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 femaleisa 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 theyhadwronged 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.
Horseshitblood 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.
