MAZE - The Endless Quest

‘Left or right?’ Nimbus asked.

‘Right,’ Viper replied as they all turned to follow the path.

The Alliance was able to get a map for the city, but the blueprint for the actual power station was a different story. They tried their best, but the intelligence agency was only able to find the manual for operating the controls. Considering how much time they had to gather all the intel, that was already impressive.

But this created a problem for Nimbus, Lurize, Viper, and Crimson. They had no idea how to navigate the structure and find the control room. In order to find the place, they quickly came up with a plan. By taking turns picking the direction to move, they could try to abuse their luck. No one actually knew how the attribute worked, but it was generally accepted that being lucky wouldn’t happen several times in a row.

It also helped to avoid any attempts to stop and discuss the plan. Hera always tried to ask the court for their opinions about various things. And, although they all thanked her for the consideration, it created a bad precedent for this kind of situation. An urge to stop and talk about the possible paths on each turn. That wasn’t something that would help right now, hence splitting up the decision somewhat solved that issue .

‘We keep moving forward or go left?’ Viper asked as they reached another intersection.

All the walls of the place had the same industrial look, concrete walls with a pastel yellow line on a blue background. It looked good, but there were no signs, no arrow pouting to the control room, nothing. The worst part of it all was that the place wasn’t built to be a labyrinth. It was just a very poorly designed building. Whoever made this was focused on making it look pretty, but never considered the people who would be working here and how easy it was to navigate the place. The titled blades were inside for over 10 minutes, moving at full speed, and they had only seen a single bathroom near the entrance. It was madness.

They continued moving, at times finding a dead end, and at times only finding more paths, including several staircases. A constant alarm ringing, with red, rotating lights on every corner, became the background for their infiltration.

‘Crap, crap, crap,’ Crimson gasped. All of them were getting anxious, but the red scaled Spymaster was the most affected by that.

‘Crim, calm down. We will figure this out,’ Viper said.

‘I don’t know. It’s been a long time. Wasn’t there something we could do to find the command center? What did Kaela tell us? Something about it being the central part of the plant and the vents?’ Crimson pressed as they turned a corner, only to find another dead end, with only a supply closet behind a door.

‘She said the vents should be pushing air towards the command room. And since it’s a secure location, they would have only a single vent in there,’ Lurize replied.

‘Yeah, but it’s hard to follow the airflow from here. Right,’ nimbus didn’t wait for anyone to ask this time since he knew it was his turn to decide.

‘Then why don’t we move through the vents?’ Crimson asked.

‘Right again,’ Viper said, since he knew they came from the straight path, ‘They are too small for a person,’ he explained.

‘But we are not people sized,’ Crimson reply made the entire group stop dead on their tracks.

There was a long pause before Lurize shook his beetle head, ‘We are morons.’

‘Absolute dumbasses,’ Nimbus sighed.

‘Idiots. Complete Idiots,’ Viper agreed.

‘So… No one thought about that?’ Crimson awkwardly asked.

‘Let’s just go,’ Nimbus looked around and found one of the vents on the top of the wall a few meters ahead of them.

Getting inside was extremely easy, they barely had to bend the horizontal grate. Once they were inside the actual airflow, it became much easier to follow. Despite that, it still took a while, which was another display of the hostile architecture of the place.

About 5 minutes later, they reached the last stop of the airflow. A vent dropping in the center of a large circular room where all the controls for the power station were located. There were six people inside. Four of them looked like regular workers, wearing simple jeans and cotton shirts. The other two were better equipped. One had a short sword, while the other a pair of spiked gauntlets.

They seemed to be just working the controls, there was no tension in the air, but that was about to change. Bursting through the grate, which was a bit smaller than the one they used to enter, the titled blades spread out and popped into their titled forms, their full bodies coming into display.

“What the fuck?!” one of the workers gasped and rushed away from the console in front of him.

“Get them!” the human with the gauntlets yelled and jumped towards Lurize. However, the Royal Tutor simply held the man’s both hands, and head butted him, knocking him out cold.

Viper attacked with a grasping strike, binding the second human warrior before Nimbus and Crimson delivered a pair of punches to the man’s head at the same time, also taking him out of the picture.

“Did you kill him?” Viper asked.

Nimbus checked, “No, he’s still alive.”

Crimson turned to the Sentinel, “Is that a good idea? What if they try something?”

“Don’t worry,” Nimbus took one of the chairs and dragged the man he knocked out towards the edge of the room. Breaking the metal armrest of the chair, he pinned the human’s arms above his head against the wall after removing his gauntlets and armor, leaving the man only with a shirt and boxer shorts. He did the same with his feet, making sure he wouldn’t be able to move properly. Nimbus helped him also bind the other armed human and remove his equipment. All the while, Viper and Crimson made sure the workers were not doing anything.

Once they were done, Lurize moved towards the control panel, double checking if everything was the way they learned about.

Nimbus walked over to the workers, “Please, stay here,” he gestured to an empty space on the side of the room, far from where the other two humans were being held.

“Why?” one of the workers asked.

