“Answer thee my riddles of yore, and land your boat upon my shore.” The Sphinx spoke with a voice that rested uneasily upon his soul.

  “I have a golden head and a golden tail but have no body nor even entrails.”

  “A gold coin.” Shaoquan answered immediately.

  His boat gently sailed forward a distance Gilgamesh estimated to be about one-sixth of the way from the center of the river to the shore.

  “I have seas without water and coasts without sand, towns without people and mountains without land.”

  “A map.” Shaoquan once again answered before anyone else could, and moved forward another space.

  “I can run but never walk, I have a mouth but never-”

  “A river.” Shaoquan answered before the Sphinx had even finished the riddle, and sailed forward one spot again.

  “...I’ll have to wait until he leaves.” Gilgamesh thought. He had no great expectations to best a Shen in a contest of intelligence, and Shaoquan seemed even more capable than the average of his clan.

  Shaoquan answered the fourth riddle to the same result, but as his boat sailed into the light waters of the shallow end of the river, a sudden wave knocked Gilgamesh and everyone else back a space. And Shaoquan eyed it all very keenly.

  “I take my blade and flick my wrist, but in the mirror no hair's amiss.”

  “Compass.” Shaoquan answered first again but gave a strange answer this time, one that was obviously wrong. A wave knocked him back a space, but he did not seem concerned at all. And Gilgamesh realized his intentions. A discomforting silence held for a short while before the Sphinx asked a new riddle.

  “I never was but always am to be, few have ever caught a glimpse but many wish to see.”

  “Future.”

  Shaoquan spoke his answer with a discomforting smile and a mocking tone. His boat sailed back into the shallow end, and a wave knocked them all back once more.

  “What a shame, Sir Garland.” A dignified laugh escaped Shaoquan’s closed mouth, as he looked back at one of the other heroes. An old man with the body of a warrior ill-fitting of his age, whose valiant and stern expression had now become guarded. “You will never know war in the Tower.”

  “You Shen cur!” The old man gritted his teeth at the threat.

  But Shaoquan only laughed more. “Blame the Trials for your poor fortune.”

  “Not good…” Gilgamesh’s eyes narrowed. “At this rate, he will push us all off the edge along with the old man….”

  Gilgamesh wracked his brain for a solution, for a way out. “...there’s a longer pause after a wrong answer. Does that mean it allows for another guess?”

  “I-”

  “Footbinding.” Shaoquan’s answer came as swiftly as the Sphinx’s riddle, and he was sent back one space. But the Sphinx did not stop this time.

  “-haunt the halls where tyrants tread, and lie with even beggars dead.”

  Gilgamesh opened his mouth to speak but someone spoke first.

  “Death!” One of the nameless others shouted out.

  “Fool!” Gilgamesh cursed in his mind as the man was knocked back two spaces to his bewilderment. “I had the answer. That was my chance.”

  Shaoquan answered the next riddle right and knocked them all back again. Gilgamesh looked back. He was now halfway from the center to the edge of the river, and beyond it seemed only darkness.

  “What is it that given one, you will have two or sadly none?”

  “Astronomy.” Shaoquan answered and Gilgamesh rushed out his own.

  “Choice!”

  “Choice!”

  Garland shouted out at the same time as him. A nerve-wracking stillness lingered, then Garland’s boat sailed two spaces forward. He had spoken his answer just a bit faster.

  “Two?” Gilgamesh observed. “Is it because we are at the lower end, or does the second answer simply reward two? Damn this. Now I must answer twice to get ahead.”

  “You’re only delaying the inevitable.” Shaoquan mocked the Atreus clan elder. He answered the next riddle correctly and knocked them all back another space.

  “4 spaces back.” Gilgamesh’s expression tightened. He had only two chances left to survive.

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  “I am the greatest teacher but never speak, your deepest regret of a time most bleak.”

  “Time!” The same nameless man from before shouted in desperation.

  “Imbecile!” Gilgamesh had never wished tragedy upon a stranger more than in this moment. Even the sight of the fool barrelling over the edge of the river into the deep void below did not cool his hatred.

  A wicked, unsettling, fanged smile spread across the Sphinx’s face for a brief moment, then it asked the next riddle.

  Shaoquan answered with no competition once again, and Gilgamesh was pushed back to the final space before the end. The other nameless heroes beside him started to beg and plead for their lives, which only served to heighten Gilgamesh’s stress further.

  “I have to get this one right… I have to…” Gilgamesh simmered.

  “A cost that only the maker knows, worthless bought and priceless stowed.”

  “Solar System.” Shaoquan answered wrong.

  “A promise!” Gilgamesh shouted out. This time, he beat Garland to the punch, and his boat sailed up next to his.

  Shaoquan answered the next riddle without a shred of hesitation, and all of the other heroes fell back into the void. The Sphinx’s body tensed as its smile grew even more wicked and eerie for a long moment.

