[b][u][center]A New Maze
By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]
 
 
 
 
 



The middle of an abandoned shopping mall was a weird place to live, but Hugo supposed that he was kind of weird by the standards of the people around him. By several standards, really, if one got down to brass tacks. He was a minotaur rather than a full anthro, so he looked like something out of mythology rather than something that fit in with the rest of the city. He wasn’t [i]entirely[/i] himself – there was a whole head-space, not-quite-real thing that even he didn’t entirely understand going on – which meant that sometimes he was there, sometimes he wasn’t. He barely even left his home, despite living in Docetri, the city of magic and power, where nearly anything was possible.

But he was himself, and he was pretty much fine with that.

The minotaur grunted as he hefted another chunk of old metal from the floor to the wall. His arms bunched up, muscles bulging along his shoulders and down his back before he pressed the panel into place. Keeping it in place with the palm of one hand, he dragged the free one around the border, little sparks shooting from his palm as he welded it into place.

“No substitute for proper stone, but not much I can do about that,” the minotaur muttered under his breath.

It wasn’t perfectly secure, either, and he knew someone hitting the other side of the wall hard enough would completely dislodge the panel, but at least it was better than just leaving the plaster wrecked and filled with holes. Hugo rapped his knuckles against the panel a couple of times, snorted in satisfaction to find it solidly in place, and stepped back to observe his handiwork.

The whole upper floor of the abandoned mall had finally been converted. He’d knocked down walls in multiple places between the once-distinct stores, remodeling them and creating a passageway of twisting corridors between them. Adjustable walls made of melted-down racks and old bits of metal broke up the once-endless balconies and hallways between the stores, forcing anyone that entered to go through his maze or have the power to punch the walls down.

Admittedly, Hugo was pretty sure that most people could punch through the walls if they had half a second to plan. He missed working with stone and concrete, but in a city like this, metal was what he had, and metal was what he used.

Still, he had to admit that it made for a very modular sort of ‘dungeon’ when it all came down to it. He could change up the walls and the room structure on the fly, adjusting his home how he liked it, and…

Well, if he had intruders that weren’t so welcome, he could keep making different prison cells until they got tired of breaking walls.

Hugo looked at one of the more reflective panels that he’d put up. It wasn’t as good as a mirror, but he still got an idea of how sweaty he was in it. Droplets ran down his dark, near-black coat, over some of the whiter patches along his hips and around the edge of his jockstrap. White eyes looked back at him, ever so slightly glowing in the reflection, and he pinched the bridge of his muzzle tiredly.

“Mmmph…using a little too much magic today, I guess…”

At least the light in his eyes still faded. Wasn’t at the danger zone yet, then. He looked at himself again, smiling slightly at the image of a muscular bull-man looking back at him. Not quite a minotaur, not quite a bull, but closer to the second, now that he thought about it. His horns were fairly large, and more than one full-of-himself top had used them for handlebars in the past, but the points were sharp enough that he could fight back, if he needed to.

[i]Not that anyone’s seen me for a while, anyway,[/i] he thought, looking at the minimal clothing he still had. [i]Heh. If anyone saw me now…[/i]

The jockstrap was all he had, really. He’d scavenged that from one of the stores, but the clothing emporium had been long-shuttered by the time he’d found it. Other scavengers had likely picked it over a hundred times before he got there, and he was frankly lucky to have gotten even that much.

And it wasn’t exactly his size, either. Though contained in a sheath, his cock bulged against the front of the jock painfully visibly, and his balls were barely contained within. The construction of the jockstrap kept them from just falling, but it was a constant fight to keep from feeling painfully constrained by it.

He adjusted himself for the umpteenth time, shifting from foot to foot. Yes, foot to foot, not hoof to hoof. He supposed that was one more difference between himself and other minotaurs, when one got down to it. Fun, though, if he ever had someone to indulge with –

Hugo shook his head, looking away from the reflective panel. Admiring himself was fine for the end of the day, but he still had light to work with, and there was a lot of mall left to convert into a proper maze.

The minotaur walked out of the half-made winding corridor of sheet metal and melted-down slag that he had to work with, leaning over the balcony and looking down from the top floor of the mall. There were three floors under him, and he still planned to fill in most of the hole on the second or third floor, making it more of a viable large space rather than the open-air [i]thing[/i] that it currently was. It was driving him crazy, but he contented himself with the promise that it would get better over time.

And at least he’d already fixed the top floor. So many walls had been knocked down, so many new corridors had been put up, and so many traps had been added. Traps…

Hugo chuckled. It was just minotaur nature, he supposed. Once a minotaur had a maze, they had to start laying down traps of various sorts. Sometimes they were deadly, if one was a more ethically dubious minotaur, and sometimes…

[i]God, if anyone actually gets this far, I’m going to have to figure out what to do with them…[/i]

Because one thing was certain: Hugo’s traps were the furthest thing from deadly that one could imagine.

He glanced up at the hole in the ceiling. He still had a little bit of daylight left, but while he had originally planned to finish off the old game store and turn it into a little den of relaxation, something tickled at the back of his mind and told him to go down to the entrance on the first floor. It was, after all, rather unsecured, and it wouldn’t do for a minotaur’s maze to be utterly without security. A little bit of invitation was fine, but outsiders should still be…relatively discouraged without an invitation.

Hugo rubbed the back of his neck and sighed; regardless of his preferences, he knew he’d be working on the front entrance until well into the night. With how run-down and ruined it was, it would take hours, but there was no helping it. A minotaur’s instincts were seldom wrong, and he knew better than to ignore his.

Sighing, the minotaur grabbed a few more plates of metal and began the long descent down busted escalators and redirected stairs. He might as well use the light for as long as he had it before seeing if there was any power he could tap.

#

He had finished putting together a few bare-bones traps along the entrance when he heard the sound of approaching voices. Hugo paused, one ear lifted, listening to see if they were getting any closer or just passing by.

They were getting closer.

[i]Hide, hide, hide![/i]

Hugo bit back a quiet whimper as he grabbed his materials and sped around the corner, hiding in the little wall-crevice where the bathrooms used to be before one would have gone from the entrance to the food court. He barely managed to keep the metal plates from going off like gongs as he situated himself, and leaned them ever so carefully against the wall before carefully peering around the corner again.

The shopping mall had once been a big draw in the neighborhood, as far as he could tell. There were lots of potted plants and a walkway that led from the sidewalk streetside to the front door. But even before he’d come around, the plants had either died or overgrown their containers, depending on how much direct sunlight they’d received. The walkway had been overgrown with roots and leaves, the pathway shattered here and there and overturned in other places.

