The Minotaurs of Maze World

by Eddie Patin

  There were people—people everywhere! The farther Jason, Riley, and Gliath walked into the bazaar from the entrance, toward the many tents and shops set up all over and stacked on top of each other, there were crowds of visitors of all heights and build. A moment after seeing the plethora of bobbing heads and shoulders, Jason started to see different head shapes, different sorts of shoulders, spikes and points, occasional antennae, tails—there were all sorts of different species of humanoids! Jason laughed, drawing a curious look from Gliath, and thought about his inner observations. Humanoid was a term from DnD meaning some sort of intelligent bipedal creature of the approximate shape of people—arms, legs, head, and so on. There were far more diverse creatures here; most of them dressed in some sort of garments or armor and strapped with gear and weapons. Some items they carried more recognizable than others. In the dim pink air of the pyramid interior, many of the creatures were veiled in shadow, but whenever Jason passed by a spotlight or the equivalent of hanging fluorescent bulbs, he saw a variety of features, colors, and textures in the entities wandering around him that chilled him to the core and filled him with equal parts exhilaration and horror.

  "Oh my God!" Jason breathed, hurrying up to Riley’s side. "There are so many!"

  Riley looked back at him and smirked. He scratched his beard. "The Market is a trading hub for infinite universes, Jason. It’s best we focus on what we came here for. If you just ogle around, you might lose your fruking mind. There’s some really weird shet from other worlds, and these creatures around you are only the ones that you can actually perceive."

  Jason nodded, watching an eight-foot-tall entity with glowing blue eyes pass them. He could see the shape of its long, smooth head—kind of like the front of a slug—but everything from where its shoulders should be on down shimmered and hurt Jason’s eyes to look at. The glowing blue eyes seemed to burn into Jason’s brain as the thing passed him.

  "So where are we going?"

  He could hear the people and creatures talking and walking and making noises all around him. There was a cacophony of many conversations with a variety of different voices, but there were also bizarre sounds—some of which Jason didn't really understand. The man didn’t even realize when his mind had shifted from basically interpreting the drone of a human crowd to picking up on strange, slithering noises and frequencies that made his guts buzz and his joints feel numb. He suddenly heard a strange bleat nearby, and looked through some moving bodies on his right to something that ... shit—he couldn’t even figure what he was looking at. It was like the creature was a feeling in the roof of Jason’s mouth. It didn’t even make sense...

  "We're going to a merchant who’s a friend of mine," Riley replied. Some people suddenly parted around Riley and kept walking past Jason and Gliath in the opposite direction—actual humans, perhaps six or seven of them—and they glared and scowled at Jason as they passed. They wore strange clothes and armor that looked like black tire rubber, but they had normal features and skin of different colors. They each had two arms and legs, long hair and beards, and dangerous eyes.

  Jason recalled when he thought Riley looked dangerous, back when he spotted the soldier hanging out with Gliath’s human form in the movie theater the night before the Wilderlands.

  Need to be a hard case to deal with this crazy shit, Jason thought.

  The three Reality Rifters passed by many shops and stands. By now, Jason was starting to pick up odors again here and there—some of them completely weird and unknown. At one point, he smelled roasting meat and followed the scent with his nose and eyes to see a food stand of some sort mostly surrounded by other humans. There was a large sign lit up by white lights revealing a language of glyphs and symbols that Jason couldn’t read, but he did recognize the colorful painted pictures of burgers and hot dogs.

  "Burgers?" he asked, tapping Riley on the shoulder.

  The soldier paused and followed Jason’s attention with a steely gaze. "Yeah," Riley replied. "But don’t bother. Food that you and I would recognize would be really rare here, so it’s also really fruking expensive..."

  Oddly enough, Jason found himself missing his cane. It was true that he didn't need it—ever since his bad leg was healed from his time in the Wilderlands—but it had become something of a personal effect while out and about. Now, as Jason followed Riley through the strange interior of the massive black pyramid, he felt a little vulnerable without it.

  After walking for a while longer through the confusing streets of sand—Jason noticed that the sand under his feet was actually white under normal lighting; not pink—Riley clapped Jason’s shoulder with a smile and led the three of them to a large tent with canvass walls. Over the tied-off entrance flaps was a large sign that read: Baylor General Provisions.

