Prologue

Nexus

Anna wiped blood out of her eyes.

She remembered reading somewhere that head wounds tended to bleed a lot, but she’d hoped to spare herself the experience if at all possible. Thankfully, it didn’t hurt that much, but the stupid cut wouldn’t stop bleeding.

She wiped her hand off on her shorts.

Anna pressed herself back against the wall and inched toward the next blind corner, hoping desperately that she wouldn’t encounter another of those things moving around in the maze. She didn’t know what they were and she couldn’t catch a good look at any of them, but they were fast, damn fast. The maze was their territory and she was an intruder, though it escaped her exactly as to how she had come to be in this strange place.

She shook her head and immediately regretted it.

A swirl of images and sensations assaulted her, strange places and feelings she couldn’t place within the regular framework of her mind. Another world, another her. A place of technology and machines. There was no maze there. No twisting corridors and frustrating dead ends. No flickering torches that hung over her head and dripped ashes and soot down on top of her when she walked beneath them.

Another distraction she couldn’t afford. Her mouth drew down into a grimace and she banished the images from her mind before poking her head around the corner.

Anna pounded her fist on the mossy stones of the wall in silent rage.

Another fucking dead end. When am I going to get OUT of this damn place?

It was almost as if she had always been here, walking these murky corridors, but she knew that could not be the case. It didn’t feel right. Nothing about this felt right, but what it did feel was....

Familiar.

“Been here before.” she told herself. “Watch out.”

The memory surfaced slowly, dredged up from the depths of her mind. It played almost like an old, grainy movie in her head, showing her standing there, wearing the same outfit: blue jean shorts and a white tank top and sneakers. In the memory she was cursing at the dead end when something came rocketing down the corridor from behind her and—

Anna bolted back down the corridor before the terrible imagery could fully fade from her mind’s eye.

Headlong flight was no stranger to her here.

She could run and she was fast. How many times had this mixture of déjà vu and speed saved her life in this awful place? She couldn’t quite remember, but it seemed like there were a lot of things she should be able to remember right then and couldn’t, like where she was and how she’d gotten there in the first place.

She hit the intersection she’d recently left behind and ducked down a side corridor mere seconds before the strange vibrations began, running up from the ground beneath her feet and shaking her where she stood leaning against the wall, panting.

The guardians of the maze were bizarre. They moved with incredible speed, too fast for her to outrun or dodge if one of them cornered her. She had only caught glimpses of them, impressions of large spherical objects hovering in midair that were blurred like the wings of a hummingbird in flight, but that was enough.

The maze guardians had to be avoided at all cost.

The vibrations increased in intensity until it passed her position, heading on its merry way towards where she’d just been. The wretched things dogged her steps everywhere she went in the maze.

Hang on a sec. She straightened and took a deep breath. That damn thing’s going to hit the dead end and come right back here.

There was nothing she could really do if it decided to come down the passageway she was standing in, but she was loath to leave her survival to blind chance. Anna turned tail and ran once more.

There was someone else here with her in the maze.

In addition to the strange guardians, she’d spotted a woman in long, flowing white robes out of the corner of her eye several times, turning down a side passage or walking calmly off in the distance down one of the long corridors. She was always gone whenever Anna reached the spot where she’d been.

Anna had no idea who the woman was or what she was doing there.

It was too much to hope for that this mysterious person could help her get out. She figured that in all likelihood they were both trapped, but she had to strive for something. Finding the woman in white was as good a goal as any when she was lost like this.

Besides, she could use the company.

After a series of dizzying turns taken at full speed, Anna was certain she’d put enough distance between herself and the mysterious guardian of the maze to take a short breather.

She found herself in another of what she’d nicknamed ‘rotational rooms.’ Each of these rooms were perfectly circular and had six entrances, but no markings on the walls or anything else to indicate which passage she should take. In the exact center of the room stood a pedestal with what appeared at first glance to be some kind of sundial on top of it. Directly above it hung one of the sooty torches and its flickering flame cast shadows all over the floor and walls.

