Stella hissed in frustration at the sight of another dead end up ahead. The spells all around her prevented her from sending out more than one decoy, and from letting one go on too far from her. She had to check every tunnel by herself, at least until she could see its end.
Dealing with the traps was trivial. Neither was there any chance of her getting lost, she kept a proper mental map of the whole place and where everything was in three dimensions. No, the only problem was how damn time consuming the whole thing was. She'd been at it for minutes already. No going faster, either, the damn walls wouldn't allow that.
She'd have almost considered just busting out and declaring Twilight was the one running away and hiding, except Twilight was clearly there. She could feel her. Stella had her own sensory net laid out, and though the signal was somewhat jumbled it still clearly showed Twilight was somewhere in the tunnels. Occasionally they'd see each other, briefly, Twilight would run past an opening ahead or call out. She'd lay new traps, too, and Stella had started to do the same.
It was still a battle. Played in slow and drawn out steps, but the two were still fighting each other while Stella made her way to the surface again. It was a more tactical confrontation than their direct one on one, and so prone to going in metaphorical circles it felt more like a waste of time, but Twilight was good at keeping it just engaging enough for Stella not to pull out of it. She was probably using the extra time to think of another plan, but Stella didn't mind that.
An odd fork in the way ahead. The tunnel wasn't that way when she'd come through the other way around. Stella smiled despite herself, in a way she couldn't help but enjoy the situation. The way Twilight still challenged her. The way she brushed those challenges aside like nothing. It felt, if nothing else, entertaining. A way to calm down and clear her head. Not how she'd imagined the fight would go, but she didn't mind.
There was a tension to the situation. A knowledge that at any moment things could snap and devolve into chaos once again. It was a drive, a way to keep both of them on edge, one more than the other. Stella couldn't by rule and wouldn't by choice break through the spells, but she had slowly started to take over portions of the maze herself. She wondered how long it would take for Twilight to retreat from those portions, clearly she already had noticed what was happening.
An open way. The only one left to possibly check, and that meant progress. It went down instead of up, at least for a bit, but it would go up again if followed along enough, Stella knew. So she walked, her proxy ahead, as she changed the walls around her.