Part 1 - Bad Day
#1 of Lexus
Author's Note: This work is based upon Onyx Tao's amazing piece "Cold Blood". Fortunately, he was gracious enough to allow me to steal his world by creating it under a Creative Commons license that allows such acts. Of course, this piece is licensed the same way; and I will be eternally gratified that he allowed me to play.
Update: November 2011. Added about 700 words to round this out and make it fit more nicely with the next bit. I had rushed some parts, as I always do, which is why you never saw part two, which was written about 2 years ago...
Lexus
This story is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License
(c) 2008-2011 by GedLion
Part 1
Bad Day
Lex III: Actioni contrariam semper et qualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse quales et in partes contrarias dirigi. Isaac Newton
Almar gazed at the fog coming out of the cave before him. The Commander-of-Ten looked down and checked his weapons closely to overcome his own nervousness. This was his first command, and he didn't quite know what to say. Arrayed next to him was his squad - nine men forming the remainder of one line of the ten rows that faced the cave. He looked past the row ahead of him to the Commander-of-hundred that was talking quietly with some other men. One, Almar recognized as the Commander-of-thousands, though he had only seen him from a distance before. The other, wearing more casual garb, was odd. Almar had never seen him, but the man appeared to be gesticulating at the cave, and was being watched approvingly by the two war leaders. What made Almar more than a little nervous was that this expedition to scout the rear lines of the Minotaur race apparently was going to go through that cave.
And the cave was glowing, slightly.
It wasn't exactly an ugly glow, though it did have an unearthly feel, as though the fog emanating from it was part of the glow, as opposed to being lit by some light source within the cave in some strange manner. Almar shook his head. The light had a fascinating feel to it, almost begging him to reach out and touch it. He deliberately averted his eyes and looked down the line. "All good?" he asked the man next to him.
The man, a trusted and solid soldier called Drang, who would never make a commander, because while he could be described as "solid", the description was apt in every way. Drang was a bear of a man, but what he had in physical stature, he lacked in the mental. Drang looked down the line, checking his fellow legionnaires and then looked back at his line commander. "Aye, Ten. Just waiting and bored, Ten. Life in the army."
Almar glanced back at the faint glow. "Bored?" he asked, with an arched eyebrow. "I can't help looking at that and thinking I want nothing to do with it!" he said, waving vaguely at the cave mouth. It was a lie, of course. Despite his sense of wrongness about the light, it had a fascination that he found hard to tear away from.
"Ten?" responded Drang, peering past the front rank at the area Almar had pointed at. "The Commander?" he hazarded, finally, frowning.
"No." Almar looked back at the cave, where tendrils of fog beckoned in slowly changing colors. "That weird changing light in the cave, soldier." Almar forced himself to look away again. "It's odd. I wonder what it is."
Drang gave his Commander-of-Ten a strange look and peered in the direction of the cave again. "Must be gone now, Ten. I don't see it."
Almar blinked at his soldier's comment and stared back at the wisping fog making a visual siren song in front of him. "Huh?" he managed to say. He was about to ask further when the Commander-Of-Hundred blew his whistle, the sound piercing through Almar's thoughts, and without further ceremony, addressed the troops.
"All right, Century Secundus. You know why you're here. We don't expect to be near their main lines; this is mostly a scouting expedition. We are escorting Master Richards here through this tunnel, which should bring us out..." the commander glanced over at the oddly garbed man for a moment, and Almar could swear he saw the commander shiver slightly, "...on the other side of the hill. We are to observe positions, and return Master Richards safely. Mostly we're expecting the legion not to be needed if the scouts do their job correctly." He glanced to his side at the small group of men dressed in leather and the traditional mottled greens and browns of the scout troops. His gaze lingered for a moment, as though weighing their worth, and then rotated around to look over his squad of ten rows of ten men, and nodded his satisfaction. He gave one quick glance at the commander-of-thousands, who nodded and gave a curt order:"Move out!"
The men approached the cave, and Almar, as he waited for the ten ahead of him to pair up side by side to enter the narrow mouth of the cave gave a look behind him. The sun was setting beyond the distant hills, and the rays were lighting up the clouds, giving them an orange hue. Fingers of light spread towards him, lighting up the rock wall around the tunnel. It was beautiful, and strangely...foreboding at the same time. As the last pair ahead of him trotted into the cave, he took a breath and indicated that Drang should move with him and followed.
