They heard the footsteps before anything else. It was clearly still a part of the memory, so they all simply continued to watch.
A woman—Eldrianna—walked right past them, kneeling at the center of the room. “Does your spirit still linger here, Theran?”
“Why have you come back?” a voice grumbled. It didn’t sound like it was coming from any direction in particular. “The only thing you ever did to me was turn me into that beast. Now I’m in a worse state than I ever was before!”
“So ungrateful,” Eldrianna returned with a tsk. “You would think you would care a bit more about me. I did, after all, fulfill my half of the bargain. Your daughter wasn’t married off to a king; she was happy, even traveling across the islands before finally coming back to rebuild your kingdom. There’s no reason for you to blame me for anything. I certainly did nothing wrong.”
“Then why did that wretch have to kill me?”
She shrugged. “Because you gave him a reason to fight. You really would’ve just been left alone if you just took your daughter and ran away. Orestis hates creatures like you, so unpredictable and far from what he thought of when he created this land. Danai has no place but to listen to her dear father, so she wouldn’t have tried anything. She never stood against him. I only came here because I’m just as desperate as you are. I need someone to do what I want and you’re the only one who’s going to be able to do it.”
“What do you want from me? Go on and get it all out! Leave me to my peace here, in a state where it seems even Vriuh won’t bring me home…”
“Plenty of things are happening right now—things you can’t even begin to comprehend,” she mused. “Wars are ending and starting, Vriuh and the Strings are both creating and destroying threads of life, and there are subtle changes too like the seasons. Orestis must have remembered that I always despised puzzles, having to sort through what he claimed to be logic… and he hoped that it would deter me from my goal… what a fool. No, it just makes me more curious to know why there’s something he’s so intent on me not knowing. Like he can hide it from me, in the end! Your part in all of that is a simple one: I’m here to give you back a fragment of your body, that you might guard this place and kill every trespasser.”
She started building, first out of presumably thin air and then dust, a vaguely human-like figure. With a bit of magic, however, it went through the same kind of transformation Theran had into the Minotaur. She stepped back from her creation and gave it a smile. “How do you feel, now that you have a body of your own again?”
It didn’t respond, but rather took to observing every little detail. It looked mystified that such a thing was even possible, before finally asking, “Where is the man that killed me?”
“Dead,” was Eldrianna’s initial response. “You must not have realized how long you’ve been in that state. It’s been some fifty years, you know—both Theseus and Anysia have died out in sea, their only child and your kingdom’s heir missing in foreign lands. Even Peiros has perished, along with many others in that province, when a plague was introduced there. There’s no one left to take vengeance on, I’m afraid.”
“Then what’s the point in being here?”
“To guard what’s still here. A long time ago, Vaso walked along a path not unlike this cave system. His treasure is hidden somewhere among all these rocks and you, dear, are going to make sure no one gets to them for me. I would say you could use them for yourself, if you ever found them, though I doubt it still works on the dead.”
“Will you at least tell me what I’m protecting?”
For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Then, carefully, as if the mere mention of it would make it disappear, she said, “The pools at the very end of these caves. Your killer has already found them and told the world about what he saw, so there’ll undoubtedly be plenty of adventurers trying to get to it. You just have to keep them from seeing it.”
“Why?”
“A simple creature like you won’t be able to understand it,” she replied, turning around and walking back to the exit. “But unless you want to be a disembodied voice again, I would suggest doing what I want.”
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She left without being given any form of defiance, once again walking right through the group on her way out. Every last fragment of the memory faded, leaving them in a silence just as unsettling as what they saw.
Dimas really shouldn’t have been surprised. There was, after all, little explanation for how the Minotaur could’ve come back without Eldrianna being there. Vriuh would never let a beast like that live again, at least not as it was now. Maybe if it had turned back to its mortal form there would be a vague hope for becoming a spirit; as it stood, though, it probably wouldn’t have even been allowed to pass through the gates. That was probably why some fragment of its spirit had stayed in the caves. While some things might be worse and some better, at least Dimas knew for certain that Vriuh’s restrictions for who could enter the underworld was the same.
