Splatterism: The Disquieting Recollections of a Minotaur Assailant: An Upbuilding Edifying Discourse

by Christian Winter

  Dead/End? Or, Incipit Vita Nova

  “Everything is metaphor; I myself am a myth about myself, for is it not as a myth that I hasten to this tryst? Who I am is irrelevant; everything finite and temporal is forgotten.”

  Kierkegaard

  As I got to my feet, all at once a thousand voices whispered, another thousand mumbled, and another thousand screamed. Even so, the screams of those dying from old wounds and those being murdered pierced through the dark, disorienting cacophony of voices all confused.

  My vision blurred immediately and I stumbled sideways until I hit something. I stuck my hand out and grabbed Scammander’s shoulder.

  Then I heard a voice close to me.

  It kept saying something.

  Two words.

  “Don’t focus.” Don’t focus. I didn’t try to block out the voices, I just let them slip into the same stream of my own consciousness.

  My vision cleared for just a moment. Scammander was leaning into a wall across from me, wincing and shaking his head and grinding his teeth.

  Then who am I holding on to?

  I turned my head and saw him.

  Or what was left of him.

  The top half of a man’s corpse was slumped over an iron spear which was jutting out from his stomach, pinning him to the wall. There was no evidence of the lower half of his body anywhere to be found. I jerked my hand away from his shoulder and fell backwards with a clump of dusty dry grey hair wrapped around my fingers. I shook my wrist and flicked my fingers, flinging the thick clump away as I stood up. I grimaced and returned to the hanging remains, grabbing a rusty knife from his belt and tucking it away. There was a small hope that I could trip and fall on it in this blurry, dizzying maze.

  Scammander looked at me.

  “What?”

  “I’m following you,” he said.

  “Me? We’re in a labyrinth. I’ve never been here before. Of the two of us, you’re the one who should know the way.”

  “Of course you know the way, you’re a minotaur—it’s your specialty.”

  “Very funny,” I mumbled.

  The voices began to overtake me again and I stumbled a little and squinted as Scammander became a blur. “It’s the vertigo,” I heard him say. “It will come and go.” I saw him fall into the wall and wobble a little as he pushed away from it. “Follow your primordial knowledge.”

  I sighed, turned forward, and fell down. We were going to be down here for years.

  I got up slowly as the maddening voices whirled around me, closing my eyes and rubbing my temples. I took small, gentle steps to the side of the maze and propped myself up on the wall.

  “I think you should get the shotgun out,” I said. “Everyone needs to know you’re up to no good down here.”

  “I can’t aim that thing in this dizzying labyrinth,” Scammander retorted. “Besides, I might hit you.”

  I groaned. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to do for some time now.” I turned around with even less hope than ever as the blurry, muttering maze slanted and shook before me. Suddenly Scammander’s shotgun fired behind me, and the bullets rushed by my ear. I spun around as he steadied De Brevitate Vitae at my face, but slipped as he fired. He tried to adjust as the second blast went off, but it flew over my head as he fell to the floor.

  “Don’t ever say I didn’t try to kill you,” he snickered and staggered back to his feet.

  “You do have a reputation to maintain,” I replied.

  The Gloomstone Vaults was a labyrinth built to slowly drive anyone unfortunate enough to fall into it across sanity’s edge and into even the unmapped regions of madness. Indigo walls and floors pulsed with a strange violet light that flashed so rapidly it felt like I was blinking a thousand times a second. If the wild voices didn’t drive prisoners insane, the throbbing light would. Every so often the light would fade entirely, leaving everything in complete darkness. That’s when the screams were the loudest.

  The blue gas formed a dense drifting cobalt sky above the maze. Sometimes we walked through lingering gritty clouds that hovered in the corridors or hung in the corners of the labyrinth. Most of the time we trembled and clung to the walls like we were walking on the edge of a mountain trail or desperately crawled along the floor. I noticed at least three layers of graffiti etched into the skull over thousands of years from dragging my face along the wall for so long. The first layer was full of desperate attempts from various individuals determined to escape by inscribing their location along the walls and drawing crude maps. These were crossed out and etched over with insults and insane rantings. Letters, words, and sentences of delirious rants were chipped and hacked to bits by deflected sword and axe blows or where prisoners had knelt and yielded their sanity to the maze and clawed at the old dead deity’s skull.

