The Heart of Man Plans His Way.

Peik tried convincing her to stand up and help him seek out a safe place if it was to be found. "Please, miss, I need your help here", he insisted. She cried and was laying down whilst covering her head with her free hand. Peik tried dragging her to her feet with both hands, grabbing hers. Yet she cried and began hyperventilating soon enough. "Miss, we can't stay here!", he kept insisting. "If you want to get out of here, you need to work together with me! I can't chop your hand off, so we have to do this together!", he said, raising his voice slightly, and felt his stress levels rise and his heart thumping like a scared animal wanting to escape its new cage.

"Help me, please!", she cried and refused to move, Peik almost ripping her hand from her wrist by the cuffs they had been linked together by.

"Look at me! Look me in the eyes, please", Peik pleaded. "What's your name, miss?", he asked, trying to deescalate the situation as much as he could - the ground still shaking under the weight of something large. She sobbed still, but, finally, began communicating.

"Ing... Ingrid", she answered softly, wiping away her tears.

"Can you walk?", Peik asked her, now able to establish eye contact. "Let us do that first, alright? We need to walk somewhere", he said to her round, teary-eyed face, and she lifted her long skirt slightly and stumbled to her feet while Peik supported her with a shoulder and an arm.

They began walking up the clearing in between all the stalks of those gigantic yellow flowers but felt as if they came closer to the thumping and shaking. There was a light coming down from the sky-like roof which could be and resembled sunlight, but Peik knew by now how much these people loved their fake light sources. While walking through the short grass, a monstrous shadow appeared from behind a rounded corner - and it was moving towards them. They both gasped in surprise and terror, and Peik hurried and tugged her into the wall of flower stems, and they made their way a few steps in there to get away from the clearing where they hid from the thing that was roaming the maze.

"What is... That thing?", she sobbed, and could apparently not control her breath or sobbing, which made Peik increasingly nervous.

"I don't know, miss. But you have to be quiet, or else it will find us", he warned her and tried reasoning with her. She took a big breath and tried calming down.

Then the centaur walked its path and was stood right where the two had made their own way in through the walls of flowers. They then had a small scare as they saw the ground lighting up in a slight red hue that was encircling them both and following them as they were walking as silent as they knew and could, and they connected to a similar red dot where the giant was standing, and he followed the lights in the same direction as they had gone. She made a small peep, and Peik gasped as he understood the thing following them had a live tracking system when he got close enough.

"It's following us! It knows where we are!", she whispered harshly to underline her anxiousness. They began walking faster to outrun the behemoth, as Peik noticed a sort of carving in the floors with some weird symbols, but they were rushing away to hide somewhere else. They came out in the open again, and their 'light circles' disappeared again - but still, they could hear it moving and trampling flowers, making its way in their direction.

"At least now we know where it is", Peik pointed out. Ingrid looked weary from walking and running on a near-to empty stomach. All of a sudden, as they were walking on the path, they heard a short creaking sound as from an old floorboard. The next second, a hole bigger than Peik's foot appeared where Ingrid was about to plant her foot, but she managed to fall down on her opposite knee to avoid it.

"They even have booby traps here", Ingrid cried. "What do we do?", she asked Peik, looking miserable and devoid of any hope to resolve this round of tasks, and getting out before she would starve or be caught by that foul being that was enclosed in there with them.

Eyes peeled, they kept walking to - hopefully - find a clue or device that would present something about how they were to solve the riddle that was next.

Ingrid's feet were sore from all the walking, and she complained more and more as time went on about her feet, how much she missed her child, and how hungry she was and agonisingly much more. They had gotten used to the ground shaking, and they had not seen any red lighting around their feet for a while. Peik had broken off a stem from a flower, and he contemplated over whether he should eat it or not, but he fought off the urge. They had not turned any corners, and Peik got a feeling they were walking in circles. "How about we try to make our way through the other flowers on that side?", he suggested, but no response from Ingrid, who was then itching her wrist where her 'part' of the handcuffs had been gnawing on her skin. He decided to drag her along into the other wall of flowers. Oh, how he wished for a machete.

