Chapter 7

After trying to keep the castle in her sights, and utterly failing to get any closer to it, she decided on a less conventional approach. 'Well it's a Labyrinth right? So in the traditional sense, nothing is what it seems and the riddles are always against common sense.' She sighed. 'Great.'

It took her a few hours (and a couple of intermittent castle sightings) to realize that if she were to ever glimpse the castle and to take the passage most direct to it, it would immediately disappear at the next step towards it. She backtracked a few steps in proof. So, she decided to do the exact opposite of heading toward the monstrous structure, and head away from it.

Cryn almost started leaping for joy after it seemed she was making progress. The dead ends became fewer and far between. Only now there seemed to be an increasing abundance of hidden holes. Sheer drops that could only be seen straight down because of the horizontal illusion that hid them.

Cryn quickly learned about these mysterious falls after a close encounter with one. She was never a very religious person, but after catching the convenient vine that saved her from a plummet, she gave silent thanks to whatever deity was listening. It was only later that she noticed the distinct lack of vines on all the other walls she encountered. 'Strange that there should have been one then.' She mused after side stepping another disguised fissure.

Cryn's supply of adrenaline, however, was beginning to wane, and as the dead ends became less frequent, her yawns took their place. She knew she hadn't slept very well, or really at all, in the last 72 hours. 'At least Earth's last 72 hours.' Cryn smirked. "What am I saying? I have no idea how time works here. All I know is that I haven't slept in a long *fucking* time!" she continued her frustrations aloud and slammed a fist into a nearby wall. Needless to say, it wasn't the wall that budged.

She whipped her hand back and lifted it to her face to see any immediate damage. She was almost too tired to feel the scrapping pain the wall had greeted her to.

'This isn't good.' She rolled her eyes toward the sky. The brilliant speckling of stars were again the only sights to greet her. And the gorgeous moon which looked like a perfect sphere in her groggy eyes. 'Like a perfect crystal.' She knew she was going to collapse in sheer exhaustion before ever reaching the castle.

She sighed and continued to survey the heavens above. Her forehead creased as one of the stars was moving above her. As she stood and watched as the star traced a large, slow ellipse over her position. She noticed that the star was getting closer, and was in fact, not a star at all. It was a white form in flight, reflecting the moon's cool white light. And as it approached she thought she saw wings and the form mold into a large bird. Unfortunately, she quickly dismissed it as a figment of her tired mind. And once again put her mind's resources her surroundings.

There hadn't been any streams in quite a while. She also noticed the lack of new (and mostly rude and unhelpful) beings in her path. It almost seemed that her environment was growing starker as she neared the huge castle.

Her forehead creased at her rush of epiphanies. She was too tired to digest all of it and actually implement it into her traveling strategy. Her mouth twisted into a cynical sneer and gave a hoarse grunt to substitute for a laugh. If she didn't keep alert and focused, she would most certainly die. After a few stumbles, she knew a rest was the only option.

Almost out of thin air, the sweet smell of vegetation caressed her nostrils. She followed the sent around two more walled passages and came upon a gorgeous court garden, with abundant vegetation and beautiful moonlight flowers. The entire garden was meticulously cut, right down to the perfect green carpet. She smiled at the aroma, and literally fell to the soft earth. It never felt so good to just fall down. She didn't move a muscle after her not so graceful landing.

She stared just listened to the silence of the beautiful garden. Just as she was about to fall into a deep and everlasting slumber, something caught in the corner of her eye. It was a green bulge not far from her, though the sheer energy expelled to move her head felt like she wasted a star's worth of internal fuel. It was green, like any other part of the unnatural clearing, yet it was outrageously overgrown with viney threads of leafy green. As she gazed about more clearly she noticed that it wasn't the only overgrown part of the courtyard. There were about ten such bulges.

She laboriously got up and went to inspect the first bulge. It was lying close to the ground but not entirely on the ground and was much greater in length than in height. It almost seemed humanoid in its upper outline. As she pulled away some of the green covering, she found it to be a stone statue. It was a creature lying on its side though up on a pedestal. The creature was not like any she had seen, but it had two eyes, a mouth, a flat nose, no ears, and it was designed as if to be sleeping. The detailing was immaculate. It had the most peaceful expression on its face, as if it were in the happiest of dreams. Cryn smiled with the expression.

