Goose Maze

"**Goose Maze**" (2x12) is the twelth episode of Memory=Null Season 2, in which the Emberlin continues to search for an escape from the ever-changing halls of Dalpha's Labyrinth.

## Synopsis

Opening the door opposite the goose, Emberlin peers into a dense forest. Jamming a dagger into the door jam and lighting a fire in his hand, he steps inside. About one hundred feet away, another door stands in the middle of the ground, and a small stream trickles through the forest off to the left. Feeling safe, he decides to take some time to fell one of the trees and turn the branches into door wedges. Reclaiming his daggers and replacing them with the wooden wedges, he then sits down underneath a tree to take a rest.

As he sits there, Emberlin watches as the catdragon cautiously approaches the open doorway. Suddenly, it tenses up and darts back into the study. Turning around, Emberlin finds himself face to face with a massive, six-foot tall beast. It’s head is like a saber tooth tiger’s skull, and out of its back stretch several smokey, incorporeal tendrils. As Emberlin makes a break for the door, its booming voice enters his mind, saying “You have the stench of fire on you.”

Emberlin stops and nervously introduces himself. The beast recognize the mantle of the Queen, and introduces themselves as one of the old gods- Secena, the God of the Hunt. They once knew the previous Queen of Embers, and was the god who taught Shehada how to hunt. They were trapped here when Dalpha promised them infinite hunting. They got what they wanted, but the hunts held no challenge. Emberlin explains his mission to wake the old gods, and offers to help them escape. By request, he shows off the god killer axe, and activates its old god search ability, which orbits his vision around Secena. The old god bades him hold the axe out, and after speaking some words, turns to smoke and rushes into the blade.

With Secena in tow, Emberlin heads over to the second door and opens it. On the other side is a small stone room with a chest in the center. He elects to open the chest from a distance and, pulling out his gun, shoots the lock from the other side of the door. After a moment of nothing exploding, he steps into the room and throws open the lid with the axe. Inside is a piece of paper, upon which is written the words “MIMIC CHECK”.

After a hearty laugh, Emberlin heads back into the forest, closes the door, and then reopens it. On the other side is the cookie jar room he had previously encountered, with the jar intact and still sitting on the table. This time, however, Emberlin enters the room and crosses over to the opposite door, finding it locked. Flipping open the lid of the jar with the axe, he quickly shoves the barrel of the gun inside, and keeps it there for the next two minutes. Eventually, though, he removes one of the cookies from the jar and tosses it through the open door, where it lands in the forest. Next, he pulls another cookie and burns it in his hand. Finally, he removes another one, and takes a bite. The room is suddenly filled with Dalpha’s booming laughter as the cookie is revealed to not be chocolate chip, but in fact raisin. As the laughter dies down, the opposite door unlocks.

Opening the door with cookie in hand, he finds yet another stone room. A pedestal stands at the center, and sitting atop it is an eight-foot cubed black box with a hole in one side. Emberlin chucks the cookie through the hole, and it disappears into the pitch dark blackness. He then moves to the left hand wall and tries the other door, but it is locked. He tries several other things, such as throwing a coin into the box, poking a stick inside, and even throwing the box into the forest river. The coin disappears silently inside, the stick goes further in than expected, and the box reappears on the pedestal once it passes the door frame. Eventually, with no other ideas, Emberlin rolls up his sleeve and puts his hand into the box.

There’s a sudden stabbing pain as Emberlin recalls memories of being on a pirate ship sailing the open seas. Standing on the deck in ragged clothes with a mop in his hand, he swabs the deck as his fellow crew members chatter around him. A gentle breeze blows through his hair as the sun peers down through the cloudless sky. A sense of accomplishment washes over him, as he happily looks forward to finding the treasure that is just around the corner.

Emberlin pulls his hand back from the box, unmarred, as he hears the sound of a door unlocking. He rubs his hand absentmindedly and tries to put his hand back inside, but nothing happens. Disappointed, he heads back to the study and, shaken by what he’s experienced, sits down by the fire and takes some time to think to himself for a few hours.

Eventually, he heads back to the last room and opens the other door. On the other side is a room with a crystal ball embedded in a pedestal in the center of the room. Written in blood on the left-hand wall is the phrase “Half-truths seed the deepest fears”. On either side of the orb is a handprint, and the orb is circled by unreadable runes. Emberlin pulls a vial of ink out of his bag, covers his hand in it, and then places his hand on the orb. He then scratches a smiley face onto the front. After a moment of nothing happening, he places his hands on the handprints.

Suddenly, his vision is ripped from him as he is transported to a group of Emerald Shield paladins marching down a street. At the other end of the street stands Mina with her arms crossed. The lead Paladin announces that they are here to claim the island in the name of the Emerald Shield, as the world has fallen into chaos due to everyone’s lack of faith, and they are here to change that. Mina informs him, as one of the leaders of the Golden Wake, that they will have to leave her island, or things will go very bad for them. The paladin scoffs and asks what “a little girl” is going to do about it. She shouts “Havok!”, and half of the crowd surrounding them begins to transform into various were-creatures.

His vision shifts to two dragonborn in jet-black plate armor, kneeling beneath an infinite black void. A booming voice says “If the rumors are in-fact true, find him and bring him to me.” His vision changes once again, this time landing on Sharsu and Hex. Hex is piloting the Epoch away from a leviathan. Hex asks Sharsu if he trusts him, and Sharsu says he does and asks what the plan is. Hex says “Something stupid. Like Emberlin would do” as Toothy transforms into Hex’s fist weapon. Hex then runs and leaps off the ship into the mouth of the leviathan as it snaps shut around him. Finally, Emberlin is shown a cell, where the Seanir is lying curled up in a corner. The cell door opens as he curls up further and pleads that he doesn’t know anything else. A voice shouts that they are hiding something before Emberlin’s vision returns to his body.

