Badax the minotaur sighed before grabbing his axe and standing up when three screaming goblins ran down the hall. They were fat little things, covered in waxy wrinkles with pointy ears and crooked noses, and while they were normally shades of blue or green, these three were varying shades of red.

That could mean only one thing: there were adventurers in the lair and he had to go do his job and kill them.

Before the trio vanished, Badax poked his head out into the hallway and shouted after them.

“Oy, you chittering blithershits! Where are the adventurers? Hey! Answer me!”

Naturally, they didn’t. Instead, they disappeared around the next corner and fled until the minotaur couldn’t hear their wails of terror anymore. Horns and hooves, how he hated their screeching! That was easily the worst part of having an all-goblin alarm system.

Well, that and the droppings.

“Fuckin’ Firstdays,” Badax grunted as he hefted his axe onto his shoulder and headed down the hall in the direction the goblins had come from. “There’s always something on Firstdays.”

Last week, it’d been that slime revolt, and the week before that it’d been the escaped demon test subject. Badax shuddered at the memory of his battle against the faceless, grasping monster. He still felt like his teeth were turning to jelly sometimes, though thankfully less frequently with each passing day.

In comparison to those dirty jobs, dealing with adventurers was nothing. However it was a “nothing” that he was getting very tired of having to handle.

“Why couldn’t it be Predd’s Firstday?” Badax grumbled as he tramped along, wishing that it was his counterpart on duty that day instead of him. The Ogre was probably sleeping off a hangover somewhere, or gorging himself on rats down in the spawning room. Seriously. Some monsters had all the luck.

His head slumped forward and the minotaur sighed once more, this time at the lack of bloodlust in his heart as he sought the upcoming battle. Though Badax knew his job requirements backwards and forwards, he simply couldn’t muster the will to psych himself up for bloodshed like he normally did.

Keeping track of time was difficult in the dark labyrinth of the lair, so Badax couldn’t say for sure how long he’d been missing his bloodlust, but it’d been a while. Maybe half a year or so?

At first, he’d thought the emptiness in his chest and head was just the result of a cold or something. After all, he’d lost his sense of taste for a week once when he’d gotten sick as a youngling, and it made sense that if one sense could be hindered by an illness, the rest could be too*

Urt, the goblin who regularly stole Badax’ liquor and most certainly wasn’t his best friend, called the condition “malaise” instead. But then, Urt was a wordy fucker and if there was one thing Badax knew in his heart of hearts, it was that wordy types didn't know anything. On the other hand, though, it wasn't like Badax knew a better term for what he was feeling, so the minotaur found himself using it more often than he would have ever dared admit. Especially anywhere Urt could hear. In addition to being wordy, Urt was a bit of a braggart, too.

Malaise. The word itself felt like a shadowy foe that needed slaying. Or, alternatively, a snack that left you hungrier than you'd been before eating it. Either way, Badax wasn't a fan.

The foul, burning scent of sulfur filled the air, and Badax quickened his pace. He was near the Mistress’ laboratory for potions and other magical liquids, where massive cauldrons gurgled and bubbled constantly in pursuit of dark and dangerous knowledge.

Up ahead, the tunnel came to a fork. To his right was a clear barrier made of magic. It was there to protect the rest of the lair from any spills that might happen inside the laboratory. Say this for the Mistress: she learned from her mistakes. All it had taken to get the barriers erected had been a single calculation mishap that ended up turning the bottom six floors of the labyrinth into a single layer of salt. Hardly any time at all.

“Badax! Hi! Are you off to deal with the adventurers? Are you going to chop them into pieces and grind their bones to dust beneath your hooves? Drink their blood? Ooh, tell me all about it!”

Badax turned and saw a small orange pixie fluttering in the air. It was Pansy, who served as an assistant inside the Mistress’ lab, helping clean the cauldrons between experiments. She was nice enough, though the minotaur was pretty sure she secretly nursed a bloodlust that would have put his own to shame, even if he hadn’t been suffering from the malaise. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why he thought so, though.

Sometimes you just had to trust your gut.

“It’s not going to be very exciting,” Badax said, not feeling like getting into the grisly details. “Any chance you know where they are? The goblin alert didn’t really tell me much, and I’d rather not waste my afternoon searching every room.”

Pansy pouted, but pointed down the left path. “I’m pretty sure I heard some boasting from chamber six a little while ago.”

Badax looked up at the ceiling and rolled his eyes.

“Boasting? Really?”

Pansy nodded and smiled at him. All of her terrifyingly sharp teeth were clearly visible.

“I’m afraid so, and that’s not all, either. Take a deep breath, big guy. You’re not going to like this.”

“How much worse can it get?”

“Well, that’s for you to decide. See, uh, the voices…they sounded…human.”

Humans? The minotaur swore and punched the wall, knocking clods of dirt down from the ceiling. Trying to stave off a Rampage, Pansy flew over as quick as her gossamer wings would carry her and gently patted his shoulder.

“I know, I know. Humans are the absolute worst, but at least that means they’ll die easy, right? Glass is half full, isn't it?”

“Classic Firstday,” Badax muttered. “Ugh. Thanks for the information, Pansy. I'll go kill them painfully. I’ll see you later, I guess.”

The pixie nodded and headed back to the lab. Before she went inside, she turned around and blew Badax a kiss.

