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.