Power of the Lost

by Cebelius

  Her voice was one of weary resignation, and despite the fact that she was ostensibly running the giant death trap that threatened not only his life, but the lives of everyone he loved, Terry found himself listening intently. He knew his empathy was too easily played upon, but it was part of who he was. It was entirely possible that her story would banish his sympathy rather than call him to action, but at the least he knew he had to listen. He trusted his cynicism to save him from doing anything too stupid.

  "Do you know my story?" she asked.

  "'Fraid not," Terry said.

  "I was a princess once, of a country called Crete. As you can see, I am no great prize as a woman. I was ostracized within my own family, as I alone among my siblings was so unfortunate."

  Terry saw her eyes flick toward him, but he had nothing to say. After a moment, she looked away again and went on. "My country possessed a great Labyrinth within which was housed the minotaur. Not like these pale imitation tauren you travel with, but a true bull monster. Military successes meant the sacrifices we offered the minotaur came from other countries. Thence came Theseus."

  "Theseus entered the Labyrinth and killed the minotaur, right?" Terry asked. "That legend is pretty well-known."

  "Theseus succeeded because I returned to him his sword, and gave him a clue to find his way out again once he'd done the deed. In exchange, he was to take me away and make me his wife."

  Terry frowned. She still sounded no more than tired. What she was telling him should have been emotionally invested, but she might have been reading a grocery list. She went on.

  "He escaped the Labyrinth and took me away with him on his ship. I was as happy as I had ever been ... as I would ever be. We reached Naxos and went ashore, and there I was abandoned at the behest of Athena, Theseus' patron deity. She did not see an ugly woman like me as being worthy of her champion Theseus, so I was made a sacrifice to the drunken god, Dionysus, whose island Naxos was."

  Again, Terry wondered at the lack of bitterness in Ariadne's voice, but he asked no questions. He was sure the time for those would come.

  "Dionysus was exceptionally drunk when we met. He praised my great beauty and crowned me on the spot with the Corona Borealis, making me the wife of a god. For a moment, I knew some measure of satisfaction. I was not fooled into thinking I was truly loved, but at least fortune had finally favored me. Alas."

  For the first time, Terry saw Ariadne's lips twist. Her voice had traces of bitterness that he suspected were the remains of what must have once been rage.

  "Dionysus quickly came to realize what he had done, and asked Athena for help, since it was Athena who had caused me to be left in his care. Athena agreed to have me killed, but in the one stroke of true fortune I ever had, Hera spared me. She who alone among the gods had pity upon a woman scorned by her husband, Hera warned me of Athena's plans and told me that there was only one sure way to escape her machinations. I could come here, to this place."

  Her eyes lifted to his again and she smiled faintly as she said, "In order to escape the gods, I had but to resign myself to the living hell of the titans, Tartarus."

  She reached up and made as though to grasp an invisible crown. Abruptly, a band of starlight appeared between her fingers, and she held it up in front of her as she said, "It is only because I had this that I accepted. I had power to face the titans, or so I thought. And ... let us be honest, taking the Corona Borealis permanently away from Dionysus for spite did play a role in my thinking."

  She settled the band around her forehead and the twinkling lights faded away after a few moments as she sighed.

  "Coming to Tartarus — what the surfacers call Celestine — however, was a cruelly ironic mistake. You are familiar with the nature of template bonds by now. They apply to me as well, but I am no hero ... only a woman. Here, finally, I was genuinely prized."

  Terry shook his head, remembering what he'd said to Laina when they'd first met, and she'd thought there were no female templates. He'd been horrified at the idea of a woman being trapped on Celestine.

  She paused, her lips twisting as the emotions that had lain so long dormant abruptly rose up within her. She mastered them though, said, "In those days the Centimanes were still a prominent threat here, and not all of the male titans had been killed or driven to hide in the depths of this world. I was ... sought after."

  She shuddered, and he understood. He said nothing as she went on.

  "The Corona Borealis did thankfully allow me to protect myself, and eventually to build this place. I will not bore you with the how of it, suffice it to say I have hidden here ever since, and there is only one more detail of note in my story, though that detail is the cause of all my grief now."

  She tilted her head to look up at him as she said, "Theseus died a hero."

  Terry's eyes widened slightly as understanding flashed through him. "You met him?"

  She smiled a little, and shook her head.

  "I did not meet him. I captured him. He is here ... but in order to trap him, I broke the rules of the Labyrinth as laid down by the Corona. Only the worthy may enter, and they must do so willfully. I pulled him in against his will. In so doing I gave him a certain power over me and the crown, though I did not know it then."

  Her smile was pure bitterness as she said, "Even here, with me literally the only woman in the world, he refused me. In my rage I cast him into his own personal Labyrinth, a prison within a prison and one specifically modeled after the original in Crete.

  "I could have turned him loose, but because he abandoned me all those years ago, now, I keep him beyond any desire for his company. Even now, after the power of my emotion is as ashes, I keep him. He is my minotaur, and at times over the years I unwittingly sacrificed to him, sent champions who challenged my Labyrinth into his domain, hoping they would kill him for me. None who have faced him could prevail, and many were women or at least ... female. He kills them or takes them for his own, and they become monsters in service to him."

