Legends of Nahvra: The Koldryth Beast
Chapter 5: The Labyrinth and The Puzzle

As the gates of the maze flew back, I felt the wind rush at me. All three of us walked in. “Come on, let’s go,” Tarquin said as he took a step forward, “We have to replace the staff, or the world might as well be doomed.”

Tarquin looked at the map and told us to follow him. After about 6 minutes of walking forward, we finally took a turn. We went left of the entrance. “Stop! There might be a trap here. Let me look around.” Tarquin said as he searched the ground for traps. “Coast is clear!” He spoke.

For hours we kept moving, turn after turn, dead end after dead end. “Damn it, another dead end,” I said to myself. It felt like we were never going to replace the end. “Let’s keep going,” I said to the others. It felt weird without Drakel. I couldn’t describe what I felt for him or what I was feeling at the moment.

Was it emptiness that I felt? Or was it something else. Why was I feeling this way for someone I only knew for a month or two. No person made me feel the way he did. I started to tear up thinking about what happened. “Hey Kazz, are you ok?” Hanako asked me as I wiped the tears away. “Yeah, I’m alright.”

We kept moving forward. As we went deeper, I heard what sounded like a trip wire. “Oh shit!” Hanako yelled out as arrows started to fly past us. “Run!” Tarquin yelled out as he pushed us away from the arrows. One of them shot his arm but he was able to get out.

“Tarquin, are you alright?” I asked him as I bandaged his wound. “Yeah, I’m good.” He said to me.

We continued to follow Tarquin through the maze. As we continued forward, we heard a low growl. “What was that?” Hanako said quietly. “I don’t know. I think it might be another one of those creatures.” I replied.

“Let’s just keep a low profile. We don’t need this thing catching us.” Hanako whispered, hoping the monster wouldn’t hear us. We stealthily followed Tarquin, trying to get away from the monster.

As we were moving away however, I tripped on the rocky floor, getting the creatures attention. The monster then turned its head around and let out a horrendous screech as it started to chase us through the maze.

“Damnit!” Hanako yelled out as we ran away. Unfortunately, we ended up losing each other in the maze. I quickly hid behind on of the many walls. I waited a few minutes fir the creature to go away.

As soon as it was clear, I left hiding. That was when I realized we all separated. “This is bad, I need to replace the others.” I mumbled to myself. As I looked around, I realized that Tarquin dropped his map. I picked it up and dusted it off.

Now that I had a map, I could replace the others easier. I was able to pinpoint where I was. By looking at the map, I also could tell where Hanako was. When we split up, there were 4 paths we could have taken.

I labeled each of the 4 paths like this: Path A was taken by none of us, I took Path B, Tarquin took path C and Hanako took path D. I started by taking path C as it was the closest and according to the map, leads to D anyways.

After around 10 minutes of walking forward, I came across an issue. There were 2 new paths, and I had no clue which one was taken. The path on my left was closer to the staff so I decided to take it.

Luckily, after around 30 minutes of moving forward and taking many turns, I found Tarquin. “Ah there you are Tarquin!” I said to him.

He didn’t respond and only snarled at me instead. “Tarquin?”

I slowly walked towards him however he grabbed a dagger and ran towards me. “Woah, woah, woah! What’s with the sudden attacks?” I asked him, trying to stop him from cutting me up.

I grabbed his arm and twisted it, disarming him. As he dropped his weapon, I heard footsteps running towards me. “Kazz, what’s gotten into you!?” The footsteps where from Hanako.

“This is not what it looks like! Tarquin attacked me!” I said as I pushed him away. As he fell to the ground, I noticed a small glowing bug on the back of his neck.

“Hanako! Hold Tarquin like this!” I said to her as I held his hands behind his back.

“Why?”

“Just do it Hanako!”

“Ok, ok! Here, like this?”

“Yeah, perfect.” I said as I pulled the bug off his neck. Blood started to drip down, so I covered his wound with some cloth.

I then threw the bug to the ground and squished it. Tarquin then fell down unconscious. Me and Hanako decided to tend to his wounds. “Hanako, you stay here, I dropped my supplies bag earlier. I am gonna go get it back.” I told her as I left the area.

I walked away and followed the map back to where I was earlier. After only 7 minutes of walking, I was able to get my supplies back. That was when the creature suddenly appeared behind me.

I then pulled out my sword and stabbed it in its weak spot. It started to bleed out but still attacked me back. I swiftly dodged its attack, only barely getting out of the way.

I then stabbed it in the stomach, heavily weakening it. The creature could barely move and after a while, bled out and died. I picked up my bag and went back to the others

“I am back!”

“Good to see you back, Kazz!” Hanako said in a kind tone. I gave Tarquin the map and we were able to replace a strange puzzle room.

As we walked in the room, the door behind us closed and we were trapped. “Oh great! Now were trapped.” Tarquin said. “Got any ideas?” He added.

“Unfortunately, not.” I spoke. I looked around the room and was able to gather this much. On one of the walls, was a mirror. In front of the mirror, there were 4 pedestals with a runic symbol on each one. On top of each pedestal, was a stone.

I took a look in the mirror and realized something. In the mirror, each stone had one of the symbols on it. “I think I found out what to do!” I said as I moved each stone to the corresponding pedestal.

Once they were fully arranged in order, a door opened, and we were let into another room. This room had 3 levers and a door. After a few minutes of thinking, we decided on pulling the left lever as we had no clue what any of them did.

The door had three symbols and when we pulled the lever, one of them started to glow. “Hanako, pull the middle one!” I said to her to which she did. Unfortunately, the glow faded away and both levers switch back.

I pulled the left one again and this time, we pulled the middle one, but the same thing happened. “What the hell!?” I said aloud. After ages of just pulling random levers, Tarquin had an idea.

“What if, we pulled all three levers at the same time?” Tarquin said to us.

“I doubt that will work, but hey, it’s worth a shot.” Hanako said to him as we pulled the levers. Much to our surprise, the door opened, and we were in our last room until we got the staff.

In this room, there were 4 portals. “What should we do?” I asked Tarquin. He didn’t really know. Tarquin suggested that we see what was behind the portals.

“We should stick together, who knows what’s behind the portals.” I said as we all went through one of the portals. As we exited the portal though, we saw there were now 5 portals and we hadn’t gotten anywhere good.

“What the hell? There are more portals!!” I said in frustration as we continued to go through the portals over and over again, each time having more portals.

After 10 minutes, there became too many to count. “I think ww should head backwards. We probably went the wrong way.” Hanako said as she went through the portal we came through. As we followed her, we realized, that we were at the location we needed to be at.

“I am not even going to begin to ask how the fuck we ended up here, but I am not complaining!” I said, audibly.

As I picked up the staff, I felt a surge of power rush through me. As I grabbed it, for some reason I felt a sense of familiarity.

It felt like someone was speaking to me in another language, for some reason O could make out a few things.

"They are still out there... The phoenix will rise... Flameborn..." As if that wasnt enough, I could here the voice call my name!

"What is a Flameborn, and why did the voice say my name?" I thought to myself. "Hey Kazz, everything ok?" Hanako asked me. "Yeah... I'm fine."

Now we needed to get back home... But how? There was a portal frame, but it was destroyed and we had no clue where the parts were.

Luckily for us, Tarquin had enough spare parts as well as parts he found when we split up. Now all we needed was mana to activate the portal. I then readied the staff and activated the portal

We walked through the portal and ended up back in the human world. We were in Tarquin’s base where we first entered the portal. As we left the temple, I felt the cool breeze on my face.

We were finally home.