On it walked three people. Two of them – a fox and a Doberman – were clearly more nervous than the one leading them forward, an otter with stars in his eyes and a clear lust for adventure writ large across his face. They all but climbed over the overgrowth between them and the mall, the otter laughing and waving the other two along while the fox and dog looked over their shoulders, wistfully staring at the street that they had abandoned.

“Come on, don’t leave me hanging here, guys,” the otter called over his shoulder. “This place has got to have something.”

“Dude, it’s been dead for ages,” the fox said. “And you know that the 79ers have already run through this like, what, twenty times?”

“More like thirty,” the Doberman muttered.

“We’re not gonna find shit there. And besides, you heard the stories? Place is haunted.”

“Hey, means we could pick up a ghost. You got that Remembrance-magic, right?” the otter said. “We could trap the thing, make it part of the group.”

Hugo bit back a small chuckle. Here he’d been thinking that more gangsters were coming for another looting run at the mall, and it was just…kids. Academy students, maybe, graduated from childhood and trying to find their own adventures in Docetri.

Or, at least, one of them was. The otter didn’t have the slightest hint of caution that most people would have had coming to a place so ripped apart by time and nature. The other two looked like they were ready to run off at the drop of a hat.

[i]Or –[/i]

Even Hugo jumped as the otter stepped over the threshold of the busted doors. The first trap went off, a ceiling panel swinging down in front of the otter. The minotaur had put that one together as an early-warning, something meant to boot anyone that didn’t get out of the way right back onto the pathway and send them on their way.

The otter surprised him; he ducked, though only barely, and the panel went over his head and snapped off. It flew off, banging into the Doberman and knocking him off his feet, instead, and tumbling right into the overgrown plants.

“That’s it! I’m fucking gone! I’m leaving!” the canine said, scrambling to his feet and running back down the path.

“Yeah, uh…that place clearly doesn’t want us here, man,” the fox said, shaking his head.

“Come on, it’s just one loose panel.”

“Dude, it kicked Vic right outta the place. No way. I’m not walking around a fucking ruin waiting for my head to get caved in.”

“But –”

“I’m going home. You do what you want, Carl.”

The otter – Carl – stared after the departing pair, soundlessly gesturing at them. Hugo just watched, his head cocked to the side in curiosity.

When he’d picked the mall as his new lair in Docetri, one of the biggest things that made it win out over other possibilities was the fact that it was abandoned, and that most people wouldn’t be coming around. The traps and walls and everything else that he had been building weren’t so much to defend the place; it was just what minotaurs [i]did[/i] as a matter of course. Like all others, he had a compulsion to play with architecture and infrastructure. It was just built into him.

But it seemed that the mall still attracted some people…though not many, thankfully. The two running off clearly took the trap warning to heart, even if Carl didn’t.

[i]Now I just gotta –[/i]

“Hellooooo, Hugo.”

The minotaur nearly jumped out of his skin, barely keeping his feet on the ground and restraining himself to a mild flail instead. Pressing one hand to his chest, he slowly turned and glared at the frog-like female. With more of a pointed beak rather than the rounded one an amphibian would normally have, and covered in shimmering black, gold, and red colors, the kappa looked like a poison dart frog crossed with a turtle. As usual when she appeared, she hadn’t bothered to put any clothes on, and squatted over a drinking fountain, long toes and soles hanging over the edge of it, and her pussy nearly touching the metal.

“Mmmph…don’t scare me like that,” he muttered.

“Heh, and here I thought you would be happy to see me again.”

“Later,” he whispered.

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“There’s someone just around the corner.”

“Ooooooh?”

Taishi hopped down. She could stand normally, but she seldom chose to; she seemed to like the way that her creeping and crawling put people off and ill-at-ease. Unlike some of her kappa ancestors, she didn’t have the same bowl of water in the middle of her head, and there were days when Hugo wondered just where that was…or if it had only been legend for kappas to start with.

She peered around the corner at Carl, and Hugo joined her. The otter had finally given up on trying to call his peers back, and had begun his exploration of the abandoned food court. Thankfully, he was going the other direction, poking his head into the ruined old restaurants, looking under tables, and slowly shuffling his way over debris to the shops on floor level.

Taishi chuckled.

“Oh, he’d be fun.”

“…Oh, you’re not –”

“Come on. Part of having a maze is having lots of other monsters in it.”

“I don’t need servants! I told you!”

“Okay, friends, then.”

“I’m [i]fine[/i] not having roommates!” he hissed.

“For now, heh. How long before you start going crazy?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Taishi chuckled, shaking her head as she pulled her head back around the corner.

“You have anything set up for catching intruders?”

“I – not yet, but –”

“Come on. Let’s make a few in case he gets to the second floor.”

“I don’t need to catch him! How many times do I have to –”

“Come on, you know you want to,” the frog-like kappa teased, sliding closer until she was almost pressed against him. “Where’s that minotaur hunger to keep all those intruders captive? Where’s that [i]need[/i] to have a little fun with all those idiots that decide to march right into [i]your[/i] home and try and take stuff from it?”

He knew what she was doing; she’d done the same thing at the last home he’d set up for himself, and the one before that. Taishi was a bad influence, constantly trying to push him back to what minotaurs were ‘supposed’ to do, and she was painfully good at it. He blamed the slime that oozed from her skin and down her flesh; there was some sort of poison, some sort of aphrodisiac to it or something, because it always made his head go funny when she touched him.

The minotaur ducked around her as she tried to press him against the wall, shaking his head rapidly.

“Oh, no, not this time.”

“Oh, come on. You know you love it.”

“Yeah, for about a week before things start to go off the rails! You can’t just catch someone and keep ‘em forever. That’s not how the world works. People start chasing you down for stuff like that.”

“In other places, maybe. Not here. Not in Docetri.”

Hugo paused in mid-step, gritting his teeth. He could already feel his thoughts turning, knowing where they were going and unable to stop it.

[i]No, no, no, this is what she wants. This is a trick, this is going to leave you on the run [b]again[/b]. It’s not going to be better this time.[/i]

Except…maybe it would be. Unlike the other cities across the world – most of which were very non-magical – Docetri was even more divided in some ways. If he had set up shop in one of the livelier parts of town, yes, things could go bad for him. He could end up having a serious problem, but here in the Dead Zones…

He’d picked them for the simple fact that they were islands of isolation within the city, entire neighborhoods where the public safety enchantments simply didn’t work. There were hundreds of tiny little details from security cameras to anti-crash spells and many things in-between that just weren’t funded and maintained in the Dead Zones, and that meant that people like him – the weird ones, the ones that weren’t as welcome in public – were able to just…disappear.

