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<span class="mu-s">-----------¢±µA≈Ø∩ΓßAαδΦΘдФ｡︵༼༽Aω-—-------</span>
The music is upbeat, melancholic, and, as expected, follows no rhythm. It comes from everywhere at once, yet the first thing Lucinda notices is the empty straight line right in front of her. Accentuated by debris, going as far as she can see, it’s like a perfect tunnel in broad daylight. Around it are fairground stalls,
around her too.
Lucinda goes pale. She’s standing very, very still. The Familiars of this labyrinth, featureless yellow silhouettes neither man nor monkey surround her from every angle to the point that she’s almost choking. They come and go, ignoring her completely, moving forward frame by frame like a broken movie tape. Only letting her blue eyes move, she sees stalls past the yellow shapes, with what seems like games and prizes on the walls. Finally daring to turn around, Lucinda finds more of the same.
Then she looks up.
The gigantic face looks straight at her, so big or close that she can’t see its chin and eyebrows at the same time. No mouth no nose but eyes, eyes scattered, eyes inside more eyes.
Already clenching her teeth and sweating, Lucinda simply looks away. This is a new one. This was not in the book. Entrances aren’t ever this guarded. She did not become invisible to enter because she would not be able to see, but had this hunter known that she would instantly be amidst a crowd, under such a heavy gaze, she would have stepped in blind. Too late for that, now. And yet, nothing happens.
Surrounded by madness, often pushing the Familiars with her shoulders, Lucinda wanders through the extravagant fair inside the Labyrinth. She doesn’t want to look at what’s under her feet. She doesn’t want to be a part of it.
The letters on the posters of the stalls are vague and did not repeat even once so far. Most of the games in them seem oddly familiar, but when she stops to stare at the Familiars playing them she’s wrong ten times out of ten. The rules are so vague that she wonders if there are rules at all, conditions to win or lose, limits, and good practices, but there does seem to be a pattern. The Familiars sometimes win and get a prize, and sometimes lose and remain meek as they are devoured like it was a chore. Or maybe those are the ones that won. The captured humans are playing too.
This Labyrinth is abnormal, more so than most of those she visited or knows of. Still not the strangest, no; not by a long shot. But even a stranger breathes and bleeds, and somewhere in here is a Witch, and the Familiars, in one way or the other, live and die for it.
>?
