King of the Plains

Chapters

Chapter One: From the Mazes of Crete
Chapter Two: Comes a Hero
Chapter 3: Highcliff
Chapter 4: Guardian
Chapter 5: Alpha
Chapter 6: Protector
Chapter 7: Patriarch
Chapter 8: Crowning

Chapter One: From the Mazes of Crete

From the Mazes of Crete

I woke up in the dark. On its own, that wasn’t all too strange. I was more of a blinds-closed guy when it came to sleeping. The part that made me instantly alert was the soreness in my neck and the cold hard surface I was laid down on. It felt like stone or rocks. Had I collapsed on my kitchen’s ceramic tiles?

Suddenly alert, I began splaying my arms around, trying to push up from the ground and feel for walls/cupboards/light-switches. God, this was going to lead to an expensive doctor’s visit. I didn’t want to take an MRI scan, but my brain was drawing a blank for how I could have gotten here and this was the serious kind of thing that you really needed to talk to a doctor about.

But, as I shifted on the floor, it became immediately clear that something was wrong. Something was wrong. It’s hard to explain, but my sense of touch was coming from places it shouldn’t have been. My arms felt further apart than they should have been and much heavier, as if they were weighed down by sand bags. My chest was too broad, the skin chafing against the cold surface below. Over my shoulders, I felt a brushing sensation as I moved my head. I always kept my hair short, how was it suddenly shoulder-length?

Worst of all was the tingling scraping sensation I felt above my head. There was an undefined ticklishness up there, that I could feel up there. Kind of like the sole of a foot getting rubbed with a feather, I could feel something there against the stone. It was the source of this crick in my neck, propping my head at an uncomfortable angle above the stone below.

I was panicking now. This wasn’t my home. Rough, cumbersome fingers felt at grooves in the stone below me. I was laid out on stone bricks, not in my kitchen. Everything about me was wrong. Sure, I was used to a bit of chest-hair, but there was a thin layer of fur all over my skin. I could feel it, pressing my index finger and thumb against the fuzzy growth over my chest. And I still hadn’t managed to stand up. What was wrong with my feet?

Despite my attempts, I couldn’t feel toes against the stone floor. My feet in general had a certain numbness to them. Giving the appendages a shake, I kicked my right foot against the bricks below to see if I could dislodge whatever was holding my feet back. To my surprise, the kick was rewarded with a piercing ‘crack,’ as if I had struck at the ground with steel toed boots. That would have been well and good if I had had my legs bound in some steel contraption, but I could feel otherwise. It had felt like I had kicked the ground, not some boot. And, as my legs brushed against one another, those same fuzzy bristles pressed into either leg, rather than some boots.

Hyperventilating, my breaths were coming in haggard gulps as I pulled my right knee up against my chest and fumbled around where I thought my foot was. In this oppressive darkness, it was harder than one might imagine to know where to instinctively grasp at with a body that didn’t seem to be in the right place. Finally latching on to a foot, I could feel a pit form in my stomach as I felt at the appendage. Where the tufts of fur cut out, a hard mass began. It wasn’t metal. No, it felt keratinous like fingernails. Rubbing rough exterior with my hand, I felt a cloven groove running across the middle, separating two halves. Suddenly, it hit me. I was holding a hoof.

Dropping the hoof, I scrambled backwards over the cold floor, trying to distance myself from the alien appendages. Sliding back, I struck against a yet unseen wall with a ‘thump.’ I couldn’t see them, but I knew the hooves were still there.

“Oh god, what am I?” I choked into the darkness. Only, it wasn’t me who spoke. I knew what my voice sounded like, even if I didn’t like the sound of it much. The thing that just talked wasn’t me. It was deep and bass, like that of a giant. I squirmed against the wall, trying to distance myself further from the foreign body parts. It wasn’t me.

I don’t know how long I was spent pressed up against that wall in the pitch darkness. A few minutes, ten maybe? Long enough for pangs of thirst to pass through my dry throat at least. It all felt surreal, just so impossible. I had wondered if it might end if I waited it out, like a dream or something. It didn’t. The stale, musty air of the dark chamber didn’t change. The cloying cornmeal scent of fungus growing in the dark still tickled my nose. Dead silence still encapsulated me, sound only touching the room as I shifted about on the floor, pulling my legs up tightly into a foetal position.

Head tucked into my legs, I was trying to ignore how fuzzy and overly muscular they were when I noticed something had changed in my surroundings. I don’t know if my eyes had adjusted to the darkness or what, but I could make out the outline of my area. It wasn’t illuminated, as you’d usually think. No. In the fuzziest of greyscales, I could just about make out walls and the floor; I could see bricks too, if I squinted.

Crawling forwards on all fours, I traced a hand over the brick floor immediately in front of me, as if to confirm what my eyes were telling me. It was real, I could feel the texture and ridges of the bricks where my eyes showed them to be. And, ever so subtly, I could see my arm in my own view. It was hard though, as if my skin was dark. God, my hands were big. I wanted to believe it was a trick of the light, but I could feel the fingers pressing up against one another and had a rough idea of their shape.

Pressing a hand up against a brick wall for support, I shakily made my way to my feet. To my hooves, I supposed. The lack of toes took some getting used to but, once I was standing, I found it surprisingly easy to stay upright. I had never stood on hooves before, but it came naturally enough. There’s that saying, ‘it’s like riding a bike,’ for things you’ve already done and can do again easily. I supposed it was like that, but I had never stood on hooves before. It was instinctive.

Looking around, I paused at the sight of a smooth lump over the wall in front of me. About the size of my fist, it would have stood out solely for not being another rectangular stone brick. But, what drew my attention to it was that the grey-brown lump was a slightly lighter shade than the rest of the formless void around me. Its edges were ever so marginally more defined. Cautiously, I poked at it with a finger. Sinking in, I realised I was touching a spongy fungus. Eyes widening, I tried cupping a bulky hand over the fungal growth. The room, already a night-imperceptible haze, got that much darker. This was my light! These fungi were just barely bioluminescent.

Taking my hand away from the fungus, almost reverently towards the bringer of light, I stepped back and surveyed my surroundings. Doing a turn, I could make out that I was in a brick room, walls locking me in on all sides. On my left, the room had a singular exit. I don’t think I could say I had a particular direction in mind. However, sitting in a pitch-black stone room wasn’t going to bring me any closer to understanding what had happened to me and how I could fix it. Besides, I was growing quite thirsty and the dry air down here wasn’t doing anything to help that. With a snort-like exhalation from my nose, I set out.

***

This place was insane. Moreover, I was making that statement fully cognisant of the fact that I had woken up in a pitch black room as some kind of non-human creature that I hadn’t been yesterday. Wherever I went, long, twisting halls of bricks wound and spiralled. But they weren’t filled with anything. There was no signage, no sense of direction. It was the ultimate non-utilisation of space. Meticulously crafted stone bricks surrounded me on all sides, showing every indication of being hand laid through the little chips on their sides or them being slightly misaligned. These weren’t some little crawlspaces either. Each hall was tall enough and wide enough to comfortably accommodate someone my size on a roam.

With each fork I reached, I tried to follow whichever route looked brighter. The barren corridors were making me desperate for an escape. With each light I pursued, a mushroom left me disappointed. After what felt like an hour of searching, but was probably half that in reality, I stumbled blindly across something different. Stood dumbly in a wide entrance, it took me a second to try and peer at what I was seeing. Having spent so much time numbly ignoring plain halls, being forced to actually examine my surroundings in this non-light was difficult.

I was in a boxy room, squarish in shape, but a little lower than the surrounding halls. I had to hang my head a little or risk my horns, I winced at the thought of them, scraping the ceiling. On the other side of the room, the entrance to another hallway began. But, between here and there, rows and rows of what appeared to be ornate stone boxes were half-slid into deep cubbies in the wall. Nearing one, I rubbed a hand lightly over it, as if to confirm what my eyes had hinted at. I let out a surprised exhalation upon touching the cool stone. It was masterfully embossed, the raised ridges hinting at an elaborate ornate pattern over the surface of the lid. It was a shame I didn’t have the light to properly appreciate what was around me.

I lifted my hand away from the stone. The elaborate boxes, the winding decorative corridors, this all screamed of a crypt. Was I in Giza? Had I been placed in a pyramid somehow? As insane as the idea was, I was desperate for some kind of rationalisation for my circumstances. Rubbing a hand against my back in stress, I was reminded again of the body I found myself in. As unlikely as it was that I could be drugged and left in the Great Pyramids, that didn’t even begin to explain what this was. I snorted, waving a hand and turning away from the stone casket. Stomping to the other side of the room, a piercing ‘clang’ shot through the room, making me flinch in surprise.

I looked down, the sound had come from the floor. Fumbling around, I saw the outline of a stick or something on the ground. Crouching down and bringing my muscled body to the floor, I saw a shaft of metal. Grabbing it from a rounded hilt, I realised that it was a sword and sheath. There was little for the metallic gleam to reflect, but I could tell it was metal by its weight and feel. Giving the flat of the blade a flick with a powerful finger, I felt the gentle reverberations. Some might have called it a shortsword. In my giant hands, it felt more accurate to call it a toothpick. I kept it close, eager to have something.

Looking over to the spot where I had kicked the sword from. I saw the outlines of a skeleton, long since decomposed. I felt bad for defiling the corpse. However, they had fallen in the middle of the room and it was dark enough that I couldn’t see their outline without looking for it. Making my way to the pile of bones, I felt a pressure stirring in my chest. They didn’t look human. I saw hands, femurs, and a broad chest. But, when it came to their head, a markedly bovine snout jutted out from the face. It was elongated far past anything that could be called human, even if I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at skulls. And, from the top of the head, a stubby pair of horns crested from the skull. Absentmindedly, I found myself rubbing the long protrusions that wrapped around my skull in a crown. This thing was bull and man, a minotaur. Breath hitching, I shot to my feet, putting some distance between the skeleton and myself as I paced unevenly back to the exit.

In the corner of my eye, I saw movement. Freezing, I snapped my head to the sight, hand clenching tightly around the sword in my hand. What the fuck was in here with me? My breaths came quickly, though I tried to conceal the sounds. Watching for the slightest movement, I saw none. Brandishing the sword between myself and the darkness, I saw movement again. It was just in front of me now. I took a step forwards.

“Hello?” I ventured, calling out to the figure. Silence was the response.

Taking another step, I could see it more clearly now, it was standing just in front of the far wall. It was dim but, in it’s hands, I could see- I could see a sword. Oh god, it was a reflection. The ‘threat’ vanquished, I sheathed the blade I had picked up. Ever so faintly, I could see around the wall where the reflection ended and the outline of a mirror began. It was glossy and dull, but a fungus behind me illuminated my form true.

My face fell the longer I stared, transfixed by the person in front of me. It was… that couldn’t be right. Idly, I brushed a hand around my jawline, feeling at the large nostrils, the elongated snout. In the mirror's reflection, I could barely even make myself out. But what I saw terrified me. Bulging muscles, hooves for feet, a rugged furry appearance, and the head of a bull. Licking my dry lips, I glanced at the skeleton behind me. I was one of them. I was a minotaur.

Credit: atenebris

I felt a heaviness, walking out of that room. A return to barren corridors couldn’t sooth my mind. Turning the corner, I winced as I was near blinded by a sudden flash of light. Hissing slightly, I shielded my eyes with a fuzzy arm as the dull greyscale I had been seeing with since I woke up seemed to disappear as my eyes adjusted to light that didn’t come from wall-fungi.

About a dozen metres in front of me, one of the walls had collapsed inwards, spilling a mound of bricks and a helping of dirt over the hallway floor. The rest of the hall seemed to be keeping together, though it all drooped a little. But that all came secondary to the sagging roof, where a minute sliver of light shone through. It was just a crack, shining right over the piled up mound of collapsed stone and dirt. But, having spent every moment since I had woken up in this hellhole surrounded by cloying darkness, that thin filament of light might as well have been sent from heaven. Bounding over to it, I tried looking through the crack. No luck, it was too narrow to even have a clear view out of, let alone fit me through. I would have to make it bigger.

Raising my hand up to the crack, I measured my bulky fingers against the narrow crevice. I could try to rip bricks away one by one, I supposed. But even wrapping my hands around them would be difficult enough, let alone the potential for cuts or the ceiling falling in on me. Glancing to the sheathed sword at my waist, I pulled the thick blade out, letting its shining steel reflect the sunlight for the first time in what must have been a century. Yeah, that might just work.

Had it been a thinner blade, I think the sword would have given up by now. But, as it was, the sword was taking to its role as a makeshift prybar well. Honestly, I was just kind of jamming it up there and trying to dislodge stuff under the makeshift staircase of dirt that the tunnel-collapse had built for me. It seemed to be working too. I could feel sections dislodging in the crack. It wasn’t too hard, the sealant over the bricks was brittle and weak, allowing sections of the already abused roof to link together into chunks. There were already a few such above me, just waiting for the right-

Without so much as a courtesy-rumble, sections of the roof started giving way. Pulling back the sword with wide eyes, I moved to dodge the biggest of the rock sections. The first to fall was an absolute boulder in its own right. That matted web of stone bricks and mortar crushed everything in the pile it landed on to a fine dust. I avoided getting turned into a fine paste but felt a piercing pain in my head as a lone brick fell a few feet onto one of my horns before spinning and slashing across my snout for good measure on its way down.

