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Asterius dreams of being a monster. They are the only dreams he has. Heat and humidity and blood are the actors of his plays. In them, he is always chasing something, someone, lurching along with cracked soles and huffing breath, always one step behind the creature which flees him. Grime festers across his skin; the flies come eagerly to him, nipping at the remains of his meals, their black bodies coating piles of limbs twisted in futile prayers to the sky.
He never needed a labyrinth to make him into a beast. Greece suffered nightmares of him long before he ever came to live there.
Erebus is a desolate realm, fit for creatures such as he. Shades flee and flock together through its murky halls as they wait for their final sentences to be passed upon them. Trapped inside the prison of eternity, many descend into their basest forms. Every desire they have entertained in their mortal lives, every secret lust that ever hounded them -- it all comes out here, in the realm of the dead. Vices bloom like lesions flowering upon their skin, twisting and torturing them into bloated caricatures. They hunt and prey upon one another even when there is no need to eat, until their wits dissolve into instincts which are lower than animals, with not even self-preservation in mind. Their jaws gape wide like snakes; their spindly bodies leap and cavort through the wilderness, giggling.
In Erebus's comfortless rooms, the dead quarrel like wild dogs. They screech mindlessly and fight among themselves for no reason other than pure spite, mutilated and murdering in turn before their bodies dissolve to be reborn again in an endless cycle of brutality. Driven by their appetites, they debase themselves. Few of these wretches are recognizable as humans any longer, if they even were to begin with.
For all these reasons -- every single one -- Asterius knows he is finally among his own kind.
He deserves this.
He does not need to sleep, not now that he is dead. Dreams may be his punishment for trying. That is the vice which he lets himself drown in. He tests himself by staying awake for what feels like an entire week, watching the green light pale and darken, blurring concepts like dusk and dawn together into frivolity.
The lack of rest does not wear him down, not in any physical sense. But he is tired, it seems, all the time, in a way that has nothing to do with the illusionary flesh his spirit is housed within. No matter how long the vigil he keeps, exhaustion does not claim him. His body will never fail, even if his sanity crumbles first.
Instead, Asterius closes his eyes willingly and lets the nightmares come, reminding him of a world that was different, but no less vicious.
Normally, he might curse his fate. But in Erebus, the hunger is also gone. The gnawing, scraping ache in Asterius's belly is absent here; like a twin born with its organs fused to his, Asterius's appetite had always been a part of his life before. He had lugged it behind him for the whole of his life. With each year that Asterius had grown older, hunger had prodded at him more insistently until he had trembled on the floor of his chambers, thoughts clouded by agony. Eventually -- no matter how diligently he had struggled to retain his own self-awareness, trying to remind himself that he was a person and not a mere beast -- that madness would drive him to latch his teeth in the nearest human beside him, unable to keep himself from finally quenching the pain.
The relief had always been short-lived. Blood and flesh may have been what his stomach needed, but no citizen of Crete would allow it. Soldiers would inevitably wrench Asterius away, beating him until he could not fight back, wrestling him into chains that would inevitably snap when his frantic struggles drove him into a rage. At times when his bellowing went on for too long, they would throw stray prisoners in his quarters -- filthy, flea-licked things -- and Asterius's jaws would make short work of them, a convenient executioner for Crete's unwanted.
Even then, it was never enough. Crete did everything it could to disavow Asterius's nature, until they finally flung him into a labyrinth and saw fit to feed him only once a year: seven sons and seven daughters of Athens, fourteen sacrifices to the maw of a monster's appetite.
All of that is gone now. For the first time in his existence, Asterius no longer feels the rabid, maddening hunger in his belly, overpowering his mind, making him no better than the furious shades and monsters thronging around him.
He is the most clear-headed he can ever remember being, and it took dying to do it.
Outside the small, barren room he has found for shelter, the wretched of Erebus howl. They gibber in a thirst that knows no peace; they have lost all sense of themselves forever. The sympathy in Asterius's chest is a keen knife. It is almost as sharp as starvation had been.
He is trapped in a pit of madmen for all eternity, and for once -- for once -- Asterius is the sanest he has ever been in his life.
He does not expect to see anyone he knows in the Underworld. None of them would have been regulated to Erebus for long, if they ever arrived there to begin with. Asterius bears his family's blood only by trickery; the only reason they had not slaughtered him in the cradle had been from the implicit threat that Poseidon would find even worse to curse them with. Asterius's life has always been a hostage to himself.
He has only the vaguest of direct memories involving them, of people with gold on their arms and coils of dark hair. Voices that are little more than exhalations of music on the air. Faces he might have shared, if he'd been born without horns. He remembers the willowy grace of his mother, Pasiphaë, and how she had grown thinner and thinner over the years, like a candle dimming out and surrendering to its own melting wax. He remembers guards ever-present, their ranks perpetually changing, faces impassive.