The sundial made no sense that she could figure out. It had no markings on it and its singular purpose of telling time with the sun’s light was pointless underground. She had this idea that she might be able to judge which tunnel to take by the shadow cast from the torch as its light hit the sundial, but the positioning was all wrong. She’d need another light source or some way to move the torch for that.

The rotational rooms were a source of constant aggravation for her. She’d spent a great deal of time inside of them, trying to divine their mysterious purposes, but in this she had utterly failed. The rooms remained as much of an enigma to her as the first time she had ever seen one. This time she barely paused, picking a tunnel at random and continuing on past the room.

This is all wrong.

A sense of terrible urgency gnawed at her. There was somewhere she had to go, someplace she needed to be, but she couldn’t get there so long as she was wandering around this awful maze with death lurking just out of sight in the smooth, featureless corridors.

How did I get here? Where is ‘here’ anyway?

Valid questions, but she had no answers. Perhaps the wound to her head had something to do with her memory loss, but she was almost certain she’d sustained the injury recently and that she’d been in the maze a much longer period of time than that. It was just a shallow gash over her right eye at any rate. She’d tripped over something and knocked her head against the wall. It was stupid. She couldn’t afford to make mistakes like that, not in this place where a misstep might mean death.

A trickle of blood oozed down her right cheek, no matter how persistently she wiped it away, but at least she could still see.

What was this place? Who would build such a thing? What were the guardians? Were they machines of some kind? Could they be stopped? Was there a switch somewhere down here that she could flip and shut the whole lot of them off?

She had more questions than answers and no one else to ask, except possibly the woman in white. Another reason to try and catch up to her. Maybe she could get an answer to a few of her questions or maybe the woman could point her towards the exit at least.

She was thinking these thoughts when she turned a corner and nearly pitched headfirst into a yawning pit that stretched from one side of the corridor to the other.

Fucking hell!

Anna backpedalled, her arms windmilling as she fought to regain her balance. Two more of those smoking torches hung over the pit, filling the area with dim, flickering shadows. She looked down into it with a cold feeling of dread.

The pit was empty.

The floor dropped down about ten feet, which was tall enough to prevent her from getting out without a ladder and enough to injure her if she’d tumbled into it, but other than the threat of falling, she could see no obvious cause for the strange feeling of terror she was experiencing.

Ok. Calm down. It’s just a hole. Didn’t fall into it, so that’s good. Maybe there’s some way past it?

She’d never seen one of these before. No memories or dreams or whatever they were warned her of what might happen to her if she dropped down into the pit. Upon closer inspection though, she discovered a series of circular holes set at irregular intervals running all along the walls inside of it. She could not guess at their purpose or why the placement was so random, while the floor appeared smooth and devoid of them.

Anna shook her head. “Better not chance it.” she muttered. This place was really starting to get to her.

“You do quite well.”

The voice came from directly behind her.

Anna let out an undignified shriek and spun around, taking an unfortunate and involuntary step backwards. For a heart-stopping instant she fell, but she instinctively grabbed onto the ledge and saved herself from going all the way down, though she did bang painfully into the wall of the pit.

She was conscious of one of those circular holes in the stone right at the level of her naval as she clung to the wall like a spider. A drop from this distance wouldn’t hurt her, but she could not shake the horrible feeling that if she did not get out of the pit as soon as possible, something very bad was going to happen to her.

The white robed woman stood above her, looking down. Now that she was close enough to get a good look, Anna could see her dark skin and strange, golden eyes.

“Help me!” Anna scrabbled for purchase on the smooth wall with her feet, but she could find none.

 “I will not.” The woman in white turned her back on Anna and began to walk away.

Shit!

A shuddering grinding noise started from the hole directly in front of her. It sounded like ancient machinery cranking away towards some unknown purpose. The sound filled her with renewed terror and Anna hauled one leg up over the ledge in a burst of energy.