“Augh!” I cried out in a deep bellow, taking an extra step back and shielding my head with an arm. Damn it. That wasn’t an OSHA approved demolition and I was paying the price for it.

Though I was nursing my muzzle, I couldn’t help but be satisfied with the result. I was confused, tired, beaten, and desperately in need of a drink, but there was a blindingly bright portal to the outside above me. Abovehead, I could see a fiery sun blazing its light into the once concealed halls of the crypt. If the thin crack of light was hard to adjust to, midday sun was a different beast entirely. But, desperate to escape this hellhole, I started grabbing at the dirt and stone, pulling myself up the mound and to the hole in the ceiling. Hooves kicking against stones, trying to find purchase on the rocks, it was an uncoordinated scramble to pull myself out of the hole.

I don’t know if it was dehydration, head trauma, the blinding sunlight searing my retinas, or some combination of all three. But, just as I crested the rim of the makeshift exit in the ceiling, I found my arms surrendering and my chest collapsing against the dirt. I just- I just needed a second.

Strained eyes peered around my surroundings, moving while the rest of me was too tired to make the effort. The sky was a crystal clear blue. More thematically consistent stone railings and stairs could be seen on the outside of this place, cut from a similarly grey stone as the inside corridors. I blinked, trying to stay conscious. Ears twitching, I heard something jingling. And, was that the clip-clopping of hooves?

The steps got closer and started ascending, as if someone was climbing a staircase. Then, just a few paces in front of the hole where I was still collapsed, I saw a figure come into view. With wide eyes, I regarded a tiny girl carrying a massive pack of items on her back. Logs, weapons, tools, canteens, it must have all weighed three times her mass. But her baggage was nothing compared to the sheer astonishment I felt looking at the girl herself. Stubby horns poked out of brilliant pink hair, the kind you only saw in the most dedicated dye-jobs. And, at the sides of her head, a pair of fluffy brass-coloured ears did a little flap as the girl sighted me. All of her was that same brass-colour, actually, since she was covered from head to cloven toe in fur. There was no other way of putting it. The girl was a minotaur. And, as odd as it was to be able to tell for something nonhuman, she was definitely a girl. Though the fur on her body gave the minotaur pretty universal coverage, a few straps of leather and cloth were serving as the girl’s bra, loincloth, and backpack, respectively. My mind was spinning and my breaths were ragged as the minotaur girl stared at me with apprehension.

Credit: Lyc

“Yeh alright down ther’?”

My head hit the ground and I was out.

Chapter Two: Comes a Hero

Comes a Hero

There was something trickling down my throat. My eyes twitched, half open. I was laying awkwardly on the ground and something was trickling down my throat. Jerking awake, my arms shot out to either side of me, clasping on to the ground for support as if I had just woken up from a nightmare.

“Easy. Easy does it there,” a voice cautioned above me. Short, stocky, and with a metal bra, the pink-haired minotauress was perched over me, a leather waterskin in her hand. “You’re alright, big guy.”

I let out a silent curse. Alright? I was still in this place. My antlers waved wildly about as I gave my head a shake and pushed myself up off of the ground. I was still in this body. I was pretty far from ‘alright.’ Rubbing a coarse hand over my furry throat, I was amazed at how much better I felt. The parchedness I felt in my oesophagus had all but vanished. And, away from the dusty halls and in natural light, I was feeling much better. I looked down at the small minotauress, whose horns barely reached up to my waist and flashed her a smile.

“You helped me. Thank you.”

“Don’ mention it,” she dismissed, waving a hand through the air as if swatting a fly away and then brushing her nose with her backhand. She gave a little sniff, grunting, “we ‘taurs have to stick together these days if we want to make it. ‘Sides, there’s barely any males around at all neither.”

Nodding, absentmindedly, I tried to put the questions that posed aside and focus on my immediate surroundings. Turning my head in a quick rotation, I surveyed our surroundings. Just behind me, a familiar hole in the stone ceiling of the crypt sat exposed. Over its periphery, where I had fallen, a minotaur-sized outline carved in loose dirt and loam showed where I had been painstakingly dragged away from the pit. Frankly, I was shocked that the little minotaur had been able to move me at all. Around us, the stone façade of the crypt continued. Not twenty metres away, I could see what appeared to be a (if not the) main entrance to the crypt. Like a mouth, it sloped down and into the darkness below. It, like everything up here, was elaborately decorated. Great horns clung to the sides of the entrance, shaping the entryway to be a head and the crypt its gullet. Some part of me wondered if I had wasted time and effort coming out where I had, but another part of me thought that I couldn’t have been close to the exit at all because this place just went on.
Much of it was covered in earth and grass, subsumed by the rolling hills themselves. But, here and there, the odd slate of grey stones peeked out, mere hints of the titanic sprawl of winding corridors lain under the earth below. Only in areas like these, where the exterior still revealed itself to the world, were you able to see what had once been a vibrant megastructure. Stairs, plateaus, balconies, external wood structures, archways, they clung to the stepped crypt. The only thing that unified them all was that they were in various states of ruin. Wood rotted, archways fell, and the land was slowly consuming the steppes of stone. The stairs the minotauress had ascended were just in front of me. Barely a few paces further, the stone was covered by tall grasses. Flanking either side of the stairs, carved rails shielded passerbys from falling over the edge. Seeing such a grand structure in this state of dilapidated ruin was beautiful in a way. Sad, but starkly awe-inspiring.
Her load set down on the stone, I realised that my new minotauress friend was looking at me. One of her carried polearms which didn’t want to fit in with her dropped bag was held in her left hand. Her right hand was extended to me, an iron cuff bracelet around her wrist gleaming in the sun as she did so.

“I’m Lulu, Dwarf Lulu.”

Credit: Lyc

Gently, I gave her surprisingly calloused hand a shake. My own shaggy hand nearly swallowed her own in the shake, on account of how much bigger it was than hers.

“Got a name, big guy?” she continued, her teeth glinting in a wide smile. I shot her a nod.

“Frederick Pearse.” Just like that, her eyelids drooped and her ears sagged.

“Yeah, I’m not introducing you to anyone with a silly name like that,” Lulu grumbled, rolling her eyes. “Must have knocked yer head on the way out,” I could just make out the miniature girl whisper as she turned her head away from me.

“Hmm?” I rumbled with a frown.

“I was sayin’ we need tah get you a name that won’t make taurs think yer a few fields short of a pasture.” Lulu pursed her lips and brought a hand to her jaw, regarding me pensively for a moment. Looking me up and down, her gaze seemed to linger at the sword sheathed over my waist. Making up her mind, she pointed a hand at the hilt and proposed, “so yer a big lad and ye’ve got a sword with you. How about Parting Blade”–the little minotaur’s hands spread wide as she gesticulated, putting emphasis on the name–“going forward? Been a lot of good Blades in the history of the plains. Respectable name, that. I paused for a second, thinking it over.

“If you think it’s for the best,” I conceded with a bass rumble.

Rubbing a hand over my temple, I nodded. It might have been my own name, but I had no dog in the race for what was or wasn’t a good minotaur name. I knew I was always Frederick. If I had to call myself Parting Blade or some other dumb name in order to work out how to go back home, so be it. In the order of “most upsetting things to me right now” having hooves and being stranded in wherever this place was stood a mile higher than name dysphoria. Peering over the rails and across the vast, sunswept plains, I was taking the where of this place to be off of the regular Earth maps. I couldn’t think of any country that had sprawling underground tomb-mazes, minotaur girls, or this striking landscape. In the far distance, practically the horizon, a great singular mountain cut across the skyline. Over the backdrop of soft rolling hills, its jagged visage could only be described as imperious. This place was like something out of a fantasy novel. I could be in middle-earth.

A cough interrupted my daydreaming. Blinking, I turned away from the distant scenery and back to the fantastical creature just in front of me. Leaning against the artistic stone rails, Lulu had lazily angled her polearm over her shoulder and was looking at me.

“So, what wer’ ya doin’ in the Tomb of Kings, big guy?”

“Tomb of Kings?” I rumbled, turning slowly to look around the stone megastructure. Was that what this place was called?

“Yeah, yaknow, the burial maze for chieftains?” She stared at me, pursing her lips at my lack of reaction. “The maze their souls are supposed to roam until Crete wakes them up for the final battle?” I wasn’t sure what to make of any of that. Once more, the small girl had left me with far more questions than answers. I was trying to parse together some semblance of an explanation or reason or strategy of how to explain my situation to the girl when she grew exasperated and clarified, “the place you just crawled out of a few minutes ago?”

“I just”–I faltered, looking down at the little minotaur–“I woke up in there.”

Lulu frowned, her eyes narrowing as she stared intensely into my own eyes. Her arms crossed as she leaned back on the rail, apparently unsatisfied with my answer.

“Yeh didn’t steal anythin’ in there did ya?” she pried, eying me up and down suspiciously.

“What? No,” I asserted quickly. Did she see pockets in my fur? I glanced down at my waist. Noticing the sheathed blade on my hip, I clarified, “nothing but this sword I found on the ground. I’m not a graverobber.” I exposed my palms, as if to show that I wasn’t carrying anything else on me. The girl was small, but she had a hammer on a stick and I wasn’t looking to get smacked with it.

Lulu looked pensively at the sheathed sword on my hip for a moment, then back to me. There was a moment of silence over the hills as if she was waiting for something to happen. As the silence drew on, the cloudiness in her eyes dissipated and her concern over the subject seemed to vanish on a dime.

“Well, if the kings didn’ want you to have it, they’d have prob-bly smited you where you stood. That’s what the ol’ elders say, anyhow. So I think yer fine,” the little minotaur said with a shrug, turning around without a care in the world. I wasn’t one to scoff at other folk’s religions anyways, as it was kind of a douchey thing to do. But, given my outstanding predicament, I had to stop and wonder if I had really come inches away from supernatural annihilation when I touched this sword. I glanced down at the blade pensively.

“Yer not gonna hang around there forever, are ya?” Lulu’s voice called out from an ever-growing distance away from me. “That old place is for the dead! C’mon, I’ll take you to Highcliff. It’s not twenty minutes on hoof from here.” Looking her way, I saw the little minotaur with her back turned, waving a hand back at me as she walked. With a single blink, I found myself bounding over to her side. I wasn’t sure what HighCliff was, but the tiny minotaur was right. There was nothing else here for me. It was time to move on.

Chapter 3: Highcliff

Highcliff

There was something that felt right about travelling these plains, actively wandering on foot with a travel companion. Albeit, the entire journey could have been a ten minute ride by car. But, feeling the wind in my hair, the sun in my face, and the freshness of the air, it was touching some primal part of me. There was a primordial element of what a human’s life was supposed to be that we lost in numbing car commutes. Somehow, I felt the fantastical minotaurs were still able to capture the essence of it, that freedom to travel the lands.

Citing my bigger size, my waist-high travelling companion hoisted her pack off to my own back and had taken to gleefully skipping about, light as a bird. For what it was worth, what was a hilariously oversized pack to her felt like feathers to me. Conceptually, being able to comfortably lift a stack of wood and several metal tools was unsettling and only should have only heightened the dysphoria I felt towards this body. In practice, I don’t know. It was pretty cool.

I was able to get my companion to stop prancing about with some light conversation. Truthfully, I felt a growing need to understand my surroundings, even if I had to try and pry the answers out of the talking mythological creature that had taken up the position of my guide and the omnipresent reminder of my insane predicament. It was a compromise, but one I was willing to make right now.

“So what’s this Highcliff like?” I asked, continuing on our small talk.

“Never been, huh? You’ve been missing out, big guy. It’s the best minotaur village on the plains!” my guide gushed. Then, as if remembering something unpleasant, her smile flickered and she added with a scowl, “at least, it’s the best since the badlands happened, anyways.”

I was missing details, it seemed. I wasn’t quite sure that it mattered but, rather than expose myself by trying to ask for context on what seemed to be a sensitive and potentially well known topic, I just nodded along, letting her continue.

“‘Sallways the first place I stop. Trees don’t grow out in this part o’ the plains, so wood is always in high demand. And nobody runs the old furnaces anymore, so everyone needs metal tools. There’s always business for ol’ Lulu and her wares.” Lulu said with a cheerfulness that seemed to conflict with the tired, almost strained cadence of her voice. Arching her back, she flexed her shoulders as if to jingle her pack. A moment later she seemed to remember that it was on my back.

Ol’ Lulu, I found myself mouthing, unconsciously.

She seemed to stare out into the hills, while not focusing on them at all. “‘Sides, folks out here need this stuff. It’s hard enough living in the plains these days. ‘Taurs have to stick together, yaknow. I’m not a fighter”–Lulu looked up to me, angling one of her little arms skywards and giving it a teeny flex–“but I can still do this.”

There was silence for a minute as we walked. I wasn’t sure if, or even how, I should try to comfort Lulu. She seemed to be in touch with the heartbeat of this region and, with as little as I knew, I was afraid off making things worse by saying something stupid. I made it maybe five paces before the stupid part of my brain spoke, for me.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Lulu, how old are you anyways?” I blurted, out loud.

