“So, he was named after a god?” I asked, curious about it.
“Well, Atlas was a god who was punished by Zeus and made to bear the weight of the heavens. It was a brutal punishment, but also a symbol of immense strength. Of endurance, and unbreakable will.”
“You weren’t wrong then, it is fitting.”
“No, I wasn’t. They named him Atlas to invoke those qualities, hoping their son would inherit not just power but fortitude and resilience. They saw the name as a blessing, a source of strength really, to bear heavy burdens,” Aster explained.
“And a kingdom is definitely a heavy burden to bear,” I said, more to myself, but Aster hummed in agreement.
We continued to make our way across the wasteland. The incline we had climbed was now a descent once again. The sun had risen bright, illuminating the ground below, giving us lighter shades of grey and deeper shadows. I could see a dark line running across the land in the not-so-far distance. Still, I couldn’t tell what it was from here, just that it seemed to be solid and very dark. There was something about it that made my stomach knot further.
“I guess with the kingdom being Atlas’s number one priority, he won’t be… erm looking for… someone to… you know…” I let this sentence trail off, knowing I wasn’t exactly playing it cool here by asking questions.
He raised a skeptical brow.
“To…?” he pressed with a roll of his hand.
“Oh, come on, you know what I’m asking here.”
“You want to know if Atlas would ever think about having a future with you?” he guessed, which, let’s face it, wasn’t hard.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.”
“And here was me thinking you were smart,” he teased, ruffling my hair, making me grumble up at him. But before I could grumble out a snarky comeback, he dipped his head lower and put me out of my misery.
“Are you kidding? He will Abso-freaking-lutely be considering a future with you.”
I sucked in a quick breath before the confidence in his words made me smile, knowing that Tiffany had definitely rubbed off on him.
“You sound sure.”
“I am. And you, my dear, would be a fool to think otherwise,” he said, cocking his head at me.
“How can you be so certain?” I asked. The butterflies in my stomach coming out to play from the certainty in his words.
“Trust me. I know my friend. Atlas doesn’t give up on what he wants. He never has. And what he wants more than anything right now isyou.”
I wanted to ask more, but the dark line I had noticed earlier was unexpectedly nearly upon us. As if it had been moving toward us to close the gap. It was something that, from far away, had looked like a chasm, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. It took over the landscape, stretching in both directions as far as I could see. But as we continued toward it, it kept stretching up, so far up that it blocked the sun, casting us into shadows. Until finally, the wall was upon us.
I couldn’t even see the top. It was an endless wall of charred rock, and I could smell the burnt earth as if it had pushed through the Earth straight from the depths of Hell.
It was very clear there was no way through. There was also no chance of getting over it. I walked back a few steps to look at the reach of this thing… yep, there was no way around it either.
“What do we do now?” I asked Aster, worried about how quiet he had become. As I waited for his answer, I pressed my hand to the wall.
It was hot, but not enough to burn me, and something soft pulsed against my palm like a heartbeat.
When he didn’t answer, I looked back. His gaze drifted past me, like he was following something, and I turned, trying to see what he was looking at. Something in the wall shimmered, and for a split second, it made the wall look like blackened glass.
“We follow that,” he said, pointing to the shimmer. I nodded, not knowing what to say, just allowing myself to trust his instincts. We followed it a short way as it rippled across the stone's surface, and then it stopped abruptly.
I looked at Aster questioningly, but his eyes remained entirely focused on the last place the wall shimmered. And then an all-mighty crack shattered the silence. I ducked, holding my hands to my ears as I spun back around to face the wall once more. I watched in awe as it split like a jagged wound. It didn’t rupture all the way up, perhaps ten feet or so, before it formed into a sharp archway. The sound echoed across the wastelands before the rock stopped cracking, and we were engulfed in silence once more.
“What… what is this place?”I whispered, like we had stumbled upon holy ground. Which was when Aster turned to face me and uttered its name, telling me that the stories were true.
The myth surrounding the Minotaur was real, and this right here was his…
Labyrinth.