But did all of that really help him be any less anxious? Of course not! He still remembered all the stories they would tell him. They had whole books dedicated to this sort of thing to try to keep kids from not doing the exact thing they’re doing right now.
“Ekambar, get off the counter. I need it to work.”
The voice made him jump before he realized it was another memory. Understanding at this point what they had to do, they continued to follow it.
“But you’ve been in here all day!”
When they rounded the corner, the two figures and their surroundings appeared. They were both what looked like a workshop; an odd collection of tools and a few contraptions were scattered about, almost to the point of having no safe path to walk through. The older of the two was Peiros, something pieced together both from what they had seen earlier and what they were seeing now. That meant that the younger would need to be Ekambar, one of the master craftsman's children and the ill-fated Phoenix King.
Peiros said nothing, instead simply picking Ekambar off of the counter and setting him on the ground.
“Hey! I wanna—“
“You’re not doing anything. At least not with me. I’m sure your mother has something for you to do.”
“Mom’s going to tell me to go feed the chickens or help her with dinner. I don’t wanna do any of that stuff! It’s all boring. You never seem to be doing something boring. You’re always in here working, but that’s just because it’s super interesting, right?”
“It’s also incredibly dangerous,” Peiros remarked. He started ushering his son out of the room, almost to the point of forcing Ekambar. “Please stay away from it.”
Ekambar turned around to be able to face his father again. “Will I be able to join you someday? Will I ever be old enough that you’ll let me come here and help you?”
“Maybe when you’re twenty-five,” Peiros decided after a pause. “Though by then maybe your fascination will disappear. You’ll probably be ready to settle down with a wife at that point.”
“Nope! I’m gonna help you as soon as you let me! Nothing’s going to stop me!”
There was a certain kind of bitter twist to the words knowing that Ekambar died before turning twenty-five; after, of course, he brought a plague that had killed almost everyone in his village.
Once Ekambar was successfully out of the room, the door was shut and locked. Peiros sighed and went back to his work.
His voice seemed to echo through the entire cavern as the memory began to fade. “There’s nothing keeping Qizar from dumping the Minotaur here if they really wanted to. They could just leave their provinces to deal with it. As much duty as I have to the king, I need to make sure that doesn’t happen. I still have a lot of work to do.”
Before they could even have time to process it, five figures rushed past them. For a moment there was nothing but height to differentiate them; then it became clearer, and they were clearly a group of two humans, two goblins, and a fairy.
“Gods, you’re all so slow! Hurry up! We didn’t get this far just to drop out now!” the fairy called, flying circles around her companions.
“Give us a break, Lux,” one of the humans sighed. “We just snuck through Seothia and somehow didn’t get caught. They’ll murder people like us and there’s no telling if they’ll be able to find us here.”
“We can continue after a short break,” offered the other. “We need all the energy we can get in case they find us. We can’t just hope they don’t realize the group that obviously doesn’t belong here.”
“I think they saw us come in…” a goblin mumbled. “At least, I know there were a couple of soldiers camping near us. I’m sure they’ll be able to come in, even if we’re in here. There was no kind of lock or anything that might’ve suggested otherwise…”
The fairy let out a hmph in defiance, and proceeded to sit on the first human’s head. “Fine! We’ll stay for a little while.” She made a little spark of light out of her hand before continuing, “This’ll go out in about ten minutes. When that happens, we’re moving again!”
They were, for a moment, in complete silence. But the hope that everything would be fine was gone the second they all heard the roar. Even to the people of the memory—who had never once heard such a sound before—knew it was nothing good. To Dimas a certain kind of dread filled him as he watched, wondering why he ever tried to think it wouldn’t turn out this way.
There were reasons the legends of the Minotaur didn’t completely fade into obscurity. They had to witness why all those tales of horrors were retold time and time again; the exact reason why some things can’t just be forgotten. Whatever kind of fate happened to the single one of the group to run back to the entrance, it wasn’t without sharing their experience.