New Leaves

Two Men and a Minotaur

The gem spike was driven straight through his heel, the menacing thunder-like clop of the Minotaur’s hooves was swiftly advancing, and the entire contents of the cup of burned coffee had been thoroughly splashed over his favorite sparkly shirt.

His situation, in simple vernacular, was pretty shitty right now.

For some reason, his hand formulated the bright idea of chucking the empty shell of the cup directly over his shoulder as he ran-limped. He heard it thunk hollowly against something and the beast gave a great roar, followed by the clopping increasing to a frequency that he could only assume meant it was charging.

Why the hell had he lied so blatantly to that powerful Summoner back at Shango’s Beat? He considered himself an expert liar, and thought himself pretty capable of deducing whether or not he should lie to finagle what he wanted out of a situation. When that Summoner came up to him and inquired about the nature of his archives, he shouldn’t have lied and said that they were largely potion and formulaic magic related. Maybe the sultry cloud of the 1900 Dionysus he had just drank clogged his brain from higher thought processes. The Summoner very obviously looked the type who got her shit together before she came for somebody in the criminal underworld. She was no amateur, either, and seemed to know a great deal about the Archivist.

To be honest, now that he thought about it, the Archivist was surprised that the Summoner had waited so long to send her huge bull friend to tear him a new asshole. The Summoner had let him walk away and go on with what was apparently to be his last party. That was until now, 4 o clock in the morning, in the bowels of The Sick City, where he was close to being run over by a minotaur. He liked to think that he would have had a better chance if a dwarven archer (a paradox who was also most likely summoned by the Summoner) had pierced his foot with some sort of gem he suspected acted as a homing beacon for the creature in case he somehow managed to get out of its line of sight.

He was going to need to do just that very soon, in fact, for this alley was about to come to a dead end. If he had been a magical being, a simple fugam spell would have propelled him over the wall. Unfortunately, he was only a keeper of spells, and had no talent for it himself, so he instead ripped off the necklace his late mother had given him for emergencies. It was a small vial, full to the cork with a richly glowing purple liquid. He took no time to regard or mourn what had been hanging around his neck on a leather cord for fifteen years before he yanked the cork out with his teeth and unceremoniously spat it onto the ground. He downed the vial, trying not to gag on the overly sweet liquid, and waited for his body to change.

As the old woman had promised him so many years ago, the potion began to work immediately. The Archivist’s body began to glow with the same purple sheen the liquid had held, and he felt light and airy. His still-moving feet were about to carry him directly into the grimy brick wall at the end of the alley, but no panic rose in his throat as he made the assessment of how near it was. Right before impact he whispered a single latin word (his spell language of choice) and proceeded to phase right through it.  

The Archivist felt a rush of pride as he emerged from the other side and the minotaur roared angrily. He was about to count the previous sequence of events as a small victory when the amber-colored gem in his foot began to glow a brilliant yellow.

A sudden jolt of pain stemming from the gem caused him to stumble onto his knees. What felt like lava continued to zip through his veins at a speed seemingly faster than his blood flowed, quickly numbing everything; his legs, torso, arms, neck, and everything in between, including his lips. His limp body toppled over onto its side. His head hit the concrete with a crack, and stars danced before his eyes for a few moments before he could clearly see the heartwarming sight of the enraged Minotaur standing on the top of the wall behind him.