Prologue: Joanna (Part 10)

Eventually, after hundreds upon hundreds of battles, she successfully killed a minotaur.

All the minotaurs crumbled into dust and in a nirvana moment, she finally received a moment of peace, as each of her avatars let out a sigh of relief in a brief moment of collective awareness, before collapsing to their knees. But only for a moment.

To her horror, the pieces of rock stirred and started to reform, but instead, the pieces drew chunks of rock from the wall and floor and two bigger, stronger lava minotaurs took their predecessors' place. Things definitely became worse, with a surge in deaths as she struggled to catch up.

With each resurrection, she could hear a peal of wild gleeful laughter in the blackness as she regained consciousness.

She was spread out too thin, and even the new avatars were emitting a pale thin mist, evaporating under the intense heat and pressure of this place. She could feel herself fade away. This pushed her to become more aggressive, fighting harder with whatever weapon she had at hand, whichever avatar. Her swordsmanship, lancemanship, archery, and marksmanship rose in acuity rapidly; she was aware of her growing skill and strength but still woefully inadequate against the minotaur pairs hunting her.

After several more years, she was able to kill a pair of minotaurs by manoeuvring them and using the environment to her advantage.

Once more, all the minotaurs collapsed into dust.

A new change started to take place, the ground started to rise, and the sky started to streak with lightning. Four minotaurs formed, bigger and stronger and better than the two previous monsters. The giant creatures, now 5 metres tall, and each sported four arms.

They held two greatswords, one in each lower hand; a shield and a lance in the stronger bigger upper arms.

The entire labyrinth became more geologically active: geysers and vents forming and spurting plumes of hot corrosive and acidic jets of steam. The Stone Minotaurs moved unimpeded but she'd died painfully several times before she got the hang of avoiding being destroyed altogether.

The scariest change was the final one. A small black cat appeared in the labyrinth, black with beady red eyes, but she could feel it from a distance, hunting her down. But instead of merely killing her, it ate each avatar, growing in power from each meal. Each soul fragment eaten disappeared altogether, lost into a hollow void.