"This is the labyrinth, the home of the Minotaur!"
No sooner had those words escaped my mouth than I heard a noise unlike that which I had ever heard before. It was hard to find the words to accurately describe it, but if I had to do so, I would say that it sounded like an unholy mixture of an angry bull with the bloodthirsty howl of a human. It was bloodcurdling, reverberating unnaturally so off the stone walls.
Mordred's helmet slamming into place, her armor clinking softly as she adopted one of her combat poses. With one hand, she gently pushed me behind her and against the closest wall protectively. Mash did something similar with a fearful-looking Rits, while Drake unholstered one of her pistols. Medea was the only one unphased, however.
"Relax," she said with humorless cheer to the rest of us. She stood back up, swiftly pulling that hood of her back over her head before dusting off her knees. "If he was nearby, we would be able to smell him, no doubt. I highly doubt that King Midas was caring enough to ensure that his son would be able to clean himself properly, to be frank."
Sheesh, talk about yet another example of shitty parenting. Still, considering that Midas could have tried to kill the Minotaur when it was newly born but didn't, that still made him better than Morgan le Fay…
But just barely.
"Yeah. Besides, wasn't the monster taken down by some wimpy human?" Mordred chimed in dismissively, untensing slightly now that the Knight of Rebellion felt that there was no immediate threat nearby. "I'm not exactly much of a reader of Greek myths, but I'm pretty sure it was something along those lines."
Medea's lips pursed slightly. "Theseus, yes," she said, and I sensed a hint of distaste in the Caster's words. If memory served me right, in some versions of the tale, Medea had married Theseus's father, had a child, and tried to kill the vanquisher of the Minotaur before his father could recognize him, or something like that.
Wisely, I kept that little tidbit of information quiet. I highly doubt that Medea would appreciate me airing her dirty laundry so to speak, and I didn't have the dubious protection of being her Master, too. By all accounts, it seems that she could be quite a vengeful woman. How much of that was true, I didn't know, but I wasn't exactly in all that much of a hurry to find out in a first-hand experience.
"What should we do if we run into him?" Ritsuka asked. It wasn't a question asked in cowardice, but rather one unsure of what to do. In all honesty, we had two choices: Run or fight.
"We fight. Like Mordred mentioned, the Minotaur was defeated once. We can do it again. We just have to stick together and keep our guard up at all times." The others nodded or grunted in agreement, while I took one last look at the mural.
"Bah, let's get back on track," Drake said, having regained her confidence. I wanted to ask Mordred to destroy the grisly mural, but I didn't want to risk damaging a possible load-bearing wall. I nodded, and we progressed farther into the Labyrinth.
Ritsuka's feet were starting to feel a bit sore, but he kept a tight lid on the urge to complain about the discomfort it was causing him. They were on a mission now. There were a few more intersections that veered sharply either to the right or left, but eventually, they reached the first split in the road, so to speak. The hallway was at a T-shaped section. One hallway to the right, the other to the left.
They all paused for a minute. In front of Ritsuka and the others, Drake rubbed her chin thoughtfully, her head swiveling back and forth to the left and right and back again. "Right or left….Right or left," she muttered, before finally snapping her fingers and pointing at the left hallway. "My gut says left!" The final decision having apparently been made, Drake began to head down the chosen passageway. Jacob, Mordred, and Medea followed after her a few seconds later, as did Chaldea's other Master and his kouhai.
Ritsuka turned to Mash, unable to hide the unease in his voice. "Remember where the entrance is?" He quietly asked Mash. His friend gave him a reassuring smile as she nodded.
"Yes. Don't worry, I've recorded everything just in case. Not that I'd ever forget," the Demi-Servant said with that quiet confidence of hers. Ritsuka quirked an eyebrow instinctively. It wasn't so much that he was doubting the value of her words, so much as he knew that the memory could prove incorrect at times. Mash gestured down the hallway they had just left.