The second door unlocks, and Emberlin opens it. This room appears to be a street in Tajemma at night time, and a second door juts out of the far end of the street. The buildings all appear to be empty, and the sky appears to be painted. As he walks closer to the door, Emberlin begins to hear music- the great composer Richard Astley’s most famous composition “Never Gonna Give You Up”. With a sigh, he approaches the second door, but as he reaches for the handle, the song finishes and begins anew. Angry, Emberlin stomps back to the entrance, re-enters the orb room, and slams the door. After a few moments of silence, he cautiously opens the door again.

It’s another square stone room, plain except for a white line which extends from the door. Following it with his eyes, he follows it up and across the wall and onto the ceiling, where it eventually ends at another door sticking out of the ceiling. Immediately understanding what to do, Emberlin begins to follow the line. When he reaches the wall, he sets his foot onto the wall as the gravity shifts, and the wall becomes the floor. He continues following the line, eventually transitioning onto the ceiling, until he finds himself standing in front of the second door.

Opening the door reveals a room with a pattern of shaped tiles on the floor, as well as above and to the right of the opposite door. Above the opposite door is a glowing “20:00”. As he walks across the room, the timer begins to count down. Emberlin tries the door, but finds it locked, so he takes a closer look at the shapes. There is a circle, triangle, diamond, square, and hexagon on the floor, and a triangle, square, hexagon, and two diamonds on the wall. He soon discovers that stepping on certain shapes on the floor will cause matching shapes on the wall to light up, but stepping on the wrong one will cause them all to go dark.

After some experimentation, he manages to light up all five shapes on the wall, but when he tries the door again, it is still locked. Stepping on the circle then causes the entire thing to reset, and seemingly changes the pattern. An increasingly frustrated and frantic Emberlin continues stepping on shapes and combinations, eventually lighting up all the shapes again; but when he tries the door, everything goes dark. A moment of calm comes over Emberlin, and he walks back to the previous room. He pulls out a door jam, tosses it into the room, casts Burning Hands, and slams the door closed.

After taking a moment to calm himself, he reopens the door to reveal a rough, cave-like stone room. Across the floor, thousands of swords of all types, styles and ages are embedded into the ground- not a single one is the same. On the far side of the room is a locked door with a plaque above it which reads “Give what is owed”. Realizing what he must do, he pulls out “Good Faith” and, after mentally preparing himself to part with this gift from the Queen of Embers, stabs the knife down into the floor- and chips the blade. An incensed Emberlin takes a closer look at the other blades and, realizing that they all have dried blood on them, cuts himself. As the blood falls to the ground, the door unlocks. He tries to find the knife fragment, but is unable to.

The next room is a mud-floor pit with thirty-foot high wooden plank walls over which are written the words “slap fight”. At the other end of the room stands an orc wearing a loincloth, also chanting “slap fight”. As he steps inside, an unseen crowd from up above joins in the chant. They both move towards each other and meet in the middle, where the orc swings at Emberlin. Emberlin dodges the slap, and then asks the very confused orc what the rules are. The orc answers “Slap fight. Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap fight.” Emberlin agrees and, while taking off his weapons, subtly casts Hex on his opponent. He then asks who slaps first, to which the Orc responds with a very strong slap to Emberlin’s face.

They trade a few slaps, but Emberlin’s additional necrotic damage quickly overwhelms the orc as he falls face down unconscious in the mud. The unseen crowd goes wild as a door rises up out of the mud on the opposite side of the arena. The crowd's chant slowly dies down as Emberlin pulls out the crystal tumbler and places it on the ground next to the orc, along with two gold coins and a note which reads “Dear orc: Slap fight? Slap fight. Slap fight? Slap fight? Slap fight. Yours sincerely, Emberlin Burns, Herald of the Queen of Embers”. Emberlin walks back towards the entrance door, but turns around as he hears the orc and the tumbler slowly sinking into the mud.

Out of door stops, he heads back to the forest to make some more, and then rests for a while in the study before heading back out. Opening up the next door, he finds a small cave, illuminated by a bit of moonlight and a faint-glowing moss. On the far side of the cave is a pond with a rundown canoe on the shore, and another door on the opposite side. There’s also the faint sound of sobbing. Stepping into the room, the door behind him suddenly vanishes. Emberlin frantically searches for the door, but only the cave wall remains. Peering around, he spots a humanoid figure curled up in the corner. Emberlin calls out to the figure, who turns around revealing himself to be Lany the wizard.

He explains that in his quest to learn more spells, he was offered super-secret knowledge from someone, and he ended up trapped in the labyrinth as a result. He’s explored about sixty-eight rooms over the course of what he believes has been about a year and a half. Emberlin breaks the news to him that it’s only been about seventeen days. In that time, he’s discovered that you can’t kill yourself or fall asleep, you never have to use the bathroom, and the doors will occasionally disappear, though if you look hard enough, you can find them again. He also reveals that the journal and spell components were his, and the catdragon’s name is Crumpet. Together, they manage to locate the entrance door due to Crumpet sticking his head through from the other side.

They both step back through into the slap fight pit and shut the door before heading back to the study. Lany hands him a skeleton key, Emberlin retrieves a bottle of wine from the desk, and the two of them begin to discover whether they can get drunk.