CHAPTER XXVII
Hanging by a Thread
Xanthus opened his eyes as the whirlwind died down. He looked around in a panic. His entire party was gone.
"What did you do to them?" he yelled to Malphas.
"How are you still here?" she said, tilting her head to the side. "Hmm. Even incomplete, your Wraith-Knight still has the power to resist my magic, does it?"
"Where are my friends?" he demanded.
"Oh, them? Somewhere. Even I cannot control the outcome of that particular magic. It's one of the few spells rooted within the chaotic nature of magic itself. They could be anywhere, I suppose. Perhaps on another planet altogether."
"I'm gonna kill you, monster!"
"Oh, come now, what good would that do? It won't bring your friends back. And besides." She began floating in the air. "You lack the power to do so, boy."
His Wraith-Knight fully manifested its magic, making itself evident in the golden flame-like halos in his eyes. He threw his left hand out at her, projecting a column of fire which impacted a barrier that surrounded her body.
"As I said, mortal," Malphas said as she began to manifest her own power, "you lack what it takes to stand against me."
β
On high alert, Perseus quickly scanned his environment the moment the torrent of magic subsided.
"Athena!" he called out into the darkness. "Echo! Xanthus!"
"Over here!"
He hurried to the sound of the voice, but kept his shield up. This wasn't his first time being drawn into the Third Layer of the Labyrinth by himself. He understood perfectly well that the voice calling out to him might not even be human.
"Perseus, thank goodness you're alive," Ilia said, approaching him with Fiona and Han in tow.
"I thought you said these things were supposed to protect us," Hanuman said, playing with the rune-inscribed ruby in his hand.
"Don't lose that," Perseus said. "It keeps the ambient chaos of the Labyrinth at bay."
"How do you explain what just happened, then?" Fiona said.
"Like I said, it keeps the ambient chaos back. That thing taking the form of your friend is hardly ambient. Have you guys seen the rest of my team?"
The trio shook their heads.
"It was all blackness after that thing Malphas did," Ilia said. "Han and Fiona weren't that far away from me, fortunately. You're the only other person we've run into besides that."
"If we were close together, they shouldn't be far off," Perseus said. "You guys are all pretty good with combat, right?"
"I wouldn't deserve to be leader of the White Fang if I wasn't," Ilia said.
"And mom would kick me out of the family if I couldn't hold my own," Fiona said. "Han, will you be all right?"
"Yeah," he said, gripping his staff tightly. "I won't let you guys down."
"Okay," Perseus said. "It's unusual for us to go around the Labyrinth without a guide like Yuan or Xanthus, but we have no choice." He pulled out his scroll. "Okay, Xanthus, let's see if the app you and Ariadne were developing actually works."
"App?" Fiona said.
"Yeah," he said as he activated the program. "Let's see...huh, it actually works. I think."
"Is that a map?" Hanuman asked.
"I guess it is. Barely, though. They weren't kidding when they said it would be super rudimentary."
"It's a black screen with blotches on it," Fiona said.
"Are those blotches rifts?" Ilia asked.
"Was that a lucky guess, or do you know something I don't?" Perseus said.
"Ozpin mentioned something about the younger Coalition members developing something along those lines, but as far as I know, that technology was supposed to be months off."
"Yeah, well, Xanthus is a bit of an overachiever. So is my sister. Damn it, I wish this thing would tell us how close we are to these rifts."
"See if it'll zoom in and out," Fiona said.
Perseus fiddled with his scroll with two fingers. "At least that works," he said before orienting himself to face the nearest rift. "Let's go this way, then."
"There's a wall in front of us," Ilia said.
"Yeah. The map doesn't show us any layout at all. It's really no more than a rift radar."
"Talk about a videogame with a bad UI," Hanuman chuckled.
"Yeah," Fiona said. "Except there's no respawn if we screw up."
"I'll be counting on you guys to navigate," Perseus said. "No matter what, though, we stick closely together. And we don't fight any Corrupted unless absolutely necessary."
β
Echo kept to the shadows as she continued on through the Labyrinth. She was still in the capital of Menagerie, so navigating wasn't too difficult given that she was the one out of the group who had taken the high ground to scan their surroundings. If memory served her well, she was close to the harbor, putting her several miles away from the Parliament building.
She silently thanked the rune-embedded gemstone in her pocket for keeping her from getting thrown any farther or any deeper than this. At least the Second Layer didn't have as many monsters as the Third Layer, though the atmosphere was still quite tense.
