Maze

About last week, my friend and fellow writer Forsaken came up with a story idea.

This past Wednesday morning around 5:50, after an all-nighter dedicated to writing a lab report, I started writing for a "20 minute break". I go so into it that I just wrote the entire story. I stopped typing, glanced up at the upper-right corner of my computer and realized it was 7:50. 

The entire piece is still kind of messy and I think the same word is almost never used to describe an action more than once, so it reads kind of crazy. Nonetheless, I'm quite proud of this writing endeavor. If only I didn't have to pul all-nighters to do this kind of thing T_T

I've withheld the premise of the story for the afterstory comments in the hopes that people will actually understand the story and the final line without knowing the premise beforehand. Please enjoy the return of the standard characters! XD

Maze
WC: 1,266

Fifty thousand leagues from any civilization is the Maze. The only thing you can trust to be real is yourself. The only things you can trust to help you are those that try to kill everything before they know what it is. The only way to get out and live is to die within. 

Cisternae felt a warning buzz in his head even before he heard the footsteps of the oncoming mazelings. He loaded up his pistols, readying himself for anything the Maze could throw at him—and it had thrown,  jumped, even dumped plenty of strange things at him already. But he’d survived splendidly thus far and planned to keep it that way. Safety off, trigger ready. 

Behind him. Two on the ground, maybe three or more behind that. He didn’t even look back as he started running, shooting a few bullets behind him in case Lady Luck was looking kindly upon him. He turned corners and ran down diverging lanes with subconscious decisiveness, hoping to draw the mazelings into a dead end, where he could burst them down without worrying about being jumped from behind. 

They were gaining on him. Cisternae whirled, emptying both of his pistols in a matter of seconds. Three violet-colored mazelings burst into smoke and dust, but the others kept charging at him. He stashed the empty guns and drew the sword from his back, waiting for contact. It came, claw on blade. And then in a flash, his blade was driving through the claw, and into the head of the beast. Slash, slash, uppercut and smash—he cut the mazelings into dust before the next wave materialized from the the hedge next to him. He ran on, sheathing the sword and reloading his guns as he sought a better fighting ground. 

He rushed into an open arena, hedged in a wide circle all sides except for the way he’d come. Cisternae turned, eyes narrowed, and swapped the guns for the sword again. Whirlpools of gray smoke opened in the sand around him, signaling the arrival of more mazeling company. 

“Bring it.”

The mazelings didn’t hesitate to attack and Cisternae didn’t either. His blade waltzed around the battlefield, turning purple skin to gray smoke. For every creature he that fell, two more seemed to rise in its place. But even this couldn’t slow his onslaught. The sword in his hand swung as though it were controlled by his mind, cutting through anything around him. 

Then he glimpsed up, and saw the latest mazeling threat—airborne.

Cisternae switched his sword to one hand and cocked a pistol with the other, wary of the winged mazeling barreling towards him. Then, just before he fired, a shard of ice jutted from its chest. The winged beast vanished into smoke, just as its earth-bound brethren had fallen to Cisternae’s sword.

—

Qualia directed her staff up, throwing out ice and fire from the same attack. As the mazeling in front of her burned into gray dust, she ducked, dodging a crooked claw. In the next instant, sand beneath it opened and dropped the clawed creature back to the void it came from. Wind spiraled around her and slammed another monster backwards and into the sword that killed it. She met the gaze of the other mortal for a dangerous moment.

They should have been fighting each other, driving each other into the next horde of mazelings that spawned. They’d both proven themselves fighters—that is, they’d both demonstrated to each other  that they were much more lethal than the average maze-dweller. That meant they were a threat to each other. 

Yet Qualia found herself back to back with the swordsman, directing a shield of fire around the both of them, and relying on him to raze the mazelings as they neared. Even without speaking, their movements harmonized. Slash and burn in perfect synchrony.  It was strange, because she’d never met him before. She’d never even seen someone like him—sun-kissed golden-brown skin, and shadow-streaked eyes—no, she had definitely never encountered this person. 

