Archive of Our Own

part i. lupa capitoline.

It was about the movement of the cape, not the color.

Luigi explains again, on his knees by the fireplace as Aldo’s two plastic toys collide, that bulls can’t actually see the color red. It’s an incendiary shade, a hue bled through the fabric for the benefit of the audience alone. Red; a catchall for hunger and sex, for fury and violence. The animal doesn’t know this, has no preconceptions embroidered into the fabric of his social order. All the bull ever sees is a taunting piece of fabric being waved in its face.

“I want to go to a bull fight,” Aldo mumbles, clopping the cow’s plastic hooves against the brick hearth. “Dad won’t even let me watch one on tv.”

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Luigi watches fondly as Aldo walks his toys across the bricks. In the other room, he can hear silverware clanging as his brother cleans up after dinner, another Saturday evening feast ingrained within Mario’s visits. They almost only ever hug on Sundays, when they part, which is well because Luigi has a hard time letting him go long enough to see him home.

“You are too young to see a bullfight,” he agrees with a small smile. “They are very violent.”

Exasperated by his father’s echoed sentiment, Aldo clicks two of the figurines together and sighs. “When I’m old enough, will you take me?”

Luigi pushes up on his hands to sit on the hearth, considering that. The warmth of the fire licks his back as he looks around his living room, pointing his attention at details that have become too familiar to notice. The yellow-tinted photographs of himself on the back of a bull; a never-used embroidered cape, hung like a tapestry above the worn couch; the framed newspaper clipping, its front page sporting a black-and-white image of him with his arms full of trophies.

Sometimes it feels like all he’s done with his life is fight. Or, at least, shroud himself in the cloak of a fighter.

He feels that gloomy smile pulling at his mouth. “I don’t know, Aldo,” he says, his answer perhaps too quiet to hear. “I would find it very sad now.”

“What was the biggest ever bull you ever killed?” his nephew asks suddenly, a renewed intensity in the words. When Luigi looks down, the boy’s eyes are huge with wonder, plastic figures forgotten at his feet.

Before Luigi can answer, Aldo is climbing up onto the bricks beside him, tumbling gracelessly onto the hearth. “It was the minotaur, right? The dragon?”

He opens his mouth to respond and Aldo cuts in again.

“Mom read me the story.”

Luigi closes his mouth and smiles, his memories momentarily soft before the butter-smooth blur is torched by the details. It had been a big deal at the time; someone had even illustrated a picture book of it. Of course, they’d drawn a brutish monster, ugly, its fur matted and mouth foaming. In some depictions Bowser was a furred beast, the terror waiting in the heart of the labyrinth. In others he was a fire-breathing dragon, curled high up around a castle, his talons long and bloody, his teeth as sharp as swords.

They always painted Luigi out to be vaingloriously handsome by comparison, muscled in a way he’d never really been.

“Was he really that big?” Aldo stretches his arms over his head, splaying his fingers wide. “Big as a house?”

Luigi pauses, thinking, and a smile pries his lips upward again. Then, with a conspiratorial glance up through his lashes, he points his eyes to the horns mounted above his fireplace.

In the book, he pries them off the minotaur’s scalp, ripping them clean. He lifts the horns triumphantly into the air as sunlight rolls golden down his back, and the blood of the beast drips like wet rubies off his elbows.

Aldo follows his gaze, then gasps as he seems to realize what they are. The legend he begs to hear recited has been right above his head all along, every time he’s visited, disguised as a piece of furniture.

Except- except one look at them and you would see that these are not the garish, mangled horns that the storybook makes them out to be. Years later, the beast’s dermal bones are still polished to a perfect curve, ending in clean spears. He still rubs them down from time to time, restoring them to their chalky gloss. The jewelry- the collars, the spikes, the chains- they had all intended to add to the overarching sense of grandeur when Bowser stepped out into the ring, but really, it was his horns that preceded him.

He is not just a beast, the crowds were told through the booming voice of the colosseum. He is a thing of legends.

From the moment he saw him, Luigi had thought so too.

When he was young, Luigi truly believed that it was his mind, not his body, that would have immortalized him.

After long days on the farm, he spent his nights slogging down liquor in dingy bars, pretending that his cheeks were pinkened not by a sheepish sense of boyish inadequacy, but by pride and a swollen gut. It’s what worldlier men, traveling from the western continent, drank, because their elixirs were still banned in North America.

He supposes that he enjoyed swilling the deathly-green imported Absinthes and herbier Amaros around in his cheek, perhaps even liked the sting as it burned its way into his chest more forcefully than wine. But mostly he liked the way that his inhibitions dissolved, chipping away at a brain suppressed by hours of labor, and how he could suddenly take his thoughts to a damp sheaf of napkin, scribbling ideas that would become smudged and crumpled once he stuffed them into his pocket.

Sometimes he’d wake in the street at midday, with his temples throbbing and a heavy chest. Sometimes he’d find himself tucked in a bed of hay in the corner of the barn, blushing and stiff when Mario woke him in a fit, scrambling so they could still meet the fields before dawn.

In some ways, the nights out made everything worse. With only those glimpses of his true self to slake him, he was never satisfied. Mario was masculine by birth, strong and earthen, a hero to the farm, but what Luigi wanted was much more slippery to describe. He wanted to be seen. He wanted to be known. He wanted a soft place to curl up safe, a place with bread and sunlight and pillows.

He did not expect to be as good at fighting as he was.

He’d always assumed that he had no capacity for violence, but as it turned out, he just never had the taste for it. Eighteen and fresh-faced, he came upon his first first street fight drunk and stumbling. His fist barely connected with either of the three boys, but when it did, it hurt his hand more than it hurt them. There were only a few bills in his wallet, but they pocketed his dignity when they took it, tossing it in the air and laughing as he moaned on the pavement.

He had never wanted to feel like the weakest person in the room again. His whole life, a part of him had always known that he was the smaller brother. Weaker in fortitude, in spirit, in masculinity of mind. Good with the goats but too mild-mannered to ever carry his own weight. Lying there helpless, in that moment he understood that if he were to lose Mario, he would be dead in the street, not just wasted and aching.

A week later, he was wrestling.

Before very long, and to his complete surprise, Luigi had outgrown human competitors. Their patterns were too predictable, too governed by reason. He needed something that would challenge him. He needed something wild.

He made the decision to apprentice with his cousin’s friend, moving into a crumbling dormitory nestled on a huge plot of land.

In the fields behind the school, Luigi’s mentor paired him up with a small calf. He still remembers that first fight as though it were stamped into the book of his life.

The cow’s eyelashes were soft, elongated halos surrounding the pacified black shine of its eyes. Together the two of them riled her into a frenzy, confusing and taunting her until she became a storming, whipping force.

The most important step in acclimating was making sure he could tolerate getting hit. With her horns nothing more than stubby mounds swallowed by fur, there was no fear of being gored. Still he was bucked, and thrashed, and charged all the same.

First he learned how to goad them. Then how to leap up onto their backs and hold fast, refusing to be thrown.

Luigi had always marveled at the delicacy of the human body. In the face of all these monumental forces- the heat waves that ripped through the valley, the guns that had taken down half of his cousins, the weaponized teeth on the head of a bull- he did not know how flesh and tendons so constantly survived the brutality of life.

Slowly, as he was repeatedly tossed to the ground and beaten by stronger opponents, he started to understand how much a body could withstand.

His bruises faded back into baked, smooth skin. His cuts sealed themselves. When his ribs broke, two months of moaning and drinking and rolling around in soft sweaters in the infirmary were all that it took to repair them.

It was not about strength after all, he found out. It was about resilience.

The moment he shed his fear of death, the technique became more important than the idea of winning. Instantly, bullfighting morphed from violence to art. It stopped being a sport and started being an outlet.

Luigi had been teased back home for what he saw in the eyes of the goats, but for the first time his ability to peer into the souls of animals afforded him the gift of foresight. He knew, just from the act of gazing, what it would take for them to give up.

After clawing his way out of Italy and into the ring, he began as a picador, chasing bulls on horseback until they’d become exhausted and enraged, ready for the matador initiating his third and final stage of the fight.

It wasn’t just the idea of glory that made him want to become more than just the coward who goaded the bull; it was that same knowing that he met in their eyes, that pervading sense that he and they were the same. It was the truth that they were doomed regardless, and how whenever he heard the crowd’s verbal outrage at a shitty estocada, he knew he could do better. That his kills would be clean and precise. That his bloodlust would be lovingly controlled. A dance, not a battle.

Because he was a wild thing too. Because where he came from, being soft meant being untamed.

The world had stirred him into a frenzy, so far from his birthed nature that sometimes his brother still looked upon him, no longer taunting with affectionate or exasperated candor, but rather with an unmistakable sadness in his eyes, reserved only for the things that have turned and cannot be turned back.

In the comfort of his living room, Luigi tells Aldo what it was like to dance with the bull. How he communicated with it, conveying a false sense of submission before beginning the fighting ritual. He doesn’t share the way that death hovered over them from the moment they made contact. How it hung in the air, always certain, constantly shifting from man to beast.

Thoughtfully, he trails his eyes over the figure that Aldo has left lying on the brick, its tan belly swollen and spotted. As a younger man, he’d worked with them so frequently that sometimes he stopped discerning between their bodies and his. In his dreams, he wouldn’t quite be quadrupedal and snorting, but he’d be close, bulky and simple, curled up with them in the barn with his fingers threaded through their short, soft fur.

He describes what it was like to emerge from the ring’s tunnel, an arm in the air with his cape billowing behind. How the sun beat down on the chalky dust in the ring, coating them all in a clay that baked their skins. Suited in his traditional uniform, embroidered with its gleaming studs, he wouldn’t even realize how heavy it was until it was over. Only afterwards would he notice the sweat streaming down his neck, leaving his hair in a tousled mess. Only then would he realize the way his hands were shaking.

