The Minotaur

SPLASH!

She launched up off the slab as a squirt of searing cold water landed on her. The Minotaur laughed, loudly. She was completely paralyzed at that point; over excited, hysterical, wet, naked, crying, angry...she could not contain it all and she shut down. She stood in the sand, barely, weaving on unsteady legs as the great shaggy monster advanced on her.

He sat on the slab next to where she stood and grabbed her hand. He tilted his head and brought down a fearsomely pointed horn, then pressed her hand against it, breaking her skin. Blood welled from the small puncture but she did not react. All she could do was watch.

He lofted the water skin, still dripping from the hosing he had given her moments before. He spilled it over her bleeding hand, then wiped away the blood. What remained was healthy, unblemished skin. Untouched, unmarred, unmolested; pure. His glittering blue eyes bored in on hers, waiting. It didn't take long.

"The water heals..."

Yes.

"It can heal...that?"

Yes.

"So, I can?"

Yes.

Almost as quickly as it had left, her resolve flowed back and refilled her. She was a little ashamed, once again underestimating her new lover, but more than anything she glowed with an inner flame with her newfound knowledge. She wiped away her foolish tears and looked up at the Minotaur. She noticed, of course, that he was still naked. And still amazing.

"You know, if you really want that...we should probably do it again."

That time she saw all of his wonderfully wicked teeth.

Epilogue

He was found wandering the desolate coast of the Eversea, just north of the great Bay of Hansekan. A fisherman pulled into a sheltered cove to hide from a passing slave ship, and there in the rocky tide wall was a body not long for this world. The fisherman took pity and pulled the dying man out of the water-carved hole where he had settled in to die. A bit of fresh water and a scrap of fish brought some color back into his face, but his mind was lost.

Back on shore in the city, the fisherman took the wanderer to the clerics to see to his health. They tried their best, but he was too far gone. The words he spoke were obviously born of delirium. He spoke of his fight at the grand arena, how he had fallen down the pit and been snared by a war net, how he had cut the net to make a rope and managed to land alive and whole in the murky underworld of the dreaded Minotaur.

All of that was easy enough to believe, apart from him winding up so far from the city. Everyone knew about the Minotaur under the arena. The Day of the Roaring was only a decade past. No, what marked him as mad was his assertion that the beast was not a beast, but a woman, tall and fair, with two children at her side. He said they escorted him out, treated him kindly, and gave him a magic potion to speed his way.

It was sad, they all agreed after he died, that a man could survive the great arena and die in such a state of madness, though there were many who refused to believe he had actually been a gladiator slave at all. Everyone knew the fate that befell anyone unfortunate enough to fall into the lair of the Minotaur.