They brushed aside the flowers, and walked a bit, only to discover the flowers stopped and a huge chasm appeared that seemed endlessly deep and wide, and Ingrid screamed from the surprise of it all. Peik saw it stretched around the circular field of flowers. "Let's go back again!", Ingrid screamed, as the thumping footsteps from that thing in the maze came closer and closer to them. It had probably heard Ingrid's wailing and screaming. The two went back again, and as they came back out into the clearing, the ground they were standing on became red again, glowing to warn them of the imminent danger. Ingrid was overwhelmed with anxiety and stress, and she began crying hysterically while running alongside Peik.

The colour only intensified, as Peik saw flowers falling and breaking away from the weight of the monster. It jumped out from its cover, and they could now see it was a robot or android with legs wider than Peik's and Ingrid's waists combined.

It was faceless and round, with sturdy arms wielding some sort of katana or machete. It raised the sword slowly over its head, ready to strike. Peik and Ingrid began running again, and Peik realised he had to drag her with him - she was totally exhausted. He pleaded with her to have her pick up the pace, and his next step was into nothingness - he had triggered another trap, and his entire foot fell through it. It widened somewhat and was about to swallow Peik's other leg too. Ingrid now had to drag him up from the hole, and the faceless machine picked up its pace a bit. They both began turning red again, and the machine raised its sword again as it was approaching the two who were trying to climb out of what had become a severe pickle.

Peik got his leg out of the hole, and could in that second inspect the robot - it had inscriptions on it. He thought of the symbols on the ground in the middle of the maze, and their adversary maliciously swung its sword. Ingrid, who was in complete adrenaline shock, tried tearing loose from Peik. The blade severed the chain that was linking their cuffs, and it raised the katana immediately again. Peik lifted himself out and began running to the middle of the maze.

"Ingrid! Follow me!", he shouted at her, and she stumbled to her feet just to escape the next attack. They made their separate, but parallel ways to the centre of the sunflower field, where Peik brushed away dead petals and grass and dust. There was some kind of signs he had not seen before, but he sat on his knees in the middle of all the symbols and began mumbling.

"The themes were confession and... And... And what? Do you remember?", Peik asked her. She began thinking as hard as Peik had done.

"I think it was a strange word... 'Tunement' or something? Sorry, I was feeding my kid when they were presenting the show", she apologised to him.

"Atonement! Yes! But how do we 'atone' for anything in here?", he asked and wondered. He felt his powers melt away under the artificial sun, his brain's processing power with them.

"What does 'atonement' even mean?", Ingrid asked him, and they felt the ground shaking as it had been doing for what had to be several hours in that nightmarish, circular maze.

"We 'confessed our sins' before, now we have to 'atone' for them, meaning we have to give something up in exchange for whatever wrong they think we have done - or so I think", he suggested to her.

"We have nothing to offer up in here! I only have my clothes I am wearing and nothing more", Ingrid dispaired.

Peik began worrying too. "What if...", he began, but was made silent by the red illumination beneath them as a sort of proximity alarm to warn them of the robot executioner closing in on them yet again - they could hear him trampling giant sunflower stems and getting closer, and their light connected to their foe again in a 'string' of light along the floor towards where it was approaching them from.

This time, though, the symbols lit up too, signifying a strange sentence:

'ONE OFFERING AND ONE TO BE FREED'. Peik realised instantly what had to be done, and he did not waver. "Get behind me, Ingrid", he said with a strong, but shivering sort of calmness to his voice. The tin hitman emerged, and Peik covered Ingrid with his own body, he tried making himself as big as he could. "Take me, you beastly thing, if you have to take any of us two", he shouted at it - and it stopped for a second, then readied its blade, before it thrust Peik right in his chest. Peik fell to his knees, sighed heavily, before he fell flat on the ground. Ingrid screamed and cowered. The ground she sat on, separated into a platform that took her underground and away from the maze.