“But I want to know about the Minotaur,” Aldo whines, cutting off a story about his longest fight.

“He’ll have to tell you the rest tomorrow.” Mario’s voice cuts through the open door. He leans against the door frame, giving his son a pointed look before he can protest.

Aldo opens his mouth to whine. “Aldo,” he insists firmly.

Luigi knows that Mario doesn’t like him sharing these stories with his son. He’s afraid it might feed the childhood violence that even the mildest boys in their family seemed prone to. But all the same, Luigi had seen him leaning in the arch of the doorway, after the leftover spaghetti had been packed away and all the dishes were washed, listening to him talk.

All of a sudden Mario hunches over and stalks heavily into the room, grabbing Aldo up in a loud fit of grunts and roars, making him squeal in delight.

After he’s been read to sleep, his brother will come back downstairs to share a cup of coffee with him before bed. He’ll sigh into the steaming mug, nudging one of Aldo’s toys with a chubby finger.

“I’m trying to keep him well rounded,” he’ll say with a sort of hapless exasperation. “But all he ever wants to talk about is fighting.”

Luigi will remember poetry scribbled on napkins. He’ll remember watching the olive trees sway, the cloud-marbled blue sky on their farm broken by the leaves of fruit trees, and those dreams of lying on his back with his head rested in the soft fur of a cow, his own limbs becoming gently curved, then hooved.

He will think about how he had to become wild if he wanted to be with them. How he was forced to meet their bodies not with his fur, but with his horns.

“He has other interests, Mario,” Luigi will promise his brother quietly, watching his brown eyes open, seeking. “Just pay close attention.”

But for now he is alone again, the crackle of the fire a whispering companion, and the horns mounted above his mantle a silent act of love.

part ii. suit of lights.

Luigi sits on the bannister that divides the bleachers from the ring, gripping the railing in his hands.

The sun sets, first golden, then red, gleaming off the deserted chrome seats. All of the hand-made banners and ticket stubs and trash has been swept away, removing all trace of the audience that had been there either. Even the dirt, which he’d left whipped up and soaked in blood, has been tilled back down, ready to welcome other players tomorrow.

Luigi fishes into his pocket and puts his mouth on a leather flask, squinting against the glare.

Five hours ago, the stadium had been alight with screaming and chanting. His body had surged with adrenaline, and he’d used it to fuel a wild chase around the ring with a bull that was twice the size of his average competitor. It was a delight. In those moments before the end, it was always a delight.

Distractedly, he pulls at the cape wrapped around his bare shoulders. The red fabric has been torn, ripped full of holes, and there are spots where the dye has failed to mask the bloodstains.

A delight, and another dead animal. He pulls it tighter around his shoulders, shivering.

There was a parade afterwards. The more prolific fans carried cut-outs of his face, which they tied around their heads or stuck to sticks and thrust into the air. Someone had grabbed him and lifted him when he’d walked through, groping hungrily at him as he passed.

The whole event has left shreds of pink and orange confetti tangled up in his hair, fluffy now that the sweat has dried. He gives it a good shake and the colors rain down, fluttering over the railing and into the pit below.

“Celebrating?”

The voice cuts through his solitude. His own language in his ears always carries a familiar, home-sick taste. He feels Emilio clap down on his shoulder, rattling him with a friendly shake.

He smiles back at the man as he stays balanced drunkenly on the metal bannister, wondering if he’d survive the fall into the pit.

“Drowning,” he babbles through a self-conscious flush, resting his chin on the bottle’s mouth. “Drowning my misery.”

Emilio leans over the railing, looking out across the ring. “Never sponsored a great matador who didn’t brood instead of celebrate,” he says, flashing Luigi a sharp grin. “For one reason or another.”

Luigi lazily hands the bottle to his manager, then shakes out the cape. He curls up with it like a blanket, thinking of sharp horns and strong legs, wishing that for once they would grind him into the earth.

“You still won, Luigi,” Emilio says, shrugging. “You still deserved that win.”

“Emilio…” he answers, reaching out and snatching a fly out of the air. He splays his fingers open and lets it go again. “Being invited to Madrid, I thought that meant I’d made it. But here they just rig their bulls.”

For a moment, Emilio is silent. Then, softly, “it is just a precaution, Luigi. So that nobody gets hurt.”

Luigi rolls his eyes up to look at the sky, dragging them over the bloated, molten of the clouds set against a purpling sky. It is beautiful, and he is wholly uninspired by everything below it.

“It’s a precaution,” he winces bitterly, “so that important gamblers won’t lose their bets.”

“This is a big venue,” Emilio returns sharply, though now it sounds like he’s playing devil’s advocate more than arguing for something he believes in. “It’s better to defer to the politics of the city than risk them abusing your reputation.”

Luigi swings his gaze back over the ring again. “Yeah,” he says defeatedly. “I suppose that is true.”

He’d been excited to fight here because it was so high profile. It was supposed to be a challenge after all the easy wins he’d collected in the smaller towns he started in, rings he’d outgrown and competitors he’d outpaced. To him, that did not mean having someone shocking the bull to the ground just because it appeared he didn’t have the upper hand.

He would not have lost. But now he couldn’t deny that he was not the reason he won.

“Do I have permission to make you feel better?”

Luigi glances over and he is met with those sparkling apple-colored eyes, and a grin sharp enough to gore him. He uncurls from his somber ball, planting his palms on the railing and shifting to take a look.

Emilio takes a small poster out of his back pocket. He unfolds it until it opens, revealing a fully-illustrated paper flier. Eyebrows furrowed, Luigi studies the picture.

“What is this?” he asks softly. Forehead furrowed, he takes the paper from Emilio’s hands.

The illustration depicts something that is not quite an animal, but not fully a man. It straddles the line with its upright posture and broad shoulders, and though it begins rather bovine, it ends almost reptilian. Sparkling, lovingly-shaded glowing scales, claws on its hands and feet, gleaming as brightly as the jagged teeth tumbling out of its mouth. It has horns, but also a shell. It is a monstrosity. A beast forged in mythology, albeit one he’s never heard of before.

“It is your next fight,” Emilio says, nudging him. “If you want it.”

Luigi swipes his thumb over the drawn curve of the creature’s neck, following the tendons, thick as cords, with his fingertip. The Mighty Minotaur Lizard the pamphlet boasts in blood-red script above its head, the words cut through by his huge horns.

“Minotaur.” Luigi stares at it for a second. “Not really the right thing to call it,” he mumbles, mostly to himself. Then he lets out a surprised laugh. “Is this from a children’s book?”

“It’s real!” Emilio instists. Then, “er- apparently.” He grins, tone taking on a campfire-like quality. “At the very least, there’s talk. There’s a rumor in Spanish circles that all who have gone up against it have returned mangled, or worse.”

Luigi blinks. “Minotaur,” he repeats, looking at it once more, but still the word does not fit. It is much more like a dragon than a bull.

All the same, Luigi does not believe in cabinets of curiosities. People like to gaze with wondrous, horrified expressions upon carnival cages filled with disfigurement. They are attractions for those who cannot see the wickedness all around them, and instead must turn accusing eyes onto the bodies of the innocently different.

Emilio sighs, then looks candidly at him. “I’m only suggesting this because I know you don’t care about the fame. You want a challenge, Luigi, I see it burning inside of you. Burning through you, down to nothing.” He shrugs furtively. “Me, I am here to want the fame for you. And I know you would slay this thing.”

Luigi smiles to himself, wrapping the cape around him. “And afterwards I fight a cyclops?” he asks amusedly. “Or a chimera, or a unicorn?”

“A unicorn would be right up your alley,” Emilio grins. “Handsome, and deadly, and very popular with younger girls.”

Scoffing, Luigi looks down at the flier in his hands. “We pay for the fight?” he frowns, skimming the text at the bottom.

Emilio’s eyes gleam. “It won’t be cheap, but it will be worth its weight if you succeed. And,” he adds, reaching out to grip Luigi’s arm fervently. “I believe in you, Luigi. I have never believed in a fighter more than I believe in you now.”

Luigi draws back to think. Soaked with the bull’s blood, his cape billows in the wind. The sun is half-swallowed by the horizon now, casting a semicircle of darkness over the stadium, but still he feels each ray reach his skin through the holes in the fabric.

Luigi runs a hand through his mess of hair and looks over at Emilio. Hesitantly, expecting both nothing and somehow the world of this offer, he gives his manager a cautious nod.

Luigi lies in the boarding house, staring at the wooden slats above. Bottle-green light trickles down through the boards, casting a pale glow on his bed. He can hear a guitar being strummed somewhere, and every so often, a foot comes stomping down to keep pace with the rhythm.

He closes his eyes and listens to the tune, hoping it will lull him to sleep.

It doesn’t. As it often is after a fight, his mind remains lit by images and sounds. The bull lingers on his periphery, its spirit still palpable, his muscles mourning that rightness in the moment that they had synced perfectly.

On his back, immobilized by exhaustion and aches and one too many ounces of tequila, Luigi rolls onto his side. His fingers flex, thirsting.

Finally he gives in, pulling the flier off his dresser.

The hotel room is no bigger than a water closet. It smells and looks like the family barn, were the piles of hay to have been transformed into a down-bed, and the animals into pieces of furniture.

Across town, Emilio is holed up in some lavish building with indoor plumbing and a bed big enough to fit a family. Luigi doesn’t like those places, that feeling of lonesome detachment that comes with luxury. He likes these aching, dusty enclosures where he can hear the lives of other people. He enjoys humble, stiff places that reminded him of where he came from, the kind of life he was bred into. So many in his bracket transform from person to celebrity, showing up in the newspaper and on radio broadcasts, then go on to sit in sprawling houses on the hill, looking down on everyone while never touching them. Luigi does not want that for himself.

