So many dead-ends retraced, traps of all sorts disarmed, and when agility failed, with intelligence faltered, pure determination saw her through. Every scar a lesson. Nothing she couldn’t handle. Every ally, every tool, they all stopped at the Labyrinth’s threshold. This was her path. Her goal. Her victory.

Things were different now, though. The wraiths in the night sighed all the more feverently. The slithering sidhe beckoned and called with their crystal horns and knives of gloss. Patrols of unknowable beasts came more and more frequently. The Trickster smiled wryly, knowing that her goal was near.

An unknowable eternity later, she stood in a plain white room. Years of toil, ages of honing body and mind, all had to be tested by the Guardian. Six feet tall, he stood, body encased in maille burnished in red, a tabard emblazoned with a crimson spiral upon his chest and a wicked axe grasped with both hands before him. The Trickster was nimble and clever, though; a slender dueling blade in her left hand, her right concealed in the folds of a cloak the color of the sea.

Determined looks were exchanged betwixt hooded face and scowling helm and the dance began. The air whispered as steel passed within a hairsbreadth of flesh, neither Trickster nor Guardian finding their mark until…

There!

The Trickster’s craft and skill took her beyond the arc of the Guardian’s blade, the behemoth’s own heavy armour working against it. Her right hand snapped forward once, twice, thrice into the Guardian’s armpit, first eliciting a gasp, a howl, and finally a ragged moan. The nimble victor breathed slowly and went to the last room to claim her prize at last.

The Trickster purposefully strode through the Labyrinth with head held high and all was well with the world.