Monster
Iron Will
Three minotaur boys snuck out after sundown. The day’s last light turned the canyon walls fluorescent red, and in some spaces, uncomfortably dark. The brothers raced down the sandy hill, just past the point where mom and dad could see from the main house.
Their wrestling ring consisted of a length of rope tied together into a big circle, and four barrels set out at the corners. As the little one, Abe, climbed atop a barrel, Will’s heart inched out of its hiding spot. Orrick, the oldest, gave Abe the lantern, and ruffled his head hard enough to push his neck back.
Orric winked, “Got Wilbur’s tissues ready?”
Will spat in the dirt and smothered it like he was stamping out a cigarette. “That’s Iron Will.” He crossed his pathetic arms.
Orrick snorted like a pig finding a truffle.
In retaliation, he snorted steam.
They circled each other, shuffling right in drunk circles. Abe hopped down and watched from behind the safety of the rope with a keen eye for detail. The stakes were higher than ever.
Orrick’s eyes flared under his heavy-looking forehead, his horns aimed for Will’s chest. Will resisted the urge to raise his fists as a shield. They were matadors, not boxers. They had self-respect.
According to the radio, pony matadors wore costumes and liked carrying blankets. Since that didn’t make any sense, they left their bedsheets at home and settled for practicing what they imagined the moves to look like.
The ponies usually faced off with bison or buffalo, and in one, a bull. Anything bigger and stronger than them. Sounded about right to Will. Orrick essentially liquified him every time. Usually, it ended with his face squashed between the ground and an armpit.
Will’s hooves scraped the dust, and he stumbled. Orrick lunged, swinging his arm at his brother’s chest. He fell. His head rebounded twice. A wheeze escaped his lungs with the rest of his air supply, “Poff.”
Orrick grinned above, enjoyment glowing through the unreadably absent look in his eyes. He smacked his elbow. Will’s eyes shot open. He saw him falling over his stomach before he could do anything.
The little air vacated his lungs under the strength of the blow. Will buckled over to the side, feeling the vomit pool. He heard Abe smother a gasp from the corner, and he glared into the dirt. Who just took a blow to the stomach here?
Orrick’s hand grabbed Will’s tail. He dragged him through the ring, kicking up dust and letting the ground rug burn Will’s back. His teeth clenched. The force of a shout built up in the back of his throat, blocked in by a bitten tongue and sheer will power.
Orrick snorted -- a loud, guttural sound from the very back of his nose -- and leaned down until he was scowling over Will’s face. “Uncle?”
A moment passed. Then Will’s hand shot out and grabbed Orrick’s hoof. Orrick’s hand shot out just as fast, grabbing Will’s arm for leverage as he flew into the air, knees pointing at Will’s chest. Will’s eyes squeezed shut before the blow shocked his poor, unassuming organs.
“GRAARGH,” he bellowed.
Orrick seethed through his teeth, in one short breath expelling that little extra bit of force, like he would lifting his cart in the mineral fields. “So. It can speak.”
Smushed against the dirt, his ears were squashed, but not enough to block out the sound of mom’s voice calling out over the hill. “Orrick! Wilbur! Abraham! Get your fannies back here right this instant, misters!”
Will smiled, which looked just as much like a frown. Orrick jumped up and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, like a kitten.
“Honestly,” she said. “You’re worrying your father sick, you know that? Get in the house, all of you.”
She went ahead.
Abe’s floppy ears hit his head. He marched ahead of his brothers, shoulders fallen. The cowbell around his neck jingled with each step. Will immediately regretted letting him tag along, and had to remind himself he would’ve hated staying behind even more than getting caught.
Orrick went after. Will tried matching his steps without looking like he was trying to avoiding his brother’s eye.
When their mother was far enough ahead, the brown in his thin, hooded eyes flicked over to Will. “You think Dad knows we left the house at all?”
Will frowned. You’re the one who got to work with him! Shouldn’t you be telling me? He shrugged.
“Yeah,” he muttered, eyes falling back on the starlit path beneath his hooves.
Their hooves crunched the canyon gravel as the geckos chirped in waist-high grasslands. The wooden ranch-house door swatched against the latch ahead.
-----
Will’s eyes only got a break from full darkness in passages glowing by the light of enchanted letters from a language he couldn’t read.
There must’ve been a lot of wanderers over the years; all kinds of ropes and chains swam through the passageways, twisting off into darkness and meeting up to compare notes. None of them tugged like his.
Every noise floating through the stale, fungal air nested in his head, laying possibilities. He plastered his ears against his square of a head. He could still hear the his own hooves scraping the gravel. He didn’t know what kind of animal could live in a place like this, but given enough time to remember the stories, he could make one up.
