They began a loud discussion about what happened to each of them since entering the maze while they searched for each other, and Hayden frowned when he heard that the others had started off on their own but run into each other after about five minutes inside the maze and had been together ever since. Keep talking and we’ll try to move towards your voice,” Zane said. “I’m stuck in a room full of mirrors,” he called out, feeling his way around more quickly now and bumping sideways into a reflection of himself in his haste. There was something odd about that, but he didn’t have time to worry about it right now.

The three of them have been together this whole time? “Hayden! Thank goodness, we thought we’d never find you!” Zane called out this time. “TESS! TUCKER!” Hayden shouted, relieved to finally make contact with part of his team.

“No, I thought I saw his reflection for a moment…” “This is the third time you thought you’ve seen him, Tess. “Hayden! Is that you?” h e heard Tess’s voice from somewhere nearby, though he couldn’t see her. He continued onwards carefully now, holding his hands out in front of him as he went to avoid walking into anything, his footsteps echoing all around him from the black-and-white tiled floor. Floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, he was surrounded by dozens of images of himself, some of them small and far away and others magnified to twice his actual size. As he pulled himself out of the water and onto solid ground (he had somehow popped up in a fountain in the middle of a mansion), he understood why.Īnd so they were. He broke the surface of the water and was surprised to find that he was surrounded by his own soggy reflection. He extinguished the light in his clear prism and returned it to his belt, swimming through the narrow tunnel and seeing light above him.

He supposed he shouldn’t have expected more from a level-three mixture, since the mastery-level version only lasted an hour, but it was still disappointing. He just needed the residual light to cast the spell and had no desire to compound his prisms.īubbles of air were approaching him from a narrow tunnel straight ahead, and Hayden swam towards it as fast as he could, his lungs beginning to strain for air as his body tired. The clear prism was still casting bright light all around it as it slowly shrank, and he held it carefully away from his line of sight as he looked th rough the amber one and thought, Air.

Cave of Nightmares by V. St. Clair