Golden Scale twisted over in his half-sleep, clanging his horns against the cold rock ground and jolting himself awake. He sat up with a start, looking wildly about himself as he groped for some memory of where he was and how he got there.
He shuddered out a sigh and rubbed at his eyes. Three short questions, he thought. Might as well go over them again. One, name. Scale. That was easy.
He dropped his arms to his sides and stared out into the darkness around him. Two, home. A harbor that lay across an ocean flickered across his mind, though he dare not let it linger. Question two was depressing, he decided.
Scale moved to stand, rising only a little before quickly sitting again, his legs set with invisible pins and needles. He rubbed at them vigorously, grimacing as blood pounded back into his limbs. Okay, three. How to win. His father had given him a very simple answer to the question that cowed his city six times before.
Survive.
And he was no ordinary minotaur, his father had said. The kids before him were strong, but he was smart. The image of his father, tears in his eyes, swam before him in the cavelike gloom. Scale squeezed his eyes shut and stood.
Immediately his stomach cramped sharply. Surely he hadn’t been in this maze for more than a few hours, he thought, but after falling asleep there wasn’t much of a way to tell anymore. Either way, he’d have to find food soon. He turned towards one of the chamber’s several thresholds and went through.
This time he’ll be smarter, Scale thought. In the first hour of being thrust into the labyrinth, he had panicked and ran as fast as he could away from the solid oak doors as soon as they slammed shut; the rumors through the city only spoke of the maze, but he had an entire sea voyage in captivity to imagine what horrors may lie inside. If there was anything living there, that slamming door might as well be a dinner bell.
The labyrinth had a quiet stillness to it, even as Scale navigated it for the second time. He moved slowly, despite his hunger pangs, and took every path intersection carefully, creeping into the junctions with his back to a wall each time. Despite seeing no sign of any other living being, the silent aura of his new prison made him feel as if it were purposefully trying to lull him into a false sense of security.
Still, he reminded himself, he had the sense of mind to notice the very, very slight slope in the floor that kept leading him back to the center chamber of the maze. And if something else lived there, he reasoned, surely it would make the middle room its lair out of sheer unconscious habit of returning there. It was empty, and he had managed to sleep off his exhaustion there, so surely he was the only creature there, he said to himself reassuringly.
He turned another corner, carefully keeping uphill, when a slight tremor through the floor made him freeze. Ears straining and muscles tense, he stood still and very nearly convinced himself it was his imagination when he heard a very low, distant thud. He could feel the back of his neck prickle; maybe the real test of the maze was to survive exhaustion and then be chased down by the monster.
He was suddenly overtaken by the insatiable urge to be anywhere other than the exact place he was in at that moment. He took several quick, winding turns, heading to the outer rim of the maze all the while. He stopped to regain his breath when he realized the path he had taken was slowly, steadily taking on a bluish hue over the usual dark rock. More than that, he realized as he cautiously moved forward, but it seemed to even glow a little.
The next turn in the path revealed a small patch of softly luminescent blue mushrooms. Scale plucked one from the side of the wall where they were smallest, watching the light drag in the air as he brought it up to his face to inspect.
Maybe these were how the others before him survived, he thought. He winced as his stomach cramped. Then again, it was blue. And glowing. He sighed, carefully bringing the small fungus to his nose and gave an experimental sniff. He smelled nothing but the same dank air of being underground. Frustrated and hungry, he split the mushroom in two, anxiously smelling every edge for any hint of curious notes that might mark it as poison. A soft clatter from not too far away caused him to jump, dropping the mushroom to the floor.
Overcoming his urge to sprint back into the maze, he inched away from his strange find and towards the end of the passageway, where it opened up to an alcove pocketing off the side of another path and intersected with a third.
The hallway before him seemed softly illuminated, not by the blue of the mushrooms this time, but of an odd red far down the corridor. It’s even bouncing a little, thought Scale as he stepped into the passage proper to better see it. As his hoof hit stone, it suddenly froze.
“What the—”
The slight red glow launched itself down the hall, accompanied by the sound of clattering footsteps. Scale threw himself back into the small alcove and twisted around its corner, hiding in a convenient shadow that darkened another path that reached back into the maze. Heart racing, he choked back his breath when the corridor he just left grew redder.