“Because this makes it easy for us to see if you are going to try anything. As long as you just stay quiet, nothing will happen with you,” the Sentinel explained, doing his best to maintain a soothing voice.

“Yeah, right. You are just saying that for us to drop our guard and be easier to kill us,” the worker scoffed.

“What?” Nimbus frowned, “How does that even make sense? Like,” he gestured to the two unconscious men, “Do you think you could do better than them? No offense, but none of you look battle ready.”

“It’s probably just some twisted game you’re playing. You enjoy the cruelty,” another worker replied, her eyes burning with rage.

“Girl, who hurt you?” Crimson asked.

“No one, and I intend for it to stay that way,” the woman replied.

Nimbus rubbed his eyes, but before he could say anything, Lurize spoke up.

“Who is going to send the signal? I lost track,” Viper raised his hand, “Then I’m all ready. This set up is just like what we saw.”

“Then I’m doing it,” Viper glanced back to the humans and back to Lurize, “Remember, you have a number minutes equal to the number of titled we have,” his words were purposeful cryptic to make sure the humans didn’t understand what he was talking about.

Lurize frowned, but after looking at the humans nodded, but paused right away, ‘We can still talk like this. You and Crimson count as one or two?’

‘Oh, right. We count as one. I was thinking about the number of titles. Either way. Five minutes. I just used the mana reinforcement,’ Viper scratched his cheek with a finger.

“Yeah, do that,” Nimbus waved Lurize off and turned back to the humans, “Now, like I was saying, we don’t want to hurt you. Any of you. No one here, and no one outside.”

“Oh, this is a peaceful invasion, then?” the woman scoffed.

“No, but you started it! All we want is to kick out the army and reclaim the room. But everyone who lives here can stay, as long as you don’t cause any trouble,” Nimbus continued.

“So you want us to be prisoners? Great,” the woman rolled her eyes.

“That’s better than what you did to us!” Crimson gasped, “We are letting you stay at home, you tossed our people in a camp, and ransacked their homes.”

“They deserved it!” another worker replied.

“Why?” Nimbus crossed his arms.

“They were terrorists,” the man continued.

“Says who? Most of the people in the camp were families with children, people who never hurt anyone. We are not the ones that started this war, you did, and that’s all because you are saying every single one of us is a terrorist!” Crimson snapped at the man. Even so, the human didn’t pull back.

“Then what are you doing right now? Is this not a terrorist attack?”

“We are at war! Things are different once that declaration is made. If you are saying that this is a terrorist attack, then what you did to take over our city is the same thing!” Crimson yelled.

“Of course is not. We did the right thing. You are just doing this to win,” the woman replied.

Crimson was about to snap but Viper put a hand on her shoulder, “Calm down. We know why they are like that,” he turned to the humans, “You said that we just want to win, right? Then tell me, how keeping you alive helps us with that? We don’t need you to operate the power station. If anything, we might need your tablets or IDs, but that’s it. “

The woman stared at Viper, then looked down, clearly confused.

“Believe us or don’t. I really don’t care. Just stay quiet and don’t try anything funny. We don’t want to hurt you, but we will if needed,” the Spymaster said as he sat down directly in front of the group.

A few moments later, a loud buzzing sound echoed through the room, along with the red rotating lights stopping. The noise made the workers jump, and a moment later, a loudspeaker could be heard.

“Alert ended. Lock down will now be lifted.”

‘Shit. We need to barricade the door. We should only need to last enough for the Alliance to get over the barrier,’ Nimbus announced as the group started to pull tables and other furniture towards the door, trying to hold it in place.

‘How long will that take? Do you know?’ Crimson asked.

‘I think it’s around 20 minutes after the barrier drops. There are a lot of people out there.’ Viper said.

‘That’s a lot of time,’ the red scaled blade sighed.

‘But we can do this. We need to hold,’ Viper pulled his dagger, but he still was staring at the workers.

“I can help,” a soft voice came from the group of humans. It was the woman from before.

“And why would you do that?” Nimbus turned to the human.

“I don’t want to die. And... I, I think there is something wrong with what I’m thinking. My head is been fuzzy for a while already. A friend of mine told me she could help, but I refused. Called her a sympathizer. Maybe she was right,” the woman held her head with both hands, “My head is hurting so much.”

“Do you think that’s the mind control wearing off, or is she playing us?” Crimson asked, staring daggers at the woman.

“There is some mana leaking from her head. It’s hard to tell,” Nimbus replied.

“How can you help?” Viper asked.

“On the main console. There is a lock down override. It’s supposed to be able to open the gates, but you can also use it to force the doors to remain closed,” the woman replied, the more she spoke, the more strained her voice became until she started to scream.

The humans glanced at Viper, who just replied, “You can help her, I’m not risking this be a trap.”

“Found it!” Lurize activated the override, and the alarms started to ring again.

Seeing that, Crimson walked closer to the human and started casting a healing spell. It was a very basic spell that she barely understood how it functioned, but by pure brute force, it seemed to work, and the woman stopped her yelling.

Viper didn’t say anything, but continued keeping his watchful eyes on the workers. He still didn’t trust what they were doing, and he would be sure that they didn’t cross any line.