The Minotaurs of Maze World

by Eddie Patin

  "Are you kidding?!"

  "It’s the only way! Let’s—"

  Gliath fired again and his railgun’s round split the air with a boom, making Jason jump. All three Reality Rifters scrambled back toward the enemy for an insane moment, then down the edge of the sandstone cliff the same way they'd climbed up—with difficulty. Jason ran with his shoulders hunched, carrying his Rigby, and thought that he spotted two bugs in the distance; shadows on the ridgeline.

  "How far are they?" Jason shouted over the snapping and buzzing rounds flying through the air. One railgun round caused an explosion of sand on the ridge next to them and whined madly as the slug ricocheted off into who knows where.

  "About a hundred and fifty yards," Riley replied. "Come on, Jason—and watch your step! Get your rifle on your back. You wearing gloves now?"

  "Yes!" Jason slung the rifle around to his back then started descending the sandstone wall, trying to keep steady while his hands and legs wanted to tremble.

  Riley shoved Jason on then followed, climbing down the ridge. Jason kept his eyes down, looking for places where he could put his feet. He moved as quickly as he dared, holding on to his sandy handholds for dear life as—

  There was another quick buzz, then a meaty smack, followed by a deep, bestial roar from up above. Jason realized that it was Gliath—the leopardwere was hit! Riley—just behind Jason and descending fast—looked up with terror on his face and gasped.

  Jason looked up at the top of the wall just in time to see a smattering of blood flying through the air. Gliath—a big, black shape—toppled over the edge of the cliff...

  "Shet!" Riley cried, and both Jason and the soldier watched helplessly as Gliath plummeted past them and fell a dozen feet down to where a rounded ledge protruded from the sandstone wall. The leopardwere hit the ledge, immediately scrambled to catch himself, and Jason saw the claws on one mighty, black hand dig into the wall as the Krulax continued sliding down to the canyon floor. Gliath grunted and growled and tumbled down another eroded section of wall, before finally catching himself on a flat ridge.

  "Gliath!" Jason called.

  "Go on!" Riley shouted. "Move it! Let’s get down!"

  Jason struggled to descend the wall as rapidly as he could. At one point, Riley passed him, leaping down from ten feet above a ridge, catching himself with ease and grace as Jason still carefully navigated erosion holes. Looking away from his handholds and footholds for an instant, Jason stared down at Gliath and watched in astonishment as the leopardwere—on his hands and knees on a flat ledge—suddenly shrunk down. The sleek black fur all over receded into tan skin and his body shrank smaller and smaller until the leopardwere was suddenly a man again.

  Hurrying, Jason focused on the climb down again until he found himself catching up behind Riley, who was helping human Gliath back to his feet. Once again, the leopardwere was in the form of a Native American man with smooth, dark skin, a severe and angular face, and long, raven-black hair. The Krulax's armor harness had shifted along with his changing form, so still fit fine, but the railgun looked a hell of a lot bigger in Gliath's hands now.

  "Are you okay?" Jason blurted.

  Jason could see a bleeding wound in Gliath’s left shoulder and a violent scuff-mark in the damaged armor there. Dark blood ran down the tight skin of Gliath's wiry and muscled arm. The leopardwere and Riley exchanged glances and the soldier clasped the Krulax’s good arm.

  "Can you shift back again?" Riley asked.

  Gliath nodded then stood straight, seemed to focus inward, then grew back to his seven-foot-tall height again as if taking a deep breath. His body stretched and changed form in a way that blew Jason’s mind: the joints of his legs shifting structure entirely into the legs of a beast, shoulders broadening, thick, sleek black fur bristling out from the tan skin and coating his entire body once more. Gliath’s neck thickened, elongated, and his skull changed shape as quickly as water running out of a pitcher into the panther-like head again. The long, straight black hair pulled into Gliath's skull until it was more of a short mane once more. The ears and other features changed position and transformed into something entirely feline. Gliath suddenly had a long, black tail again.

  Amazing!

  When Gliath opened his eyes, they were pale under the yellow sky and completely cat-like once again.

  Then there was another crack and buzz of a round flying by. A sandstone rock near the trio exploded.

  "Let’s go!" Riley exclaimed and led the way.