An enormous crash drove her straight up and over the ledge, but not before something sharp bit into the side of her leg as she pulled it out. Blistering the air with curse words, Anna clutched her leg and looked down into the pit.

Holy mother of God.

The metallic grinding began again as she trembled violently and watched long, razor sharp metal spears retract slowly into the holes in the walls of the pit. They were staggered so that no two of them intersected each other, but there was no space between them for even the smallest person to stand without being impaled.

Had she fallen all the way down there or not been fast enough getting out....

The metal spears vanished into the holes in the walls of the pit and the ancient machinery fell silent once more, leaving no evidence of the potential death waiting within.

“What kind of place is this?”

Anna looked down at the cut on her leg and bit her lip. The pain was sharp and jagged, but she could deal with that. The real problem was that the injury would slow her and she could be in serious trouble if it didn’t stop bleeding soon. The cut was an impressive looking slice on her right leg just below the knee, where the wickedly sharp blade of the spear had snagged her as she pulled her leg out of the pit. Blood ran down her skin, soaking her sock. She had nothing to bind it with.

Maybe if I tore a strip off of my shirt I could use it as a bandage.

“This fucking sucks.”

Gradually she became aware of another presence in the corridor. She looked over at the woman in white. This time she noticed that she was carrying a staff of polished wood that was almost taller than she was.

“Why didn’t you help me up?” Anna demanded.

The woman regarded her calmly. Her golden eyes were at once knowing and somehow familiar. Had Anna seen her somewhere before? She wasn’t getting the same sort of déjà vu feeling from her as from the maze itself, but with the absence of most of her memories she couldn’t entirely discount the possibility that she knew her from somewhere.

“This trial is yours alone.” The woman spoke evenly, her voice almost completely devoid of inflection. “I will not interfere in it, nor will anyone else.”

“The hell kind of answer is that? I could have died.”

“You did not.” Her golden eyes revealed nothing of her thoughts.

Anna stood, wincing at the pain in her leg. “Look lady, can you get me out of here or not? Cause if all you’re gonna do is stand around watching me get hurt, I can do that just fine without you.”

The woman nodded gravely at her. “If that is what you wish.”

“Yes damn it, it is.” Anna was in no mood for games, not after yet another narrow brush with death in the maze.

“Then follow and prepare yourself.” The woman began to walk, her pace neither hurried nor slow and Anna followed quickly after her, determined not to lose her again.

As they walked, the corridor began to slope upwards. Like all of the others that Anna had explored, it was much taller than she was and was lit by the hanging torches that smoked horribly in the enclosed space. It didn’t seem to bother her guide, but Anna felt as if she were choking whenever they drew near one and was grateful for the infrequent lights, though that did make it hard to see any great distance down the passageway.

“Who the hell are you anyway?” Anna knew she wasn’t exactly being polite, but she was tired and injured and her head hurt and she’d been running around in a maze full of deathtraps. She had absolutely no patience for anything or anyone anymore.

The woman shrugged.

“Would a name mean anything if I were to give one to you? I have worn many over the years. Many and more. Most have faded into the twilight of time.” She paused thoughtfully. “Perhaps it is better that way.”

Anna snarled something unintelligible. “Lady, you don’t make a whole lot of sense.”

The woman laughed. It was a surprisingly cheerful sound, coming from someone with such a solemn demeanor.

“I suppose not. You must forgive me. I have been without company for a long time. You may call me the Oracle, if you wish.”

Anna stumbled. She knew this woman. She knew that name, but from where? Why would she ever talk to someone who called themselves not just an oracle, but the Oracle?

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means what it means. The future is foretold.”

“Bullshit.” Anna snapped. “I don’t believe in fate or destiny or anything like that. I just...I just want to know why I’m here and how I can get home.”