  Bits and pieces of old dusty armor and weapons were scattered throughout the sinuous skull. Corpses of all stages of death and decay were equally abundant. As we rounded one corner I saw a balding skeleton with a very thin layer of skin still sticking to it. I jumped when its eyes opened and it began speaking to me.

  “Please…” it said in a sickened whisper. “Feed me…”

  “I—I don’t have any food,” I muttered feebly.

  “No…” it hissed. “Feed me your flesh…”

  I stood frozen in disgusted horror as a rusty battle axe crashed into the emaciated prisoner’s chest. Scammander planted his foot in the man’s face as he wrenched the axe out amidst a spray of thin flesh and loose blood, then instantly swung it back into his face. The head split in two at the nose as Scammander released the axe and the corpse slumped as the rusty weapon bounced off the wall. Scammander grabbed my arm and thrust me forward.

  “Keep moving!” he screamed.

  Everything was heavy with anxiety and distress. It wasn’t just hard to walk—it was hard to breathe. It was hard to exist. I clenched my jaw and began grinding my teeth, forcing one foot in front of the other. I squeezed both sides of my head and dropped to my knees as my teeth continued to scrape across each other. I began moaning and pulling my hair as the light began flashing rapidly and the voices began to scream all at once inside my skull.

  Scammander pulled me to my feet and threw me forward again. “That’s the last time I pick you up in this maze Evander.”

  I fell into a wall but continued walking. A few more twists and turns brought us to a massive pile of bodies gathered in a corner. None of them had heads. Some were still bleeding. The voices and blurring subsided for a moment.

  “The blue mist,” I said darkly. “It’s alive.”

  “It is?” Scammander said in complete shock.

  “Certainly,” I said turning around to face him. “You know how I know?”

  “No?”

  “I’ve been down here before,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster.

  “I knew it!” he shouted gleefully. “I knew you were a criminal!”

  I moaned. “No,” I said growing serious. “But I bet he is,” I said pointing behind the elf.

  Scammander whirled around and raised his staff. But there was nothing there.

  I chuckled and turned around in time to catch a thick mace to the face. No matter what body parts I lost I was always able to feel pain. As my head buckled and crunched I felt a viscous goo spill over my lips and hang in my fur. I dropped to the floor instantly and felt the mace rush over my head as I fell. I clutched at my face and jaw scrambling backwards and growling and groaning as the wretched healing spell pulled strands of skin together across my fractured face. I managed to open one eye to get a glimpse of the lumbering shadow staggering towards me. Ogre. I grabbed a repeater and began firing. It shot two bolts, one went sailing out into the dark blue steam and the other bounced off the floor and skidded into the wall. Then it stopped firing. I squeezed franticly as the pile of shadows stumbled towards me, but it wouldn’t shoot.

  As I stood up the dizziness overtook me and I crashed back into the cranial wall. I rolled a
way as the blackened mace smashed the bone barrier, covering me in a cloud of thin bone-dust. Again I tried to thrust myself up but fell down on all fours and scrambled away from another blow.

  Shadows and black spots congealed and separated as my vision tried repeatedly to sharpen only to blur and fade completely. The shadowy tower continued to stumble towards me, then one foot got tangled up with the other and it face-planted.

  I pounced on the body of the massy shadowman which was covered in thick platemail armor, and the mace was tucked under the body so I couldn’t get to it to bash his brains out. This clearly wasn’t the first time my adversary had been in this kind of fight. I pushed his face down in the dirt and slammed the dagger into the soft spot on the back of his neck. Once was enough to kill him, but I slammed it twice more for all the pain and misery he caused me. The wild vertigo came to a halt and everything in the maze was still and stable. I rolled off the corpse and jammed my back into a wall.

  No matter how many times you fight for your life, it becomes more harrowing and exhausting with each contest. Eventually I guess you just give up.

