by Naomi Lucas
His muscles strained and his body began to prepare itself...
A shriek at his back had him swiveling on his hooves, grasping the handle of his axe, and swinging it with devastating efficacy at whatever dared to approach him. Vedikus kept the female trapped to his side as he watched the blade of his weapon sink deep into an orc’s shoulder. Blood gushed out as its sword clattered to the ground. He yanked his axe out and let his opponent drop.
More creatures entered the fray, frenzied by the scent of her blood. They began to overwhelm the centaurs. His gaze darted past them as he looked for an escape. The female shoved against him.
“Stop!” he ordered.
Her fighting struggles only increased.
Vedikus flicked the excess blood off his weapon and pushed her back up against the labyrinth wall. A heavy, alarmed gasp escaped her lips and he leaned over her, shielding her from the slaughter.
“You know me,” he hissed, giving her no opportunity to look anywhere else. “You know me,” Vedikus said again. He didn’t know why he cared.
“You...” she wheezed and slunk away from him.
“Do you want to live?” he asked carefully, his voice hoarse. His free hand cupped the back of her neck.
She answered with another whimper.
“Well?” he asked again. The female shook under his palm. The shock of the fall was leaving her system. Vedikus didn’t want to let her go. The feel of her hair on the back of his hand did something to him and he felt his blood quickened. But not for battle... The female nodded and he grunted. “Then do not move from this spot. Do not move.”
Vedikus squeezed her nape then let her go, watching her. When she didn’t immediately flee, and with one eye still on her prostrated form, he nudged the shortsword the orc had dropped toward her feet. The haze of battle was already taking over and clouding his mind. He would touch her again when everything was dead.
Without another look, he picked up his other battle axe and turned to face the maelstrom.
***
I’m alive.
Her skin burned where the creature had touched her. Her pulse strummed wildly under her skin. She wanted to make it stop, to rub the feel of it off, but her hands remained bound with rope.
In a sudden rabid effort she wrested and fought to break free but the rope held strong and only tore her skin further. She kept trying despite the pain, unable to allow herself to stop.
Stopping meant death.
I’m not dead yet.
Aldora searched for an escape or a safer hiding place. Her eyes found her catcher though, and each time she looked away, they drifted back.
The large, hunkering shadow of him filled her vision. If it wasn’t an illusion within the midnight gloom, the beast had horns jutting from the sides of its head. It was the only true feature she could make out. The rest, including the chaos behind him, were all just a bunch of blurry shapes.
But she knew him. The moment he spoke and his darkly cadent voice sounded—drowning out everything else—Aldora knew it was him. He was the reason she was here.
She shuffled to the side, deeper into the vines. Something scraped her boot. She dropped her gaze to see what it was, recalling that he had kicked something toward her.
Aldora slipped down the hedge wall. A weapon. Oh light, a blade? She turned to her side and extended her searching hands out behind her. Her fingers touched lukewarm metal. She grabbed the sword handle and tugged it further into the vines. Its weight was too much for her to wield in her current position.
Her attention shifted to the battle before her and the hissing, screeching roars of what she could not make out. I-I don’t want to know. She struggled to lift the sword upright against the wall. Shapes of horses drew her hurried gaze.
Not horses. Centaurs.
She grasped the weapon tighter, her hands wet with sweat, and managed to wedge the crossguard into the ground and expose the edge of the blade. Freedom! Furiously, she slid her bindings against it, and with each snap of a cord, her speed increased.
Aldora worked feverishly while watching the frenzy, learning whatever she could while she was still immobilized. Spinely creatures, large brutish, humanoid beings, and other things she could not fully make out flitted throughout, moving in then retreating, or perishing in their attempts. What she couldn’t see, she could smell.
And it smelled like death.
There were thick tree trunks and walls on every side of her, and Aldora realized she was in an open space. A clearing of sorts and unlike what she expected of the labyrinth, of what the stories had said. She’d thought the other side would be endless walls and trees.
She angled her head up but already knew she would never be able to climb the barrier wall to safety.
Another snap of rope loosened her joined wrists an inch. Her heart was in her throat, strangling her from the inside.
She glanced back to her horned catcher and the bodies that continuously fell at his feet. Shapes came at him from all sides, small and large to attack him at once, but each fell like her rag-dollies to the ground.
The violence of her catcher kept drawing her back, just like his voice had earlier. Large arms, thicker than humanly possible, jutted from his sides to hold a weapon in each hand, elongating his shadowy limbs in twisted and distorted ways. He swept them in arcs, spinning and swiveling, hacking and slicing straight through whatever came near.
Aldora felt his power and his violence, could almost taste its potency on her tongue. The more enemies that fell at his hand, the faster and more brutal he became. As if each kill fueled his bloodlust further.
She drew back into the foliage and tried to breathe.
He’s shielding me.
Nothing got past him. No matter how many beings tried, even those that attempted to dodge his attacks and sneak past him were stopped with blunt ferocity. The air quickened about her ears. Her matted hair rose and fluttered about. Each moment the charge coming from him grew. The shadows began to mold into one.