Other people could be made to disappear in the Dead Zones. As long as he didn’t catch someone with too many connections –

His jockstrap twitched at the thought. Hugo groaned, rubbing his forehead.

“I hate it when you do this,” he muttered.

“Heh, come on, you know you’d love to have that otter down to nothing but a loincloth. Couple of gold rings on his feet, a couple of shackles…maybe a nice ring gag in his mouth so he can’t say no to your dick…”

“Mmmph…”

“I know you, Hugo. I know what you want. And I know what you’re denying yourself. Come on…Let’s set a few traps for the little bitch.”

“…Fine. But if he gets out, he gets out. No fucking with him. We play fair.”

“Don’t I always?” Taishi chuckled.

“Not even slightly…”

#

They were able to reach the second floor with ease. He wasn’t sure how Taishi did it – the kappa always seemed to move with ease, almost like she had some way of teleporting to wherever she wanted to be – but he had his own ways of getting around. Minotaurs were known for being creatures of the labyrinth, after all, and while the abandoned shopping mall was hardly one of the old-style mazes, there were enough twists and turns even before he got involved for it to qualify.

He moved on silent feet from one corner to another, finding the turns by instinct and feel. Without the otter ever seeing him, he reached the second floor and leaned on the railing, looking around.

There weren’t many points where those on the first floor could climb up. The elevators were dead, and even he struggled to pull the heavy doors apart without some power to run the engines. With those out of order, the only ways up and down were the out-of-order escalators…or some ambitious soul trying to put together a ladder out of debris, which – given that he was dealing with an otter – was at least somewhat possible.

Taishi walked out of the shadows to stand beside him. The naked kappa reached out to touch him, only for Hugo to deliberate spark a little lightning off his arm. The magic seared a little, draining him, but he managed to keep a smile on his face.

“Ah ha, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Not yet.”

“Mmm, later, then.”

“Maybe.”

“Nope. You already implied it would be fine at a different time, and I’m going to take it and run with it.”

“What are you, a lawyer?”

“I could probably give a few a run for their money,” she said, leaning over the railing. “Looks like he’s busy checking everything out.”

“Not everything.”

“Oh?” She smiled as she looked up at him. “What do your cow-eyes see, then?”

“Bull, please.” He smiled. “It’s not like you’ve ever come around to peg me.”

“Mmmm, I think of other parts when I think ‘cow.’” The kappa winked. “Tell me, are your balls still as productive as they used to be?”

“…Anyway.” He blushed, clearing his throat. “Look at him. He’s not just an explorer. He’s looking for something.”

“Like he’d find anything here; it’s been picked clean.”

“Not completely. Not for someone that knows what they’re looking for.”

“So what is he looking for? What kind of bait are you thinking of?”

Hating the way that she could call him out like that and know exactly what he was thinking before he did, Hugo looked over the railing again. The otter had just climbed over old rubble – [i]Must get around to collecting the drywall and other bits so I have more than metal to work with[/i] – and stepped inside an old game store. The minotaur nodded to himself.

“Machinery. Circuitry. Stuff to keep gadgets running.”

“And what’s stopping him from just buying that?” Taishi asked.

“Could be he doesn’t have enough money. Could be adventure. Could be that they just don’t sell specific models anymore.”

“Hmmm, so he’s looking through the old bits to see if he can find something for…what, you think?”

“Who knows?” Hugo said, shaking his head. “But whatever it is, it clearly means something to him. And knowing that there’s a huge electronics store on the third floor –”

“Perfect. See, I told you that you could trap him.”

“Oh, stop.”

Still, he couldn’t deny that there was a small thrill to the hunt. His cock was twitching again, and his heart beat a little faster than it had been. It had been a [i]very[/i] long time indeed since he’d last been on the ‘hunt’ for someone in his domain, and he’d all but forgotten the way that it felt. It wasn’t just minotaur instincts at that point, though they played their role in making it more fun.

No, there was just…something about pushing himself…being part of a test…being both hunter and object for someone else.

It thrilled him, and he couldn’t have entirely said why. It just did. And he had to take a few deep breaths to calm himself down before he started making a mess of things.

“Upstairs,” he muttered, turning to the ruined escalators, but Taishi was already gone.

The rubble and debris that had fallen from more damaged parts of the shopping mall gave him quite a bit of exercise as he climbed over damaged steps and past wreckage, but he was used to it by now. The mall had become his labyrinth, and he knew every trick to every route. He climbed over the chunks of fallen flooring, weaved around jagged panels, and climbed from the second to the third floor with ease.

Taishi was waiting, of course. She chuckled as he walked up to the cracked windows of the abandoned store, squatting on one of the busted-out sills.

“You need to get faster.”

“Or you need to teach me that trick,” he muttered, walking along the storefront. “Now, let’s see…”

There was little point in trapping the front of the store; the broken windows had gaps too big to cover, and the holes could be expanded easily. The otter would get through anything that Hugo could jury-rig, and that would just waste time and resources.

So, nothing at the front, but what about a few steps in? He walked inside, careful of the broken glass around his feet, and looked at the old cash registers, the lines, the architecture of the store. There were narrow places where he could put down a few traps in the entryway, particularly if Taishi let him borrow some of her slime. Throw down a few shelving units, and he’d have a funnel that would push the otter down two different pathways to get to the rest of the store.

He nodded to himself as he walked further in, his eyes drawn to different bits of old machinery like they were treasures of a dragon’s hoard. What worked? What didn’t? What looked valuable? What looked like trash?

It was like his understanding of Machine-magic mixed with the natural instincts of a minotaur, and he picked up things almost at random that looked like they would be useful for bait. He carried them with him to the back of the store, redistributing them without thinking, putting one old printer on a pedestal that would catch the light from the front of the shop, a phone on a countertop a bit further in. Everything would be like signposts to a treasure hunter, screaming ‘this way, this way.’

And if he did this right, it would drive the otter to come deeper and deeper, forgetting about the danger that might be waiting ahead.

“Hehehehe, you’re enjoying this,” Taishi said, hopping along the top of a nearby shelf.

“…Maybe,” Hugo admitted as he delved deeper.

“You’re getting a boner.”

“Shut up.”

