Chereads / Art: A Tale of Heracles / Chapter 16 - Impossible

Chapter 16 - Impossible

The more Art looked the creature before him, the more he had difficulty believing it and yet there it was. It was impossible! Half-bull and half-man, Minos had said, but that did not seem accurate. The head and neck were that of a bull while the rest was human, but the skin of the creature looked to be tough as the toughest leather and a dull yellow colour like that of brass.

Chained and clad in a pink loincloth, the creature stared at Art with eyes that were neither those of a bull nor those of a human, but the eyes of something monstrous. Turning his gaze away from the young monster, the Young Gael looked at Minos and uttered: "I've never seen anything like him before."

"His name is Asterion, but everyone else calls him the Minotaur." Stated the Cretan Monarch. "The Athenian inventor Daedalus is working on a prison for him. Like your friend Thebe, Daedalus and his son Icarus are also in exile… I can only hope the prison will be inescapable, something like… Like this cannot be allowed out into the world! He would be worse than his paterfamilias and besides, I have plans for him."

Plans? What kind of plans? What plans could anyone have for a monster like this? The only plans for this abomination should have been to keep him imprisoned!

Suddenly, the Minotaur lunged at Art! Normally not one to hit a child, even if that child was a monstrous abomination, the Young Gael retaliated with punching the monster in the nose and making an exit from the room that the Minotaur was being kept in.

Art had heard of husbands that had left their wives' illegitimate children to be exposed. What plans could Minos have had for his stepson that required a monstrosity that lived off of the flesh of humanity to be kept alive?