“Didn’t yer ma ever tell you its rude to ask ha’ of a Lady?” Lulu giggled into a hand. Waving it, she dismissively assured, “nah, yer fine. I’m twenny four.”

My eyes widened and I looked at the miniature minotaur for some hint of deception. Surely it was a joke. A feeling of awe built in me as I realised her attention wasn’t even on me. She seemed cheerily focused on the road ahead. Was my body incredibly old? Was she just small? The final few minutes of our journey I spent in contemplative silence.

I sucked in a deep breath when I first saw it. Though she was several feet too low too low to look from the height I was at, Lulu seemed to have enough geo-spatial awareness to interpret the action.

“Ooh, are we there? Are we?” Trying to see what I saw, Lulu scampered six paces up the hill until she’d crested it and was high enough to look over the edge and into the village before us.

“Parting Blade, I’d like to make this yer official welcome to Highcliff!” she beamed, beaconing to the disparate collection of buildings with spread hands.

I had to give it to her, it was nice. I didn’t know if I could call them cliffs but gentle ridges over the fields of green gave the village some nice shielding from the winds. Like most villages, it was built on a source of water. For a society which I kind of doubted had central plumbing, it was impressive how crystal-clear the river passing the village ran. The minotaurs apparently had taken to some kind of rounded building style. With a hodgepodge of thatch, stone, and wood, dozens of buildings dotted the landscape. And far, far beyond the buildings, I could still see the domineering visage of the lone mountain of the plains.

Between us and the village, a haphazard bridge gave us a crossing point over the running water. And, beyond that, only a few handmade fences over grass boxed in the houses. It didn’t look like much central planning was involved in the layout of the settlement, but it did have a nice appearance.

Credit: Alexis Mohammed

“-And it may be in the rainshadow of Crete’s Horn, but Highcliff was built on the Longhorn River, so everytaur out here has fresh water to drink and plenty of clover and grass to snack on.” Lulu continued on, ranting about the area as I nodded my head, trying to absorb everything she was saying.

On our approach, I noticed someone lounging by the fence on the other side of the river. A light pink furred minotauress with bone white hair was leaning against a fence post and playing with her hair, twirling it into braids. She was much bigger than Lulu, maybe a head shorter than me. That killed my theory that the size thing was sexual dimorphism in minotaurs.

Credit: Rizapiska

Noticing our arrival, the pink minotauress smiled and waved a hand, her hair apparently forgotten.

“It’s been a while since anyone came to town. Welcome.” She smiled warmly, closing her eyes briefly and arcing her back against the fence.

“Hey, how’s it goin’. I’ve seen you before. Sharlin Softhorn, right?” Lulu gave the larger minotauress a quick flicking wave of her hand, an ear flopping as she talked.

“Charolais, dear,” the minotauress corrected, running a hand idly through her hair.

“Charolais, m’bad,” Lulu corrected. “I’ve just come in with my haul, ‘s there anythin’ you need?”

Charolais pulled her right hand away from her hair and brought it to her mouth with a hum. Looking from Lulu’s pack to me, she decided, “no, unless you’re selling this young man’s name.”

“Parting Blade,”–I offered with a nod, remembering to go with the name Lulu suggested–“it’s a pleasure to meet you.

“I’d love to make it one, sweetie. Been a while since the town saw any big, strong-” Lulu cut her off with a sudden clap of her hands.

“Yep, good catchin’ up with you too. Goods to sell ‘n all,” Lulu grunted, shoving me from behind. It was a futile gesture but, trying to accommodate her, I walked in the direction she was pushing me with an awkward smile. Not sure how to handle any of that myself, to be honest. As we left, Charolais gave a dainty wave before tittering into a hand and returning to her hair.

Our walk continued on as we entered the village proper. Here and there, doors opened and minotaurs stepped out to look at the newcomers or peruse our goods. The attention didn’t last for long before a new interruption struck.

“Lulu!” A matronly voice called out from behind us, the clip-clops of hooves drawing closer quickly. Recognition dawning in them, Lulu’s eyes went wide and she tensed up. She barely had time to turn before I saw the little minotaur get swooped up in a great hug. Spinning, I found Lulu being held close to the chest of a minotaur woman, suspended like a stuffed animal. The woman was cute in a rustic sort of way. She had caramel fur with yellow spots and a mop of flowing brown hair on top of her head. She was wearing a blue overall with an adorable cow logo up the front over her chest. Most endearing of all, she seemed overjoyed to see the little Lulu again.

Credit: Slightlysimian

“Look at you, girl! Not so small-time any more, huh? You’ve got your own caravan now and a nice big gentletaur to carry your bags around.” She flashed a smile at me.

“Jersey! Let me mph!” Lulu yelled, forcing her way out of the bigger woman’s cleavage, with a bevy of shoves and kicks. As the gasping Lulu managed to drop to the ground and escape, I gave a nod to the caramel minotaur.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Jersey was it?”

“Right you are”–Jersey beamed, flashing a white smile and crossing her arms–“Fluffy Jersey, but you can just call me Jersey. It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Mr….”

“Parting Blade. I’m new around here.”

“Why, I reckon you are,” Jersey giggled openly. “I reckon I’d have noticed a big guy like you in town before.” She smiled, looking me up and down once. Blinking, she jerked, seeming to remember something. “Right, I love smalltalk as much as the next taur but, before I forget, Lulu could you be a dear and give me three logs. The young ‘uns at the nursery could use some more spoons to replace the ones we’ve broken this year, so I’m hoping to carve them.”

Eager to see business done, Lulu collected herself from the ground and after some non-verbal prodding, got me to lower her bag to the ground, which she eagerly rummaged through. With a flash of gold metal, the wood was exchanged for, Jersey taking the three handily with a grateful nod. Leaning on a foot to support the side of her body carrying the wood, she turned her head to me.

“It was lovely meeting you, Parting. If you stay long in Highcliff, maybe we’ll see each other around.” Flashing another one of those pearly smiles, Jersey hefted the three logs between her right arm and overalls and turned off to head deeper in the village. I could swear I saw a blush on her face as she turned away.

We continued like that for a few minutes, wandering around the town as eager minotaurs came to pursue Lulu’s dwindling stock and trade for unminted gold or local goods. Strikingly, everyone seemed to know the little minotaur that had made herself my wandering companion. More apparent still, besides some young boys, I don’t think I saw anyone but women in the whole village. Everyone was very nice, but it was strange.

Eventually, we came upon a central pavilion around which the rest of the village seemed to be centred. Here, a small network of buildings cloistered together around a bed of stone pavement. And, from a lone chimney, the smoke of an open fire burned. With the warm weather, I was wondering why a fire was needed at all. Then I heard the rhythmic ‘tink-tink-tink’ of hammer on metal.

Lulu had us on a direct approach to the smokestack. As we approached what looked to be some sort of smithy, I couldn’t help but notice how dilapidated some of the buildings were here. Holes in the roofing, rotting supports, and frankly concerning leaning were rife. Unlike some of the outlier buildings in the village, it wasn’t immediately clear that these were still inhabited.

When we had come within a few metres of the smithy’s entrance, I heard a trickling slide of ceramic on ceramic coming from above me. I looked up just in time to see a brownish-red ceramic roofing tile slide off the edge of one of the dilapidated buildings to fall a full story directly on my shoulder. As the shingle bounced off me and shattered like glass against the stone pavement, I let out an inhuman roar. Deep and base, it reverberated through the street as I shielded my bruised arm with a hand.

There was silence for a brief moment, before sound could be heard from the smithy.

“Males! Are we under attack?” A woman’s piercing voice shouted as the hammering of iron abruptly halted.

With a sharp ring of metal sliding, a thunder of hooves clattered within the building and a huge woman, shot like a bullet from the smithy’s entrance, a metal gladius in hand. Bands of iron strapped around either of her horns she was, like everyone else in this village, a minotaur. With a head of jet-black hair and striking blue eyes, she was the image of bestial rage in her furor to defend the town. Calloused hands of a chocolate brown fur, like the rest of her body, clung tightly to the sword in her grip. Turning wildly, her horns were lowered and her sword was raised, both ready to strike.

Credit: Merrunz

Seeing me, a wave of tension left her body and, after a moment, she lowered her sword.

“A battle aged male? Here, now?” Though she no longer looked like she was about to swing with her sword, the woman adopted a haughty posture and looked me up and down with a scowl. Noticing Lulu, she gave the minotauress a nod, asking, “Dwarf Lulu, you’re in town. Good, we’ve been in need of fresh ingots for days.” Walking up to me proudly, she continued talking. Looking me directly in the eyes, she continued, “and where did this one come from.”

“I found ‘im over at the Tomb of Kings,” Lulu chirped cheerfully. In the corner of my eye, I could see she was rustling through her gear bag, pulling out a few loose bars of iron I had never noticed were in there to begin with.

“Grazing in the hills, figures,” she snorted, her eyes dimming. “If every taur hid away in the grass, the whole plains would be like that old tomb, a ruin.” I didn’t quite know how to take that. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to insult me, but whatever situation the minotaurs were in was a wholly extraneous situation to my own circumstances. I just wanted to get home.

“The name’s Parting Blade,” I offered, extending a hand to shake. The smith looked at my hand for just a moment, then back up to me. I gave it another second, then she snorted. Put off, I retracted the hand.

“Listen, we accept many types here,”–the smith started, glaring at me all the while– “but I have no time for a taur with the heart of a weakling.”

“Look, I don’t know what I did to get on the wrong leg with you, but I-”

“What you did?” the large minotauress huffed, interrupting me. “You’ve done nothing. It’s what you didn’t do. Any true minotaur would be out there, fighting right now.”

“Look, Hoofstrong, just lay off the man. Not everytaur can just go out there and-” Lulu was appreciated, but I was too worked up now to put up with this. Taking a step towards the smith, an act which seemed to surprise the hulking minotauress, I cut off Lulu mid-sentence.

“Fighting what?” I forced, finally too exasperated at the meandering references to enemies that the minotaurs around me kept making. With regards to my combative conversation partner, this did not appear to be the correct decision.

“Fighting what!? Do you have cowbells in your hoofing ears? What do you think they’re out there fighting?” She was snorting aggressively now, pushed right up into my face, as if daring me to try her. Taking half a step back, she pointed a chocolate furred hand directly upwards to the midday sky.

“They’re fighting the Solar Empire of course.”

Chapter 4: Guardian

Guardian

“What’s tha’ even supposed to mean?” Lulu wove her hands through the air as we walked, trying to grab my attention as I struggled to look her in the eyes.

“I told you. I’m not from-”

“Not from aroun’ here. Yeah, ye’ve said that already,” Lulu groaned, exasperated. “I’m asking where ‘not from around here’ can be, if yer not even in the know ‘bout the war?”

Lulu had been grilling me since we left the irate blacksmith. I didn’t want to lie to anyone or deceive by omission. But I had no clue how “I’m not actually a minotaur or sure how I got to this planet, can you help build me a spaceship?” would go down with my current cohort. And so, I was stuck with vague deflections about my origins. Evidently, as Lulu continued waving her arms by my side, this strategy was running into roadblocks. To be truthful, it hurt a little. Lulu and the other minotaurs had all been very nice to me up to this point. (With the exception of the smithy, who seemed to have extraneous reasons for her anger at me.) It felt bad to trick them like this.

Our crawl around town selling goods had come to a close nearly as soon as it had begun. The town had been in as desperate need for tools and raw materials as Lulu had asserted. Upon realizing that she was in town, her customers had, more often than not, come to her directly. The once replete pack was down to a small satchel of shining golden nuggets and textile goods which she would, presumably, sell off elsewhere.

Rather than to any customer then, our direction turned out to be the longhorn river. In a semi-joking chastisement, Lulu had noted my drinking her entire canteen while I was unconscious. My embarrassment was only undercut by the re-emergence of my thirstiness. I was a big guy. I needed lots of fluids.

“Look, don’t get me wrong. ‘Taur stick together ‘n all. But I found you alone ‘n a pit with nothin’ but the fur on yer back. How am I supposed to help you without knowing what you even need?”

“I’m”–I tried to begin, freezing up after a second under the stress of how to explain my situation without being institutionalised. Turning to Lulu with a hollow expression, I seemed to catch the little minotauress off guard with my distress–“I’m going through a lot right now. I’m still looking for some answers myself. Maybe when I’ve figured some more out, I’ll know what I need.”

I didn’t feel good about forcing that on Lulu, but it was the truth and it was all I was comfortable with saying right now. For her part, Lulu just looked at me oddly for a moment, quietly shaking her head. Ultimately, she accepted it. We continued on for another minute in relative peace.

“Here we go,” Lulu mumbled, semi automatically, as we stopped on the riverbanks. Inflating her canteen by angling it opposite to the flow of the water, I just kneeled on the banks and cupped my hands into the clear water. Closing my eyes in contentment, I basked in the coolness and crisp freshness of the stream’s water as it passed down my throat in audible gulps.