Tendrils of the glowing green fog pounced towards him as though an octopus had gleefully found prey. They wrapped around him in thicker and thicker bands, immediately obscuring his view. He felt along the wall, almost blindly, stumbling forwards. He heard Drang swearing on his left, and pressed against a body ahead of him. The fog left no room for light in the tunnel, and naturally the men ahead had slowed down. He swore, as the jostling of the man ahead made him whack his head on a protuberance from the wall. Behind him he heard a cry of distress, and the men ahead of him suddenly surged backwards giving him a second blow to the head on the same rock. "Ten? Ten? What's going on!" called a familiar voice next to him. Ahead there was a sudden scream, and an absence of bodies; the sound echoing strangely along in space. There was a feel of rushing of air and a sensation of falling as he bounced into the rock wall...
He struck the floor with a whooshing of air from his lungs that almost stunned him. Groaning and gasping for air he looked around him. Lush green fields surrounded the brightly lit area, and a light breeze made the yellow grass - corn or maize or something - ripple. He was shaded from the sunlight by the edge of a wood, the green trees above him rustling with the wind. Almar forced himself to his hands and knees, and sat up, trying to see over the grass. As he did so, something flowed into his eyes, stinging them. Instinctively he wiped his eyes and looked at the dark red fluid covering his hands. Blood. But he felt no pain. With a grimace, he decided that he had to find his men, and gritting his teeth made himself stand. Again, there was no pain, just some discomfort from bruised muscles, which surprised him. He looked around, while wiping his face with his hands.
He was clearly in a crop field. The short green-yellow grasses were only a couple of feet high, but uniformly planted and practically weed-free. He didn't recognize the crop, but since it was only part grown, and he was hardly a farming expert, this wasn't really surprising. Wading forwards he called out, "Hello? Drang? Kom? Anyone?" A groan answered him a dozen feet to his left, and he dashed through the grass, cutting a channel into the crop, to find a quivering body resting in a formed hollow in the earth.
The figure squirming in the mud, as though born there, could be barely described as human. It was certainly impossible to identify who it was. There were lumps of rock - spikes really - passing right through the abdomen, and the rest of him was beaten bloody as though he'd been trampled by horses. He was legion though, as the bloodstained lorica attested. The poor soldier lay in an almost foetal position; groaning, and panting for shallow breath. As Almar stared in horror, the man shuddered and lay still, apart from blood oozing from shattered holes rent in his body. The Commander-of-ten took three paces, and emptied his stomach onto the earth.
He was gasping for breath, a few minutes later, kneeling in the soft earth, when he heard a cry across the field. He stood and looked in the direction of the sound, and his blood ran cold. A few hundred yards away, a group of minotaurs stood, many of them holding farming implements. They were holding up a human between them. Almar could see blood pouring from wounds in the soldiers body. He could imagine how they looked up close, from seeing the other soldier behind him - the man looked to be in a similar state. Having been lifted up, however, this soldier was thrashing and screaming, spraying the assembled bovines with his lifeblood. As he watched, one of the horned creatures grabbed the human by the head and twisted. He could hear bones crack from where he stood, and gave a small cry of horror as they let the body fall to the floor.
Then of course, one of them pointed his way, and they began to move towards him. For one frozen moment he stared at the approaching creatures, and then turned and bolted for the relative safety of the trees at the edge of the field. He ran heedlessly between the trees until he ran out of breath to run further, and hauled himself behind the largest trunk he could see, panting. He could hear cries and shouts in the distance, but none of them seemed to be close. Almar examined the woods around him. He didn't recognize any of the tree types, and wondered why this side of the ridge they tunnelled through was far more lush with vegetation than where he'd begun. How far down the mountains had that tunnel gone anyway?
He froze in place at a thought. Worms take it....where were the mountains?
