Brinn held the thread in his hands and stared, mouth ajar. The smell of dust and ink still filled the air, but the study he’d left behind was long gone. As he looked to his left and right he realized he hadn’t been at a dead end after all. It was a “T” shaped intersection. He was utterly out of mana, his spell having fizzled out shortly after he’d cast the invocation to destroy the paint mimic, but some light seemed to have returned to the room. He couldn’t identify a source, it just seemed to bloom from somewhere in the air itself, diffusing evenly throughout the room. It gave everything a somewhat fake sheen. With his back against the wall the tunnel vision of the attack of the painted monster. It had really looked just like him—if he was made out of dripping slime and had a poor understanding of body mechanics. While it may have grabbed his attention, the creature hadn’t turned out to be the most absurd thing he’d seen that day.

  Without looking, he took a small leather pouch from his ingredients bag. He was thankful he’d invested so much money into fire resistance enchantments. It was hard to be an adventuring alchemist if all your ingredients went up in smoke. This only served to remind Brinn of the vials he’d lost in the battle with Amelia. All those ingredients, wasted.

  He untied the thread that held the waterproofed leather shut tight, and it fell open easily. Inside was a small paper-bound book. The spine was worn from many openings and the paper was soft, and, Brinn realized—surprisingly old. There was no picture on the cover—they hadn’t developed those sorts of presses as a kid—but the title, “The Adventures of Thaddeus Borwick, Artificer Extraordinaire” followed by “T.B. Pierce” stood in bold against the browning paper. He flipped towards the end. He didn’t know the exact page, but it wasn’t far past the last corner he’d bent to mark his place. He began to read. He mouthed the words aloud under his breath.

  “Thaddeus leapt. Underneath him, a league of sharpened spikes flew by in an instant. The girl’s arms tightened around him. He felt the roundness of her breasts pressing into his back as he traced through the umbral halls. In his hands, he held their salvation: A spool that wound itself as they ran. “Andrea’s Golden Thread.”” He couldn’t even get through the excerpt without cringing internally.

  It was ridiculous. Yet there it was. Seemed a little cheaper and yellower than he’d imagined as a kid, but nonetheless, there was a golden thread crossing the hallway beyond him, and as Brinn looked to either side, he only saw it carry on further in each direction into the dark. Brinn was stumped. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what to do, he knew exactly what to do, it was all just a little…unoriginal, wasn’t it?

  “A golden thread in a labyrinth? Really?” Brinn said to the empty air.

  But it didn’t matter. If Brinn understood things correctly, the labyrinth would take him where it wanted—where the bard wanted—regardless of what he did. That’s what happened each time he tried to turn around and leave anyways. He may as well follow the thread. There was a solid chance this was just some trap of the bard’s, but the lich wanted a story. It would be anticlimactic for him to die this way. Right?

  The question became, as he ran down the thread, whether or not he was even following it in the right direction. That gave him a coin flip’s chance to be going the right direction, and he’d give it another coin flip whether or not he was just walking into a trap when he reached the end. He studied the string as he walked, as if staring into the thick yellow strand would let him derive some new wisdom about his situation.

  As funny as he would have found it for the lich to be drawing inspiration from the writings of T.B Pierce. It may have held a special place in the harts of many a young man that wanted to become an adventurer—but those opinions usually changed when they found out that adventuring is mostly about trying not to die in a cave. And the story was, of course, based heavily in legend. The real myth hadn’t had nearly as many spike traps, or “voluptuous breasts.”

  His younger self had certainly preferred the book version, but he was familiar with the other one. Brinn suspected every kid was. The real myth had been about a great labyrinth, where imprisoned men and the monsters there to guard them had learned to coexist. They interbred—which Brinn had always found absurd, the physiological implications were ridiculous—and a champion was born. Part man, part monster; he leads his combined peoples—the people of the labyrinth to revolution, only to be crushed at the hands of a great hero.

  His grandmother had told him the story, and Brinn suspected her grandmother had told her, and her grandmother her, and so on into eternity. It was as ubiquitous as stories could be, at least in the city—Brinn heard a soft humming in the distance. He braced himself, thinking of the study, the bard—but it wasn’t him. The voice was feminine. For a split second Brinn’s mind drifted to Amelia in horror.

  A clatter sounded in the dimness ahead, and Brinn came to a halt. A tight feeling in his chest told him he was walking into a trap. Did he care? Either way, it would be best to walk into it with a plan. He looked down the hallway ahead. Any portraits? Conventional traps? Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen one of those since Spinny had left the party. Convenient. It was difficult to make out the walls more than a few feet in front of him, even with the strange ambient light that now filled the halls. Nothing. His heart pounded in his chest as his mind veered into hyper-vigilance.

  And…for once, nothing happened. His hands shook. He let out a held breath with a sigh, calm himself, but the next inhale was only more desperate. He was in danger, yes. He was exhausted. But he could still be a professional. Probably. He was an adventurer! A real one, not some bandying pulp hero. Despite himself, the sudden surge of fear persisted.

  This was stupid. He had to keep moving. He put his back to the wall and sank to his knees. Whatever was waiting for him wasn’t getting any better. He’d heard from some mercenary that if you were losing your shit in a battle that you had to think of better times. It was too simple. Probably bullshit. Brinn had never worked out what thoughts could reliably make someone calmer. The best ones only made it worse. The good times only matter when you can’t get them back. But it had to be worth a try.

  Maybe family would work.

  His mind drifted t Nan again, telling stories. She had sat in a chair that his pa had made, rocking by the fire, knitting away with her little hooks. It wasn’t just the labyrinth. She had told him of the moon being the womb of a dreaming child. Of heroes. Once, she had made him a sash.

  His efforts led to mixed results. He felt his breathing slow, even his heartbeat—but some of that might have simply been homesickness distracting him from impending doom. Perhaps that was the point. He did miss Nan—but they wouldn’t be seeing each other again. She’d passed a long time ago.

  Once, she had made him a sash from yellow yarn and—no, wait, Brinn thought—his grandmother hadn’t ever knit. Why was he thinking about knitting? Come to think of it, the “golden thread” he’d been following did look quite a bit more like yellow yarn. Then, a realization came to him at the last possible moment. He heard a noise behind him, just as the little hand wrapped around his throat. He shouldn’t let himself hope, but his heart soared.

  “Thought ye’d surprise me again did yer knives yah greasy fraud?” whispered a high but harsh voice. It didn’t reach his ear.