Chapter 95: Ariadne, Two

When Theseus turned eighteen, the castle of Archizoun hosted a ball of courtship, for the prince to look for a suitable bride. The ballroom was lush with beauties, each more captivating than the last. The second daughter of Minos, Phaedra, tried vainly to get his attention, but Theseus found himself most taken by another particular lady.

“Who’s that?...”

“She’s beautiful…”

“Wearing a mask, how mysterious.”

This was no masked ball, but this woman wore a mask anyway: shiny brass, with two curved horns and a snout, imitating a bull. Below her mask her features were beautifully angular, her skin smooth as marble. Her dark hair was intricately braided. In her fierce mask and trailing scarlet peplos, she was a stunner drew the envious looks of everyone. Including his.

“Won’t you tell me your name?” he asked her as he followed her up a spiralling staircase. The lady didn’t make approach easy at all, gliding away on graceful feet whenever Theseus got closer. But Theseus was a hunter; the chase only further heightened his interest.

The bull-masked woman fanned herself coquettishly. “Why not you just give me one? You’ve always had a good sense for names.”

Theseus stumbled, catching himself on the railing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Below her mask, the woman smiled mystically. Theseus’ heart stuttered in his chest, and it was almost like he could smell the rain in the air again, the rain from that day.

From an open balcony door, a strong wind gusted in. Caught unawares, and because of his hairstyle specially done for the ball, his celery wreath hadn’t been sitting properly. The gale ripped the wreath from his head, and it drifted out of the gallery. Theseus yelped, his hand flying out to summon threads of Soleki to reel it back. But before he could do so, he heard the melodic chirping of birds.

…Birds?

Wide-eyed, Theseus watched as a flock of multicoloured sparrows dove from outside the balcony. They swam around the chandeliers of the castle ballroom, chirping, and the people on the ballroom floor stared up, amazed. The sparrows picked up the flyaway celery wreath in their tiny beaks, and flew back to where Theseus stood on the second floor of the gallery. Gently, the birds set the wreath on his head; two or three of them hopped around, tucking it securely in the prince’s dark hair, before they flocked away again.

Theseus turned to look at the woman, who was holding out her hand. One of the birds landed on her palm briefly, before flying off. Still smiling at him, she put a finger over her lips. “Can’t have you losing something like that,” she said.

A confusing response. Celery was relatively expensive for a peasant to afford, but for a prince it was nothing so precious. It was thus that Theseus wondered: did she know? However improbable it was, could she be…

At the end of the night, Theseus chose the woman to be his betrothed. A woman that he hadn’t asked the name of, but that he already knew. The woman who had made him chase after her the entire night giggled and said yes. Hand in hand they strode onto the elevated stage of the ballroom.

King Aegeus bid the bride-to-be to remove her mask. She pulled it off in a flourish, her black hair, now left long unwinding around her shoulders. For the first time since they were both ten, Ariadne stood in front of Theseus.

“Asterion?!” an enraged voice yelled out. It was the clan leader Minos, come to the ball because of his daughter Phaedra. He clearly had not expected to see another child of his here, and especially not this one—the one that he had personally estranged so many years ago. “What are you doing here? And in those… clothes!”

The crowd began to whisper among themselves.

“Is that the son of Minos that went missing many years back?”

“I knew there was something off about that girl.”

“Sun above, he looks hideous.”

“Is that why he disappeared? Did Minos send him away out of shame?”

King Aegeus was not happy, either. “Theseus, choose another woman at once. A real one this time.” Phaedra of Minos was waving at him from the crowd, her smile wide and sickeningly sweet.

Theseus’ face flushed. He’d just found Ariadne again after eight years. He had spent those days regretting, regretting so badly that he hadn’t defended her, back when she had needed someone the most. Now, he would’ve been mad to let her go again. “Ariadne is the most beautiful woman out of any other in this kingdom tonight. I won’t go with any other.”

The advisors exchanged a look. And hurriedly dragged them off the stage, ushering Ariadne, Theseus, Minos and King Aegeus into a private room.

“Be reasonable, your Majesty,” Theseus’ advisor said to him. “Don’t let your impulses sway you. You simply cannot marry someone like… that.”

“Why not? I’m the prince,” Theseus crossed his arms pompously. “I can do what I want.”

“I am the King and your father,” said Aegeus.

“What are you going to do if I don’t obey? Kill me?” questioned the brazen teenager.

“This is bigger than just yourself, Theseus. Don’t think that just because you’re immortal, that you can do whatever you wish without consequences. If you marry that person, the common population would never approve of it. They’d never accept your Queen. And you know what will happen. You will cease to be King, too, or even any kind of monarch.”

“What? It’s not like Ariadne’s some kind of peasant or commoner,” Theseus looked like he wanted to tear his hair out. “She’s of noble status too—and you’re saying, just because she was born a boy, she can’t be queen?”

“A man cannot be Queen,” said an advisor. “That is quite obvious.”