A nasty, snakish face slid into the room, led by a flickering tongue. Its milky eyes stared straight into Scale’s darkened hall; his heart erupted into his throat, but as the creature explored the alcove instead of heading straight for him, he was sure it hadn’t noticed he was there yet. Its body was almost dragon-like, squat with crimson scales, though the ridges along its back and tail emitted that odd, dim red shine. It was small, but vicious-looking.
It licked at the air and turned away from Scale’s hiding place towards the third corridor; he had to stifle a sigh of relief when he realized he had chosen the hall that didn’t slope down. It slunk into the mushroom path and out of sight.
Muscles painfully tense, Scale let a minute or two slip by before rising from his corner. Panic rose in his chest and the walls seemed to warp and wobble as he quickly, quietly stole across the room and into the passage that the creature came from.
He stopped just around the corner and leaned an arm against the wall, trying to steady himself despite the hall twisting before his eyes. He had only a moment before he felt his legs swept out from underneath him. He crashed down to the ground before receiving a blow to the back of his head. Stars burst in his eyes, then everything went black.
________________________________________
When Scale awoke, it was to a splitting headache and a soft scuffing sound somewhere not too far from him. Taking the longest, slowest deep breath of his life, he slowly cracked one eye open. Through the blur of sharp pain and watery eyes, he could make out a figure at the other side of the alcove scraping something on the ground. The figure, though smaller than before, glowed very slightly in red.
Scale’s eyes shot open and he leapt to his feet, fists raised to defend himself, when he caught full view of the “monster” and froze.
“Oh. You’re just a pony.” Hearing his own disused voice echo through the chamber and halls made him jump, though not as much as the mare who had her back to him.
She turned around smoothly and met his slack jawed stare with calm composure. Her eyes had the kind of intensity that reminded Scale of a very stern librarian he had met once. She raised her hoof, which was lightly flecked with a glowing blue powder.
“Nightmare Nightcap. You’re lucky your reaction wasn’t more severe.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He couldn’t help but stare. “Uh, reaction?”
“Your pupils were dilated. And you were drooling heavily while you were out.” He hastily wiped his mouth. She pretended not to notice. “I thought you were dead when I came through at first. I didn’t realize you were hallucinating until I saw the mushrooms in the other hallway.”
They stood in silence for a moment.
“So you hit me?”
“Kicked you,” she corrected, “and yes.”
More silence.
“Um. Right.” Scale gingerly touched the back of his head where a welt was already emerging. “And just so we’re clear, you were the one making those noises, and there isn’t actually a dragon, or… Or something, right?”
She just stared.
“…Uh huh. Uh, look, so it seems like we’re now fellow prisoners. I think we should work together and, uh, find a way out of here?” He wilted under her unflinching gaze.
“…Alright,” she said.
“O-oh, great! I guess I could… Show you around?” He gestured weakly down the hall.
“There are things to see here?” She cocked an eyebrow.
“Well, there’s… The center of the maze, I guess?”
She looked down the hall pensively. “Okay, let’s start there,” she said at last.
Scale sighed in relief, happy to do something other than hold the most awkward conversation of his life. “Alright then, right this way!” he said as he started down the hall, taking the first turn back down.
“So, what’s your name?”
She didn’t answer right away. “Ruby Heart.”
“Huh. I like that name.”
They took a few turns in silence. So much for escaping awkward conversation.
“So, so you’re a crystal pony, right?” He glanced backwards in time to catch her nod. “I didn’t know your king put ponies down here too.” Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, he thought with a cringe. He searched for another topic. “How do you know so much about those mushrooms?”
“You like to ask questions.”
“There are a lot of questions to ask.” She didn’t reply. “I mean, being selected in the Drawing, getting shipped here, the forced marching to the castle—in some of the worst weather too, might I add—and getting thrown in this horrible maze.”
“You also like to complain,” she deadpanned.
Scale couldn’t help but let his jaw go a little slack. “Yeah, well, there’s a lot to complain about!”
They emerged from the winding catacombs into the large, vaulted room that was the center. Scale wondered if his spot on the floor was still warm and if it was possible to alleviate hunger with more sleep.
