The thread glowed as it rolled out, behind the leathered feet of the hero. He had seduced a girl into giving him this thread, he had slept with her in her palace rooms on her silk sheets. He was a hero, she was a princess. She gave him a magic thread to lay out behind him. He could feel the brocade on his back, on his legs; he looked at the walls that he could see and he saw them to be old, old stone. And sometimes old blood as well. His torch threw fitful shadows, palsied things that jerked around him in the dark. Theseus was coming to kill the Minotaur. There had been others, with him. Virgins one and all, sent to feed the beast at Crete. They were dead now, Theseus assumed. He had come to kill the monster. They had not. He had seduced a princess and gotten a magic thread in return. They had not. They were, he concluded, probably all dead. He walked forward, and left the soft glow of the magic he had been given behind him, to mark the way. It was a very long way. It was so long, and so, well, labrynthine, that even Daedelus, old puzzle-brain, had forgotten the way before he died. That was saying something. It was a hard thing to do, to learn the maze. Theseus had come to kill the bull in the middle of it. He walked on. Darkness so complete that to learn to see in it would be the death of vision that could bear the sun. It would take years, to let eyes adjust to this place's gloom. Years long and hard, groping along the stone, slowly learning paths by touch before knowing them by sight. Theseus holds a torch aloft and walks along, trailing magic behind him and smiling in the glimmer of his fire. He has a sword at his side. In the torchlight it will sparkle. When he kills the monster. Which he will, as fast as he can.
This Minotaur has a throne of skulls. It built it slowly and purposefully. It is a throne to scale. There are many skulls. This Minotaur is a monster, gruesome, and pale. Pale because it has lived in this maze its whole life. Far too terrible to see. It licked the skulls clean. It's not very hard to kill a bull that can't see. The sword sparkled very, very bright.
Theseus smiles hard walking back. He follows the same path out as he took in. He marked it out. She marked it out for him. It's the shortest path from the heart of the labrynth. Destiny does not much care for shortcuts. The thread glows as Destiny holds it in his hands. Theseus stops walking and stops smiling. He had slept with a princess to get that thread. He had killed a monster with it and with his sword. And then Destiny was gone. And so was the magic. And it was very, very dark.