Stone-Walkers
The Stone-Walkers are the natives of the Flux Maze, the labyrinth that rearranges itself around whoever is inside. They are part of the Maze, able to merge with its stone and pass through its walls. They act as guides and as traps at once, testing whether a traveller is fit to pass, and the Maze’s students come to learn from them.
Appearance
A Stone-Walker has a person’s shape and size, heavier in the shoulder. Its skin is polished granite, grey flecked with black and pink, cool and smooth to the touch, with fine seams at the joints. Its eyes glow the warm orange of the magma veins that run through the Maze’s walls, and a faint glow shows in its seams when it is angered or deep in thought.
It moves with a fluid, gliding motion, untroubled by floors that tilt and walls that slide, and when it steps into a wall the stone takes it like water closing over a diver, with a soft grinding sigh. It is silent and observant, and smells of wet stone and iron.
Habitat and Range
They live throughout the Maze and within its walls, and are seen most near the paths visitors take. A Maze holds a scattering of them, and the settlements within its walls, reachable only by those who know the song of the stone, live by their leave.
Behaviour and Temperament
Stone-Walkers are silent and observant, and when they speak it is in riddles. They value adaptability and the ability to listen to the stone, and they think outsiders rigid and clumsy. A traveller who forces a way, curses the walls, or tries to map the Maze as if it stood still finds a Stone-Walker leading them deeper; one who waits, listens, and moves with the shifting is shown a way out. They do not explain which they are doing.
Abilities
They merge with stone and move through walls, and are unaffected by the Maze’s shifting. They draw sustenance from the motion of the rock, the kinetic energy of stone grinding on stone. They seem to know where the Maze will open next, and some can hum the song of the stone that keeps a path open for a while.
Life Cycle
Stone-Walkers are said to come out of the Maze’s walls as the Maze itself grows. Some believe the Lost, whom the Maze takes into its stone, come out again as Stone-Walkers; nothing confirms it. They seem to live as long as their Maze.