The glowing text following his path was the first kind of magic he’d ever seen. At first, he didn’t know what he was looking at. It took an embarrassingly long time for him to remember what a unicorn was. But, he’d never seen one in his life, and hadn’t heard of any living anywhere near the valley.
How far did these tunnels go?
A little snap echoed from the right. He tensed up. A pebble fell behind him and he thought the world was over.
Silence filled in the gap.
He wondered if his family sent a search party for him, too. When nothing came to break the silence, he wondered if he’d get to find out.
After who-knows-how-long, he ran out of steps to take. He stumbled toward a wall, and threw his back against it. The stone was cold enough to make him suck in, but it didn’t matter.
His short breath hitched. The blue hues of crumbled, cracking bricks crowded around. He gripped the fur on his knees, chest fluttering, and head falling back. I’m gonna die. No one’s going to ever find me here. I’ll rot until I’m gone, and no one will know I was here, and no one’s ever gonna care.
He sat for a solid hour, at least.
He stared, hiccuping at the ropes laying in restless lines in either direction, gripping harder onto his. Had any of them gotten out?
… They did, he thought.
Head aching, he got up and followed them back into a never-ending night.
He couldn’t have journeyed more than a mile before the words started to reappear. The inscriptions were the same blue as before, but these, he could read. They crawled on, giving him a preview of the walk ahead.
Once he read the words they burned into his eyelids like sunspots. Written over and over on passage after passage:
Don’t look at the eyes.
If it was a poem, it wasn’t a very good one.
He said the words again in his head, and even under his breath, but never any louder than his hoof-steps. Every once in a while, he’d still hear a grunt or a whine from somewhere implacably far.
He made all sorts of guesses as to what it could mean, but most crumbled into nonsense. Eventually, he had to give up before the terrifying beasts in his head whose eyes he couldn’t look at freaked him out much more.
After that, he started keeping track of how many corners he turned down. It didn’t last long. That pony’s advice distracted him too much to keep a decent count.
Then it occurred to him. If someone -- somepony – had the time to scrawl that into the wall, why didn’t they have time to include directions?
His hooves moved faster. The rope unraveled from shoulder in tugs. He snorted out his breath.
Breathe, said the voice in his head. Just breathe.
He slowed, but kept trotting along. It wasn’t long before he realized what had happened. His new buddy had given him something to think about besides the Labyrinth, whether they meant to or not. He meant to. He smiled, lips shaking.
-----
Iron Vaughn, they called him.
Wilbur sat on a stool in his dad’s workshop, among reins and scythes and ongoing projects left to rust. He never knew why, but his dad’s shop was always a dark place to be. Daylight didn’t like it there. The blinds kept even the brightest of days at bay, even if the humidity still slithered through. Hues of blue and steaming red turned white, a sweetness below the roasted smell of coal -- that’s what he’d choose to remember.
His dad shoved a crackling rod into water, broad roan shoulders defined like a mountainside and about twice as big. He grunted like a boxer does when his fist makes contact with bone. Will flinched.
That stool was probably the most uncomfortable place to be.
“Wilbur,” he said, through the gristle of a low-toned, deeply angry voice; it almost sounded like regret, even if what he was currently doing what he was was sorry for. He didn’t turn around. “I saw you wrestling with your brothers.”
Will’s stomach contracted, so suddenly all the contents had nowhere to go. A part of him smiled, but something else wanted to run and never be found; he couldn’t tell what kind of talk this was going to be. All of that came through in a squirm on the stool.
Will could see his dad’s well-defined bags and hard-earned creases when he half-turned to grab another tool. “Get stronger. If you’d quit dancing around, you might pin him for a few seconds, but you’re never going to get anywhere if you don’t lift.”
Will nodded to his bouncing knees. His hooves clacked together. Tender-voiced, he said, “Yes, sir.”
His dad paused. He did that between most everything he had to say, so Will knew he meant what he meant.
“You know you’ve got to be the one to keep your sisters safe? Your mom, Abe, the girls; you’re the only one they’ve got when I’m out with Orrick working the draft.” Deep, heart-beating anger. “You’re responsible for them, Wilbur.”
What would never (yes, in a million years) be said, but Will couldn’t help but think afterward was a continuation so sick and horrible he could hardly stand himself for thinking it. In his father’s voice, Will heard 'it's your job to protect them from me.'
-----
His heart dropped and his hooves stopped. The message, the lit rooms- what if it’s luring me?
He gripped the rope. No. It has to be a unicorn. It’s just a pony. He started up again, reaching back out to the wall.
