Chapter 17 The Badlands
We left the cavern at dawn, and not long later, I began to feel the coolness and the touch of a gentle wind.
Soon, the brightness of the sun pushed its way through small gaps in the wall of the Labyrinth in front of us.
The Labyrinth had remained quiet, allowing us safe passage up to this point, as if it knew we were leaving.
We stepped toward the wall in front of us, and the shimmer that had come from Aster and Stava’s touch returned.
It reacted to their presence, as if comforted by it.
The wall soon began wrapping in on itself, forming an arch, and I lifted a hand to protect my eyes from the glare of the sun.
“I will leave you here,” Aunt Stava said. “I hope, for the sake of The?kós, you are successful in retrieving the Weaver’s torch.”
“I will do whatever it takes,” Aster said, bowing his head. I nodded and was quick to correct him.
“We will do whatever it takes,” I corrected.
Aunt Stava inclined her head slowly at me in a show of respect before she looked back to her nephew. Someone I knew meant a great deal to her, which had been easy to see even in the small time I had spent around them both.
She then closed her eyes and let out a big sigh before looking at us once again, her lips thinned in a tight line.
“Be careful, little bull… Alexandra.”
She took a step back, and we watched as the wall closed up in front of her, leaving us both alone, finally outside of the Labyrinth’s living walls.
I looked at Aster as he began to change to human form in front of me, and I was thankful that the armor around his waist, though a little looser, managed to hang on to his hips.
“Should have brought some extra clothes,” I said, grimacing. “I bet you’re freezing.”
“We run hotter than most myths, so the cold rarely affects me. Besides, I have a feeling I will be back to being a Minotaur again before long.”
He turned away from the Labyrinth, and I followed suit.
The view was nothing special, just the same as before.
Black soil, dead grass, and silence. A vast, eerie silence made the back of my neck prickle.
It wasn’t the peaceful kind of quiet. It was foreboding, and it sent a shiver right through me.
As a nature lover, the scene before me was painful to witness, and it wasn’t even my world.
Because it was as though I could see how it once was.
Its rolling green hills and its thick forests ripe with life and beauty.
Aster led the way, walking over the now barren fields, through rocky canyons and across dried-up rivers.
He was silent, but I was glad of it, my mind too busy for any conversation as I thought about what Aster had said about the Gorgon King.
About how Atlas and Aster had run from him.
I couldn’t imagine either of them running from anything, though they were younger then, just causing mischief.
But the fear that Aster had shown unnerved me to the point that I had little sleep last night.
Though sleeping on the bare ground with nothing but the fur blanket to comfort me hadn’t exactly helped.
I didn’t know how long we walked, but it was most of the day, at least, with the sun getting lower and lower with each step. As we finished the excruciating ascent of a hill, I was about to ask how much further to the Badlands when I took in the view. My question turning into a gasp.
The Badlands did not look the way I had expected them to.
I slowed without realizing it, my breath catching as the land opened out before us.
Because honestly, I had been bracing myself for another stretch of ruin.
Another scarred wasteland like the one we had just crossed, only older and more natural, shaped by time instead of darkness.
I had expected dead ground and broken stone, something harsh and inhospitable that earned its name through desolation alone.
Instead, I found myself staring at life.
An Oasis.
Acres of deep green forest spilled across the valley below, thick canopies rolling like waves between jagged mountain ridges.
Their peaks, sharp and ancient yet crowned with moss and climbing vines rather than bare stone.
Rivers threaded through the land like veins of silver, catching the light as they cut through shadowed ravines and disappeared beneath the trees.
Mist clung low to the forest floor, curling around trunks and roots, giving the whole place an otherworldly softness that made my chest ache.
It was beautiful. Achingly so.
And that, more than anything, unsettled me.
“This is…” I started, then faltered, the words refusing to form properly as I took another step forward, as if getting closer might make it make sense.
“It’s incredible.”
Aster stopped beside me, his gaze fixed on the land below, his expression unreadable in that way he had when he was thinking ten steps ahead of everyone else.