Her danger sensing Semblance spiked to her left and she began dashing, slipping quietly past Corrupted and other unknowable creatures. She glanced at one as she ran by. Its shape made no sense, consisting of an almost pyramidal body with its base up and the point downward. How it moved without any legs or wings was a mystery. To her surprise, an eye opened up to scan ahead.
She continued running as the thing disappeared into the fog behind her. She couldn't be completely sure, but she could have sworn that the eye was surrounded by teeth.
"Get the hell away from me you ugly bastards!"
That was Athena's voice. Echo's jog turned into a full-blown sprint as she nocked an arrow into her bowstring. The moment her partner was within view, she let her arrow soar, saving Athena from a vicious looking creature attacking from behind. Athena turned around to scan her would-be attacker before making eye contact with Echo, who had another arrow ready to fly.
"Have you seen the others?" Athena asked.
Echo shook her head. "You?"
"Just you."
That's okay. As long as I've got you. "There's more."
"Yeah, I can hear them. This fog is impossible, though."
She was right about that. As long as the fog persisted in this world, Echo's specialty, long-range striking, was out of commission.
"Can you get us out of here?"
"Yeah. This way. This is the only direction my Semblance isn't pointing to."
"I'll be right behind you."
They ducked into an alley, getting out of the wide open street. With walls on either side, it would be a lot easier to keep from being surrounded. Of course, that also meant only two directions of escape.
Echo stopped in her tracks alongside Athena. There was raspy breath coming from up ahead. They crept forward until they could see its shadowy outline roughly twenty yards ahead. Athena gave Echo hand signals, letting her know her intentions, before silently advancing on the Corrupted, which faced the other direction. Echo had an arrow nocked, ready to fly on a moment's notice.
Athena reached up with both hands, swiftly breaking the monster's neck before catching it and slowly lowering it to the ground. There were more raspy breaths up ahead. The two girls pressed up against a brick wall, peering past a break in the barrier. On the other side of the wall was a parking lot filled with Corrupted of all types, some small and childlike, others adult sized.
They moved toward the other side of the alley, putting distance between themselves and the creatures, hoping the fog would keep them concealed as well. Fortunately, their plan worked and they made it past the brick wall.
"I think we're in the clear for now," Echo said as her Semblance's buzzing diminished to its usual ambient white noise, signaling that she was still in the Labyrinth, but that there were no imminent threats nearby.
"Finally," Athena said, reaching into her pocket to pull out her scroll. She turned on the app that Ariadne and Xanthus had developed for the whole team. It was rudimentary in design and was only meant to be used for emergencies since it showed them no layout whatsoever of their surroundings.
"There's a rift close by," Echo said, also checking her own app.
"Yeah, but we don't know if it's up or down," Athena said.
Echo hopped up to a streetlight and then higher to a water tank atop a small apartment building. She looked to the distance, where the Parliament building loomed beyond the thick fog. She zoomed her app out. There was a massive blotch directly ahead of her.
"I can't be completely sure," Echo said as she landed beside Athena, "but I think this huge rift is over at the Parliament building."
"Makes sense," Athena said. "That asshole Malphas did just blast us away from there."
"Should we head that way?"
"The rest of the team will probably think of the same thing, so yeah. Hell, Xanthus might already be there given his superpowers."
Echo chuckled. "I'll take point."
β
Perseus fell to the ground, gripping his head.
"Hey!" Fiona yelled, kneeling beside him. "Are you okay?"
It was all he could do to keep from screaming and attracting every monster within earshot. The last time he felt pain like this was last year, on that fateful day his friend had changed her future. A burning sensation came from his left hand and he looked at the Rune of Atonement, which seemed to pulse with power.
"What is it?" he grunted. "What are you trying to tell me?"
"Huh?" Ilia said. "Is there something there we're not seeing?"
The pain subsided and he remained on all fours, panting as sweat dripped down his forehead and face. He glanced at the Rune of Atonement. It lay still once more.
"Are you all right?" Hanuman asked him.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm fine."
"Is it the Labyrinth messing with your head?" Fiona asked.
In truth, he couldn't be sure of that. After all, this wasn't the first time he had gone through something like this, and it was just as chaotic now as it was back then, on that day when Demetri witnessed him fading in and out of existence, transitioning between the real world and the Labyrinth repeatedly.
He sat back, allowing himself to refocus. He couldn't become a burden, not right now, not while he had charges counting on him to keep them safe from the horrors the Third Layer had to throw at them.
"Take your time," Ilia said. "It could've been something as benign as a migraine."
That was no migraine and he knew it. It was the Rune of Atonement. It had to be.
Perseus.
He looked around. None of his companions was talking directly to him.
Perseus.
