And I return with another chapter of this as well. Now that play rehearsal is over, I can get back to what I'm supposed to be doing: catering to your every whim, readers. So we get to the first of the myths this time, the story of Theseus and the Minotaur.
Last Time: We met Quatre, Oracle of Delphi in training. He's a bit of a livewire, and he likes to piss off the five high priests. But what's going to happen now that the old oracle's bit the dust?
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The first hero came not more than two weeks after Pythia had been cremated and Quatre had officially been named Oracle of Delphi in a ceremony with much wine and sacrifice. His first order of business as official sibyl, though, was moving the tripod forward enough that he would not breathe the noxious fumes that spilled from the crack below it. Pythia had warned him of these vapors, that they would ruin his god-given talents, and thus slid the chair forward. And in the two weeks of downtime, Quatre had really learned to hone his powers; training like no man had done before him. The high priests wondered if he'd been possessed.
"I've never seen Quatre more dedicated to his work," Galenus remarked.
"That's because he's scared out of his sandals that he'll mess up and be hero chow," Oryxis replied, watching their young pupil meditate.
And in that span of time he learned that Apollo's words did indeed flow easier when he focused more, putting all of his soul into hearing the command of the gods and bending his visions to his will.
"Make way! Make way! I, Theseus, son of Aegeus, have come to see the Oracle of Delphi! Get out of my way!" a bold voice bellowed as the sound of heavy footsteps echoed through the temple. Quatre was lounging on the tripod that day, idly scribbling things on a wax tablet on his lap. He perked up when he heard the man approaching, though. He was tall and muscular, clad in a copper-and-leather breastplate, a sword hanging loosely at his side. His full lips were pulled into a sneer when he saw the slender young sibyl, staring down his aquiline nose with nothing but contempt.
"Boy, stop your playing and get down from there! That is the chair of Pythia, the Delphic Oracle; it is not a plaything for scruffy young orphans. I demand to see the oracle Pythia at once!"
Quatre sighed. "Pythia is dead. My name is Quatre; I am the Delphic Oracle you seek. Tell me what it is you wish to know, Theseus, son of Aegeus."
The mighty hero's sneer did not dissipate. It was obvious he had no desire to hear the word of Apollo preached from the mouth of a boy only a few years younger than he.
"I must travel to Crete and slay the fierce Minotaur. Tell me, sibyl, will I be successful?"
The sibyl's ocean-blue eyes closed, hands crossed in a pose of oracular meditation. His mind cleared, his breath slowed, and all things became hazy and irrelevant as he focused all of his ability on hearing Apollo's answer. There was a flash of light, and Quatre saw the hero battling his monster in the middle of the infamous Cretan labyrinth. He was flailing wildly; beating the creature with a stout club, blood spewing onto the walls. Theseus would kill the Minotaur.
"Phoebus Apollo, don't let this happen!" Quatre wailed in his mind. The Minotaur stepped forward, blood blotching his muzzle. He seemed innocent, incapable of the horrible things that the monster was rumored to have done. And, Quatre noted, he had rather nice eyes for a hideous creature. That fearsome voice whispered in his ear again, would you let a monster live?
"No one should die like this."
"Well? What do you see, oracle?" Theseus asked testily, tapping his foot in impatience.
Quatre didn't open his eyes, the vision still swirling in his mind. He wouldn't let this man kill the Minotaur, monster or no. "I see death, Theseus, son of Aegeus. I see blood staining the walls of King Minos' labyrinth." Oh, he saw blood all right. He just didn't say whose blood it was. Theseus turned pale, all of the color draining from his face and lips.
"Death? Tell me, oracle, is it my death? Will I die?" he shouted.
"The gods do not specify. But I do see a ship with black sails returning from Crete."
The hero looked as if he were about to wet his toga. "Oh. I'll just be going then. Goodbye."
"Wait, does this mean you're still going to Crete?" Quatre asked, biting his lip.
"Are you shitting me? Go to Crete? You just told me I'd die! I am staying as far away from Crete as is possible. Chiron the centaur has a whole batch of heroes who'd just love to go to and slay a Minotaur. I think I'll become a goat herder, it's a lot safer and it's got a fairly decent dental plan. Thank you, Oracle of Delphi, you are truly a gift from Olympus."