"It's just a matter of going back the way we came, Senpai. Getting separated along the way would be a bigger issue for us, however." Mash paused, and Ritsuka waited patiently before her eyes widened and she perked up. "Oh, I know. Master, let's hold hands." Ritsuka choked slightly at that.
"Huh?!"
"It'd be a disaster if we got separated here. Holding hands would prevent that from happening," Mash explained with a patient smile on her lips. Ritsuka's cheeks grew warm, as an awkward sensation roiled in his stomach.
"Ah, Mash, wouldn't that be a bit embarrassing?" Ritsuka tried, unsure of what the hell to do. Mash shuffled slightly, looking quite bashful to Ritsuka.
"Ummm, I understand how you feel, but this is no time to be embarrassed, Master. If we get separated, we might be wandering around in this maze until we die, be it from starvation, hunger, thirst, or something else. It may be a bit awkward, at least at first, but better safe than sorry," Mash said, sounding as nervous as he felt, before slowly extending her free hand. Despite himself, Ritsuka gave her a warm, albeit weak, smile.
"Are you embarrassed too, Mash?" The girl's cheeks reddened as Ritsuka grasped the offered hand softly.
"N-No comment," Mash said shyly. They continued to walk with the rest of the group, but now with their hands clasping one another. Neither of them said anything for a few minutes, until Mash nudged him gently with her forearm. Ritsuka looked at her, seeing that her blush had finally faded, as his own blush had, and been replaced with a nostalgic smile on her lips.
"This reminds me, back then, when we first met…You held my hand like this, too." Ritsuka nodded, as the image of his friend bleeding out as she was pinned under a massive piece of rubble, while he and Jacob struggled to get the debris off her. "Now, it feels nostalgic. Even though that is has only been a month and a half since then.
"Yeah. We've made quite a number of memories together, haven't we?" Ritsuka remarked with a lopsided smile. Mash nodded.
"Yes, we have. Thank you for being able to share them with me, Senpai."
"Your welcome, Mash. The same sentiment applies to you, too."
A pleasant atmosphere finally managed to overpower the one of dread that the labyrinth gave. Unfortunately, a soft chuckle had Ritsuka remembering that he wasn't the only one listening to Mash and vice versa.
"Aw, the two of you look adorable like that," Jacob said with a warm smile, a teasing glint in his eyes. Next to him, Mordred snickered, her green eyes glinting impishly in the torchlight.
"Yeah, they look like they would be a nice couple," the Saber added with a toothy smirk. Ritsuka's cheeks exploded into heat as his eyes widened at the thought. Not that he found it repulsive or something along those lines, but because he was thinking of it actually happening, and found himself quite liking the image. Now that the couple in front of him had suggested it, it really did feel like that. That he and Mash were…that they were…
Mash's fingers tightened around his, breaking him free of his thoughts as he saw a similar look of embarrassment on the features of his ever reliable kouhai. He gave what he hoped came across as a brief, comforting squeeze of his own, and Mash seemed to relax slightly once more.
"Just relax, Rits," Jacob said, an apologetic look softening the mischievous one now. "It's just an attempt to lighten the mood down here, you know? Don't think too much into it, unless you want to..." Jacob added with what seemed to have been a knowing smirk. Ritsuka opened his mouth to reply, before Drake cleared her throat loudly, and everyone came to a stop.
"If you all are done flirting with one another," Drake started to say a bit dryly, "There's an enemy up ahead!"
Seeing as how it was only two skeletons, calling the encounter a fight would imply that the skeletal warriors had a chance of lashing out. Mordred grabbed one with her gauntlet and slammed it into the wall, while Medea muttered something in her native tongue before a block of ice appeared above the second skeleton.
Moving her hand downwards, the Witch of Betrayal brought the block down, smashing the apparently stunned enemy into the ground even as the ice itself broke apart. With another word and a small wave of her hand, Medea dismissed the ice.
Both enemies dealt with, we quickly and silently resumed walking, though our pace was a bit faster now. While it wasn't the Minotaur or a Servant, the encounter carried another meaning with it. There were undoubtedly a few more Dragon Tooth Warriors still down here. We resumed walking, though this time kept quiet, each of us on high alert, waiting to detect the slightest hint of something, anything, being out of place as we continued traversing the labyrinth.
