Labyrinth by Alex Archer

realization, Annja felt something brush against her legs. She jerked them up and away. She wasn’t in salt water, so that ruled out sharks. And while she didn’t relish the thought of facing anything in the dark, she could control her panic.
Now might be the time to see what it is I’m up against here, she thought. Annja visualized the sword waiting for her in the otherwhere. Instantly, the sword was in her hands, forcing her to tread water with her legs only. But the dull gray light the sword cast provided much-needed illumination.
Annja held the blade high overhead and attempted to see where she was. She glanced up at the ceiling and saw she’d misjudged the distance she’d fallen by perhaps a dozen feet. She could see the hole in the ceiling where she’d come plummeting through.
Any higher and I would have broken my back when I landed, she thought. Fairclough must have worked it out that way on purpose.
The stone wall at the one end gleamed in the light. Annja could see that the stones reached all the way to the ceiling, but looked impossible to climb. Then she slowly traced the wall. It went all the way around the water. She estimated that the pool was the length of a football field. Completely enclosed by the stone wall.
Again, she was in a room with no apparent exit.
She’d already tried to dive and hadn’t reached the bottom. So how deep was it? And did the exit lie somewhere beneath the surface?
One way to find out.
Annja took a deep breath and dove, holding the sword out in front of her while she kicked through the water. Just having the sword gave her a lot more strength and her system felt flush with energy. Her lungs didn’t protest so much as she swam deeper.
She could make out all sorts of plants and a sandy bottom roughly thirty feet below her.
She marveled at Fairclough’s construction of this maze. It wasn’t the type of maze she’d expected. This wasn’t a series of corridors and dead ends; it was a complex series of rooms, each with its own unique set of conditions. In order to get through this, Annja was going to need all of her wits about her.
A school of small fish swam away from the light of the sword, and Annja saw their large white eyes, more accustomed to the darkness than the light. What else lived down here?
She got her answer a second later as she spotted what looked like a bull shark. It cruised lazily some distance away from her. Annja felt her heartbeat kick up a notch as she remembered that bull sharks could live in fresh water. They’d been found up rivers hundreds of miles away from the ocean.
The shark suddenly seemed to notice her and altered its course. It wasn’t huge. But at roughly six feet long, it was still large enough to give Annja some problems.
If she’d been unarmed in the dark, it would have made short work of her.
But with the light and the sword, Annja felt ready for anything.
She hoped she wouldn’t have to kill it. It was simply doing what it was supposed to do. As an apex predator, its job was to hunt and eat. But when it swam suddenly closer with its pectoral fins jutting downward, Annja could see that its attitude had changed from mild curiosity to anger. It seemed to view Annja as an intruder.
I don’t blame it, she thought. If I ruled this place and someone threatening showed up, I’d be pretty pissed, too.
She flicked the sword blade up and aimed it at the shark’s snout. It brushed against the steel and Annja felt the blade cut into the nostrils. The shark bucked and jumped away.
Annja watched it retreat into deeper water trailing a thin line of blood in its wake. She hoped that would be the last of interest it expressed in her.
She turned her attention back to surveying the area beneath her. Unfortunately, she ran out of air, so she had to surface and take several deep breaths.
There was no doubt the sword helped her stay underwater longer. But there were limits to what it could do. And if Annja was going to figure out how to get out of here,