I quickly left my boat on the shores of the Gray Lake, and made my way to the labyrinth. It was a majestically decorated tiled archway, filled with vines and purple roses.
Being there, you can feel the enchantment and fear seize your body. It is a rare feeling. Life and death in one place.
For this time, the Wise Ones of my tribe had given me a plan. It was the silver arrows. But I knew that wouldn't be enough. So I had a plan B: a Pyroo.
The Pyroos, innocent beings that inhabit the Primus volcano on Sash Island, are like a burning soul that can change form at any time.
My idea was that the Pyroo would serve as a floating lamp, so that in this attempt there would be no surprises in the labyrinth. I was more than deluded.
As soon as I was getting deeper into the place, the forest mist was getting thicker and even with the Pyroo I couldn't see more than two meters ahead.
“I think we'll have to turn back,” I commented the Pyroo in a defeated voice.
“The salvation of the Kaleha region depends on us,” the orange being replied to me.
“All the tribes will die,” I said falling to my knees.
“I can expand so you can see everything like on a summer morning,” the Pyroo explained to me before climbing higher, and shaped like the roof of a hut, begin to illuminate the whole place like I had never seen it before.
"Hurry up! I can only keep this shape for a short time,” he warned me.
I immediately set off, but not by following the paths of the labyrinth. Instead, I climbed the tallest tree I could see and from there I saw, for the first time, the way out of that horrible place.
I jumped from tree to tree as fast as I could. A strange wind began to blow, but I never stopped. It was in a matter of the blink of an eye that those ghosts came out of me.
I almost had a heart attack. They were no longer small like last time. On this new attempt, the ghosts in the maze had the faces of gargoyles.
Their attitude was also much more aggressive than before. However, before they could paralyze me forever, I acted as the Wise Ones had advised and fired a trio of silver arrows.
Their whimpering like suffering pigs soon reached my ears. It didn't take long for them to disappear, and my happiness was great to see that the arrows really worked.
The ghosts kept appearing and I kept shooting every silver arrow I had at them.
Already close to the entrance, I realized that the Pyroo's forces were running out because it was getting a little dark and small embers were falling from above, too.
A bit tired, but finally a few meters from the exit to the Sacred Volt, I decided to put my feet on the ground.
"Hey, Pyroo, you can rest now. I'm already at the exit,” I shouted to him full of joy.
Everything was silence.
“Pyroo, are you there?” I asked still looking at the orange flattened cone above me.
"Yes, I'm here, but you're not at the exit. You're back at the entrance, in fact!” the Pyroo revealed to me.
My body began to tremble. Without much energy and no arrow, I was right back where I started. Vines and purple flowers.
Pyroo descended and near me, he began to speak. At first I didn't understand him because of how dissociated I was, but then I could hear his words.
"... Max, that's the alternative. From now on I'll be your arrows,” Pyroo finished telling me.
“Even if you were, how do I know we won't end up at the entrance again?” I questioned aloud.
By logic, I figured that if I had cheated to get to the exit before, this time I should go through the forest without doing so.
"It won't work. The truth is, this maze has no escape,” the Pyroo commented.
“Are you kidding me?”
“From above I could see that in the center there is something,” whispered my companion mysteriously.
At that instant we set in motion a plan C. We flew over the labyrinth and from above I could notice how, indeed, there was a large gray rock that glowed faintly, just like the full moon on some autumn night.
Without wasting any time, I loaded my bow with a large flaming arrow, which, when I shot it, grew larger and more powerful in a way that glowed like gold.
The impact with the rock was so thunderous that the world seemed to end. The whole place began to tremble while I was still watching from above what happened next.
To our surprise, the rocky center was none other than the head of a golem that, among the rubble, rose to attack us frantically.
At first we could dodge its blows because they were slow. But as time went by, the golem began to move faster and we even noticed that the roots of the trees listened to him, and moved towards us like tentacles.
In the midst of this madness between life and death, I saw something glow on the golem's chest. I couldn't make out at first what it was, but as I asked the Pyroo to come closer, I saw that it was the Sacred Volt itself.
“We need the Sacred Volt to create the medicine that will restore our people to health again,”
Those words of the Wise Ones ignited in me the last spark of action left in my body. Surprisingly, the Pyroo went from holding me in the air to enveloping me completely and, without feeling it burn me, we were a spear lunging towards the grotesque creature.
When I thought I was about to tear the Sacred Volt from the golem's chest, I felt a thick branch attack us from below and for a moment I thought I was dead.
However, Pyroo disengaged from me and focused on burning the attacker, while I fell into the golem's chest.
It didn't take me long to get my hands on the Volt, but I didn't have enough energy to pull it away from its owner.
The enraged monster sought to remove me from his chest, and to try to achieve it, he did not hesitate to direct a blow to himself.
I let myself fall from above to avoid death, but I regretted my failure until, when I was about to hit the ground, Pyroo caught me.
In fact, from below we could see how the monster had done a lot of damage to itself, and his immensity slowly fell on the remains of the labyrinth where the unwary used to die.
The timing was perfect, and with agility, we passed through everything around us to finally find the Sacred Volt that lay glowing on the ground for our capture.
After using what little strength we had left to sail back to Kaleha, we were barely able to disembark and raise before the Wise Ones the longed-for remedy that would prevent the disappearance of all the tribes.
Since then, and every summer, a great meeting is held between all the tribes of Kaleha and the Pyroos in gratitude for the feat of the Labyrinth of the Foggy Forest around a statue that resembles me with a flame in my hand.