  I slid up the wall and closed my eyes. I opened them slowly. Everything was stark and clear. I walked over to my repeater, knelt down slowly and picked it up. I looked over at the corpse, which was as big as an ogre. It certainly hit like an ogre. With a deep sigh I strode over to the hulking armored body and rolled it over with my foot.

  Although my vision was sharp and clear I wish I would have been blind.

  I sank down over the body and put the repeater up to my temple.

  “To yours I add my own,” I said pulling the trigger. I heard the twang as the air brushed through the fur on the side of my head. But no arrow. I pulled it a few more times to the same push of air before I flung it aside and grabbed the other from my robe. I placed it by my other temple, then in front of my face. No matter where I pointed it, the small crossbow wouldn’t fire. I wept a little, but was too exhausted and so I merely looked down at the emptiness in the minotaur’s eyes. Humanity is the only race I know of that kills its own without weeping. This minotaur was bald—all of his fur was shaved off. Or he lost it all from sickness. Crusted stumps where his horns should have been meant he suffered from malnourishment. If he cut them away in hopes of goring himself, they had probably been crushed to powder in his grasp.

  “Did—did you know him?” I said looking up to Scammander with warm tears hanging on the bottom of my eyes.

  “No, I’m sorry Evander. Does he have tattoos? Sometimes—sometimes they tell the story of why they are down here.”

  I didn’t say anything at first. I just looked into his eyes. “I,” I gulped and wiped more tears away from my eyes. “I just thought I was the last one.” I hardly finished the sentence before another rush of tears came to my eyes. “I…I thought we were all dead. I thought we had all been dead for a very long time,” I said holding his smooth head in my lap.

  Scammander tried to kneel down but fell and landed spread out on his back.

  “How long do you think he’s been down here? There’s no way he could have lived for so long.”

  Scammander lifted his head cautiously, then let it fall back to the ground. “I don’t know,” he said still lying flat on his back. “Things don’t…work normally down here.” He slowly got up and came over next to me. “Close his eyes Evander. You have done him a great favor, freeing him from this place.”

  “Shrink him,” I said looking into his empty blue eyes. “Shrink him.”

  I heard Scammander sigh as he slipped the tight leather gloves over his skinny white hands.

  “Very well,” he said. “But I would caution you that this could be used against you at some point.” A light pinch on the felonius minotaur shrank him down. I held out my hand and Scammander placed the corpse into my palm, then folded my fingers back over its small body. He shot a quiet glance at me and stood up, lurched forward, then stumbled to the right before regaining his balance.

  “He’s one of mine, I can’t leave him down here,” I said forcing myself up. The spinning resumed. Scammander was already moving. We stumbled forward together and when we rounded the corner Scammander stopped immediately. He grabbed both my shoulders and leaned in.

  “We’re being followed.”

  “Aren’t we always?”

  I shook my head then something dawned on me. “Hold on,” I said. “Do you think this is what Skepsis was talking about?”

  “If you wanted the easy answer to Skepsis’s riddle, you should have asked Eidos when you had the chance.”

  “He didn’t have a mouth,” I replied.

  “Oh. I forgot.” Scammander shrugged. “Unless you want to add a great deal of misery to your existence, I would advise that you never think about what Skepsis said to you ever again.” He looked over my shoulder before looking at me once more. “If I remember correctly, I was following you. Take the lead.”

  Just then a man made of pure amber metal strode around the corner and stopped in front of us. The history of an illustrious city was etched on one half of his breastplate and on the other half was the history of his own creation. The faces of two young scholars were at the bottom and above them were elaborate mathematical equations. Above the formulas were robed doctors holding pieces of rare metal, reading books, holding odd geometric shapes, and studying miniature statues in various poses. Finally, near the top the two scholars were in a crowded amphitheater standing next to their invented man, presenting him to a gathering of doctors. One academic held an ancient book titled ‘On the Soul’ and the other doctor held a book known to antiquity as the ‘Physics.’ Running across the very top of his breastplate, carved in capital letters was what I could only guess to be the invention’s name: ALGORITHM. NEOPTOLEMUS. MECHANICUS. ACADEMICUS.

  “Scammander.”