But most of all, Asterius remembers his family from the rumors that swarmed them, thick as maggots on a festering wound. Whenever he had managed to free himself enough to escape into the gardens, or to crawl along the doors of his chambers -- his fingers running over the clever locks that Daedalus had crafted to keep him from breaking out -- Asterius would listen to the guards on the other sides of the walls. He learned of his family from their idle tongues: of King Minos's ruthless temper, his vindictiveness, his willingness to use anyone and everyone around him. Of the way that his mother had shone like the sun itself once, before she had been unwillingly mated to a bull.
Mockery had ever followed her after Asterius's birth, spreading tales of her regularly visiting the stables to fulfill her needs, her husband unable to satisfy her. Of the King's impotence, of the lineage of his other children. Of certain games, in bed.
The whispers that, when Asterius's mother had first tried to suckle him, he tore off part of her breast.
And his sister -- his sweet, naive sister, who was brave enough to try and befriend him when she herself was but a child, too young to know that she should loathe him -- he has the fewest memories of her at all. Asterius tries to hold onto them the most carefully, like treasures arranged in a box of worn velvet. Whenever he needs them the most, he unrolls them out like a scroll across the floor, and remembers how Ariadne would smile up at him, gap-toothed. How she would bring him wreaths of flowers to drape messily over his horns, hoping to cure the sickness that defined his very existence -- and how he saw less and less of her as he grew older, until those memories of her were all he had.
Ariadne, who had slowly learned to shun him from the examples set by others, ushered behind the shields of watchful guards as their family feared that he would eat her, too.
Dawn is just beginning to break in pale, jade waves over the stones when Asterius hears the sound of a man's voice.
Erebus's halls -- closed in, locked down -- had been too painfully familiar for his tastes. Asterius had pushed himself relentlessly towards its outskirts, following every incomplete walkway and half-finished wall, until he had finally stepped upon a stretch of earth where no stones had been laid yet for buildings. The land outside had stretched forever in the gloom: rough, unhewn, and completely barren of anything save monsters.
He hadn't hesitated to walk directly into it.
The cave he picked to rest in this time is little different from the rest: a shallow overhang near the side of a ravine, that he can fold himself into and listen to the scrape and wail of other shades lumbering past. He is not the first who has used it for shelter. The crevice is stacked thick with bones, arranged by size and type, and stripped clean of all meat. Erebus is filled with such cubbyholes. They make a hive of neat storehouses for builders which Asterius never sees, and isn't sure that he wants to.
In general, Asterius still does not quite understand what to do about the skeletons he comes across; if they belong to the dead, then surely some wretched out there must be very irate for Asterius to be pawing through them, mixing up their parts with a stranger's. He's not sure if he's supposed to be respectful of the remains or just indifferent, considering how much of the Underworld's architecture seems to be constructed of various body parts arranged in impossible patterns. He'd broken an archway recently in Erebus that had been entirely made of femurs: a rather difficult feat of craftsmanship, now turned to chips and dust.
Asterius's own bones are somewhere, after all. Someone may have made a boat out of them by now.
He's holding the remains of a skull in his palm -- the jaw is missing, possibly turned into part of a chair -- when he hears, strangely, the noise of a person muttering out loud, alternating between curses and yelps of satisfaction as they draw closer.
He cups the skull absently between his fingers, perking his ears to better capture the noise. It cannot be a wretched. The words sound as if they belong to someone who still remembers the basics of speech, and the novelty of that -- the possibility of another spirit this deep in Erebus which still retains its sanity -- is rare enough that it keeps Asterius fixed in place, like a deer waiting immobile in a forest for the hunter's eye.
It is in this way that he witnesses the King of Athens emerge from around a narrow bend in the rubble-strewn path: river mud on his shins, soot-singed from whatever witch he must have offended in passing, strands of hair swinging like black weeds from his spear.
He is different in small ways, but Asterius still recognizes the man. His hair is shorter. Older, perhaps, from when they fought; there hadn't been much opportunity for Asterius to assess Theseus's age the last time they met, even if he'd been in full control of his mental facilities at the time. Otherwise, the King of Athens looks completely undeterred by Erebus, as if he had simply turned down the wrong path during an afternoon walk, or had strayed into the wrong cave on the course of an adventure.
Asterius blinks slowly, and wonders if he has already begun to hallucinate.
Theseus, on the other hand, appears far less shocked. "Hah!" he crows, spreading his arms wide in triumph, as if a crowd might suddenly manifest and applaud on command, wretches lining up on cue to politely cheer. "Excellent, this is excellent indeed! I must say, my good man, you certainly pick the most challenging places to take your repose in! One might call it disgusting, even! But no -- Fates forbid that I should judge!"
You just did, Asterius thinks dispassionately.
He wants to say it out loud. The words are on his tongue; he knows how to shape them, how to make the sounds behave. But no matter how he tries, he cannot make them come out. Years of silence sit like an invisible stone in his throat, muzzling him as furiously as the halters that King Minos had kept trying to force upon him, hoping to curb his appetite.
Stripped of other options, Asterius turns his head sidelong and snorts instead.
