#perdix

Jason: alright Eurydice, calm down, no need to get stabby

Damian: I WILL— why am I Eurydice?

Jason: because… Bruce went to bargain for your soul? Obviously Orpheus failed, but eh.

Damian: and what would that make you?

Jason: Icarus. Duh.

Tim: does that make me Perdix?

Jason: no, Tim. Not everything is about you. Perdix is Stephanie

Bruce: but I didn’t push Stephanie off of a high building

“There is.”

“Could I meet him?”

“You would not get along.”

“Oh, why not? I just want someone to play with.”

“He is a hungry creature. He eats people.”

“Why?”

“Because he is a monster. He has the body of an enormous man and the face of a bull.”

“Bulls eat grass, not meat.”

“This one eats men. That is all he has ever eaten. Rather, that is all he has ever been fed.”

“That is a sad way to live.”

“It is. But that is what our benefactor decrees, and I am at his mercy.”

“You? What did you do?”

“You know I built the labyrinth. It is the creature’s prison. Every boy and girl from our homeland who has died in that place has me to thank. Even then, I have done far worse than that.”

“I think the king is to blame.”

“Speak carefully when you besmirch him. Call him our benefactor, or when a cleverer guard listens, the bull father.”

“Bull father? You could not mean…”

“The thing in the maze, yes, is his son. And for this too I am to blame, I who crafted the means for his wife’s accursed tryst.”

“How could such a thing happen? People do not give birth to monsters.”

“The father was insolent and refused to give the gods their due. Asterion is a punishment.”

“A child cannot be a punishment.”

December 27, 2024:

Spruce Tertiary, Banescale, Underbelly.