  He had no hair, no skin, and took no breath, but said my companion’s name with the same contempt and suspicion as the rest of the world did.

  Scammander seemed flattered.

  “I was sent by the Academy,” he said. “Professors Ptolemy III and Ptolemarchus IV built me to kill you.”

  “Must be short on funding this year.” Scammander said unfazed. “Professors of Logic and Metaphysics?”

  The mechanical man nodded.

  “The Ptolemies,” Scammander laughed. “I should have known.”

  “Yes, you shared the same reading group, known as Darker Still,” the mechanical man said. “I shall tell them you remembered.”

  The puckish wizard shrugged. “They were the only ones that showed any promise. How much is the bounty up to now?”

  “The bounty on you is quite…appealing.”

  “How many academic journals did you have to submit that thesis to in order to finally reach that conclusion,” I said.

  The algorithm-man said nothing.

  “Academics don’t have a sense of humor,” Scammander said out of the side of his mouth. “Well Neoptolemus I suppose you want to have a debate to the death,” Scammander said stumbling into me and holding on to my shoulder for support. I was already leaning against the wall, but nearly fell over when he bumped into me.

  “Oh no,” it said moving a few steps closer. “Before I left the Academy the esteemed ethicist Hippias III placed ten thousand years of ethical hypotheses into my central processing unit which I completed on my way here. Killing you will be most just,” Neoptolemus Academicus said. Its eyes changed from a bright yellow to a burning, intense red.

  “Magic would be really great right now Scammander!” I screamed. A thin red line of hot light cut the air where my face was as I lurched to the side from the dizziness. I heard the brief blast of De Brevitate Vitae and watched the mechanical-man march forward as the shells bounced off his gilded amber breastplate.

  Neoptolemus fired the light-cannon into the wall, which smoked a little but otherwise seemed to absorb the blast. While Neoptolemus’s internal algorithms were very fast, the mechanical man himself moved very slow. The robot began
to slowly plod along through the maze, utterly unaffected by the whirling labyrinth.

  We stumbled through the elaborate folds of the maze bumping into each other, bouncing off walls, and crawling madly on the ground. Then we ran right into a roaming band of marauders, who looked like they had just finished a meal.

  “Is your only instinct to get killed?” Scammander shrieked as he collapsed to the ground.

  I whirled around to run back, but Neoptolemus rounded the corner. The mechanical-man’s cannon went off and a thin red beam of unbroken light stretched from his wrist all the way to the wall. One of the emaciated brawlers lurched across it towards Scammander and the beam slit him in half from the chest up. His smoldering shoulders and head smoked quietly in the ensuing mayhem. Neoptolemus pressed a button on his wrist and fired again. A flurry of bright red beams burned through another convict’s face who happened to be standing too close to Scammander. The remaining two convicts looked at the mechanic. Seeing that there was no flesh on Neoptolemus, the two ran off into the muttering maze.

  We careened through the twists and turns of the blurry, flashing maze once more, which never ceased to fill our ears with screams and whispers and monotone mutterings.

  At last we stumbled into a large room with a corpse slumped over a desk just as the labyrinthic madness drained out of our minds and receded into black whispers. Scammander halted and prepared to make his stand.

  “Get behind me, the shield is the only chance we have at survival,” he said unstrapping it from his back and bracing himself behind it, staggering as he focused and steadied himself.

  I played along, but decided that I was not going to leave this labyrinth alive.

  When Neoptolemus rounded the corner he fired while moving, missing us with every shot. I peered around Scammander, and saw Neoptolemus plant his feet and aim directly at the aegis. Bits and pieces popped off the ancient painted shield and sprayed over the top all around us as Neoptolemus unleashed another volley of hot light. The Mech plodded around the shield and aimed at Scammander, whose eyes were closed and whose face was covered in sweat. I leapt in front of the wizard as a giant circle of light enveloped the machine’s hand. The glow vanished as Neoptolemus folded his arm and walked away, readjusting his angle to get a clear shot at Scammander. He aimed again and again I stepped into the line of fire, hoping to be annihilated by the cutting rays. But again the mechanical-man ceased and readjusted.