The self proclaimed Oracle turned to look at her. Her expression betrayed faint amusement. “How many times do you believe we have met? Is this the first? Can you tell me that I do not seem familiar to you?”

“I...what?” Anna stared at her.

“This place, your memories, your injuries...how many times have we stood here? How many times have you asked these questions of me? You cannot escape your fate, no matter how you twist and turn to avoid it. When the time comes, you will remember everything.”

She turned away and resumed walking. After a brief, internal struggle, during which Anna questioned the wisdom of following a lunatic even in the best of times, let alone through a maze filled with deathtraps, she grudgingly limped after her.

They walked for a time without speaking, leaving Anna alone with her thoughts. Her injury traced a line of fire up her leg with every step. It seemed to have stopped bleeding, fortunately enough, but it still hurt. She was struggling to keep pace with the Oracle and wondered what would happen when she was unable to keep up. Would the woman just leave her behind? Who could tell what someone so obviously unhinged was going to do before they did it?

She was so engrossed in her personal suffering that she almost walked into the staff the Oracle held in front of her, barring her way.

“What is it now?” she demanded.

The two of them were standing in front of a dead end, much like the dozens of others that Anna had already encountered in the maze. She wondered suddenly if they were about to hear the warning vibrations of the maze guardians coming up behind them. There was nothing they could do if that happened. Their route here had no turns, no intersections, and no way out if something came along behind them or some unknown trap was triggered. It was one long, slightly uphill corridor leading straight to this blank wall.

“What do you see?” the Oracle asked her.

“Another fucking dead end. I thought you were going to show me the way out? I hate these damn things.”

She could see no way forward. No way out.

The woman lowered her staff. “A dead end? By that you would say that there is no way forward? No way out of the maze in which you are trapped?”

Anna looked sideways at her. It was more than a little unsettling that the woman’s thoughts were so close to her own.

“Your understanding is limited.” She waved a hand at the smooth surface of the wall in front of them.

Anna blinked. A part of the wall had simply vanished, leaving behind a doorway opening into darkness.

“What you see, is not always what is. What is...is not always what you see.”

Anna stared, openmouthed.

“How did you—? What did—?”

“Come. Follow.” The Oracle entered the doorway without a backwards glance.

Anna stared after her.

Well isn’t that just fucking fantastic?

Scowling, she limped through the doorway and into a large, dimly lit chamber.

The first thing she noticed was the tree. She couldn’t tell what type it was, because she couldn’t see most of it. It appeared to have grown down through the crumbling stone ceiling and all she could see of it was a huge mass of tangled roots, spreading out through the chamber, seeking the earth. Some of these were as large around as she was tall, while others were no bigger than the width of her arm.

She could’ve sworn that she’d never seen anything like it before and yet....

There were a series of large metal gratings in the floor, covering dark openings that presumably led back down into the maze. One of the gratings was broken and twisted by one of the tree roots growing down into the hole. She felt an undeniable flash of recognition at the sight of it, but her perspective was different, last time.

As before, she could see herself, like a silent film running in her head, climbing up out of the hole, grabbing onto the tree and hauling herself up into this room.

I’ve been here before. How? Why? What on Earth is going on?

The memory faded.

The Oracle was a patient presence next to her. Her golden eyes studied her, measuring her, for what Anna did not know. She didn’t care for the feeling at all and glared back at the woman.

“What is this place?”

The Oracle raised her staff, pointing towards the broken ceiling and the mass of tree roots.

“You wished to find the exit, did you not? For that you must climb.”

“You have got to be shitting me.”

She looked up. The only light came from where the tree roots had broken through the ceiling, which had caused part of it to collapse. She supposed she could climb up there and get out through the hole in the ceiling if she absolutely had to.

That did not sound like something she wanted to do with her injured leg, though she was confident that she could manage the climb. She turned to voice her objections to the Oracle, but the woman was nowhere to be found.

