Paladins of the Pickle Goddess

It didn’t take long for me to realize I wasn’t meant for mazes. “I just wish it didn’t all look the same,” I muttered, staring into another statue of Teuthida’s eyes. She stared back. She looked, as usual, like a stone statue. I was getting very tired of stone women. “Nothing to say for yourself?”

“I swear, this usually works,” said Apis. He ran a hand along the wall, frowning. “That’s the solution to every maze. You just take every left.”

“I thought that was the solution to get out. We’re trying to get in,” said Vita. “Maybe that’s where you’ve gone wrong. You can’t go into this maze trying to solve it. You need to open your heart to Teuthida.”

“Hmm. We should look for tracks. I’m sure my assistant has already solved this. He would have left evidence for me.” Herminius knelt to the floor and ran a hand along the stones. I stopped, mid-stride, so we wouldn’t leave him behind, and tried not to roll my eyes too loudly. They were paving stones. What kind of tracks would this assistant have been leaving? Crumbs?

“Is this the one that didn’t figure out you were running in time to follow you?”

“That was on purpose!” Herminius took the next turn at a fast clip, adjusting his cloak. “Not that any of you would understand,” he said. “You’re all people of fortune. Following whatever you seek. Balbinus would never abandon me for anything so little as his own life. He’s dedicated to the council, as am I. I must beat the temple and find truth before my idiot competitor gets there. Otherwise, how will anyone know that I’m much more clever and powerful than Domitius?”

This was met by a resounding silence.

“Anyway,” continued Herminius, “He’s very practical. He knows I pay his salary.”

“How many times do I have to tell you,” said Vita, “It’s not about beating the temple, it’s about understanding Teuthida’s mind! It’s a conversation with her!”

“Weren’t we just in this corridor?”

We all turned to face Duran. He was pointing at the feet of the statue of Teuthida. I began to shake my head automatically. “Of course not,” I said. “There are dozens of those statues.”

They were all nearly identical, too. We could nearly tell them apart by the tentacles, but-

“No,” he said, “It is. Look-” he leaned down, pointing. Sure enough. “There. The tentacle where someone etched in their initials.”

L+L in a heart. I squinted in the light of the lantern. “Weren’t we only taking lefts?”

“I thought we were only taking every right, now,” said Apis.

I frowned. “What about ones with a middle corridor?”

“Wasn’t that a coin flip?”

“I think we should go all-right, all the time,” said Duran.

“Why?” Vita leaned on one of her crutches, wincing. Her ankle must have been killing her. We had been walking for ages, with no rest.

He shrugged. “Left didn’t work.”

We had no other plan. We took the right path.

“So,” I said. “What’s our plan if we don’t solve this in two days?”

That was how much food we’d brought, according to Apis. Two days worth of food. It felt a lot heavier now that I was carrying it. I was beginning to realize the level of horror. No exit plan. Just endless walls.

You’ve really done it now, Elysia. Andrena probably can’t even help you at this point. I paused. Well, not that she ever helped. Then, just because I might as well, If you have a moment, Andrena, I could use a hand. Anything, really. Maybe a minor miracle? Just a hint? Maybe a sign? A map?

A bee, even?

“Teuthida will provide,” Vita said, at the same time Herminius said, “There are supposed to be re-supply chambers hidden throughout.”

She turned, frowning. “You’re ruining the mystery.”

“Is it really a mystery? Everyone’s meant to know that. Most people aren’t able to carry in everything they’d need,” he said. “Although- well, everyone says the food and wood in those supply chambers is pretty low-quality. That’s why I brought my own spices and supplies.”

He patted his pack. It clattered too loudly for me to trust it.

“Wait,” I said. “Did you bring any actual food?”

“Vita said it first! Teuthida will provide. Besides, Balbinus should be in here somewhere.”

I stopped walking. “Absolutely not. You’re just depending on us for this?”

Vita opened her mouth, then closed it. I rounded on her. “Not you, too?”

She half-shrugged, as much as she could with the crutches. “It’s not like I can carry much!”

To be fair, she was injured. Almost like it had been a horrible idea to bring her along into a test from the gods. I took a deep breath. I began to speak. Apis reached over and patted me on the shoulder. “Elysia is just worried,” he said. “She’s very caring…about everyone…”

“I think someone should tell me what exactly the plan is, here,” I said. “Because as far as I know, this is a bizarre test by a god with the brain of a squid, and relying on her for anything is a horrible idea.”

“We only have to last until the second ring!” Vita huffed.

“Second ring?”

“It’s like you didn’t do any research at all,” she said. “The outer ring is the maze. Obviously. To force you to look inwards, and seek Teuthida’s help for the answers.” Or to drive you mad, it seemed. “The second ring is the dark waters of Teuthida.”