  “I touch your face. I am in your words. I am a lack of space and beloved by birds.”

  “Air.” Shaoquan returned to the shallow end yet again and knocked them both back.

  “Turn me on my side and I am all there is. Sever me entwine and I have nothing left to give.”

  “Rombus.” Shaoquan sailed back a space with a smile and looked back at them with eager superiority.

  Gilgamesh knew the cause of his mockery. Neither he nor Garland was sure of the answer, and a wrong one here was far too risky. A second answer not only rewarded double but also punished double, and that would send them over the edge.

  Gilgamesh strained his thoughts but could not think of an answer he could entrust with his life, and the riddle expired.

  “I live in the past but shape the future.”

  “Memory.” Shaoquan’s words fell like a smothering cloak, and the two of them were bumped back right to the edge, close enough to peer into the depths of the void.

  “It must be this time. There is no other chance.” Urgency submerged Gilgamesh’s soul.

  “The more you take, the more I grow. The more you leave, the less I know.”

  “Equator.”

  Gilgamesh almost shouted out after Shaoquan’s answer, but managed to stop the word against his teeth. The answer he had thought did not match the second part of the riddle.

  “I must answer. I must!” Gilgamesh urged himself to say something, anything. But he could not. It was tantamount to throwing his own life away, and that act was one unacceptable to him even in this pit of despair.

  “I cannot…”

  [ Three-Headed Snake ] is disappointed in you.

  [ Serpent of False Mysteries ] is panicking.

  [ Some gods gladly await your downfall. ]

  “No matter how hard you wrack your feeble minds, there is no other path for you but down.” Shaoquan hummed a laugh, though the sly contempt within his eyes only grew. “But I suppose I can spare you some generosity. You may compete for the next riddle between yourselves. I will graciously abstain.”

  Gilgamesh’s eyes flickered. “A chance… Why? …Did a god offer him a quest? No, the reason does not matter. It is a chance.”

  Clarity of thought returned to Gilgamesh.

  “...He clearly revels in the torment of those beneath him. He has no intention of sparing me. Even if I survive this round, there is the next. The only way out is to win. I must win. There is still a chance.”

  “Shaoquan can only knock me back one space each time, but after he chooses a wrong answer, I have a chance to move up two spaces.” Gilgamesh’s expression tensed with Fear and Malice. “...You will regret this. I will close the distance between us.”

  Gilgamesh strained his focus to the brink of his mind on a single tyrannical purpose within. He banished the world around him, all apart from the Sphinx ahead.

  “I am a mystery but my existence is a clue. You see yourself in me, and I myself in you.”

  “Mir-”

  “Mirror!” Garland stole his answer as fast as he could muster, just as Gilgamesh wanted.

  “Riddle.” He decreed upon the world.

  In the most suffocating of tension, it felt as though the world had stopped around him. Then his boat started to move, and travelled two spaces up while Garland sailed back.

  “You bastard!” The old man roared as he fell over the edge of the river into the void.

  Shaoquan laughed fully for the first time, a high-pitched laugh of dignified privilege as he took genuine amusement in the petty deception. “How utterly devious. But you know… nothing has changed. You may get lucky a few times, but luck runs out eventually.”

  Gilgamesh did not respond. His expression was frayed with an unsightly focus of an unsettling intensity. Mockery did not reach him. He only awaited the next riddle.

  “I grow in silence but die in noise.”

  Shaoquan smiled. “Intuition.”

  Shaoquan's boat moved up and landed on the shore. It took Gilgamesh a while to comprehend, such was the depth that he had sunk into his intensity. It was not until after Shaoquan spoke that the realization finally dawned on him.

  “There’s hardly any fun in outwitting a mindless beast.” Shaoquan stepped off the boat with a sigh. Though just before he departed through the doorway, he looked back with smiling eyes.

  “All you’re missing are the horns.”

  Gilgamesh’s malice flared at the most grievous slight, but he grabbed hold of it all and forced it back down. His trial was far from over.

  ----

  “Many have heard yet none have seen, I won’t speak back unless you speak keen.”

  “An echo.” Gilgamesh sailed one step closer to the shore, closer than he had ever reached.

  “Like a sword I cut, like a shield I guard, but you would be a fool to ignore what I impart.”

  “Truth.” Gilgamesh entered the shallow end for the first time. The Sphinx’s smile spread a little wider and her eyes squinted with a deep vileness.

  “I am the beginning of the end and the end of the time, what you fear in me another would find most sublime.”

  Gilgamesh clenched his jaw. “...Nothing.” His boat sailed to the shore and he stepped onto land without a word.

  “What a shame…” The Sphinx gazed back with hungry eyes, but Gilgamesh did not respond. He simply walked through the doorway to the next part of the Labyrinth and glanced at the words above as he passed.

  ‘Knowledge.’