Chapter 71: The Season of the Minotaur (20)

The Muse’s freedom spelled Whispermire’s demise.

Simon had foreseen that there would be a disaster following her escape from the seal, but he had underestimated its sheer scale. He had anticipated a quake or something conventional, while missing a more insidious possibility.

A dryad was the soul of her manatree, and the Darkwood’s one had finally resumed its natural lifecycle after centuries of interruption. It gorged itself on all the wayward souls lost in its miasma, on all the pain and memories of hundreds of thousands victims. Energy stored across centuries of stunted growth was suddenly released into the tree.

And thus it bloomed.

Simon could only observe the ongoing madness with horror through his throne room’s crystal ball. Black flowers had appeared all over its branches and its roots had spread all across the region, tearing apart hills and houses in a tide of hungry wood. This unchecked growth caused tremors and quakes that could be felt all the way from the Halls of the Minotaur. The Darkwood expanded outward until it swallowed Whispermire and its surrounding farmlands in minutes, bathing them in massive quantities of poisonous miasma.

“Help us, Lord Belias!” “My children can’t breathe!” “They’re buried alive!” “The miasma caught up to us, please help!”

A flow of telepathic messages continued to buzz in Simon’s mind at such a frantic rate he had to focus to even think. Each of them felt like a dagger to the heart, doubly so since his plan to evacuate Whispermire was swiftly turning into a fiasco. His people’s efforts to leave the city for the countryside simply meant it took half an hour for the Darkwood to reach them rather than minutes.

His cult might have been in control of Whispermire, but it only covered a fraction of the population, and not all of them had been blessed with Brands of Gluttony to avoid possible discovery. This meant most of the population had no protection against miasma’s poisonous effects.

This was a disaster.

“Stop this!” Simon commanded the Muse. “Stop this madness right now!”

“I… cannot…” the Stone Muse hissed, black veins straining beneath her skin. “This is… my nature… all I can do is… redirect the miasma…”

“Then do it!” Simon ordered sternly. “Create breathable hollows for my followers and keep the miasma away from the Goetia Research Center.”

“I fear nothing short of burning down the miasma tree will halt its blooming, Your Majesty,” Duchar warned him with his usual detachment. He had spent the last few hours or so constantly casting analysis spells to better understand the process. “It is catching up on several lost centuries of growth in mere hours.”

“The Darkwood will engulf half of Magvolia at this rate,” Hector rasped.

Maybe all of it once the comet crosses the Minotaur constellation and empowers the Muse further, Simon thought grimly. The sheer scale of the chaos and death toll weighed heavily on him. Thousands are dying.

Simon telepathically commanded his cultists to lead the survivors to pockets of air safe from miasma, but he knew in his heart that most were already condemned. The Muse’s return would be paved with so many corpses.

There was no way the War Party wouldn’t react to this sudden threat either. A fleet of airships might be on their way to bombard the Darkwood as they spoke. Simon had mentally contacted Shabram to serve as an intermediary and sent gargoyle messengers west, asking for a peaceful meeting and promising his support against Euphemia, but he had no idea whether Lauriane and Louis would listen or even believe him. Could they even establish communications in time?

This won’t stick, Simon told himself to assuage his guilt. This will all go away. One day, I will wake up with the tools to stop this. I will soon have the knowledge I need to prevent this disaster from ever happening again.

This had to be worth the cost. It had to.

Thankfully, there was some cause for rejoicing amidst all this nonsense. Simon looked up from his crystal ball to see a familiar, loving face ascending up the sanctum’s stairs.

“So this is the Halls of the Minotaur,” Cassandra noted as she looked around, her fellow witches following in her wake with Nora carrying a magical lantern in hand. She smiled at Simon and her family. “I am glad to see you safe and sound, Simon. I had feared I would find this place in ruins, with you alone among the ashes.”

“As you can see, your fears were unwarranted,” Simon replied upon greeting her. “The Halls of the Minotaur will become a much better place to live with you in it.”

“Thank you kindly.” Cassandra spotted the Muse and honored her with a respectful bow. “It is a pleasure to meet you, milady.”

Her kindness was wasted on the Muse. “You treacherous priestess, a false friend you have been.” She then glared at Simon. “I can smell his scent on you, bedwarmer. Even his promises of bliss and union were lies.”

“Says the creature who intended to betray her liberator from the very beginning rather than hold up her end of the bargain,” Simon replied scornfully. How could such an ancient and powerful being be so petty? “You lost. Accept your defeat with grace.”

“There has to be a loophole,” the Muse replied, clearly not taking the hint. “I will study the contract until I find a flaw, overlooked and deadly.”

“You don’t have enough time to waste, Beloved.” Simon turned to the demons and cultists in the room. “Clear the sanctum.”

The dust left behind by the four treacherous cultists in the room did wonders for discipline, and everyone except the Muse and the Honorius family left the throne room. This would be for the better. Gaining control over the Muse’s power was secondary to compelling her to answer questions too important for minions to overhear.

“I need answers you alone can provide,” Simon said. “I have waited for them long enough.”

“I will tell you no–” A surge of pain coursed through the Muse, the mere thought of disobedience punished by the contract and replaced with meek obedience. “What do you wish to learn, Beloved?”

“I am not talking to you, Muse. Not yet, at least.” Simon glared at the miasma crystal embedded in her forehead. “Answer your master’s call, Minotaur.”

The Muse stared at him for a moment, her expression torn by incomprehension. Her face twisted as she tried to make sense out of the request. Perhaps she had forgotten where the dryad ended and where the demon began after sharing their essence for four centuries.