Aldora leaned forward, drawn to the energy. Until it was broken by a voice.
“Elscalien, Telner, on the offense, drive them back!”
She’d ceased moving her wrists and in renewed hurry, Aldora pressed the rope harder against the blade’s edge. Moments later her wrists fell away and were finally free. She shook them once but knew she couldn’t stop moving, and despite the pain, she reached back and grasped the handle of the shortsword and brandished it, rising to her feet.
I’m not a warrior but a hider. She looked around to do what she was good at before making a move. Common sense trumped ability.
Her eyes returned to him where he fought off a swarm of short, gangly creatures. I need to get around him.
He’d kept her from harm but for how long? She’d trust him to keep her safe until the end of the fight, but it was what happened after that worried her.
There was little opening but she spied several pathways where creatures gathered, pouring into the clearing. But one was quiet and Aldora focused on it. If she was going to hide—to run—it had to be now, before the monsters remembered she was there.
Before he returned to claim his prize.
What will he do to me?
Would he rape her? Or worse, feast on her flesh as he did so? Her mind raced with horrid possibilities. She wiped her tears on the back of her hand.
I can’t stay here. Her heart threatened to explode.
Without waiting for a better chance, she pressed back into the hedge wall and made her way along it, under the creeping vines, and toward the only clear path in sight.
She came upon a rotting tree midway—and with a quick glance back at the horned beast to make sure he wasn’t searching for her—she moved toward it, running her body along the tree’s side until she faced the open path. Aldora counted to five, peering through the gloom to see if anything would jump out of it, or dash in. But nothing did.
Go. She twitched.
Aldora took a steadying breath and lowered her sword,
and with a quick swipe of her sleeve across her forehead she—
“Female!” Pure rage vibrated the air. “Where is she!?”
She fled into the labyrinth.
Chapter Five
***
Vedikus stormed away from where the female had been, filled with fury. He spotted a shape dart into the darkness to his right.
“Minotaur! You lost her!?” The chief centaur screamed, kicking his legs back. Several goblins shot across the clearing. Vedikus ignored him and ran after the girl. He was out of the sacrificial zone and at the first fork within moments, without another glimpse of her.
Where is she? There were bodies strewn about but none of them were hers. Right or left? Vedikus swayed his head back and forth, releasing steam. Which way?
Telner appeared suddenly out of the darkness from his left, galloping toward him and flicking blood off his spear.
Not left.
“Where are you going, bull? Where’s the female?” Concerned, agitated anger spurted from the stallion. “I’ll kill you for this!”
Telner charged him.
Vedikus had no time for horseshit and sprinted down the right-hand path. It soon forked again and he halted.
I can’t lose her. His victory meant nothing without a celebration with his prize. He regretted offering her a blade.
Two options, but as he searched both paths, Telner reappeared. Vedikus growled at him in warning. His vision blurred. Minutes ago he’d barely held himself back from going berserk and the need to do so only increased. He cursed the female.
If he and his brothers hadn’t needed her so badly, picking a direction would be easy.
He chose the right-hand path again. Immediately after his skull cleared and he stopped.
She never came this way.
Vedikus looked up at the partially hidden moon and thanked her, turning on his hooves. Maybe the female is a witch.
His mother had been.
And if she had taught him anything, it was that humans were unpredictable, determined, and did unexpected things when scared or threatened.
“Minotaur!” Telner roared, closing in.
Vedikus faced the centaur and pulled out his axes.
“Failure assumes I have lost. I’ve lost nothing, horse, and to assume as much is to ask for death.” His fingers adjusted on his weapon.
“Then where is she? Where’s the female? We had a deal, and your kindred would be ashamed if you wronged my people. We are neutral!” Telner rose up on his hind legs and crashed back down. The ground trembled between them.
“She’s hiding.” Vedikus looked past him.
“Where? Produce her now. She must make a choice.”
Over my cursed vile blood. He had never agreed. He used and discarded, and honed his endurance and strength without help. Vedikus and his brothers had a different way of accomplishing their goals, their own blood-code with the first Minotaur, and they walked alone because their way of thinking disagreed with the others of his people.
The Bathyr had left their mother tribe behind to traverse the labyrinth and begin anew. Not one bull followed them into the outer mists. And because he and his brothers had bound together, they became a brotherhood of warriors. His only regret about that day was that he was leaving innocents of his previous tribe unprotected. To lose their best warriors was the price his old tribe had paid for wronging them.
Because they had wronged the Bathyr and dishonored their mother. Even now her bones were missing, and his sire slept alone, waiting for his mate’s return in his eternal slumber. Until her bones were restored and put properly to rest, the Bathyr would never return to the mother tribe.
Vedikus raised his axes and charged at the centaur.
The female is mine.
Telner reared up and aimed his spear to the ground as Vedikus angled his head down, positioning his horns. The power behind a minotaur charge was on par to none, and the centaur realized a moment too late that death was on the table.