  Riley stepped through the threshold ahead of Jason into a ramshackle store full of supplies that Jason mostly recognized. He saw a solid pegboard wall full of various firearms. Most of the guns resembled firearms from Earth, but many looked like they were out of various Sci-Fi movies. There were also racks of clothing and strange armored bodysuits a lot like Riley’s, and many tables and shelves full of odds and ends. It was like a messy Army Surplus store. There were also generators for sale, and Jason recognized a shelf full of those heavy cylinder batteries that Riley had hooked up to the portable gate back home. Jason suddenly smelled the odor of hot copper, and he noticed several large space heaters positioned around the interior, mostly in the corners. There were many other wares for sale as well, but Jason’s attention was suddenly taken by a human standing from a chair and table in a corner of the shop.

  "Riley! Gliath!" the man bellowed, grinning. His voice was gruff and he was dressed in multiple layers of warm clothes with a thick, red knit cap covering his head. Jason realized that the entire shop was lit up with hanging white lights, which revealed the normal colors that Jason was used to seeing on Earth. The man wrapped in jackets was pale, covered in stubble, and his thick eyebrows and what hair emerged from under his cap was carrot-top red.

  "Dave!" Riley replied with a warm smile, extending both arms for a hug as the two men approached each other across the sandy floor. They clapped each other on the back, both smiling broadly. "Good to see ya, man!"

  The man named Dave was the same height as Riley, but stouter and more muscular. His teeth were a little too yellow, and if Jason was seeing the correct colors in the white lights of the shop, it looked like he had icy blue eyes. Jason figured that all of the thick clothing was because of the chill of this world.

  "Word is you got zapped, Riley!" Dave said, holding the Reality Rifter out at arm’s length for a moment as he looked him over, then stepped back. He smiled at Gliath, who stood nearby looking around the shop with emotionless yellowish-green eyes and flicking his long, black tail. "Heya, Gliath! How’s it going, Krulax?" He looked at Jason and opened his grinning mouth to speak, then paused. "Hey ... uh ... Jason ... um ... what’s different here?"

  Riley clapped his friend on the arm. "I'm not dead, Dave. Almost dead, but Gliath and I made it." The soldier gestured for Jason to approach, who closed the distance with cautious steps. "Dave, this is Jason Leaper 934. He’s new."

  The mirth melted away from Dave's face, and the thick man gaped at Jason with clear shock in his blue eyes. "What...?!" he exclaimed. "A new Jason?!"

  Riley looked at Jason then pointed at his bundled merchant friend. "Jason, this is Dave Baylor, owner of this shop. He’s actually the only human with a permanent shop here at the Market. We used to be in the Guard together."

  "The um..." Jason started, extending a hand to shake, "The Guard? Like ... the army back on your world?"

  "Yeah, exactly," Riley replied, smirking at Dave. "We went through training together and were in the same company for a while until I was transitioned to special forces. Dave was a Reality Rifter for a while too until he decided to settle down here."

  Dave nodded, shaking Jason’s hand quickly with a firm grip, then clasped his arms together ov
er his chest. He looked cold. With all of the space heaters, Jason could feel that the air in the tent was milder than out in the market streets, but the redheaded merchant had to be pretty damned cold from being here all of the time...

  "Good to meet ya, Jason Leaper 934," Dave said gruffly, then looked back to Riley. "What happened to Jason 113?"

  Riley shared glances with Gliath then leaned against a shelf behind him, looking down to the sand at their feet. He looked back up to Dave then scratched his beard.

  "He ... ah ... we went to a bad world. Jason 113 was sort of ... transformed at a molecular level. In a bad way."

  "Transformed?!" Dave asked.

  "Transformed to death," Riley replied. "The air there was weird. Crystallized everything. His world was destroyed, too. It was bad."

  "Shet..." Dave muttered. "That’s rough, man." Then, he seemed to shake the shock off of his bundled shoulders and looked at Jason. "So how’d you meet this one?"

  "Jason 113 sent us to him before he died. This is Jason 934’s first time to the Market."

  "This place is crazy!" Jason said, finally speaking up. "How do you survive here, Dave?"