“Mmm, you like that, big guy?” Lulu giggled, breaking my concentration. She took a quick swig from her canteen, before walking away from the water’s edge and strolling over to a flowering purple plant. I think it was a legume, alfalfa maybe? “Get a load of this”–grabbing a plant, she just started grazing on it–“stuff. By the riverbank, the shoots get so watery and crunchy and they’re just so good,” the little minotaur beamed, holding a hand up to her cheek in nirvanic bliss.

Tepidly, I made my way over to a patch of the stuff. I couldn’t say I’d ever tried grazing on plants. Still, the water had been delicious and Lulu seemed pretty confident that this was good as well. Dropping to a knee and leaning low to reach the plants, I gingerly took a nibble of a sprout and rolled it in my mouth for a second. Eyes widening, I dove in for a full bite. That was good. I don’t know if it was being placed in a body whose tastebuds weren’t ruined by corn syrup, but those greens could have been served to me in a five-star restaurant as a salad and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

Lulu and I continued eating our fills for a few minutes on that riverbank, revelling in the sense of fullness that the food brought. But just as I was winding down from my feast, I was shaken out of my reverie by a piercing sound. Without warning, it cut into the silence, the moaning of a great horn. Deep and reverberating, it echoed across the plains for a few seconds before fading away.

I looked to Lulu for guidance, wondering if this was some kind of ritual she knew about. But the little pink haired minotaur just perked up her bronze ears, swivelling them about cautiously as she tried to work out what was going on. That made me worried.

They came overland.

Grimy, misshapen canids, their arms were too bulky and long. Their claws were replaced by hands. A hodgepodge of iron and leather scraps clung tightly to their forms in some parody of armour that surprisingly seemed to be holding together. Their weapons were better, but not by much. Scavenged weapons, makeshift blades, or just heavy looking wooden or stone clubs occupied a hand of most of the dogs. Any others seemed confident enough in their tooth’s and claw’s ability to intimidate prey. There was no other way of interpreting the canids than as savages. That had been the very first thing I noticed about the dogs. The second was that they were leading a marauding raid through Highcliff.

Harassing the minotauresses, looting building, and trying to grab at stragglers, chaos followed the dogs wherever they stepped. Here and there, I could hear the clattering of blades, pockets of defence forming against the dogs. But, by my assessment the minotaurs should have been doing better, for all the physical superiority they enjoyed. It was hard to describe, but the defence the villagers were putting up was off. They weren’t paralyzed with fear or surrendering to the marauding dogs. No, it just looked herbivorous. The minotaurs were grouping up together into herds, terrified children flocking behind mothers. A hodgepodge of weapons, tools, or even just horned-headbutts were all the village folk were using to hold back the dog’s pack.

Milling about in terror, the villagers were keeping to tight circles. The adults headbutted, grappled or, if they had weapons, lunged at any dog that got too close. But each strike seemed defensive, warding. The dogs could pick at the minotauresses, look for weak links, and retreat if the ‘taurs pushed back against them. Whenever dogs converged for a strike, the group of minotaurs would retreat, sprinting a few paces and exposing their back line. It was a miracle that I hadn’t seen anyone killed yet.

I wasn’t sure where Lulu and I had separated but, at some point, we had rushed for cover in different directions and I had lost sight of her. I just prayed that she had found a group to seek refuge with. I didn’t want to think about the dogs cornering her. She wasn’t big enough to fight back.

Darting past a house on the hunt for my companion, I froze, hearing a great shuffling of metal to my side. From an angle I hadn’t seen, a big, armoured dog was prowling for minotaurs. Great belted plates of steel locked it inside of an iron cage. Unlike other, leather clad, dogs, this one had sprung for ill-fitting metal. The breastplate it wore, was several sizes too large for the dog, giving it the rounded appearance of an egg. Over its head, a similarly rounded iron helmet only had open slots for its eyes and a pair of floppy ears, each of which bore rips and tears from fights past.

Most concerningly, the dog held a thick wooden shaft which, with two reams of rope, had had a menacing looking poleaxe blade grafted to it. With a rumbling chuckle, the dog took a step closer to me, having sighted its mark. It rested its axe over its shoulder lazily, evidently confident in its ability to take on a straggler minotaur away from a group.

Credit: Velgarn

“Minotaur alone, will come easy, yes?” the dog grunted, its voice muffled by the oversized breastplate it had slipped into. Its beady eyes still glinted outside of its exposed visor, betraying the greed in the mange-ridden dog’s glassy orbs. “Promises not beat if Minotaur comes quietly. Quarry always need more minotaurs. Worth many gems, yes.”

The dog was barely comprehensible but the words I did catch through the slurred armour-muffled speech told me everything I needed to know. This thing. This flea-ridden, mindless, filthy thing had come to this village to steal chattel, people.

I may not have chosen it, but I was a minotaur. I was strong, stronger than ten of these dogs put together. Snarling openly, I reached for my scabbard, pulling out the sword I had picked up in the Tomb of Kings. Seeing this, the dog in front of me tensed, abandoning the bargaining tone it had established with me.

“Minotaur! Minotaur drop weapon now or get hurt!” it demanded, struggling to articulate each word.

I didn’t dignify it with a response, instead steadying my sword between the two of us. I may not have had any formal training with a blade, but my grip was steady, my blade was sharp, and my arms were strong.

Truthfully, I might have responded to the dog under other circumstances, offering it a warning, a threat, or some quip. But, the longer I stared at the dog, the more lucidity I managed to pull together for the stark realisation that this body was hormonal. It took me a second to recognise that the raging desire to head to the groups of minotaurs and huddle with them was not my own. The impulse to scare off the dog with braying whines and displays of headbutting strength was extraneous to me, while still being my own instincts. Underneath this mountain of flesh, I was still me. I was still human. Exhaling deeply while staring down the angry dog, I managed to suppress the herbivorous instincts. They would do me no good against pack hunters like these. But the adrenaline, the rage that hearing the frightened scream of women and children inspired in me, I clung on to those. I let those fuel me.

Incensed by my non-response to its demands, the armoured dog charged me with a retching snarl. Its axe held high, it was barrelling towards me with speed that belied its heavy metal armour, ready to cleave downwards in a vertical strike.

Wielding my sword defensively, I angled it in the path of the dog’s telegraphed axe swing. Pushing the weapon away with a flex of my arms, the axe’s momentum still carried it in a downward arc, but it was pushed so far off course as to be nowhere near me.

Reaching out as surprised dog tried to recover from my parry, I grabbed at axe’s handle. With a single swipe, I ripped it from the canine’s hands. Then, disdainfully, I threw the sharpened slag away. The lucid part of me wanted to worry about the building the blade had thoroughly lodged itself partways into. Instead, I was dead-focused on the dog in front of me. Evidently stunned by my atypical reaction to its attacks, it was wholly unprepared for me to push the advantage and deliver a meteoric kick to its salvaged armour.

The pig iron caved inwards and worn leather straps and buckles popped off as the thunderous might of my trunk-like legs slammed into the dog’s breastplate. The dog had been stronger than it looked. The dog had been heavier than it looked. But, before me, it was nothing. The canine got a few steps of airtime, sailing backwards and landing heavily against the steps to a house. The shriek of metal on stone as the dog’s ragged form fell provided remarkable contrast against the gentle steps leading to a cosy looking minotaur house. A family might have lived here. Children might have played here. And these things had come to destroy all of that. My lips curled into an open snarl.

Plodding over to the fallen dog, which struggled weakly in its broken iron shell, my grip on the blade in my hands shifted. The blade was pointed downwards, while both hands curled around the hilt. The downward sword, it was held similarly to a knight pledging to protect the lands. In a way, I supposed that was what I was doing, pledging to protect this village. I liked that idea somehow. I wasn’t sure if the thought was my own, or another instinct hoisted upon me by this body, but both parts of me agreed it was the right thing to do now. The downwards blade hovered over the open eye-slit of the armoured dog’s visor. I brought the blade down.

I left the dog where it lay. The lucid part of me that kept crying out wanted to focus on the world-shattering existential event that was my first kill. The rest of my mind shouted it down, focusing on the smell of blood, the fire inside my chest, and the oath I had made to protect.

The dogs would be in for a surprise with me. I wasn’t running. My attacks weren’t defensive or opportunistic. I was a minotaur, and I was on the hunt.

I heard louder and louder shouts as I came to the edge of Highcliff, where the dogs had entered from the plains. There were numerous groups of terrified minotaurs here. Women and children, all sheltering together and trying to hold back the savage dogs from their number.

By one of the houses, I saw some distressingly familiar faces shielding a group of children. Fluffy Jersey, who I’d seen Lulu sell a trio of logs to not an hour ago, was currently fending off two dogs from grabbing at her wards with nothing more than a rock in her hands. By her side, sword in hand, the smith I had argued with earlier was slashing towards anything that got too close. Distracting the smith with a feint towards Jersey, the second dog grabbed at a screaming minotauress, barely a teen, and tried to drag her away from the group. Nostrils flaring, I saw the smith slash towards the second dog, who had his hands full with the bucking and struggling minotaur in his hands. It only received a light graze over an arm, but the dog released the girl with a pained bark. For the moment, the group was safe.

I knew it wasn’t something natural to me but, hearing the terrified cries of the minotaurs burned itself into my ears, triggering what I could only call a maddening anger in me. It was even worse than when I had merely imagined what the dogs wanted, while facing the heavily armoured dog. Now I could see them, hear their cries. Absentmindedly, I was drawing a heavy hoof against the ground, tracing the dirt.

Around a bend just in front of me, over one of the village’s cliff like ridges, I saw yet another dog heading the direction of the smith. Its eyes widened momentarily, seeing me a moment after I saw it. Like a vice, a massive furry hand clutched its head. Lifting the entire dog up wholesale, I slammed it into the stone ridge, flattening its face against the rock. One smash, two smash, three smash. Strutting forward into the open, I carried the dog high, red rivulets running down its head. Like a sack of potatoes, the broken dog was tossed out before me. Then, I lifted my sword high, issuing a challenge.

“Come and get it!” I boomed, the edge of my blade still slick with dripping red blood. Shock and awe. I would make the dogs feel fear.

My stunt had apparently drawn sufficient attention from the dogs. A number peeled away from their assault on the peaceful minotaurs of Highcliff, leering at me instead.

But, before any movement occurred on their end. There was a rustling in the grasses of the open plains. A harmonized pair of howls sung across the field and, for some reason, this frenzied the spectating dogs into jubilation.

“Blood Mutt!” the dogs cheered, their rough voices harmonising together in some bastardization of a howl. “Blood Mutt the rider!”

Their announcement came just before I saw him. Bigger than the other dogs, scruffier than the other dogs, and better equipped than the other dogs immediately came to mind. Over muted tan fur, this one was wearing a well-fitting helmet, pauldrons, and complete leg armour. Criss crossing his body, strips of leather bound the various loose pieces of armour together. And, just like the leather, scores of scars, old and new, divided up his chest and arms like a sick game of tic tac toe.

Even more striking than the dog was the beast below it. Somehow, and I had no clue what fucked up universe allowed this to happen, the dog’s alpha rode around on a wolf. Stranger still, the wolf he rode looked, and I know how crazy this sounds, like it was made out of sticks. With glowing yellow eyes and various wolf-like features emulated by precise placement of woody cuttings, the ‘Blood Mutt,’ had an oversized mount to ride about on. It seemed broken in enough to suffer its rider’s presence, though I saw it nipping at anything else that came close.

Credit: TDSpiral

The dog rode lazily towards me, nearing closer with a sneer.

“Minotaurs weak now!” he spat, spittle flying from between his helmet’s opened mouth section. Bucking his legs, the dog forced his wooden wolf steed to rear up on its hindlegs, snarling dryly. Snapping its jaw voraciously, a viscous saliva-like fluid dripped from the broken animal’s maw. “Mutt Clan strongest. Minotaur gems ours, Minotaur lands ours, Minotaurs ours,” the dog dictated, stressing each item he wanted to take from the village. His words were met with a bevy of cheers from the less articulate dogs.

Looking at me expectantly, the pack leader watched as I levelled my sword between us, the challenge implicit. The display of defiance was met with a toothy grin from the lead dog, this ‘Blood Mutt.’

“Maybe not slave, this one,” he laughed, as if having told a great joke. “Good show for the others at least. He dies. Together.”

The non-sentences were apparently a crystal-clear order to the troop. Instead of a climactic one on one with their leader, the dogs opted to dogpile me. Four rushed at once, the leader included. Besides the leader, the rest were wearing only stitched together strips of leather. Far less protection than the armoured beast I had slain before, but with far greater mobility. I would have to test if their protection meant anything against me. If there was a reaction they expected, my stepping forwards and attacking was not it.

The very first dog came at me with a wooden club that had had nails and bits of metal shoved into it. Evidently, not a tool for the ones they wanted to capture. But, even with hands and feet, the dogs fought like hounds. This one thought I was a lone straggler that had been surrounded. It thought that it could attack without consequence. These canines had grown soft, harassing herbivores. Carrying the momentum of my forward step, I swung widely into his leather armour, through his abdomen, and out the other side. It felt like tearing through paper. They expected feints and posturing. They got a predator.

