Gray raced through the maze in a panic. He had one week to finish this cursed labyrinth that even the creator needed three days to complete, and he had no food. If he failed, Lucy would be frozen. Normally cool under pressure, Gray felt nothing but panic now. If it had been someone else, if Natsu had been the one abducted, maybe Gray could have kept calm and thought out a plan. Instead, it was Lucy, and his mind went into a blinding rage the minute Whitehall flew away with her.

Gray turned many corners, not paying attention to Lucy's suggestion on the proper way to escape a hedge maze. He had seen Whitehall and Lucy flying north, and that was where he tried to head. Just another corner ... always, he expected to see clues just around the corner. Instead, he came across dead end after dead end, until suddenly he was back at the beginning.

"What the hell?" he shouted.

He ran in the other direction now, randomly following twists, until he realized he was in another area he had been to, considering his own shoe prints were in the snow.

"Screw this," he growled. "Ice-Make: Ladder!"

A blue circle flashed, and a ladder laid up against the hedge of bloodberry bushes. He began to climb when an annoyingly mocking mechanical voice came through the air.

"Nu-uh-uh! This is your first and only warning. Climbing over, digging under, or destroying the bush walls all count as penalties, and each penalty will take off eight hours of your time for completing Whitehall's Wonderful Winter Maze. Play by the rules, and have a pleasantly fun day."

"Figures," Gray growled. "I gotta sit. It's been an hour at least. I'm going about this all wrong."

Gray walked over to a stone fountain where two corridors intersected in a cross. The fountain was frozen over, but that was fine. If the berries were poisonous, he would bet the water was, too.

Gray sat heavily, only now realizing he was panting from running around for so long. He dropped his head into his hands and yanked at the black strands of hair with a growl of frustration. Just then, the same mocking voice announced:

"You now have six days and twenty-three hours left."

"Is that so?" Gray grumbled wryly. "Good to know I've screwed around for a whole hour. Goddammit!" His frustration turned to worry. A whole hour, and he had no clue what Whitehall was up to, where he went, or what he had planned. Despite himself, Gray shivered as a thousand worst-case scenarios plagued his mind. "Lucy," he whispered. "Just wait for me. God, I hope you're safe."

In a cabin placed in the dead center of the maze, Lucy sat at a table with a steaming cup of tea. She mindlessly stirred in a sugar cube and watched a video lacrima. On its screen was Gray in the maze. She could see the panic in his face, and she worried for him.

"Has he stopped running aimlessly?" a woman asked.

"Yes, looks like he calmed down," Lucy said sadly.

An svelte woman named Wisteria sauntered into the room. She had short and spiky purple hair, a bust that matched Lucy's impressive size, and an impossibly skinny waist that was showed off by jeans so loose, they hung on her hips, and a boyish teeshirt torn short so that it barely covered her breasts. She had already explained to Lucy, she was a servant of Willie Whitehall, the caretaker of this cabin, and her duty was to attend the person carried off to this place to wait while their lover completed the maze. Lucy had spent a long time fiercely denying this whole lover nonsense, but Wisteria seemed not to care. She fixed tea, baked some cookies, and gave Lucy the video lacrima that was tied into cameras stationed all over the maze. This allowed the girlfriend to watch, and it provided Whitehall with his sick entertainment.

"God, I hope you're safe," she heard him say.

"Gray," Lucy sighed. She touching the face that showed a tear sliding down such pale skin. "Idiot. Don't worry about me. I'm more worried about you."

"He can't hear you," said Wisteria. "We can see and hear your man, but he doesn't know he's being watched. This is a way for the person waiting at the end to see the true emotions of their partner."

"True emotions?" Lucy pouted at the servant's words. "I don't get this maze at all. You say it's for lovers, but Gray and I are only friends. We're teammates, nothing more."

Wisteria gazed at her with something akin to pity. "Is that how both of you feel?"

"Of course! Gray ... I mean, he's cute, sure, but ... lover? No way!"

The purple-haired woman sighed sadly. "Then I fear for his success. Love spurs a person on. Love also defeats the evil of this cursed labyrinth. If there is no love between you, I'm afraid, Lucy Heartfilia, that your life will be very short indeed."

Outside, Erza was on a communications device with Levy. She turned the lacrima recorder to the gateway with its wall of runes in some odd language.

"Yes," Levy said excitedly. "It's a dialectic writing unique to the Tigardus Mountain region, almost unheard of in the rest of Fiore. There's a bunch of gibberish about how great and awesome this maze is—seriously, this Whitehall man was on an ego trip while casting these runes—but what it boils down to is that the only people who can enter the maze are couples who have feelings of love for one another. The couple will be separated, and one has a week to complete the maze to save their lover from being frozen."

Natsu scratched his head in confusion. "Then why can't I enter?"

Levy blinked in shock. "Do you ... um ... love Lucy?" she asked, blushing slightly in shock.

"Sure! I love all of my guildmates," he declared boldly.

Erza rubbed out a throbbing vein. "Not that type of love, idiot."

Levy clarified, "The word used signifies romantic love."

