Chapter 1

  Ben—the Minotaur of the Knossos Labyrinth—was bored. As always.

  He sat on the edge of an ornate circular fountain, tracing the cracks in the white marble with his thick finger. Water bubbled from the flower-like spout at its center, spilling into the basin in a steady stream. Once, he had found the sound enchanting. Now it was nothing but background noise.

  He looked up at the walls—already repaired after last night’s outburst. The holes he had smashed in frustration were gone, the cracks sealed. Even the thick vines he had ripped down had returned, their tendrils creeping back across the pale stone… as though nothing had happened.

  It was always the same. No matter how many times he bloodied his knuckles, broke his bones, or bashed his head against the walls—there was no escape. He’d been here so long he’d stopped counting the years. His hope of leaving was long dead, as were the memories of his old life. Now the daily act of destruction was a ritual—a release of frustration—rather than any sign of lingering hope.

  Ben was the guardian of this fountain—the monster at the end of the maze that surrounded it. Both it and he were locked away within a vast dome at the heart of the Labyrinth. He could not die here—unless slain—not even of boredom. Though he certainly wished he could.

  Once, this place had been designed as a test of strength and courage—a trial he had barely survived. He and his brothers-in-arms had slain the fearsome Minotaur who guarded the fountain, and he—being the last to stand—had drunk from its waters.

  He had gained the blessing he sought: eternal life and inhuman strength.

  But what none of the tales had warned—what no hero could have known—was that the blessing was not free. Nothing ever is. It came with a price.

  The cost—was Ben was himself.

  How it happened no longer mattered; those memories were as faded as his former life. What mattered now—the only thing keeping him alive—was the curse. It kept him here, forgotten and alone, bound to its commands.

  For when someone entered the Labyrinth, the walls themselves guided them toward the dome at its heart—led them directly to him.

  Company—perhaps even a companion to pass the years with—would have been a welcome change. But that wasn’t why fools entered the Labyrinth. They sought what he guarded, and it was his unfortunate duty to ensure they did not gain it.

  ***

  From the wall ahead, a familiar sound catches Ben’s attention. A sound he’s heard so many times that it no longer stirs a thrill—only a sigh of resentment slipping from his throat in weary acceptance of what comes next.

  The wall shifts to admit the next fool seeking the fountain’s blessing. Ben rises to his hooves, knowing the drill after countless repetitions. The first faint tug brushes his senses—a drifting pull at the nape of his neck—and within moments… his mind slides loose from his body.

  His consciousness—his very spirit, perhaps—peels away from his flesh and drifts, insubstantial, beside him.

  Helpless, he hovers in the air, a silent specter, a prisoner within his own punishment, while the body below moves without him.

  He watches as muscles tighten and flex, steam huffing from wide nostrils at the end of his chocolate-brown muzzle—the lighter patch at its tip the only hint of contrast in his hide.

  Large, sharp, overgrown hooves paw the stone, restless and eager. Huge, hide-covered hands with thick, powerful fingers curl into fists. His head lowers, red-dyed horns angling forward, ready to charge and gore.

  Every motion unfolds without his command, every physical sensation absent—as if the Labyrinth itself grips the strings of his body now, guiding him like a puppet.

  The wall parts, leaving a wide opening to the hall beyond—a mere suggestion of sunlight touching the marbled floor.

  The wall parts, leaving a wide opening to the hall beyond—true sunlight spilling across the marbled floor.

  This time it’s a small party: two men and a woman. All three wear leather armor. One carries a sword and shield, another a spear, and the woman lifts a staff crowned with a bound stone.

  They hesitate, glance around, but spot only the prize they seek and advance recklessly—heedless of the danger here.

  They barrel inside, weapons drawn but held loosely, rushing toward the fountain’s blessing without so much as a glance toward the eight-foot-tall beast of muscle, sinew, and horn glaring at them with eyes of liquid void.

  But Ben’s body knows this dance all too well. The moment they cross the chamber’s threshold—it charges. He can do nothing for them, only watch as his form hunts them, corners them… and butchers them.