“You weren’t expecting this.” His assumption was correct.
“No,” I admitted, unable to tear my eyes away.
“I thought the Badlands would look… ruined. Like The?kós. Just older.” I shook my head slightly. “This looks so alive.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched.
“Not everything is what it seems,” he said at last, his words sending a shiver up my spine.
I turned to him, a dozen questions rising at once, but before I could voice a single one, he was already moving again, his hand brushing briefly against my arm in a silent prompt.
“Come on,” he added, glancing back at me.
I hesitated for just a heartbeat longer, casting one last look over the lush, breathtaking expanse. A strange chill was crawling through me despite the warmth of the sun.
As we crested another hill, my legs burned, and my lungs protested with every breath.
I slowed despite myself, bracing my hands against my thighs as I bent forward slightly, willing the ache to ease just enough that I wouldn’t collapse where I stood.
The chill from the Labyrinth still clung to me in a way that felt more insidious than the cold itself.
Like it had seeped beneath my skin and refused to leave, no matter how much distance we’d put between ourselves and its living walls.
When I finally straightened, drawing in a deeper breath and bracing myself to complain or at least ask how much farther we still had to go, the words never quite made it past my lips as we reached a beautiful wooded area.
The earth beneath my boots deepened in color, rich and dark, holding moisture rather than repelling it.
Grass pushed through the soil in thick, confident clusters.
Low shrubs spread across the slope ahead of us, their leaves glossy and green, untouched by rot or blight, and beyond them the land rolled gently downward into dense woodland that shimmered with life.
For a moment, I simply stood there, stunned, my chest tightening with a strange, disorienting mix of relief and unease.
“So before the darkness, is this what The?kós looked like?” I asked at last, my voice quiet, as if speaking too loudly might fracture whatever illusion I was standing in.
Aster stopped beside me, his gaze sweeping the landscape and making my unease deepen at the subtle shift in his posture.
“Not exactly, no,” he replied, his tone steady but thoughtful.
The air carried the scent of damp earth and wild growth, layered with a faintly floral undertone.
A breeze moved through the trees ahead, cool and gentle, lifting strands of my hair and brushing against my skin.
I inhaled deeply before I could stop myself, greedily drawing in proof that life still existed somewhere in this world after all.
Seeing as he didn’t elaborate, I moved on to my next question. “So, this King, where is he?” I asked, glancing at him.
“His fortress is still another day’s travel.”
Frustration and anxiety knotted something low in my stomach, a building tension I had not consciously acknowledged until now.
As we began our descent down the far side of the hill, the ground softened beneath our boots, leaving light imprints.
Before long, the trees closed in around us, their branches weaving together overhead, dappling the forest floor with sunlight.
We moved in silence, the forest alive with subtle sound, the hush of leaves, the distant call of birds darting between branches, the quiet murmur of water somewhere nearby threading through it all.
It should have been comforting. Instead, the longer we walked, the more that familiar unease crept in, settling between my shoulder blades and lifting the hairs on the back of my neck.
The feeling had followed me since we left the Labyrinth, easy to dismiss at first as exhaustion or lingering fear. But here, surrounded by so much, it sharpened into something far more distinct. The unmistakable sensation of being watched. Not hunted or even threatened.
Observed.
I glanced over my shoulder, scanning the trees behind us, searching for movement, for anything that might justify the prickling awareness crawling over my skin. The forest stood still, sunlight filtering through leaves that stirred lazily in the breeze, giving no sign that anything was amiss.
Telling myself I was being ridiculous, I turned forward again, only for the feeling to intensify, pressing into me as if unseen eyes were tracking my every step. My pace slowed without meaning to, my breath hitching just slightly.
“Do you feel that?” I asked quietly.
Aster slowed beside me, his head tilting as he listened to something beyond my reach. He turned in a slow circle, his gaze sharp and searching, before shaking his head.
“There’s nothing,” he said, though the certainty I had come to rely on was missing from his voice.
His unease remained.