What is it?
There was no response.
Who are you?
Again, the voice gave him no reply.
He made his way to his feet, using his sword and shield as crutches. He stood in place for a time, giving the Rune of Atonement another glance. As he stared, the eye above the scales began to open, returning his gaze.
"I'm guessing those are Corrupted," Fiona said, standing beside her brother, who barely could manage to maintain his composure.
These three had plenty of experience fighting against Grimm of all shapes and sizes, but these were an entirely different battle. The Grimm had ferocity and an unquenchable hatred for humankind and everything related to humanity, but these Corrupted were more terrifying to behold. It did not help that some of them wept in sorrow while others laughed hysterically. There were yet more which behaved in other hyper-emotional manners, some screaming in terror and actively fleeing them while others roared with rage.
"S-Sis, you're not s-scared of them, right?" Hanuman said as he stepped closer to Fiona and Ilia.
"I have no idea what to expect from these," Fiona said, readying her naginata for battle.
"According to the reports, they should take damage just like anything else," Ilia said. "Be cautious, though. We have no idea what their fighting capabilities areβ"
Before she could finish, Perseus was upon the attackers, his Semblance at full power. He crashed into his first opponent with enough force to break its neck on impact. He de-powered his Semblance to conserve aura before resuming his attack, slashing and stabbing through three before one clambered against his shield. He went for a low strike, taking the thing's legs out from underneath it before bringing down his shield with enough force to decapitate it. For his last enemy, he transformed his sword into a shotgun, blasting all four barrels into the monster's face at once before reloading with shells stored in his shield.
"Whoa," Hanuman said.
"That was pretty brutal," Fiona said.
"There's more around us," Ilia said. "Don't let your guard down."
Perseus led the way through the horde, choosing the thinnest section to fight through. Without Echo here, it was difficult to know which way to go and without Yuan or Xanthus to keep their immediate reality stable, he had no idea if they would suddenly ascend or descend to a deeper Labyrinth layer.
"Over here!" Hanuman yelled from the side. "There's no monsters this way!"
The group crossed the street as a single unit, Perseus leading from the front, flanked by Ilia and Fiona while Hanuman kept watch over their rear. They succeeded in breaching through the last line of Corrupted, sprinting to put as much distance between them and their enemy as possible. Once they were sure that they were in the clear, the quartet stopped to catch their breaths.
"Okay, so," Fiona began, stooping over. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but did some of those things use magic attacks on us?"
Perseus nodded, never once letting down his guard.
"It figures."
"Talk about a jump in difficulty," Hanuman said.
"Those other monsters, the completely alien ones," Ilia began, "those are not among the Corrupted, are they?"
"No," Perseus said. "We've only seen those things sporadically. Typically, they'd serve as the final guardian of a personal Labyrinth, or we would find them randomly roaming around in the middle of nowhere. I've never seen five of them gathered together like this."
"Perhaps because of Malphas's influence?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. Let's keep moving." He looked at his scroll. "Damn it."
"What happened?" Fiona said.
"The rifts have all changed. I don't even know where this nearest one is. One is back where we came from and we're hella not going that way."
"Let's see," Ilia said, looking at his rift radar app to try and compare it to what she was seeing of their surroundings. "It's no good. Supposedly, we're still in District 2, but this place is so distorted that I can't tell which direction we're facing. And this darkness, it's unreal."
"I can't see anything past that broken streetlight over there," Hanuman said. "But it's weird. The sky is dark red. But none of the light travels farther than, like, fifty feet."
"That's the Third Layer of the Labyrinth for you," Perseus said.
"Okay," Ilia said, "if the world isn't completely scrambled, this rift on the map should be down this way, which would put it right in the middle of the warehouses at the harbor."
"We got thrown that far away from Parliament?" Fiona said.
"It would seem so. Let's keep moving."
As before, Perseus led from the front, shield at low ready. Their path to the harbor was unbarred, but when they arrived, the app they were relying on stopped responding.
"Shit," Perseus said. "My scroll's completely frozen."
"What's...happening?" Fiona said, looking around.
The arrangement of the buildings at the docks was distorted beyond comprehension. Some structures were twisted in impossible shapes and directions while others were far too small or far too large.
"This is..." Ilia began. "I read the reports from the Labyrinth Task Force in Vacuo and also what you guys ran through with Hillphire Innovations, but to see it with my own eyes..."
"I'm getting dizzy," Hanuman said.
"This is the worst distortion I've ever seen," Perseus said.
"I thought you've seen it all, though," Fiona said.