Quatre slapped on a cheesy, fake sort of grin, now having second thoughts about telling one of the great heroes not to fulfill his destiny. But it seemed a little late for that.
"Well Apollo," he sighed as soon as the beefy Theseus was gone, "I suppose you steered me in this direction for a reason. Does this mean I'll be boarding the first ship to Crete?"
A leaf from the laurel tree blew into his lap, despite there being no wind anywhere, which was a pretty good indication that the answer was 'yes.' Quatre wiped his thumb over the wax tablet, smoothing it out before scratching a note with his stylus.
To the Priests, especially my dear Hylas,
I have been blessed with a vision from Apollo, and He has told me to go on a journey. Therefore, I must leave you and fulfill my quest. I do not know when, or if, I will return, but until I do know that the gods will keep me safe. In the time of my absence, I appoint Oryxis as substitute Oracle, as he is the youngest and the best actor of you lot. Gods bless you all.
Quatre
And so he left the tablet and stylus on his tripod, packed up his meager belongings, and set out from the temple which had been his home for eighteen years, ready to go on some harebrained journey he had foolishly initiated on his own. He just prayed that the gods would indeed take care of him, since in his eyes he was doing something they would approve of. Either that, or Zeus would smote him with lightning for doing something as stupid as converting Theseus, one of the greatest heroes of Greek history, into a goatherd.
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The harbor was crowded, but there was no real surprise there. The harbor was always crowded. The Greeks were known for their sailing, for there was no possible way to trade with the island city-states via land, and the only idiot to ever try and fly at this time was Daedalus and his son Icarus, who consequently flew too close to the sun and ended up dead. There was really no alternative except maybe god-sent miracle, and Quatre wasn't going to pin his hopes on one of those. And so, he marched right up to the nearest brawny sailor and, turning his nose up like an aristocrat, asked when a ship would be sailing to Crete.
"Yer in luck," the salty seaman replied with a gap-toothed grin. "This here ship's going to Crete today, free of charge. Jest hop right in and we'd be glad to take ye."
Quatre, being adorably naïve, thanked the man and marched up the gangplank, satchel in hand. A group of men and women stared at the young blonde, who seemed to have the gall to think that this was maybe a Carnival cruise.
"Poor thing, nobody told him that this was the shipload of sacrifices to be made to the Minotaur," one woman whispered to her comrades, who all nodded sympathetically. But the young sibyl had heard what she said, and decided to act on an impulse that he had.
"Did you say the Minotaur?" he asked, trying to sound as macho as possible. His voice really sounded nothing more than a pitiful squeak.
"Ha! The Minotaur is no problem for me, Theseus son of Aegeus! I will slay the Minotaur and mount his head over my fireplace!"
A few of the men gave him glowers of suspicion. "You're Theseus, the son of King Aegeus? You look awfully scrawny to be him."
Quatre laughed a little nervously, then coughed, trying to revert back to his macho voice. "This? This is a disguise, a glamour given to me by Athena, so that King Minos of Crete does not recognize me, and I may slip into the Labyrinth unnoticed to slay the hideous beast!"
"Just keep stringing them along, Quatre," he said to himself, "sooner or later they'll shut up and leave you alone."
Unfortunately, the sacrifices didn't shut up. In fact, they kept pressing him with questions, asking the young 'hero' all manner of things that only the great Theseus would know. Quatre simply made things up, hoping that his lies would hold. The seven women and six men seemed appeased by his answers, and eventually left him alone. Granted, they arrived in Crete not long after that, but it was enough for Quatre to gather his thoughts before being herded off to the Labyrinth to be Minotaur snacks.
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Oddly enough, before being herded off to the infamous Labyrinth of Crete, King Minos held a feast for all who were to be sacrificed. Hey, why die on an empty stomach? So they partook of the great feast, Quatre noticing that he was warily being watched by the king's daughter Ariadne, as well as a wine-bearing girl whose name he later learned was Catherine. But there were whispers to accompany those wary stares, and the name of Theseus was being batted across every pair of lips. But he realized that he couldn't come clean and admit that he was not the great hero, for he probably would have been sacrificed anyways.