“Are we already… Is this it?” asked Ruby. Scale raised an eyebrow at the puzzlement in her voice—either she really did have some emotion somewhere in there, or the mushrooms had a more lasting effect than he realized.
“Yeah, this is the middle.”
“How in the world did you get here?”
“Well, when I first got here I—”
“No, I mean just now. How did you find your way back?”
“Oh, didn’t you notice? The floor in this place is a little funny, it… It kinda dips, so… You just sorta…” Scale studied the floor intently, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“…You just find your way back with the slope?” Ruby finished. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah.” He paced the room, eyes glued to the floor, before stopping in the center. “Could you come here for a minute?”
She did so, eyes muddled in confusion until she looked down. There, the traces of glowing blue and the ever so slight illumination from her mane and tail caught lines drawn in a muddy blue color on the floor, stretching out through the entire chamber.
Scale pointed excitedly to the point he was standing on. “Look, I think it’s a map of the labyrinth! Here’s the spot where we are, and here are the five paths that go from here!”
Ruby inspected the thick lines with a grimace. “What was this made with?”
Scale looked thoughtfully for a moment. “You know, I bet those mushrooms don’t glow forever after they’ve been picked.”
“So you want to use a map ground into the floor by someone who was hallucinating? Badly?” Ruby looked up skeptically.
Scale shrugged. “All the places I recognize on here seem to be right. And it’s not like we don’t have the time to explore, anyway.”
“Alright, fine,” Ruby ceded, “but if they were around so much Nightcap, they couldn’t have been in their right mind.”
The pair paced the chamber floor for quite some time, eyeing the thick blocky lines for any sort of marking or symbols that might hint to anything they could use.
“Okay,” Scale said, slumping to the floor after his twelfth pass on his half of the map, “I can’t find anything on here. All I have over here is the door and some dead ends.”
Ruby looked up from the other side of the chamber. “What are you talking about? The door is over here.”
Scale sat up, eyes wide. “So we found another way out?”
“Maybe you did. But the door is over here.”
“Wait, how do you know that?” Scale jumped to his hooves and ran to the spot on the floor Ruby had pointed to. Sure enough, two thick lines running parallel to each other intersected the outer wall, the space between them empty.
Ruby sidled up next to Scale and gestured to the paths near the door. “I recognize these turns. I had tied a string to the doors so I could find my way back out, but the string was too short,” she finished in a mumble. “I had to go back and untie it.” Scale noted the ring of thread wrapped around the base of her tail, what he earlier took as a hair tie.
“So that means,” he ran to the other side of the chamber, stopping at an identical marking on the floor, “that this is either another door, or a way out.” He looked to Ruby, his eyes a little brighter and a grin growing across his face.
She sighed. Following him across the room, she studied the map from the center to the edge where Scale stood for only a moment before heading to the nearest path out. “You coming?”
Scale gaped. “Eh, you sure you got all that?”
She merely tapped the side of her head with her hoof before continuing on. Scale paused, then shrugged and followed along.
“At least we’ll always be able to find our way back, right?”
But Ruby’s memory was surprisingly efficient. Before Scale had time to think up more silence-filling small talk, they wound through their final corridor and faced the outer wall of the labyrinth.
“I don’t see anything,” she stated.
“You sure this is where the other door was?”
“Positive.” She walked up to the wall, inspecting it carefully. “The map said it should be right here.” She rapped the wall with her hoof for emphasis, though the knock reverberated much louder than it should have.
The two stared. Scale threw himself at the wall, running his hands fervently over the hewn rock.
“I think I feel a seam here! But I can’t get a grip on—”
“Out of the way,” Ruby commanded. Scale stepped to one side in time to see her rear her hind legs and deliver a harsh blow to the center of the panel he had felt out, splitting it in two. She turned, shaking her back legs with a scowl. “It wasn’t as thick as I thought, but now you can move it.”
“You okay?” Scale asked, cringing.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just move the rocks out of the way and we can go.”
One half of the panel popped inward when it was struck. Scale wiggled it free and set it aside, revealing what looked like a fairly decently sized tunnel carved into the rock.
“Wow. I wonder where it leads,” Scale said.