Luckily -- or perhaps not -- Theseus seems willing to interpret the noise as encouragement to continue. "Now, then, if you might be so kind! I seem to have angered a large number of the foul spawn which lurk here, so I suspect they will soon be on my trail. But with you, my search is at an end. For I have come," he proclaims grandly, "to fetch you to Elysium!"
It might be the shock of it which loosens Asterius's tongue at last. Confronted by pure ludicrousness, his mind slips free from unwanted habits, and finds his voice for him.
He manages a single word. "What."
Theseus plants his hands on his hips, chest puffed out proud. "To Elyyyyysium!" he shouts jubilantly, as if Asterius's confusion stems from being merely hard-of-hearing. "After all, I'm a great hero. A Champion! One of the best there is! And, naturally, those who associate with me must also be equally mighty, and of worth. A rather unfortunate mistake that had you ending up here in Erebus -- Lord Hades must have had some terribly inexperienced and under-trained novice at the records that day. Why, I'm certain he will not make such a grievous mistake again! But it matters little now, for I have finally found you once more. Let us both rejoice!"
The words pour over Asterius like a flood of molten gold, burning him with their brilliance. They are too fast for him to reply to, their rationales too flawed to find any sort of counterargument against. Humiliation chokes him. He struggles to answer, and then is angry that he is struggling, embarrassed that he cannot find the words which Theseus is clearly expecting that he can produce. The irony of it is overwhelming. It is the first time in years that anyone has spoken with him, and Asterius cannot answer: he can only stand there like the dumb beast which everyone had preferred to think of him as.
But Theseus unaccountably, waits -- which makes it even worse to have someone witness Asterius's incompetence. He claws uselessly at his own thoughts, until finally -- sneering and baring his teeth as he feels like he is vomiting up the sounds like riverstones -- Asterius manages to wrestle out additional questions. "Why? To kill... like... a trophy?"
It is the only explanation. Theseus must wish to demonstrate his prowess by defeating Asterius over and over forever, using him as a mere slaughter animal in order to brag further about his own strength.
But it is Theseus's turn to look taken aback at the accusation, lip curling in distaste. "What? No, I wouldn't call you up there simply to murder you repeatedly, how uncouth. But if I am to stand upon Elysium's sacred fields -- and how could I not -- then it seems only fitting that I have the finest of company with me. Which would be you, Asterius. Shall we be off?"
The sound of his name is like a whip in winter, a hot line across his spine. It makes Asterius want to bite in panicked self-defense. "How?" he grits out, not caring how broken his voice might sound. "My name. You know it."
With a dismissive flap of his hand, Theseus strolls closer and reaches out to pluck the skull from Asterius's unresisting grip. "How do you think? I asked Ariadne. She was only too happy to answer my questions, and no one else would tell me. She had quite a number of memories regarding you, you know. I made certain to ask for every detail."
It is too much to take in at once. Asterius reels back, unsure of what to question first: Theseus's interest, the promise of escape from Erebus, that the sister who had assisted in his death would even identify him as anything more than a source of familial shame. He has existed as little better than an exhibition for his entire life. A bounty, a threat. A devourer of fourteen lives per year.
A monster who would have eaten more, if he had been allowed.
But before Asterius can address any of that, he needs to get rid of Theseus first.
He turns away without bothering to answer further, and sprints for the edge of the ravine. The steepness of its slope does not frighten him; he has navigated far worse among Daedalus's traps. Asterius leaps down it at a rushing pace, aiming for the most stable outcroppings to slow his landslide's weight. Unlike Theseus, he can count on his greater strength to save him -- and even if it does not, even if he stumbles and falls into thin air, skull smashing itself against the rocks -- it will be only a short time before his soul rematerializes back in Erebus. It would be a much longer journey from Elysium, if Theseus even bothered to try again.
As Asterius clambers down, his feet stumbling, feeling the crack in his ankle as he lands wrong on one foot, he hears the king's voice calling out above. Over and over, the noise resounds, and this is what he runs from: the echoes of Asterius surrounding him as he descends further into Erebus, addressing him by a name that had been penned up and forgotten behind the Labyrinth's walls, never to be heard again.
Once he is safely away from Theseus and all the man's riddles, Asterius finally allows himself to slow down. His ankle is barely working; he is an easy target for shades like this, limping along with his head bowed low.
He leans against the nearest boulder, panting with his mouth open, swallowing the dust of Erebus.
"What," he repeats out loud, fighting to reproduce the first part of his failed half of the conversation. His voice is rusty; it comes out as a croak. He tries again. "What."
Nothing -- unsurprisingly -- answers.
He stands there, huffing, grateful for the silence. The emptiness is a welcome one, wrapping around him as easily as if he were back in the Labyrinth again. The early days when he had been first imprisoned hadn't been the worst, but they had been the loudest as Asterius had begged for anyone to hear him, to free him, to feed him. He had been so terrified as the months had gone on, realizing the likelihood that Crete might have locked him up to see how far his endurance could be pushed -- that they were hoping, perhaps, that he would eat himself out of madness.
