two inches thick and three feet long. It's honestly better described as a javelin. 

Slowly turning around to face back the way he came through the corridor, he can faintly identify two more of the deadly weapons. It's then that it becomes clearer to him what must have happened – he stepped on a booby trap that triggered three of these bolts to fire at him. One must have grazed his calf, one must have barely missed above his head, and one must have slammed directly into his chest. 

The realization sends a shudder through Rain's body. Ideal Protection saved him from being skewered, but the considerable force of that bolt was redistributed to his torso as a whole. Hence, him getting rag-dolled across the floor. Glancing down at his armor Relic, he notices a deep scratch in the mystic, jet black chest piece, and the sight makes his breath quicken involuntarily. 

'For this thing to get scratched, the weapon had to be at least Paragon Prestige...'

The full severity of the encounter finally settles on Rain, and he realizes how close he came to death. He's a couple inches shorter than average, so that highest bolt would have hit most people. More importantly, if he hadn't been given the Ideal Protection, or if he'd received normal Paragon armor, he wouldn't have withstood that bolt. He's even lucky that no Fel came to eat him while he was unconscious, given that he had a profusely bleeding cut. 

Rain lets out a shaky breath, coming to terms with what just happened. 

"I think...that's enough jogging in the Labyrinth..."