The Exodus Sagas: Book I - Of Spiders And Falcons by Jason R Jones Page A

the sign of the cold that he was near. His father, Tathlyn, had told him which cavern to follow and when the uprising distraction from the gladiatorial arena happened he did what he was told. His younger brother was left there, and many others that were on the wrong side of the arena deep in the earth when the moment struck. Tychaeus had been as much a friend as a brother, and friendship in the deep slave city of Unlinn was something rare and to be kept quiet. His scars grew uncomfortable, feeling them tingle with life and sensations that had been very long lost. So many scars, markings of hundreds of battles and kills, he had those and his slave tattoos to remember this place with. He had hoped to be with many other minotaurs, a few humans, even dwarves that had been enslaved or born into it like Saberrak had, but they had all been hunted down by the pet gladiators of the owners or lost in these strange winding tunnels. Depending on the violated property master, ogre, human, or a host of other races, an attempted escape could mean anywhere from fifty lashes and the pit or death outright. Saberrak’s master, Zeress the Black, a foul ogre warrior with a passion for tattoos and marking his combatants, would have a public slaughter and charge double in the arena for the viewing. He would also do it himself, Saberrak had seen, with his metal whip and curved serrated blade. It was a known custom to cut a minotaurs horn as a sign of defeat and dishonor and the gray beast had seen his master perform a few of those displays to ones who disobeyed, seen it entirely too close. His rewards were black ink to mark victories, Saberrak rubbed under his eyes where two mirrored patterns adorned his face, tattoos mimicking the curved horns on either side of his head. He had been awarded, more forced, those markings from a pit fight with just himself against a Misathi giant that stood twice as tall as he did. His test of “manhood”, Zeress had called it, a fourteen foot tall test that he was not supposed to survive.
    He could smell them now, Chalas and his two bestial cousins, closer now and Saberrak picked up his pace in the quiet darkness. He climbed over ledges, around stalagmites, and over underground pools that seemed lifeless and dreary. He dodged small chasms that he found ways around and down slick and cold drops into still more cavern. Using his chain and hook, he climbed over a ledge twice as tall as he, hoping the minotaurs that pursued would lose his trail. The horned gladiator could hear now, his enemies closing, sloshing the water, and the clack of hooves. The white minotaurs, besides red eyes and shaggy hair, had hooves instead of feet, unlike the rest of his kind. Most minotaurs suspected this was due to their closeness to beast as opposed to man. His kind, the grays were known for hunting, his red cousins famous for their fearless brutality, the dark browns for their wickedness, and his black skinned descendants for their silence and wisdom, passing down generations of history to one another. None of them truly recognized their unkempt albino descendants as anything but a disgrace to the minotaur breed. The gladiator snapped out of his thoughts and prejudices and moved on.
    Close now , maybe a hundred or so steps behind me he thought. Saberrak saw light, not the thousand torches of the arena or the foul smelling lantern radiance either. White light, from cracks in the top of the cavern, too far to reach, and plants growing through the cracks, or had been growing but now dead from the cold, roots of some sort he imagined. Over fifty feet for certain, but there they were, seven, no eight, beams of soft light from ceiling to floor and a bit of a cold stirring movement in the air. He kept moving in this strange environ, despite the fascination, the minotaur was well aware of his chase and the consequences of his capture should he fail. He rounded a turn in the cavern that had still more lines of white from above and the walls