Carrying the swing through, I tried to bring the blade into a thrust against the leader who, on wolfback, had nearly set upon me. At this distance, I could see the curved sabre in his hands, a weapon designed for use on horseback. Nocks and scrapes peppered the edge of the blade, giving it a nasty serrated edge. I couldn’t let that thing touch me.

Moments before we clashed, the alarmed dog leader swerved his pet wolf to my left side, turning away as he saw the fate of his faster friend. I would have been just in time to let the rider spear himself on the point of my sword, had he continued his charge. Unfortunately, ripping through his companion had slowed me down just enough to prevent me from carrying through the attack to a strike against the Mutt. The third dog was either too stupid or too unperceptive to catch the memo though. Coming in on my right side, opposite to where my blade was pointed, he had a full jaw of canines open to snare itself on my arm and drag me down like a pack of wolves was wont to do.

Roaring angrily, I pulled back my sword and clocked the mangy dog in the teeth with my sword’s rounded pommel, clocking it weightily. It felt the sensation of snapping an entire sheath of spaghetti in half, dislodging the dog’s fangs. Broken in a single blow, the dog’s course changed, abruptly falling back alive, if writhing in pain.

“Yeah!” I shouted, exhilarated by the cocktail of hormonal drugs coursing through my system and the instinctive sensation of triumph my brain was rewarding me with, with each threat to my minotaurs that fell. Thumping a hand aggressively against my chest, I bellowed an ear-shattering, bestial war cry with lungs far more powerful than I was used to, “YEAH!”

The fourth dog stopped in its tracks, ears splaying back at the sudden defeat of its packmates. Stifling a whine, it looked to its alpha for guidance. It was weak, it wouldn’t hurt my minotaurs or my village. Stifling an urge to lunge at it and gore it with my horns, the part of my not consumed by maddening blood lust reminded me that the dog leader was still trailing behind me. Turning away from the lesser pack dog, I looked at the leader. Again, just like a canid, he was flanking me to look for an opening.

I knew how he wanted this to go down. His packmates nipping at my ankles. Feint attacks being met by bluff charges. The dogs in my blind spots would go for the throat and tendons and bring me to the ground where I couldn’t fight back anymore. Even now, there were more dogs on the way, summoned by the whines of the balking pack beta. I snarled at the dog on the wooden wolf. He probably thought I was going to let him charge me on that wolf of his a few times. He could catch me in feints, keeping me distracted and off my feet. That was his mistake. He was fighting a cow. I was hunting a wolf.

Charging forward, a fire blazing in my eyes, I beelined for the pack alpha. Still skipping in a lazy circle around me, the dog was caught completely off guard by the sudden assault. He’d tried to spur the wooden wolf below him, but the lag between the two was too great for my fury. Slashing horizontally across the wooden wolf, I tried to kill the dog’s mobility first. It worked surprisingly well. Sending its rider sprawling onto the grass, the wolf collapsed into a pile of timber sprouts. I had wondered if they had just glued wood to an actual canine to try to armour it. This settled that question.

Tumbling to the ground, the grounded alpha recouped surprisingly quickly. Kneeing up, it tried to shield itself with a guarding sabre. Still, it seemed to think I would give it time to recoup. A wordless, guttural roar filled my lungs as I bore down on the dog. For the first time, I saw a flash of terror in its eyes as our swords locked. It was a dog; I was a minotaur. That was never going to work for it. Practically guiding its sword with my own, I kept our two blades locked and pulled them away from the dog’s body. With its midsection opened, I arced a hoof high, striking the considerably shorter diamond dog in its head.

Like a dropped pot, the dog’s helmet clanged noisily, sliding up the dog’s head and settling back more like a baseball cap than a head guard. The dog’s movement, once tense and flighty, eased immediately as the marauding slaver lost consciousness. The lock of our blades breaking, I grabbed at the limp dog’s head with my left hand and, with my sword arm, cut cleanly across the now exposed neck.

And that sight is what the reinforcements who’d come to finish me off saw, as they bounded over from their positions harassing the townspeople. Their fallen comrades next to me, clutching their leader’s head. For the first time since I’d heard the tattoo of the dog’s horn, there was silence over Highcliff.

“Who’s next?” I boomed, that red haze still burning in my eyes.

It was the fourth dog by the Alpha’s side who acted first. Maybe he was in command after his death. Yelping in a whimper, he scuttled off, fleeing into the grasses of the plain to who knows where. Like floodgates had opened, the rest of the dogs followed suit, a chorus of yelps serving as the reprise to the dog’s battle horn.

I watched them go, still clutching my sword tightly until the last had vanished into the plains, several fields away. The rage fogging my mind was fading away all the while. There were others around me now. Friends, minotaurs. I let loose a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and the sword in my grip clattered to the ground, slipping from my grip.

Gasping breathlessly, I fell to a knee as adrenaline fled my bloodstream. It was over. Highcliff was safe.

Author's Note

I've really got to cool it with 4k chapters if I want to keep a good upload schedule.

Chapter 5: Alpha

Alpha

There was blood matting my fur. Patting my chest, I breathed a sigh of relief as no stings of pain shot through my nerves. The blood was not my own. In the heat of battle, I could believe that I might not even feel cuts. That barely even felt like me in those fights. It was some amalgam of a minotaur’s hormones, alongside my trying to not get us killed. It was better now, but I could still feel the vestiges of bestial thinking in my conscious.

The minotauresses around me fretted and paced, asking if I was alright and checking for cuts. On the ground before me was my sword and the head of the leader of the mutts, helmet and all. Groaning, I reached down for the sword. I was beaten by a chocolate brown furred hand, which deftly grabbed the blade off the ground. Turning, I saw the smith, my blade in hand, taking a knee in tall grass. I opened my mouth to ask what she was doing, but she pre-empted me.

“Best to clean blood off quickly. Keeps the blade sharp,” she explained, running the shaft of the blade along grass and dirt, until it was mostly cleaned. Satisfied, she paced over to me. With skilled precision, she sheathed the sword on my waist with a single hand, all while looking up to my eyes.

“Take that to me later and I’ll see about getting it oiled. Now, let’s get moving. We should get you to the others.”

‘Others?’ I had wondered. But, being directed, we were already moving. Hoofstrong had given me her shoulder to lean on as we moved. Angled almost perpendicular to me, the back of the smith’s hair was tickling my chest as we walked.

“You never gave me your name. Lulu said it was Hoofstrong, right?” I asked, leaning into her side.

“Hoofstrong Blue,” she responded, breathing deeply as she propped me up.

“Parting Blade,” I replied in kind.

“Yeah.” Hoofstrong kept walking for a few steps, head pressed up against my chest quietly.

“I was wrong about you,” she began, speaking over the quiet crunch of gravel as we continued our march through the town. “I’ve never seen anyone fight like that before, but you have the heart and soul of a warrior.”

We continued in silence, heading deeper into the village with the guidance of Hoofstrong. There was somewhere specific she seemed to be taking me, but I was using most of my consciousness just staying upright.

“Big guy, yer okay!” Lulu rushed at me, latching around my waist in a clinging hug.

I had found out where Lulu had disappeared to, alongside many of the other village girls. It had been unofficial village protocol to group in the centre of the village for a united stand, though many minotaurs got split into fractured smaller groups before they could reach the village’s heart. Lulu had, apparently, gotten pulled into this group when we’d split up and had been held back from running back out to the dogs to try and find me.

Smiling, I looked down to and patted the small minotauress on the back to reassure her I was fine. Jolting, Lulu pushed her arms against me, shoving herself back. Wide eyed and a blush creeping across her face, she quickly announced having somewhere she needed to be and darted off. I wanted to pursue her, ask if she was alright. But, just as she disappeared, a wave coursed through the crowd of minotauresses as they made way for someone.

Watching the crowd of minotaurs part, I sighted what was clearly the first male I had seen in the village who looked above the age of six. He was positively ancient, supported by a long stick in his right hand which he had adapted as a cane. With sunken, sallow features and a hump along the back of his neck, he was the image of a village elder. Looking me up and down, the minotaur gave me a welcoming dip of his head.

“They call me Malvi Elderhoof.” The old minotaur smiled. “There was a time I was called Malvi Sturdyhoof, but I take pride in my age these days,” Malvi reminisced, his eyes growing distant. “Too few old minotaurs now.”

“I am told that we have you to thank for saving our village today, young man. The Diamond Dogs have come before, but this is the boldest direct attack on our homestead that I have seen in all my years.”

“Diamond Dogs, is that what those things are called?” I asked, looking out to the distance as if I could still see them fleeing from here.

Elderhoof chortled, biting back a dry cough as it arose.

“You are fortunate to have not run across them before. The Diamond Dogs only care for war and gems. Now they descend on our great nation, like scavengers to carrion,” the elder explained, exhaling deeply. “There was a time when even the smallest pack of them would be driven from our lands on sight but, now, there is nothing to push them back.”

“He challenged the entire pack, then bested their leader and two other dogs all at once!” my one-time shoulder rest and village smith loudly boasted. “They will think twice about coming back, if their pack doesn’t split up entirely.”

“Is that so?” the elder asked, looking at Hoofstrong’s face inquisitively. After a moment of looking at the girl, he turned back to me. “Well, you are welcome to use the house north of the smith for as long as you wish to stay here. It has been our of use for”–the old minotaur hummed deeply, taking a moment in thought–“several years now. Still, the young ones tell me it is still in good repair. I apologise for the lack of an inn, if that’s what you’re used to. But, while there are Minotaurs in need of a place to stay, Highcliff will make room. The plains provide.”

“Thank you for your generosity,” I voiced my gratitude with a nod. The elder seemed to take the gesture well, smiling gently.

“Get yourself cleaned up down by the river. You won’t want any of that blood getting rubbed in an open wound,” Malvi advised, his sagely nods suggesting he had some experience with this. “And, once you’re done”–the elder continued, glancing up to the gentle orange glow of the lowering sun–“I suggest getting any rest you can in. It is going to be a long night.”

“Long night?” I queried, worry furrowing across my creased brow. “Are the Diamond Dogs going to come back for a second attack?”

“The Dogs?” Malvi started, his fixation on the fading sun broken. “No, son. You just saved half our village from getting captured by mutts, and then you came back reeking of malehood. The only man most of the girls have seen since the great army was called together is yours truly. Chances are, you’re going to have a busy evening.”

I stared blankly at the elder for a moment, looking for signs that he was messing with me. Floppy ears twitching, I turned my head at the sound of girls tittering. My eyes widened at seeing a handful of their expressions, lidded-eyed anticipation. I barked a cough into a fist, excusing myself hastily. I could really use that cold-stream bath right now.

Chances were, nobody would come over. I reassured myself for the umpteenth time, splashing cold water in my face. I was waist deep in the Longhorn River, doing my best to avoid thinking about minotaur-girls. Sure, many of them had features that could be considered conventionally attractive. But me and a minotaur? That wasn’t the kind of relationship a guy thinks about in college. I was used to normal human women, not soft, fuzzy girls with wide hips and brimming-. I cut myself off before that train of thought could go on any longer.

The stirring in between my legs was all the proof I needed that this wasn’t working. Desperately, I tried the least arousing thing I could imagine, speech writing. I would just rehearse lines to tell any minotaur girls that showed up on my doorstep.

“I’m flattered you want to spend the evening with me”–I narrated to the running water, trying to find the resolve to stand by the words I was saying–“but I am ahh….” I trailed off, words escaping me. Step aside Cicero, there’s a new top-orator in town. “I am still new to this town need to get my bearings.” Yeah. That worked. I still needed to get my bearings. After that, then I could-. I blinked hard as images of the village girls flashed through my mind. Breathing deeply, I dunked my head right into the crisp water. Surfacing, I made for the shore. I could sleep this off.

The place was easy enough to find. Of all the vacated houses by the smithy, it was the only one that wasn’t in an excessively dilapidated condition. It wasn’t big but, honestly, that just made me all the more comfortable in it. In this economy, who could afford a big studio? It was the most human thing I had experienced, coming to this place. But it did have a room with what looked to be a freshly carried over bed in it, alongside a staircase that went up to a second level. Maybe this had once been a combined-use shop. Catching my breath, I settled down on a side of the bed, taking mental stock of everything that had happened today. I had hurt a sapient creature, killed them. But the most shocking part had been that I was able to move on, uncaringly. That wasn’t normal, right? I felt there had been little more to the equation than the dogs being evil and threatening the minotauresses, then a mechanical reaction that they had to go. It was too easy to think of this world as my own. Everything was strange and foreign here, even my own reactions. I was being caught off guard by the minotaurs, the girls and how at home they made me feel. I had to-

My concentration broke at the sudden knock on my door. My face went white. It was probably just Elderhoof, come to make sure I had settled in well. Or maybe someone had brought a gift-basked to welcome me. No need to be alarmed, I rationalized, standing up and walking to the door.

“Still new in town. Need to get my bearings,” I whispered under my breath, repeating the mantra like a protective charm. Licking my dry lips, hand around the doorhandle, I bit back a curse and opened it wide.

There, stood in my doorway, was the village smith. Barely fitting in the door, she was steadying herself with the door’s frame while leaning towards me. An intense, impassioned look in her stark blue eyes, gusts of hot air were rushing out of her nostrils which condensed in the air with each heavy breath she took. Oh god, this was actually happening.