Rose lifted her spore-covered hoof into the tunnel’s mouth. It still glowed, but the light it cast wasn’t enough to light the back of the tunnel. “I’ll lead,” she said as she stepped in.
The shaft was large enough for Scale, though he still felt cramped as they crept along. It quickly grew steep and curved back on itself, and after what felt like half a mile, they came to a dead end. This false wall, though, was much more apparent.
“There’s light coming from the edges,” said Rose, “we must be somewhere in the castle now.”
“That looks like daylight to me,” Scale suggested. “This could really be our way out.”
“Hmm.” Rose pressed her ear to the crease and Scale followed suit. “I can’t hear anything.”
“Neither can I.”
“Alright. Be ready to run.” Rose turned her back to the wall and kicked.
The false wall popped out easily and they scrambled out into the large, deserted room.
“Damn, we are in the castle,” Ruby whispered.
Scale picked up what was the tunnel panel and set it back on the wall. “Huh, look, that was a portrait.”
“I’d rather not,” Ruby muttered. She glanced out the window to the city below. It was daylight, but very few ponies dotted the streets. “We’re up pretty high. Maybe if we—”
“What are you doing here?” Ruby and Scale whipped around in unison towards the door, where a bat pony in crystal armor stood. Her eyes didn’t seem quite as sharp as they should have been, but her snarl was no less vicious.
Scale rushed her, horns down, but the bat pony was fast. She raised her forelegs up high, too quickly for Scale to do much else but follow her with his eyes as she slammed down on his horns and vaulted overhead, landing squarely behind him as he crashed head first into the wall.
Ruby was across the room in a flash, pummeling the guard to the ground.
“Get up!” He was quickly forced to his feet and rushed out the door into the castle hall. “We need to go, now,” Ruby hissed. They tore through the hall and down the stairs, where three more guards stood before a pair of very large double doors. All three stared after them, oddly glassy eyed, before Scale yelled out.
“Move!”
He shoved her back up the stairs as the three bat ponies gave chase. The guard from before stood in the doorway of the room they had come from, clearly still dazed. Ruby and Scale quickly ducked through a small doorway just off the hall, Scale slamming the door shut behind them. He plastered himself against the door, braced against the inevitable onslaught, when he heard Ruby gasp. Twisting his neck to see the room behind him, he caught view of a very large, very dark crystal growing in the room’s center.
“I’m going to break it,” said Ruby.
Scale could hear a commotion begin outside. The confused shouting grew in voices and volume as it came closer to the door.
“Why? You don’t know what it does!”
“It’s not right,” she answered, her voice on edge. “I can feel it. Keep the door closed and I’ll deal with this.”
Just as she turned to deliver a solid kick, a massive thud sounded from the other side of the door, causing it to rattle.
“We don’t really have time on our hands, here, Ruby,” Scale called. But with each pounding she gave the crystal, the guards would strike the door twice, making the hinges squeal harshly once or twice.
“Just once more,” Ruby yelled over the noise as she landed a final blow.
A harsh crinkling sound ripped through the air as the crystal cracked and splintered, sending shards flying every which way. Scale felt himself sieze a little, though it took him a moment to realize it wasn’t because the noise startled him.
He heard Ruby inhale sharply from behind him.
Everything else around him seemed oddly surreal. The floor no longer seemed able to hold his weight, and as he slid down the door, the bangs and shouts died out. Ruby was there, suddenly, oddly next to him, and a fiery pain started in Scale’s back.
“No,” Ruby yelled, her hoof pressing too hard on his back. “No, no no. Scale, can you hear me? Say something. Come on. Wh-what’s your name? Tell me your name.”
Easy. “Golden Scale,” he whispered. Ruby’s face slid out of focus.
“Okay. Good.” Her voice began to fray at the edges. “Okay. Tell me where you’re from.”
“Th… There’s a… A harbor. And a beach…”
“Yeah, tell me about your home.”
He gave a short, loud breath that was supposed to be a laugh. “That’s depressing to think about.” He closed his eyes.
There was a riot of noise and voices as Scale felt his body lighten and his world turned slate gray.
