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“Then suffer, child, in eternal darkness. And in time, anything left of your personality… will fade.”
True to the dead king’s promise, the world went dark around Marcy Wu. Untrue to his promise, it quickly reformed around her. Even when possessing one's body, it seems, you cannot completely shut out their mind. Instead, Marcy’s surroundings went a pale white, and off in the distance, a battle played out, projected in the distant sky of the vast nothing. Marcy squinted, and saw flurries of pink and brown, met by slashes of orange and black. The vision was tinted ever so slightly orange and seemed to be first person -- her person. She was watching the Core act through her own eyes. And staring back at her, eyes full of rage and determination, was Sasha Waybright, dual swords in hands, fighting back. Fighting for her.
Marcy had to act, this she knew. She couldn't sit back while her friend was risking her life for her. But what could she do? She couldn’t just run out and take back control. But just as well, the fact that she wasn’t sitting in eternal darkness meant the Core couldn’t stop her entirely. So what was its game? What was the dead king playing?
A crash of thunder echoed around her, and Marcy spun to the side as great hedge walls slammed into the not-ground before her. Ah. The game is revealed. And it’s… a maze? Really? This was gonna be easier than she thought. Just follow the left wall until you're out. No problem.
And no problem it was. Marcy Wu expertly cleared the maze in a matter of minutes. And she was met with another. This wasn’t a terrible surprise. Of course, it wasn’t going to be so simple as a single, basic maze. So Marcy again leapt in. This time, the maze had islands, isolated paths that didn’t connect to any others. Slightly harder, but still, easy enough to solve by just following one wall again, and jumping to the other when caught in a circle.
A third maze stood in her way. Expected. One maze for each calamity gem. This one was more intricate, its designs and paths more complex, which would have been an issue if the core had stripped her of her elaborate fantasy cloak and gear. This time, she left a trail of cloth breadcrumbs and again cleared the final maze in a matter of minutes.
But it wasn’t the final maze. Another stood before her – probably five mazes, that was a solid number for puzzles – and this time, she didn't have any excess fabric to mark her way. After five minutes of stumbling into dead end after dead end, Marcy realized that the walls were in fact, quite short, and she might be able to just barely climb over them. She scaled the short hedges and ran along the top to the end. As she jumped back to the ground, a fifth maze appeared before her, this time much taller and with a thick stone roof.
Marcy grumbled but relented to the maze. This time, she tried squeezing through the branches of the hedges, and she made it out with just a few scrapes and only some leaves in her hair. She shook head, and caught one as it fell. It was bright green and shaped differently, but she couldn’t help but think of Anne. She turned back, and the fight continued in the distance, but at a snail's pace. Time was slower here, it seemed. That was something, the smallest advantage, but it wouldn’t last her forever. Her friends were still in danger, fighting, risking life and limb, while she was stuck here, crawling through bushes.
Marcy sighed, clenched her eyes and grit her teeth, and turned back around. Well, she thought as she gazed upon the towering stone walls, I guess not crawling through bushes . Still, Marcy ran. So what if the mazes kept getting harder? She was still Marcy Wu, Ranger of the Newtopian Night Guard, a master strategist! She wouldn’t be stopped by a mere maze.
And so she solved another mere maze. Then another, and another, another. Seven mazes, maybe one for each deadly sin? Then nine, probably one for each of the core's eyes? Then twelve, then fifteen, then twenty, again and again, and again, wall after wall after wall, each taking ever longer to navigate. Multiple floors, dizzying patterns, dark dungeons and blinding streets, labyrinth upon labyrinth.
She was getting frustrated, and frustration didn't help solve puzzles. She tried to take a step back, take a deep breath. She just needed to calm down, centre herself, and take this slowly and methodically. The clang of steel on steel echoed and jolted her from her attempted reverie. She turned, and saw Sasha's face off in the ether, teeth gritted and eyes sharp as the blade in her hands. her surroundings glowed a familiar sickening orange as a blazing scythe spun in her hands at someone else's will. And so she kept going.
This next maze, number twenty-three, manifested as a great library, and after her third dead end, Marcy stopped to catch her breath. The false torch light flickered around her, and caught on a book, The Official Amphibian Guide to Solving Mazes. That’s suspiciously helpful.