  She looked up at him and he nodded his understanding. She said, "These days I craft other challenges for those who enter the Labyrinth, and Theseus rages alone, now both a prisoner and a warden. I cannot leave this space while any others remain, yet I will not release him. Because I broke the rules to bring him here, I can do him no direct harm. The traps of the Labyrinth ignore him. To the Corona Borealis, we are one and the same. Just as I will not release him, he will not release the monsters under his control, and so we are all at an impasse. It has been so for thousands of years."

  "You want me to deal with Theseus," Terry guessed, but Ariadne shook her head.

  "You cannot deal with him. He is insane, driven so long since. I want you to kill him. If you do this for me, then I will place all that I have at your disposal."

  Terry thought about that, then asked, "Where are my companions?"

  "They are safe. I wanted to offer you this chance before I throw the lot of you into the next challenge. If you accept my offer, I will send you into Theseus' portion of the Labyrinth, and if you succeed, it will be as I have said. Otherwise, I will craft challenges designed to kill you, and if you somehow succeed despite my best effort I will send you from this place with the gift to which you are entitled as a victor, and nothing more."

  Once again her voice had lost its emotional content, and she spoke as though reading from a script.

  "Just me?" he asked. "What happens to the others if I fail?"

  Ariadne hesitated a moment, then said, "As recompense, I will eject them from the Labyrinth rather than force them to complete it. They will not die here, but that is all I can promise."

  "Can you put them in a specific place?" he asked.

  "Where did you have in mind?"

  "Wherever Euryale is. Have Sphinx explain things to her. Tell her I want her to see Yuri made chief ... that will be my last request."

  Ariadne's eyes widened slightly as she asked, "The Euryale?"

  "Yep. She's one of my bonds."

  She t
hought about that a moment, then nodded. "I will do this for you if you fail, but I hope that you do not. You are entitled to take one weapon with you into the Labyrinth, and one clue. The weapon must be yours and the clue must be mine. It is the way of things. Choose your weapon, and I will give you your clue."

  Terry opened his mouth, then hesitated. There were three obvious weapons at his disposal. The Rod of the Heart, the blood-stained lumbering ax, and his dagger. The Rod was the obvious choice for raw power, but he was going into hostile, unpredictable territory. It was exactly the wrong kind of battle to try and fight with blood magic ... as a novice. His ax then became top pick, but he was going to go up against a born hero from a time when swordplay wasn't thought of as something only geeks were into. He would get crushed for sure.

  Not to mention Theseus has bonded women in there with him. Women I'm probably going to run into and have to beat.

  He gave it some thought, then with a flash of what he could only have described as inspiration an idea came to him.

  "Prada is my weapon of choice," he said at last.

  One corner of Ariadne's unibrow lifted a bit, and she smirked. "Heh. Now that's clever. Very well, here is your weapon."

  She held out her hand and Prada shimmered into existence in her palm, then shot out and latched herself to Terry with blinding speed.

  'Husband! What is going on?'

  Her voice in his mind was frantic, and he thought as calmly as he could, Have a look at my recent memories.

  He felt Prada's presence in his mind as an immense comfort, and as the blood devil rifled through his thoughts, Ariadne said, "And here is your clue."

  Terry expected her to give him some hint about where he was going. He expected her to maybe hand him a map or even do something odd like try and kiss him — a prospect he did not relish.

  Instead, she held out her hand again. When Terry opened his, she dropped a small ball of dirty yarn in his outstretched palm.

  "What the-"

  Before he could finish his question, she snapped the fingers of her other hand, and sent him somewhere else.

  25

  Insanity is Relative

  "- fuck? ... Aw shit."

  Terry stood in front of a wall of gray stone blocks. It was about twenty feet high and had a subtle curvature to the left and right. The wall faded into the hazy distance both left and right. That curvature prompted him to guess that the area it enclosed was both circular and very, very large.

  He stood on a shelf of rock about twenty feet on a side in front of a vast gray stone door carved with intricate vine-work. The door was ajar, which was fortunate because it was the height of the wall and probably weighed several tons. The skeletal remains of some creature leaned against the wall near the door, obviously old and just as obviously not human. Even the armor the creature had worn was little more than bits of rust held together by hope and the fact that there probably wasn't ever any wind or rain around here.

  Above, the sky was a curious rose color and clouds raced by high overhead, but there was no hint of that wind down where Terry stood. Out beyond the shelf in every other direction aside from the door was empty space. The Labyrinth he faced seemed to hang suspended in mid-air. Given the places and magic Terry had seen since he arrived on Celestine though, that didn't surprise him like it probably should have.

  I guess I really am just getting used to this crazy shit, he mused.

  'That you asked for me as your weapon was both inspired and touching, Husband,' Prada said, speaking within his mind. He got a sensation of warmth from her that was so powerful that it derailed his train of thought.

  You're welcome? To be honest, I did that because you were legitimately my best option.

  'I know. Why do you think I'm so pleased?'

  He grinned.

  Well, because you love me. Duh.

