“It might not be there… but I was young and rebellious once…”
“That hasn’t changed,” Aunt Strava muttered with a laugh.
“We were always told to stay away from the Badlands, but Atlas and I decided one day that we wanted to explore them. We wanted to understand why the land next to Theïkós had been given that name.”
Aunt Strava shook her head, her mouth gaping. “Oh boy, tell me you didn’t?”
“We did,” Aster admitted, rising to his feet and crossing his arms. “We entered the Badlands and found his home, his fortress. We trespassed, making our way through his palace until we found it.”
“Found what?” Stava and I asked at the same time.
“A corridor full of treasures and other prized possessions, one that bore a resemblance to the Weaver’s torch from the stories told to me as a boy,” Aster answered. “Atlas dared me to take something. So, I put my Axe down, ready to pick it up. But as I touched it, an almighty roar echoed through the entire castle. I swear the walls shook. We ran! And I left my axe too…my father’s axe.”His jaw tensed at the memory as he looked ashamed.
“Ah, so that is how you lost it.”
He released a sigh and nodded before continuing. “We ran across the Badlands toward the safety of Theïkós, but just before we made it across, we looked back at those chasing us and realized that the stories were true.”
“Why, what did you see?”I whispered, wholly invested in the story.
“We both saw the fabled…”
“Gorgon King.”
We left the cavern at dawn, and not long later, I began to feel the coolness and the touch of a gentle wind. Soon, the brightness of the sun pushed its way through small gaps in the wall of the Labyrinth in front of us. The Labyrinth had remained quiet, allowing us safe passage up to this point, as if it knew we were leaving. We stepped toward the wall in front of us, and the shimmer that had come from Aster and Stava’s touch returned. It reacted to their presence, as if comforted by it. The wall soon began wrapping in on itself, forming an arch, and I lifted a hand to protect my eyes from the glare of the sun.
“I will leave you here,” Aunt Stava said. “I hope, for the sake of Theïkós, you are successful in retrieving the Weaver’s torch.”
“I will do whatever it takes,” Aster said, bowing his head. I nodded and was quick to correct him.
“Wewill do whatever it takes,” I corrected.
Aunt Stava inclined her head slowly at me in a show of respect before she looked back to her nephew. Someone I knew meant a great deal to her, which had been easy to see even in the small time I had spent around them both.
She then closed her eyes and let out a big sigh before looking at us once again, her lips thinned in a tight line.
“Be careful, little bull… Alexandra.”
She took a step back, and we watched as the wall closed up in front of her, leaving us both alone, finally outside of the Labyrinth’s living walls. I looked at Aster as he began to change to human form in front of me, and I was thankful that the armor around his waist, though a little looser, managed to hang on to his hips.
“Should have brought some extra clothes,” I said, grimacing. “I bet you’re freezing.”
“We run hotter than most myths, so the cold rarely affects me. Besides, I have a feeling I will be back to being a Minotaur again before long.”
He turned away from the Labyrinth, and I followed suit. The view was nothing special, just the same as before. Black soil, dead grass, and silence. A vast, eerie silence made the back of my neck prickle. It wasn’t the peaceful kind of quiet. It was foreboding, and it sent a shiver right through me. As a nature lover, the scene before me was painful to witness, and it wasn’t even my world. Because it was as though I could see how it once was. Its rolling green hills and its thick forests ripe with life and beauty.
Aster led the way, walking over the now barren fields, through rocky canyons and across dried-up rivers. He was silent, but I was glad of it, my mind too busy for any conversation as I thought about what Aster had said about the Gorgon King. About how Atlas and Aster had run from him. I couldn’t imagine either of them running from anything, though they were younger then, just causing mischief. But the fear that Aster had shown unnerved me to the point that I had little sleep last night. Though sleeping on the bare ground with nothing but the fur blanket to comfort me hadn’t exactly helped.
I didn’t know how long we walked, but it was most of the day, at least, with the sun getting lower and lower with each step. As we finished the excruciating ascent of a hill, I was about to askhow much further to the Badlands when I took in the view. My question turning into a gasp.
The Badlands did not look the way I had expected them to.
I slowed without realizing it, my breath catching as the land opened out before us. Because honestly, I had been bracing myself for another stretch of ruin. Another scarred wasteland like the one we had just crossed, only older and more natural, shaped by time instead of darkness. I had expected dead ground and broken stone, something harsh and inhospitable that earned its name through desolation alone.
Instead, I found myself staring at life.
An Oasis.
Acres of deep green forest spilled across the valley below, thick canopies rolling like waves between jagged mountain ridges. Their peaks, sharp and ancient yet crowned with moss and climbing vines rather than bare stone. Rivers threaded through the land like veins of silver, catching the light as they cut through shadowed ravines and disappeared beneath the trees. Mist clung low to the forest floor, curling around trunks and roots, giving the whole place an otherworldly softness that made my chest ache.
