Thread: Minotaur's New Owner (PsionicCuttlefish & alakazam)

Gruthon sighed as he scratched out another random design on a femur-bone with one of his talon-like nails. He had stopped keeping track of how long he was down here quite awhile ago, and was resorting to whatever little pastimes he could invent to fill his days. But even so, scratching artistic patterns into the bones of the things you had eaten was bound to get tiresome eventually. He was bored . But that's the way it went, when humans wanted their supernatural or superstrong guardians to a mind-bending labyrinth sitting on top of who-knows-what treasure, they never bothered to actually consider what the thoughts were of guardian they were assigning to the job. Gruthon sighed again, put down the bone he was working on, then stood up and patted down his long, slightly shaggy fur as he glared at the glowing sigil above the huge double-doors of the main antechamber. It had been about two years ago since the local human king had captured Gruthon the Minotuar, placed him inside this labyrinth, and sealed him in with powerful magic designed to compel him to be loyal to what the binding spell had anchored him to--in this case, the labyrinth itself--and compel him to kill anything and anyone that threatened the labyrinth or sought to take advantage of it. Or, more specifically, anyone who wanted to steal something from it. He could never leave as long as the spell was active, and all he could do was his job, which consisted of hunting down the odd thief in the maze of passageways who thought they had a chance at the treasure, or killing the occasional criminal the king above deliberately threw into the labyrinth to have Gruthon 'deal with'. At least the binding spell kept him sustained and nourished, it wouldn't do to have your undefeatable guardian drop dead from starvation after all, though Gruthon couldn't help but snack on anything and everything that made its way down here it helped to make him not feel like he was starving. Gruthon started to walk towards one of the secret side-passages, intending to wander around the labyrinth a bit. As a minotaur, he already had a natural instinctive sense of direction and location, and he already knew every inch of the labyrinth, knew what stones belonged where. There was nothing new or interesting about it, which was a big reason why he was so bored. But for now, maybe he'd go do the third room across from the tenth spiral-corridor, that had developed a nice water-leak that made a pleasant drip-drip-dripping sound... Gruthon then suddenly froze, and flicked his ears forward. Someone had just entered the labyrinth. Someone who didn't belong. As part of the binding spell, Gruthon could tell if anyone was in the labyrinth and their approximate location, all the better to hunt them down with. Not that he didn't -need- it, but it was there all the same. As he focused, he also picked up on another part of the spell being able to get a vauge idea of why someone was here, if they had anything to do with the labyrinth or vault. Gruthon could tell if they intended to threaten either, or if they wanted to take something that didn't belong to them. Thieves always fell into the latter part, which made the spell compel Gruthon to attack them. Criminals almost never had any threat against the labyrinth itself, but if they stayed too long even if it wasn't their choice, Gruthon was forced to attack anyway. The hunch then came to Gruthon--this new person was giving off I want desires....but not focused on the vault. Not a thief then or at least not a typical one, but what else could there be in the labyrinth that anyone could want? There seemed to be a threat against...the labyrinth itself? That was strange. New. Interesting. The spell buzzed in the back of Gruthon's mind, egging him on to seek out and attack the intruder, but until the threat was clear or immediate, Gruthon wasn't truly compeled just yet. This was the strangest, most not-boring thing that had happened in a long time, and Gruthon wanted to know what it was about. He hid in an alcove in the antechamber and settled down to track the intruder's progress. He'd let them reach the antechamber, then do his job...