It has been so long since Asterius has used human speech. It has been even longer since humans used it with him. In the seasons prior to the Labyrinth's completion, even the guards had eventually grown tired of mocking him and had refused to acknowledge his words altogether, moving on past laughter and simply looking past his head whenever he spoke, pretending they could not hear.
Each year when Crete would send in the fourteen sacrifices, Asterius would always be wild with hunger. Even when he hoped to work with the prisoners, starvation made it impossible. Desperation convinced him each time that Crete had already abandoned him, that they had forgotten about him entirely or found some other way to appease the gods around his death. The walls of the Labyrinth had been dry and bare of any answers, filled with traps that snapped and spun at him as Asterius had staggered through, screaming until his voice had coated every corner.
During the rare moments that Asterius did manage to wrestle control of himself, it never worked. He would plead with the prisoners to work together with him, to cooperate so that they could all go free -- and they would always scream and cower away, terrified at seeing their companions' blood on him, the gristle of their meat still stuck in his teeth.
Somehow, Theseus finds him again.
This time, Asterius is in a corner of Erebus where the many forks of the Styx congeal together, puddling into a small lake. Unlike the rest of the river, the waters leading into the misty valley have been heated to unconscionable temperatures by the proximity of some vein of the earth. Steam curdles the air. The surface of the lake bubbles. It is a good thing Asterius knows that he does not need to drink it.
There are gluttons who try anyway, however, shades who cannot bear to see any form of liquid anymore without attempting to pack it down their throats. Asterius watches the carnage as they dip their hands into the steaming lake and howl at the heat, even as they promptly pour the boiling water into their mouths, their arms scalded by overflow, crimson liquid dripping down their skin.
It is a horrible thing to witness.
If Asterius were still alive, he knows, he would almost certainly be attempting the same.
He makes himself watch for this very reason, grimly conscious of his own self-awareness now, condemning his past self with each wretch that gulps down a fresh mouthful. He is so intent upon the sight that Theseus's arrival takes him by surprise; he jerks around with a shocked snort when he hears his name being announced.
"Asterius! Ah, my good man!" Clambering down one of the upper paths into the valley, Theseus jogs lightly across the dirt, approaching Asterius without bothering to be greeted first. "Another interesting refuge today, I see. I must say, you are giving me quite the scenic tour of this place."
Refuge indeed. Asterius gives Theseus a deliberately skeptical glance out of the corner of his eye before he finally ducks his head in a polite nod. Bull he might be, but now that he has regained his self-control, he will not neglect the luxury of having it. "King."
Undaunted, Theseus trots down closer to the hellish waters and surveys them thoughtfully, as if he is looking out across the sweet blue waters of an ocean instead. "The rivers in Elysium are much more pleasant, I must admit. There's a spot near the colosseum that I favor in particular, with a delightful view of the gardens. Far nicer than here -- though if you're this fond of this heat, we can visit the baths. Always at the perfect temperature, soothing every muscle of your body after a hard match!" Idly flipping his spear in reverse, Theseus tucks it under his elbow, a smile spreading slyly across his face. "Shall we not go there, and let you experience it for yourself?"
At the question, Asterius heaves a sigh, regarding the man dimly. He should have expected another attempt at luring him upwards. A keen pang of regret taps his chest; he should have rehearsed more variations of denial in advance. "No."
"Why not? You have the right, my good fellow! Can you truly sate your passions here, among these hellspawn?"
Asterius resists the urge to shove the King of Athens into the lake. "No," he repeats, a gritted noise between his teeth.
But Theseus only stands there expectantly, head cocked and listening, and Asterius finds he is forced to put together more words, forcing himself around uncomfortable syllables and even more uncomfortable meanings. "Elysium... is reserved for those whose deeds serve as inspiration for mortals," he grits out painstakingly, and not entirely sure that each noun is placed in the right order, "and the only purpose I serve... is as a warning against offending the gods, and of their punishments."
It is the longest sentence he can remember speaking in years.
Theseus swings his hand up. Asterius flinches automatically, shoulders bunching, before he realizes the man is simply clapping him upon the arm in an amiable gesture. It is an act that he has seen performed by humans before, as one companion to another. He has never experienced it before for himself. Crete's guards had never tried to make friends with him; there had been different reasons for them to reach out.
The strangeness of it all keeps him frozen beneath Theseus's touch, even as his skin prickles with nervousness at the contact.
Mercifully enough, Theseus does not seem to notice, dropping his hand after only a moment. The pressure of his palm lingers behind on Asterius's skin. "Are you certain?"
"No mortal would wish to be like me, King of Athens."
"Well, that's just quitter talk," Theseus retorts amiably, so arrogantly sure, so arrogantly blind, that Asterius can't help but snort an incredulous laugh, helpless in the face of a pride greater than the Underworld itself.