If anything, most of the time he just finds himself just wanting Mario. He receives letters filled with picture-book stories of the engagement. He misses Peach, so nicknamed for her sticky fingers whenever she would visit their farm, reaching up and plucking them off their branches. He misses the way she would sit down on her knees in front of the calves, honeyed hair tumbling behind her ears, and how her soft eyelashes would mirror theirs as she ran a hand over the bumps of their backs, the men around comfortable to placate a woman’s softer appetites.

He thinks of the Madrid bull, electrified and writhing, and wonders if one day they will stick a wire onto his body, sewn secretly into the fabric of his costume when a wealthy man places a bet against him. He will fall, spasming into the dirt, and the bull will charge him. It will spear its horns through his chest and lift him into the air. Sun will rain down on them. A cape of blood will bloom.

With heavy eyelids, he raises the paper above his head and finally gives himself what he desires. Ravenous, his eyes flick back and forth over the image.

A shaky sigh forces its way out of his lungs. With an unsteady hand, he traces the back of his knuckle along the swell of the creature’s rocky chest, then down to the pale yellow curve of its underbelly.

The Minotaur Lizard.

The image cuts off there, ending at the curved bones of the creature’s hips, but Luigi’s mind compensates for the absent space. He imagines strong, straining thighs, covered in those short tufts of hair and endless stretches of scales. He creates thick claws for its hands and feet. He envisions human fists attached to those bulging arms, ready to reach out and grab or crush its enemies. Ready to fall at once to all fours, and charge with a speed that he has never seen before.

Luigi shivers and quickly tucks the print away, curling back up with the blanket.

When he makes it to Castile and León, he will not be surprised if this rumored beast turns out to be some man wearing the skin of a snake. Or, more likely still, a hybrid species bred for a lifetime of agony. The drawing is surely an advertisement alone, obviously meant to sensationalize, never intended to depict the truth.

All the same, the picture has accomplished one thing: it has put the beast inside his head.

And in it they are already fighting, their horns locked, their bodies tangled, their beliefs about what is possible and what is human at odds with each other.

If there is any possibility at all that it is real, he needs to look upon it with his own eyes.

He needs to see it cast its shadow across the sun.

Luigi’s body is stiff from the cart ride, most of which he spent in a doze. Jolted awake by the stillness, he lifts the tarp and squints against the midday sun, letting it burn the sleep from his eyes.

The city of Burgos looks back at him, formidable and sharp. He’s still shaky from being rattled around, but manages to hop over the edge of the cart and onto stable footing, stretching his arms out in a yawn.

After endless hours in the sun, even his complexion can’t protect him from burning anymore. The August rays have caused him to flush red on the tip of his nose, over his shoulders, across his cheeks, affording him a dark, rosy glow that is sore to the touch.

Emilio has asked to meet him at noon. Their contract is expiring in a week, and they need to sit down and rehash its terms before Luigi signs off on another year.

“Thanks,” he murmurs when the driver comes around the side of the cart, giving him a handshake filled with paper bills. He wanders past the horses, offering one of them a grateful pat, then stands looking down the road. The city is red and gothic, cathedral spires spearing into the sky.

Having arrived separately for once, Emilio is waiting for him in one of the tucked-away coffee shops downtown. The map in Luigi’s satchel instructs him how to get there, though a drawn-in circle advises that he stop by his hotel first, if only to splash some water on his face.

He pulls the map from his bag and shakes it out to full size.

For a moment, he watches over the paper as the driver climbs back into the seat, then with a whip sends the cart rattling deeper down the main road. He looks back down, comparing the symbols on the map to their living landmarks, just able to discern where he is from the tips of a cathedral a few blocks away.

Luigi looks down the streets once more, charting where to go.

Then promptly turns away from the city, stuffing the map away.

Once he’s off the road, the terrain slopes suddenly upward. The ground turns uneven, covered in rocks that roll beneath his sandals wherever he steps. For a second Luigi just cranes his neck and looks up the mountain, truly taking in the size of its slope.

He braces himself, hands wrapped around the satchel strap, before realizing that if he thinks too long about it, he won’t be able to do it. So just like that, he starts to ascend, planting his hands and feet into the dirt.

It is an upward struggle.

The higher he gets, the steeper the slope becomes. The faster he goes, the more dangerous it becomes to slow down. If he breaks his pace to rest, the terrain comes apart in his hands, and so too does his surety, certain he’ll collapse with the rubble.

Luigi lets out a gasp as an electric burn pulls through his muscles. His lungs flare, seeking more oxygen, and his head swims with the combination of air-thirst and fatigue.

Then, all at once, it happens. He cries out, pushing himself on, and suddenly breaks through the barrier of his body.

Luigi takes flight.

He has found that there’s an upper limit to suffering. At a certain point, just on the brink of collapse, his body will explode with light, flooding with endorphins that consume all of the pain inside him. It is both why he fights, and also why he is good at fighting.

He races up the mountain, grabbing the earth in his hands, using tumbling boulders as footholds. He becomes a scampering lizard, quick and smooth in his motions; then he becomes an eagle, barely touching the ground as he flies over it.

Finally, at the very end of it all, he is a mountain goat perched on the peak of a huge hill, balanced delicately on a ledge that drops sheerly down.

But even now, Luigi has no eyes for the danger. No sense of fear. Because a handful of yards away, way down in the valley of the mountains, he can see the colosseum.

It isn’t built in the same style as the other stadiums he’s fought at, huge arenas dominated by the tiers of bleachers that encircle them. This one allows for only three rows of spectators, and even then the seats have been pushed far away from the pit, elevated to a height equally as exhausting to climb.

The pit itself has been sunk low into the ground, only accessible via stairs that disappear into the earth on either side of the battle ground.

It is a striking image, but it isn’t what has shortened his breath. That is reserved for the giant cage built around the pit itself, made to box the fighters in completely.

Luigi squints; from afar, the bars are hard to see through. With the sun gleaming off them and his vision swirling from dehydration, he can barely make out the second, smaller cage, hidden within the bigger one.

That is where he finally sees movement.

Leaning over the edge on his belly, Luigi slumps forward suddenly, his eyes wide and mouth gaping. Dirt and rocks roll under his stomach, pouring down the side of the mountain.

It’s difficult to make out from afar, such a long way from his current vantage point, but he can just manage to see the animal squeezed into the enclosure.

Its iridescent hide gleams in the harsh light of the afternoon. He sees its enormous chest rising and falling with each breath it takes, marked by belabored inhales and exhales. It’s sleeping, he realizes, and he squirms so far forward that he lets out a cry when the earth shifts violently below him, threatening to collapse.

He pulls back, elbows scraping on grit, then simply gawks harder, straining to see more than he possibly can.

He can’t make out its face, tucked somewhere in that coiled ball of scales and dermal spikes. The closest thing he can make out are two tusk-shaped bones, glossy and white in the sunlight, curved more proudly than the other spikes protruding off of it.

The grotesquely enamored part of Luigi wanted to scramble to his knees, to sit and watch for hours, to wait for it to move again. He wants to stare until the pieces of its body come together in his understanding and he can see it as a whole, instead of suffering through poor glimpses that the cage provides. A deep, swirling dissatisfaction moves through him. This is something his mind cannot reckon, something he realizes he has long thirsted for, and he cannot look upon it satisfyingly enough.

All at once, Luigi jerks himself around, breathing hard. He sits with the creature far away behind him, looking up at the empty blue sky, and feels its presence burning like hot suns on his back.

It feels wrong to watch it sleep. It feels indecent to observe it, to try to know it, when it does not know him yet.

Luigi once more recalls that first training session with the calf. Running around with it in the dirt, both of them thrown into a frenzy. He remembers the excitement of learning its body and its instincts, of feeling it do the same. Every time he accidentally exposed a vulnerability to a bull and it remembered, something in his spirit sang.

Without so much as stealing another glimpse, Luigi pushes off the dirt with his palms and sendings himself skittering on his ass down the hill, back towards the worn, glistening houses and the landmarks on his map.

The town is dark by the time he locates the hotel.

“Christ, Luigi,” Emilio is already growling when he comes barreling into the lobby, covered in sweat and dirt. “I’ve been waiting for hours. Where the hell have you been?”

Gripping the strap of his bag and breathing hard, Luigi looks around self-consciously. The desk clerk blinks pleasantly at the two of them, half of her attention kindly dedicated to an open book. Luigi’s bags are nowhere to be seen, but that familiar manila folder sits by Emilio’s side on the couch, the contract agreement inside still waiting to be signed.

Luigi flushes hot at the sight of it. “I went on a walk,” he babbles shamefacedly.

The relief fades from Emilio’s face. Frustration pours back in.

“You went on a walk?” he asks. His eyes were burning. “You know why I don’t let you travel alone, Luigi? Because you go on walks. You vanish into thin air, and you come back whenever you please.”

Luigi feels his chest balloon, the fight reaching his ribs but not quite making it to his fists. He wants to lash out, for all that power that overcomes him in the ring to come to his aid now, but his tongue doesn’t know how to fight, and it never has, so instead he just looks away, cheeks heated in mortification.

“Look at me, Luigi,” Emilio barks.

Like a child being scolded, Luigi dredges his eyes woundedly up from the floor, passing them embarrassedly over the desk clerk who’s keeping an eye on them, and finally pierces them through his manager.

“It is my job to make sure you’re safe,” he says, steadying his tone. “Not just as your manager, but as your uncle.”

Luigi sighs, cheeks burning.

“When all of this is said and done, we’ll have enough to move back to Italy and support your family permanently.” Something in his voice breaks, leveling with him. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

He says the words like they are magic. Like they are meant to unlock something in Luigi that he doesn’t already know.

And yet they fall on flat ears, because Emilio has delayed them time and time again. One more bull fight. One more public appearance. Out of instinct, he opens his mouth to tell Emilio about the minotaur. Then, just as quickly, he closes it again.

He cannot expect to survive a battle with that creature. No one could.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, watching Emilio’s severe features soften.

It isn’t worth fighting over. Very few things actually are.