A day later, he was cold, starving, and very scared. The wood - or rather forest - at least had the advantage of being large enough to lose the Minotaur farmers. It had the disadvantage that he had very little food, and his small canteen was now empty. The uphill slope away from the farmland didn't seem keen on providing running water, and his woodscraft didn't provide any better ideas. He was also not equipped for a long term stay in enemy territory; and though he had his dagger and sword, he did not have any serious hunting equipment. Not that it would have helped, since he saw very little signs of game, probably because his woodscraft was almost nonexistent, other than the odd fishing trip when he was a youngster. He knew other men of his century that would have settled into trapping meat with a gusto, but that wasn't him. Of course there would be the issue of cooking it without attracting attention anyway. Assuming he could start the fire in the first place.
Of the ridged hills he thought he had been travelling under through he tunnel, there was no sign, and he had no idea how to reconnect with his own forces. He kept thinking the same thought over and over "What happened, and where the hell am I?" with occasional breaks for "Where are all my men?" That 24 hours was perhaps the worst day of Almar's life. He tried to get a little rest when it was dark, but the slightest noise startled him, and he slept very little.
Hunger drove him back the way he came, after he had realised there was no clear end to the trees on the far side. By the time he had hiked back to the farming area, the sun was late in the sky, and the clouds were tinged with pink. He looked at it, and sighed: Probably not a good omen, if the last time was any measure.
He studied the farmland carefully, observing. To his left stood grass crops. Something that looked a little like wheat, but still green and young. Further down the valley were what appeared to be some houses. He stepped from the treeline a little, and stopped dead in shock as a small group of minotaur had stood up in the middle of the wheat, about 30 yards away. Big, well armed minotaur. The one on the end gave a grin. "Just where Lord Bright said he would be." He had time to note that the accent sounded exceptionally strange, and with that they leaped forwards at him.
Almar looked on as the minotaur accelerated, and a wave of...darkness seemed to emanate from the troops towards him, as though connecting their intended destination with themselves. As the black wave reached him and he felt the pressure of it passing through it, he pushed back at it, afraid and shocked by the nightmarish vision. To his amazement the blackness recoiled as he did so, slamming back into the approaching minotaur. And each and every one of them stopped as though frozen to ice.
Almar backed away, and after a few seconds, when it became apparent that the minotaur were no longer approaching, he stared, utterly confused. It was then, with a roar, that a solid black form ran from the building below and towards him. The soldier turned and ran into the trees again, but in his physical condition, and lack of sleep, water and food, not to mention a strange crushing weariness that suddenly overcame him, there was no avoiding the speeding bovine behind him, despite two hundred yards of head start. The creature crashed into him, and the two went down in a heap. Almar was momentarily breathless as the larger creature landed on him, and by the time he had assessed his situation, he was staring down the length of his own sword at the red eyed minotaur holding it to his throat.
"What did you do to them?" hissed the enraged beast. "What?"
"I...didn't do anything. I don't know!" squeaked the soldier.
The minotaur's eyes narrowed, and he reached down and discarded the human's dagger, and searched him for other weapons before bodily hauling him to his feet.
"Human, if you so much as breathe incorrectly, I swear on my honor I will cleave your body in twain. Do not doubt me."
Almar did not doubt him. The strong human bovine cross was wearing military garb, but of a different colour to the soldiers he had seen earlier. Perhaps he was their leader? Nonetheless, he was, as most minotaur are, quite strong enough to overpower the smaller human. He found himself frogmarched back through the trees to the site of the strange incident.
Both paused as they came in sight of the eight minotaur, seemingly frozen in place. The minotaur squeezed his grip tighter around the back of the human's neck. "Undo it. Now."
"I...I can't!" responded the human, baffled. "I didn't do it. I really don't know what happened!"
With a disgusted snarl, the minotaur pressed the sword's edge against his neck. Almar could feel the sharp point dimpling his skin. "I do not jest, human. What did you do to my commander and his troops?"
Almar stared wide eyed at the minotaur, frozen in mid stride. "I swear it. I have no idea."
He felt the bovine lean in towards him, and felt its hot breath on the back of his neck. "I should kill you." There was a pause, and Almar feared his life was at an end, but then the minotaur went on, "But this must be investigated." The minotaur growled. "I will free my father from this if I have to break every bone in your body to do it, human."
