Chapter 10 - Aric
Iturn back in the stone hallway and find the claws of my worst nightmare snatching Declan and pulling backwards so hard, when he slams on the ground, I am a hundred percent sure he’s dead.
The only reason I don’t freak out about this is because he’s a demigod, like me, and it’ll take much more than that to kill him.
I am a hundred-and-one percent sure of this fact. Because this isn’t just any maze or any monster, this is my maze. My monster.
My training grounds, to be exact.
When I was sixteen, my father made this maze so he could turn me into a soldier. I can still see, with perfect clarity, that look in his eyes when he brought me here for the first time.
“You’re weak,” he said. His words coming out like venom. “You’re pathetic. And if you can’t live up to my name, Aric, then you don’t deserve to live at all.”
I was never a small boy. How could I be? I was Ares’s bastard son and took after him in build and muscle. So these insults weren’t based in facts. They were never meant to physically describe me, they were meant to emotionally hurt me.
Because pain, in the eyes of Ares, builds character. And character builds heroes. And if I wasn’t gonna grow up to be a hero, he didn’t want me around.
He was training me to be a warrior and the only way to cure fear is to face all the consequences of losing before you ever step out onto the battlefield.
That’s what this maze was. My battlefield.
The day he brought me here was my sixteenth birthday.
The next time I saw daylight, I was twenty-one.
Five years.
He left me here to fight this monster in the maze for five fucking years.
It’s not real, this place. Well, it is, in every way that matters. But it’s not Olympus and it’s not the mortal realm either. It’s something in between.
Some kind of illusion.
If an illusion could literally decapitate you, and you don’t die. Just wake up in your bed like it never happened.
Except it did happen and there was no way to forget.
I died every way possible.
I suffered every pain imaginable at the hands of this monster.
And I came out the other side with every single memory intact.
This is how you build character, my father told me.
This is how you make a warrior.
I’ve never been the same since.
So when I see my nightmare pulling Declan away with those massive claws, I freeze.
I can’t process what I’m seeing. I killed it, even though it wasn’t really alive, it bled.
I took its head off. I cut it up into little pieces and threw them into the fire.
I watched it burn, bit by bit. I ground those horns down into dust with a crude grindstone.
So that when I left this place, I knew I would never have to come back because the monster was gone.
And yet, here it is.
My monster. Doing its best to kill Declan right in front of my eyes.
I can’t move. I’m frozen, like I looked the Medusa in the eyes and was turned to rock.
I went crazy in here.
Lost my fucking mind.
Was talking to myself.
Making up rhymes to pass the time because I lost my mind.
Suddenly, I hear Star screaming Declan’s name. Then pounding footsteps. From around a corner she appears, Quaid following behind her.
The spell the maze cast over me, fades and I blink. Just like Star blinked back in the jail cell.
She stops dead, then begins to scream.
And the words—the crazy rambling of the boy I was, but will never be again—start coming back to me.
Quaid pushes Star out of the way, shoving her behind him.
And this is it. My time to shine in the grand design.
I move, straight at the Minotaur, and just before it swipes another claw over Declan’s body on the ground, I grab him. Picking him up with all the strength of the man I am.
I take him with me, heading straight towards Star, the words already spilling out of my mouth, unbidden, but there, nonetheless.
“Midnight dreams and moonlit lies.”
Star’s eyes go wide with surprise!
“The fates of three and one collide.”
Fuck this place, I will not die.
“Charm to ease your growing fear. Strength to let the brightness near. A final gift to be your eyes.” And then I yell, “Ruuuuun!”
Quaid grabs Star, following me and then, the impossible happens.
The world blinks, the walls disappear, and we go right through them.