“Hehehe, come on. Just admit that you like playing games with peoples’ heads. You like dragging them down just as much as me. It’s part of the fun of being what we are, isn’t it? A little more…monstrous?”

“I swear, you just got bored with normal people and decided to come around to mess with my head.”

“What was your first clue?”

Rolling his eyes, he tuned her out as he continued to lay out the bait for the otter. He didn’t know what Carl actually wanted from the shopping mall, but he knew that it had to be somewhere in the store. All he had to do was make sure that the viable possibilities led in a chain between each other.

After all, control the intruder’s perception, control the route that they would take. And if you controlled their route, then making sure that they hit most of the traps and tricks got much, much easier.

It took the minotaur all of five minutes to get the proper route set up, one that zig-zagged through the store. After he made sure that he hadn’t left any obvious tracks along the ground – he hadn’t – he glanced up at Taishi.

“Ready to help me set up?”

“Mmm, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that we need some wire, as many rubber bands as possible, some canned air…”

He had a number of traps in mind. Most of them were immobility based, but if he could get some of the more inventive ones to work, he had no doubt in his mind that Carl would be stuck in the store with him. And anything stuck in a minotaur’s maze would not stay itself for long.

#

Carl grunted as he dragged himself up the last of the rubble piles around the top of the escalator. The otter’s fingers were covered in dust, and for that matter, so were his clothes. The t-shirt was probably a lost cause; so much drywall on it that he’d probably gum up any washing machine he threw it in. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen to the rest of his clothes.

On the plus side…

He hefted the bag at his side, grinning despite himself. For all that his friends had said that the mall was a lost cause, he’d certainly found quite a haul so far. Some old chips, the guts of a few computer systems that were painfully outdated, and a chassis that was almost perfect for what he needed. He just needed a couple more things – some good wiring, some screens – and judging from the directory, that should be right about –

“Perfect,” he muttered, smiling at the old electronics store. “You’ll do.”

The otter grinned to himself as he stepped through the broken-open entrance of the store. Much like any other that still operated in the ‘proper’ parts of the city, it had the division between the cash registers in front of half the doors and the open area in front of the ostensible ‘entrance.’ A busted-up alcove to his right was probably where the store once sold televisions, while straight ahead were the usuals aisles, shelves, and displays –

Carl’s gaze fell on one such display and his eyes went wide as he saw an old game console. He darted straight for it, leaping over a pile of old plastic rubbish and stutter-stepping to a halt a half-step away from the small podium.

“Holy hell. Is this thing…oh god, it’s still in one piece,” he muttered.

Not common to find an old Thrill-Gamer around; most of those consoles were recalled due to a lawsuit when it was found that they could play anyone’s disks and the whole games industry went all proprietary on their ass. Nobody put out another reader like that ever again, but on the rare occasion one was found, it sold for thousands, if not millions of dollars as tech-bros all over the world chased after it.

“Hell yes,” Carl whispered, circling the display. “Man…I thought…ho, boy. This just made the whole day worth it.”

Just as the otter reached for it, though, a flicker down toward the back of the store drew his eyes off to the side. He paused, glancing its way –

“No way…no freaking way…”

The Thrill-Gamer was a treasure all on its own, but hanging from one of the shelving units further down was something equally impossible: one of the disks that the game system had come with. Any other developer would have been seen as insane for selling blank disks, but the Thrill-Gamer system could inscribe disks as well as read any of them. And just like the game system could read any disk, the inscribed ones could be read by any system. Well, provided that they had the same sort of disk size for it.

It was the perfect system for piracy and equality, and the entire game industry had tried to shut it down with one lawsuit after another. They’d mostly succeeded, too, with only a few of the disks and systems still outside the big warehouses.

[i]Man, this is perfect…[/i]

He bagged the Thrill-Gamer and walked further in. As soon as he found the disks, he saw another treasure further in, and another after that, each one making his grin grow and pulling him further into the store.

Carl was just reaching for the fifth little trinket when he heard a soft ‘click’ as it came off the hook.

“What –”

The otter yelped as four security wires shot out of the shelving unit behind him, binding his legs together from his ankles to his knees. He wobbled back and forth, desperately trying to get his balance back as he leaned forward –

Click.

“Oh come – mmmph!”

A panel dropped in the row of shelves in front of him and a foam ball shot out, lodging itself right in his muzzle. He coughed, trying to spit it out, and as he flailed around, he fell over backward. Thankfully, there was enough soft plastic debris to catch him, but it was still humiliating to just topple over.

As he sat up and pulled the ball out of his mouth, Carl realized he could just make out something a few aisles down. Something moving, shuffling, walking around in the store. He wasn’t alone.

“Oh, come on. Come on, come on – why won’t you come off?!”

The security cords were pulled tight, yanked around his legs so hard and pulled so close that they formed wrinkles in his pants, trapping them where they were. He grunted as he tried to pull them free, but they never so much as rolled down his legs.

And they were wet. Why were they wet?

As he fumbled with them, however, his fingers went numb. Carl struggled, trying to grab them again and again, but within a minute, his fingers stopped working. They would no longer bend, no longer so much as twitch as he commanded them. The slime oozed through his pants, making his knees stop moving, and even his ankles no longer felt right. It was as if everything from his knees down had gone completely off the grid, no longer connected to his brain save for as a useless lump.

He let go, trying to wiggle away, but without the use of his arms, all he could do was throw himself forward. Carl grunted every time he scrunched up, worming his way across the floor. He made it a total of a pace, maybe two, before the source of the noise revealed itself.

“Wow, Hugo, I’m surprised that worked.”

“Same. I mean, I hoped, but –”

“Oh, don’t start, you big worrywart. Just because you don’t have faith in your traps doesn’t mean that they don’t work. Particularly when you have my help.”

“More like your slime.”

Carl barely heard what they were saying; he was too busy staring at them.

In Docetri, one got used to seeing strange things on a daily basis. Body-magic warped the shapes and forms of just about everything, and Machine-magic could create golems or impossible machines of any sort. Perception-magic made illusions and controlled minds, and Presence-magic shifted how people were seen and where they stood at any given moment. Lightning-magic was…well, that was pretty self-explanatory, and Remembrance-magic was complicated.

Carl was used to magic, but seeing a minotaur in a jockstrap and a multi-colored frog-creature in the buff just…strolling down the aisle of a ruined store was weird, even to him. They stopped a pace away from him, looking down, and the otter just stared at up at them.