Cursing, Anna searched the chamber for her, but the woman had vanished, seemingly without a trace. She couldn’t even find her footsteps in the dust on the floor, though she could see her own clearly enough.

There were two entrances, both of which had ancient, rusting metal doors that had fallen off their hinges. One led to a collapsed tunnel, which was impossible to get through. The other sloped downward into utter blackness.

Anna assumed that this tunnel led back down into the maze and that the Oracle herself had taken it. This had to be the way the two of them had entered the chamber as well...except for the strange fact that it was on the wrong side of the room. She had come in on the side opposite the tunnel and was able to follow her footsteps back to where they emerged from a blank wall.

Frustrated, she even took a look down into the hole in the floor with the broken metal grating. There was nothing down there but a deep and abiding darkness. Had she really climbed up out of this once before? She couldn’t remember how she would’ve ended up at the bottom of the hole in the first place.

Nothing made any sense.

Anna returned to the tree roots, sighing.

“Fine. That’s just fine. I didn’t need you anyway.”

The Oracle’s voice whispered into the stillness.

“I would grant you a final word of warning. Take the sword...and beware what comes.”

Anna spun around, but could see no one. Was the woman hiding somewhere? Was she snickering at her from behind her false door?

“I don’t need you!” she cried out. “You hear me? You can just take all that rubbish about fate and your stupid staff and shove it up your—”

The ground beneath her began to vibrate in a familiar fashion, cutting her off. A maze guardian, passing through some tunnel beneath her feet? Had one of them found the only entrance to this place? Was it speeding towards her even now as she stood there cursing?

Anna threw herself into the climb, ignoring the burning pain from her injured leg whenever she put weight on it. As she pulled herself up and over the tree roots, clambering from one to another, distant, fleeting memories of climbing trees when she was little came back to her, flickering into her mind’s eye and then vanishing.

She climbed as rapidly as she could, ignoring the odd echoes of memory that threatened to distract her. Fortunately, it was an easy enough climb. The tree roots were numerous and there were hand and footholds aplenty.

The opening in the roof was a tight fit, but she managed to pull herself up through the dirt and the plants and the roots into the open air above, wincing as she banged her injured leg against the tree itself.

Anna rolled out onto the grass with a gasp of relief at finally being out of the claustrophobic tunnels and her near escape from another of those strange maze guardians. It seemed terribly bright compared to the dim tunnels below and it took her eyes a little while to adjust, but when they did she found herself staring up at the base of largest tree she’d ever seen. It went up and up and up. Its trunk was larger around than her whole house.

“That...is one damn big tree.”

She looked around, shading her eyes with one hand against the rays of sunlight shining through a canopy of shimmering green leaves. The light cast dappled shadows onto the earthy, rich floor of a forest unlike any she had ever seen before. She found that rather than the exception, the enormous tree seemed to be the norm here.

She was completely surrounded by them.

Everything was incredibly huge. Mighty oaks and redwoods stretched up into the sky that went up so high up she could only see the lower, intertwined branches. These were ancient, but where on Earth did they allow trees to grow to this size and not cut them down?

She stood, dusted herself off and started to walk, the pain from her injury momentarily forgotten at the sight of yet another mystery. The unearthly splendor of the forest was unlike anything she had ever experienced. It seemed to call to her with a vast, silent voice. She could not resist it and so compelled, she stumbled forward with vacant eyes, her gaze fixed on nothing and everything at once.

After a bit of pushing her way through the undergrowth, she found what appeared to be a game trail, winding its way through the trees. Awestruck and dazed, Anna started to follow it. It was harder to see the sunlight now, with the gigantic trees towering over her on all sides. She felt very small by comparison.

The voice of the forest was a vast, silent roar in her mind that eclipsed all thought, commanding her to move forward, ever forward.

To what, she could not say.