But then the fiend answered.

The Muse was wracked with pain as the crystal in her forehead shone with a baleful, otherworldly orange glow. The dryad screamed in agony in a way that caused Cassandra and even Simon himself to wince in brief sympathy, followed by disquiet as her skull morphed and changed in the most hideous of ways. Her face ripped open along her nose like two halves of a mask sliding away to reveal another visage beneath; one without beauty nor any hint of humanity.

“I just had the longest of dreams,” said a deep and terrible voice.

The creature whose face had emerged from the Muse’s bore its title of Minotaur well. Two great bull horns each capable of skewering a man whole framed a demonic visage of exposed white bone and purple flesh. Orange glowing eyes radiated evil over a maw of sharp dagger fangs.

“I dreamed of you, wicked knight,” the archfiend said with a voice that echoed in both the sanctum and inside Simon’s own skull. “I dreamed that we were one, casting this world into discord… your father’s blood dripping down our horns and watering our mouth with joy.”

The same feeling of longing that had taken Simon over when he first saw the Muse briefly returned; the sensation that the crystal called out to him, that it had been made for him, and his destiny had always been to join with it since he was born under the Minotaur’s stars. It didn’t last long before Indomitable Crown cancelled out the effect, but Simon could see that Cassandra seemed slightly unnerved by the crystal upon feeling its call. Simon took her hand into his own, his touch drawing her out of her trance.

He is rather verbose for an archfiend… and intelligent too, Simon thought. He had half-expected a savage personality similar to the creatures his constellation took its name from, but the Minotaur Zodiac Fiend sounded ancient, almost wise. This is no bull-headed brute. I’d better tread carefully, even with the contract.

Moreover, that dream of his… was it a previous reign? Did the Minotaur receive flashes of past possibilities like Simon had dreamed of his father’s various deaths?

“You remember it, don’t you? That dream of what should have been.” A black tongue slithered between the demon’s fangs. “It was foretold that you would come here to merge thy spirit and flesh with mine. You would have shattered my chains, and I would have freed you in ways you cannot fathom. We would have been magnificent together.”

Simon recalled that his father’s list of deaths explicitly excluded Simon from Zodiac Fiend-related deaths. Considering how his mother had taken him close to Magvolia in his youth, he must have ended up meeting the Minotaur more than once.

What does that say of me? Simon thought grimly. That I had the potential to become the Paladin in one reign, and to sell my soul to a demon for revenge in another?

“That possibility is long past.” Simon could feel the possessive revulsion of the Overlord’s spirit inside him, like a dragon breathing smoke at a thief approaching too close to its hoard. “I can tell my Class would not allow such a union. We’ve met too late, I’m afraid.”

“Yes… yes, I know that.” The demon let out what could pass for a sigh of sorrow. “Mardok cheated me once again. He stole you from me, corrupted you as he corrupted this entire world and cast its future into darkness.”

Was he aware of the reigns? Or could he simply sense that something was wrong with the timeline?

“Fascinating,” Duchar muttered, having spent minutes looking at the spot where the Muse’s face turned into the Minotaur’s own. “It is my first time seeing a demon and its host forcefully coexisting without merging. Do you have to take turns, or does your host suppress you unless forced to relinquish control?”

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“This tree is a prison,” the Minotaur lamented. “I have dreamed for so long, trapped between the past and the future, reaching out for one without ever reaching either. The chains you put on us dragged me out of my slumber for a time, but I will soon fade away again. This is torture, for both my host and myself. Our spirits ache to join, but there are bleeding wounds where our minds should meld together.”

A brief flash of compassion flared in Cassandra’s eyes. Only she could feel empathy for a sealed demon. “What is your name, great archfiend?”

“I am Asterion, the Minotaur. The spinner of the wheel of death and rebirth, he who presides over cycles of violence.” The Minotaur turned his loathsome gaze onto Cassandra. “You too could become my soulmate. What is it that you seek, daughter of demonkind? Immortality? A loved one’s rebirth? Life and death are mine to command.”

“Do not dare,” Hector threatened upon drawing his axe. “Or I will chop your wooden vessel low…”

“The contract prevents you from touching her without my say-so,” Simon reminded him. He and Duchar had covered their bases. “Stay in your place, Asterion, unless you want an early return trip to the Abyss.”

“I wouldn’t mind merging with him, Simon,” Cassandra replied with far too much aplomb for the situation. “If we could free the Muse and have the contract transferred over to me, I could help you both.”

“It would be a most wonderful experiment, my daughter, but I would advise caution,” Duchar decided. “This entity is clearly a unique fiend unlike any others I have ever encountered. It warrants further study and observation before practical study.”

“Father, sister…” A rather aghast Hector shook his head. “You cannot be serious… this is madness.”

“You are being far too hasty with this,” Simon agreed, glaring at the Minotaur. “Try to deceive us at your own peril.”

The demon’s eyes dimmed. “It doesn’t matter,” he said with a quieter voice all of a sudden. “None of this matters.”

“What do you mean?” Cassandra asked, a frown on her face.

“This universe is…” Asterion hesitated on the word a moment. “Wrong. I can feel it. A wrongness… and you are at the center of it all.” He glanced at Simon with an emotion he didn’t think an archfiend could be capable of: unease. “What have you done to the world, Simon?”

Simon’s spine stiffened as he sensed phantom fingers on his throat. His hand reached out to his neck and found nothing, yet he continued to feel an ominous, invisible presence pressing against his skin.

“Simon?” Cassandra asked upon sensing his unease. “Is something wrong?”