  A sense of hesitation flooded through him, but before she could say anything he thought, You do. You're too smart to actually think you need a physical heart for that. Love isn't a purely emotional thing. I love you too ... though you still weird me out from time to time.

  'Now you've made me curious, Husband. What is love to you, if not a feeling?'

  His attention was sliding back toward his surroundings. He moved toward the skeleton, his eyes roving it for anything he could use, and his answer was out loud and absent.

  "If you want good for someone, you love them. Anyone who says love is complicated is full of shit. It's a simple thing. The feelings attached may come and go. As twisted as they were, I even love my family back on Earth. I still hope they turn out all right."

  Prada didn't answer, and as he looked over the skeletal remains love was already the furthest thing from his mind.

  Several of the ribs had been cracked or broken, and Terry was no expert, but he knew the look of chewed bones when he saw them. Whoever this had been, he hoped that the dying part had come before the eating part.

  With a glance up at the sheer height and size of the door, he peeked around the corner and was treated to the sight of an unremarkable hallway ... unremarkable but for the fact that there was no ceiling, and the racing skies above made for a disorienting sight.

  I wonder if those clouds always go the same way, he mused. If they did that would likely be his only means of orienting himself, considering there was no visible sun or moon. The light was diffuse, and there were no shadows to speak of.

  Distance was hard to measure with so few points of reference, but he could see branches along the hallway he was looking down, and at a point in the far distance the hall seemed to split into a Y.

  Terry glanced down at the ball of yarn in his hand. It was tiny, and he had no idea how it constituted any kind of a clue. If it were larger, he might have thought he was supposed to string it along and use it as a guide, but if he unrolled it he doubted it would be much longer than he was tall. As he stared at it though he noticed that it was glowing, ever so faintly. The aura was the same brown color as the one his bullshit bag gave off, which he noticed with a start he was no longer carrying.

  I guess I have to finish this before I die of thirst ... so three days max given how big this place is, and that does not fill me with confidence.

  Since the pack had a brown aura, and it held far more than it had any right to, Terry reasoned that this little ball of yarn was actually significantly larger than it appeared to be. Maybe it was as simple as using it as a guide.

  The problems with that were manifold and included the likelihood that it still wasn't long enough, and that anyone who noticed it could cut it or use it to mislead him. Still, it was the best idea he had, and if what Ariadne had told him was true, it was actually supposed to help him.

  He examined the door and wound up tying one end of the yarn to one of the stone leaves carved into the door. He gave several test tugs to make sure it wouldn't just come off when he pulled, then rounded the door and entered the Labyrinth, holding the ball loosely in his fist to let the string play out through his fingers.

  He walked ten feet — longer than the yarn could possibly have been if it were normal — and checked its size. No change.

  As he looked back along its length, he noticed that after three feet, the line disappeared. He started to walk back, and the yarn pulled itself back between his fingers, the line fading into view toward the door as he approached.

  Well that's handy. Okay then. Getting out might not be a problem ... then again, now I know I can't just get to the center, whip this dude, and be transported. I have to find this guy, beat him, and then find my way back here.

  As he tucked the ball of yarn into a pocket, Prada's thoughts intruded.

  'Kill him.'

  Terry quirked a brow at that, and Prada answered before he could formulate the question, still speaking inside his head.

  'You must kill everyone you meet here, Husband. If it is Theseus, he is the objective, but every woman you encounter here you must also kill. A viable strategy should we be given more information
would be to seek out and kill his females first, to weaken him. We already know that your bond powers fade if the woman who gave them to you dies. Your highest chances for success involve seeking out isolated targets and killing them until we can find Theseus himself.'

  As Terry's indignation and then outright rebellion at the idea of hunting down and killing people rose within him, Prada added as a seeming afterthought, 'Or you could find and fuck them. That might be better. Not only would you break their bonds to Theseus, you would gain their powers for us.'

  His jaw dropped as his brain ground to an unceremonious halt.

  Just as he'd begun to formulate an incredulous reply, Prada sighed and said, 'It is a shame you didn't fuck Ariadne when you had the chance. Breaking her bond with Theseus might have obviated the need to come in here at all. Shame.'

  "Okay, stop. Just ... stop," Terry said, speaking aloud despite knowing he should probably not be giving his position away in here. "Prada, come on. Seriously?"

  Prada then threw him a curveball as she said with a sly chuckle, 'Relax, Husband. I'm not being serious. Pity fucking Ariadne may have improved our position here, but it's not your style and she's had thousands of years to think this through. If it would have helped, I'm sure she'd have done her best to rape you before risking you in here.'

  Terry made a face, and kept his reply silent. That's just nasty.

  'Whaling not your thing then?'

  He could tell by her tone that she was messing with him, but still. Silently gagging as he walked the length of the hallway, carefully looking around for magic, or really anything strange, he thought, People who don't respect themselves enough to keep in some kind of decent shape aren't going to respect their partners either. Besides, you heard her. She trapped Theseus here for thousands of years because he turned her down. Granted given what she said about him, he's a dick too, but that's not the kind of crazy I want anywhere near me. Now is not the time to distract me asking about my kinks. This place is probably trapped you know?

  'Silly man. With me you are practically immune to mechanical traps.'