Mark of the Fool
Chapter 517: The Walls in the Centre of the Labyrinth

The ramparts of Jaretha made the outer labyrinth’s walls look like a child’s sand castle.

Forged of gold and white, burning stone, it filled the sky above as the Troupe of the Gargoyle rolled toward the open gates. Calling them city walls seemed to do them a disservice.

The walls around Generasi? Now those were fine city walls, in Alex’s—admittedly inexperienced—opinion. They were high. They were strong. They were well polished.

They weren’t, however, roughly eight hundred feet high, as Jaretha’s ramparts were, according to what he’d read about the hell-domain.

“Such wealth and splendour, yet so many fiends take their pleasure in the torment of mortalkind. How many of these immortal fiends leave their walls to hunt us in the material world?” Kyembe sat behind, leaning out as Alex gripped the hell-boars’ reins, guiding them as they pulled the wagon to Jaretha.

The young wizard noted disgust in the Spirit Killer’s voice.

“It’s bloody ridiculous when you think about it, isn’t it?” he muttered in agreement.

“Enjoying their cosmic joke is the way of demons and gods. And we are the subject of their amusement.”

“Heh. You remind me of someone,” Alex smiled.

Floorboards groaned behind them as painted hooves shifted position; Thundar poked his head out of the wagon over Alex’s other shoulder, whistling at the gathered crowd before the city.

He leaned around the side of the wagon, looking back.

A mere hundred feet of stone separated Jaretha’s rampart from the surrounding maze, like a moat standing between a mortal castle and the encroaching wilderness. The labyrinth stretched around the city as far as the eye could see, its burning walls parted by hundreds of pathways leading from its depths.

From each passageway came dozens of demonic travellers, all making for the city’s walls, turning the length of stone into a writhing thoroughfare of fiendish bodies.

It was both horrid…yet beautiful, in its own strange way.

Alex could only wonder how mortals—and there were mortal wizards who had left the material world to dwell in this city—could stay here without going mad.

“You, uh, marked where we came out, right?” Thundar whispered as Kyembe ducked back into the wagon. “If we have to leave in a hurry, it’d be real easy to run into the wrong path.”

Alex subtly tapped his right shoulder. “I’ve got it memorised,” he said, guiding the wagon through the crowded road to the colossal city gates. “Trust me, there’s no way we’re leaving here without knowing where we’re going.”

“Thank the ancestors.” Thundar looked ahead to the city’s gates which appeared white from a distance, and of an irregular texture, only becoming clear what the surface actually was as they came closer.

They were not painted white, in fact.

Nor were they carved of white stone.

Rather, the bones of untold numbers had been pressed into their steely surface, laminating them in a skeletal sheath, serving as a grisly warning to any who would think to enter the city by force.

Or break one of itslaws when within its walls.

“I don’t want to be decorating those gates when this is all over,” the minotaur muttered.

“Don’t worry about it,” Alex said. “We’d probably be decorating some hall in Kaz-Mowang’s palace instead.”

Thundar glared at him. “Listen, if we’re gonna die, I’m making sure they get you first.”

The troupe passed through Jaretha’s gates, two beams of red light falling on them like the sun’s rays breaking through cloud cover. But, the light came from far more sinister sources.

Flanking the gates inside the city stood two demonic titans. Each half as tall as the walls at their backs, horned, hooved, and cyclopean; a single eye watched from the centre of their foreheads, burning like red stars, casting scarlet beams wherever their gaze fell. Scaly hands gripped spiked clubs large enough to smash a rampart while their ankles were encircled by rings of spiked steel.

A single kick would see those barbs shear through scores of foes—whether mortal or demon—at once, making any sane enemy tremble at the carnage that would result.

After a few tense moments, the titans’ eyes drifted away from the wagon, turning to inspect other members of the bustling, fiendish crowd. But they were far from the last eyes following the mortals as they made their way through the city.

Dozens of demons and devils paused their business, turning to stare, gawk, point and grin at Alex and his wagon as it passed through the streets. Some cracked their knuckles.

Some licked their lips.

Others gnashed their fangs.

All looked upon him with a manic hunger that made his skin crawl. For his part, the young wizard kept his eyes forward, shoulders set, and his back straight. Using the Mark, he altered his body language to project importance, as though he belonged in the city and was there on important business for a very important master.

‘Whether in mortal realms or demon ones, you’re more likely to be left alone if you look like you belong,’ he thought. ‘And you can’t risk a fight before you even get to Kaz-Mowang’s palace. If that happens, the whole mission’s blown.’

His eyes travelled up to the walls of the jewelled palace of Ezaliel dominating much of the sky above. ‘Don’t start throwing around thunder and lightning yet, Baelin,’ he thought. ‘Give us a bit more time.’

Chancellor Baelin was very, very close to throwing around thunder and lightning.

The ancient archwizard drummed his thumbs against the decidedly uncomfortable geometric monstrosity that Ezaliel had claimed was a seat. He was still not quite convinced that the chair hadn't been some sort of nasty, private joke on the demon’s part.

The surroundings might also have been a part of that joke.

Ezaliel’s meeting room was a kaleidoscopic nightmare of nonsensical shapes, rhombuses, dodecahedrons and other flights of visual mathematics, all clashing together in a way precisely designed to irritate the mortal eye.

To make matters worse, the room was overlaid with polished, mirrored glass.

On every surface.

Thousands of twisted reflections of every demon in the chamber, as well as Baelin and his two attendant engeli, writhed in his vision from every angle: a fitting representation of the domain’s mania-field.

For an untrained mind, the surroundings would have frayed their will to the limit, and opened their thoughts to the preying of the mania-field.