He half-expects Theseus to try and argue with him longer, but the man braces his spear properly again, rotating his shoulders before beginning to flex one knee and then another in a runner's stretch. "Regardless, I have had a few challenges recently in the colosseum that were somewhat entertaining. Yet their number dwindles by the day, and I fear they will soon cease altogether. You should at least witness this next match!" Finishing his initial warm-up, Theseus bounces lightly on his heels, turning the gleam of his enthusiasm back upon Asterius like an out-of-control bonfire. "We could even fight together, and delight the crowd as one! Or you could spar with me in the arena, and we can have glorious matches of our own, that all the world might envy our performance as we achieve heights that would spur Olympus itself to applause!"
In all his time spent wondering after the King's first arrival, Asterius did not anticipate this. To attend the man in Elysium as either a slave or a sacrifice -- that, he could have understood. This is neither. To stand by a king as an equal, even if only in combat, is beyond his mind's grasp. It is beyond his worth. He does not know what -- how -- he can deserve such a thing; such gifts are for creatures unlike him, heroes who are praised and adored, treasured by their nations and grieved in their deaths.
"Go away," he says, even though it is not what he means. He does not know what they should mean. He does not want Theseus to leave, and he cannot bear for the man to stay, and Asterius still cannot figure out why any of this is happening at all, to him, to a monster who should be spending the rest of eternity in the deepest chasms of the Underworld, quietly going mad a second time.
He suspects that even if he had been speaking for all his life, he would never have the right words for this.
Instead, Asterius inclines his head, clearing his throat before Theseus can embark on another volley. "Go," he repeats. "But come back later. "
He does not waste his second reprieve waiting dully, this time. Theseus is fickle in his energies. Asterius does not know how soon the king will return, but he finds, nervously, that he is looking forward to it.
In the meantime, he spends his hours practicing phrases aloud. As part of the royal household, even concealed behind shrouds and screens, Asterius had been provided tutors for such things -- back in the days when his family still entertained dim hopes that Asterius merely looked like a bull, and his beastial traits might somehow melt away if enough civilization was poured upon them. Asterius had responded alertly to the lessons. He had learned how to speak quickly; he had listened to the epics most diligently, memorizing what he could of the tales of gods and heroes, looking for himself reflected back in places other than the monsters which would always be slain by the end of the story. His hungers could still be fed in private back then, swallowing down birds and stolen chunks of goat from the kitchen, trying to ignore the stirrings of discontent in his belly that demanded more.
Each dripping mouthful had been a queasy warning that his younger self had hoped desperately to hide.
But the words had been beautiful. With them, Asterius had been just like any other person -- gruff even as a child, more gravely in the throat, but nothing more horrific than that. There had been no difference between him and anyone else, so long as his appearance was hidden.
As he forces himself to stretch his mouth and draw out the vowels, tasting the sounds like marbles of honey on his tongue, Asterius finds himself remembering how much he once loved to speak: to prove that he was more than an animal, that he possessed thought and wit and mind. To demonstrate the controlled deliberateness of his words, like a sculptor at work. He remembers the joy of it, in speaking like any other human -- before the fact that he could speak at all became a matter of abject mockery, and then dismissal.
There is no one in Erebus to laugh at him now. The wretched shades yowl, incoherent and restless. Asterius practices the words until he falls asleep around them, reciting back everything he wants to say, and waiting for the next time that Theseus might come.
Without any clear idea of Theseus's timeline, Asterius is forced to choose their next location on his own. He could have stayed put by the lake; it would have been simpler that way, knowing that Theseus had found it once before. But some stubborn part of himself decides to relocate anyway, testing the man's mettle a third time. If Asterius is worth it, and if the whole thing is not simply a ploy to force him into another cage, then Theseus would doubtlessly make the effort to track him down anywhere in Erebus.
Even so, there is little need to torture the king. The field that Asterius has chosen this time is pleasant enough, relatively speaking, due to the fact that the wretched leave it largely alone. The soil is cracked and strewn with rocks, and there is nowhere particularly comfortable to sit, but there are fewer shades attempting to tear Asterius's throat out, and that gives it some merit.
When he hears the king's approach this time, relief leaps in his chest.
He waits until Theseus has come to a halt before him before inclining his head respectfully, remembering the bows that his tutors had once instructed him in performing. "Greetings, King of Athens."
The sentence comes out perfectly. Asterius had practiced that phrase in particular, repeating it under his breath as he had walked, a drumbeat for his marching steps.
He does not know if he is pleased or disappointed when Theseus makes no comment upon his proficiency, only grinning with the same overabundance of energy as ever. "And a good day to you as well, Asterius! I was thinking, perhaps, if you were somehow nervous about showing off your skills in battle -- having not had a chance to recently remind yourself of your talents -- that we might quicken it once more between us! Why, so few people dare to challenge me in Elysium that I have begun to fear that I myself may be getting quite rusty. Shall we have a match here?"
The suggestion is novel enough that Asterius nearly agrees before he catches himself short on his own limitations. He opens his hands to demonstrate their emptiness. "I have no weapons."