He shook his head. "From what my sister has told us, it's Lilly's team back in Vacuo that goes through the craziest Labyrinth shit. She faces giant ogres, I think. And Labyrinths with severely distorted time and space. The most desynchronized we get is temporal, whenever we dive into the Third Layer or the Fourth Layer."
"There's a fourth?"
"Yeah. That's what we call it, but it really doesn't make any sense since it could be as benign as the First Layer or even crazier than the Third Layer. We just call them Personal Labyrinths since they reflect whatever the victim is going through in particular."
"Would this be an example of a Fourth Layer?" Ilia said.
"Honestly, I have no clue. I mean, Ariadne and the other brains try to come up with theories as to how all of this works, but studying quantum physics is probably easier than trying to study friggin' magic. And even then, all the rules we know about have never been applied to a city-wide Labyrinth inhabited by the entire population."
Perseus was about to add his own opinion on the matter when he froze in place. The world around him shifted to an all-too familiar backdrop. He was back in the labs underneath Shade Academy, the Rift Complex, where the Labyrinth Task Force carried out all of their operations.
"Lilly...?" he muttered.
"Huh?" Fiona said.
"Hey, are you seeing things?" Hanuman said.
Their words didn't reach him. He watched as Lilly screamed while the machines extracted magic directly from her body, forcing runes to manifest in the air before they etched themselves into those rubies they now carried around. He reached into his pocket, eyeing the arrangement of runes and geometric lines embedded within the center of the clear, red gemstone.
Is this how much pain went into these things? What the hell have I done?
It was him, after all, who brought that pure blossom into the hell she now inhabited. It was because of his thoughtless actions that that flower began to wilt, turning into a pale shadow of what she had once been.
Another scream jarred him from his own thoughts. Lilly put on a brave face as the needles pricked and probed. Ariadne and Dr. Cherenkov stopped the procedures, but Lilly urged them on, insisting that if her pain would save lives, it was worth it.
Lilly, stop...
She screamed once more as the monstrous needle pierced her back, drilling straight into her spine.
Why do you have to do this?
The wounds would heal quickly and without leaving a trace of scarring, but the scars that truly mattered could not be seen on the outside. Perseus fell to his knees as he watched helplessly. He should have known. From the beginning, he should have known that Lilly would allow herself to be subjected to any inhumanity if it meant saving lives and stopping the suffering of others.
"It's my fault," he sobbed. "It's all my fault."
"Hey! Snap out of it!"
He looked to his right. Fiona's face was fierce as she shook him out of his nightmare. He looked around quickly. Ilia and Hanuman were barely holding off against a gigantic horde of Corrupted. There were too many to count.
I can't fail. I can't fail now!
He poured all of his will into his Semblance, maxing it out before crushing almost twenty of those horrible creatures, carving out a path for them to escape through. He continued slashing and stabbing his way through the mass of twisted human forms, leading the way into an alley to try and nullify the surrounding monsters' numbers, but the waves seemed endless.
"There's too many that way!"
The group ducked into a building, the only one with a functioning door that wasn't chained up from ground to ceiling or barred in other bizarre ways. Hanuman slammed the heavy metal gate shut while his sister helped block it with a metal beam. They stepped away as the Corrupted slammed into it repeatedly from outside.
Meanwhile, Ilia tended to Perseus, who had fallen to his knees as his aura shattered from the overexertion of his super strength Semblance. He panted, closing his eyes to try and dispel those images he had relived. They were no mere illusions. They were memories recreated by this wretched world, a personal hell for him to relive as many times as he might like.
Perseus.
It was that voice again.
I have looked into your soul, Perseus. You carry a sin too heavy for one man to bear.
The voice was right. His soul was heavy.
Will you have the strength to bear it, young one? Or will it crush you under its weight?
"I don't know...if I have what it takes..."
"I won't hear that from you," Ilia said. "You're not giving up that easily, young man. You're a member of Team APEX, aren't you? The team that made it to the finals to stand up against the leader of Team IVRY?"
He looked over at Ilia, whose eyes burned with intensity.
"What would your team captain do if she saw you like this?"
He chuckled. "She'd call me stupid and tell me to stand up and quit being lazy."
"I guess that's what you should do, then, hmm?"
He nodded, getting back up to his feet. His stance was far from firm, however. After all, in each of their pockets was a gemstone which caused Lilly Schnee so much pain to produce, a gemstone which kept all of them from being completely consumed by this world.
Perseus Jupiter could not answer whether or not he could ever be worthy of Salvation.
And as these thoughts crossed his mind, the Rune of Atonement on his left hand opened wide its all-seeing eye, casting its gaze directly on his heart.