Marcy inched cautiously towards it, and slowly flipped it open. The first page showed an illustration of a confused newt, shrugging at the start of a rudimentary 2D maze. In big, bold letters, read
If you ever find yourself trapped in a maze, follow these helpful tips and tricks to secure your freedom!
Marcy tentatively flipped the page. More illustrations dotted the margins, and each page was dedicated to a single piece of advice.
Page one: Keep one hand on the wall!
Page two:If you get stuck, try the other wall!
Page three: Leave a trail of breadcrumbs or cloth!
Page four:If the walls are short enough, try climbing over it!
Page five: If the walls are flimsy enough, try tunneling through the wall!
Marcy flipped feverishly through the pages, met only with everything she had just tried, and which had just failed.
She reached the second last page, ears hot and face scrunched in anger and frustration.
Page twenty-three: go to a library, find a book about mazes, read the book and then-
The text cut off. Clenched the paper, took a shallow breath, shakily turned to the last page,
Page twenty-three cont.: -turn the page!
Marcy screamed.
She pounded her fists against the accursed book and threw it to the floor. It landed with a thud, a dull sound masked by enraged screams and sorrowful tears. This wasn’t fair! All Marcy wanted was to be with her friends, all she wanted was to not be alone! And now she had condemned not just herself, but everyone she cared about. Everyone she ever knew. She slumped to the ground, head in hands, body shaking with every garbled breath. She was stuck. Her friends were stuck. Sasha and Anne, the people who meant more to her than anything, the people she would give her life for in an instant, were doomed. And it was her fault. She had dragged them into this wonderful, amazing, terrible hell. She had made a pact with the devil to keep them with her, and now the devil was at the door. And while her friends fought to right her wrongs for her, she was here, helpless, so sure she could beat the devil at its own games.
Had she learned nothing since coming to Amphibia? Was she really still poor, tiny, helpless Marcy? Did her training with Yunaan mean so little? Her adventures in the Guard, her cross-country expeditions with Anne, all her growth, everything! Was it all pointless? She was doomed. Forever to be so arrogant and self-sure that she had it all figured out that it put everyone around her in danger. Just like when they stole the music box and she was so sure they could be together. Just like when she was so sure that Andrias would let her explore other worlds with her best friends. Just like the first temple, where Anne and her new family almost died and–
Oh.
Marcy wrenched her head up, eyes wide. She looked through the tears to where the old tome had landed. It sat opened to the Author page, where the blazing orange eyes of the core stared out.
OH!
It was just like the temple! She was so sure she was smarter, so sure she could outwit Wit itself, that she didn't realize that she was playing someone else's game, according to someone else's rules. The core wrote that book to torment her. The core made these maze’s to trap her here. The core had created a game for her, and she was all too eager to be the player.
But this was Marcy’s body. This was Marcy’s mind. She could play her own game.
She raced back to the entrance of the library maze. The fight played out against the void in the distance. Sasha was on the ground, a blazing wound across her back, as Marcy’s body moved in slow motion towards her. Neon lights flashed in not-Marcy’s vision.
Marcy took 3 steps backward, watching the battle in the distance closely. It was barely visible, almost impossible to notice, but the lights blurred ever so slightly. She darted forward, and the lights sharpened.
Marcy ran. A long line of labyrinths lay before her. She ignored them, ran beside them, outside of them. She ran and ran, closer and closer to fight. The outside world began to bleed in as Marcy got closer. She felt the wind on her face as Not-Marcy looked out of her castle, arm raised with red energy. She heard metal scrape across the floor, and felt her head begin to turn. In the very corner of her eye, she saw Sasha rise, pink sword in hand. Marcy could feel her arm tensing, a phantom, gripping a scythe she couldn’t see. She felt her body primed to move, to strike, to cut Sasha in half. Sasha lunged, the core twisted to respond. Marcy was inches away, the projection beaming around her. She reached out, and grabbed. And just before the not-Marcy could parry, she felt a phantom hand seizing her arm.
Sasha screamed. Marcy screamed. The Core screamed. And everything went black.
At the very edges of the blackness, rang out the voices of angels. Marcy’s angels, calling her back.
“We love you and…”
“....we forgive you”
Marcy reached out.