Credit: Greasymojo

“I’m flatter-” was all I managed to say before the hulking woman pulled me into a deep French kiss, her tongue exploring my mouth for a second before she pulled her head back.

“Did you think you could fight back a whole pack of diamond dogs, come home smelling like a warrior, and none of us would notice?” she husked. Her breaths were deep and haggard, rough like the smith herself. “It took everything I had to not take you right in front of the elder, after what you did.”

Glimmering in the torch sconce, I saw a slick string of fluid drip down towards the floor, sliding between Hoofstrong’s legs. She was ready for me.

“We’ve only known each other for-” I tried to protest half-heartedly, transfixed by the slickness in between her legs.

“Life is too short out here to take things slowly,” she interrupted breathily, tracing a hand along the side of my face as she rubbed against me.

The longer I stood next to her, the more I felt that same pressure on my mind that I had felt down by the stream. The one that teased me with thoughts of the village girls. And now there was a girl here, just in front of me. She wanted me. And, why shouldn’t I help her out? I had sworn to protect these girls and she needed me. Sensate and insensate parts of my mind collided, looking over the busty minotauress. I wasn’t a human right now. Interspecies questions or taboos didn’t even apply here. Pooling my consciousness one last time against the clouding haze that was overcoming my mind, I tried to ask a simple question. Was this something I wanted?

I wrapped my arms around Hoofstrong, pulling her into a kiss.

That was all the prompting the desire-possessed woman had needed. Fighting for dominance of each other’s mouths, our tongues clashed wrapping around one another. I hadn’t realized how long my own was until now, but it was definitely a cow tongue in my mouth. Sneaking a hand between us, I started fondling one of her breasts with a hand. Even with my large hands, her watermelon sized breasts seemed to dwarf them, my wide fingers sinking into the soft mammaries.

“You like those?” she husked teasingly. Grabbing the top of her blue dress, the smith pulled it up and over her head, the cloth freeing up some of her chocolate fur as it slipped off of her. My eyes widened, seeing that she was wearing no panties or bra under her dress. She had come here with single-minded ambitions. Now exposed, I could see just how drenched the fur around her hungrily drooling pussy was. Breathing deeply at the sight and smell of it, I felt an evocative stirring in my loins.

Leading me backwards several steps, a hand slipped around my back making me walk awkwardly backwards, I was pushed onto the bed, bouncing lightly on springs. Looming like a mountain, Hoofstrong slid over me. Halting just over my waist, she lowered herself down, and I could feel just how searingly hot her pussy was against my navel. Licking my lips hungrily, I realized that I was feeling sensations from against Hoofstrong’s cushiony ass. I was fully erect, hard like titanium, and twitching against her posterior. I didn’t even have time to say anything before the smith, her eyes burning with heated lust, lifted her rear back up and positioned her glistening folds over my member. I was in a cowgirl position with a minotaur. It would have been funny, were I not incoherent with animalistic desire.

Suddenly, an explosion of sensations blossomed in me as Hoofstrong impaled herself on my cock. A deep, shuddering chuckle escaped her as she tensed up spasming around me.

“I saw you fighting out there,” she growled so deeply that it almost sounded angry. “Were you thinking about us as you anh fought?” Midway through the question, she bounced her hips once, bringing the very tip of my member to her entrance, before thrusting it right back in again. “I want a male like that you know,”–she grunted needily, working into a steady rhythm of bounces–“one who can take me. One who can fight for what’s his.”

Sinking my hands into her full rear, I arced my back up to bring my head to Hoofstrong’s elastic breasts. Latching onto a nipple with my flat teeth and sucking gently, I began teasing her tit while occasionally thrusting as she continued her jackhammering against my hips. Her bouncing up and down, pulled at the sensitive nipple locked in my mouth. Breath hitching, she moaned needily.

“Anh, it’s been too long,” Hoofstrong rasped, her pendulous breasts bouncing up and down as she rode me.

Her thighs were working overtime, a sheen of sweat coating them as the powerful muscles brought the hulking minotauress slamming rhythmically into my pelvis like a piston, all to sink my cock deep into her folds. The repeated blows might have hurt, but I found my hands pulling her hips down harder with each revolution. She felt so good and I was losing myself in the instinctive haze of sex.

Our dancing pelvises were working themselves up into a crescendo, but it couldn’t last forever. The sensations too much for me. Mind in a trance, the only thoughts that filled my head were those of the all encompassing need to thrust deeply into the woman and cum. With no lucidity for words, I announced my intentions with a ragged gasp, letting go of Hoofstrong’s nipples. As a wave of ultra-sensitive pleasure coursed through my member, what felt to me like a firehose-spray of steaming hot baby batter began flowing deep into the smith. Any sense of rhythm lost, I was pushing my hips up into the air wantonly, trying to get as deep as I could into the bouncing minotauress.

“Ancestors have mercy, I’m going to-” Instead of words, the hulking woman let out an unearthly howl into the night, forcefully slamming my hips back down against the bed twice with enough power that it would probably bruise, before fully swallowing my member inside her. Her folds greedily swallowed up every drop. After a moment, I found her sunk across my chest, the passionate fury having left her eyes and sleep taking her. A thick sheen of sweat coated her fur, blending with my own smells as she laid onto me. Ever so gently, I laid the heavy girl on the other side of the bed, falling back on my own half.

I panted softly, lain beside the unconscious Hoofstrong. She was so incredible. I wanted to rub against her, make love to her, protect her from everything, and spend all day by her side. It was a shame she was asleep, but she looked so beautiful like this, smiling softly on her side as strands of her dark hair slipped over her eyes.

Suddenly, I heard movement, a light tapping of hooves. There was someone new standing in my doorframe, her hands locked together by her waist as her fingers twirled around one another nervously. I recognized her. Her soft face and caramel fur. The cute yellow blotches along her arms and ears. It was Fluffy Jersey, waiting outside my room. I remembered the last time I saw her, being attacked by Diamond dogs. The image of her in danger sent me tense, despite knowing she was safe here, in my doorway.

I snorted in worry, a cloud of condensation puffing out from the hot air expelled by my body. I was hot. It felt like I was burning up. Jersey looked like she wanted to say something, her lip quavering some unspoken question. But I was far to numb to pick up on things like that right then. Stepping forward, I pulled the minotauress into my broad arms, sniffing her throatily to check that she was okay. Held tight in my grip, it only took a moment to confirm to my bestial brain that she was fine. Dipping my head, I placed long licks along the side of her muzzle. God, she smelled so good. Her head buried deeply in the fur of my chest, Jersey let out a low whine. She had melted like butter in my arms, bound as tightly by her own hormones as I was.

“Want ah you!” Jersey gasped, the non-sentence being the most her mind could muster.

Breathing deeply, I lifted Fluffy Jersey right up into the air. My thick fingers sank into her plush rear as I carried her like a bag of rice. With an appreciative moan, her legs locked around my back, cloven hooves scraping against my tail. Turning, I brought my prize back into the room, absentmindedly noting the powerful odour of sex and sweat that hung heavy in the air. Tenderly, I laid her on the bed, right next to the deeply sleeping Hoofstrong.

I rubbed the side of my face against her neck, covering her with my scent. Sliding my hands up and down her body, I tried to paw at her obstructing clothing, barely cognizant of how any of it slipped on or off. Why was she wearing any of it anyways? She was so beautiful, and she smelled so interesting. I just wanted to bury myself close to her and experience more of her body.

Biting a lip, Jersey began stripping her clothes off, piece by piece. The dress came first, revealing the soft, caramel brown minotauress underneath in her undergarments. Her yellow spots, I saw, continued all across the fuzzy fur. My gaze lingered over her blue panties, which had a vertical slit of navy dampness running along their front. My minotauress wanted me right now, she needed me.

Noticing my staring, Jersey smiled coyly and, leaning over the side of the bed, undid her matching blue bra. Fluttering down, the dainty blue cloth fell away from her breasts, landing on her lap.

Credit: Jezzlen

I took a second to take in Jersey’s body, her wide curves, her soft eyes, and her protruding nipples. The voice in my head that seemed to be guiding all my movements spoke up as I surveyed her. She would make such a good mother. The wide, child-bearing hips, the breasts made for feeding, and I already knew she was good with other women’s children.

Pinning her wrists down, I bowled Jersey back onto the bed, hovering atop her body. I didn’t have the presence of mind to compliment her, but I could press my tongue into Jersey’s mouth, wrapping my long muscly appendage around her own.

Breaking away, I started a disorganized series of licks, kisses, and head-rubs down the minotauress’ chest. All the while, I was basking in the sensation of her, and replacing it with my own so that everyone knew whose she was. Finally, I worked my way down to her sopping wet panties. Before even taking them off, I gave a long lick up the cloth, over the patch of wetness. Eyes widening, it was like a jolt of electricity had arced across my brain. Something about her taste awoke a burning fire in me.

My tongue was longer than anything I had ever dealt with before and I was going to make use of it. Sliding Jersey’s panties down, I started with a single, long lap of her pussy lips, tasting her. There it was again, much stronger now. Lust inflamed, I launched into a vicious assault against her folds. Shoving at least five inches of rough cow tongue inside her, I writhed about, exploring every spot I could of hers. Positioning my mouth just above her slit, I’d made sure that every time the tongue slide out of or deeper into her folds, the rough surface rubbed her clitoral nub to excruciating degrees of sensitivity.

“What are you ahn”–Jersey tried to ask, gasping between words as her pelvis lurched and quaked against my mouth–“doing with your tongue?!” I could barely make out her words, barring that the pleasured cries resounded in my mind, eliciting a strong feeling of happiness. My minotauress was feeling good. I could only focus on the taste of her folds as my rough tongue ravaged about, exploring her interior. Suddenly, the bestial voice in my head spoke up once again, revealing what that taste meant for Jersey.

She was ready! She was ready. She was ready. She was ready. Every moment, I was assailed by another reminder that she was receptive, and I had to give her what she needed. Hulking tongue sliding out of her folds, the rough surface gave one last lick to Jersey’s clitoris on the way out, making her shudder. Crawling forward onto the bed, I positioned my head just over Jersey’s own, staring with intense passion into her own eyes. I was vaguely aware of the tungsten rod of intense pleasure, twitching and bobbing against the minotauress’ navel.

“Need you”–I huffed, single minded determination consuming my every thought–“so bad.”

“Ye-es!” Jersey whined, moaning between words.

Locked in the missionary position, I reared back, powerful thighs tensing like a cat about to leap. Positioning my twitching member just before Jersey’s quivering pussy, I just about managed a shuddering gasp before thrusting forwards, burying myself inside her. I was inside. She felt so good. Just like Hoofstrong before, I felt a surge of emotions coursing from our contact. Love, lust, an overwhelming desire to protect. Pulling my hips back, I reaffirmed them with a second thrust into her silky folds, burying my member back inside her where it belonged.

Stars crossing her eyes, Jersey was lost in the sensations, not as able to keep up with it as Hoofstrong. She just laid on the bed, mewling each time my cock bottomed out in her and my full balls slapped against her soft rear. It was fine. I loved her. I loved her so much. Continuing the motions, I worked up to a full rhythm, pulling back and filling her depths with a single-minded focus.

Her tongue lolling out of her mouth as each thrust plumbed her depths, I saw Jersey’s head turn, looking towards the door. Huffing throatily as I continued my assault, I turned to look at what she saw. There were people there, minotauresses. One of them, a perky rust-brown and tan girl with little nubs of horns and a cowbell around her neck was looking on in astonishment. The other had silver hair and bright gold eyes. I think I recognized her. Her eyes were fixated on the spot where Jersey’s and my own hips collided, hips sending ripples of motion through buttocks every second. One of her hands had slipped between her thighs and was teasing her hungry snatch with two fingers, a dribble of fluid sliding down her fingers. What had her name been? Char, Chère? Girls, my mind supplied, filling in the blanks. There were girls at the door.

I wanted to get close to them. I needed to smell them, to coat them in my scent. They would have to wait until I was done with Jersey though, I was close to finishing. Choking back a growl, I picked up the pace, my trunk-like thighs a blur against Jersey’s cushioned ass.

“Give it to me!” Jersey whined out, wanton lust pervading each word. “I need you”–she lost her words with a jolt, falling limp across my the bed as I thrust deeply into the minotauress’ silky folds–“I need anh I need….” Her walls spasmed around my dick and, locking her hoofs around my legs, she hilted herself entirely around me, the violent movement driving me over the edge as I felt a pooling explosion of pleasure in my loins.

“Breed me!” Jersey screamed frantically, quaking in the throes of orgasm as she writhed around my waist.

Like a crescendo, I felt my release erupt into her, the first spurts of baby batter basting her inner walls. Waves of sensations all coursing through me at once, I saw white.

I woke up in a room that stank of sex. I was at the bottom of a pile, draped in gently sleeping girls.

Chapter 6: Protector

Protector

I just laid on the mattress for a moment, trying to get my bearings. What had happened last night? I mean, I knew. My mind had been a haze but I was there, behind it all. During the fight and the following evening, I had been playing second fiddle to instincts that were not my own. I was better now. Still, I could feel the soft and occasionally bristly fur of a pile of minotaur girls weighing down on me, sleeping gently. And, though I could think with a far clearer mind, a lingering sensation of affection and protectiveness still passed through me when I concentrated on the radiator-like body heat of their fur.

