16 #3
“I have a terrible feeling about this,” Elias mutters.
Desperation and self-preservation clash within me. I want to help him, yet I can’t bring myself to move.
“Daedalus!” I shout.
His head flinches, not toward my voice, but downward, toward my prosthesis. Can he sense his magic in it? Does he remember I’m his friend?
He turns. And in the lamplight, his injuries are worse than I thought. The front of his skull is deeply dented. Thick saliva oozes from his slack bottom lip.
“What have they done to you?” I cry.
A tear falls as I start toward him.
“Callalie, no!” Elias shouts.
He and August lunge, grasping my arms. They pull me back into the circle, but it’s too late.
Daedalus’s stare snaps to me and sharpens. His nostrils flare. A predator marking his prey. A low rumble pours from his chest.
My breath frays.
I have made a very grave mistake.
Daedalus is the monster.
He turns to face me. His body, bones, muscle, and sinew stretch, bend, twist, and pop as he grows larger, becoming the beast we heard from the other side of the wall.
This – he – is our beast. Our test. Our trial. We found the center of the labyrinth. All that’s left is to slay the monster in its middle.
I don’t want to kill my friend. He made this leg for me. Gave it, and me, a piece of his magic. A piece of himself.
He was kind, I remind myself when the vessels in his eyes burst red, when slobber streams like strands of spider silk from his mouth, and two sharp horns emerge from his forehead, then elongate.
His feet buckle into hooves, and he releases a roar that startles the bats on the ceiling of this dark, damp place. They fly erratically, going anywhere and nowhere, desperate and afraid.
“My gods,” Ulani breathes as Daedalus grows even taller, broader, and more furious.
The Daedalus I knew is gone. Every trace of him erased.
This is his punishment for being kind to me.
Heartache smothers my breaths. The only way to set him free from this labyrinth, protect my friends, and win this gods damned trial is to end his life.
If we don’t kill him, none of us will make it out of the maze alive.
And I must be the one to do it. I owe Daedalus the dignity of not dying at a stranger’s hateful hand.
I walk forward, spear poised. Ulani and Vailea flank me with their golden weapons drawn.
“It has to be me,” I tell them.
They both nod, but I see it in their eyes. They’ll kill him if I can’t. If I don’t.
Before we take another step, Torsten and his championed allies rush out from another corridor, then shout for us to help them surround the minotaur.
“No!” I don’t want them to scare Daedalus. He deserves an honorable death. One that’s swift and as painless as possible. Torsten’s a cruel bastard. He won’t care if Daedalus suffers. He doesn’t know him.
Torsten roars and lunges at Daedalus, brandishing the broadsword he’d gained since the last trial.
Daedalus bellows his fury at Torsten’s show of aggression. One of his hooves paws the stone. Froth builds in the corners of his mouth. He lowers his head, positions his horns, and charges the Norseman.
I sprint toward the minotaur’s back, draw back my spear, plunge it between Daedalus’s ribs… and push until bone crunches and the sharp tip punctures his heart.
When he gasps, there’s nothing monstrous about the sound. It’s wholly mortal.
His beastly legs buckle. Daedalus crashes to the ground onto his side, sending a tremor through the entire maze. Was this how it felt when his ancestor’s son fell to the earth? Did it quake then, too? Feeling the strike, but also marking the moment.
The Daedalus of legend never flew too close to the sun like his boy Icarus. He understood the sun’s power and was too smart to be so foolish. The Daedalus I knew shared his heart, mind, and magic. But he wasn’t wise or wary enough to keep his distance from me.
“We have to go!” Elias shouts.
Now that Daedalus is down, now that he’s dead, the race back to our portals and to the arena to finish this trial is on. Torsten calls to his group to run, but none of them know which entrance leads back to their portal.
One pulls the glowing strand from their pocket. They didn’t use it.
They start down one, then stop to argue. Hazi is adamant it’s not the right path. Kallik insists it is. The two men shout at one another until Torsten stalks down one to check.
August plants a foot on Daedalus’s back and pulls my spear free. Blood coats the sharp tip. He holds it out for me to take, but I can’t. I shake my head.
“I’ve got it,” he assures me. “Let’s go!” he shouts to our allies, pointing to the wrong opening in the maze.
“That’s not it!” I yell. “It’s here.”
I point to the C I scored into the wall.
C. For Carina.
Niall peeks around the corner and waves for us to hurry. We overtake him, sprinting over the golden thread, slipping on slick stone when we take turn after turn, until we find Koda, safe and standing in front of the activated portal.
Ulani and Vailea leap into the gold. Elias and Niall help Koda through. August clasps my hand and we jump back to the arena together. We land in the thick sand of the colosseum in the middle of four portals.
The crowd goes feral, cheering, waving flags, pumping fists. They stomp their feet so hard I feel the reverberation in my chest.
The other groups – we beat them.
Our group won. But gods, what we lost in that maze.
I raise my arms and clutch the sides of my head, trying to process what just happened. I turn a circle, the weight of the trial making every step heavier than the last. Sobs try to claw their way out from the very core of me.
Panic and regret swell and build into a tidal wave. I deserve to drown in them.
What have I done?
I killed him.
I killed Daedalus.
“Hands on your knees. Pretend you’re out of breath,” August says as he stands beside me and beams a smile at the mortal audience as he waves to them. “Don’t let them see you break.”
I’m not pretending. I do as August says and try my best not to vomit.
August stays with me. He pats my back like an ally would while I crumble.
Ares allowed Daedalus to visit. He let him deliver the prosthesis to me so I could continue in the trials. Then threw the man into the dark and made him a beast!
Had the craftsman’s family been searching for him, only to find him broadcast as a monster? Did they watch what I did to him?
“I killed him,” I choke.
August shakes his head. “You had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice! I killed him.” This time when I say it, I can barely contain the panic.
What if I was wrong? What if he could have been helped?
Would the gods have restored him if we brought him out of the labyrinth? If we showed him mercy by capturing him instead of assuming his only way out of the trial was death?
“That wasn’t him.” August bends down beside me. “That wasn’t the man you knew.”
That’s not exactly true. The gasp had been his. And even if the ‘mortal’ was gone, his soul was inside the beast. Daedalus was dragged into this mess because of me. He died because of me. He suffered because of me.