Eventually, the minotaur – who was bulging that jockstrap a little more than he wanted to think about – squatted down on the balls of his feet beside him. Carl held his breath as if he was staring at a feral animal –

“Please tell me you don’t believe all the bullshit stories around minotaurs,” the big black and white bovine said. “I really don’t want to spend the first week of our new relationship unpicking all that stuff.”

“…”

“I’m not a T-Rex. I can see you even when you’re not moving.”

“…Dammit,” Carl muttered.

“What do they teach people about minotaurs these days?” the big bull muttered.

“Well, pretty sure that they don’t teach them any more than they teach about people like me,” the frog-thing said, rolling her eyes. “The way that he’s staring at me, I can’t tell if he desperately wants to dick me or wants to run away.”

“Uh, both. Very much both,” Carl admitted.

“…Well, at least he talks to you,” the minotaur muttered.

“It’s the naked thing; I bet you he’d talk if you had your dick flopped on his face.”

“I would not!”

“Not sure if I believe that,” the frog-thing said with a chuckle.

“Leave him alone,” the minotaur said, shaking his head. “Whatever he’s learned, he’s clearly not at his best right now. You forget how good your poison is, ad how much it messes with people’s heads, I think.”

Poison. So that’s what the slime was. He looked back at his legs again, and down at his arms. No wonder they didn’t want to work; whatever he’d been soaked with had probably been absorbed into his skin and his body by now, which meant that it was running wild. Clearly wasn’t messing with his heart or anything, but –

The minotaur chuckled. Carl whipped his head up.

“What?”

“You’re trying to puzzle it out. It’s nice.”

“…Why would – I don’t get it.”

“Puzzles are my life. I can’t help it; I get into them and I want to figure them out.”

“While you should be relaxing,” the frog muttered.

“Taishi, I swear…just…shut up for two seconds,” the minotaur muttered, shaking his head. “This one’s mine now, okay?”

“Is he?”

“Well, soon enough.”

“Heheh…fine. I’ll leave you two alone. Just make sure that you don’t chicken out this time; sometimes, letting them go isn’t as nice as you think it is.”

She disappeared, and Carl stared at the spot where she used to be. He’d seen Presence-mages just teleport away before, but the way that she just…disappeared…It was either one of the best uses of it that he’d ever seen, or something else entirely. Maybe she was using a different sort of magic. Maybe she was one of the Pact-mages. Maybe –

“You’re overthinking again,” the bull said.

“…Kinda hard not to when you’re…you know, dealing with this.”

“Fair point. Well, let’s start with some official introductions, hmm?” The minotaur offered his hand. “I’m Hugo. And you?”

“Uh…Carl.”

“Good to meet you, Carl. Now, up you get.”

The minotaur pulled him upright with surprising ease, and the otter blinked as he wobbled back and forth on bound legs. He gestured at them, but Hugo shook his head.

“Not yet. Not until I’m sure you’re not going to run off.”

“Uh…isn’t this kidnapping?”

“Probably. Technically. But you were the one that lost.”

“…What do you mean, lost?”

“You came in to try and steal from a minotaur. If you’d gotten through all the traps and left, then that would have been fine. Fair game and all that. You would have earned all the winnings that you’d put your hands on.

“But…you didn’t win, did you?”

The otter stared at the speckled bull. He tried to think of something to say against that sheer stupidity, but nothing came to mind. Every response that he could conceive of sounded too…reasonable.

[i]What do you even say to something like that?[/i] he thought as he was forced to hop along behind the bull as they made their way out of the store.

#

Hugo led his new subordinate up the various escalators to the top floor. Various bits of rubble – some old, some fresh – re-routed them to a different path than he’d used to get down, but he was able to maneuver along the damaged, broken-down bits of the mall without too much trouble. Whenever they got to one of the climbing bits, he picked the otter up by the scruff of the neck and carried him along, only setting him down when they reached flat ground again. No need for the little guy to get hurt trying to hop along.

Once they reached the top floor, he casually shoved one of the metal plates over the escalator hole in the floor. It would at least keep Carl from trying to pull a runner once the bindings were undone, and –

“So, am I, uh, ever going to leave?” the otter asked.

“Hmm?”

“Well, you did say this was technically kidnapping, and that kind of implies that I’m not leaving, so – well, guess I just wanted to check.”

“…You’ve never looked up what minotaurs do in their mazes, have you?”

“To be fair, I didn’t think minotaurs were going to be a big thing in my life.”

“Valid, heh,” Hugo said, shaking his head as he stood up again. “Well, I guess the answer is probably no, then. Unless things really, really don’t work out, and the whole thing goes to hell, and I just get desperate to get rid of you…no, you’re probably not leaving again.”

“…That’s gloomy.”

“Did you have any plans?” Hugo asked, cocking his head to the side. “Oh, dear. Did I interrupt something?”

“Well, um…”

“Some college thing? Or – right, academies, they’re called here? Some sort of big plan for getting a degree?”

“Well…not so much that.”

“A good job, then?”

“Uh…well, nothing yet, but, um…”

The more that the minotaur pushed, the more that the otter’s face started to glow red. It didn’t take long for him to realize that there was nothing [i]actually[/i] there for the otter. No big family plans, no hot date, no scholarly pursuits, no job. Carl, for all intents and purposes, had been completely disconnected. Well, other than –

“Your friends?”

“More, uh, acquaintances. People I would sometimes do things with. Judging by the fact that they just ran off as soon as that trap came down, I imagine that they’re probably going to forget that they ever knew me.”

“…I think that’s a lot gloomier than anything I said.”

“Now that you mention it, yeah. Kinda.”

The minotaur shook his head, leaning down and pulling the otter into a hug. The smaller man stiffened for a moment, then relaxed into it, resting against his chest. No tears or anything – not that Hugo expected that – but just a simple sense of ease.

They stayed like that for a few seconds, then he leaned the otter against the wall.

“Right. I think it’s time to get those bindings off. You’re not going to run or anything, are you?”

“Not like I got anywhere to run to.”

“Yeah, let’s not go back there.”

Hugo undid the security bindings with a little bit of Machine-magic and the intense strength that all minotaurs just naturally had. Tossing the broken metal over his shoulders, he helped the otter back to his feet. As Carl wobbled, he looked the smaller man over, tapping his chin a couple of times.

“Ever worn a loincloth?” Hugo asked. 

Carl blinked, tilting his head. The minotaur gestured at himself.

“Look, I’d prefer a loincloth myself, but the jockstrap’s all I was able to get. I’m still looking for something for the right look for me. With you, though, we could cut that shirt down, find some more cabling, and you could just…hang loose. Properly uncovered, like someone under me should be.”