  Dave smiled, his thick face making his stubble stick out. "Oh ... I stay warm and I keep my own water supplies, trading with others. I keep a constant big supply of fuel for the generators, and trade for food. It’s definitely an interesting life." He looked back to Riley. "This one’s a lot younger than the last one." He turned back to Jason. "How old are you, 934?"

  "Uh ... thirty-three."

  "Older than me! I'll be damned!" Dave replied. Jason noticed that the man did look pretty haggard for being around Riley’s age—which he figured was late twenties—assuming that both soldiers were about the same age having gone through the military together. It must be rough living on a world like this. "Well you look twenty years or so younger than Jason 113, new guy."

  "That’s what I’ve been told," Jason replied.

  Dave extended a beefy hand and put it onto Jason’s shoulder. "Make sure to take your time and watch yourself. Planeswalking and monster hunting is dangerous work! I worked with Jason 113 for a while too with Riley and Gliath and there’s some horrific shet out there. If you rush in, well..." He glanced back over at Riley, and it was as if the wind was taken out of his sails. "Wimpy little humans like us are very delicate in the cosmic scale of things, ya know? Listen to Riley—he knows his shet."

  "Thanks."

  "We need some supplies," Riley said, his tone suddenly business. "The incident that killed Jason 113 took out the base too, and—"

  "Aw," Dave bellowed, shaking his head. "Damn shame..."

  "Yeah," Riley replied. "So we just have guns from universe 934 right now—aside from my blaster—and we need to outfit ourselves for a new job. We need some armor for the new Jason as well. We have a lot of infinity crystals."

  Dave was eager to help Riley and before long, the three of them were amassing a pile of stuff. Dave put aside several more of those batteries for the portable gate—what Riley called Fusion Cores—into a hard case for Gliath to carry. He also gave Riley several small metal items the size of a pack of gum that they referred to as blanks. Riley chose one of the rifles hanging on the wall for himself: a strange-looking high-tech gun of stout construction with what looked like a 20" barrel and two different magazines. He also grabbed a handful of extra mags that were full of thin, gleaming metal bolts. Riley also gave Gliath a four-foot-long heavy rifle with two long, metal panels running along an empty space where the barrel should have been, also loaded with two different kinds of magazines.

  "What are those?" Jason asked as Riley added slings and other unrecognizable accessories, then they slung the rifles over their backs. The soldier handed Gliath extra mags as well, which he promptly stashed into the various pouches on his armor.

  Riley smirked. "Didn’t I tell ya before? This is a Gauss rifle. And I bought Gliath a long-range railgun. He’s the sniper of our group."

  Sci-Fi guns, Jason thought, his eyes playing over Riley’s new weapon. He could see that it had a trigger and iron sights—or some equivalent at least—but the rest of the controls were alien to him. There were also dials and a small screen at the back of the receiver. The rifle seemed to have a lot of electronics built into it.

  "Just ... Gauss rifle and railgun?" Jason asked. "No specific names? Brands? Models?"

  Riley smirked. "There are several different categories of weapons like this across the omniverse, and many different worlds have their own versions. But this tech—the kind that us humans can understand and use anyway—generally follows the same patterns. There are slug guns like yours, and like that lever gun I bought. There are also guns that use magnets and electricity like these. There are energy weapons like this one." Riley patted his sidearm. "Right now, I’m more concerned with the quality and level of technology than what the guns' names are. There are a billion fruking names." He unslung the rifle and looked over the receiver and barrel. "This is a ... I don’t recognize the language. Looks like symbols." Riley looked over at Dave. "What world are these from?"

  Dave shrugged. "I bought ‘em from other planeswalkers. Don’t remember. They’re good weapons. Tested."

  "But if I can tell what kind of weapon it is," Riley said to Jason, "and the quality and caliber, then that's all I need. This here is a coil gun. I call it a Gauss rifle. It’s a weird caliber—looks like Tungsten bolts, or some sort of metal like it—but I have lots of ammo. And Gliath’s is a railgun; a nice quality one, too."

  "Cool..." Jason replied.

  "You want one too?" Riley said. "We might have enough for another..."

  "I dunno..." Jason replied, peering at the weird weapon. "It’s electricity-based?"

