"Believe what you will. I have had this thread since long before I entered Sigil."
"You think you have, but it's a delusion." Although he too was yelling, Tessali's tone was patronizing and overly patient. "Please try to understand."
Jayk jerked the elf's hand away from the Thrasson. "No, you understand! You are in the land of barmies now, so you do what we say, not us as you say. Yes?"
To Tessali's credit, he managed to avoid flinching when he met the tiefling's diamond-eyed gaze. "I'm trying to help us all."
"You may turn back if you wish." As he spoke, the Amnesian Hero glanced at his feet. The orange fog was already waist-deep, but he still saw thick plumes of silver steam rising from his toes. "But trouble us no more. I haven't time to discuss the matter."
"Your foot, Zoombee?" Jayk shouldered past the elf, her shoulders hunched against the barrage of hailstones. "I can refreeze it."
The Amnesian Hero shook his head. "In this heat, I fear it would not be worth the trouble."
Tessali glanced at the silver steam rising from the Thrasson's toes. "I've noticed your limp. What's wrong?"
"I stepped in something called an ooze portal, and now my leg is turning to mud."
The elf furrowed his brow. "But if you escaped, you should be recovering-"
"Zoombee's foot was caught a very long time," Jayk said. "It had already changed when I froze the puddle."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Tessali dropped to all fours and disappeared into the orange fog, then began tugging at the Amnesian Hero's leg.
The Thrasson jerked his foot away. "What are you doing?"
Tessali raised his head. "I am a healer."
"You are a tangler of minds!" Jayk corrected. She looked to the Amnesian Hero. "Don't trust him, Zoombee. He'll steal your thoughts."
"If I were going to do that, Jayk, wouldn't I want to work on the other end?" Tessali's face betrayed the pain of exposing the flat of his back to the hail, but he made no move to stand and escape the barrage. He looked back at the Amnesian Hero. "I'm only trying to stop the ooze. That way, we can make our decision without worrying about your foot"
"You cannot convince me to turn back, if that is the price of your help." The Amnesian Hero moved to step around the elf. "I would rather turn to mud than lose my way in these mazes."
Tessali raised a hand to stop the Thrasson. "It is not the way of the Bleak Cabal to place conditions on its help. We'll trust to the thread. Just let me do what I can."
The Amnesian Hero nodded, more than a little relieved by the elf's generosity. He looked around for someplace to escape the storm. Finding none, he retreated down the corridor to where the hail was not so heavy, unwinding the golden thread as he went. He braced a hand on Jayk's shoulder, then Tessali squatted down and lifted the Thrasson's foot out of the orange fog. A thin veil of steam was rising from the thawing flesh-but not thickly enough to hide its slimy, claylike texture.
Tessali pulled his dagger from its sheath, drawing a suspicious glare from Jayk.
"I warn you, mindtangler, if you try any of your tricks-"
"You'll see that I regret it, I know." Tessali did not even look up as he spoke. "Jayk, I'm well aware that the Amnesian Hero is all that stands between you and my death. The last thing I'm going to do is cause him harm."
With that, Tessali began to probe the thawing flesh. To the relief of the Amnesian Hero, nowhere did the dagger tip sink more than a coin's thickness into the pearly ooze that covered his foot.
Tessali nodded in approval. "Good. It's thawing from the outside. There's no chance of the ooze working its way into your bones." He cleaned his dagger blade on the ground, then returned the weapon to its sheath. "I can't restore your foot to normal – that would require a better healer than I – but I can keep the ooze from consuming the rest of your body."
The Amnesian Hero narrowed his eyes. "You do not mean to cut it off…"
Tessali smiled and shook his head. "No, nothing like that." He felt around on the ground for a moment, then came up with the jagged corner of a broken brick. "This should do nicely."
"To do what?" Jayk demanded, ever suspicious.
"Turn his foot to stone-or brick, in this case," Tessali explained. "When a patient shows an unusual talent for escaping, we are occasionally forced to use such a spell to keep him restrained."
The Thrasson scowled. "I am not fond of being restrained."
"You won't be," Tessali assured him. "You, I'm not going to mortar to the floor."
"I still dislike this idea," the Amnesian Hero said. "Can't you do something else? If we run into trouble, a brick foot will slow me down."
"Not as much as turning into a puddle of ooze," Tessali countered. "I'm sony, but this is all I can do. Besides, you're already lame. The only difference you'll notice is that your foot seems heavier. And I'll change it back the instant we find someone to restore it."
The Amnesian Hero stared at his thawing flesh for several moments, then finally nodded. The elf pressed the stone into the slimy flesh, but jerked his hands away when a deep, rumbling bellow rolled over the passage.
The roar was not nearly so loud or sudden as the thunderclap that had preceded the hailstorm. Rather, it built more gradually, seeming to echo out of all the side corridors at once.
Jayk's big eyes darted from one side passage to another, then settled on Tessali. "You make this sound!"
Only the Amnesian Hero's firm grasp kept her from lunging at the elf. "Leave him alone. Tessali has nothing to do with it."
The bellow sounded again, a little louder than before, then died away. Jayk craned her neck to look back down the passage.
"Zoombee, if Tessali is not causing the sound, who is?"
"The monster of the labyrinth, of course." Continuing to hold his foot above the fog, the Amnesian Hero gestured for Tessali to continue. "I was starting to worry there wasn't one."
Tessali pushed the brick shard into the Thrasson's soft foot. "I'd think it wiser to worry because there is one."
"Despite what you claimed earlier, Tessali, you have not played many mazes, have you?" The Amnesian Hero did not wait for the elf to respond. "If there is a monster, he must be fed. And since he must be fed, there must be some way to put food into the maze. Is all this not true?"
"Of course."
The Amnesian Hero raised his left hand, which was all but hidden beneath the unruly tangle of golden filament. "I think the thread is leading us to that place now."
Tessali frowned, puzzled, then suddenly paled. "You mean we are the food!"
The Thrasson nodded and drew his sword. "I suggest you hurry, Tessali. In my experience, the monster seldom strays far from the food gate." Sign Of One
Again, the bellow rumbled through the labyrinth's thousand passages, overwhelming even the roar of the wall-pounding hail. As before, the sound came from all directions at once, left and right and front and back; the dark sky crackled with its fury, and the brick-paved ground trembled at its might. The Amnesian Hero bent forward, as though that would help his gaze pierce the fog's turbid density. He saw nothing but cascades of white hail vaporizing against orange-glowing iron.
"That one sounded louder," whispered Tessali. To prevent the group from becoming separated in the thick fog, both he and the tiefling were holding onto the Thrasson's amphora sling. "It's getting closer."
"Good." The scalding air had reduced the Amnesian Hero's voice to a croak; each time they rounded a comer, the iron walls seemed to glow more brightly with their orange heat. "We must be nearing the exit."