  The Reality Rifters all hauled ass down the ridge back to the canyon floor then ran. Jason heard the low buzzing of some Nothrix wings at one point but kept his head down and decided not to look back.

  "How many did you kill?" Jason asked as they hustled down the canyon corridor. He felt his boots hitting the sand and gravel again and again. He used the weight of his rifle to swing back and forth, helping him run. Jason's backpack bounced up and down on his back—the water inside its bladder sloshing around—and it wasn’t long before his lungs were burning.

  "Three!" Riley shouted back. "Come on—we have to take a few turns before we stop. Keep an eye out for minotaurs!"

  "Oh shit..." Jason replied, running with the pounding of his heart, trying to control his breathing. There was another crack, but no sand exploded nearby.

  Without asking any more questions, Jason kept his head down and followed Riley, who was ridiculously fleet of foot and led them through the canyon, close to the wall, darting around pink oak scrubs and letting the trees stay at their backs whenever possible. Jason prayed that he wouldn’t collapse. His legs were burning now, and his vision was pulsating at the edges with his heartbeat—made even weirder and more disorienting by the alien, yellow sky.

  Jason imagined accidentally plunging into a giant slime and a cold fear boiled up deep inside him. He only looked back once, and it was just to make sure that Gliath was still behind him.

  He was, running with ease like a giant shadow.

  Riley led the three of them down a corridor that opened to the right, then another that opened left. A hundred yards or so later, the soldier finally slowed down to a walking pace. Looking up to the ridges around them with narrowed eyes, Riley peered around for danger as if he hadn’t already been running for half a mile.

  "Oh God!" Jason cried, slowing down but immediately putting his hands on his knees and gasping for air. His backpack shifted around behind him, making him feel like he was about to fall over at any moment. "Holy shit!"

  "Fruking Ghrag," Riley muttered, stopping and turning to wait. "What’s the matter, Jason? Can’t run?"

  "They were trying to kill us too?!"

  "No shet," the soldier replied. "They killed Rush and Tommy and stole their hides most likely. Then they tried to do the same to us."

  "God damn it..." Jason muttered, his heart pounding in his ears. He took a long drink of water from his bite valve. Then he turned back and looked at the leopardwere. "You okay, Gliath? You got shot!"

  Gliath was fully in his hybrid, 'warrior' form again, and with his sleek, black fur pitch-dark under the yellow sky, Jason couldn’t see the gunshot wound at all. He could still see the damage to Gliath’s armor.

  "I am okay, Jason Leaper 934," Gliath rumbled, also not at all out of breath.

  Shit.

  Now that Jason’s knee was healed from his time in the Wilderlands, he’d really have to get into better shape if he wanted to keep doing this...

  "He’s okay," Riley said, walking up behind Jason and clapping the leopardwere on the shoulder. Riley pulled the magazine out of his Gauss rifle after another quick look around then swapped it for the one on his belt. "Gliath can regenerate. He does it all the time, but can do it fast if he shifts forms. He’ll just need to eat a lot more meat when we get back."

  "We should go back," Jason said, his heartbeat and breathing finally stabilizing.

  "What?!" Riley replied, cocking an eyebrow.

  "We should go home and regroup."

  "What for
?" Riley asked. "Gliath could use a meal, sure, but we’re otherwise no worse for wear, Jason. We just need to get ahead of—"

  "But the Nothrix Reapers!" Jason stammered. "They tried to kill us!"

  "Yeah," Riley replied, scratching his beard. "They’re gonna try to kill us now. Frukers. All the more reason to keep going. If we go back, we won’t be able to rift back here without appearing right next to their fruking camp."

  It was a good point.

  Jason wanted to argue. He wanted to flee—this felt too crazy. They needed some distance. Some time to think. But there was something in Riley’s logic there that made sense.

  "Ugh!" Jason walked on for a while then stopped and turned back. "We already have the three hides, and now a fourth one waiting back home. We could just cut our losses and stop now. Four hides is good! I could use some more time to practice, and—"

  "No," Riley said, crossing his arms. "I’m serious about bringing Skinner ten hides. We’ve got to do it. Just because the bugs are after us now isn’t a good reason to run away. Besides—they can’t aim for shet. If we’re careful, we can kill 'em all, and keep hunting! I’ve got to bring in six more. We can do it!"

