The Soldier

 A searing blast strikes near my head and bricks shatter and splinter about me. I dive round the corner and dash down the corridor. I hear them grumbling and running behind me. I count to myself to twelve cause I figure it'll take em at least that long to reach the corner and turn it. On twelve I turn and fire. Sharp beams flashing back and forth across the hallway I scatter light and I think I got em all I run to the end of the corridor it's another deadend, another stone wall of this maddening towering maze.

 Only this time there's a window. I climb out onto the sill it's a long way down and down at the bottom is a wide wide muddy swamp filled with gators and crocs and fierce angry eels. And me? Silly me. I'm luxuriating, I'm thinking. I'm wondering whether I should try to land on a gator or aim for the water. Which would be softer to hit? When suddenly a sharp beam cuts across my arm and I find myself falling free.
 

The Angel

 Swinging limbs and swinging lives through the swamp with the gators her eyes so bright like the stars have you seen the stars tonight? She shines she splashes she rolls in deep pools and strokes me where my green scales turn to skin and the skin to a red bloody mist. I've been wounded. And she has come to save me.
 

The Spirit Sweats

Little drips of water off the moss it's not raining just dripping off the leaves on a sunny day, both suns today are in the sky. I see her languid lying through the trees on some cliffs on a rock she doesn't see me. She is quiet, still, her dark flesh sweating in the suns. I see her spirit hovering wavering slightly above around about her and I can see that it is at peace. And so I leave her thus.
 

Upon Being Healed

This is where she lives she says. And I believe her I hear so many things so many ways that nothing really matters anymore. "And those stars," she points up high, "are my friends."

I struggle to keep my eyes my mind open alive. We lie together on the cliffs our spirits mingling together in the suns as one.

"And they can be your friends, too," she says. "As soon as you are at peace. How is your wound?"

She touchs her dark lips to my green skin the bandages gone my new scar healed ugly and proud. She wants to know if I'm going back into the tower to try again to seek the legend of the Grebnon Maze. And I tell her yes, that is something I must do.

The legend:  fight the Grebnon through the hallways down corridors to dead ends before they kill you and maybe just possibly maybe you might escape through the window that leads to the greatest treasure known to tnif.
 

Discovery City

I'm stealthy I slink through the marbled room no one sees me or hears me or smells. I turn a corner and at the far end I see I've discovered another window in the maze. And suddenly behind me a sharp light hisses and I hear it, I duck and leap up running.

At the window I climb up on the sill and look for my reward only to see, far, far below, pointing directly up at me from the ground far below, one large hard sharpened spike.

And me? Silly me. I'm slapping myself on the forehead for being the fool and idiot that I am. The Treasure of the Grebnon? Simple. It's life. To come out of the tower alive is all the treasure any one person deserves and I know now that I had that treasure once in my grasp and left it lying out there on the cliffs above the trees under the suns and stars the sweat her arms.

Her skin so slick her breathe so damp I'm in revelation I know I must find that window again and in a sudden quick moment I feel light burst across my cheek and I feel myself in a sudden quick fall for what I know will be my very last time.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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