Run. Run as fast as you can. Sprint for your life. Don’t stop.
It’s closing in on both you. You can feel it. It’s getting so close, ready to reach out and touch you and the young one in your arms.
Run. Keep running. Don’t stop.
Duck through low passages, leap and slide, don’t lose your grip on the child. Fly through the labyrinth, flee the beast closing in behind you. Ignore the shouts of the others, just keep running, don’t stop…
A turn and a turn and a staircase, then a turn and a turn and a long hall, up and down and all directions in a kaleidoscope of grey, don’t stop, keep running, you’re getting closer!
The child in your arms is bleeding and burnt and barely breathing, skin ashen, eyes fluttering slowly. His life seems to be slipping from your arms like sand, and you can’t stop, don’t stop, don’t let him go.
Fear, fear, it tries to cloud your mind, make you slow, tries to make you let it catch up with you and the child. You push the fear away and run faster, you’re used to it, you’ve been running for the longest time…
Oh, the labyrinth, the great gray labyrinth, it taunts you and beckons you this way and that, liar’s doors popping into existence to lure you off the path, but it can’t stop you, you know the way and you’re almost there.
Oh, the child, the child, the bewailed child! Why, you scream silently, why did he have to do this? Why? Why did he inflict so much pain on both of you? Why, why? Your questions go unanswered as you draw nearer to the light, your fears and wonderings meaningless for the moment.
Your breath is beginning to catch in your throat, your eyes burning with a strange pain, you’re choking and water’s running down your face, focus, keep running. Close, close, close!
The door jumps out at you around another turn, blazing white in your eyes, and you feel yourself surge forward without really meaning to, soaring forward through the portal into the haven.
Just as you feel the child’s heart slow and stop, ceasing to breathe as you pound forward to the bed, the healers, the metal angels promising false deliverance.