And then it hit him.
Not gently. Not like a memory surfacing through still water. It crashed into him like the full, rolling front of a tidal wave — the Labyrinth, its spiraling floors carved into something not quite natural stone, the grinding echo of thousands of boots ascending in formation, the sharp smell of torch smoke and blood and ozone from the teleportation grids.
He grabbed his head with both hands.
'The arrow hero.'
'First Battalion.'
'The demon horde on the forty-third stratum — the one that came screaming out of the fog wall to the east, the one that the scouts said wasn't supposed to be there —'
His molars ground together so hard his jaw ached.
He'd been following at the rear of the formation. He wasn't even a frontline fighter. He was support, utility, the kind of man who carried supplies and mapped corridors and flagged unstable terrain. But it hadn't mattered. When the horde punched through the flank, support died just as easily as swordsmen.