He half-expects Theseus to not care about such inequalities; instead, the man glances at his spear, and leans it against the nearest boulder, bracing his shield behind it. He dusts his hands off, dropping immediately into a crouch. "Let us grapple, then! Though your body would surely dominate mine with little effort, I would rejoice in the opportunity to pit my strength against your own! Come, then! I shall stand fast!"
Asterius snorts, though the idea of taking the man and breaking him in half is not an unappealing one, if only as a reminder of Asterius's own strength. "An unfair match, king. Bring a blade for me instead. I will use it."
Thwarted from his latest plan, Theseus straightens up, puzzled momentarily out of his usual exuberance. "Come to think of it, I don't believe I've ever seen you armed before. What have you been trained in?"
"Not much." It is hard not to sound bitter. Asterius does not try. "I ate my weapons instructor when I was barely past ten summers. At the time, we had only managed to cover the basics of clubs and mauls. Afterwards," Asterius forces himself to shrug around the flutter of resentment, even if he understands the reasoning. "Afterwards, they did not allow me much. They did not arm me in the Labyrinth, naturally. If I was killed there -- if any of the prisoners killed me, it was still -- "
He fails to complete the sentence, swimming in the uncertainty of what he is trying to say for once, rather than the inability to make words at all. "King Minos. He won either way. The fact that you slew me... was his victory too."
He is not certain how Theseus might react to this fact. It was difficult enough to merely get the words out, let alone to convey the importance of the message. But by the short, rough sigh that Theseus makes, Asterius can tell that this information is not news to the man; Theseus must have already come to a similar realization long ago, and it had been just as unpleasant to him.
One advantage to such knowledge, however, is that Theseus does not need time to digest it. "Then shall we run for a bit instead? It never hurts to stretch one's legs. Take me on your most hazardous course, Asterius. I will not falter!"
Driven now by Theseus's brazen stubbornness, Asterius gives the king a skeptical look. Any path fits those requirements; there is no lack of danger in Erebus. Plummeting down a chasm or being torn apart by wretches is hardly entertainment.
But a challenge is a challenge, and there is something about the idea of such leisure that Asterius cannot deny the joy of, even in all his discontent.
"Very well," he assents. "To the foot of the mountain there, past the fork in the streams. Take care not to lose sight of it. I cannot promise your safety otherwise."
They pick the route at random, Asterius waving a hand idly towards the horizon -- and then they are off, pelting across the field like a pair of arrows battling a crosswind towards a target. The match is closer than he expects. Asterius is better on the straightways and any downward slopes, where his momentum works to his advantage, flinging his weight along once he's reached a decent speed. Theseus, however, is light on his feet, even with his shield and spear, which he carries with the doughty resolve of a soldier used to marching across one side of Greece to the other. Each time Asterius sees Theseus drawing ahead, he pushes himself harder to catch up with the fleet figure darting in front of him, refusing to yield the victory so readily.
The last time he had seen Theseus running like this, it had not been nearly as enjoyable. The walls of the Labyrinth had spiraled around them, locking them into a lethal chase. Asterius had known all of Daedalus's traps, all the dead ends and murderous loops which Theseus had miraculously avoided; he hadn't understood the purpose of the thread in his prey's hand at the time. In the end, it had been too late.
The memory should be a humiliating one, sealed by Asterius's final defeat. Here, though, the moment is different. He can hear Theseus calling encouragements to him instead of threats; Asterius finds that he is shouting back, able to speak in words instead of roars, to think clearly and retain his sense of self without struggling for it. They are running together, instead of Asterius being the one in pursuit, as he has not run since childhood when he had still been naive enough to treat it as play.
But it is play again here, with Theseus, as they both challenge each other to keep up, goading one another to faster speeds with reckless glee. It does not matter that they are not racing across the grasses of Crete, or that the wretched they pass screech in a frustrated chorus. The only thing that exists in this world is the way that he and Theseus are moving through it in unison, neither one of them allowing the other to fall behind too far. Asterius's blood thrums in time with the pounding of his feet. He follows gladly after Theseus's triumphant laughter as the man vaults over a boulder to take the lead once more.
The wonder of it washes everything else away.
Afterwards, once they have fetched up against the nearest branch of the river Styx as it puddles around the mountain's base, both of them wind down to rest. Asterius wades directly into the cold, blood-red currents without hesitation, rinsing off his sweat -- and then swings a wave of water at Theseus when he sees the man choosing to cool down with a fervent series of squats instead.
The yelling, Asterius decides, is worth it.
Once that mischief is done with -- both of them sopping wet -- Asterius kneels upstream and scoops up a handful of water out of habit. The Styx looks so much like blood that he drinks anyway, even if he does not need it. He expects Theseus to join him -- but the man only beams, stooping to rummage through his possessions. He fishes around one of his pouches until he finally pulls out a bottle of golden liquid, and then brandishes it in the air.
"Here's a better drink to split with me," he declares, holding it out next towards Asterius. "I feel that we have both earned a draught of nectar for our display today."
Asterius eyes the vial, his normal wariness softened by the exhilaration still pounding through his blood. "You know that does nothing for me, King Theseus."