  "Electromagnets," Riley said. "It’s a lot like a rifle from your world, I guess, except you can tune the coils to different speeds and sequences for different reasons, and it uses a mag for slugs and another mag that’s more like a power source. I guess ... it might be a little complicated for you. Weapons like these are common on my world—I know how to calibrate them for different gravity and shet. But I’m sure you can figure it out, Jason."

  Jason thought back to his moderate collection of guns back home.

  "Maybe next time," he replied. "I probably have something at home that I can use for now." Learning how to use the OCS and how to calibrate and operate electro-magnetic weapons might be a bit too much to handle at once...

  Riley shrugged.

  They went on with Dave to look at various suits of armor he had on hand. After going over several different shirts and jumpsuits and suits of composite plates for a variety of body shapes (mostly human), they settled on what Riley called Merc armor, which was a full body-suit just like his. The suit that Dave and Riley decided upon for Jason was used, a bit weathered and scraped up here and there, but it was intact and looked like it would fit. Dave instructed the three of them to stop and see a visiting tailor named Athelos several stores down, who would be able to fit the thick, woven soft suit for Jason's body.

  "Oh yeah!" Riley exclaimed just before they settled up. "Dave, I've got two fruking wyvern's eggs. You think you might like to buy 'em? Can we trade with those? I reckon they're worth more together than all of this stuff..."

  Dave winced. "Eh ... I don't know about that, good buddy. Finding a buyer for wyvern eggs is pretty tough. I'll just take infinity crystals this time."

  "Will you keep an ear for a buyer?"

  "Sure."

  Riley paid his friend with many infinity crystals. The three Reality Rifters left, emerging from the tent into the dim, pink world of the Market inside the protective confines of the black pyramid. Jason followed Riley as he pushed through the sandy streets full of weird entities and other planeswalkers until they reached the stall where Dave had sent them to meet the tailor.

  The inside the tailor's tent was a lot like Dave’s, though dark and without any lights of any kind other than the dim, pink ambience coming in from the entrance. A strange
creature that was tall and wispy with a gentle face that Jason could swear was a bit translucent in the low light greeted them.

  "Athelos?" Riley offered.

  "Why, Riley Wyatt..." the creature replied, gliding over to them over the dark, sandy floor. Its voice was ... ethereal. That was best way that Jason could think of it; light and airy while powerful and penetrating at the same time. "It has been two years, Reality Rifter," the translucent entity said. "And Gliath Voidheart the Deathhand..." Jason watched in the shadowy tent as the creature’s thin head rose to regard the leopardwere that silently followed behind the two of them like a dark guardian. Then Athelos’s eyes—like gleaming stars far away in space—landed on Jason. "I see that your Jason Leaper has changed forms..."

  "I thought I remembered you," Riley said with a smirk. "We did a job for you—two years ago you say?—hunting minotaurs."

  "That is correct, Riley Wyatt," the strange creature replied like a long breath across silk. "In fact, I am offering bounties for minotaur hides again. That is why I am here."

  Riley grinned and jabbed Jason’s shoulder. "Really? You set a job at the Bounty Boards?"

  Minotaurs? Jason thought with a twist in his stomach.

  "Indeed..." Athelos replied, the word flowing around Jason like water. "Will you hunt minotaurs for me once more? I am in need of thirty hides..."

  "Well, that’s a lot," Riley said, scratching his beard. "But I bet we can fill a good bit of those. What do you think, Jason?" As Jason opened his mouth to reply, the soldier interrupted and continued. "Oh—this is a new Jason, Athelos," he said with none of the embedded emotion like when he told Dave about it. "Dave Baylor pointed us your way. We were hoping you could fit him with this used Merc armor."

  "Certainly..."

  They gave Athelos the armor and Jason patiently went along with the outlandish creature. He took in and tried not to think about all of the weirdness of being measuring him with appendages that felt like soft tentacles made of ribbons or silk rope in the dark tent. As Athelos felt along Jason’s body, arms, and legs, the man peered around the tent, hoping for his eyes to adjust a little better to the dim light. He saw all sorts of garments in the dark. Some he recognized as shirts and jackets, but a lot of the alien tailor's clothing and products were just plain bizarre...