It must have been forty-five minutes, maybe even more, before a member of our party spoke again.
"Hmmm? Hang on a moment" Drake said suddenly, pausing before quietly reloading her pistols. I partially unsheathed my pugio silently, the broad, leaf-shaped blade reflecting the torchlight. While she was reloading, it sounded like she was sniffing the air. "I smell something," Drake said when she had finished, a grim look on her face.
"What is it?" Mash asked, while Mordred grunted in annoyance.
"Yeah, don't keep us waiting," the Saber said impatiently. With Clarent still summoned, she began to tap the flat of the massive blade against her right pauldron, one of her tics that showed when she wanted to get a move on or something like that. I reached out to gently nudge her when Drake gave us her reply.
"Blood." I stiffened slightly at Drake's answer, and I sniffed the air in turn. My nose soon wrinkled up slightly as my upper lip curled back in distaste as a familiar and hated odor filled my nostrils.
Sure enough, I could detect the faintest hints of a metallic smell that I had encountered one time too many in the short period that I had been working at Chaldea. "With my job, I'm used to smelling stuff like this," Drake said evenly.
"I smell it, too," I said softly, my eyes darting down to the floor. The walls clearly didn't have blood dripping down them like in the castle at Orleans, thank god for that, but the scent seemed to be close by. So where was… there!
"I think I found the source," I said, emotionlessly, pointing at the small puddle of blood only a few yards in front of us. It was a tiny thing, almost unnoticeable if one didn't smell the scent of it.
"Look, the drops form a trail," Mash observed. Sure enough, that was the case. By all signs that we could see, whoever had been bleeding had gone down the path we were headed. Considering the number of the Dragon Tooth Warriors we had dealt with earlier in the labyrinth, perhaps the one who had established the Bounded Field had an encounter with their own, and been injured?
"Looks like the wound wasn't that bad. A flesh wound," Drake mused, having reached the same conclusion about the small amount of the blood we could see.
"It's our only clue. We should follow it!" Mash said, rather urgently. Needing no further urging, we did exactly that, resuming a brisk and steady pace as we followed the fine trail of crimson splattered before us.
The trail seemed to indicate that the individual whose blood we were tracking had been walking at a surprisingly calm rate. If that was so, then that means that whoever was injured wasn't in any actual peril. Still, that didn't answer who or what was responsible.
As we progressed further, it seemed like the light was starting to get slightly dimmer. We must be approaching the center. Though it had remained silent, I couldn't help but feel like we were going to encounter the maze's most infamous occupant before the day's end.
Suddenly, Drake, still in the lead, held up a hand, indicating for the rest of us to stop.
"The blood trail stops here," Drake reported as we came to a halt behind her. She sounded quite disappointed, a feeling I could very much relate to at the moment. "I guess we'll have to give up on tracking it further, huh?"
"Worry about that later," I growled as a half dozen of those damned Dragon Tooth Warriors charged towards us. "Let's make this quick!"
And quick work of them, we did. Two fell to Drake's pistols, while Mash, Medea, and Mordred easily took down the remaining four. In such small numbers, they proved to be only slightly more annoying than their weaker cousins that I had fought so many times before.
Of course, I wasn't that much of in a hurry to test my own sword skills against one.
"Well, fighting these non-humans, like those bone warriors just now, means that I now got some more great tales to tell," Drake said with her usual cheer, absent-mindedly kicking a small bile of battered and broken bones nearby with the toe of her boot. "Anyways, even these things die when you shoot a lead ball through them. I learned something new today!"
"I think that is more to due with you having a Grail that is lending you power. So please don't get cocky," I mentioned cautiously. Drake scoffed but nodded, the serious look in her eyes telling me that she would keep my piece of advice in mind in any future fights.
Nothing further needing to be said, we resumed once more our progression, though not for long.
