Chapter Text
Phillip is certain he’s going to die.
He keeps running anyway, fueled more by fear and stubborn spite than by hope.
All of the other members of his platoon who were left behind on guard duty are already dead.
Phillip himself has been lucky to escape that fate so far, but not lucky enough. The human seems determined to run him down, and he has little hope of reaching reinforcements before it catches him. Humans have some ridiculous endurance, and there isn’t another minotaur outpost near his encampment for miles. He might be able to walk or march that distance without a second thought, but he can’t run for that long.
When a beam of light shines from the long-dormant rift temple, it feels like salvation. Like fate.
Phillip changes course, skidding and scrabbling in the dry dust of the ravaged land, and sprints towards the rift.
His highest hopes fall flat; there is no victorious minotaur army making its way through the rift, no returned Nowhere King with a freshly crafted Key. But his fears are also banished—there is no vengeful centaur army coming through the rift, either.
There is only the portal, soft and serene, glowing within its gateway.
Phillip briefly considers ducking behind a pillar, trying to get a drop on the human rather than rushing headfirst into unknown territory—but then he hears footsteps on the stone behind him and discards the idea. The human is too close behind him for that to work. He’ll just have to take the risk.
The portal passes over his skin like an ethereal sheet of water, melodious and strange. It's been decades, and Phillip never traveled between the worlds much to begin with; he'd almost forgotten the sensation.
He'd definitely forgotten how clean the rift is. He doesn't think he's seen a white this pure since the rift closed; even the sun always has a reddish haze from dust or smoke, these days.
There's nowhere to hide in the rift. But if he can just get through the other portal with even a small lead, he'll finally be able to break the human's sightline. He might stand a chance. He sprints for the other gateway.
It's blocked.
Phillip hisses to himself, eyes narrowing at the… it can't be a centaur, surely? Centaurs have arms. But it doesn't look right for a horse, either, or anything from the human world for that matter; it's so soft. He has no idea what it is.
It doesn't matter. It will be dead soon enough.
Phillip snarls and draws his sword as he approaches the blue portal, voice raising in a shriek as he rushes forward to slash the strange creature to the ground and make his escape—
Agony explodes in his back. His limbs go numb; he wheezes, arms falling to his side and sword falling from his limp grasp.
The world swims. His legs give out and he collapses.
Dimly, Phillip can hear voices that eventually meld into a soothing, joyful song. But they soon fade to silence as his senses fail.
Phillip drifts in and out of consciousness after that, collecting scattered impressions: silence, frantic voices, the low, rumbling rasp of a vaguely familiar voice.
He wakes at one point to the clash of battle and cold sludge against his scales. It's accompanied by the distantly familiar presence of the Nowhere King in his mind. (The Nowhere King! Has he—been in the rift, all these years? Or is he trying to go through—?) But even with the compulsion of the Nowhere King's mental command, Phillip can't gather the strength to stand; the effort grays out the world once more.
He wakes again to fresh agony as the sludge around him suddenly rushes to the side.
“No–!” he manages, eyes flying open, but the protest is futile; the sludge is sucked away and drags him along with it. The edges of something squeeze against him as he passes through a narrow space, forcing the air from his lungs, and then his senses white out with pain again as he collides with the ground.
The peace of unconsciousness doesn’t last long; he wakes yet again.
(Why hasn’t he died?)
He’s surrounded by stuff, limbs tangled in pillows and statues and junk; his weak attempts to reach his back get him nowhere. But when Phillip musters the strength to push himself from his side onto his front, the hilt of the blade in his back catches on something in the pile; it slides free.
The removal is agony, but its absence is a blessing. He lies very, very still and focuses on breathing. His breath rasps in his throat, catches wetly in his chest. He coughs, spitting out a mouthful of the thick black liquid that flows through his body, but it doesn’t clear his breathing much.
Some of the objects around him are solid and dig uncomfortably into his sides. But most of what he’s landed on is soft. It’s… not bad, really. He slits his eyes open and focuses blearily on the hand lying limply near his head. The ground is purple. He curls his claws, feels it press against his scales.
The texture is indescribable.
(…He likes it.)
(Why hasn’t he died?)
There are some muffled voices around him, hissed whispers and shuffling:
“What is that?”
“It’s so pointy…”
“Don’t get close to it! Haven’t you heard about—”
Phillip should probably care about that. He should be trying to escape. He should get back to the Nowhere King, back to the other minotaurs. That human took out all of the rear guard from his platoon; he’s the last survivor, he needs to report. That should be more important than the pain pulsing through him.
…but he’s too tired.
Phillip lets his eyes fall closed and goes back to focusing on his breathing.
The world shifts, rumbles, contracts, and suddenly Phillip is flying through the air. He chokes as he slams into a warm chest. The world swims nauseatingly, and he’s only vaguely aware as small hands lift him up and shake him around. He struggles to catch his breath, tongue thick in his throat.
It’s all he can do to keep his eyes open. They keep sliding closed, and anyway, all he can see is a yellowish blur and then a dizzying spin of blue and green as he’s shaken around again—
And then agony lances through his back as a knife strikes it. His scream barely has the strength to be considered a squeak, and he runs out of breath almost immediately. He pants thinly, managing to drag in strained sips of air as the… they must be a centaur, everything’s so bright… as the centaur drapes him over its shoulders.
He doesn’t understand what is happening.
(The air tastes sweet.)
The jostling doesn’t stop. He’s paraded and swung around in a macabre celebration, and he doesn’t even have the strength to struggle. Even if he did, his legs are worryingly weak and rife with pins and needles; he doesn’t think he’d be able to get anywhere. The knife probably grazed his spine.
He’s too injured to move, too intact to die. Each breath rasps in his chest, shifts the knife in his back until it grates against his ribs. He keeps his breathing shallow, so slow it’s nearly stopped, and that helps. Minotaurs can survive a lot, and he’s mostly reptile; he runs cool. He doesn’t need to breathe much as long as he keeps still like this, lets his awareness slip in and out as it pleases.
That has its limits. He jerks awake as the urge to breathe grows strong enough to make him panic; coughs and hacks as he sucks in a deep lungful of air and the knife shifts.
Once he’s gotten his throat clear it’s the most alert he’s felt in a while. He freezes, expression blank, as he realizes just how many centaurs have surrounded him.
“Oh, I could just eat you up,” the centaur that’s holding him exclaims, pressing its head into his cheek.
…what.
“Okay…” says the round gray creature that he tried to attack in the rift. “Not sure if that’s a good or a bad omen.”
Whatever the maybe-horse is, it took the words right out of his mouth.