  "Why?!" Jason shouted. "Why do you care so much, Riley?"

  Riley narrowed his eyes. "Look. You’re new to all this, Jason. We lost a lot of status with the Bounty Boards when Jason 113 fruked up on universe 1240. You don’t understand. We’ve gotta get back to the way things were before! I need to bring Skinner those ten hides. It’s not that hard. Monster hunting is the hard part. Danger is part of the game, man."

  "Nothrix!" Gliath bellowed suddenly, turning to one side and raising his railgun to his armored shoulder. The leopardwere aimed and fired. The rifle thumped as its moving parts jolted to life and the air split with a deafening boom as the hypersonic round pierced the sky.

  "Shet!" Riley exclaimed, turning and aiming his Gauss rifle. "Let’s keep going!"

  Jason looked just in time to see one of the bugs suddenly on the ridge burst—only the silhouette of it—exploding in a mist of tissue and chunks of flesh as Gliath’s round hit home. He could hear the low buzzing of their faraway wings over the ringing in his ears.

  "They can fly after us!" Jason exclaimed.

  The three reality Rifters ran on, following the canyon until they could take a turn to the right again. More cracks split the air and rounds buzzed angrily past them, kicking up sand and shattering eroded sandstone boulders. Once they turned the corner, Jason stumbled as Riley shoved him roughly against the sandstone wall. The branches of a scrub oak scratched at his armor and face.

  "What the fuck?!"

  "Get down!" Riley said. "You’re our way back home!"

  As Jason tucked into the crevice of the ridge wall, Gliath took a position near him—behind a fallen sandstone boulder with the big railgun at his shoulder—peering through a scope that looked a lot like one from Earth. A Nothrix railgun round suddenly smacked the canyon wall above Jason’s head, sending a shower of sand down onto him.

  Then the leopardwere was hit again.

  Gliath grunted deeply with surprise as a round tore through his chest, sending a gout of dark blood spraying onto the sand behind him. Gliath staggered, shocked, and dropped the front end of his railgun. The weapon clattered when its muzzle collided with the canyon floor.

  "Gliath! Shit—Riley! Gliath’s hit again!"

  Riley appeared from somewhere around the corner, firing off several bursts from his Gauss rifle—the sonic cracks were different than those of the Nothrix rounds—then turned to throw a quick glance back at Gliath. The Krulax was flagging, down on one knee, trying to raise the railgun again...

  "Fall back, buddy!" Riley cried. "Jason, open—"

  Then Riley paused with a gasp as a railgun round from the Nothrix punched through his midsection...

  Chapter 20

  Riley felt the awkward and jolting sense of a slug round fluttering through his abdomen like a ghost and smashing into the sand behind him.

  Fruk!

  That round had his name on it. He felt it pass painlessly through his belly. It would have nicked his spine then punched out of his back, tearing flesh, armor and part of his jacket, pieces of his guts, and probably one kidney along with it. But instead, the metal railgun slug shuddered through his form harmlessly as he shifted out of phase.

  It wasn’t the first time. Riley knew—knowing full well the extreme risks of planeswalking and exploring where men were never meant to tread—that it wouldn’t be the last time.

  His phase belt saved his ass, and he knew it.

  His cybernetic vision HUD was going crazy showing Jason hiding on his left in a tree, Gliath wounded on the ground behind him, and two more bugs up on the ridge only fifty yards away. Little red triangles danced around his vision, superimposed over their centers of mass even as the bugs dodged back and forth from the edges of the walls with their railguns in and out of range.

  Gliath was hurt bad. Riley knew it.

  His leopardwere pal must have used a lot of energy the last time he was shot—shifting back and forth to heal the wound channel and whatever damage he took in that fall off of the cliff. Railguns did a hell of a lot of damage from hydrostatic shock, too. There was no way that Gliath could regenerate fast enough now to get away from those Nothrix frukers on foot...

  They had to go.

  Jason was staring at Riley as if he was a ghost.

  The soldier shouted again and repeated himself, aiming his Gauss rifle up at his would-be shooter to make sure that he wouldn’t be interrupted again.