Strange birds cried in the distance and animals chirped and grunted at one another in the deep dark of the woods around her. Anna breathed deeply, smelling a rich, loamy scent that reminded her of the fresh scent of a spring rain, how everything was always somehow cleaner afterwards. It was so much better than the smoky, unpleasant air she’d started to get used to in the maze.

It was hard to focus on any one thing. Her memories still had yet to return, but she was beginning to get that same feeling of déjà vu that had warned her so many times before in the underground maze. This time however, she could do nothing about it.

Anna limped down the path, surrounded by the fragrance of the forest. Unseen animals rustled in the underbrush as she passed, unheeding of their presence. Something was waiting for her. Something ahead. The splendor of the forest was enthralling and enchanting. It was at once otherworldly and familiar, a silent scream from her past.

Something forgotten.

Something fey.

As before, her memories tried to warn her, but this time, she could not picture what it was that she was remembering. It was just a feeling, as intangible as the air itself.

Her skin prickled and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Watchers, she thought numbly. She was being observed quietly, patiently.

Watchers in the green.

The feeling of déjà vu was strong now, stronger even than in the maze itself. She’d been here before, walking this trail, seeing this forest. Behind her, there was nothing but death. A maze with no solution and an Oracle who predicted nothing. She had to go on, on towards...what, exactly? She couldn’t say and she hoped the answer to that question made this whole strange experience somehow worth it.

The trail wound to and fro through the thicker underbrush on either side, with many scraggly branches reaching across the path as if to bar her way. She pushed them aside or climbed over them, wondering at herself. Her injuries barely bothered her anymore. She almost couldn’t feel them at all. She felt strong, stronger than ever before. Strong enough to face what was coming.

This was right. This was what she was supposed to do, where she was supposed to be.

The trees now tangled together to form an almost impenetrable canopy overhead, blocking out most of the light.

It was a surprise when she stumbled upon the clearing. The silent, overwhelming roar that had consumed her thoughts vanished. The sudden increase in light hurt her eyes, but her gaze was drawn immediately to the sword standing upright in the center surrounded by fragrant grass. It was coated in dirt and rust with virulent green vines twined about the pommel, seeming to hold it in place. There was some kind of lettering on the blade, but at a distance, she couldn’t quite make it out.

The Oracle’s words came back to her.

Take the sword…and beware what comes.

Heedless, Anna entered the clearing and knelt next to the sword, brushing dirt off the inscription, wanting to know, wanting to understand what she was seeing. This was what she was supposed to find.

“Atropos?” Her voice echoed into the silence and she flinched at the noise. It was then that she realized just how quiet it was. How still. A whisper. A subconscious thought. A voice that was no voice. An echo of memory, fear and pain, triumph...and despair.

 “This once was green.”

A bone-chilling howl filled the air, answered again and again on all sides of the clearing. Anna could hear crashing and snarling, the enraged growling of savage beasts tearing through the undergrowth, closing in on her from all sides. Instinctively, her hand closed on the pommel of the sword.

She drew it free, ripping it from the earth and the plants that held it and spun to face the beasts. This time, she was ready. This time, she would show them. She would show them all.

The sunlight increased in intensity, blinding her and preventing her from seeing more than vague shadows as the beasts crashed into the clearing on all sides. She couldn’t see, but she felt no fear.

She never did at this point.

Anna felt the sword in her hands, the grass under her feet. She heard the snarling of the beasts as they leaped at her. She could not believe how coldly furious she was. To have survived everything that the maze had thrown at her, only to fall here?

Impossible.

“Damn you.” she spat and raised the blade as the first of them closed in on her. She swung and felt the sword catch flesh, heard the creature’s roar turn to a high pitched whine of pain, felt a savage surge of triumph within her chest.

Another of them pounced at her, a formless shadow with slashing fangs and claws.

Anna flung herself to the side….

And crashed to the floor of her bedroom, tangled in her sheets. Cursing, she sat up, her heart hammering in her chest as the images of the dream slowly faded.

“What in the name of Hell was that?”