“Think about it too,” coaxed another. “The woman you know as Ariadne may be a noble, but she is also an ex-prince… it’s not difficult to see that this is just a ploy to get you ousted from the throne, and reinstate the Minos bloodline as royal. She’s merely tricking you for her family’s own ends.”

“Excuse me—what bloodline do you speak of? What family?” Ariadne cried at last, fists in her red skirt. “Sir Minos disowned me a long time ago. I haven’t been a child of Minos for years now.”

“Then where’d you get your fine clothes, and that mask from? If you aren’t a noble, then you’re a petty thief. Theseus, do you really want to marry a criminal like that?”

“I didn’t steal these, I got them through my own means-”

“Enough,” Minos boomed. The former king sank heavily into his chair, pinching his brows. Then he reopened his eyes, gaze sharp.

“How about a deal?” Minos said. “My child. I will give you a chance to prove yourself to me. Complete this quest, and by my power, I will ensure all will address and see you the way you wish to be seen. In fact, I’ll welcome you back into the line of Minos, if you wish.”

Ariadne opened her mouth-

“No, Ariadne. You don’t even know what you’re agreeing to,” Theseus said, panicked. “You could die if you do.”

“I want to be recognised,” Ariadne said dourly. “That is worth more to me than any life of mine. If this is my chance then so be it. Name your price.”

King Aegeus caught Minos’ eye, and he nodded along. “I agree to the terms.”

“Very well,” Minos said. “I want you to enter the heart of the Cretan Labryinth, alone. Within it you’ll find a monster. Slay it and bring me its head.”

An impossible task, doomed to failure. No one who entered the Cretan Labryinth could ever escape it. Theseus and the royal retinue of Aegeus brought Ariadne to its edge. As Theseus watched the young woman walk down the concentric staircase, he remembered the rumours back then of Ariadne throwing herself into the frothing ocean, and thought that this was not so different.

Of course, it was a trick all along. After Ariadne had gone in, King Aegeus and Minos together spread the myth of the monster within the Labryinth, They called it the Minotaur. A creature that was unimaginably hideous, a half-bull and half-man that, if broken loose from its lair, would come into the kingdom and eat villagers. They promised a grand reward to whoever could capture and slay the creature. And then, when adventurers inevitably didn’t emerge from the maze, they chalked up the disappearances to the Minotaur’s terrifying appetite.

Years passed like this. There was no way that Ariadne was still alive down there. She would have starved to death. But, as if knowing what the two Kings had done from beyond the grave, a new misfortune befell Archizoun. That being the red-eyed, clicking spiders. The Minotaur’s Spider claimed hundreds of lives every month, and nothing seemed to be able to ward it nor cure its venom.

As part of their earlier agreement, Aegeus and Minos had prevented Theseus from going after Ariadne, for fear he would help her escape. But now they were left with no choice. Finally Theseus was sent to deal with the threat. Stepping between the flaming pillars of the Labryinth’s entrance, the celery wreath on his head began to glow. It was by following this unspooling golden thread that Theseus uncovered the heart of the Cretan Labryinth. And the monster within. The monster she had become… the Spider Matriarch.

~~~

“She was beyond saving, but I couldn’t bring myself to kill her. How could I have killed her?” Theseus mumbled. “My one true love?”

Standing in the room of the Shifting Sands, the air was silent for a moment.

“Yeah,” Jemi Garen nodded. “I think I know what’s going on now.”

“See, I knew you would understand-”

“-and I call horseshit,” Jemi interrupted.

Theseus blinked. “You seriously think I made all that up?”

“No, I believe the story is true. But your sob story is still an obvious attempt at garnering sympathy and distracting from the point. Your true love isn’t the reason why you won’t return to the Labryinth. If Ariadne was so beyond saving, why did she let you go? And, given that she’s already let you go once, why would you be scared of going in there again?”

“Because I don’t want to face her again, not when she’s like this,” Theseus said, hands cradling his face. “You’d know if you saw her.”

“Okay, then don’t come,” Jemi switched up. “I believe the wreath will work. I don’t actually need you; the Cockatrice is strong enough. I’ll go in, kill the Minotaur, and solve this mess myself.”

“No!” Theseus blurted. “Don’t kill her.”

“Why? Because you love her? If you really loved her, why would you have escaped from the Labryinth without bringing her? What kind of person wouldn’t go mad stuck in a place like that? Maybe there was something that could have cured her once she was out. Certainly, freeing her from the Labryinth could have put an end to her spiders’ vengeance.”

“......” Theseus was backed into a corner.

“Well, I must congratulate you for your efforts. You might have been able to fool any other person,” Jemi said, “but not me. Because I’m someone who already knows about it.”

“About what?”

“Ariadne told you, didn’t she?” Jemi said. “About the life debt spell.”

Turquoise eyes widened.

“You couldn’t kill her, because she saved your life once, and now your life belongs to her. Ariadne is the one and only thing that can take that from you… so if she dies, you’ll die too. She, immortal prince, is your mortal weakness.”

~~~