Theseus waggles the bottle, undeterred. "Not even the pleasure of having it?"
In all honesty, Asterius cannot provide an answer to that particular question. No wine had ever soothed his throat in the past -- but he is dead now, and things such as sleep and sweat are mere illusions anyway. For that reason alone, he should refuse. Even a single drop of nectar is precious.
But he cannot tear himself away from the sight of how Theseus offers the drink to him so casually, as if they are merely two athletes relaxing together on some pleasant summer day. This is a different illusion from death. If Asterius holds his breath, he can allow himself to believe that he and Theseus are friends sharing both a match and a meal in equal readiness, laughing out the rest of the evening in idle conversation: at ease with one another's company and relishing the trust of it.
Reaching out, Asterius takes the bottle carefully, aware of how fragile the glass is within his grip. He uncorks it as Theseus watches approvingly, and drinks, feeling the nectar slake a different thirst.
When Asterius had reached the height of a young man, Crete's soldiers had ringed his nose, thinking it would make him easier to control. In many ways, it had. The pain whenever it was grabbed had been excruciating, turning his head instinctively to ease the pressure, and the heavy ring was large enough for any soldier to seize and pull. With it, they had used shepherd's crooks and staves to keep Asterius at arm's length, before realizing he had the intelligence to grab the stick and yank his would-be handler back towards him.
Crete had already begun to forget, by that time, that he was capable of rational thought. Asterius had become merely the Bull to them, instead of a child who had tried to dutifully learn how to tie his own sandals and the proper way to address visitors at a royal court.
The soldiers had had to drug Asterius's food in order to ring him, which had been its own difficulty; he had spurned the blood and meat of livestock by then, and they had been loathe to try alternatives. He had woken up halfway through the process, alerted by the searing pain. The smith had lost three fingers to Asterius's teeth, gulped down with satisfaction even as Asterius had tried to devour the rest of the man's arm whole.
The guards had won, in the end. They had always won.
That night -- what he thinks is night, at least -- Asterius touches the ring in his nose gingerly. It had made the voyage with him into the afterlife, likely because he will never be able to forget how much it had defined him.
But he also feels the lingering shadow of Theseus's hand upon his arm, lifted neither in harm nor in punishment. He can hear the laughter they had shared, their voices mixing easily with no barrier of monster to identify either one. Theseus's nonchalant confidence as the nectar had been passed back and forth. The man's lack of hesitation to drink from the same bottle that Asterius had also touched.
The way that Asterius -- through Theseus's eyes -- may be worth something after all.
He does not know what to say. The offer is clear; for all of Theseus's many quirks, subtlety is not among them. Everything that Asterius has learned so far seems to point in favor of the man's sincerity. The mere fact that Theseus has been able to enter and exit Erebus at all implies that he has the permissions needed to back his promise.
Even so, however, Asterius cannot understand why.
He waits and broods and forgets to bother with counting the days, until he glances over the side of the hill he has camped on, and sees the king arriving once more.
Theseus is a small dot far below, his armor glittering in the light. Along with his own spear and shield, the tiny figure appears to be lugging along what looks like a massive, linen-wrapped shape: a lump with a long handle, like some god's stolen hammer or possibly one of Charon's unused ferry paddles. Possibly -- judging by the weight -- the ferry itself. Whatever the mystery, it's cumbersome enough that the small dot of Theseus's hair barely moves in all the time that Asterius watches, its progress painstakingly gruelling.
The stones around him grow gradually brighter, turning the lighter green that Asterius has come to associate with noon. A few wretched scramble around in the distance, off hunting one another. Whenever Asterius checks on Theseus's progress, the man is still no closer.
Eventually, Asterius goes down the hill first.
He meets Theseus halfway, shaking his head at himself for how readily he has begun to tolerate the man's strange whims. The King of Athens had been taking a break in the shadow of the hill, crouching down beside the wrapped parcel -- which had slid up against him, as if in hopes of squashing him flat -- but when he spots Asterius, he jerks to his feet. The bundle begins to topple over; Theseus grabs it at the last minute by its handle, tries and fails to shove it behind himself awkwardly, and then finally gives up and attempts to lean with forced casualness upon it, as if it is simply a stray fencepost that has conveniently sprouted in the path.
"Why, fancy meeting you here, Asterius!" His grin is blisteringly merry. "I was just out and about on my exercises! Quite good weather for it, wouldn't you say?"
Asterius snorts at the shallowness of the lie. Curiosity has him firmly in its grip now, however, and he merely flicks his ears as if to shoo away a fly. "Just who do you think you are fooling, King Theseus?"
"Not you, certainly!" Reversing direction with little effort, Theseus shrugs, and places even more of his weight into his slouch. "Trickery is beneath you, naturally. As well as myself!"
To this, Asterius says nothing aloud; trickery was precisely how Theseus earned his victory in the Labyrinth, and is also why Asterius is very much dead right now. Instead, he looks pointedly at the wrapped angles of the parcel. "What burdens you today? That is no farmtool."