The girls were nice. The girls were good. But I was gross. The desperately-in-need-of-a-shower kind of feeling pervaded every inch of me, from the tips of my horn to the cleft in my hooves. Another trip to the riverbed looked to be on my schedule. But, first, there was the question of the bodies draped over my own. Was I expected to perform aftercare for a dozen girls, cook breakfast for a village, or cuddle for several days?

Silencing my doubts, I tried to slip out of the bed, sliding grasping arms off me ever so slowly, the sleeping bodies they were attached to only shifting ever so slightly as I moved. I was practically playing limbo, trying to make my way under the tangled mess of limbs. I paused for a second as a black-furred leg twitched, its cloven hoof dragging up and down the bed, searching for the warm fur it had been buried in moments before. After a moment, it stopped. I was still good. Finally taking a second to orient myself once there were no more women on top of me, I realised that I had been lower to the ground than I thought I should be. Sitting up on the mattress, I discovered that it was laid flat on the ground, sans-bedframe. Don’t think about it. I would just have to remember that I was on the line for a bed. Everything else later, river now. I stood up.

Thinking myself the nimblest minotaur in existence, I hadn’t made it a step away from the bed before feeling a gentle hand grip my left leg’s calf.

“You’re not going, are you?” A sleepy voice asked, a hint of sadness in its inflection.

Pivoting, I turned back around to the collapsed mattress, finding a reddish brown minotaur woman held onto my leg. The front of her coat, down the underside of her chin and neck to her trim waist was of a lighter rose fur. Surprisingly intact undergarments cupped her breasts, hanging loosely off the drowsy girl. And, somewhat amusingly, a little brass cowbell necklace dangled off the minotaur’s neck, clinking mutedly as the girl’s torso lurched from the mattress to my leg.

Credit: Luryry

The question asked hung in the air for a second, cutting into my core. I wasn’t going, was I? I supposed I knew the answer before the question had ever been asked.

“I will be sticking around,” I rumbled with a warm smile, the minotauress’ features being burned into my eyes. Evidently pleased at my answer, the grip on my leg fell away and the prone minotaur instead used her hand to prop up her head, eying me up from her position on the mattress.

Embarrassment clouded my thoughts. In the haze of last night, somehow I hadn’t even noticed her joining the pile. I hadn’t noticed a lot of the sleeping minotauresses join the pile. I didn’t like to think of myself as someone who slept around with no sense of personal connection. However, just holding on to that feeling of dissociation with the minotauresses around me was difficult. The longer I looked at the red-brown girl before me, the fonder I felt of her. It was bizarre, we hadn’t even done introductions yet. I blinked. That truth hit me like a truck, we hadn’t done introductions.

“Apologies, I don’t think I introduced myself last night. You can call me Parting Blade,” I said, extending a hand to the smiling minotauress. Brushing a hand across her hair, the minotauress placed her smaller hand in my own, giving a light squeeze.

“That’s quite alright, deary. Can’t say I was in much of a talking mood last night either,” the rust-coloured minotauress tittered, her eyes lidding halfway playfully. “The name’s Angus, Red Angus. But you can call me Angy, darling.”

Angy. I liked the name. I liked the girl it was attached to. Leaning down, I gave the rust fur of Angy’s cheek a parting kiss. As soon as I touched the fur, the taste hit me and I struggled to not recoil. Ew ew ew. It looked like all of us could use a pretty thorough rinse.

Waving the minotauress goodbye, I lumbered outside. I was single-minded in my path to the river, trying to sprint through the walk of shame

Hoofstrong’s smithy was lit and smoking when I finished bathing. Black fur was an easy colour to miss impurities in, but I was fairly sure I had cleaned up as well as cold water and roughly scrubbing hands would allow.

I had been wandering around the village after my dip in the river. It was nice to get some fresh air, but I was catching some stares from the minotaurs. The sun was fairly high in the sky, probably making it the afternoon, but there were few people out and about. And, those I did see, were doing the whole point-and-whisper schtick with each other. I didn’t really want to hang around but I absolutely could not go back into my temporary home right now. And so, Hoofstrong’s smithy, with little puffs of smoke just beginning to peek out of its smokestack, became my destination.

The inside of the workshop, now that I took the time to look at it, was actually quite nice. Tools hung on racks in the wall, some bigger and some smaller. The wear on their edges helped show which ones saw more use than others. Over a table, a blade’s hilt sat wrapped in cloth, unfinished. In the centre of the room, there was an anvil to strike blades upon and a bucket of still water to cool them in. And, just beyond these, sat a glowing furnace, coals just beginning to come alight in the orange flames. It was a new day and the smithy was just about to come online.

Credit: ZoeyPeltier

To my right, a door running along the wall of the smithy, heading deeper into the building opened up and I saw a familiar chocolate minotaur dripping from head to toe in water rubbing a ragged towel through her long, black hair.

“Oh”–Hoofstrong exclaimed, pausing by the door to her quarters, the towel in her hand frozen for a second–“the warrior.”

Did she have a bath in there? It was a far cry from indoor plumbing and picking buckets of water by hand all the way from the stream sounded like a pain, but I would have to look into that as an option if I wanted to stay here for long. She had, apparently, gotten clean and was well into starting her day in the time it had taken me to travel all the way to the river and back.

“Sorry for the intrusion. I just needed somewhere to duck into, away from all of the eyes out there,” I apologised, with a short bow of my head to the smith.

“No worries. No worries,” the smith repeated absentmindedly. Walking over to her hearth, she picked up a great air-bellows. Bringing its pointed nozzle to the fireplace, she gave the contraption a good push and, with a rush of air, the hearth’s embers exploded into a fiery blaze. “The girls around here are just a little excited”–Hoofstrong explained, casually keeping an eye on the blazing inferno just before her eyes–“because it’s been so long since a strong man came to town. Let alone such a potent specimen.” Turning her head ever so slightly, the minotauress cast an eye back to me. “You shouldn’t have anything to worry about, unless you were planning on running away and leaving some broken hearts behind,” Hoofstrong finished, leaving the awkward sentence hanging in the air for a few seconds. I pursed my lips, looking at her curiously. Was she asking for herself?

“I made a promise to protect Highcliff. I intend on keeping it,” I said resolutely. I didn’t know if Hoofstrong was being vulnerable or not, but now was the time to be direct in my intentions to support her and every other minotaur here.

Hoofstrong had had her back turned to me, fixated for several seconds longer than seemed necessary on the furnace. Standing, she turned back to me with a small smile on her face. Leaning over to me, she gave a quick peck on my cheek.

“You can protect me any day,” Hoofstrong purred, leaning by my ear. Straightening out, she adopted a more serious expression. “But, if you are going to be sticking around, I would like to take a look at your sword. Maybe you’d like a shield too? There’s no shame in one of those. The Diamond Dogs left plenty of metal scraps behind as they ran off, so I have a lot more to work with than the ingots Lulu brought in on her last supply run.”

Looking expectantly at the belt around my waist, Hoofstrong offered an upturned hand. Unsheathing my sword, I gently turned it around, passing the hilt to the smith. Her brow furrowed slightly as she took the blade and closely examined its length, betraying her interest.

I pursed my lips, running a calloused hand over my chest and through the thick fur covering it. A layer of fur blunted blows, lessened scratches from claws, and provided decent protection from bugs and chill. But blades? For how much stronger I had been than the Diamond Dogs that had attacked, I was hobbled by the carefulness I had needed to take during the fight. One lucky slash could have cut me wide open, leaving me here to bleed out without a proper hospital in the whole country.

“If we’ve got the resources, how about some armour?” I proposed tentatively, the fur over my chest returning to its natural shape as I lifted my hand away from it.

“Armour?” Hoofstrong rumbled absentmindedly, her focus still entirely on the weapon in her hands. “You’d have to head a few days west to find any minotaurs working with leather.” Humming appreciatively, Hoofstrong held the shaft of my sword in the sun’s light, the metal glinting in her eye. Glancing over to me, she continued, “I can inlay some steel studs into leather if you bring me some elbow pads or a heart-protector, but I’m a smith at heart.”

She thought I wanted something in leather? I mean, it would be much better than what I had right now, however thick my skin was. Still, it didn’t play into my strengths. I was a walking mountain, a force of nature. Any armour, no matter how heavy, I was confident that I could wear.

“Since we salvaged so much iron from the Diamond Dogs, I was hoping I could get something in metal. A chestplate maybe?” There was a pregnant pause.

“You’re joking,” Hoofstrong barked, her focus now completely on me. “No minotaur has ever had the gall or cowardice to ask me for armour before.”

“Cowardice?” I asked, turning to the smith. She had a sternness in her eyes now. Had I committed some unknown faux pas?

Like a roaring furnace lived in her chest, Hoofstrong snorted and billowing clouds of condensation fired from her snout. Dropping my sword ignominiously on the table, Hoofstrong plodded over to me, each hoofstep sounding against the smithy floor like a blow. She stopped short in front of me, her eyes burrowing into my skull like a drill. She paused for a second, looking for something, before opening her mouth.

“Did you plan to claim me, just before announcing that you had no intention to trade blows with competitors?”

“Fight competitors? What does that even”–I paused, rubbing my temple in exasperation. This was going to be one of those things that didn’t translate over well–“what does that mean? And, please, remember that I’m not from around here when you explain.”

“Yes, you’ve said that before,” Hoofstrong grunted irritably. Her arms had crossed and she looked moments away from bashing me up the head with one of her hammers. Alright, she was mad.

Huffing angrily, her only action for several seconds was to stand there and stare. I had nothing to say. Frankly, I didn’t even know where to begin. Cooling down slightly, she finally addressed my question with an accusation, warning, “to wear more than the most basic of leather straps is to invite mockery for cowardice. It announces that one is afraid of being struck, or afraid of shedding blood to protect their claims. True minotaurs are supposed to move free of constraints, like the wind through the grass.”

“This tradition is longstanding and is and has always been part of our history. No matter what part of the plains you grew up in, you should have known this.” Hoofstrong took a provocative step towards me, projecting absolute confidence through her posture. Despite standing just shorter than me, her aggressive, unflinching approach and granite muscles made no hint of the implicit threat. With conviction, Hoofstrong dictated, “you have taken me as a mate and you will respect the history of our people.”

I met the chocolate minotaur in her fiery eyes. The ornamental metal bands around her horns glimmered in the sunlight, drawing attention to the spear like tips of bone. She brokered no compromise, drawing on history and tradition and all the things that made rational people fly into a rage. Some small part of me wanted to not push her on this, to let it slide and avoid conflict. The crackle of embers snapped in the background. But, deep down, I knew that was the same part of me that still demanded I leave Highcliff and its minotaurs behind.

I stepped forward.

“I made a promise to protect these people,” I rumbled with an uncompromising firmness in my voice. Hoofstrong ceded no ground, but I was a bulwark against her will. “I have a duty to keep them safe, to winfights protecting them. The minotaurs who would judge me are gone. I have seen nothing but the ruins of their society. If fighting with honour in their eyes means dying and leaving this village to the dogs, then I would rather live dishonourably and keep Highcliff safe.”

There was a moment of silence. The tension in the air was thick enough to be cut like a knife. Hoofstrong’s piercing blue eyes darted between my own, looking for any hint of insincerity. My muscles were taut, ready to block a strike that hadn’t yet come. If Hoofstrong was going to bring this to blows, I wouldn’t strike back. But I still didn’t want to take a blacksmith’s hammer directly to the head, that was part of why I was asking for armour after all. The room was dead still, except for the spitting and crackling of embers in the hearth. It was just me, squared up against Highcliff’s powerful smith. I held for a few seconds, then a few more. Finally, Hoofstrong’s iron stance softened and she took a step back from me.

“I have never made armour before, but ancients smite me if I am not the best smith this side of the plains. I will have it to you before the week is through.”

Hoofstrong looked me up and down, smouldering coals in the furnace’s hearth casting a gentle glow around the chocolate minotaur’s frame. Her blue eyes, like glittering sapphires, reflected the dancing flames of the smithy.

“If I must invite the mockery of my ancestors to keep you around”–Hoofstrong lamented, exhaling slowly. Brushing various tools and debris from a workbench, she’d turned her back to me–“so be it. You don’t fight like a minotaur, you don’t think like a minotaur, you don’t act like a minotaur.” There was a pause.

“But maybe you’re just what we need.”

Author's Note

My computer was broken, apologies for the delays in posting. Back to regular updates, people.

Chapter 7: Patriarch

I was going to be a father.

It had taken me a week to find out. After committing to my order, Hoofstrong had locked herself away in the smithy for several days with only the muffled ‘ping’ of rhythmic hammer strikes letting the world know she was okay. When she had sent for me on the seventh day, I had opened the smithy door, only to be pulled into a deep kiss by a waiting minotauress.