“Don’t get yourself killed! This place wouldn’t be the same without you.”

I’m not sure that’d be such a bad thing, Badax thought as he left the pixie behind and made his way toward room six. It was empty though, so he continued on toward room seven.

As he walked, he tightened his grip around the handle of his axe. Like him, the weapon had seen better days. Its blade was chipped and almost completely dull. Most of the time, he simply relied on the weapon’s size and weight to bludgeon his foes to death instead of trying to properly chop them up. In the words of the Mistress: dead was dead.

Still, sometimes he wondered if it might be easier to simply swap his axe out for a different weapon.

Like a hammer, for example. Good weapons, hammers. Especially for single combat.

Another trio of goblins – or maybe it was the first set again. Badax had a tough time telling them apart – ran past, screaming their lungs out. Briefly, the minotaur entertained the thought of whetting his blade with their blood, but his heart wasn’t really in it. He didn’t feel like answering the barrage of questions that would follow if he intentionally killed fellow servants of the mistress without an explicit order to do so, and he wasn’t hungry enough to get out of the interrogation by claiming that he’d been hungry and needed a snack.

Better to let screaming goblins cry, as the old saying went.

A short distance further, Badax heard the unmistakable sound of human voices. Sure enough, they were boasting. Or maybe it was that strange style of communicationthat Urt called “bantering”. Slowing to a stop, Badax decided to listen for a bit before entering and confronting them. Though he hated the way human adventurers chattered non-stop - was it too much to ask for a little peace and quiet sometimes? - he couldn’t deny that it made his job a lot easier.

“That was pretty awesome, right Gaston? When that little goblin bastard was about to sound the alarm, I was like WHOOSH! You know? I hit him with a Fireball, right between the eyes! Mess with the Golden Four and you end up dead on the floor! Right, Gaston?”

Fighting the urge to slap his face with his empty hand, Badax forced himself to stay where he was. He was already learning valuable information. There were four human adventurers and that one of them was some sort of Wizard or other spellcaster.

“In case you didn’t notice,” a woman’s voice snapped. “The goblin did sound the alarm, Regis. Didn’t you hear that awful wailing a little bit ago? I’d bet my daggers that was a warning. We’ve probably got a mini-boss at the very least heading our way.”

Daggers, huh? The woman must be a Rogue of some sort.

The wizard spoke again. “Let them come. You worry too much, Clea. We’ve got Gaston here, and he’s an Oakheart Knight! I'd like to see the weapon that could pierce his plate! And, if that alone isn’t enough, we’ve got Tinsnip with us too. We’re fine.”

“I still think we should move on,” the woman said. “And we should do it quietly. Gaston, surely you see the reason in that, right?”

“Well I'm not going anywhere without a proper Fanfare,” whined the wizard. “We haven’t had one yet and I want my post-battle bonuses! Gaston, please?”

“Clea has a good point, but I think we can afford a short break,” said a third voice, which must have belonged to Gaston the knight. It had the warm, noble sound that Badax had long associated with the type of adventurer who talked about duty, honor and righteousness with complete sincerity. That was Badax' least favorite type of foe. They were always a pain in the ass to kill.

Someone – Badax guessed it was the wizard, Regis – clapped enthusiastically.

“Yes! That's why you're the boss, Gaston! Tinsnip, do your thing!”

The adventurers' voices fell silent, and a strange tune filled the air. Badax shook his head.

Well, that's probably it for useful information. Guess I'd better get to work then.

The minotaur took his axe into both hands and crept toward the door as quietly as he could. Despite his hooves, he was surprisingly stealthy as he nudged it open and took a look inside.

Sure enough, there were four adventurers in the center of the room. Next to them was an extra crispy charred goblin corpse. Badax was relieved to see that it was too skinny to be Urt. He didn’t know what they were doing, though. Three of the adventurers, the Wizard, the Rogue, and the Knight were engaged in some sort of bizarre ritual dance, stamping their feet, and raising their weapons into the air over and over in sync with the music. Occasionally the wizard twirled his staff, too.

The fourth adventurer, a man with stringy black hair dressed in a pair of blue-gray pants and a matching vest that all looked the worse for wear, was responsible for the tune. He held a strange, stringed object in his hands, and there was something to the way he moved that made the sounds coming out of it change.

Badax was fascinated by the sight, and he watched for as long as he dared before he took another few steps into the room and hoisted his axe above his head. The minotaur readied a killing blow.

Now, the real question: whose skull did he crush first?

The minotaur weighed his options for a moment, then pivoted so that he was aiming at the Wizard. While the Knight and the Rogue seemed more competent, Badax knew all too well what could happen if you left a spellcaster alone long enough. He'd seen enough fellow minions get splattered by such things, and had no desire to add his name to that list.

There was once a time when Badax would have roared when he struck, but those days had passed and been long forgotten. You didn’t survive in Badax’ line of work for as long as he had – though he couldn’t be sure of exactly how long that was – by making unnecessary noise when you had the element of surprise. Instead, he simply brought down his axe with all his strength, and the wizard’s lifeless body crumpled to the floor with a sound not unlike cracking an egg.

[Successful Surprise Attack! You have gained 5 experience!]

The other adventurers spun to face him, but by then Badax was lifting his weapon for his next attack.

*Minotaurs, of course, have six senses: Sight, Touch, Taste, Smell, Hearing, and Bloodlust.