“The swamp,” said Herminius.

“Some people call it the swamp,” she said. “You can fish there. They keep it stocked, according to my auntie.”

“What about the third ring?”

“No one discusses it,” she said, nose up. “It’s secret.”

“So you don’t know.”

“I have faith.”

“If Teuthida doesn’t provide, you’re not getting our supplies,” I said. I stormed down the corridor before anyone could reply to that, everyone following me at various speeds. I couldn’t believe it. I should have forced my way into the packing. How had Apis allowed that? Wasn’t he meant to be responsible?

It was the priest in him, I was willing to bet. He’d probably heard that Teuthida would provide and believed it.

I was midway through stomping right at another fork when Duran pulled on my cloak. “Madam Elysia,” he said. “Look.”

He was pointing at yet another statue. “I don’t see the difference.”

“Her hands,” he said. “They’re not in the same position.”

He was right. Instead of her hands being out in supplication, they were pressed together in prayer. I shrugged. “I suppose the artist felt like being creative for once.”

“Can we at least stop to look at it?”

“I-“ I paused.

“Vita’s having trouble,” said Apis. “It might be good to slow down. Have a break for some water.”

“As long as she’s not having any of my rations,” I said. Why not? It wasn’t as if we were making any real progress. It was driving me mad, the endless same-ness of it.

Vita did look bad as she collapsed at the foot of the statue, stacking her crutches and re-wrapping her ankle. Next to her, Herminius was re-sorting his arrows for the tenth time.

It was left to me to follow Duran behind the statue, where he was pressing his hand against the stones as if he’d find anything different.

“They’re stacked too neat,” he told me, when I came to stare at him. Whenever he was quiet too long, I got a bad feeling about it. Duran wasn’t meant to live unsupervised- even when I’d taken custody of the abyssal blade.

I stared for a moment. When I didn’t see it, he pointed. Sure enough, the stones were stacked evenly in an archway, with cobbles filling in the middle- like someone had filled in an old doorway or oven with a new set of cobbles.

“Well,” I said, “Even priestesses have to do repairs to their horrible, mentally taxing mazes eventually.”

The ring of stones around the edge was strange; the one at the top, which looked like the keystone of a window was carved like a squid. At the midpoint of the arch, to either side, a pair of large stones had been set. It looked like someone had left before finishing their repair job. No grout filled in the space around them.

Duran was poking them. They didn’t wobble, but it still made me nervous. “Why don’t we leave before you wiggle something loose.”

It had to be sacrilegious to break a temple, right?

He reached up above him and shoved on the squid.

With a grind of stone on stone, it pressed in. Like a stone button. In the same moment, there was a whiff of fast movement. Before I realized what had happened, I felt a sharp sting of pain on my left arm.

In front of me, a dark space had opened up. The stones had swung open, revealing a void beyond. A door.

I glanced down at my arm. A neat line had been cut in my cloak. Blood welled up underneath. Whatever it was had cut through the cloak, through my tunic, and down to my skin.

Disbelieving, I turned to look at the statue. Behind me, there was a dart quivering, stuck straight into a tentacle. I glanced down at the floor. More had flung out, falling down on the floor. I hadn’t even heard them fall.

“They came out of both sides of the doorway,” said Apis. I jumped. He needs a bell.

“Where did you-”

He held up another dart. “It’s lucky you were the only one hurt. Vita was too low, and Herminius…”

Herminus was dabbing dramatically at his face with the edge of his cloak. Apis leaned in. “It had lost momentum by the time it got across the hall,” he said. “There’s no blood. Are you well?”

I glanced again at the stone, disbelieving. “There are traps?”

I had expected some tricks. I hadn’t expected this place to try and kill me. I wiped the blood off of my arm. “That… that… that jumped up fish! How dare she!”

“Let’s not get worked up.”

“I’ll be as worked up as I please! She tried to kill me!”

“Well,” said Apis. “It was only a small dart.”

“What if it had gotten me in the neck!”

I took a deep breath. This was personal now. “She thinks she can scare me off,” I muttered. “We’ll see about that.”

“I really don’t-”

I lost the rest of Apis’s sentence as I turned and stormed after Duran, into the dark little room he’d found. It was really more of a pantry-sized room. In a better life, I would have thought it was a good place to store pickles. There were shelves and shelves, as well as what looked like a set of bunks.

Duran was sitting on one of the bunks, knees pulled up to his chest and lantern left on the floor. The light pooled around it, making the shelves look barren and sad. He pulled at the covers, looking more upset than I’d ever seen him.

“There’s nothing,” he said, as I stepped in. “No treasure! No nothing! Just stupid mattresses and cobwebs!”