"And now, friends, let me escort you to the Labyrinth," Minos said jovially, leading a torchlight procession out of the great dining hall and to the immense maze. The wine-bearer Catherine was following in the shadows, occasionally trying to get the oracle's attention. She needn't have tried so hard; Quatre could see her clear as daylight.
"Psst! My lord Theseus!" she hissed, raising her hand against her mouth. "The lady Ariadne wanted me to give you this, so you can find your way out of the Labyrinth. I think she had some sort of sexual innuendo going with it as well, but I completely ignore her most of the time. And please, Lord Theseus, save my brother!"
Quatre was about to ask more about this brother, but Catherine was gone almost immediately after she whipped a ball of twine at him. They reached the mouth of the Labyrinth shortly after.
"Well, goodbye, friends. I shall deeply mourn your losses," Minos declared, waving as he pushed the fourteen victims into the maze and sealed them in. The other thirteen merely sighed, accepting their deaths and heading off on their merry way. Quatre waited a count of seventeen elephants before going in himself, tying the end of the twine to a nail sticking out on the wall.
It was rather odd, the Labyrinth. He had expected horrible screaming, the stench of blood and festering carcasses, bones littering the ground. But there was nothing, not even one little smear of red. There wasn't even spooky ominous background music to strike fear into his heart.
"And Theseus was afraid of this? By the gods, it's about as scary as one of Jarus' lectures!" Quatre muttered, unraveling more string as he walked. Soon enough, he came to the center of the maze, where the Minotaur was supposed to be devouring the corpses of the other sacrifices. Supposed to be.
"Oh, so you're this Theseus fellow the others swore would come and get me, huh?" stated a rather pleasant-sounding voice, dark and honey-rich. "You don't seem like the monster slaying type to me, more like a scribe or a votary."
Quatre straightened himself up to his full height, which wasn't very much. "Well, I'll have you know that I am indeed Theseus, the son of Aegeus, and I am here to slay you."
The Minotaur stepped out of the shadows, quite calmly for a bloodthirsty, man-eating beast.
"Then by all means, slay me. I will put up no struggle."
He was really all too calm; exuding this air of gentleness and sincerity that one would not think of when they picture a creature half bull and half man. And, while Quatre couldn't say much about the bull half, the portion that was human was really quite handsome. Damn, this was a tight spot.
"Okay, so maybe I lied and I'm not really Theseus," he admitted. "So I guess you have to kill me now and stuff like that."
The Minotaur gave him an odd look, as if he had not been told that this was what he was supposed to be doing, goring the boy to death and then feasting on his innards.
"I don't know what you've been told, but I am not some flesh-eating monster that kills every Portia and Marcus that saunter in here. And since you aren't Theseus, just who are you, and where is this Theseus that's supposed to come kill me?" he asked.
"My name is Quatre, and I'm the Delphic Oracle. Theseus came into my temple a few days ago, asking if he would be successful in slaying you. Even though the prophecy said he would, I told him that he was going to die in the Labyrinth…so you wouldn't get killed. The real Theseus became a goatherd or a tax collector or something."
The Minotaur smiled with his eyes, which were greener than the grass of the Elysian Fields.
"I greatly appreciate it, Oracle Quatre, that you spared my life. Especially where I have never once killed any of those sacrifices that Minos sends in here, not once in all the months I have been in this form."
"Say what?"