He rammed head first into the stallion just as Telnar’s two front hooves crashed down. He screamed and Vedikus felt the sharpened point of the centaur’s spear slice deep across his back. He thrust his horns straight through Telner’s leather armor and deep into the centaur’s torso. Thick warm liquid burst over his head and down his face, splashing over his eyes and onto his lips.
Horseshit blood filled his mouth. He shook his head back and forth, ravaging the centaur’s chest. The spear pierced his back several more times before it sunk in deep and stayed there. Telner’s body slackened.
Vedikus gripped the centaur’s front legs and hefted the heavy weight off him, sliding his horns free. More gore spilled over his body as Telner’s twitching, weakly braying form dropped to the ground.
The centaur looked up at him. “You’ll pay for this,” he rasped.
Vedikus kneeled beside him. “I’ve already paid. More than you can ever know. Horseshit can’t win against a minotaur alone. If you wanted to truly feed my blood to the mist, you would’ve waited for your brethren. You let your battle lust win and in doing so, will die a fool’s death.”
Telner curled his lips and sneered. “This won’t kill me.”
Vedikus looked at what was left of Telner’s chest. He’d fatally punctured the stallion’s lungs and intestines. It was only a matter of hours, possibly minutes before the stud died. No feelings of remorse coursed through him nor thoughts of regret.
Only the strong, the intelligent, survived the world labyrinth, and a young centaur leaving his chief to battle a minotaur was neither.
Vedikus chanted his final rites and rose to his cloven feet. He stepped over the centaur’s struggling body and backtracked toward the sacrificial zone. Telner’s curses followed him until the mist devoured them like it did everything else.
Even now the mist licked at his rent back. The more carnage there was, the more it drew the hungering fog. But it was that same cursed brume that would bring him to his trophy.
He flicked his axes and sheathed them. Vedikus swiped the gore from his face. It was better on his hands where it couldn’t blind him. Vedikus found the first fork and quickly disposed of several hobgoblins skittering throughout. He chose the left-hand path this time. His tail slapped against the leather loincloth at his back.
He looked up. Daylight will be upon us soon.
But he’d have the female long before then.
***
Aldora fled down the path, following the wall. She swiped vines away that reached for her and jumped over corpses. Heavy steps sounded right behind her.
She drew her sword to her chest and searched for a place to hide. Her breaths came out in spurts, and sweat poured down her body.
She knew almost nothing about what really dwelled within the labyrinth and Aldora wasn’t sure if the stories she’d been told could be trusted; except for the monsters with teeth made for crushing bones.
Ghouls, beasts, ghosts, and goblins.
Her fingers clenched around her weapon. At least she had that.
Aldora dove back into the vines at her side and slipped in as far as the hedge would let her. She’d barely made it within before the beast was upon her. A thousand thorns pricked and sliced into her flesh on all sides, worse than those that had punctured her at the barrier. A whimper escaped her lips before she drew her hand up over them. The air was hot and heavy against her palm.
The shadow hovered, stilled and looked at the split trail like she had. The thing was massive, far more so standing so near, and Aldora was certain he toyed with her.
Please keep going. Don’t hear my heart. She prayed.
Something slithered across her scalp, burrowing through her hair and a screech caught in her throat. It took all her willpower not to tear out of the brush and claw it off.
“Minotaur! You lost her?”
Aldora eased back as the speaker approached from the left path. Its form was blocked by the horned beast directly in front of her.
She did not want to draw his
attention, did not want him to find her. He may have caught her and protected her from the other fiends, but she otherwise had no idea what he had in store for her. Only hours ago they had spoken with a wall between them and his voice—with its seductively dark cadence—had enthralled her enough to keep her in place.
What he planned to do with her—to her—now that he had won was something she refused to find out. The only people she trusted were her family. The thought of them filled her with sadness and she quickly pushed them from her mind.
I will see them again...
I have to try.
The beast shot away and the centaur went in chase of him. Her hand remained poised over her mouth until she could no longer hear them, and when nothing else appeared, she tore out of the clinging vines and dropped her weapon, streaking her fingers through her hair.
She writhed frantically, leaning over to dislodge the critter on her head and the feel of its many, tiny legs. It tried to scurry away but she caught it under her boots as she stamped it into the ground. Aldora didn’t stop until nothing remained. The feel of it lingered on her raised flesh.
She picked up her shortsword and dashed to the left, sprinting a dozen yards down a veering path that led farther away from the barrier. It sloped sharply and brought her to a halt. The canopy had thickened to block whatever small amount of light shone from the moon, but she could still see the pile of small, broken bodies that were clearly not human below.
Their smell was sour and fresh. Aldora drew closer, an eye on her surroundings until the corpses were at her feet. One held a dagger stretched out in front of him and she snatched it up to slip into her boot. She pushed the body over, she found a bag attached to its belt. In it were items she couldn’t see but she took it anyway.
Howls arose in the distance and she shot to her feet.
Barghests.
Aldora looked around once more but she remained alone. It won’t be for long even if everything nearby has been killed. I need to hide. She glanced up at the canopy. She had no idea what awaited up there but she’d confront bugs over monsters any night.