We go up a passage, exploring a few intersections, find nothing and repeat. The place feels more like a tomb than a labyrinth. Not that I am inviting The System to hit us with skeletons and wraiths or anything. For being in a world pretty much brimming with magic, this place is kind of boring and repetitive.

  “I miss the rain,” Jes says out of nowhere. “And the sun. I miss the sky.”

  “Cheeseburgers,” I add.

  “Sleeping on a mattress,” she sighs.

  Baco jumps on some sort of beetle and swallows it whole. We’re becoming numb and losing our edge, I can feel it. We need a pick me up so we don’t get dangerously lax.

  “What’s Medusa’s favorite cheese?” I ask.

  “Oh, God,” Jes mutters, hiding her face. “Don’t do this.”

  I flair my spear. “It’s gorgon-zola!”

  “I asked you not to do it,” Jes groans.

  “Who’s Medusa?” Sadie asks.

  “She’s a gorgon,” I explain. “You must know gorgons, right? So ugly they turn people to stone.”

  “Oh,” Sadie says limply. “I like feta.”

  “I was just trying to bring a little entertainment to the boring part of our journey,” I say.

  “Oh,” Sadie says from behind us. "I can help."

  I hadn’t heard the sound of Sadie’s flute before. She plays a dance of some kind with a strong, reeling melody, which fills the corridors with natural reverb.

  “Whoa,” Jes raises her hand to stop the music. “Might attract monsters.”

  “We want monsters,” I point out, signaling Sadie to continue. “Get in a few more skill-ups before the minotaur if we can.”

  Jes thinks a moment and nods in agreement. Sadie continues and adds a dance, using her hooves as percussion with a stomp, stomp, slide sequence that she must have done a thousand times before. Jes starts bopping her head and lets a smile escape. I join in with some choice dance moves, spinning my spear around my body. Jes picks up the stomp, stomp, slide pattern. I wait and join in.

  Baco tries. The little guy tries desperately to understand the pattern, but he can’t figure out how to make it work on four pudgy legs. He definitely feels the beat though, and starts enhancing the music with a guttural grunt at the start of each repetition.

  He might think he’s singing.

  For a moment, just a moment, we are happy. There’s no test to study for. No monsters jumping from the shadows. No hunger and fatigue weighing us down. No family problems. Just a group of people lost in a deadly maze who have momentarily let themselves forget that they are lost in a deadly maze by line dancing.

  Baco’s grunting rhythm section comes to a sharp halt as a net slams up to the ceiling in a cloud of dust, with the good brigadier snared inside. We all stare up. He looks like a salami tied with twine, his feet hanging helplessly through the holes in the net.

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  Sadie stops her playing and looks at the poor boar fifteen feet over our heads, swinging back and forth as his feet pump against nothing. “Satyr snare,” she says.

  The net is tight to his body. We have to somehow get up there first. I don’t like how the net looks like it’s digging into him. “How do we get him down? We can’t cut the net without hurting him.”

  “How did we not see that?” Jes cries. “The music hasn’t attracted monsters, only distracted us.”

  “You can’t see them,” Sadie explains, head swaying with the pig pendulum she stares at above us. “It’s magically hidden from normal detection.”

  “I ask again, how do we get him down?” Baco is up there, I don’t care how or why.

  “Just jump up there and cut the net,” Jes suggests.

  Sadie jumps and touches the net to show she can easily reach it. Baco grunts as the net tightens into him.

  “If she tries that with a blade, we’ll cut Baco,” I say. “You know how much force will be behind swinging a blade during a jump? Sadie can stand on me, but we need something small, like lawn clippers, that cut the net and not him. We’re not going to use your axe to press a blade into his body.”

  “He’ll heal,” she counters.

  “Not the point,” I snap. “Not cutting Baco. Sadie, how do satyrs get these things down? Obviously, if they make a trap, they need to free what they capture.”

  “Or they just leave them to starve to death,” Jes muses.

  “Not helping,” I say.

  Another sound from Baco. The net is tightening. We’re on a timer.

  “Sadie,” I say, staring up at our porcine teammate. “You got close to the net. Any ideas?”

  “You’re not going to like the answer,” Sadie warns.

  I cross my arms. “Try me.”

  “You need the key phrase,” she says. “When I got up there and touched it, I knew.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I interrupt. “The phrase is a secret.”

  Sadie twists her mouth. “Not really.”

  “So, that means you know it.”

  The look she gives me is clearly another ‘not really’.

  “Satyrs hunt in warbands called lodges,” she starts. “The name of the lodge is usually the key phrase. That way, if you come across a trap set by your lodge, you can get the prize and—”

  Baco lets out a squeak. We all look up. The net is getting tighter.

  “Sadie, how do we know the lodge name?” I urge. “Quickly.”

  “There’s a symbol somewhere on the net,” she says. “A tag.”

  The net is ten feet over our heads. I jump and fail to reach by a long shot. “Can’t reach and I’m not using my weapon. Ideas. We need ideas. Jes, can you slip him out, a teleport gate or something?”

  She shakes her head. “That takes anything you’re touching with you. That net is attached to the ceiling. I’ll take the net, maybe part of the ceiling. That might crush him.”

  “Hold on, Baco, buddy. Sadie, what are popular satyr clan names? Maybe it’s one of the well known lodges.”

  “Dom, there’s an old saying that there are as many lodges as there are types of cheese.”

  “Feta!” I scream.

  It was worth a shot.

  “Let me stand on your shoulders,” Jes says. “Maybe I can find the tag.”

  I turn around. “Climb on.”

  Jes scrambles up my back. Before I realize, her knees are on my shoulders and she’s kneeling on me. Old me would have collapsed under the weight.

  “Give me a hand,” she insists. I reach up, she takes my hand and then there’s a foot on my shoulder. “Hold my calves.”

  This is it. This is how I die. I’m holding some girl’s hairy calves as she’s standing on my shoulders trying to free my war boar from a magical snare trap. If anything comes up the hall, we’re done.

  “I found a leather tag,” Jes shouts, grabbing the net and forcing her ankle into my ear.

  “Is it words?” Sadie asks.

  “It’s a picture,” she replies. “Ow, Dom, those horns hurt.”

  “A little more detail,” I implore. “About the picture, not my horns.”

  “Looks like a branch maybe,” she says, clearly unsure.

  “Olive branch lodge?” I ask.

  “No,” Sadie says. “Lodge names are threatening, not peaceful.”

  “Describe it better,” I urge, starting to shift under the weight.

  “It’s like a fat squiggle and it turns into a bunch of smaller squiggles. More like a frayed rope than a branch.”

  “That’s not threatening at all,” Sadie notes.

  Baco squeaks in discomfort.

  “It’s a hydra!” I yell. “Hydra lodge.”

  Having a full grown woman stand on your shoulders is uncomfortable. Having a full grown woman and a war boar tumble down on top of you is simply humiliating.