The Ancient Maze: Captain Czar’s Prize!
Tunic malfunction? The Minotaur won’t mind I bet.
Captain Czar’s entry:
Entrant #707-B (Male, 30s, Human). Attempt date: Ides of the Month of Flowers - dusk.
The last bit of the clue was woven around my fingers. The mousy guard at the beginning of the maze had given me the ball of indigo-dyed yarn as he droned on about the challenge. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard at the inns back in Maropolis, the closet city. Everyone there warned me against anything dyed red. Purple was even off the table. Luckily, or unluckily, I didn’t have the riches of kings to afford those expensive dyes. Besides the untreated canvas and wool I wore, the only pop of color was a blue tunic my father gave me on the day of my commissioning.
I let the last bit of the clue slip from my fingers as I looked back at the maze. Hours of searching didn’t yield a single bit of that silver promised to me. A fool’s errand, I know, but one handful of silver would be enough to let me buy that sailboat that I’d been eyeing at the market for years now. I sighed, knowing that the journey to the maze would counterbalance the measly amount of money I still had in my possession.
I picked up the string and began rolling it back into the ball of yarn. It was dark now so I had to rely on touch to guide me back to the entrance. Looking up was pointless. The absence of any light let my mind wander back to the guard. His spiel was about safety, or something like that. He kept repeating something. Hull? No, that can’t be right. Full? What would be full? Certainly not my coin purse. Ah, yes, he kept saying bull. A bull was supposed to prowl this maze but I hadn’t seen any b—