His ears filled with a dull roar as he watched a black orb shape itself into his vision. It began to glimmer, but its top started leaking a sickly green liquid. It threatened to consume the orb, but just as it dripped downwards, a two toned light shone from the orb’s bottom. On the left was a pink, warm and brilliant, while the right shone a comforting indigo. As the lights intensified, casting the orb in their colors, the green quickly dried and flaked away.
A harsh, stabbing pain erupted in Scale’s back and he slipped into unconsciousness.
________________________________________
Scale woke wild-eyed in cold darkness. He moved to sit up, but his muscles felt impossibly heavy and his back stiff.
“Whoa there, you should stay where you are,” came an unfamiliar voice, quiet and close. “We don’t need to draw any attention to ourselves.”
He turned to see a pair of yellow eyes peering out of a dark corner. They were quickly obscured by a blur of red.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Ruby said as she hugged him tight.
“Where are we? And why do I feel so awful?” Scale asked.
Ruby stepped aside to give him a better view of the small crystal cave they were in. A small tunnel led up into the slate colored crystal, and a few bat ponies milled about sullenly.
“This is the captain of the guard,” Ruby said as she gestured to the speaker earlier. “She got us out of the castle after we broke the crystal.”
The captain stepped forward. “Well, we’re not completely out of the castle. We’re still in the escape passage, but just through there,” she nodded to the cave’s mouth, “you can make a run for it through the city.”
Scale tried sitting up again, but Ruby pressed a hoof to his arm. “You should really rest. Apparently those dark crystals soak up a lot of energy. When we broke the crystal, it wasn’t drawing from the bat ponies anymore. We’re lucky it wasn’t a bigger piece that hit you.” She trotted over to a pack lying against the tunnel wall and pulled out a baked tart topped with crystal berries. “You should eat something, too.”
“Ruby, I think I love you.”
“Just shut up and eat,” she said, dumping the pastry in his lap.
Undeterred, he happily downed it in just a few bites and contented himself with watching the bat ponies come and go through the tunnel. It struck him as surreal that just a short while ago these same ponies were practically baying for his blood on the other side of a door. He wondered what other things the King of the Crystal Empire was capable of.
Ruby and the captain sat in conversation for a while, a little too far away for Scale to eavesdrop. Ruby didn’t return to his side until the mouth of the tunnel dimmed at sunset and the castle lights illuminated the crystal walls eerily.
“I think we have a plan worked out,” she said as she sat. “The king doesn’t know that crystal is broken yet. The captain has agreed to cause a diversion to let us escape, but he’s still very powerful, and there are still a lot of ponies who could use the guards’ help while he’s still none the wiser. Once we get past the gate posts at the edge of the city, we’ll be safe. We can go from there.”
“So we just keep our heads down, keep walking, and hope we don’t get caught?”
“That’s the gist, yes.”
Scale nodded. “Alright, let’s do it,” he said with a grin.
Ruby waved over two bat ponies and helped Scale sit up. The guards loaded them both up with supply bags and escorted them to the mouth of the cave, where the captain was waiting.
“He’s quite wound up upstairs, you know,” she said. “Don’t draw attention to yourselves or he’ll be chomping at the bit to get ahold of you and make examples out of you both.”
Ruby nodded. Scale gulped.
“We’ll be careful,” said Ruby. She looked up at Scale. “Let’s go.”
They left the base of the castle with purposeful strides and entered the city. Scale was intensely aware of the stares he was earning on the street and eagerly followed Ruby when she steered them both into an alleyway.
“There’s no way to move through town without being seen from the castle at some point,” she said, “but at least the buildings are a little closer together here.”
They had quickly put several blocks between them and the castle when an odd rumbling emitted from behind them. Scale glanced back at the palace to see a dozen bat ponies circling the high tower in the night sky.
“That must be the captain,” Ruby said. “She was going to lead him to believe that we were looking for the crystal heart.”
“The what?”
“It’s—well, if we had it, his reign would essentially be over.”
“Oh.” Heart pounding, nerves set, and short of breath, Scale found himself happy to save the questions for later. Just a few blocks later, Ruby slowed to an easy walk.
“It’s just over the hill,” she said, pointing out to the fields beyond the city where two tall rose-colored crystals stood.