Minotaur pregnancies, it turned out, progressed unnaturally quickly. Over the course of just a few days, Hoofstrong’s belly had swollen up like a human woman’s would at several months of pregnancy. I wasn’t sure how to describe the chocolate minotaur’s journey to motherhood, since trimesters most certainly didn’t apply here. The way things were going, it seemed unlikely that even half a trimester would elapse before the birth. And she wasn’t the only one. The rusty minotauress, Angy, was also nursing a rounded belly. Multiple women were pregnant and I was the father.

I was having some difficulty processing it all. Over the span of a few days, I had gone from a bachelor who’d never imagined he’d be able to afford a kid in this economy, to an expectant father to two pregnant minotauresses. There wasn’t really anything that prepared you for that kind of thing.

Hoofstrong, in a hastily resized flowing blue dress, was laid on her side in her room in the smithy. A calloused hand rubbed with uncharacteristic tenderness over the bulge in her stomach. She looked calmer now, more relaxed than I had come to associate with the powerful smith.

Credit: Whiterabbit95

“Some more alfalfa? A cup of water?” I prodded the chocolate minotauress while leaning over her mattress. It was not the first time that day I’d asked the question.

“Enough!” Hoofstrong barked, shooing me away with a hand but making no movement to pull away from the stack of pillows I’d brought to her bedside. “I am pregnant, not infirm. I managed to finish your damned armour, I am still perfectly capable of doing things for myself.”

“Sorry! Sorry,” I apologised, again, not for the first time that day. Ever since I had discovered the pregnant Hoofstrong, my protective instincts had kicked into overdrive. I was channelling them in a slightly more productive channel than smashing potential threats to the smith, though I was internally cognizant that it was a bit excessive. Pulling back, I stared at the smith for a moment, emotions swelling in me. Darting back to her, I gave the red-faced minotauress a peck on the cheek.

She didn’t swat me away.

To my surprise, the minotaurs had decided to throw a party at the news of the girl’s pregnancies. Somewhat darkly, it seemed that new life being brought to the plains was much rarer than an attack of Diamond Dogs being fended off, and so there was more cause to celebrate. The whole thing was a very impromptu affair, but it wasn’t like the townsfolk had rows of streamers and balloons to break out for the occasion. No, the party light was the red glow over the dimming horizon and the only present was the attendance of near-every minotaur in the village, young and old. And, really, that was all I could ever ask for.

Around a large table, handmade ceramic cups were being passed around. Inside, a golden-brown liquid sloshed around, smelling strongly of fermentation. A handful of watchful, matronly minotaurs hung around the table, making sure that curious children didn’t make their way to what the adults were drinking. Being the furred black goliath I was, it didn’t take long for me to get recognized. The man of the hour, I was welcomed in with a subdued cheer and smiles all around. A slight chill blew on the winds over the plains, but I could only describe the environment as warm.

As soon as I’d arrived, a cheery minotauress passed me a mug. To be honest, I was a little cautious. The liquid in my cup was definitely crude. Husks of fibrous stalks from the brewing still floated in the mixture. Albeit, that they had managed to filter or brew a drink at all with what I had seen in this village was fairly impressive.

Well, man of the hour and all. It would be rude to turn it down. Deeper in the crowd, I could see the round-bellied Red with a waterskin in hand, instead of a mug. She, at least, got a pass. God, she was such a good mother. Blinking away the rush of protective thoughts, I returned to the mug at hand. Raising it up to my lips, I let a sip of the golden mix flow into my mouth.

It was delicious. The brew was like the best part of eating alfalfa, but in liquid form. Was this why cows liked eating fermented hay so much, it tasted something like this to them? A wave of cheers passed around the party as I drank. Some minotaurs clinked their mugs together, others rose them in toast, all drank.

I had barely gotten my first sip in before a pint-sized, pink-haired fuzzball careened into my waist with a tackle that would have made rugby players tear up with pride.

“Partin’,”–a familiar voice by my hip called out–“yer here!”

My eyes lit up, seeing the little minotauress clinging onto me.

“Lulu!” I beamed, picking the minotauress up in my arms and pulling her into a hug against my chest.

“‘Ey, ‘ey! Too high!” she protested, waving her hands and grabbing at my fur for stability while keeping an eye on the metre drop to the floor below.

“Alright, fine,” I chuckled, leaning down and bringing the thrashing minotauress to the ground as she struck against my arms with surprising force. Must have been all that carrying-giant-bags energy.

Our heads coming close together, I could smell that familiar alcoholic fermentation coming from Lulu’s breath. Had she already started drinking?

“You and Hoofstrong, huh? Big strong ‘uns, I guess. I’m happy fer yah.” Straining to reach up to the drinks table, Lulu stood on her tip-hooves and stretched, grabbing herself a mug.

“Thanks, Lulu. That means a lot coming from you.” I said, beaming at the minotauress. “I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t lead me out of that old maze.” She didn’t seem to react to my words, instead kind of staring off through the party.

“Yeah, you really got yerself situated. Started movin’ fast, huh?” Taking a deep breath, Lulu brought her mug up to her lips and took a huge swig, proportional to her body-size. Honestly, seeing Lulu drink at all was a little odd to look at, though internally I knew she was in her twenties. Holding the mug up to her lips for a moment longer, Lulu finally lowered it and snorted a little puff from her nostrils. Taking a deep breath, her face turned serious and she looked me in the eyes.

“We need tah talk, big guy,” Lulu stressed, her lips pursed. “Not now, or ev’n today. But it would mean a lot tah me if we could sit down an’ talk some things over.”

Yeah, that sounded nice. I was kind of missing the time I hadn’t been spending with Lulu these last few days, though we still saw each other about.

“Yeah, of course, Lulu. But what do-” I’d started, before being cut off by the little minotauress at my waist throwing a friendly slug at my knee.

“Not now, big guy. The night’s yours!” Bouncing on her feet, Dwarf Lulu gave a fist pump before turning off and darting away from me. Under her breath, I could hear a muffled, “Yeah!” as her tip-tapping hooves carried her away.

Perplexed, I took a sip of my drink, watching the small minotaur skip away and disappear behind the legs of the many celebrating minotaurs, I suddenly felt a pair of thin, silky arms slipping around my left bicep. Turning my head in surprise, I found the pink-white minotauress Charolais hanging languidly from my arm, an assured smile on her face. In one of her hands, a half emptied mug of the night’s spirits swirled about, a mere afterthought to the drink’s owner.

“So, you got Hoofstrong and Red pregnant,” Charolais trilled, leaning back and sipping at her mug daintily. “You know, I’ve always wanted to be a mother.”

I coughed hard, the sip I’d taken being sent down the wrong pipe. Wide eyed, I beat a fist against my chest, wholly caught off guard by the sudden conversation topic. Turning fully to face the light pink minotaur, my mouth hung agape as I scoured my seemingly shut-down mind for an acceptable response. Not waiting around for me to talk, she traced a lone index finger up to the upper half of my agape jaw and gave me a little boop on my nose.

“Just a little tidbit about myself, dear,” Charolais tittered to herself, seemingly amused by how flustered I’d become. Steadying herself, the pink furred woman released my left arm from her grip and gave me a kiss on the side of my neck. Turning away without a care in the world, the minotauress strutted away into the packed party, her sleek tail fluttering from side to side with each step.

Fuck.

The evening progressed like that for a while, often to an uncomfortable degree. Eventually, I managed to slip away from the droves of well-wishers and girls who sounded suspiciously like they were irked to not be part of the evening’s main attraction. Catching my breath, I’d wrapped around the back of one of the village’s round buildings. It was central enough to the celebration’s core that I wasn’t leaving the party, but secluded enough that I could collect myself for a few minutes.

Brushing a hand through the thick hair at the top of my head, I had managed to bring my breathing to a crawl before even noticing that I was not alone around the back of this home. Cane in hand, the hunched Malvi Elderhoof was stood not a metre from me. The dark browns and blacks of his coat helped him blend into the darkened wall, as the sun began its parting journey from the sky. And the elder, heedless of the celebrations around us was just still, staring at the fading sun.

Seemingly waiting, unconcerned if I had noticed him, Elderhoof acknowledged me with a small nod.

“Let me offer you my congratulations, young man,” the elderly minotaur praised with a smile. Stepping awkwardly over to me while leaning on his cane, he placed a frail arm around my back, pulling me into a one-armed hug. “This is the happiest I have seen Hoofstrong in years. It eases an old man’s heart, to see his little girl focused on something other than broken blades and burnt lands.”

Nodding dumbly along with the elder, it took a moment for the rugged minotaur’s words to process in my mind. The pieces clicking, I nearly spat out my drink.

“Her fa- Hoofstrong is your daughter?” I spluttered with wide eyes. My posture straightened through some instinct inherent to men everywhere, which seemed to transcend both minotaur and man.

“Easy there, boy,” Malvi chided amicably. The inkling of a smile cracked across his face. “The times of butting horns to posture and dowries on marriage are long past us. That my little Blue is happy is more than I could ask for.”

“I spoke with the young Lulu earlier,” Elderhoof hummed, looking back to the party’s heart. “She mentioned that you were new to these parts. And that you had had some difficulty with getting lost in the Maze of Kings?”

My smile was a little strained with the elder. I didn’t exactly want to have to explain to others why I had been stranded underground in ancient burial grounds. On the other hand, I couldn’t exactly coach Lulu into providing a more reasonable backstory for me. If for no other reason that I had no frame of reference for what normalcy looked like out here.

“That’s right,” I answered after a moment. “This is all a bit of a change of pace for me.” I dipped my head, taking a sip of the golden elixir in my hands. “I’m still getting my bearings out here.”

Malvi looked at me curiously for a moment, the elder’s brow furrowing as he leaned on his cane.

“I see.” There was a few seconds of silence between us as the background noise of jubilant minotaurs laughing and drinking filled the void. Then Malvi’s back un-arched itself by a few degrees as the elder looked me in my eyes. Softly but very pointedly, he asked, “tell me young man, do you know how the old kingdom collapsed?”

I was caught off guard by the sudden line of questioning. For as much as I didn’t want to seem out of place, lying when the elder could pose follow up questions seemed like a terrible idea.

“No, could you tell me more about it?” I probed, trying to frame it as an opportunity for the elder to speak, rather than me not knowing minotaur history. Eerily, the elder’s stare continued.

“I thought not,” he hummed to himself while shifting his weight around on his cane. “And you have said that you wish to protect the plains, yes?” The elder took another glance at my eyes. Not waiting for a response, the hunched minotaur looked away and continued talking. “Then you should know about the threats that plague our plains.”

“Many years ago, back in the days of plenty, our lands were assaulted by the ponyfolk. Back then, they were a very different peoples”–the elder clarified helpfully, rolling a hand in gesticulation–“with whom we had enjoyed many centuries of peace and trade. So you understand it was surprising to us. But we were strong. Our culture of militarism ran deep and our walls soared high. No mutts could have even touched us then,” Malvi sighed wistfully.

“It was not the first time we had been challenged over our lands, nor was it the first time invaders were pushed back. When the grand army of the tribes coalesced around King Ironheart, the ponies found no easy foe in him. The battles were slogs, but the plains were ours.” There was a pause. “I was just a dumb steer back then. Not too different to you, perhaps,” Malvi chuckled, his eyes distant. “Too inexperienced to join our forces. I was just a watchman over the walls of Hooves’ Rest. By the winds, my horns were too short to even keep claim over the girl I liked. Not that that stopped us from sneaking some kisses behind the wall. We were so young,” Elderhoof reminisced with a fond smile, lost in the memories. Slowly, the smile faded and a dimness set in his eyes.

“The ponies’ sun-princess tired of the protracted war. I remember the last day. A messenger come to town, boldly announcing our latest victory in pushing back the ponies. The braggart had scarcely finished relaying his messages before the sun was wrenched out of its heavenly orbit and brought over our lands.”

“The north was where our army stood, and so that is where the sun hovered.” Malvi’s face was blank and stony, but there was an almost imperceptible shake in his hands, which he brought to his chest reflexively, crossing his arms. “Even from Hooves’ Rest, the heat was unbearable. Wood caught alight, houses collapsed, and the winds raged and surged with the fiery updraft. Thunderous clouds roared and snapped, deafening the ears.”

“For a full day”–Malvi rasped–“the sun hovered above the north. I hid,” the elder stressed, looking into my eyes to make sure I was paying attention. “I curled up in a ditch and I cried and I hid, thinking that each moment would be the last one of my life. The blistering winds and collapsing buildings didn’t claim me, but everything was different when I crawled out of that ditch.”

“The breadbasket of Equus became ash that day,” Malvi lamented, his voice dry and cracking. “The north was gone. An endless sea of fertile wheat fields, burned to an ashen wasteland. They call it The Badlands now. The aquifers run dry and the soil accepts no life. Our homelands were cut in half.”

“It looked like the ponies would have overrun us easily then,” Malvi spat, turning his head off to the distance. “I later learned that their princess’ move crippled them too. Fires ruined their crop-season and, with their armies weakened, we were granted a few year’s reprieve. But did it even matter in the end? No wooden palisade or building survived the sun’s wrath. Our honoured warriors laid dead, without even bodies to lay to rest. Little survived but collapsed buildings, scattered minotaurs, and stone reminders of a grand civilization that had left this world without the last of its people. ”

“That was the day our kingdom died.”

Chapter 8: Crowning

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