One of the very few comforts he had was the forty pounds of twine he had hurting his left shoulder. By now it’d been rubbed raw, but that made him hold tighter.
Feeling the twine fall off his back was easy in the beginning.
Later on, though, he became very aware of the thinning. He reminded himself that this was the whole town’s supply of rope, and tried letting his mind wander back to that awful riddle.
Maybe it wasn’t finished. It didn’t sound finished to Will. He wouldn’t have stopped for long … maybe there’s more to it somewhere else. He didn’t like that idea. Every time he came to a corner two or more paths were his for the choosing (dead-ends weren’t common, but he found more than his share of them). Point being: he didn’t trust his luck enough to stumble on something so necessary.
When another kind of light became clear down the corridor, he dropped his stomach and ran.
Daylight.
Will never ran faster any time in his life. His strides came so long and powerful it seemed like everything around him was moving and he was staying in one place. The twine flew off his shoulder. His smile grinded against his cheeks.
He bolted through the archway out so fast he tripped. He didn’t care about his eyes sizzling. He couldn’t give a pony’s plot that he had no idea where this place was. He didn’t even care that there was nothing blocking the horizon in any direction he could see. He collapsed on the ground, laughing out the dust.
Of course, that only lasted as long as it took him to remember his brother’s name. Abe.
He pushed his torso up, propping up his head to look into the black-hole trying to suck him back in. His breath came out sounding like shivers.
He sat there for a lot longer than he ever told anyone he did. He punched the dirt. He hid his head in his knees. None of it did him any good. Eventually, he let out a sound so sad it almost matched the dread inside.
Will pulled off the ground and stood at the gate to the Labyrinth, shoulders slumped to the left. After being in there, he knew something: if he let himself sit out there for even a minute more, he wasn’t going back in. Ever.
Every step he took was as long and drawn-out as his breath. He readjusted the twine on his shoulder, favouring groove it’d made.
The darkness coming over felt so cold after the sun. He’d never forget that.
----
Will shuffled into the middle of the Labyrinth. Torchlight blanketed his brother, curled up against the opposite wall. He stared. The word tore itself out. “Abe!”
If only he’d seen it.
Trotting in from an alcove, its eyes burned the brightest in the room. When it moved, the metal plates in its body clinked and worked in waves to compensate. A silver ring twinkled though its pig-like snout.
Will urged him, prayed to him, to keep still, stay silent, but once Abe saw his brother it was over. Even with a scream he’d obviously already overused. It was enough. “Will!”
The mecha-bull, who’d taken interest in Will, turned on end -- a tearing movement. Its whip of tail, twice as thick as both of Will’s hooves, struck the ground. The way it trot after him, almost bucking already, set something in his stomach on fire, the smoke rising to the cheeks.
Will stamped. “Hey!”
The bull shook its head, graphite horns waving, groaning.
Panic throttled his stomach. “Hey! HEY!”
That did it. The bull charged, and so did Will; both toward the same wall.
The last second never did Will any favours before.
But, he’d never fought a giant mechanical bull before, either, so the day was full of firsts.
It projected into the wall - CRASH - and still, its golden, thinly inscribed horns didn’t take a dent. The blow came straight to the scowl. Its eyes erupted, growing white as it snorted pressurized steam.
Will danced toward his brother, shuffling like a wrestler in a stone ring. “Stay down.”
He nodded, holding his mouth shut with his hands.
The bull roared, shaking the mortar, then dove into attack. When it’s eyes fired up, burning into Will like headlights, he realized a thing: the Mecchataur wasn’t real, it was an automaton. Somebody made it, with metal, and a source of heat inside that he could turn up.
Don’t be shy, look ‘em in the eye. He smirked. “Want some?”
The bull rumbled, louder than thunder through the chamber, barreling straight for him. He stood in a ready position, hunching.
The flames turned blue mid-run.
Will charged, too, but he ran into a leap, swing his hooves between it horns. The bull ran into the ground, steaming, screaming, because he’d made its head soft with heat.
He just had to stay on top. Climbing onto its back, Will’s thighs crackled. His snout scrunched at the smell. He straddled its back, the plates kicking.
The mecha-bull screeched. It slammed its ‘hind legs against the floor, rattling Will’s bones. The heat or the sting made him woozy, but he held on long enough for the bull to collapse before he did.
The clatter was incredible.
“... Abe.“
His brother gaped down at him. “You kicked his butt.”
His lips quirked up, tears pooling, panting out a laugh. He lumbered over, held Abe’s head against his stomach and laughed, hearing him laugh into him.
He held on tight. If he noticed Will shaking from the burns on the inside of this legs, he didn’t show any sign of it. Holding on gently, Iron Will never felt so strong.