Page 41 of The Labyrinth and the Threaded Daughter

Corin didn’t want to ask for more details despite the fact he was still so confused. What he knew already was uncomfortable. He straightened and took a breath.

“He helped me. Even knowing what he was. Or… what he wasn’t.” He sighed in defeat. “Did he know?”

“What he was?” she questioned. When Corin nodded, she shrugged. “I believe so. As much as I could tell.”

He pursed his lips. “He led me to you.”

Ariadne nodded, the words appearing caught in her throat.

They stood there for a moment longer, the past laid bare in bone and silence, before Ariadne turned and continued down the corridor. Corin followed, casting one last look over his shoulder, and sent out a mental prayer for well wishes for his kin.

It didn’t take much longer for the corridor to narrow again, funneling the two forward until the walls pressed close on either side, the faint golden veins illuminating their skin. The air continued to grow colder with every step, the warmth in the chamber behind them fading into something sharp and metallic.

Then the floor simply vanished.

XV

Corin halted so abruptly that Ariadne nearly walked into his back.

The stone dropped away in front of them in a way that wasn’t clean. It was a jagged, yawning chasm that stretched from wall to wall. There was no visible bottom, only darkness so deep the veins illuminating the hall disappeared. A faint, sour wind rose the cavern, carrying the stench of damp stone and something older. Something wrong.

Corin edged closer, peering down.

The darkness appeared to move as he looked down on it, shifting slightly every few moments as if it were alive. Not visibly, not in any way he could point to or fully describe to anyone who could not see it, but he felt it. It was like a subtle pressure against his senses, like eyes opening far below.

A low sound drifted up from the pit, distant but unmistakable: a growl. So low and drawn out and layered with others behind it that Corin nearly stumbled if not for Ariadne’s grip on his elbow.

He swallowed. “What’s down there?”

Ariadne stepped up beside him, careful not to put her weight too close to the edge. She looked down into the darkness for a long moment before answering. “Tartarus.”

Corin turned to her sharply. “You say that like you’re guessing.”

“I am,” she admitted with a soft sigh. “If I were to enter…” she shook her head. “…I do not know if I would be able to leave. I never wished to try.”

“Then how do you know it is Tartarus?”

Another sound rose from the depths then—a scraping followed by something like a breath drawn too deep. It was as though the Labyrinth’s chasm answered for her.

“It is where the monsters come from,” she explained. “Or where they emerge from after a violent slumber.”

Corin’s jaw tightened. “And I suppose we need to cross.”

“The Labyrinth will just send it back to us however we go,” Ariadne said. Sympathy coated her features.

“You know from experience.”

“It is unfortunate.”

He inhaled sharply. “How do we cross?”

“There is a ledge we can use,” she said, pointing to the edge of the pit. “Right there.”

A narrow ledge ran along the wall, no wider than a man’s forearm. It hugged the stone just beneath shoulder height, curving along the chasm’s edge to the far side. The wall above it was slick with mixture, the surface uneven and treacherous.

“I guess we shuffle,” Corin muttered.

Ariadne nodded once. “One at a time is likely best. You can start.”