That smell.Calavia’s smell was unusual. The female smelled like everything else that lingered too long in the labyrinth, she smelled like him, his brothers, and all that he had come to know, but there was something else, something very human about her scent, and it wasn’t the citric aroma that often accompanied magic-users. Astegur couldn’t place it.She’s not human.
If she was, he would know. His brothers would know. She would already belong to them.
If they knew there was a lone female so close to their lands, there would have been nothing stopping them from claiming her first. She would have been a gift from the God queen, the very moon itself, and she would be heavily pregnant with child.
The idea momentarily stopped him, but he shook his head and sliced the mist with his horns. The Bathyr had made a pact. After they left their tribe, they vowed to stake out a place near the labyrinth wall and procure pure human brides. The human blood had all but been bred out of the minotaurs they left behind in the deadlands, weakening them so vastly that their minds had twisted. They had blamed Amia, his mother, for their weakness, but it was their own inability to remain strong that ruined them.
He swiped at his nose as he ducked into the dwelling he had claimed as his own. There was nothing left but stone and several rotted pieces of wood. There wasn’t even a roof over his head, but it was as far from the hag as he could get. It was where he kept his satchels.
Astegur growled; the female’s scent continued to plague him. He knelt to pick through his pack. He removed the last of his rations and quickly ate them, not bothering to heat them up first to make a proper meal. He would need to forage food on the morrow.
His hands still ached to slam his weapon over and over into a wall, or better yet, a willing opponent. Calavia’s face would not fall from his skull.
My help for freedom.The very idea of bending to someone’s will disgusted him.
He settled his right hand over his weapon’s hilt and shook.
Kill centaurs for release.Killing the horsebeasts did not bother him although his kind and centaurs had never truly warred. They had the same outlook on the world. Their histories aligned in a similar way. Their differences were not because they were either horses or bulls, but their inherent need for companionship. Centaurs, when they attacked, were greatest in groups, their tribes were built to accompany such a notion, nearly everything was shared in some way. Food. Mates. The upbringing of young. Whereas minotaurs—although they tribalized—were nomadic loners. They did not share mates nor young. Food being the only exception.
But if what the hag said was true, the centaurs were only gathering in her lands because of his brother. Vedikus was not one to care nor rely on others, not even his own blood. Astegur found himself believing all that Calavia had told him, and his anger festered. Once Prayer fell, there was nothing stopping the centaur legion to the south from infiltrating the Bathyr’s borders and threatening their domain.
It didn’t matter if the centaurs could not climb the rocky slopes. If the horde established itself in the wetlands, it would make traveling and conquering the land that much harder. The swamps between the labyrinth wall and the barrier lands, the mountains west, and the ocean and waterways south, to the forests north, could not be taken easily if they were already occupied by another tribe.
Vedikus…what have you done?
Astegur squeezed his axe’s shaft harder. Prayer just happened to be in the wrong spot.
She will regret the day she placed a spell over me.His eyes glazed over as he thought about what he would do to the hag the moment he broke free. He saw his hands grasping her dark hair, yanking it away from her pale face, and her eyes widening involuntarily. A small gasp would escape her lips. All of her wax, all of her source, would drown in the water of the swamp, where it would be forever ruined and far from her grasp.
He’d tighten his hold upon her, and leave his mark forever on her moonkissed flesh. He’d pull her close as he leaned in so she’d see nothing else but him as he struck her down… He wanted to own her last glance, her last burst of emotion, her final expression when it happened. She owed him that.
But in his skull, he saw himself pressing his nose to her neck and breathing in her scent. Instead of bringing the female to her knees and making her a slave to his will, he pictured her eyes closing shut, and the strange smell of her drifting into him.
Filling him up, gripping his loins, hardening him only to make him burst.
Water splashed his face, breaking the trance. Astegur looked up at the sky, feeling his body loosen up from the riotous tension intent on sending him beyond control. Small silver drops of rain fell over his brow and cheeks, down his neck and over his chest, washing his wayward thoughts away. He stood up on his hooves and kicked his bags into the corner where there was a small amount of shelter and let the sky water cleanse him.
The hag’s scent went with it.
He did not know how long he stood there, letting the rain drench his body, but it wasn’t until he was fully soaked, straight down to the fur on his legs, that thunder filled his ears. He turned from the bruising sky to look out over the marsh and the green orbs of light throughout.
Something’s out there.His eyes narrowed as he scanned the landscape.
He moved toward the edge of his dwelling to get a better look, blinking the water from his eyelashes. In the distance, stood a lone woman, the same one he had seen after killing the centaurs. Her dress was plastered to her frail body, but he could not make out her features. He innately knew she was the same female thrall the hag claimed him from.
Lightning flashed, lighting her up for a brief moment, and his gaze filled with blood. Ruby red blood that drenched her sodden dress all the way down past the reeds she stood within. When the lightning ended, he blinked and she was no longer there.
Astegur stared out into the rain and mist, searching, but the thrall was gone, and for the first time since he was a calf at his mother’s side, an unease with the world filled his gut. He turned away with an annoyed grunt and moved to where his bags lay and sat beside them, leaning against the frigid stone.
The reason I smell human blood is because of Vedikus and his human prize. They were here not that long ago.He convinced himself that was it, and that any thoughts of possessing one such as the hag was an effect from his healing and weakened state. It was with thoughts of her in his head, and the pounding thunder in his ears, that he closed his eyes.
He awoke the next morning to find the storm gone from the skies and the splash of slow footfalls as the thralls began their day. Astegur rubbed his face and checked that his satchels and weapons were still beside him. The rain had washed away the remaining blood and mud upon his skin and he relished the simple pleasure of being clean, even if his wounds itched and pulled his flesh taut with scabs.
His ears pricked with the sound of a voice.
“Nethis, gather the wood that has been displaced by the storm.”
Astegur rose quietly to his hooves and found Calavia several huts away speaking to a thrall that must have once been a boy.
