Page 54 of A Fable of Riddles and Redemption

“No,” she whispered, sinking to her knees. “I’ve already been here.”

It was so close to where Caliban had left her. Despair washed over her for a moment before the urgent need to escape forced her to her feet again.

I cannot stay within his vile clutches. I have to get out of here.

Zorina chose an unmarked mirror to leave through, searing it with a ‘seven’ on her way out. She passed through two more chambers without incident.

To her shock and dismay, after exiting the door marked with a ‘nine,’ she spotted the number ‘one’ on one of the mirrors.

“Seriously?! Back where I started?” Growling in frustration, she searched for a new door she had yet to go through, desperately hoping it would not be the one that led to Caliban’s home.

Thankfully, it was not, and she marked it with a ‘ten’ before quickly fleeing the room.

And then the next room had mirrors labeled with ‘seven’ and ‘eight.’ Choosing yet another hidden door she had not previously used, Zorina went through…and spotted her labels for ‘five’ and ‘six.’

A mix of anxiety, exasperation, and despondency washed over her. How many times would she traverse the same rooms? She felt hopelessly lost, though admittedly, she did not have the best sense of direction.

Thankfully, the next two rooms were new. The one after them, unfortunately, contained doors labeled with ‘eight’ and ‘nine.’

“Blast it all. Am I going around in circles?”

With a deep breath, Zorina deliberately took the door in the opposite direction as the one labeled ‘nine’ and marked it with a ‘fifteen.’ As she moved from mirrored room to mirrored room, she realized there was a pattern: doors appeared to be on every other wall, so she began to skip the ones where doors seemed unlikely. It made sense, in a twisted sort of way, that each mirror could not be a door to another room due to their shapes. All the same, it meant that there could potentially be six doors in each identical room—six doors in every dodecagon where she could get hopelessly lost.

Grateful that she’d had the foresight to label the doors early on, she continued moving onward. Three rooms later, and she was back in the same one again—and one room she’d gone through in the process only had three doors, all of which she had gone through previously. Zorina ground her teeth as she added a ‘nineteen’ to the door labeled ‘fifteen.’

This room had four doors instead of six, and she had gone through each of them before, too. Adding a ‘twenty’ to the door marked ‘eight,’ she pressed on.

Her exhaustion began to weigh on her more as she stumbled from room to room, mirror to mirror. The bare-branched trees placed at every seam reflected endlessly, making each room appear to be an eternal, gloomy forest. Combined with the pink glow of her magic to light the way, it was an eerie sight.

Hunger began to gnaw at her stomach, and she wondered when she’d last eaten. How long had she been wandering in this maze of mirrors?

Most of the rooms she opened at this point were new, but some of them were ones she had traversed earlier. It was disheartening, both to find new rooms in this horrid place, and to find the same ones. She couldn’t decide which was worse: new rooms that showed just how extensive the maze was, or finding herself stuck in the same rooms over and over again.

As soon as Zorina seared a ‘thirty’ on the next door and went through, she again fell to her knees in despair. Waves of dizziness washed over her, and she knew she needed to stop and rest for a bit. Captivity for an unknown period of time, where some of her power was likely drained away, plus hours of wandering in this mirror maze with her previously dormant magic lighting her path, and she was beyond exhausted—and hungry and very thirsty, besides.

Letting her magic fizzle out, she lay down on the strange, spongy floor and closed her eyes. The world felt like it was spinning, even with her eyes shut. Two faces swam across her frenzied mind: one handsome and charming, and the other grotesque beneath its mask—the very mask currently tucked away in her pocket.

Zorina shuddered at the remembrance. If I can get out of here, maybe Herrick can help me? He’s a city guard…maybe he can protect me.

Not that she felt like anything could hide her or keep her safe from Caliban now—not with everything he knew about her. And he’d possibly linked her soul to his somehow?

Her thoughts tormented her as she rested her body, her mind feeling anything but the respite she sought. When she finally felt like she could move again, she slowly rose to her feet. Fatigue and vertigo threatened to knock her over again, but she fought against them as she forced herself to press on.

Oddly enough, that room only had two doors: the one she’d entered, and the one she prepared to exit once she marked it with a ‘thirty-one.’

Perhaps I’m near the end of this thing? If there is one… Or maybe this is one of the corners?

The thought that there may only be one entrance to this maze struck her. Could the door she’d initially entered through be the only way in or out?

Shaking her head, Zorina refused to let herself think like that. There had to be another way!

The next room was new, followed by a repeat and then another new room. For the next several rooms, a similar pattern fell into place: a new room, and then another repeat, before she came to another new one. Sometimes she’d find two adjacent new rooms…or multiple repeat rooms in a row.

Eventually, however, every single room she entered bore at least two marked mirrors from her previous passage. She lost track of how many consecutive rooms she’d already gone through.

As she poked at the unused panels in the room with labels ‘fifty,’ ‘fifty-one,’ and ‘sixty-one,’ Zorina came to the realization that there could only be one more door to this particular room.

Oh, please let this be the end! she thought, not for the first time in this miserable maze.