It’s been a long time since he’s felt this kind of dread in his belly, this turning-over in fear of not knowing the outcome of a fight. But there is liberation in that. Tomorrow he will fly free. Fly completely off the handle- and when he crashes to the earth, he will finally be content.

“It’s alright, Luigi,” Emilio says with a sudden gentleness that reminds him of his brother. “You’re a hard worker. I don’t mean to keep you on so tight a leash.”

Luigi nods, unsure if he should hug Emilio, or push him off and run back for the mountains.

In the end, he does neither. Luigi instead heads upstairs to shower, and when he is clean and level-headed once more, he returns to the lobby to sign the new contract. He ensures that Mario would inherit everything if he were to lose his life.

They travel to the arena a few days later, setting out the moment the sun enters the sky.

“There are going to be a lot of waivers,” Emilio warns him. Sitting beside him in the cart, his manager looks Luigi up and down as though appraising him for the first time. “I’m not worried about it, but don’t be afraid to back out if your gut tells you to.”

“What- what do you think it is?” he asks quietly.

“The minotaur?” Emilio snorts. “Honestly? I expect it to be some engorged creature. There are some reptiles that can reach two-hundred pounds.” He leans back, shrugging. “Or perhaps it’s some defective human-reptile offspring.”

“Is that possible?” Luigi balks.

“Anything is possible, Luigi.”

The cart rattles along, sending them bouncing as it travels uphill. Due for another hot day, Luigi eases the tarp back so he can let the sunlight blaze across his face.

It will take a while to get there on the valley roads, but Luigi doesn’t mind the wait. He has quite a lot to think about.

He wonders, for the hundredth time, if what he thought he saw was an illusion. Perhaps the exhaustion of climbing the hill had caused him to see what he expected in the discolored land below. In all fairness, he had not gotten a good look at the creature at all, and he’s had days to let his memory run wild with the image.

But he cannot deny the cage. That cage circled the entire ring, boxing in the fighter and his opponent. Perhaps this is all some grand performance that he does not yet understand. Perhaps the waivers will treat him like an actor putting on a show, not a matador risking his life. Luigi puts his chin in his hands and thinks about what he would do if that happened.

“Luigi,” Emilio says after a period of silence.

Luigi looks over, realizing the older is regarding him intensely.

“Do you remember your father at all?” he asks awkwardly.

Taken off guard, Luigi frowns. “I remember not living on the farm,” he says finally, staring out at the sandy mountains. “I remember that he liked books.”

“He looked like you, when we were your age.” And the conversation seems to end there, whatever Emilio had wanted to say hanging uselessly in the air.

Luigi looks away, and focuses his attention on the landscape again.

Focus.

Before every fight, Luigi will close his eyes, curl up into a dark corner of the ring, and focus.

A moment of darkness is his only opportunity to push away everything. To erase his history, to pull out the roots of his plans. When he steps into that pit, he wants to be free from it all, a brazen fighter with a hollow gut, their story no more complex than a man and a bull competing to prolong that burst of life.

He stands in the underground chamber now, the sword loosely clutched in his hand. There is darkness all around him.

There is a cage surrounding the ring.

He tries to forget the look of frustration on Emilio’s face when his manager realized that the walls around the pit obscure one’s vision of the ring itself; the arena can only be looked down on from the bleachers elevated around it. He tries to wash away the long-winded legal descriptions of responsibilities and liabilities, phrases that he had to ask Emilio to explain in shorter terms. He tries to eliminate the strange smile of the owner, gazing at him like a piece of meat meant to sate an ever-growing appetite.

On the edge of his consciousness, he can hear the size of the crowd outside. Someone is making an announcement, their voice booming through the pit as they shout out his name.

Breathing out, Luigi loosens his muscles. He readies his mind.

He is so desperate to see the minotaur that he can barely restrain himself.

It isn’t the cresting of the crowd’s cheers that bring him back, nor is it the announcer shouting his name to fuel their applauds. It is when the door is cranked up, sending sunlight pouring into the pitch-black cavern, that he opens his eyes.

Vision swimming, he steps forward into the light.

For just a moment the pulse of the crowd is muted, their voices far away. He cranes his neck up as he steps out of the shadowed doorway to find them surrounding the pit, packed tightly together. Some are on their feet, jeering as if heckling him. Others stare at him with cautious affection in their eyes, waiting expectantly. In light of their imposing circle above him, the sword feels childishly small in his hand.

His eyes pass briefly over Emilio, seated in the front row. He is worryingly devoid of color, motionlessly staring at Luigi with horror in his eyes.

Luigi doesn’t even process the expression because all of a sudden, the only thing for miles is the sound of heavy breathing. It is the first time he ever hears it: those labored, intense snorts, smoky breath exhaled through flaring nostrils. Everything inside of him seizes, and before he even has the sense to be scared, he turns.

The dragon lies within the cage, iridescent scales gleaming in the sunlight. It is curled up on its belly, asleep.

Luigi stares. The underwater quality of the world pierces back into focus, so abruptly that his ears ring, the screaming crowd bursting into him, the creature’s breathing quaking his footing.

He can see it now, and it is absolutely real.

Even curled up, it is enormous. Each heavy, panting breath makes its belly balloon, the ribbed chest beneath its shimmering coat heaving up and down. Claws sprawl out from underneath it, affixed to its hands and feet, accompanied by a dozen piano blades sticking out through its gnarled lips. On its back is a hard shell, its spikes polished to deadly points, and though it does not need them, the creature has been adorned in jewelry fit for a caged animal. Black collars contain its throat and arms, chains dangling down from the spikes fastened into the leather.

The only soft part of the creature are the tufts of short hair sprouting across its body- the tufts of fur, and its breath. It releases a labored breath from its nose every few seconds, ears flicking delicately beneath its imposing horns.

Luigi takes a step back, planting a foot behind him. Then the wind whistles and he startles, his heart jumping into his throat.

From high above, something shoots down into the pit.

The arrow hits with a sickening thwick, passing through the bars of the cave and lodging into the beast’s shoulder. The animal’s eyes split open, and all at once, Luigi is staring at those black orbs, blacker than any darkness Luigi had ever looked into. Its gaze lands on him. Its breathing slows, focusing. He does not know if the crowd has suddenly gone silent, or if the primal thing inside of him has shut them off completely, eliminating everything but this mammoth-sized threat in front of him.

The next two things happen at once: the minotaur lizard launches to its feet, roaring wildly, and the cage door collapses to the ground.

Right before it all blurs into motion, Luigi watches the beast as it rises to its full brilliance. Not just towering above him, but somehow surrounding him, too. Its frame bulky and terrifying, giving every indication of a predator that could outrun him, outclimb him, even outwit him.

Beautiful. Awful.

He has no time to realize what he thinks of it; in the next moment it is barreling towards him.

Electrified by shock, Luigi darts out of the way.

The beast’s claws skitter on the ground as it bolts right, making the earth rumble beneath them. An explosion of dirt mushrooms where its feet hit, and the second it realizes that Luigi has moved, it roars, collapsing to all fours and quickly hurtling back around.

Luigi is shaking, the heartbeat pounding in his head. He can smell the woodsmoke of the creature’s breath, staring helplessly at its wound-up body in the split second before it pounces.

He feels his death all around him. It burns smoky and hot, and it gleams, the sun bursting off it like a viking’s funeral in the sky.

Petrified, he forced his eyes to travel back up the length of the beast’s body. His eyes graze over its muscled arms, shoulders arched back with its horns and spikes threateningly bared, and its face- on its face it wears the angry, focused expression of a man. The only features that bestialize it are its pitch-black gaze, that maw of ill-fitting teeth, and the feral look of animal pain in its eyes.

Luigi stares at it, frozen, his heart pumping electric currents through his body every second that it certainly should, but does not pounce.

All of a sudden, with a force that almost blows the air out of his lungs, he realizes something. The creature is evaluating him back. Not with animal eyes gazing through him, but intelligent eyes. Human eyes.

Sweat pours down his face, but something cold and liquid runs through his blood. The sun beats hard on him, like wax melting across his eyes, and suddenly, Luigi cannot see. He feels the beast’s breath in his bones, its harsh glare on his skin, but he cannot see well enough to understand.

All at once, the beast rears up onto its back legs and bursts forward. The trance is violently broken.

Luigi cries out, dropping low, and he hears the audience react as he skids between the dragon’s huge legs. Another burst of sound when the creature’s head collides with the wall of the pit, causing it to send off an enraged, mournful bellow.

The sound shakes him to the core. He clutches his hand around the sword’s hilt, feeling its sheer inadequacy in his grasp. “Okay,” he babbles to himself frantically, springing back to face the beast again and walk backwards away from it. “Okay, Luigi, okay.”

The minotaur rips its horns out of the dirt wall surrounding the cage and jerks its neck to look at him, eyes alight.

Luigi raises the sword and steps back, holding it horizontally in front of him in a gesture of defense. His eyes dart back and forth over the beast.

Not an it. A he. That much is clear and on display.

The beast has gone still again, unmoving, watching him. Luigi finds his eyes drawn again to his throat, to the spiked collar clasped by a strip of metal, studded as if to declare him the prize he is.

Suddenly, Luigi sees its expression change. It clenches as though in pain, letting out a huge roar, and comes bucking wildly in his direction again, this time on all fours.

This time Luigi does not dodge its onslaught. This time, to the sound of a screaming audience, he charges back.

He does not want to fight this thing. He will not kill it. There is no way he could kill it.

With a burst of clarity the wax melts, pouring off his eyes. The least he can do before he loses his life is have a little fun.

Every footstep pounding down on the pit causes Luigi to bounce, and this time he uses the reverberation to launch himself a little higher, gripping the sword with both hands and slicing it through the air at the creature’s ankle. He hears the leathery skin rip, sending a spray of blood into the ring, and there’s a brief flicker of victory in his chest before the dragon picks up its foot and kicks him onto the ground.

