Eryx
Deep in the maze of hallways beneath the arena, the minotaur sat up, suddenly wide-awake in his windowless cell. From two doors down, the cockatrice gave another ear-piercing shriek and clawed the concrete. She’d been irritable since her narrow defeat of the wendigo, because she’d lost the last two inches of her tail to the cannibal in the ring, but this wasn’t her usual angry ranting.
The cockatrice sounded...excited.
Across the hall, the chimera roared, and the hairs stood up on Eryx’s thick forearms. He stood and looked through the window in his cell door, and at first he couldn’t process what he was seeing. The chimera’s goat and lion heads were pushing each other aside to claim the view through its window. They were so close to the door that breath from the lion’s muzzle fogged the glass.
The minotaur’s eyes narrowed as he watched. The collars should have shocked and immobilized the beast before it got within two feet of its door.
From farther down the hall came a great thud, and the groan of heavy hinges as one of the other beasts rammed its cell door.
Eryx looked up at the sensor over his own door. It was dark, as usual, and there was only one way to test its functionality. The minotaur’s massive lungs expanded as he sucked in a great breath. Then he stepped closer to the door.
The sensor remained dark. No pain came.
He took another step and slowly exhaled. The sensors were broken.
The cockatrice crowed again, and the minotaur’s huge heart seemed ready to burst through his thick chest.
The time had come.
Eryx studied the door as carefully as he’d ever considered any opponent in the ring. He bent at the waist and took another deep breath. His left hoof pawed the dusty concrete floor, but he was as unaware of the motion as he was of the ancient instinct that drove it. He was lost in a memory of himself as a younger bull in a much smaller box made of rough wood planks rather than concrete.
The minotaur backed up as far as he could and pawed the ground again. Then he ran at the door with every bit of energy and strength he had.
His massive horns punctured the steel like a fork through a tin can, but the hinges held.
Eryx yanked his head free and backed up to try again. The wooden box faded from his thoughts, as did the infant minotaur who’d failed to breach it. The beast who ran at his cell door this time was more than two thousand pounds of solid muscle and sheer determination, driven straight at the only obstacle standing in the way of his freedom.
He barreled into the door and ripped it off its hinges with a groan of tearing steel. Momentum carried both the bull and the punctured door across the hall, where they rammed into the cinder-block wall beside the chimera’s cell.
Eryx stood and wrenched the door from his horns. He dropped the ruined hunk of metal at his feet just as another door flew open down the hall. A young giant—no more than twelve years old, yet seven feet tall—barreled into the dim passageway and glanced around to gain his bearings. Then he charged down the broad hallway past the minotaur, the earth shaking beneath his huge bare feet with every step.
Cacophony rose from the cells all around Eryx as the other beasts rammed their doors, eager to gain freedom. He looked to the left, then the right, then finally took off behind the giant.
As the minotaur approached a corner to the left, a sharp scream rose above the low-pitched growls and grunts from the beasts enclosed in cells on both sides of the hall. The scream ended in a gurgle, and Eryx rounded the corner, he saw the young giant running up ahead, blood dripping from his thick, pale fingers. On the ground behind him lay the corpse of a black-clad handler, still leaking blood from his crushed skull.
Eryx knelt carefully and plucked the ID from the dead handler’s uniform, which he’d often seen used to unlock doors. The badge read Derek Oakland. He turned the badge over to examine the bar code on the back, then he gave it an experimental swipe beneath the card reader beside the nearest cell door.
The card reader flashed green, and Eryx pulled open the door. The troll inside gave him an aggressive grunt, then barreled toward the opening. The minotaur lunged to the side, narrowly avoiding a clash with the hairy, gray-skinned biped, then watched, amused, as the troll raced down the hall and around a corner in his uneven gait.
For a moment, the minotaur only stared at the card in his thick grip, considering. Freeing the animal hybrids and sentient predators would cause a panic. With good reason.
It would also cause one hell of a distraction...
Eryx raced down curving hallways and around sharp corners, opening doors and dodging newly freed beasts as he searched for a way out. But no exit appeared in the labyrinthine passageways.
Frustrated, Eryx turned and retraced his own steps, pushing his way past furry forms and dodging scaled and horned appendages, searching for whatever wrong turn he’d taken. Within minutes, he found himself standing again in front of his own destroyed door. Most of his neighbors were still locked in their cells, growling, roaring and howling their outrage.
The minotaur stood before the chimera’s door, stolen ID badge ready.
“Eryx?”
He turned, his heart thumping madly beneath his chest at the familiar voice. Rommily stood near the end of the hall, dwarfed by the high, arched ceiling and exaggerated width of the passage. Swallowed by her own ill-fitting clothes.
Never had the bull so thoroughly hated his mute bovine tongue.
A smile broke over the oracle’s face, and she ran toward him, thin arms outstretched.
Behind her a steel door flew open and crashed against the cinder-block wall. The ammit—a one-ton beast with the hindquarters of a hippo, the front half of a lion and the head of a crocodile—burst from her cell and barreled down the hall, cracking the concrete floor beneath her huge four-toed rear hooves. Content to trample anyone in her path.
Rommily screamed and lurched forward. Eryx raced toward them both. The ammit snorted as it charged toward freedom, blowing Rommily’s hair forward as she ran.
At the last second, Eryx darted into an open cell, reaching out for Rommily. His thick hand wrapped around her arm and he pulled the oracle into the deserted room, shielding her with his own body as the ammit barreled down the hall. Past them both.
When the threat was gone, Eryx stepped back. Rommily looked up at him, dark eyes wide. Then she smiled and took his hand.
And the oracle led the mighty minotaur out of the maze through a service entrance.