QotD: Your people make a statue in your honor. What is it made out of & what victory does it commemorate?

A maze guards the gate of the City with No Name. Strangers come from many lands just to see it, to test their courage and their curiosity. Tales are told of those entering and never returning, and some who’ve been within and then out again declare those missing were never seen inside. Others say that the maze changes, that the correct path for one will only delay or swallow another.

The walls of the maze certainly change: anyone on the outside can see that plainly if they wait long enough. One morning it might be nothing but leafy green hedges bearing sharp thorns and flowers in riotous colors. By evening, it could be obsidian, polished to a glow that captures the moon, or even the stars. Some say they’ve seen it wood, with curious detailing, or with large figures carved bold and deep, so they almost seem alive: knights, dragons, ladies in long trailing gowns. Then it will change, so slowly, or perhaps magically, that you cannot see how. The knight becomes a mage, the dragon a moonstone, the lady an owl, and they are no longer wood carvings, but etchings upon glistening silver.

Most curious of all are the tales told by those who have conquered the maze and spent time within the city. Anyone can see the spires rising high above the city walls, the walls themselves two hundred feet high. Some claim the city was nothing but spires and towers, with citizens so light, so airy that you could sometimes see through them. Others say the spires are an illusion, that there is no city at all, but only a pleasant farm or two. Still others have reported a city buried deep underground, all twisted caves and echoing caverns. I myself have never been inside, fearing my own nightmares, I suppose, for the city defies reason, working instead on the imaginations of those who enter.

They called her Weidela, the Storyteller, and there are those still living in these old hills who remember when she walked among them, or at least they claim so. My own great-grandfather speaks of her sometimes, and his old face brightens, his blind eyes seem to sparkle, and he laughs as if he were still a child.

Weidela walked down from the hills one day, the old ones say, and chose a spot out upon the broad plain. There was nothing there but broken dirt and blood, the scene of countless battles, quarrels no one remembers anymore. She said it was enough, and stuck her walking stick in the ground. At first, everyone was certain she’d be killed, run down by one army or another. The armies did come, but somehow the battle skirted her small camp set in the very center of the melee. When it was seen she came to no harm, a few others joined her, wanting to hear the tales again, they said.

It was nothing but ramshackle huts and tents for a time, and this king and that prince would ride down to hurl themselves at the foe. Some of the wounded landed close enough to her camp that they’d be drawn inside. Healed, a few came forth again, speaking of a wondrous spring that quenched their thirst, of tame monsters that bowed to Weidela’s will, of beautiful women wearing every color imaginable and singing like angels. Some said that was nothing but delirium from their infected wounds.

One day the great wall began to grow. At first it was only stones set in a ring that encompassed the breadth of the plain. Armies came, and stopped in bewilderment, unable to step across. They watched the enemy on the other side for days or weeks or months, depending whose tale you believe, and then quietly melted away.

The maze came later, long after the city walls had grown to their present height, long after the silvery towers rose in elegant splendor. Weidela had died, said some, and the maze was her people’s tribute. Others said she could not die, that it was her stories that held the city secure.

I am a coward; I confess it. I tell myself each morning that I will brave the maze, that I will conquer it and find the city. I tell myself it will be the city of my dreams, and I will live my life out in the best that my imagination can bear. I come and look, ache with longing, and go home again, afraid of the worst my mind might create. I know in my heart I’ll never go. I’m my father’s child and have too much of the steady world cementing me to reason. Still, I long for the fantastic, and I nudge my great-grandfather as he sits in his corner, begging the tales he remembers, committing them to memory. Someday I will have a child of my own, and she will need to hear them.