“…Are you…No, you’re not joking, are you?”

“Why would I? You actually look pretty fit, pretty healthy; why not show everything off?”

“Uh, because…because…”

“You’re not going to be in public anymore. This mall is mine, or, you know, is becoming mine,” Hugo said, shrugging. “Soon as I get all the floors secure, the only people that’ll come in will be people working for me – like you – or people that are going to be. That’s just the way that labyrinths work.”

“This is a mall, though.”

“Heh…for now.”

There was a small sense of satisfaction that Hugo had missed running through him now. He’d been prepping the place as a hidey-hole more than anything else. No matter how much he had told himself that this was his maze, now, he hadn’t actually believed it, for no minotaur was supposed to live alone. But now…

Now, he had someone.

He looked at Carl again. The otter wasn’t particularly tall, but he had that slender, adventuresome build that the species was famously known for. He looked like someone that would wiggle into holes that he didn’t belong in, get caught, and then grin wide as he was forced to take his punishment. He had that twinkle in his eyes that promised fun and playful adventure at all hours of the day…and Hugo liked that.

[i]And he’s got that shape that…would be fun in other ways, too…[/i]

Though slender, the otter’s hips had just enough curve to them that the minotaur could imagine that they’d be easy to grip, and his cock stirred more in his jockstrap. The twitch, the throb, the pulse must have been visible, because Carl immediately looked down. Hugo chuckled.

“Afraid of that thing, are we?”

“It…Are you going to –”

“Eventually.”

“…How long is…eventually?”

“Depends on how well I can hold myself back.”

“Then, you mean…”

“Yeah, uh…if it wasn’t clear, part of staying here [i]is[/i] doing what you’re told, and that will include…yeah, bending over.”

“…I [i]really[/i] don’t think that’ll fit.”

“You know, you’re not the first one to say that and be wrong.”

Hugo shook his head. He knew that he was already starting to take this in a weird direction, and he needed to take control of the situation before either of them started feeling wrong about what they were doing.

[i]Taishi could –[/i]

The minotaur pushed that thought out of his mind. While he knew that the frog-woman could make things easier with the poison that oozed from her skin, that would only be a partial fix. Sure, it would make him and Carl too horny to care about their inhibitions, but eventually, that stuff wore off.

No, if he wanted this otter to be his, to be his subordinate properly, then he needed to make sure that he did this himself.

“Alright, let’s get those clothes off.”

“But –”

“Off,” Hugo said, wiggling his finger down.

After a moment of hesitation, Carl blushed and did as he was told. What the minotaur got to see was an otter that was doing relatively well for himself, as far as appearances went. Just enough exercise to stay mostly slender, a little cushion in the rumps and hips, some very good swimming muscle in the legs and shoulders, and –

[i]Mmm…[/i]

While the minotaur wasn’t a total bottom – he liked to switch it up, mostly – he had to admit that the otter had a decent prick. Probably about five inches soft, and it looked like the sort that didn’t do a lot of growing; he couldn’t see any of the usual stretchy bits that marked it as one that got much longer. Maybe seven inches, at most, though he’d guess something closer to six.

[i]More than enough to show how much he’s enjoying everything,[/i] he thought as he crossed his arms and leaned against the railing. [i]I bet he’s going to be a drippy one, too, with those balls…[/i]

Hiding his smile, Hugo waved for the otter to turn in place. Those hips were just as perfectly grabbable as he’d hoped, and that rump under the rudder-like tail was enough to get his cock twitching again. He could just imagine the way that the cheeks would spread, showing off a hole that was well-broken by his cock –

Well, it would be well-broken. Eventually.

Carl finished turning, looking far more embarrassed now that his clothes were off, but he didn’t make any move to put them back on. He stood there with his arms at his sides, shuffling from one bare foot to the other.

“So…what now?”

“Now?” Hugo chuckled. “Now, we get started with the decorations.”

“I don’t recall there being any shops celling ornaments.”

“Oh, you don’t need that. You just need a little metal, and a little Machine-magic.”

“That’s what you cast? Machine-magic?”

“And a couple of other things.”

Mostly some Body-magic tricks and an affinity for Place-magic. He wasn’t [i]that[/i] good at the Body stuff, admittedly; he could patch a cut and manage some types of transformations, but most of his magical ability was focused on Machine-magic (the making of machines, traps, and the lightning-welding that he did) or on Place-magic (finding places with a natural magical aura and tapping it). Of course, until he had a good grip on Carl, he didn’t want to admit most of that.

“Anyway, come on. I’ve got a stash of metal nearby that’d look great on you.”

#

It was an interesting time getting the otter fitted for a new outfit. The garments were easy enough; Hugo didn’t have the machinery or the skill to weave or sew things together, but loincloths were basically just bits of fabric that had to hang from belts. It didn’t look authentic by any means by the time that he ripped a few shirts of the right color and tied them to a belt for Carl to wear, but it worked well enough to keep everything more or less out in the open.

The otter complained a bit about the lack of a back flap, but Hugo pointed out that he didn’t have anything back there, either. That was enough to shut the otter up, and it made him wonder just how much Carl might have been staring at his ass.

The metal, thankfully, was easier. He molded several bits of steel – and a little bit of gold that he’d stashed away from one of the jewelry stores – into rings and shackles, and even managed to get a band of gold through one of the steel rings to get something more decorative out of it.

He was slowly sliding the cock ring down Carl’s shaft, the otter seated on one of the chairs salvaged from one of the clothing shops, when his new subordinate cleared his throat. Hugo looked up, cocking his head to the side.

“Too tight?”

“No, just…weird.”

“That I’m decorating you?”

“Well, kinda, but…I guess I thought…”

“That I’d be fucking you already?”

“…Now that you say it, yes.”

“Well, that comes later,” Hugo said, shaking his head as he continued wiggling the ring down the hardening shaft. “And I think we’re both going to enjoy that, if the way that you keep staring me is any indication.”

Twitch-twitch. The otter’s cock clearly agreed, too. He chuckled as he wiggled the ring to the base of the shaft, giving it one last little zap. The well-shaped metal contracted, pulling close to the flesh. Not so much that it was dangerous, but certainly tight enough that it wouldn’t be sliding off without a little bit of help.

As he lifted the otter’s feet, he took the toe rings that he’d made special for them. The golden bands had little slots in the side to allow for the webbing to go untouched and unharmed, and he slid them onto the big toes, one by one. The glint of light off gold was still one of those rather beautiful things.

