Page 1 of The Labyrinth

Prologue

People like to say the Fall began with the appearance of the monsters, but those of us who survived it know better. We know the beginning of the end started before we even realized their existence.

Our world was overworked. Oversaturated with people. It was struggling, and while we all knew it, we refused to acknowledge it. Instead, we kept overfarming. Overpopulating. Over-everything. It was bound to bite us in the ass at some point. Because eventually, the world was going to fight back.

Sometime around the first fires, the monsters appeared. No one knew where they came from. One day they were justthere. At first, we were able to co-exist peacefully. Until we weren’t.

People began to use them for their own personal gain. Making them battle against each other for money. Using them to fight their own personal wars.

Eventually, the monsters fought back.

And while we were fighting each other, the world burned.

Our fields turned to ash, our once green lands becoming deserts of dust. The rain was toxic, destroying anything the fires left behind. Extreme weather raged. Tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes bigger than any we had ever seen before. Meteors fell from the sky, leaving a trail of ruin in their wake.

People fled the wastelands, seeking refuge in the cities. But the cities weren’t big enough to house all of us. In a time of life and death, the strongest will always rise to the top. And unfortunately for us, we weren’t the strongest anymore.

Theywere.

The monsters took our ravaged cities for themselves, leaving what was left of the human population outside their newly erected gates.

And so, the new world evolved. We were no longer the apex predators, the ones with little to fear. We had nothing but the dust.

From the recovered journal of Iris May Alden, Year 13 AF (After the Fall)

Chapter1

Rissa

For the most part, the dust didn’t bother people anymore. Especially if it was all you had ever known.

Running water of any kind was a luxury, reserved for those inside the Labyrinth. The rest of us scraped by with whatever we could use to clean ourselves. Eventually, though, you just got used to the dirt. It stained our skin and blurred our vision with blotchy clouds. Our bodies, our nails, our hair was all the same—brown.

My mother said it hadn’t always been this way. She told us stories that in her lifetime, baths were a household commodity. Water ran from taps, clear and cold. Drinkable, even. We laughed at her when she’d tell us her daydreams with a faraway look in her eyes. Because surely they were daydreams, not memories. Who had ever heard of a bathtub in a person’s house? Our small shack wasn’t big enough for more than the large bed and the open fire we cooked dinners on, let alone such a rarity. Of course, my mother had also lived beforetheytook over, so things might have been completely different then. Still, I doubted it.

Like the dust, I had only ever known a life outside the Labyrinth walls. Whispers around our small village, Ironforge, said it wasn’t any better on the inside. That the monsters were fighting amongst themselves, a civil war breaking out between factions, leaving us caught in the middle.

“The monsters are at it again,” they’d whisper when the sounds of a small skirmish would echo through the streets. They’d never speak too loudly though. Just in case. You could never be sure what creatures were hiding, wolves in sheep’s clothing.

I got out of the bed, leaving only my younger sister, Ettie, behind. Everyone else had already begun their day, including my mother and my three older brothers. We all had to work since my father passed. It was the only way for us to survive. Ettie was too young to truly understand the hardships of our life just yet, and I wanted her to stay naïve of it for as long as possible. I stroked her dirty hair away from her face. She was still enough of a baby that hints of the natural golden gleamed through the dust. She was my one precious thing in this life that had been thrust upon me, my treasure amongst the tin, and I would do everything in my power to protect her.

I bent and brushed a kiss against her forehead, her skin leaving a light grit across my lips. She blinked up at me, her large blue eyes wide. “Rissa? Is it time to get up?”

I smiled down at her. “Not yet, sweetheart. I’m going to start the fire, and then you can get up. I don’t want you to catch a cold.”

The weather had shifted over the past couple weeks, and the mornings held a sharpness that chilled you to the bone. We couldn’t afford a doctor, so if Ettie didn’t have to get up before I warmed up the shack, then I wouldn’t make her.

My brothers left before the sun broke, off to the mines that shipped minerals and gems to the monsters that ruled the Labyrinth. My mother hadn’t returned from her work yet. I tried not to think too hard about what my mother did, because at the end of the day she did it for us. Every day she put her own needs aside for Ettie, my brothers, and me. But selling her body to the men of the mine…I just wasn’t sure it was something I would ever be able to stomach myself. She had tried to convince me once or twice, telling me the work was less difficult than my current job, and the money was better. I knew she was right, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.

No. I’d stick to scrap metal collecting, selling the tin and aluminum I could find just outside the village. Lately, I had to go closer and closer to the gates to find material to sell, but as long as it kept Ettie in school, it was worth it. She was smart, maybe smart enough to even become a doctor one day, but school cost money, and also meant a mouth in the house to feed who wasn’t working. I didn’t mind, and neither did my mother. But Lars, my oldest brother, had been running his mouth lately. Talking about pulling Ettie out of school, and having her run errands for a few dollars a task. I couldn’t allow that.

I pulled my sweater tighter around me, my elbows cold in the holes. I’d sell as much scrap metal as it took. Fuck Lars. He wasn’t a replacement for Dad, no matter how much he tried to be. Besides, Sam, my middle brother, took after Dad more than Lars ever would. Looking around the shack, I took it all in as a reminder of why I did what I did. The two mattresses, stuffed with whatever clean fabric we could find took up most of the room. Our small “kitchen” filled the rest. One day, I’d get her out of here.

Ettie would have a better life. I’d make sure of it.

I bent over the embers, feeding small bits of kindling into the remains of yesterday’s fire until the flame caught. With a grim smile of pride, I hauled over the large copper pot that would hold the morning’s porridge.

“Porridge, again?” Ettie whined from bed, watching me as I got things ready. I dumped the lumpy oatmeal mixture into the pot. I hated porridge too, but it was all we had.

---