“One day, rocks rained from the sky. Not little rocks, though—massive rocks, boulders, broader even than my arms stretched all the way out! These rocks landed near a small Tekritanin city. People went to investigate them, to see what they could find. But there was so much dust kicked up in the air that it stung their eyes and clung to their clothes, so they all went home coughing up a fit. And since nobody was looking, something followed them home.
“In the days that followed, the people of the little city collected all those rocks, bringing them home to break them down and see what was in them. With everything they found, they were able to make new kinds of things. You see, the rock was full of a curiously strong metal, and the people were inspired by it. In the following days, they built all kinds of new tools for working metal, and then new techniques for the new tools, and then new things with all their tools and techniques. The little city started selling weapons, armor, and jewelry that were as good as any in all the League—and our family started selling toys better than anywhere in the entire League! Everyone got rich, and every day saw the invention of some new wonder.
“Everyone was so swept up in the entertainment of it all. The people churned out endless marvels, each more complicated and overwrought than the last, as everyone just wanted to make the next best thing. When they ran out of that metal, they went back to mining around the city, but found themselves mining at a pace they never could before. Sometimes, they thought they saw something watching them, but they ignored it, busy as they were with their work. The people tore through the mountains, leaving valleys and pits in their wake, all in their desperation to just keep making.
“But for all their work, people were enjoying themselves less and less. They stopped chatting with each other, stopped playing, stopped partying, singing, eating, sleeping. All they could do, all they wanted to do, was work and work and work. That’s when the last families that could still see reason gathered, ours included.
“Imagine it. All around those somber folks, there were people building the most beautiful, most complicated city anyone had ever attempted. It was like hundreds of years of history bottled up into a single moment, as if all the pages of a book happened in a sentence. The gathered families decided that most people should leave the city—flee, try to escape from the spell that had fallen over them, build a new life elsewhere. A lot of people did, including most of our family. The rest, though, had something they needed to do. They stayed behind.
“The people who stayed formed a big organization, like an early idea of a guild. They were builders, masons, carpenters, jewelers, wizards, and, of course, toy makers! They set to work, thinking about all the times that they had felt like something was watching them. They tried to build up the city to be like a maze, so that everywhere you turned, it was like a totally different place. The jewelers and the toy makers set about building little toys and puzzles and baubles, and scattered them throughout the streets of the city, so the whole city began to look like a giant playroom. And sure enough, they found that something was watching them work.
“As they built further and further, transforming every inch of the city, the creature finally came out of hiding. It leapt from rooftop to rooftop, played with the puzzles they set out, and became totally entranced. The people led it deeper and deeper into the heart of the city, laying out all their endless little wonders for it to poke at. And then, they sprung their trap.
“All the wizards worked together to cast a great spell. They raised walls around the entire city, shutting it off entirely from the outside. They trapped the creature in those walls, trapped it inside with them, trapped themselves in, too. They gave up everything they had to save everyone they knew—including their own city. That’s how desperate they were to stop the creature. They made a heroic sacrifice! But in the end, it didn’t end up solving much. You see, that creature is still slinking around that city today, waiting for a chance to escape. Except, of course, that place isn’t exactly a city anymore.
“It’s the Tagas Labyrinth.” —“The Arrival of Kuworsys,” as told by Forouz Ifranin to his granddaughter, Iza
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