  Its horns lead the charge, sweeping for a target. Fists slam into armor, collapsing the flesh beneath. Hard hooves lash out, sending bodies flying.

  The adventurers fight—they struggle. A sword slices deep into his side, a spearhead bites into his thigh. The woman screams as a light flares at the end of her staff, blinding in its brilliance… just before Ben’s body crushes her ribcage with a sharp kick from a hooved leg.

  And then it’s over—quickly, as it always is.

  They are no match. None ever are. Their pleas for mercy echo off the cold stone, but die quickly—unheard by anyone capable of granting it. The shifting walls drive them here—as they have countless others—yet once they cross the threshold, once their eyes find the fountain, their fates are sealed.

  When the battle concludes, the walls scrape and reform as though a passage were never there—sealing behind them any hope of escape.

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  Though Ben anticipates this part, even yearns for it, it is always the same. Each time he defends this place, he earns a moment—a brief respite from the blank walls of the dome, just before his spirit is dragged back into his cursed flesh.

  The ceiling above fades, granting him a fleeting glimpse of the world beyond—the world to which he once belonged… but can never return. He relishes the sight, though it comes at such a damnable price… and it is always too brief, always ending with the inevitable pull back into his body.

  From his disembodied vantage above, he sees a distant mountain crowned with storm clouds, its peak flashing with lightning. Thunder rolls through the charged air—sounds and sensations he dearly misses.

  He turns and beholds the city of Knossos pressed against the maze’s edge. Larger and much changed since he last walked its streets, yet still bright, still alive. And beyond it… the beautiful cerulean-blue Aegean Sea, glittering beneath the setting sun.

  Clouds blaze in hues of orange and purple, streaked with flares of brilliant yellow light. It’s a rare vision. But any glimpse of the world beyond this dome is a mercy. They keep him sane. Or at least as sane as a cursed soul can be in an endless prison of violence and death.

  But all too soon, the familiar tug comes once more—and his spirit sinks back into himself. He feels his hide, his horns, his hooves. He feels the wounds, the strain in his muscles… and the hollowness in his chest.

  He opens his eyes, already knowing what sights await him. The copper tang of blood hangs thick in the air—it coats his large nostrils, making every breath a reminder of the destruction he’s caused, and of what he yet has to do.

  He looks down. A lake of red pools across the smooth marble floor. The broken remains of the humans lie strewn around the room—bent weapons, torn armor, splintered bones—the aftermath of a pointless battle.

  He watched it unfold from above, saw every move, knew what awaited him… yet the scene—as always—churns his gut. With a low groan he accepts his fate, as he has countless times before, and surveys the wreckage.

  There… in the chest of the spearman, he sees the two marks: deep, gaping holes punched clean through the man’s ribs by his horns. There is always one—sometimes more. He always notices them. They are like a signature, the sure sign that this man faced the Minotaur… and lost.

  His gaze shifts to himself. His fur is matted with sticky crimson. His eyes travel upward to the sight he knows he’ll see, yet still forces himself to look. His horns drip with fresh blood, the creamy white keratin stained forever a deep red—marked by countless deaths upon them.

  Crimson rivulets trail down his face and into his mouth. The coppery tang is all too familiar—a taste he has grown used to over endless years, yet despises all the same. It twists his stomach, still makes him long to retch. He wants to vomit, but cannot; what little he digests has long since been burned away.

  Then, almost immediately, the compulsion seizes him. He learned long ago that resistance to this next part brings only agony—spasms wracking his body, fire tearing through his veins—until he yields and obeys.

  So he bends, seizes the first corpse by the ankles, and drags it away.

  The dome—his prison—never changes. It holds the front chamber, where the fountain waits—the place all who enter are meant to see. Yet it is not their final resting place. Behind it lies another chamber, and in that chamber a great pit, its walls tangled with vines that climb upward and stretch toward unseen places beyond. That is his destination now.