"Hmmm," Drake said, slowing down. We cam to a halt behind her. "It's not like we've gotten lost down here, thankfully, but I'm still getting all kinds of bad vibes. New bad vibes, to be exact," Drake tacked on hastily upon seeing my arched eyebrow.
That's better. I'd have been extremely concerned over her state of mind if she was just now feeling the 'bad vibes' this maze from hell was giving off.
"Yeah. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up as well."
"What do you think, Senpai?" Mash quietly asked Ritsuka. My fellow Master gave off a weak laugh, the forced nature of the act quite transparent.
"I sense an encounter," he said. Mash nodded solemnly.
"I see. Then, in that case, we should—"
"Wait, what's that noise up ahead?" Drake cut in. We fell silent, straining our ears. At first, I heard nothing. Then, I heard it.
The sounds of chains rustling, along with heavy breathing, had us all looking ahead. Mordred and Mash pushed their way in front of Ritsuka and I. My partner crouched down slightly, angling Clarent so that the massive broadsword was pointing forwards. Mash braced herself against her shield, in case whoever or whatever was approaching tried to launch some sort of ranged attack. Next to us, Medea summoned her staff while Drake cocked both of her pistols once again.
The sounds grew louder and louder. I could swear that I felt the ground starting to shake slightly. Then, a tall, board-chested and muscular figure appeared before us.
"Seems like my hunch was right," Drake said grimly, while Mash gasped slightly in horror.
"This is…a Servant!"
A metal mask in the effigy of a bull's head covered the figure's face. Out of the mass of snow-white hair that dangled from his head, two black horns pointed skywards. An aura of dread and menace permeated the very air between us and the creature before us now.
His shoulders rose and fell with each heavy breath he took. A faint, reddish glow seeped out of the eye slits of the mask, as a loud yet muffled growling noise escaped from his throat.
There was no mistaking the identity of the one in front of us. Even if the face was covered, the mask alone indicated the apparent facial structure that lay underneath. Half man, half beast.
The Minotaur had found us.
And he was not in a friendly mood.
"….Die," he said in a raspy voice, as if unused to speaking words.
"T-That's the Minotaur?" Drake gasped, taking a half-step backwards. "He's huge!"
"No…Minotaur…Me…Asterios," the Minotaur growled, jabbing a thumb towards his bare chest. He then pointed one of his axes towards us. "Kill…You…All!" Each word sounded labored, like with Caligula or Eric Bloodaxe. Based on the size, weapons, speaking patterns, and the mythological background he held, it wasn't hard to guess his potential Servant class.
"Another Berserker, like Eric the Bloodaxe King! Guess there's no use arguing!" Mash shouted.
"Nor is retreating an option," Medea added. "This is his territory after all."
"Since when did we ever turn tail and run, though?" Mordred shot back, her helmet once more obscuring her face. "Orders, Master!" I gritted my teeth as my fingers dug into my palms. The terrain wasn't ideal, but like Medea and Mash had said, there was no point in trying to deny our only recourse. There were only two orders I could think of, and I shouted them both as the Minotaur, or Asterios as he called himself, readied himself for a charge.
"Bring him down, and don't die!"
Original Endnotes: And done! Y'all know what this means...Servant fight next chapter! Since this one is more balanced, that should mean that it will be more enjoyable! Anyways, what did you guys think of this chapter? Did you enjoy the Ritsuka-Mash moment? Also, damn it, is Marie now finally getting to Mordred, who's infecting Jacob too?
Anyways, not much else to say, so the question(s) of the chapter! First up: Would you rather explore the labyrinth (Minotaur not included), or sail through a storm? Second question: Who's ready to see a (hopefully somewhat toned-down) Blackbeard soon?
As always, thank you guys and gals for all the love and support, and thanks for reading! Please feel free to leave your thoughts and all, and I'm looking forward to reading and seeing them! I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and have a wonderful rest of the weekend! See y'all in the next chapter!
Updated Endnotes 10/24/21: Chapter 130 was posted today, and am working on creating a DeviantArt account for fanart and all, so please stay tuned. See you in the next posting here.