But there was something nagging at the back of her head. 'What an odd sculpture to put in a garden such as this, and to keep is so untended.' She went to the next bulge and uncovered another strange creature, in much the same position as the first. Complete with expression. She went and checked the others, all different creatures with the same qualities of sleep and stone. One of the creatures was another, seemingly, human female.

Though slowed by dehydration and fatigue, her mind finally connected. "They were once alive!" She almost screamed it, but her voice came out only a whisper. "Until they fell asleep here, in this garden." She shuddered at the thought of becoming a statue, and left the area quickly now immune to it's seductive calling.

'There could be worse things, I guess. At least they all looked peaceful in their slumber." Another thought troubled her. "A creature cannot fall asleep here." She pondered her arrival and how she had woken up. It was the sleep that brought her here? 'Well, not necessarily, but after I fell asleep by the first stream I was in trouble.' She started to panic, sleep was very important to sanity and living in general. She could feel a mass of emotions boiling to the surface. Even if she did let herself sleep, where would she end up? "Another close call, another place I would have to comprehend again?" Her voice was again hoarse and faltering, but it didn't matter. She fought down the bile threatening to come up. But the tears, they weren't so easily dammed.

Cryn temporarily to caught herself from crying. Tried to re-evaluate the situation and stay focused on her immediate goals. But her emotions won out. She wanted to go… "Go where? Home?" She shook her head and leaned against the cool stone masonry, oblivious to the fact that the walls had changed again. The tears would not stay back anymore.

She cried. She cried for her situation, her self-pity, but mostly for her frustrations, her inadequacies, her lack of a life. It all came up and out. She cried for and about her parents. She didn't have the energy for a full out dramatic fit. She simply sat against the wall and let the tears drain out and the sobs be stifled in her shirt. She knew the precious saline that dripped so lavishly down her cheeks was a resource she couldn't afford to loose. But logic had been swept under the rug. She was running on pure emotions now.

After a bit, in that it state, not quite sleeping yet not quite awake, she raised her head. Her blood shot eyes rose to the sky to watch the moon decline it's nightly reign and the beginnings of the reddish sun that intended to climb to it's own high throne. Her body felt spent. But then she did notice that the wall she was leaning on wasn't warm at all. In fact it was cold, and hard, and once again a different color.

She slowly got up and surveyed her new surroundings in the new light. The walls were an almost gold color. There were no marks on them, only smooth surfaces that connected seamlessly to one another. She ran a finger across the wall; it was crisp and flawless. The color was getting brighter as the sun rose, and the walls reflected the light to a degree. She reached an opening and looked at the thickness of the wall. It was relatively thin.

'That's no good.' She thought. 'That means more maze per foot. Great.' And she was right. The openings and 'hallways' were much thinner than before. The stretches of walkway shorter, the number of turns greater, and the disorientation of such flawless and continuous walls mind boggling. Cryn, for the first time in her life, started to feel faint.

She staggered on, hoping that she didn't stumble into some deadly trap. She let her subconscious guide her feet. The walls began to glare like the sun not long after the sunrise. Cryn had to shield her eyes. It only made herself feel more helpless, more lost, more willing to sit down and give up.

But before she lost all hope, the castle once again appeared out of nothingness, not 100 feet away. At first she didn't notice it. Her eyes were squinted to slits and staring straight down under the added protection of her hands. Only after a feeling of intuition did she take a brief look up and nearly fell over with the sight of the structure she had been searching for.

She didn't dare to hope that it really was just around another turn, another wall. 'It must be a mirage.' She meekly smiled, but turned the last corner and was actually in front of the castle. She gasped and looked up, the glaring light now gone.

It was monstrous in size. A castle fit for giants. "How come it didn't look this big from a far?" Her voice squeaked with dryness.

"Well, well. What have we here?"

Cryn jumped at the cultured voice and quickly whipped around to face it's owner.