“Anyway,” he said as he picked up the larger ankle shackles he’d formed. “For me, aesthetics are part of the whole thing. I could technically get it up for you the way that you are now, but I’m not one of those minotaurs that goes around rutting anything that comes into his maze. I have to get it fairly. You understand?”

“Not really.”

“How to put this…”

He hesitated, rolling the padded interior of the shackle against the otter’s ankle. Hugo tapped his fingers against the metal as he rolled the concept around in his head, only snapping the first shackle shut – click – when he had it.

“Think of it like this. You know how some demons and devils have rules over what they can do?”

“Yeah. Docetri schools cover that as part of basic magical theory.”

“Well, minotaurs have a sort of code of conduct, too. Well, there’s technically three of them, but the one that I follow is a little more rule-bound than the others, and the number of loopholes – anyway. Getting ahead of myself there. The main point is, for me, there are rules in what I can and can’t do. And most of those rules boil down to whether I fairly caught someone or not.

“Until the traps work and pin someone down, keeping them from getting away, I can’t do anything to them. I have to let them go, almost like a catch and release program, and if they manage to get some treasure, then they’re free to leave with it. It’s all part of the rules, part of the game. But if you [i]do[/i] get caught…”

He clicked the other shackle over the otter’s ankle, smiling up at him.

“Then you’re mine. And I can do whatever I like.”

“…”

“I see your dick doesn’t mind that idea so much,” Hugo said, watching as it rose up and pressed against the underside of the improvised loincloth. “Such a needy little thing…”

“Mmmph…”

“Alright. Well, you’ve got the cock ring, you’ve got the shackles, you’ve got the toe rings. That’ll do for a start.”

He stood up, looming over the seated otter. His jockstrap twitched again, the front throbbing slightly as he imagined what he could do. There were all kinds of magics that could transform the smaller male, making him bigger, swishier, curvier, manlier. There were Body-magics that could turn the otter into something else entirely; he could make him into a werewolf, or a sphinx, a kitsune, or any number of mythological creatures. He could give him a bigger dick than what he had swinging between his legs, or turn him into a female, or something in-between if he really wanted to.

The possibilities for a minotaur’s underling were just about as endless as the imagine of the minotaur that owned him, and Hugo was fairly imaginative as minotaurs went.

For now, though, he wanted to enjoy the base model. He pulled Carl up by the shoulder, gently turning him in place before bending him over the chair.

“Let me get a look back here.”

“Is it…time then?” Carl asked.

“Probably.”

“Fuck…”

“That’s the general idea, yes.”

He smiled as he grabbed the otter by the hips. Just as he had hoped, they were perfectly formed for this, allowing him an easy grip. His thumbs slid between the muscular cheeks, pressing into the curve before spreading them. His little otter gasped, but said nothing, even though his pucker said plenty with the way that it clenched and squeezed on nothing.

[i]Oh, he might be saying that he’s not interested, but that’s not the hole of someone that wants to run away. That’s a bottom that needs to be taken…[/i]

Hugo’s cock continued to rise in the jockstrap, the flared head starting to push forward, dragging the band from his waist. He huffed under his breath, snorting as he kept throbbing, getting harder and harder as he nudged his thumbs against the soft pink flesh of the otter’s rim. Nudging his thumbs a little deeper in, he rested them on the edge, where fur faded and pink flesh asserted itself, and slowly fanned it as open as he could.

Carl whimpered under him, but the otter had a nice spread down there. Not quite a gape, but there was some looseness there. Some curiosity, perhaps, a little bit of indulgence with fingers, but not quite enough to imply that he had let someone else fuck him yet. No wonder he was a little afraid.

Hugo knelt behind him, keeping the cheeks spread, and slowly stuck out his tongue. The first lick made the otter yelp, arching his back.

“Oh god…ho-ly fuck…”

It was hard not to chuckle at the otter’s near-immediate squeaky moans as he dragged his tongue along the smaller male’s hole. The initial taste of sweat and saltiness faded, replaced by a dull bitterness that never entirely went away. He dug his hands deeper into the cheeks, getting a better grip as he pulled the hole slightly further open. Carl kept huffing and puffing, gasping and shivering against the chair as he worked his tongue over the otter’s wrinkled flesh.

As his new subordinate panted and gasped, tail going higher and higher, Hugo flicked his tongue over that pink flesh again and again. He could feel the slight loosening going on, the way that the hole was slowly relaxing and giving in to the pleasure that he offered. Other Body-mages might have used their spells to make it feel even better, to force that hole to stretch and become looser, but he didn’t have a real understanding of those spells. Hugo had to do it all on his own, with his own talents.

And he was good at that.

Lick, lap, then he sealed his lips against the otter’s hole. He sucked in –

“Mmmmph fuuuuuuuck…”

[i]Hehehe, get all the blood back there, make it nice and sensitive.[/i]

But not too much. Didn’t want to break anything, just make it nice and puffy, nice and sensitive. After all, the cock wasn’t the only place that felt more when more blood was flowing through it.

As he felt the flesh start to heat beneath his tongue, he eased up on the suction and went back to licking. Taint to hole, then around it, slowly caressing the slightly more inflamed flesh. He judged how far he needed to go from Carl’s moans, hearing them peak, then fade, then peak again as he tried different directions, different patterns of licks. He studied the otter as much as he studied the mall around him, and found out what he enjoyed and what he didn’t, right up to the point of –

“Ahhh!”

Carl moaned, the soft ‘smack’ of the otter’s cock hitting his belly as the minotaur slipped his tongue past the rim. Inside, now, wriggling, teasing at the flesh within. He twisted it around, finding the prostate with ease, and flicked his tongue across it. Another little smack, the otter’s breath coming in shaky gasps now, and the moans were getting higher and higher.

Hugo knew he could make the otter cum from this. It would be easy to push him that hard, to get him to blow his load all over the ground from a simple tongue-fucking. Someone with a prostate that sensitive was almost begging for it.

And for a moment, he considered it, thrusting his tongue past that hole again, and again, and again, feeling it clenching down on his tongue and trying to trap it inside. He wormed it along the prostate, pulled back, and slammed it in again, and the otter almost managed to push his hips back against his grip. Didn’t quite, but the fact that he tried told Hugo that he was pretty damn close.

He stopped there, though. He slowly pulled his head back, his tongue sliding wetly from the otter’s asshole, and Carl whimpered.

“Mmmph…I was so close…”

“I know.”

