Maze
The Maze surrounds the entire Firecavern complex, lit by sourceless, ambient warm light and walled with smooth stone, strangely unreflective and neutral in texture. In the more frequented parts of the Maze, the walls are strangely geometric compared to the rest of the Cavern, having well-defined walls, floor and ceiling, and corners at right angles. In the less used corners the corridors round themselves, become rougher.
The ambient light gradually fades as the corridors descend and get nearer to the Vast Waters, which underlie the Caverns as a whole, until there is no light at all. Light spells cast in these deeper corridors will not even reach the walls.
The geometry of the Maze is difficult to comprehend. A walker will always feel as if they are upright, even though the corridors slowly curve to the point at which, in the case of normal gravity, the floor would become the ceiling and the ceiling the floor. Spatially, the maze seems impossible as well, doubling back on itself or going in circles where no circles should be, and allowing creatures of wildly different sizes to walk comfortably while feeling as if the ceiling and walls are close but not claustrophobic.
A number of maze-walking guards live mostly in the Maze, having created personal rooms off of some of the more secluded pathways, and their function is to walk the Maze in search of stranded wanderers. They are perhaps the only ones with full knowledge of the Maze’s intricacies besides KTFE herself.
Sometimes the Maze is easy to navigate: when KTFE wants visitors, the trek is maybe five minutes. However, sometimes the Maze seems to close off completely, and visitors will find themselves wandering for hours or days. One quality of the maze is that biological functions are suspended — walkers will not get hungry or thirsty, and will not need to relieve themselves.
The Maze has exits into all the main rooms of the Caverns, though these are generally impossible to find unless you know where you’re going and are used mostly as emergency exits by the guards. There is one primary entrance into the Maze, which is fronted by a long metal corridor lined with a red carpet and lived in by two identical guards that swap each other off regularly.