The breath explodes from his lungs as his back slams into earth. On his back, he scrambles away until he can climb to his feet again, body aching from the impact. He feels poked through where the claws nearly pierced his skin.

Without a moment to recover, Luigi is being charged again.

He moves forward, racing towards the minotaur, and finally he feels something snap into place inside of him. The animal barrels forward on its hands and feet, its horns angled down to spear him, readied for the kill.

Luigi pushes ahead, sheathing his sword, and inside of him there is no fear of death. He is not afraid of those horns penetrating his chest, ripping through his ribs and lungs to thrust him up and then whip him back down. Instead of fearing them, he jumps and grabs them with his hands, pushing off the dirt and thrusting himself up until he lands, skitteringly, on top of the creature’s crown.

The arena is an ocean of screaming. The lizard whips its head wildly, trying to shake him off, and all at once Luigi feels a delighted laugh burst out of him.

He thinks for just a moment that he hears the minotaur laugh too- subtly, in the way that the breath exits his nose.

Then the monster bucks suddenly, collapsing back onto all fours.

Luigi cries out, losing his footing, and tumbles onto the ground.

The world goes still, buzzing. Lying on his side, eye-to-eye with a creature of legends, Luigi’s heart pulses. The dragon is low to the ground, lying flat on its stomach, and everything inside of him is connected to it. He’s scared, but the beast just snorts languidly, his eyes flicking back and forth over him. Not pitch black- amber. The amber of the few breaths of flame left before the coal crumbles into black.

Luigi puts his palms on the earth, gently easing his weight up. The creature does the same.

He moves, slowly, inching slightly closer, and the minotaur lizard does, too.

It isn’t a tether of spirit. It isn’t their souls joining, linking together. It is an invisible string made of breath and body, a connection that is utterly human. On the ground, propped up on his hands and knees, he and the minotaur are the same.

In the sudden stillness of the moment, it is quiet enough that finally Luigi hears it: the sizzle of flesh, tenderized by shock. The minotaur roars suddenly, bellowing out a wild sound of pain, and rears back onto its feet.

Lying on his side in the dirt, Luigi gawks. A long-building anger suddenly sweeps through him.

For the first time in his life, as he pulls himself onto his feet and begins to run, he is not driven by any sense of passion. Instead it is rage powering him, as he works his way across the ring and back towards the towering metal cage, disgust in his heart and blood on his hands.

The creature’s cage comes upon him, visibly scalding to the touch. There are four sets of shackles lying in the dirt, huge irons attached to links of chains that Luigi can only assume keep him bound whenever not in battle. They are irons that he is sure burn the same way that the rest of the cage does beneath the sun.

Behind him, he can hear the minotaur chasing after him, heavy footsteps that make the fluid rattle in his eyes.

He doesn’t slow until he reaches the cage, and even then, he grabs onto it, looking up at the bars looming above him, painfully hot and unforgivingly vertical. All the same, he swings his arms around one of the poles and begins to climb.

He hears the crowd react, feels the chatter of their restlessness and confusion. At one point he throws his vision over his shoulder and catches sight of Emilio, glancing at the man’s blanched expression, at the head clenched despairingly in his hands.

His attention is forced back by the beast slamming against the cage with the full force of its body.

Luigi turns away and doubles his effort, arms shaking.

The animal backs up, building speed, and Luigi takes that moment to scramble another few feet up the bar, arms and knees clenched tightly around the pole. The whole structure shudders on the second impact, vibrations from the impact traveling up and down the metal.

Finally, his skin flaking and sweat pouring down his face, his hand closes around the first horizontal pole latticed at the top of the cage. He pulls himself up with all his strength, dragging himself onto the highest rungs, then flops across them on his belly. The metal bites him, and he cries out until he can plant his feet down on one strip of metal, shoes saving his skin from the burn.

Still, it is just one danger traded for another. The bars are wide enough apart for him to fall through with one misstep; if his feet roll over the cylindrical bars, he will plummet directly through.

Holding his arms out to keep his balance, he carefully rises to full height, and begins jumping from one bar to the next.

Below him, the dragon rises up onto its back legs. It opens its mouth, sharpened teeth sparkling, and amazingly, for the first time ever, a horrible thought occurs to him. Fire.

The beast roars, the force of his scream shaking the cage, but instead of fire, all that comes out is a huff of smoke. The cry dissolves into a whimper, smoke petering down to nothing, and though Luigi’s heart twists inexplicably at the sight, he does not have time to think about it. He is already running, jumping from one bar to the next, his fear of falling crumbling under the force of his snowballing momentum.

The edge of the cage comes upon him fast; the fireless dragon roars helplessly below. With a leap of faith, Luigi jumps, soaring for just a moment midair.

His flight doesn’t waver. His wings do not melt. And when he lands, he lands not in a crumpled heap on the ground, but on his hands and his feet- planted firmly on the arm of the minotaur.

Without thinking, he runs. He bolts up the creature’s arm, racing over its shoulder. He rips the sword out of his belt, too fast for the bellowing dragon to shake him away, and then dives into the air, aiming for its scaly neck.

Luigi thinks about the owner of the colosseum. His greasy, uncomfortable smile. How he’s seen men like that, over and over again, somehow always in charge of these places.

The minotaur’s jewelry gleams in the sunlight. That same man put that collar on it to express ownership over it, to mark it as his possession. But Luigi is smarter now. He knows that it is more than a statement.

He knows now that what men own, they need to control.

With his arms thrust upward, he slices through the minotaur’s electric collar.

What happens next is a blur in his eyes. In one moment he is falling, plunging to the earth, eyes closing contentedly. He lets the wax finally cover his face like a death mask, the sunlight scalding where his palms had gripped the bars, swirling like vicious shards of amber in his eyes. In the next, a huge fist has reached out and grabbed him, and all he can see is rough padding enveloping him as the minotaur lizard tucks him beneath its arm.

He grabs hold of one of its leather cuffs, wedging himself between it and the beast’s rough skin, then looks out to see the panic in the crowds. The onlookers are screaming in real terror now, masses of them fleeing, streaming through the bleachers in colorful loops of bodies.

Still clutching Luigi to him, the beast leaps up at the large cage encircling the stadium. He roars, clawing at the dirt wall that the arena is sunken into, then propels himself upward, thrusting his shell against the bars.

Only a ring of damaged flesh remains looped around the beast’s neck, and it is not enough to keep him subdued. Without the shocks to bring him to the ground, he smashes himself into the bars again and again, roaring loudly enough to split the ground, and he does not stop until the iron starts to bend, shrieking as it is split apart.

All of a sudden, they’re out. The beast is squirming his way out through the bars, gnashing and clawing with wild abandon, and it’s like they’ve crossed a palpable barrier when he emerges onto the other side of the mountain, the force of his resistance sending him scuttling down in a landslide of rocks and dirt.

He is free. They both are.

Luigi realizes he is crying.

He starts to slip from the band and one of the creature's hands grabs him again, gently placing him down onto his back. He grabs hold of a spike on its battered shell as the dragon shoots forward, regaining his footing and taking off purposefully into the mountains.

The cries and screams of the crowd fade into silence. Even the colosseum, such a mammoth upon the land, disappears behind rolling mounds of dirt.

Hot wind whips against his face as they run, drying the tears on his cheeks.

He doesn’t know how long they’ve been running when the minotaur finally comes to an abrupt halt, but he does know that it only happens because the creature physically cannot run any further. With a whine it collapses onto the ground, arms and legs buckling, a huge sound of effort huffing out of its mouth.

The minotaur lizard bucks gently, putting his head to the ground, and with a startled cry Luigi tumbles down its back, between its horns, and onto the ground.

The moment his feet hit the earth, he wants to collapse. He finds himself shaking and teary, wildly aware of the endless stretch of mountains around them. He looks out at it, at that stark nothingness of uncultivated land, but mostly he just looks at the dragon, both entranced by this creature and absolutely terrified of it.

Breathing heavily, with each of his scales seeming to flare like gills, it places its claws into the dirt and rises up onto its legs, unfolding to full height.

It casts a massive shadow over him. Sunlight drips down its back, running messily between the spikes of its shell and getting caught in the green grooves. Like a sundial, its shadow tells him that his old life is over. With its size, it tells him that he will never feel anything but miniscule again.

Quivering, Luigi stumbles to his feet and takes a few steps back. He waits to see if it will gore and eat him.

It would be its first meal in privacy in god knows how long. He could be chased around and pinned, stripped slowly, devoured with a care and conservation that Luigi is sure has been long deprived of him. And wouldn’t that be what he’s been dreaming of himself? Perhaps not the immediate impact of himself skewered on a bull’s horns, but the kind of dismantling that he knows he deserves, after all of the bloodshed that he’s skinned with his own hands.

All the same, the minotaur does not charge. It stares down at him, its eyes so human that Luigi is filled with the uncanny sense that he is in the presence of another person.

Just when it feels like they are almost speaking, a meaningful back-and-forth exchanged in the language of breaths and posture, it leans down his head, meeting Luigi at his own height.

His heart races. His hand lifts into the air of its own accord, and he wonders if he is allowed to touch it.

Suddenly the dragon nudges him with the flat of his skull, beating his scalp gently into his ribs, and Luigi cries out, stumbling over its head. He falls into the tuft of orange hair between the hills of its horns.

Squealing, he fights to hold onto its fur as it rises back onto its legs. In the absence of its collar, he feels himself slip down into the empty space, legs coming to dangle on either side of its shoulders. His scalded fists look for something to hold onto, and end up gripping its horns like reigns. The flesh of his palms screech from their burns, but he has no time to adjust before it is running again, bounding forward on two crushing feet with heaving grunts pounding out of its throat, his massive shoulders carrying Luigi deeper into the mountains.

In his heart there is a pang of loss, but curiously it is one that speaks only of Mario. Mario, with tender notes of Peach. The sense of loss is swift, and simple. It is the only part of his life that he mourns to leave behind.