“Come on…just…just a bit –”

“If you’re good, I’ll eat your ass out later. For now, though…”

It was time. He slowly pulled down the front of his loincloth, and a flared-tipped cock flopped free. Despite being mostly hard, the whole shaft was so big that it could barely point straight forward at the best of times. As the jock came down, pre-cum slimed up the shaft itself, and strings of it ran into the fabric, leaving it a slimy mess as the cloth hit the floor.

He ground the slippery, slimy length against the otter’s ass cheeks. Carl was too busy panting to see it, but he was sure that the otter could feel the sheer girth and power of a minotaur’s cock against his ass cheeks.

Hugo rested the head of his cock against the otter’s spit-slimed hole. It was open now, still not quite gaping, but it would be after it had the experience of meeting his cock. There would be no getting away from that. It would become so wide, so stretched, that few other cocks would ever do the job. Carl would remember this for the rest of his life; even if things went bad and they separated, he would remember [i]this[/i]…and miss it.

He pressed the flared tip to that hole, feeling it resist for a moment, then another…then finally give with a wet ‘squelch.’

The otter gasped, the air forced out of his body as he went ram-rod straight, knees popping and his spine stiffening as Hugo slid inside. It was so much tighter than his hand, gripping his dick like a vise, and he could barely wiggle in another couple of inches, then another, slowly pushing the otter to take it, to adjust, to learn.

“Ah…ah…nngh…”

Though Carl [i]was[/i] a little slow to take it, the minotaur noted. Probably bigger than anything that he was used to. Still, Hugo kept sliding forward, little bit by little bit, occasionally wiggling his hips back an inch to get some more leverage, only to take the otter that bit further. One inch of cock after another settled into that tight little rump, and the sound of the otter’s wheezing moans getting higher and higher until they were more squeaks than anything else only made him harder.

Finally, he slipped in all the way. The otter’s cheeks clenched around his shaft, or tried to; the sheer girth of his cock kept them split apart. He could feel the little shivers running down the smaller male’s back, and he patted the otter’s hips gently.

“It’s going to be okay.”

“Nnnngh…”

“Hurting?”

Carl shook his head.

“Too much?”

The otter held up two fingers, barely apart.

“Heh, good. Right on the limit…”

Settling his stance, Hugo took a deep breath. Much as he was playing off just how tight the otter was, that sheer grip was nearly pulling him over the edge, too. He wasn’t going to last long, so he’d just have to make it as good as possible for the both of them while it lasted.

As soon as he started pulling back, Carl stiffened again, huffing and groaning. The sight of his hole slowly pulling out, gripping that big cock so tight that it was sucked out a little bit from him sliding back, was hotter than anything else so far. Hugo huffed, grinning wide as he slid back, back, back, right to the halfway point before –

Squelch.

“Ahhhhh!”

It was like the moan was pressed out of the little guy with that hard thrust, and Carl stared straight ahead, his tail twitching, his cock making little ‘smack smack smack’ sounds as it slapped up against his belly. Hugo gritted his teeth, holding back as he dragged his hips back again, feeling that slow tug all the way to the midpoint –

Squelch.

Tug.

Squelch.

Tug.

Squelch.

Each one was a little faster than the one before until he worked up to a regular pace, hammering in, out, in, out, each thrust hard enough to grind the otter almost up and over the chair. Forward, back, forward, back, feeling those soft cheeks clenching around his cock every time that he buried himself in that hole, enjoying every last squish and squelch of his pre-cum lubing up the otter’s insides: he was barely able to hold back and keep going.

In. Out. In. Out. He grunted as he leaned over his otter, wrapping one arm around his chest and keeping the other at his hips. He could feel how sloppy things were getting inside, how that hole was getting fucked looser and looser with each thrust. It was like he was breaking the smaller guy, reforming him, showing him where he belonged: under a minotaur, a good little cock-sleeve, a subordinate that wanted to get used, filled, changed by the cock of the man that owned him.

Harder.

Faster.

Deeper.

They were grunting in tandem, huffing away for nearly a minute before Carl finally gasped and stiffened up. The sudden clench around Hugo’s cock was all the evidence that he needed that things had finally reached their climax, and he let go of his own restraint.

“RRRR!”

He hilted with the otter, holding his cock as deep as it would go. His balls pulled tight, and he felt the full force of his own seed shooting in.

“Ah!”

Carl must have felt it too; that gasp was too loud to be anything else. Hugo grunted, rolling his hips, grinding his hilted cock just that little bit deeper to work his cum as far into his new subordinate as he could. In, in, in. Each pulse felt that little bit stronger than the one before it for nearly a minute, only then starting to slacken off.

Two minutes later, he groaned, gradually sliding back. Carl didn’t say anything; he wasn’t sure the otter could.

His cock popped free after he took a step backward, and that ruined, gaping thing bubbled away with all the cum still inside. Carl fell forward, slumped onto the chair, ass hanging off the edge of it, and a waterfall of thick white cum oozed free. It bubbled out, then fell in strings, then streams, forming a puddle on the floor.

Hugo took a deep breath, wiped his forehead, and walked around the chair to look the otter in the eye. The little guy was still conscious, at least.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Holy…fuck…”

“That’s…kind of a yes?”

“Catching…my breath…but holy…holy shit…”

“Heh…good?”

“Mmm-hmmmmmmm.”

“Good enough to stick around?”

“Mmmmmm-hmmmmmmmm.”

“Awesome. I’ll get started on making you a room.”

Hugo turned, only to pause as the otter grabbed him by the tail. He looked over his shoulder at the panting man.

“Hmm?”

“Wait…wait a bit…stick around and…and I’ll help after…after I get my breath back.”

“…You sure? I mean, I can do this on my own.”

“I’m your…your subordinate, remember? Supposed to…supposed to help.”

“…Alright, heh. If you’re sure.”

“Am.”

Hugo sat down beside the panting otter. It would be a delay, and he didn’t know how skilled Carl actually was, but…well, it’d be nice to have someone working with him again.

Maybe Taishi was right. Maybe he did need more people around.

 

 




 
[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]
 
Summary: A little introduction of my minotaur to Docetri. Hugo is making an abandoned shopping mall into a minotaur maze, and ends up having a few visitors.
 
Tags: M/M, Minotaur, Frog, Kappa, Otter, Modern Fantasy, Shopping Mall, Magic, Loincloth, Jockstrap, Anal, Rimming, Drugs, Slime, Dom/Sub, Owned, Rules, Docetri,