makeshift shore for some time, but was pleasantly surprised by Kat's decisiveness. 'Follow me,” he said, discarding the handful and taking charge over a desolate and Martian terrain.
***
The desert was flat, dry and tough, and the many cracks over it soon ground our progress. They first appeared like scars on the landscape, but all were gaping trenches, some spanning thousands of feet wide, others a foot apart. Our path over this shattered quagmire was sporadic and speculative, and with a pulverising set of seven suns above us, there was no shade to recover.
Kat's preferred course between the cavities was a path of earth so threadbare that we had no choice but to keep in single file throughout. Obscurity waited at each side of us, blanketed by a sinister churning of red clouds and orange sand. Occasional geysers blew skyward from these depths, and we four were minuscule in their supernatural scale.
Disturbingly, our route of rock became thinner and thinner until there was simply nowhere left to go. We faced a crevasse, with nothing but sandy air and fall before us. 'We cannot venture back!' exclaimed Harmony, resting hands on her knees.
Kat ordered us quiet while he surveyed the smoking plunge at his toes. 'No going back,” he uttered.
Then, without word or warning, he leapt a five footed trench toward another route left of us — the only option left. 'Come!' he exclaimed, landing safely on the other side and making it look so typically straightforward.
Eddinray wasn't convinced. He stared with a sickly expression at the smouldering gap between himself and Kat. 'I'll drop through that hole like a boulder, a boulder I say!” Perhaps,' he proposed, 'perhaps we
'Back to what?' I yelled, hot and frustrated. 'This is it Eddinray! This is all we got!'
Kat yelled at us again, and delaying no further, I collected my feet over the ledge, bent my knees and dived toward the samurai. Landing safely on the other side, my heels had nothing to spare behind me.
'You won't fall!' I cried, turning to hold my arms out for Eddinray. 'We won't let you!'
'Lady's first, Harmony,” offered the knight, attempting to shake the butterflies from his system.
Made of tougher stuff, Harmony moved into position, and the blue steel in her eyes told me she was ready for the leap; but as she bent her legs, an explosion of gas erupting from the gap smashed her backward. Cradling one another, Harmony and Eddinray squawked for dear life as that gas went on to shroud all the suns in the sky.
I felt Kat's hardy grip on my shoulder, and he arose my attention to the rock at our feet, breaking away like wet biscuits. We backed off two steps and when the eruption and dust eventually discharged, we saw our petrified friends smeared in a wash of red clay.
I sighed, relieved upon hearing Harmony's gentle sobbing.
'This time angel,' said Eddinray, standing; 'I shall go first.'
'Together knight,” she insisted.
'Impossible dear! My mail is simply too heavy — together we fall!'
'Then we fall!'
Her tears smudged the muck under her eyes as they took their position at the crag, and faced us opposite.
'Now!' Kat moaned, fearing another surge of gas or the surface to give way.
Thankfully, they waited no longer, and simultaneously hopped for our outstretched hands and rigid fingers. We snatched them in a lock of grips but their combined weights threatened to pull us all to our dooms. 'Back Fox!' snarled Kat.
Grimacing, Kat and I leaned fully backward, heaving Harmony and Eddinray with us and away from danger
***
The cavity-covered landscape had long filled in. The seven differential suns sucked all the moisture from our bodies and roasted our skin. 'Mother always said pale boys look ill,” mumbled Eddinray, delirious. 'I'm not ill, mother. I won't drink my tears, please do not make me!'
Severely sunstroke, I steadied his arm over my shoulder. 'Almost there Eddinray! Almost there… Somewhere!'
Kat's lips resembled two stretched over raisins and his face was peeling like a paper mask. When the end of this desert finally arrived, it was one soul defeating sight too many — a cliff edge and an immense drop of a thousand feet. I collapsed with a pitiful groan. Eddinray withered like a weed to his backside whilst Harmony slunk over his legs. Kat remained standing of course, his cemented features eyeing what lay ahead, and what lay below. To the right of our depression was a steep stairway down to another hellish test, a glowing maze of yellow light, a labyrinth seemingly covering all corners of this realm with countless straights and corners; knot after complicated knot forming no distinct pattern. Judging by Kat's blank expression, not even he knew what waited in that network of limitless passages.
I broke the silence, but my encouraging words could not disguise the heartless tone underneath them.
'We carry on. One step at a time,” And raising my hand, I pointed far, far away. 'Look there, that must be the centre,” The labyrinth's centre was an intense light of stars beaming an awe-inspiring spotlight up to the sky. It was divine radiation, the sort one would expect to find in Heaven, not Hell.
What was the purpose of this light? Was it transportation to some water abundant realm? Perhaps a free ticket to the gates of the 9th Fortress? I thought only of the good, as the rest of the labyrinth would almost certainly accommodate the bad.
'It's a dare,” said Kat, bitterly. 'The prize of this puzzle.'
'Well the prize stays put,” I said, wearily glancing at Harmony and Eddinray.
'Are you okay?'
'Fine,” they answered, simultaneously dull.
'Where's the water, Missy?' I thought aloud. 'Where?'
I listened for her reply in my head, tried to remove myself from this life sucking place; but for all my concentration I came up short, my life-support was gone.
'There must be something Kat?' I yelled. 'What have we missed? We'll be lost years in that labyrinth!'
Busying himself with meditation, any tranquillity Kat found was disrupted by a new and unfamiliar voice.
'Assist you?' he asked us.
Rapidly, we turned to meet a blurry vision, the ghostly mirage of a man no more than forty years old with a handsome face, blonde hair curling to his shoulders and a turquoise gown draping over his slender body.
'Assist you?' he repeated, his smile kind and voice soft.
'Does everyone else see this?' I stuttered, gobsmacked. Thankfully all their heads nodded, and a careful Harmony was first to approached the glowing stranger. 'Who are you?” she asked, her voice painfully dry. What… do you want here?'
'I am the poet,” he replied, an Italian flavour to his accent. 'I assist souls in the under-realm. Virgil, here on behalf of an individual most anxious to see you arrive safely, and promptly at your destination.'
'Individual?' I said, bewildered. 'Who? And what do you know of our destination?'
'Your destination is the 9thFortress,' he answered, 'and the individual I represent prefers to remain anonymous. It is his wish.'
'His?' pressed Kat, drawing the dusty katana from his belt. 'Talk!'
Unconcerned, Virgil parted his arms to reveal two defenceless palms. 'I am here to help you samurai Kat. Take it or leave it.' He then drifted like the ghost he was through Eddinray, giving the knight a ticklish chill.
'How can you help?' I inquired. 'What are you offering?'
'I offer water and advice to reach the 9th Fortress. That is all. For now.'
Reluctant to accept, Harmony interrogated. 'This is Hell, Virgil, is it not? What ploy is this? The assistance you offer sorely comes free here. What price for your water and advice?'
'The price,' he returned, with a grin, 'is your trust.'
Having given that away cheaply before, I darted a vigilant eye to Kat. 'You ever experienced this?'
He shook his cruel face, and his inexperience did nothing for my nerves.
'I am an honorable man,” said the vaporous Virgil, now presenting a heavy barrel of clear water with a single wave of his arm. Too weary to be impressed, the barrel was the length and width of a man, and our lips ached for