Because mostly, as he holds onto the minotaur lizard’s horns, it feels only as though he is moving towards something.

part iii. charon’s obol.

It’s growing dark when Luigi cries out suddenly, jerking himself upright. “Look!” he calls, his voice wasted and weak in the bottom of his throat. “There!” He stretches out his arm, pointing wildly at a yawning cavern that has been carved into the hillside.

The beast stops, dirt scuttling against his claws, and turns to look at the cave. Tucked between a huge shelf of boulders, the cavern is unlike any of the others they have come across. It’s tall enough that the creature wouldn’t have to resort to all fours just to fit inside.

He is grateful for the sight, not sure how much longer he’d be able to keep his grip. It isn’t just him; the minotaur’s chest is heaving too, breaths coming out in guttural bursts.

Trudging slowly, the minotaur walks towards the mouth of the cave, wading slowly into that darkness.

They are submerged by its blackness, and soon all Luigi can do is listen to the sound of its footsteps as its feet clamp down on the ground. After a moment, the beast shifts, and Luigi finds himself crumbling to the ground. His legs buckle immediately, unable to support him, and he rolls to the floor, back hitting the packed earth.

There’s a rustle, and then nothing but the sound of its breathing. He knows that it is lying down now, somewhere close to him in the dark, and while all of his instincts tell him he should be overcome by terror, all he can manage to feel is an exhausted sense of relief.

Still, his hand shakes when he lifts it, reaching into the darkness.

With a shaky breath, his hand makes contact. There is no bite. No warning growl. His fingers run through a patch of the minotaur’s fur, grasping slightly, and in the silence, Luigi hears the breath huffing from its flared nostrils. Flurries of heat hit his arm, making the hairs stand on end.

Luigi slips his hands lower, onto what must be its chest. The rough ridges of scales bite at his fingertips and his palms burn, the charred flesh of his hands pulsing painfully.

“Are you hurt?” he asks quietly. The blood-spray of the beast’s ankles on his sword is vivid in the darkness of his mind.

The minotaur expels a soft breath through its nose. He feels its chest rising and falling beneath his palm. All of a sudden, something smooth and wet darts down between the two. He jolts, drawing back with a strangled cry, but the beast just wraps Luigi’s hand with his tongue, pulling him closer again, offering his raw skin gentle licks.

The cool, soothing glide of the saliva brings tears to Luigi’s eyes. He rolls forward, whining quietly, then offers his other palm to the beast’s healing balm as well.

After the shock of it has subsided, Luigi blinks away the wetness and realizes that his eyes have begun to adjust. The entrance to the cave is no longer a pinprick of light on his periphery but a clear source of evening sun.

In its glow he can see the minotaur’s shape.

Minotaur is still not a good name to describe it at all, but then neither is dragon, nor beast. There are no words at all. As its tongue releases his hand, slithering back up between the prison of its teeth, Luigi arches back to gawk up at it too.

It looms, its eyes studying him intensely, and suddenly Luigi doesn’t understand how it isn't obliterating the darkness entirely just by existing here. Its skin seems to call the light forward, sucking it in, and when Luigi looks up, the sides of his face still wet with streaks of tears, the walls of the cave glimmer as though they’re in a cove beneath the water. Iridescent sea-glass colors dance, blues and yellows and greens in symphony, both an aurora and a nightlight, a galaxy and a home in the country. He swallows down his own sounds of wonder, and when he looks back at the minotaur, it seems almost proud.

And how couldn’t it be? How could it exist within itself and not boast that to the world?

That gasp suddenly rises out of him, and he is surprised to find that it blooms into a sob. He cannot stand the thought of this thing being kept in chains, forced to use its body for purposes commanded by another.

He reaches out, trembling even harder, and places his hand down on its maw. The skin folds inward against his touch, giving way to exposed gum, saliva pooling hot and wet. He trails his palm past its mouth, gently cradling one corner of its massive face, and a sickening pulse in his gut tells him with surety that it would breathe fire if it had not been somehow rendered unable.

The beast opens its mouth. A deep-seated purr rumbles through its body, palpable as lightning traveling through a swollen cloud.

A sudden rush passes through him, weightless and warm. Luigi’s heart pulses not just in his chest but all throughout him, down his core and into his groin, making his head swim.

All at once, the beast has him by the shoulders. Luigi breathes out in sudden desperation, rolling underneath it, and he barely keeps his head on his shoulder as the creature mounts him, rumbling gently at the back of his skull, pushing him onto all fours and flicking its tongue into his hair.

Luigi whines, bracing himself, and though he expects the creature’s skin to grate against his, instead he only feels the tufts of fur as the creature slots itself against his back. He drops his weight onto his arms, stretching forward, and cries out gently as the lizard’s tongue coils around his neck, pulling his head to the side so that he may greet Luigi’s lips with deep, growling licks.

Luigi pants, pulling down his beaded trousers in a heatsick daze. The lizard’s tongue presses into his mouth as its cock presses between his thighs, slick and wet, the texture of which he’s never before felt in his hands. Its odd shapes prods against him, slippery yet taut, and as he opens his jaw wider, moaning, he finds his head unable to keep a distinction between the appendage in his mouth and the one between his thighs.

One of the minotaur’s fingers edges down his back, the motion startlingly human. This part of him is rough, scalloped with a severity, but still he rocks back against it, muffledly choking on the tongue to voice his encouragement.

In the next second the finger is gone, the beast’s hand wrapping around his stomach to pull him forward. Luigi moves with the monster, feeling the tapered tip of its cock press against him, and pushes back with a cry as his body resists the introduction. He lets the dragon’s tongue slip out of his mouth so he may bury his burning face into his arms.

The creature’s hand goes around his face, gentle fingers wrapping around his features. He feels the dangerous talons protruding from its fingers, both splayed harmlessly across his cheek and now digging into shoulder where they curl around it.

He thrusts himself back with another cry, tears leaking down his cheeks, and still that feeling of freedom swoops around inside of him, hollowing him deliciously, readying him to want to be filled.

He sees himself gored on the bull’s horns. He sees himself thrust through with holes, his body limp and apertured, run through and bleeding out into the dirt, curled up by the hooves of the beast he did not slay.

“Turn around and look at me,” the minotaur lizard says behind him.

Luigi jolts away, ripping himself out of the creature’s arms. On his hands and knees, he scrambles to his feet, then yanks himself around as he flounders, back hitting the wall of the cave.

His eyes run wildly over the creature in front of him. It stands on all fours, looking up at him with dangerous glistening eyes.

Luigi presses his hands to the wall, heart bashing itself against his ribs.

“Did you just speak?” he whispers hoarsely.

The low, gravely rumbles of the beast’s words echo in his head, but the minotaur lizard just breathes slowly and blinks, looking at him with reptile eyes. And still Luigi feels as though they are communicating once again, in the language of simply watching one another.

As if in retreat, the beast sits back. It props its shell against a large boulder, letting go of a heaving sigh, and without thinking Luigi is drawn back to it, that invisible thread instantly reactivated. He scrambles forward, then drops down into its powerful lap, meeting it at its eye level. There is something as sickly as obsession burning in his own gaze. He studies it, wishing he could be swallowed and scorched by the depths of those impenetrable eyes.

The dragon’s gaze runs down his front, ears twitching lightly. Then he takes Luigi by the thighs and guides him back onto his cock, easing the tip slowly against Luigi’s entrance until his body gives, letting the speared, slick shape of him in.

He hangs his head back and cries, alight with pleasure and pain, as the minotaur grips his thighs and pulls him open on his cock. His flesh breaks where claws dig into the globes of his ass. His body trembles where forces himself down onto the widening length, deathly aware that he cannot take it all, miserably aroused by how badly he burns already.

“Please,” he hisses with his eyes closed. “Do what you want to me.”

The lizard’s breath is hot on his face. When he calls out in pain, using its shoulders to push himself down, it stops him, clamping his arms to his sides to prevent him from descending further.

The gesture tastes of intelligence; it is like a storm breaking. Heavy drool rolls down the beast’s mouth, splattering onto his lap. Luigi clenches his thighs, legs pulled too far apart to find any friction, but his own cock throbs between them just the same.

The creature bucks suddenly forward, knocking him onto his back and stealing the breath from his lungs. The monster towers above him, all fours planted around him, growling and snapping and thrusting into him, crushing him, and Luigi loses his head, a sob of pleasure bursting from his chest.

He reaches up to grab it, fists curling around the monster’s arm bands. He pushes back, despite being all-but instructed not to, and the dragon plants his claws into the ground, snarling. The cock inside of him pulses, engorging, and Luigi feels himself go lightheaded in shock. Hot semen pumps into him, so much that he’s afraid he might rupture. His vision fireworks, bursting so hard that his consciousness tunnels, and perhaps it does fully eclipse, because all of a sudden he realizes that the beast has drawn itself out of him already, its come rolling thickly down his thighs.

Chest shuddering, Luigi takes in deep breaths. He lets that sick, overheated feeling roll over him, slowly eeking out. He’s alive. He’s still alive.

Above him, the beast breathes slowly. It’s dropped gently down, covering him, but there’s enough space between them that he isn’t flattened by it.

He presses his face into its hide, using the warm fur to clean his face of its tears.

“Luigi.”

Luigi yanks his head up, frozen in shock.

It’s that same voice- low, vibrational, strained by disuse. More breath than words, but startlingly audible.

He speaks. The minotaur lizard speaks.

“Yes?” he whispers feebly, voice a squeak in the gaping cave. “Yes,” he says again.

But the beast just closes its eyes and snorts in acknowledgement. Then it scoops a hand underneath Luigi’s back, pulls him into its chest, and rolls onto its back, giving Luigi a soft place to rest.

part iv. daniel in the lion’s den.

There’s still a little sun left in the day. Luigi uses it to chase a hog down the mountain, scampering unsteadily on his feet. The animal gives an angry squeal, bucking on its hind legs, but still it lets itself be herded into the false safety of the cave.