—

Cisternae felt a rush of heat and exhilaration whirl around him, scathing the nearest monsters. His sword arched up and around, beheading the creatures as they came. He wasn’t watching his back anymore— his focus was directly before him, slicing through the lilac sea. Creatures seemed to line up, partially frozen or rooted to the ground, awaiting his blade. His sword was a guillotine, and he was the mazeling executioner. 

He tore through their ranks, turning what he could to dust and directing what he couldn’t into  fireballs or thorns. Sometimes blades of air joined his weapon, and together, swords of metal or wind stabbed through their enemies. He parried an attack, and a jet of water countered in the same instant. 

Qualia felt a spark of happiness light up her face, and a tremble of amusement grazed her as her partner danced past. She touched upon a kind of freedom she hadn’t known since she’d been trapped within the Maze. It was the way she and this boy worked so well together, ghosting past each other in perfect balance as they supported each other. It took her a moment to grasp the feeling. It was still fighting, but now, it was wicked fun. 

Cisternae laughed now as he destroyed the creepers that swarmed the arena. He’d never understood how the endless fight could be fun. Only now—and only with this girl. Two loose trails of chocolate swirled around her head as she turned and her smile was as bright as a sunrise beyond the Maze. He realized suddenly who she was. 

She was the reason his heart continued to beat and his body continued to move. She was the other half of the fragment he called himself. She was the person that could break the illusions around him. And that meant that she alone could decide how he would die. 

Qualia recognized it as well, as light scorched everything before her staff. The reason they defended each other and the meaning behind their unified fighting patterns and the very mechanism of their seamless thinking: they were soulmates. He was her antithesis. He was the only one who could understand her flawlessly. He was the only one in this world who could kill her.

Finally, a swing from her staff and a bang from his gun took out the last of the mazelings. To confirm the end of the day’s battle, a silver whirlpool opened up at the center of the arena, depositing a cornucopia filled with food, water, fresh clothes and all the amenities they could hope for. The fight was over. They knelt or leaned over their knees, breathing heavily and stowing their weapons. They had survived another day in the Maze. 

Cisternae contained his breath, but his expression betrayed both relief and anxiety. Qualia turned around slowly, but she shivered from a combination of excitement and terror. His guns were holstered and sword sheathed. Her limbs hung at her sides, the staff slung on her back. They were no longer on the edge. Yet neither moved towards the glimmering cornucopia.

They were still and silent as the adrenaline drained slowly from their blood. They both knew the person before them. Before them was the way out of the Maze. That was the final fight—for both of them. One of them could escape the Maze here and now. Yet they hesitated to move, because they both understood that death awaited both of them, albeit in different forms.

“So...bullet to the brain?"

Comments:

The original premise was a world where your soulmate was the only person that could kill you.

Thus, I made the only way to escape the maze is to die, and consequentially the only way to escape would be to find and get your soulmate to kill you. I think the idea got twisted when I was writing it into something like "only one person can escape/ only the killer gets away".

To restate, the conditions for leaving the maze are to find your soulmate, whom you will/ should recognize almost immediately, and then kill them. The line at the beginning, "The only way to get out and live is to die within," refers to the condition that if you want to survive and leave the maze, you have to kill the other half of your heart.

The speaker of the last line is intentionally vague. It could be Cisternae asking Qualia if a simple bullet will do, or Qualia requesting a quick death.

Origins of the Story:
Originally, Forsaken and I were talking about how our soulmates would be like in this AU (conversation roughly paraphrased):
me: dude, I would never die because he can't find me. I'd be sitting there like "SOULMATE-KUN COME FIND ME PLEASE. I WANNA LUV YOU"
Forsaken: I'd be the complete opposite. "DON'T YOU DARE LOOK FOR ME."
me: dude. no. You and your soulmate'd be beating everyone else up.

Forsaken: no...I can't be enjoying myself with him because if we're soul mates then all of sudden he's gonna be like, "so...bullet to the brain or...?"

She thought this was the funniest mental image ever and from there came up with the skeleton of the scene. During my productive all-nighter I fleshed out this skeleton into what you see now.

The whole soul-mate thing is similar to another soulmate concept I had earlier in high school. More on that next week :)

Best,
~Minerva