The Maze of Me

In the maze of me, you search.

I know what you are searching for. You asked me about Penumbra, in those last moments when I was still a woman. My eyes widened, I tried to step away, but you wove magic and ensnared me. It was so easy for you, almost trivial, to catch me and cast your transformation. Being turned inside-out was exquisite agony. My mental and physical realities exchanged places.

I became a maze.

My stone passages tremble at your scraping footsteps. Dusty lichen memories flake at your touch, forever lost. Brain damage, if I was human. But I don’t think you plan to turn me back. You’ll leave me here, a nice stone maze in the middle of a misty field. The wind and seasons will do their damage. By the time I fall into ruin, I will be quite insane.

You don’t pause at intersections or take time to appreciate the maze I’ve become; your right-hand-rule makes all the decisions as you slide your palm along my wall. Your fingertips gouge my emotions, my deepest secrets. You pass over my first kiss, and the memory flakes into near-oblivion. I can only remember that it happened, not who it was with or what I felt. I sear at the invasion.

Turn after turn, you stroll down passages rattling with dry leaves; every one you trod upon is an aspect of myself lost forever. My love of knitting, gone. My fondness for small animals, erased. Your very presence in this space degrades it.

Second by second, you are ruining me.

You come to a turn, stop, and examine the wall. The lichen of memory is scuffed here, a finger-trail through a nearly fluorescent patch that was once yachting with my father. Now, only the smell of salt spray remains.

I am not simply connected, you realize. Your right-hand-rule will not help you reach my center, so you lift your hand and switch walls. The memories here are more recent, and as you thoughtlessly scrape their substance from the channels of my mind I lose long hours of studying at the Arcanum. But there are thousands of hours more that remain.

As you quest inward, the walls begin to warp. You turn at an intersection which, when out of sight, becomes an unbroken passage. The stone walls glow the aquamarine of luminescent jellyfish. This is not the first maze you have made, and each one is different.

None so different, though, as me.

This close to the center, the lichen does not flake at your touch. It is new, hardy, and growing. The walls themselves sprout fresh, green leaves. You stop to pluck one, but you cannot break the stem. You look over your shoulder, but a roiling white mist shrouds the way back.

I sense your sweat. Your anxiety. You are not quite sure what is happening.

You cast a spell of finding. A spell of location. A spell of travel. All three fail to take root in the maze of me, dispersing like embers in a tempest. This failure of magic terrifies you, as it should. You rush on, brushing questing branches from your face as you hurtle deeper toward my core. Once there, you know you will have ultimate control over me. You will be able to discover the secret of Penumbra.

There are too many turns and no easy algorithm for solving them. In your ineptitude you can’t help but make mistakes, but this close to my core it is easy to funnel you toward the center of the maze. The walls you pass become streaked with yellow luminescence. You risk a touch and jerk back in pain. The coursing magic here is like electricity, and this is the first real sign you’ve found that you’re in over your head.

But you keep going. The core—no matter how strong I was as a woman, the core will give you complete control. As you sprint down my halls they shift from shining yellow to a terrible dark purple. Suddenly you emerge into an open stone courtyard, empty save for a single item. The core—an amethyst sphere hovering just over the ground—is yours for the taking.

It should be easy to exert your will, you being physical and myself only metaphorical, but still you hesitate. You look back toward the passage from which you came, but it has been replaced by solid stone. Never before have your victims changed themselves as you stalked their corridors. Instead they quivered, quailed, and flinched at every touch of your fingers. You scrubbed them of memory, building a chain of casualties until at last you found me. If you want to know the secret of Penumbra, this force you’ve been tracking, then you must take hold of my core.

You steel yourself and rush forward. Your fingertips scarcely touch the core when all control leaves your body. Your eyes stare blankly ahead at the terrible light of the amethyst. Somewhere in your mind, a very small child wails. This is not a maze, the child realizes.

It is a labyrinth.

Unraveling your spell is easy once I have control over your body. We are two again, together on that empty field. Then I am alone, standing at the entrance to a stone maze. I tear your walls, make my way to your core, and steal back what you have taken from my friends and students.

Penumbra? You had no idea; you shouldn’t have come looking. Penumbra isn’t a ritual or a place of power. I am Penumbra.

I leave you in that field, a ruined maze that tourists will walk and find… unchallenging. I must return to those who need me. Those you left comatose with your violation; they will need what I lured you here to take. Their memories, their cores. I leave yours in the maze.

The maze of you.