Before it notices another presence, it is already too late; the monster’s hand slashes out the darkness and seizes the animal in a clench of claws, letting out one final squeal before it is slammed down into the earth.

Luigi slows to a jog, watching as the minotaur lizard bites it in half.

They’ve been hiding out for a week now, perhaps longer. There came a day that Luigi became too hungry to keep count.

He buckles forward with his hands on his knees, breathing hard. The reason that it is too dangerous for the minotaur to go outside and stand at its full height is the same reason that Luigi is afraid to start a fire. He often goes out to collect edible plants, but still his stomach is hollow, the pit inside of him gnawing for more.

As huge waterfalls of blood pour down on the rock, the beast offers Luigi some of the meat.

“I can’t,” he says despairingly, slumping down.

The dragon, his face illuminated by sunlight, is caught between appearing sympathetic and relieved. He swallows the rest of the pig whole, barely stopping to chew.

“Tomorrow,” it says in a gurgling voice, one Luigi does not often get to hear. It reaches out and puts an apologetic hand around Luigi’s shoulders, guiding him back inside. “I will find you something tomorrow.”

Luigi gives a shivery nod and then scurries back into the cave, careful to avoid putting his feet in the blood pooled on the ground.

He runs until he hits the wall, tumbling into it and then turning, sliding down into the dirt. A huge sigh forces its way from his lungs.

The creature follows him into the cave, the fur on its body smelling warm and pleasant. Luigi smiles as he looks up, even as he flushes faintly on the inside, the sight of those sparkling scales and gleaming horns enough to feed his eyes.

“What are you?” he asks, surprised by the impulse of his words.

The beast stops in front of him, lowering itself heavily onto the ground. It starts to breathe again and Luigi feels his body react, lighting at the sound.

“You’re not an animal,” Luigi says, suddenly bashful. “You’re not a god.”

He isn’t completely ready for the response, but all the same, it is the only one that could have ever rung true.

“I was a man,” he rumbles. “A long time ago.”

Luigi puts his hands on the ground, sitting up straighter. “And- and what happened?” he asks breathlessly.

“I was like you.” He snorts. After speaking too much his voice becomes labored, like it is difficult holding onto his humanity. “Killed every bull I fought. Asked for a challenge.” His coal-dark eyes blink slowly. “He gave me one.”

“Who?” Luigi asks.

Closing his eyes, the breath exits his nostrils in forceful snorts. “Powerful man.”

“You were cursed, then,” he says quickly.

The minotaur blinks at him, eyes opening and shining wetly.

“Is there- is there any way to break it?”

He is quiet for a while. Then the minotaur lizard exhales. “Only if I am defeated in battle.”

Luigi jerks to his feet, impulsive bravado propelling him. “I could defeat you!” he says, tumbling excitedly over his own words.

For a moment, the beast regards him with a pitying flicker of amusement. Then he turns his head. “No you couldn’t.”

“I could,” he insists.

“If I let you. That would not count.”

Luigi walks forward, stirred up and frenzied. “It’s worth-”

The beast snorts loudly, startling him.

“I can’t go back,” he grunts, horns grating against the cave wall when he lifts his head to glare into Luigi’s eyes. “Can’t even remember my name.”

“I’ll give you a new name! No one will-”

The minotaur stands suddenly, the force of the motion almost knocking Luigi back. Before he can fall, those giant hands are grabbing hold of Luigi’s hips and pulling him into the air. He cries out, flailing, but then is lowered down harmlessly onto the ledge of the rock pile, letting Luigi come face-to-face with him while elevated to his full height.

“I am content,” he huffs plainly. And as if to punctuate it, he licks a wet stripe up Luigi’s bare chest.

Luigi leans back, opening his mouth to argue, but the minotaur’s tongue licks his face. He laughs, grabbing hold of the creature’s horns to try to push him away. Then he feels hot breath on his groin and a tongue slipping between his legs, lapping at him with bold, wet strokes, and he stops.

The playful fight evaporates from his lips, replaced by a soft panting. He grips the minotaur’s horns in his hands, holding on so he can buck against the flat of his tongue.

Luigi has never been fond of precision; he’s never even particularly liked speaking. He fumbles with his words and motor abilities alike, coming off as stupid whenever tasks don't engage his body and mind as one cohesive, combined mechanism.

He imagines becoming a creature. Never having to speak again. Never having to do anything other than what is in his nature.

“Yes,” he moans quietly, arching back to let the beast’s tongue pleasure him.

His fingers clenched down on the monster’s horns, bursting with hotness at the way the tongue laps messily at him, without rhythm or precision, and even more at the way he has to chase it, thrusting desperately, if he wants any hope of reaching the edge.

Finally, with a pleased rumble, the creature bows down, wrapping its tongue around the length of his cock. With a gasp, Luigi’s palms unknot from around his horns. He gives in, letting the tongue tighten around him and bring him to orgasm.

Afterwards, Luigi presses his face into the creature’s chest, breathing in the smoky scent of his skin, the warm sunlight of his fur. They cannot not kiss. They cannot lie in a passionate exchange of lips. But the creature picks up one of his feet and wraps its tongue around it, washing it of all the grit and dirt and blood that has accumulated throughout the day, and somehow even in its pure animality, it is more intimate, and more loving than any touch he has ever received.

“Do you still want me to give you a name?” Luigi murmurs after the minotaur has brought him back down to the floor, settling with Luigi curled up in the crook of his arm.

The minotaur lizard thinks for a second, then shakes his head.

All the same, in his sleep, a name comes to him.

Bowser.

He whispers it, in the dead of the night, forming it on his mouth over and over. His lips bowl over the first syllable, then sharpen, hissing out the second.

The beast stills, breathing quietly. It grips him a little tighter.

From that moment on, he is no longer a beast.

The hardness of the ground might have woken Luigi if he’d not been so exhausted. But he is also faint with hunger, and it’s like he knows that there’s food in the cave.

He lifts himself weakly, vision swimming. It takes him a moment to make out Bowser hunched over in the cave entrance, but when his sight finally focuses, and his knowing sharpens, it falls immediately upon the potatoes and fruits scattered all over the floor.

He scrambles awake on all fours, hurrying to take a potato in his hands, then rolls the firm, moist shape between his palms. When he bites into it, his eyes water as the starchy shock melts to sugar on his tongue.

“How?” he whispers as he grabs an apple in his other hand and takes a bite of that too, letting the flavors blend. “Where did this come from?”

“A farmhouse,” Bowser answers, getting down to his knees. “Miles north.”

“You eat too,” he insists, holding out his hands. The potato and the apple’s skin are broken, inner flesh glistening perfectly beneath his bitemarks.

“I ate their livestock,” Bowser snorts back, and indeed, his maw is curved upwards in euphoric fullness, his belly full of blood.

A smile tugs at Luigi’s lips half a second before his veins run cold. “We have to be careful,” he says worriedly, barely chewing before swallowing. “They’re going to be looking for us.”

“You were hungry,” Bowser states. Then he leans his head back against the rock pile and closes his eyes.

“Don’t move,” Luigi begs, holding the flat of his palm against Bowser’s chest. He can feel the creature’s heart beating, a strong, healthy thud, and with the way that it fills the cave, he is terrified that he is breathing too loudly.

The commotion outside is still going on. He can hear voices shouting back and forth, the landscape shifting under heavy boots, but he’s unable to tell if they are right outside or if it’s an illusion, the voices thrown and magnified by the rocky, echoing walls.

It hadn’t taken him many days to gorge himself on the stolen crops. At one point in his fullness, he’d lent back and patted the Bowser on the back of his head, telling him, “go on.” He’d hardly had a moment to blink before the beast swallowed up the rest of the food.

Luigi chose to be a fighter, but tonight all he can do is bury his head into Bowser’s fur and hide, praying for the voices to recede. He is shaking by the time they are alone in the mountains again, gripping the creature’s fur in fists tight enough to break.

Now he has something to lose, and for once he is terrified at the idea of having to fight to keep it.

Luigi feels himself fading in the darkness.

He misses the sun. So much of his days as a human were spent submerged in it: lounging on his back in the grass, or letting it beat down on him in the ring. Having it bake him during long hours on the road, and letting it revitalize him after excruciating meetings and hotel stays. The cave sucks in the light and devours it. Now his skin is growing pallid, and his eyes burn whenever they so much as glance towards the entrance.

But he can’t leave. He can’t risk going out there again.

All of a sudden Bowser roars. It's loud, and mournful. It sends water plunking down from the ceiling and onto the dirt. It sends Luigi’s bones rattling in his chest. The monster gets up, his footfalls heavy, and begins stalking towards the entrance.

“No,” Luigi croaks, voice shaking. He is sick with worry. Sick with hunger and immobility, sick with inhumanity, yet he manages to thrust out his hand and seize Bowser by the ankle.

That stops him at least. He turns, black eyes an animal.

“Food,” Bowser grunts back.

Eyes wide, Luigi shakes his head. His hair is long now. It falls down around his face, wild as a lion’s mane. “No,” he whispers desperately. “No.”

And though he has no power in his grasp, no breath of hope when it comes to strong-arming this beast in any way, when he pulls back on the dragon’s leg, Bowser merely sighs and sits back down beside him.

Taking ragged breaths in, Luigi digs his nails into the dirt and drags his body along behind him, inching closer to the mouth of the cave. He feels skeletal, transparent. He’d once heard about a species of fish that live so deep in the ocean, that after a million generations their eyes stopped being born with them.

He is afraid that the entirety of him is becoming useless. That if he stays in this cave, he will wither into nothing.

On his belly and squirming, he pulls himself to his knees and crawls slowly out of the shadows of the cave.

The arc of sunlight spears him. He rolls gaspingly onto his back.

Naked and pale, he closes his eyes and stretches out in the sunlight, moaning as it licks his skin with a million tiny pinpricks.