"I'm actually not even the Minotaur. My name is Trowa; I was formerly a shepherd under Minos' employ. It was a fairly decent job and it included room and board, all I had to do was keep an eye on Minos' golden sheep from sunrise to sunset every day. I raised most of his flock from lambs; they were good sheep, well trained and far more intelligent than most stock. But one day maybe three years ago, while I was out with the flock on the hills of Crete, I fell asleep in the sun. Zeus saw me and came to me, insisting that I have an affair with him. Did he honestly take me for an idiot? I mean, he is husband to the Queen of the Gods, She Who Punishes Philanderers; I wasn't about to piss her off. So I refused him…several times, in fact. And, as punishment, he transformed me into a Minotaur, doomed to this existence for who knows how long. Probably forty lifetimes of community service. Well, Minos locked me up in here and started that whole business with the sacrifices. But I wasn't about to eat them or anything. They'd come through; I'd give them some of the golden wool I'd managed to secure for myself from those years of shepherding, and send them off on their merry way. My sister keeps me alive, and I've just been waiting for my chance at redemption to come."
Quatre sniffled, overcome by the tragedy of the Minotaur…or rather, Trowa's tale. It always boiled down to Zeus and his inability to go one day without having sex with someone other than Hera. He was such a sucker for sob stories.
"That's settled then. By Apollo's lyre, I will help you escape from Crete and break this abominable curse that thunder-bearing Zeus has placed upon you! That is my solemn vow!"
"Hn, that's all well and good, Quatre, but in case you haven't noticed, I'm a hideous monster. There is no way I'll be able to walk around the streets without being abused or run at with swords. A lot of people think I've killed their sons and daughters," Trowa pointed out.
He wound a lock of blonde hair around his slender fingers, trying to use either his own ingenuity or his oracular talents to come up with a solution to his comrade's perplexing quandary. Trowa really couldn't go out in the light of day without getting run through, but to keep him in the Labyrinth was nothing short of torture. At long last, he had an idea.
"Take my cloak, it's much too long for me. You're man enough to walk unnoticed through the streets, as long as your face is hidden, I think we'll be all right," Quatre suggested, unfastening the rough wool cloak from around his throat. With the hood drawn low over his face, so that shadow concealed all but his luminous green eyes, Trowa merely looked like a mysterious stranger.
"And now, phase two…getting the Hades out of here before Minos realizes his short one Minotaur."
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They emerged from the Labyrinth through the back exit, taking every last skein of golden wool that was hidden by the door to cover any necessary payments they would have along the way. The cloaked figure that was the Minotaur of Crete looked about warily, the first real taste of freedom he had experienced in three long years. The rays of the sun god Helios were almost too much for him.
"By the gods, freedom…" he murmured, voice muffled by the deep hood.
"Well, not quite yet," Quatre reminded him. "We still have to get off this island before you're really free. And after that we still have to find a way to lift that curse of yours. So…I guess freedom will come after that."
"Where will we go next, Oracle Quatre?"
He shrugged. "Wherever Apollo moves us. For now, I say we head towards the port and see if we can't charter a boat to anywhere but here. I'm sure by now the princess has realized that her hero hasn't come to find her, despite all her handy little charms bestowed."
And so, they set off, not realizing that all the while, the gods were watching them from atop Olympus' heights. And a good many of those gods were not particularly pleased with the meddling interferences of one little oracle.
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Notes:
The real story of the Minotaur is that Minos of Crete had a white bull that he refused to sacrifice to Poseidon. As a result, his wife was made to fall in love with the bull and thus nine months later, you get a Minotaur. (You figure out the logistics of that one.) Ashamed of the creature, Minos had a Labyrinth built, and locked the Minotaur within. And every year, he called for seven men and seven women to be sacrificed to the Minotaur, for reasons I don't remember. Theseus, a great hero, decided that he would go and slay the monster, and promised his father to return alive. As a sign of his success, he would change the sails on his ship from black to white when he came back. Well, he got to Crete; fell in love with Minos' daughter Ariadne, who gave him a ball of string to guide his way through the Labyrinth. He goes into the maze and kills the Minotaur and heads back towards Crete with Ariadne. On the way back, he dumps her off on some island because the gods tell him to, and forgets to change the sails. When Theseus' father sees the ship returning with black sails, he jumps off a cliff and kills himself, forming the Aegean Sea.
Next Time: Well, Oracle Quatre and the (heheh) Minotaurowa (I've been dying to spring that one) will run into the hero Perseus, who's on his way to slay the Gorgon Medusa. What will Apollo tell our sibylline hero this time? And which pilot will we run into next?