Chapter 44.4- Doom Days

The explosion pushed it forward until it disappeared into the grass of the maze only for me to barely twist out of the way of a pincer that came down from behind me. The pincer stabbed itself into the ground, cracking the transparent stone. I fired two cutting curses at it, but both deflected off its carapace and it exploded again, shooting straight at me once again. For a second time, I jumped over to avoid the creature and it continued on into the hedge. It can out again from the other side. I couldn’t deny, that was an interesting way to combat its difficulties being able to turn around in these quarters— making it so that moving through the hedge led it back to the other end of the corridor.

This time, I turned around, expecting it to come out of the wall and when it did, I slashed my wand upwards, causing a spike from the ground to shoot upwards. Just as I expected, the rounded spike turned the Skrewt over, exposing its soft underbelly. A soft underbelly that I wasted no time in cleaving straight through with a cutting curse. I jumped over its gurgling and bleeding form while muttering a silent apology to the half giant that had spent a tremendous amount of time breeding and raising the thing.

When I rounded the corner, this time I was faced with nothing but an empty passageway with the only thing special about it being that the ground for most of it was made of coarse white sand rather than the spelled transparent stone that had been the case for most of the maze. Cautious, I conjured a simple snake to cover the distance. It made it about halfway when the sand swallowed it. Interesting. Turning some stray stones into badgers, I sent them forth. Just like the snake, they made a fair amount of progress before the sand opened up and swallowed them. Except this time I was sure that I had noticed something particular about the way they went. I tried again with another set of badgers, and I carefully watched each one disappear into the sand. It ended up taking me two more tries before I was able to notice again and thus confirm my theory.

I waited for the last badger to have the sand begin to fold in beneath it before I whispered, accio. I felt the weight of the object I was trying to pull begin to pull me instead, sending my arm lurching forward and my body with it before I could catch myself and focus my intent even further. The creature fought the pull for a few seconds, but my magic could not be denied. And an earthworm-like thing that was the size of Hagrid shot from the sand, screeching its displeasure to the heavens. It turned its head this way and that way— at least what I thought was its head. It had no eyes, nor any other features other than a wide opening with sharp teeth within it.

“Dao” I whispered and the Chinese cleaving curse tore it in toe from head to tail. I stepped past its writhing body and continued further into the maze. I just had to hope that this was one of those mazes where every route led to the goal— just involving different obstacles.