As sure as he sensed their descent into W?nd?rl?nd, so too does The Eleventh Hour sense the reverse for each and every visitor that chooses to leave in that natural way. They've learned all they can from the rustling leaves of the hedge maze, from the siren ring of a room bleeding red, from a throne handmade and empty-- and now it is time for their ascent. They rise from deep within The Labyrinth-- like a bucket from the bottom of a deep, deep well, like amusement park balloons with cut strings flung into cloudless skies, like a single note ringing out clear and true into a breathless audience-- leaving behind the walls of his shared creation with knowledge anew. Knowledge to be tucked beneath their breast or cast aside without a second thought. A gift to be kept or to be squandered, as all gifts are. The Eleventh Hour turns this thought over and over in his head like a smooth riverstone as each visitor flickers briefly through the Fourteenth Floor on their way to the surface of

It is rather kind of the maze you walk to narrate to you the history of its design as you wander its paths. It leads you this way, and then that, and then this again, and you do not mind its repetitive nature. In fact, you marvel at the design of it, for it reminds you of your own home. How what you've constructed runs up against itself at its edges, at the limitations of your design. You can only code so far, and so much. The force of your exertion in a foreign realm can only go so far. As the narrator sings to you a song of how the creatures of this place reached into the core of themselves and built it brick by brick with their ichor and their blood, you can't help but wonder what that entails for a Stygian. You have not yet had the pleasure to nick a creature of Nightmare with a blade to see what occurs. Instead, you pluck a petal from a rose and deposit its curled slip of a form into a tube for later analysis, tucking it away into your coat. (That is the nature of diving, and

The scent of roses and the rustle of leaves unveil the painful secrets of a bygone era to Matka's waiting and open heart. It is only a shame that the narrating voice alongside it is as jarring as it is thunderous. Its words weave together a tapestry worthy of pity and great empathy in equal measure. Much like her and her compatriots of the Aetheneum, the residents of W?nd?rl?nd had vied for the precious gift of memory. They had wrestled with their nature-- and their home, and their prison-- in writhing twists and turns in the hopes of being Enough to disrupt the placid surface of recollections in the collective unconscious. A lost cause, it seemed, with how the L?byr?nth sunk lower and lower beneath the even the most dreadful depths of nightmares. Matka caresses a vibrant rose petal as though it were a kitten's chin. As though the maze were aware of her presence-- and with how the walls seem to shudder around her, she supposes it might be. The walls have eyes, and ears. The sky

Even the sights of the Mad Tea Alley are too loud for Matka's predilections. Buildings stretch towards an empty void of a heavy, blanketed sky, and the walls are covered in places with paint so fluorescent she finds it easiest to avert her eyes. Storefronts with closed doors litter its streets, and an empty table coaxing adornments and accompaniments beseech her assistance. All the while, a buzzing grows in the hollow of her throat, the whine and the hum of it not her own. Her footsteps do not echo as she traverses the narrow alleys, muffled by something as of yet unknown, drowned out by the siren song of nostalgic songs (although Matka has never heard their discordant tunes). She wants to settle down the cacophonous clamors of these unknown crowds, their blurry and eager voices too much for her untrained ears. Forward, the desires pull her, until the shadows of her slide from the cyan and magenta and cream of the alley into something-- Sharp. The walls close in, collapsing in

As she falls, and flies, and floats, Matka minds her scarf with tender care. She winds it around one arm with a practiced air; it would not do for it to tangle or snarl. She is approaching something rather interesting, she thinks. An ancient place thrumming with a curious (and curiouser) sort of energy that tugs at the core of her until she is but a single string pulled taut. At first it is like a bow's, her wits a notched arrow as jade eyes rove over the cards that float alongside her, breath hitched. Waiting. Always waiting, but Matka has the patience of an old oak tree, of something who has always been and will always been-- and is well aware of it. (In the aftermath of her awakening, she has found she knows the taste of history. Catches the scent of it like one might do with lungfuls of old books, the familiar scent of paper and bookbinding glue.) Matka touches down with a delicate step, breathing a soft, sonorous "Oh!" into the room as the tension in her transmutes itself into

You have never left The Labyrinth, although you know its name and incoherent shape. From the depths of it you emerged like a newborn fawn, a hungering thing from a murky chrysalis wholly disconnected from the Nightmare Tree. For all that you know of falling-- infinite, infinite falling-- you have not yet managed to crawl back down to the depths from whence you came. Even a Child of The Labyrinth has their limits, and you learn very swiftly to test yours with regular and frightening frequency with the fervency of the we're-all-mad-here. Whipped into a frenzy, moving mountains with the whole of you. With the whims of you. You are not alone. Of course you are not alone: you are but a piece of the puzzle, but one of the sculptors of the block of non-euclidean clay. What has passed through your hands will pass through a dozen more, even as you smooth them over the red and black walls that will box in your wanderers, as you throw them in the air for a cascade of what might become the

He's never made a habit of getting into the business of things more power and more vast than himself, but that has-- unfortunately-- never translated into them giving him the same sort of courtesy. Whatever's driving W?nd?rl?nd is certainly no exception. The place is too bright, too loud, and too saccharine in ways so reminiscent of Treatropolis that it ping warning bells at the speed of light through Leslie's mind the second that he steps out of the woods and into the streets of what is supposed to be the prelude of a tea party. Something is Wrong, here: the park is trying far too hard to be kind, and it is not quite succeeding. It is playing a most wondrous melody on an instrument out of tune. It is offering up a gift in a dented box wrapped in dulled foil paper tied with a fraying bow. It is counting up prime numbers and forgetting how. The thing that gets him, though, is that the place isn't making any real attempts at hiding it. W?nd?rl?nd is exactly what it says on the tin