“Get to the exit!” Thorne shouted, pointing to it on the monitor as if Zelda could see. But even as Zelda staggered to her feet and turned toward the last hole she’d blown through the labyrinth, the Angler Worm cut her off. It heaved its massive bulk forward, surging on countless legs like some sort of gargantuan millipede.
Zelda was forced to run in the opposite direction, following the corridor she was in instead of using the rest of the exit route she’d created.
The weeviles were still on her, chipping away at her health – down to thirty-five percent now – but most had finally burned up in the sun. The last of them took one more swipe at her, then collapsed in burning heaps on the ground.
The grachnids were not so easily lost, though. Those that hadn’t been crushed by the Angler Worm were still hot on Zelda’s tail.
“Pressure plate!” Kaiden shouted and Zelda spotted it just in time. She darted around it, then fired an Improved Scatter Shot over her shoulder. One of the lasers hit the plate and the front rank of grachnids were impaled as a row of spikes launched up from underground.
Grachnid assisted kill – 1,000 EXP gained!
Grachnid assisted kill – 1,000 EXP gained!
Grachnid assisted kill – 1,000 EXP gained!
Grachnid assisted kill – 1,000 EXP gained!
The others were undeterred, though, clambering over the corpses of their brethren and continuing the chase. They were faster than Zelda, what with their advantage of four extra legs. She couldn’t keep ahead of them forever.
“They’re gaining on you,” Titus said, panic in his voice.
“Time check!” Zelda shouted back.
Titus looked perplexed, but glanced over to the timer.
“Twenty-nine minutes and forty-eight seconds since you entered.”
“Thought so,” Zelda said, and even from the shaky view of the camera drone Kaiden could see her smile. A moment later the labyrinth began to shake.
“It’s reconfiguring again,” Kaiden said. The walls sank into the ground, and for a painful few seconds, the whole of the labyrinth was one flat plane. Zelda was running along its edge now, the bottomless trench on her left and the exit just ahead. The Angler Worm was still guarding it. She ran right for it anyway.
The grachnids were on her, too. The swiftest of them slashed her across the back and her health dropped to twenty-nine percent.
She responded with a blind shot, blasting off an Improved Scatter Shot that left several grachnids screeching. But there were too many. She couldn’t fight them off and she couldn’t outrun them.
A moment later, though, Kaiden realized she didn’t need to.
The labyrinth was finishing its reconfiguration and new walls were rising out of the ground. Zelda turned hard to the one nearest her – tanking several grachnid slashes on the way – and flung herself atop it. The wall carried her up as it rose and the grachnids were left behind, hissing and screeching as they swarmed around its bottom.
“Yeah!” Kaiden shouted. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
“You got this!” Titus shouted.
Even Thorne joined in, cheering as Zelda stood, finding her balance as the wall came to a stop. It was an exterior one. At its base on one side the grachnids swarmed, climbing over each other in a living tower that was actually about halfway up the wall and rising. On the other side, the trench, bottomless and gaping. It was too wide for Zelda to jump across it to safety. No, she only had one option: the exit. The bridge she’d crossed to enter the labyrinth in the first place.
She was high above the maze now and could look out across its entirety. From such a height it was easy to see the exit – and the Angler Worm guarding it.
She charged toward it, sprinting along the top of the exterior wall as the camera drone zipped along beside her. Kaiden got a good view of her face. Focused. Determined. And maybe, if only a little bit, smiling.
As Zelda approached, the worm gave a great heave and stretched up as tall as it could. It rose above the wall, blotting out the sun for a moment, its millions of legs splayed out and ready to fall. And fall they did, in a rain of stabbing limbs and crushing weight.
But Zelda wasn’t there.
Her eighteen percent health was enough for one last trick. A trick she’d used earlier, but that worked just as well here.
She launched off the wall, flinging herself diagonally over the trench and toward the bridge. As she did, she detonated an Improved Kinetic Grenade at her feet. The concussive blast washed over her and carried her over the empty expanse. She plummeted, then crashed down on to the bridge. Her health flashed down into the red as momentum forced her into a roll.
Finally, she came to a stop just beyond the edge of the bridge, the flag beside her on the ground, and the labyrinth behind her, defeated.
Chapter Fifty
“Zelda! You absolutely brilliant maniac!” Kaiden couldn’t stop himself from shouting as he ran out of the broadcast room to where she’d landed just beyond the bridge.
She got to her feet, wiping dirt and grachnid blood and who knew what else from her armor, but she was smiling.
“Well, not all exactly to plan, but I suppose it worked out—"
Kaiden hit her at a sprint and wrapped her in a hug. Hadn’t even planned to do it, wasn’t thinking properly, really.
She stumbled back, surprised but just managing to stay on her feet.
“That was incredible! I mean, the way you trapped the dilopoad in the hedge. And then the… oh.” Kaiden realized he was hugging her. “Uh, ah. My ba—”
“That. Was. Insane!”
Titus hit them both from behind with a tackle hug that sent them all tumbling to