  He walks with the body trailing behind, leaving a dark red smear across the stone in its path.

  The pit gapes at the anterior chamber’s center, a wide hollow with a stairway cut into its side. He steps down, his hooves clacking with each descent, followed by the dull thump of the corpse bumping behind him—each impact punctuated by a wet crack as the head strikes stone.

  At the bottom, he swings the body around and hurls it onto the bare earth. It lands with a heavy thwomp against the soil.

  “Two more,” he sighs, turning back and ascending the stairs once more.

  When all three bodies are gathered in the pit, Ben exhales, nostrils flaring, shoulders sagging. Then he steps forward—up onto the corpses.

  The dance of destruction begins.

  Stomp: —Crunch-Crack-Squash—

  Stomp: —Crunch-Crack-Squash—

  He fixes his gaze upward, away from the ruin beneath him, to the painted dome above. A false heaven—blue sky smeared with crude white clouds. He stares at that lie while his hooves rise and fall, grinding flesh to pulp, until the soil itself rises to claim the mangled fragments—piece by piece.

  He knows he must do it. It is the only way to survive. Yet sorrow and shame hollow him with every stomp. This is the final act of the bargain—the deal bought with a single drink from the fountain, a price he had never known. Now the Labyrinth pulls his strings—not only when he kills, but when it forces him to stomp.

  —Crunch-Crack-Squash—

  At last, the final pieces sink into the loam, lost beneath the soil. The compulsion ebbs, leaving him trembling and empty.

  He climbs the stairs again, shoulders sagging, chest heaving. “Always more death—more fools who thought they could claim the fountain’s blessing. In the end, they all wind up as nothing more than compost for the pit. The Minotaur makes sure of that.”

  This cycle—this pattern of needless death—always ends the same way.

  The vine rewards him for his grim work. By morning, a single fruit will hang from a branch near the fountain—his only food. It had tasted sweet once, intoxicatingly so. Now it is nothing but bland, mushy flesh—simply the fruit of his labors.

  The pit is where the vines begin, the heart of the Labyrinth. The dead feed it. Their souls feed it. And through it, they feed him.

  But there is one last thing he needs to finish for himself—his one simple moment of reprieve.

  He trudges back to the fountain, steps over the rim… and collapses face-first into the water.

  Waves wash out and slap against marble, spilling across the floor. In their wake they cleanse the blood still staining the stone, washing away the physical remnants of what he’d just done.

  He stays there, submerged as much as the basin allows, smothering memory, smothering guilt. For a time, he does not scrub, does not rise. He simply holds his breath, his bull-like bulk too dense to float, while the water’s enchantment seeps into him.

  His wounds close—but that is not truly what he seeks. The water numbs him. It blurs his memory, softens the trauma, and forces his thoughts into a calming haze.

  It grants him the strength to endure another day.

  When his lungs burn, he slowly rises back to the surface, dragging in a heavy breath. The blood from his hide clouds the basin pink, but the discoloration vanishes swiftly through the grate below, leaving the water pristine once more.

  Finally, the cycle is complete.

  At least until he seeks the fruit’s nourishment tomorrow. And when the walls shift again, the cycle will begin anew.

  ***

  Days pass. Maybe weeks. Perhaps years. Time melts together in the isolation beneath the fake sky of the dome.

  Another day. More boredom. More loneliness.

  The thoughts echo endlessly through his mind, broken only by the rarest of interruptions. This is his life. His duty. His curse.

  He is forced to remain—doing nothing, doing the same thing, day after day—until, perhaps, someone finally defeats him… and grants him the chance to die.

  A memory stirs then, thin as a spider’s web: the quiet “thank you” murmured ages ago by the Minotaur before him—spoken as the creature knelt dying before Ben and finally found his release, words that carry far greater meaning now that Ben understands the curse’s true price.

  “Perhaps someday, someone will free me from this curse as well. Grant me the freedom of death,” he mutters, tracing the same groove in the fountain’s marble. The stone is worn smooth, depressed from countless passes of his thick finger.