For all that Theseus's courage is bewilderingly strong, this question -- at last -- seems to daunt him. The man kicks at the ground mulishly, stubbing his foot into the dirt. "Well, I gave our situation some thought, Asterius." Our situation, Asterius thinks darkly, noting the pronoun but not interrupting. "After considering the resources available to you, I realized that your reluctance may stem from the lack of proper armaments, correct? You haven't exactly been given a decent weapon at any point in your life! So, I took the liberty of remedying that. Here, try this one! It should fit you quite well, if I'm any guess at your measurements!"
He steps aside with what is clearly intended to be a flourish, but instead of whisking the cloth neatly away -- an impossible task, considering how many times it's been wrapped around the weapon inside -- Theseus is forced to try and wiggle the shape around its bindings, cursing until Asterius steps in and easily picks up the weight by its handle, lifting it up high enough that it can finish being uncovered.
As the metal becomes revealed, he realizes exactly what manner of instrument Theseus has brought with him. The axe is either newly-forged or impervious to age; its metal is brilliantly polished, mirroring his own features back at him. It is a massive, glorious thing, double-headed -- a curious choice, appropriate for a child of Crete but less so for Asterius's male hands -- and there is no pitting of the blade nor wear on its grip. The haft is smooth and unchipped. Asterius hefts the weapon up in both hands and lays it flat across his palms, fingers curving around the base of its massive head, and tilts it back and forth in fascination.
There are no flaws. It is a gift worthy of a hero.
The motion seems to signal some sort of implicit acceptance on his part, for Theseus perks up, puffing out his chest in renewed enthusiasm. "There are different techniques for using an axe, of course, but I believe you'll be quick to learn -- particularly with me at your side," he emphasizes. "Elysium has no lack of opportunities for practice! Together we will take on every shade and creature that dares to think themselves our equals, and feast on victories sweeter than ambrosia! And -- should we ever run out of adversaries, the cowards fleeing before us -- then we may whet our talents upon each other in exertions unsurpassed by any poet's dreams! Our names will be sung forever in the colosseum, and our companionship will remain unbroken even until the end of time itself. All this is yours, Asterius! It is your right!"
When Asterius remains mute, hypnotized by the gleam of light across the axe's blades, Theseus clears his throat and adds, quietly, "I can think of no better way to spend all eternity than with your strength beside me. Do say yes."
Silence is no longer suitable -- for not only this moment, but also for Asterius himself. "King Theseus," he begins. The words are smoother now. They no longer stick like gravel in his throat, but the question itself remains a slow one, shying away from its own existence. "Before I give you my answer, you must tell me something else first. You treat me as a person -- as a man, not a beast. Why?"
The startled, confused expression that knits Theseus's face is not one that Asterius expects. "Because you are one." With a dismissive toss of his head, Theseus shakes away his momentary befuddlement. "And since I am a king, my words are mere fact! Therefore, if anyone should claim otherwise, they are quite simply wrong. You have always been a person, Asterius. Always. Really -- ask me something more difficult to test my knowledge with than that."
Asterius stares.
In that moment, he feels everything fall away around him, as if the walls of Erebus are shattering, breaking apart to reveal a second prison, a second Labyrinth that he has always worn around himself -- and it is crumbling too, splintering open to reveal the sunlight and ocean of the world beyond, bringing fresh air to his lungs and the smell of salt on the breeze. He is standing in the heart of a maze that he has never been able to find his way out of on his own, and this man -- this king -- is waiting here with his hand extended, showing him the gate.
Theseus's logic is as slender as a string. It is only as strong as the person holding the other end.
But that person is the King of Athens. A ridiculously convoluted man, propelled by overconfidence and sheer force of personality, ignoring matters as trivial as common sense. Yet, if Theseus had ever been the type of hero to follow the standards of others, then he never would have come for Asterius at all. He would have refused to seek Asterius out four times in the depths of the Underworld; he would have never questioned Ariadne for a name, for a history, for proof of who her brother had been before bloodthirst had made him its prisoner.
Like the rest of the world, if Theseus had been like anyone else, then he would have never realized there was a person within the Bull of Minos at all.
Asterius has never been in this position before. Always, he has been the creature which others have been rescued from. Guards swooping in to tear his victims from him, chains and poles to keep him from devouring the servants unlucky enough to get into arm's reach. Would-be saviors thinking to scale the walls of the Labyrinth, seeking both coin and fame from killing a mindless monster lumbering through a prison.
Each year, families had begged for help in saving their loved ones from the Bull's appetite: seven sons and seven daughters, fourteen victims total.
No one had ever asked Asterius if he needed to be rescued from himself.
He inclines his head to Theseus, and then bows lower, dropping to one knee. There is only one word that he needs to have mastered now, and Asterius delivers it without hesitation.
"Yes."
In his dreams, Asterius is always a monster. But in death, he walks with heroes, and whenever he starts to falter -- in his fears, his belief, his self -- he needs only turn to the person beside him as proof that he belongs.
By Theseus's side, he no longer dwells in dreams.