Almar blinked in surprise. He hadn't really considered familial bonds between the minotaur. In truth, he'd never even seen one before - he'd only been told reports of how big and strong and fast they were. Now, face to face with eight of them, nine if he counted the one holding him, they seemed...different. Not quite so fearsome perhaps. True, they were well over a foot taller than the tallest humans, before one even counted the horns, and built to a pretty solid design, if these were fair examples, but the idea that one could be upset because his father was in danger was a whole new concept.
He didn't have time to muse on this though because the minotaur was marching him bodily down the valley. He yelled as he approached the farmhouse, and several minotaur appeared, followed, to Almar's shock by several humans.
The black holding him yelled, "One of you get me a runner. We need to send word back to Conundrum and get a mage out here. My Fa...commander and his troops are held in some kind of magic, and we need to find out what." The black surveyed the ragtag group in front of him. There were three minotaurs, and they were the better dressed of the group. The humans were very carefully not looking at him, held as he was. Suddenly it clicked: slaves. He'd been told that captives could be enslaved, just as in the empire, but the idea of being enslaved to a different species was just so bizarre that he hadn't really considered the ramifications of that.
A human was given a hastily written note, and sped down the one road leading from the farm. Almar watched him go, and wondered how long it would take to reach his destination. Meanwhile, he was trussed like a solstice bird and dumped unceremoniously on the floor. The rope was so tight he began to lose sensation in his limbs almost immediately. Two humans dragged him into the barn. He looked from one to the other pleadingly. "Hey, were there any others of my hundred? Can you loosen these ropes?"
The two men looked at him as though he had sprouted a new head. Without speaking a word, they left the barn. They did not close the door, which was disappointing. Almar had a faint hope that out of sight he might have been able to wriggle free. Though the amount and tightness of the rope left him with very, very little hope of that at all. He looked around the barn. It was typical - sawdust floor, wooden walls, some animal stalls that were currently unoccupied, a few hay bales. Some of the farm implements on the wall had some promise. He flexed his muscles, trying to find a weak spot in the mesh wrapped around him.
He spent some time wriggling in the bonds - it was hard to judge time, but it was certainly full dark outside when he realized that his numb arms weren't responding well to his attempts to move any more. He began to fear that with the circulation cut off that much he was going to lose hands and feet, and rather than trying to escape the bonds he began alternating positions that eased up the pressure on one limb at a cost to the other, giving first one, then the other a chance at blood flow. It worked, but was a cycle of numbing and pain on each arm and leg in turn. An experienced torturer would have found little else that could be so soul destroying over time.
It wasn't long after he'd started this process of rolling one way and the other, that a commotion started outside. There was a cry in the distance, and then voices shouting indistinctly. There was a shout of "Over here" from outside the barn, and a minute later, a crowd of minotaur were hurrying through the door. "Where is he?" was the comment made by one of them, as they crossed the threshold.
The speaker was a minotaur who's headfur was, like Almar's captor, black. He was difficult to differentiate, excepting that he was taller, and had the very tip of one horn broken off cleanly, as though it had been cut away. Like the others in the group, he wore a simple chest harness, adorned with weapons. Almar recognized them: they were the minotaur group that he'd seen in the crop field outside. The imposing blackfurred figure crouched down and stared at Almar. "What did you do to us?" he said, slowly. "I have never heard of Tempus being...changed like that. How, human, did you turn it against us?"
Almar said nothing. He couldn't imagine what to say. He understood the words - well, most of them - but they made no sense at all. The minotaur continued to stare at him, and eventually, to fill the silence, he responded, "I don't understand."
The minotaur sniffed, looked a little startled. "I do not know what to make of this. We will have to wait until..." he turned and looked at one of the farmers, "you sent a message to Lord Blue?" At the farmer's nod, he continued, "then we should wait for Lord Blue to advise us on this matter." He tapped a hoof slowly, "Though, that said, he is not a Lord to leave waiting. Perhaps we should take this human back to Conundrum, since all the others seem to have died."
Those final words caused Almar to gasp, and then finally, sob. He was all alone. He looked up at the group of his enemy surrounding him and tried to hold it in.
"Interesting," was the comment made by the troop leader. "The feral misses his companions." With that, he left. The other minotaur milled around for a moment, and then followed their leader, leaving Almar alone with his thoughts and his despair.