Happy looked at the purple writing in confusion. "But Gray and Lucy aren't dating, although Gray lllllllllllikes her."

Erza hummed thoughtfully. "Do the runes specify that it has to be requited love?"

Levy looked through the lacrima again, squinting as she tried to read it. "No, nothing about that. Just that the romantic love has to be mutual."

"I still don't get it," Natsu pouted.

Erza sighed as she comprehended far more than just the meaning of the runes. "Lucy must like Gray in a romantic way, and Gray feels the same. The two just haven't come to acknowledge it yet."

Happy giggled. "Lucy llllloves Gray! Gray and Lucy, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"

Inside the maze, Gray was back at work, one hand on the left wall like how Lucy had begun to do it. Always follow to the left wall: that was what she said. Of course, that worked best when a person began that rule from the beginning and not an hour into the maze. He could have been leaving marks behind too, dropping berries or crumbs of ice or ... or something. Instead, like an idiot, he had panicked. Having Lucy taken away made him unable to think. He ended up just running around and getting lost.

It was dark now. The sun sat early this far north during wintertime, and the night was going to be brutally cold for everyone except him. He already felt hungry, but he knew he could not eat the poisonous berries until starvation was inevitable. He realized it had been foolish to run around. Now his energy was burned off. He needed to consider his route and not race through blindly.

As the darkness intensified until he could see nothing and only knew the direction by the hand that stayed on the left wall, he really wished Lucy was there. She was smart; she probably could find her way out of this maze in less than three days. He worried about her being with that psychopath, but Whitehall at least seemed like a man who stuck to the rules of his own game. He would not dare hurt Lucy ... not for one week, at least.

"You now have six days and sixteen hours left."

Hearing the time limit chime every hour made Gray want to start running again, but he had to calm himself. It was dark, and he had nothing with which to build a fire. He guessed some people in the maze froze to death. Luckily, he had no problem with the cold. It was food that troubled him. His stomach was twisting. The plump red berries shining in the moonlight seemed to mock him.

Gray knew he needed sleep. Although he was wasting time with dreams, he had to pace himself. Going delirious from lack of sleep would be far worse than six to eight hours of rest. If only his stomach would stop growling.

He settled down as well as he could. The snowy ground was not a problem, but the hard path underneath gave no comfort. He pulled his hood down low to block the tempting view of the berries and tried to get a little sleep.

In a manor far to the north, Whitehall watched his screen.

"Thus, the little wizard sleeps fitfully his first night," he said, narrating his own scene. "A rather uneventful day, but only because he's one lucky boy. He might have gotten lost at first, but that one twist he made at random put him a full day closer, and avoided three pitfalls, than if he had followed the left wall from the very beginning. See, I know the left wall trick, so I designed this maze to work against that. Following the left wall will take the longest and bring you into the most dangerous zones. But it seems he's stubbornly following that advice now. Good! That'll make it more entertaining for me. I estimate it will take him three more days, if he follows his current pace and avoids the pitfalls. Oh, and if he can withstand the hunger and the brutal winter chill."

Whitehall pressed his fingers together, enjoying the crackling fire that cast ominous shadows on his bearded face.

"Still, that's only half the fun. Then there is the girlfriend. Or maybe I should say, the unrequited lover."

He looked over to another lacrima screen that showed Lucy sitting at a table, ignoring the food Wisteria had made for her, her brown eyes focused on the lacrima of Gray trying to sleep.

"Will the two discover their buried feelings for one another? Will that spark of love fizzle before it can ignite? Yes, these two are truly entertaining. Not really lovers, yet both have feelings for one another hidden so deep inside, they can't confess it to themselves. I've not seen that before in this maze. It makes things oh-so-deliciously more suspenseful, and that, boys and girls, is what I live for."

Whitehall looked up to his audience, an entire corridor lined with massive crystals of frozen bodies, mostly women, although one was a man from a rare chance when a gay couple had wandered into the maze.

"Yes, you all know how I love tragic entertainment." He walked up to one of the frozen girls, her face forever captured weeping for a lover who never showed up. "Isn't that so, my dear? Love is most beautiful when in the throes of tragedy. That is why I consider each and every one of you true art." He stroked the magic ice that encased the girl. "Like this, you are forever perfect in my eyes, filled with such emotion. Artists can never hope to capture what I have here: the expression of love shattering into woe. That's why I built this maze. It either transforms lukewarm love into fiery passion, or it perfectly captures the greatest tragedy of love, frozen for all time. Why, I got into the carnival business because I loved to see emotions on people's faces: grimaces of terror at a roller coaster, screams of panic in a haunted house, faces turning green as a ride makes their stomach hurl, and afterward, all is jolly laughs once more. Expression! Emotion! Such inspiring art!"

He strode through the hall lined with crystal frozen figures, each with agony and sadness on their faces.

"Another piece shall join us soon. That boy lacks the passion needed to complete my maze. I predict he will fail. That blonde will make a charming addition to my art collection. I think I should place her here, by the stained glass window. Yes, the colors of the sun shining through would light up her golden hair so beautifully. I just hope she has a good face when she's frozen over."