  "Jason, open a rift! We’ve got to go!"

  "Riley, are you okay?!"

  "Open a rift now, Jason!"

  Two bugs appeared at the edge of the wall. Riley’s bionic processor made targeting with iron sights a breeze—he didn’t need optics—so he snapped up his Gauss rifle onto target within an instant and fired off a three-round burst that splattered the nearest bug's gross head. It was as if he'd shot a cantaloupe; a cantaloupe full of goop.

  The other bug aimed its railgun down at them and fired. With Riley’s enhanced vision and cybernetic reflexes, he saw the round part the air with a ripple—streaking toward him like a bolt of inevitability—then the crack of the round breaking the sound barrier split the air.

  It was a good thing that the bugs couldn’t aim for shet...

  Riley dodged to the side as the round crashed into the sand near him, spraying the soldier with gravel and chunks of sandstone, kicking up tufts of desert grass. As Riley moved quickly to one side, he leveled his sights on the Nothrix sniper—who was still recovering from its shot—and he put three hypersonic rounds into its chest. The creature’s flabby torso erupted into a violent spray of insectoid gore. One chiton-armored arm flew off at the shoulder.

  The soldier’s HUD started picking up new targets approaching and as Riley focused his hearing, he detected the low buzz of the bastards’ fleshy wings.

  More were coming, but they weren’t in sight yet.

  Riley ran back to Gliath and helped lift his friend off of the ground. The leopardwere dragged his rifle, sagging and lolling his great, feline head. Blood poured from a chest wound. The soldier felt a hard pang of fear, then sadness. He envisioned Gliath dying right there in the sand...

  Slinging his Gauss rifle around his back, Riley half-dragged Gliath toward the sandstone wall where Jason was working with his OCS, eyes wide and lips pressed tightly together.

  "Almost there!" Jason exclaimed. "I just—I’m trying to go too fast! I keep fucking it up!"

  "Take your time then!" Riley snapped then looked at Gliath, whose eyes rolled. "Shet, buddy. You can regenerate that, can’t ya? I dunno—it looks bad..."

  "I need ... time," Gliath said in his deep voice. The leopardwere choked then hacked up a splatter of blood. "I heal ... even now ... but I need time."

  "What about my potion?" Riley asked, throwing one hand down to rest on his emergency pouch.

  Shet. This whole d
amned mission was going bad. They were fruking everything up! Riley didn’t want to lead—he just wanted everything to be back to normal! If Jason 113 was here, they would have never run into any of these problems. Jason 113 would have led them with sound tactics that minimized the danger. The Nothrix would have never gotten the drop on them. Gliath wouldn’t be dying now...

  The soldier felt a cold stone in his chest crushing his heart...

  "No, Ranaja," Gliath said, staring at him. His Krulax friend’s eyes were strangely pale and ghostly under the yellow sky. The colors of the atmosphere made them look whiter. "I just need time. We must rift back to base."

  "I’ve got it!" Jason called, just as there was a loud snap. For a second, Riley thought that the Nothrix were shooting at them again, but then a brilliant orange light lit up the side of the canyon where they were hiding behind some scraggly trees.

  "Riley Wyatt!" a nasty, shrill voice shouted from high and around the corner. "Riley nasty, soft human! Human shit-scum! You surrounded!"

  "It’s Ghrag!" Jason exclaimed, lowering the OCS at his side. He looked at Riley for an instant, his face and blue eyes lit up by the blazing, swirling form of the rift. Oranges sparks flew and sputtered all over in the sand. "Ready? Let's go!"

  Riley looked in the direction of the Nothrix bastard's voice. His HUD filled out, picking up lifeforms and marking them as enemies. Through the corner of the sandstone wall, he could see five forms as red triangles bobbing around between fifty and a hundred yards away, hidden through solid stone.

  "Fruk off, Ghrag!" Riley shouted, then laughed like a maniac.

  "Stupid shit-human!" the bug shouted back, clicking loudly. "Give us your hides! Give hides, or we kill you all! Your bodyguard dead, yes? We kill you if you do not ack ack ack give us hides!"

  "We sold them, you dumb shet!" Riley hollered. "And now we’re gonna sell some more, then I’ll be back for you, you stupid fruking bug!"