To Baelin? It was simply irritating.

As was the simpering demon before him.

He was a lean, bulbous seneschal with the head of a jackal and the body of an emaciated human. His voice was like glass scraping across chalk, and his tone was ripe with the sort of arrogance reserved for bootlickers, bureaucrats and young noble offspring hiding behind the power of greater masters. “—as we have discussed at length, the piddly, insignificant ‘crimes’—that you so accuse the Abyssal Knight Ezaliel, Ionomancer of the Third Mountain, Master of the Orillian Cult, Defeater of the Three Hundred and Ninety-Seventh sub-maze of—”

The chancellor resisted the urge to blast the offending demon into component atoms.

His eyes drifted away from the sycophant to the form of Ezaliel, floating above his demonic attendants like some minor god looking down on his earthly realm.

He was unchanged from Baelin’s memory: his form was carved like a perfectly cut jewel with thirty rhombic faces; each displaying otherworldly lights swimming deep within its jewel-like structure.

The lights shone like the shimmering hues in Noarc’s Rainbow Tower, but while pretty, they also disturbed one’s senses like a predators’ eyes shining through a lightless jungle, or the light from stars that had grown sick. At times, they flared bright enough to light up the mirrors, twisting the reflections, making them waver like one was viewing them through bubbling water.

His power was much greater here, Baelin felt it, and the silent abyssal knight emitted the confidence of a general surveying a conquered realm.

The chancellor’s nostrils flared in displeasure.

He doubted the demon was so foolish as to forget the results of their last encounter: Baelin had been the victor by a wide margin, and the demon’s home advantage could only serve to lessen such a gap, not eliminate it completely.

No, there was something else at play here: the ancient archwizard had the distinct feeling that he was not the only one with help waiting in other realms.

A part of his mind wandered, thinking of the small group who were—likely at this moment—beginning to infiltrate the halls of Kaz-Mowang. Another part of his mind consulted his internal timekeeper, counting down the amount of time he had left before he could begin his… ‘distraction operation’.

The gibbering struck them first.

A babbling of voices drifted toward their wagon on the hot wind, punctuated by the manic rattling of iron bars. There was giddy laughter, mixed with deep, heart-breaking sobs.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Guntile whispered from inside the wagon.

The troupe had passed through the city, and were now slowly and cautiously travelling the passageways of Kaz-Mowang’s personal maze. Things had been unnaturally quiet; the greater demon’s guards had not troubled them at all, simply looking at the gargoyle atop their wagon then glancing away as though they were beneath even a second look.

From there, they had moved deeper into the confines of Kaz-Mowang’s maze while the sounds of the city faded behind them. Only the crackle of the fiery sky, the creak of their wagon, and their own whispered words broke the unnerving silence.

Yet, manic energy filled the air, like a breath held before a scream.

And now the scream had come.

A shriek of ecstasy and agony joined the gibbering and sobbing ahead, sending a chill deep into Alex’s soul.

“I’m not sure I wanna know what that is,” Thundar murmured. “I’m getting sick just hearing it.”

“Steady,” Ezerak whispered as their wagon emerged from Kaz-Mowang’s personal maze. “Steady.”

“Yeah,” Alex said as they rolled through the passage, emerging from the maze and into the greater demon’s well tended grounds. “In a way, our performance begins right now.”

“Aye,” Ripp muttered. “I for one want to know where that racket’s coming from.”

“Your wish is answered.” The Spirit Killer leaned over the others, his hand gripping the edge of the wagon. “Look there, beyond the fountain. You will see what passes for music in these realms.”

Alex followed Kyembe’s pointing finger…then immediately wished he hadn’t.

Ahead, a towering fountain rose, forged in the image of Kaz-Mowang, standing triumphant on a hill of corpses. The tines of his trident sprayed red liquid through the air, their streams arcing down, splashing into the waiting mouths of stone gargoyles.

And behind the fountain, the source of the sounds.

A dozen cages—like those for songbirds, but several orders of magnitude larger—sat in a row beside a line of crimson hedges. Inside each cage, a mortal huddled: trapped, filthy and utterly broken.

Glassy eyes stared into nothingness as they wept, giggled or sobbed to themselves. Some laughed hysterically while smashing their foreheads against the iron bars. Others chewed bleeding fingers.

Each wasting muscle was tensed from the effects of the mania-field, and ashen skin was criss-crossed in a grid of scars and open wounds.

A pack of demons stood around—claws clutching fancy glasses of what looked like wine—drinking, chatting, and sharing laughter. The scene was the exact image you’d expect to see of a group of aristocrats enjoying the orchestra at one of Patrizia dePaolo’s balls.

But, the sight of those poor, broken souls wasn’t what drew Alex’s eye the most. Among the demons near the cages were two recognisable figures standing with a third,and the trio towered above the others.

The first was a demon of metal and gears, looking like an infernal machine given unnatural life. Its head was far too small for its body, while its belly was rounded like a great iron cauldron. Gears whirled in its joints as steam poured from its eye sockets and mouth.

Kaz-Mowang was the second: tall, hulking and, with a manic malice emanating from him in waves. His body was a tower of power, his horns could have impaled the hell-boars with a single sweep. He was without the trident he customarily carried, instead, he held a fine goblet of wine as he conversed with the demons, one who Alex recognised all-too-well.

Not too far from the wagon, stood the towering, powerfully built form of Zonon-In, with menace in her eyes and her crab’s claws snipping at the air in time to the screams.

As the wagon rolled along, she spied them, a toothy grin taking her maw as she announced:

“At last, more entertainment has arrived! Let us hope they can keep their minds, though if they don’t, that’s always fun too. In its own way...”

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