He lays that way for some time, spine arched and blooming for the sun, until he feels a rough hand stroke down his front. When he opens his eyes, the minotaur lizard is looming above him, its black eyes shining.

“We cannot live like this,” it says.

Through eyelids that ache, heavy from holding the weight of the sun, Luigi nods.

“We need to move on from here.”

Luigi closes his eyes and nods again. He lifts an arm over his eyes, shielding them from the harsh light. It feels good, still. Better than eating, better than fur and tongues. It is as though the sunlight spreads through him, nurturing each cell back to life.

He dozes off for a few hours, and when he awakes, Bowser is seated in the open clearing, a mangled mountain goat at his side. With two pointed talons he kindles a spark over the tinder pile he’d laid, using his claws to bring an ember to life.

“Come here, Luigi.”

Dizzy, Luigi hobbles to his feet and ambles over, knees wobbling with every step.

Bowser catches him with his hand when he falls. “Blow on this until it ignites,” he instructs.

Weakly, Luigi leans over and purses his lips, weakly blowing onto the embers. His vision swirls. His head spins.

“This is how it feels,” Bowser says heavily, “when they take away your fire.”

I have taken away your fire, he says.

Bowser blows on the twigs and the ember erupts, growing into a flame that quickly spreads through the nest of kindling. He rips a chunk out of the dead goat, skewers it on his claw, and holds it over the firepit to cook.

“Tomorrow we’re going to find somewhere to live,” he says, the words unbroken by heavy snorts. It seems that he is speaking with ease now, becoming less and less fatigued by the action. “We need to be by a river. We can’t keep drinking rainwater.”

“I need land,” Luigi rasps, heart racing when Bowser shakes off the charred slab of meat and drops it onto the ground in front of him. “The cave is killing me.”

There is silence for a moment.

Then Bowser releases a breath through his nose. “You should go home, Luigi,” he says. “You are suffering.”

Luigi pulls his arms around himself, gripping his elbows.

“You’re a man. You need things I don’t need. And I need things that you don’t.”

“You’re a man too,” Luigi says quietly.

“Not anymore. Not really.”

Luigi closes his eyes.

“I wish I had hollow bones,” he says after a moment, voice low. He swallows. “And wings. I wish I could be closer to the sun and further from all of this.”

Bowser doesn’t say anything. He just extends his finger and begins cutting the cooked meat into smaller portions.

“You’re lucky you are not fully a man,” Luigi adds, looking over at the orange sunset dripping between the mountain peaks. “Even to be part of them…”

“Eat, Luigi.”

Luigi blinks, his bitterness hollowing out. He takes a slab of meat in his hands. His first few bites are tentative, appraising, but after a moment he is tearing into it, juicy and tender and crisped, the nourishment flowing through him, depositing strength throughout his body.

Bowser gulps down the remainder of the goat, and when he is finished, he stands.

Still chewing, Luigi’s eyes travel up the length of him. His eyes devour the dragon’s strong muscles, shaped and sculpted and not the least obscured by his rolling scales. He admires the way that his belly rolls soft, the glistening shape of the cock between his legs, pointed at the top and widening far beyond what is tenable at the base. The horns on his head and the spikes on his back. Luigi gets to his feet and staggers towards him, his eyes flooded with protein and pulse racing with affection.

The minotaur jolts out of the way, snorting pleasantly. It drags its foot against the ground, as though threatening to attack.

Luigi’s heart sears. A laugh of pure glee bursts out of him, and he bolts forward again.

For a few minutes they fight, Luigi dodging swipes and charges, climbing up rocks and inclines. A fair opponent, Bowser allows his weakened limbs all the time they need to get him where he’s trying to go.

Luigi jumps from a ledge and tumbles through the air, letting Bowser catch him. He winds his arms around the minotaur’s bicep, grabbing onto him tightly with his feet dangling free.

“I was wrong,” the minotaur says patronizingly, then swings his arm up to throw Luigi over his shoulder. “You have conquered me, little one.”

Luigi’s laugh is torn from his lips as Bowser starts running. He gives a scream of delight as it takes the wind out of him, turning him both dizzy and airy at the same time. He is flying, and he is falling, but either way he is safe, hands clamped protectively around the great creature of legend’s horns.

One more night in the cave.

They will spend one more night submerged deep in that darkness and then they depart, seeking a home that suits them both.

Lying on his back on the hard ground, Luigi sighs pleasantly. Bowser’s arm is tossed over his front, covering him like a blanket. He raises his arms above his head and stretches, spine arching against rock.

Luigi has not had lovers.

He has had only imagined partners who are his to kiss and walk around with. He’s dreamed of it, of course, especially in despairing moments when he had only himself to survive for, and when that one thing was not enough. He dreamed of it all night after he saw Mario and Peach spinning on the patio, porch lights bathing the bricks, fruit trees in motion in the warm, evening breeze.

The minotaur is not that. It does not fit into the anonymous shape of those fantasies.

This is not a lover he can kiss on the lips, or one he can take to dinner and eat beside. Not somebody he can walk down the streets holding hands with or spin with on the patio or recite words to beneath a wedding arch. But he can curl up with it at night, using its fur like a bed. And he can ride on its shoulders, holding fast to its horns, run through by the bottomless sensation of his gut and the delicious clench of his thighs around its neck. There may be no marriage, no bridal lasso to encircle them both, but Luigi is ensnared all the same. For him, this is love. It is not a dismal fantasy made to tide him over in his blackest nights. It is love- real, and alive, and breathing loudly in the still of the cave.

He is still submerged in a deep sleep, his mind empty of dreams but full of the berry-rich flesh of love, when his world is suddenly shattered by confusion, and the whistle of wind darting past his face.

He hears the thwick cut through the silence. Then a burst of light spears onto his face.

Luigi jumps to his feet, his heart racing and his head thick with grogginess, and for a moment all he can feel is the icy emptiness inside of him. It fills him with nothing, a nothing even more substantial than the hollow darkness of the cave.

He staggers on his feet, confused, and hears himself gasp, though he doesn't know why.

Bowser groans on the floor, snapping and whining, but when Luigi tries to look at him he is blinded by the brilliance of that harsh light tearing into his eyes.

“Luigi?” Emilio asks, his voice bewildered and shaking.

Luigi heaves out a breath, jerking violently away. His knees wobble beneath him. He almost falls.

At first he thinks he hears horror in his uncle’s voice. Then, suddenly, he realized it is horror for him. For his naked, filthy body. For the scene in front of him: a man being held hostage in the minotaur lizard’s lair, withered down to almost nothing, emaciated and weak.

He whimpers, trying once more to look at the beast, but the artificial light blinds his vision.

Emilio stands rooted to the spot for another moment. Then he reaches forward in a burst of pure understanding, his reflexes lightning-fast and horrified. He grabs Luigi’s arm and his crossbow clatters to the ground.

Luigi gasps for air as his manager yanks him out of the cave and into the throng of people waiting for them in the mountains.

He tries to fight, to jerk away and run back inside, but his feet fail him. He stumbles helplessly along as Emilio pulls him, and by the time they are outside, it is too late. There are people all around him, wedged now in between him and his freedom.

Later, he will remember not feeling any grief or sorrow, not yet. That would come. In that moment all he felt was the emptiness. The coldness. And it was expanding, cutting through everything inside of him, cutting through the world.

He remembers how, in a frantic fit of desperation, Emilio had grabbed his arm and thrust it into the air.

He remembers standing there, broken, looking out over the crowd.

“Luigi has slayed the minotaur!” Emilio had screamed.

part v. estocada.

Luigi doesn’t remember if they’d cheered. Somebody had wept with gratitude, he recalls. Most of them had been silent, exhausted and afraid, eager for the search party to finally be disbanded. He’d been too deep in shock to retain any of it.

Tiredly, Luigi stands up on the hearth and gently lowers the horns down from the wall, gripping them in careful hands. They are brittle now, dry and delicate, and look somehow smaller than they did affixed to the creature’s temples.

Emilio had them mounted and mailed to his brother’s house in Italy, which he had retired to only a few weeks after being found.

Before the emptiness finally thawed, flooding him with a grief that almost decimated his world, the doctors and counselors had sat him down and tried to get him to talk about what had happened. They told him he’d been taken by an animal. They insisted he’d been ravished. That he’d been entrapped and traumatized.

For a short time, he almost believed them. It kept the heartache at bay, so he just nodded and let them try to heal his wounds.

He regrets it now, for the process has robbed precious memories from him. It has made him doubt the ones he had, making him question everything from his sanity to his stupidity. It has tainted the fierceness and the vibrancy of the lingering love that, in those years that followed, he had needed to survive.

It is still here. All he has are the horns and his own heart, but he still feels it. The minotaur lizard had been more than its own flesh, and in that same way, Bowser had made him feel like he could be too. Sometimes he is still flying on its back, himself a bird and an angel and an icarus that cannot be burned, because the sun has promised to never do anything but nourish him.

He’d been muddled with sleep and racked with agony at the time, but when that blinding light dropped to the floor so Emilio could drag him out of the cave, Luigi had whipped his head back to look at the minotaur.

In the milky light of dawn, it was lying still on the ground with an arrow through its heart. Its eyes were closed as though in sleep, its arm still stretched out where it had been covering Luigi in its own fleecy display of claws.

Everybody knows that legends burn bright and fast. He wasn’t surprised to see its flesh caving in, dissolving to nothing.

As he was pulled away, he’d watched the fabric of the minotaur break down. It’d taken years for him to understand, but when he finally did, it all made sense. In the end, the cursed creature had been defeated in battle.

And in the center of Bowser’s chest, tucked into his massive rib cage, he’d seen the body of a man curled up inside of him. He had rough skin and fiery red hair. His eyes were closed.

In this life, there have been few instances in which Luigi has known peace. True, soul-soothing peace.

All the same, he cannot imagine a peace as absolute as the expression on that man’s face.