Scale’s breaths came in short gasps. “Why are we slowing down? I, I can—phew—I can totally make this.”
“We’re nearly there,” Ruby muttered. “You need to get home, and I need to find a way to help, so I guess we should say our goodbyes.”
“Wait, where’re you off to?”
“There’s a pair of princesses who live in a castle somewhere south of here. They were able to seal away the embodiment of chaos and I think they’d help us now if I asked.”
“Well, if they’re that strong, why haven’t they helped before?”
“I’m not certain, but I have good reason to think our king has put an iron hoof on all information that comes and goes through the Empire. I mean, we could even defend ourselves if we had enough hope, but…” Ruby’s eyes fell.
“Heeey, well, that’s an easy fix, right?” Scale cut in with a smile. “You need to give them a little hope in those princesses! Do you have any proof of what’s going on, something that they absolutely can’t ignore?”
“I… I, uh… Um, well, ever since our king took the throne, it’s gotten colder.”
Scale mimed a yawn. “Weather changes every day, y’know.”
Ruby screwed up her face. “I’m trying here,” she said through grit teeth. She took a deep breath. “Okay. Well. I’m a crystal pony, but my coat doesn’t have any shine.”
Scale looked over his nails with disinterest. “So you’re a normal pony who thinks she’s special. Big deal.” He took up a high pitched tone. “I have many princess-ly duties to attend to, do be to the point or on your way.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Okay, okay!” He threw up his hands defensively. “It’s only a joke, really. And I haven’t had much to joke about lately.”
“You still don’t.”
“Oh, don’t I?” With a cheese-eating grin, Scale pulled out the shard of dark crystal from his bag.
Ruby sat for a moment, lips pursed. “Okay, so we have a tainted crystal. If these princesses have never been to the empire before, and can’t sense the difference like crystal ponies, how are they supposed to know that’s not how they look?”
Scale pointed out the direction they were heading, out towards the massive—and pink—crystal gate posts.
Ruby gasped. “They—the—I—”
“I figured we could break off a chunk as we leave. Since the guards are gone, we don’t exactly need to hurry anymore, right?”
“They never changed! They never changed!” she exclaimed under her breath. Ruby took off in something between a gallop and a skip, the moonlight glinting off her coat a little more strongly than before.
Scale followed at an easy lope, smiling as he went. He wondered how long it had been since she had seen normalcy in her home.
“I’m coming with you too, by the way. Don’t think you can dump me out here and run!” he called after her.
________________________________________
Several days later, Scale trudged through the snow once more. He had left Ruby with the princesses and their royal escort at the gate posts and went west alone.
The snow was much deeper than he had expected. Since his arrival, the road that had taken him from the ship to the city had been covered entirely, and the winds howling in from the north gave no signs of slowing. Scale tucked his nose into the soft red scarf that Rose had given him before they parted.
It wasn’t as sentimental a moment as he had expected. She had roughly shoved the hoof-stitched scarf into his hands and gave him a hard look. He merely grabbed it, smiled, and waved before trekking west. His face fell a little thinking about it, but there would be plenty of time for saying thanks when her kingdom was liberated. And besides, he had his own city that desperately needed good news.
After no more than a few hours of walking, a short deserted dock came into view through the storm. A small black boat was moored there.
He clutched the scarf tighter. It would be a long trip home.
Author's Note
-Golden Scale’s name has a multilayered etymology. In addition to being a reasonable name for a merchant’s son, the “golden” portion relates to his species’ name. “Mino-” of Minotaur relates to Minos, the mythical Cretan king who demanded a tribute from Athens to feed the Minotaur trapped in his labyrinth. Of course, whether this is the same Minos of the golden touch depends on the source, but he’s an interesting mythic character nonetheless.
-Not much is known about the Minoan civilization on ancient Crete, but the ruins of the mazelike palace of Knossos contain murals of people vaulting over massive bulls. There’s a hypothesis that this was a ritual, celebration, or form of entertainment that gave birth to the myth of the Cretan Minotaur when ancient tourists happened by. This is only conjecture, though; modern attempts at bull leaping have shown it to be extremely difficult, and bad timing is akin to being sideswiped by a car.
