Chapter 2

Maximus had just reached the entrance of the 'loose cannon' when he heard the familiar voice of his partner greet him "You're late runt." Maximus wasn't actually a runt, quite the opposite. He was nearly six feet tall and pretty well built owing to his time in the army. He had dark black hair and matching black eyes. He kept his hair short, like most soldiers in the army. He no longer had to keep it that way but he was so used to having it short that he did not bother changing it. He couldn't grow any sort of facial hair, though, which bothered him a little. He was a little to the lean side, which served him well as it made him more agile and flexible with the sword. But he was in no way a runt, but then again almost everyone seemed like a runt to his partner. For one thing, he was a Minotaur.

Minotaur's were one of the many races that inhabited the earth, along with humans, centaurs, satyrs, nymphs and many others which made up the world community. Minotaurs were half bull, half human creatures who usually stood well over seven feet. They looked like bulls that had learned to walk on their hind legs. They were well known for their strength and horns. In fact, Minotaur horns were quite valuable but were illegal to sell. But a few still somehow found their way into the blackmarket sometimes.

Maximus turned to his partner and said "What, you started missing me already?" with a grin. His name was Rex and like all Minotaurs that was it. All Minotaurs had very short names like Zod, Gib or Bob. Rex was well over seven feet tall and had dark brown skin and fur covering his body, but Minotaurs were like that – they weren't big on combing or shaving. He wore a pair of yellow and green camouflage pant that matched his eye, which was also a dull yellow shade. He didn't wear any shoes as his hooves were tougher than Max's combat boots. He also didn't wear any shirt. It wasn't part of their culture or something. Unless it was armour or something defensive Minotaurs usually walked around bare-chested and Rex was no exception. Maximus never really understood any of this, but when Rex had explained he just nodded along. Rex was pretty menacing looking – or he would have been if there wasn't just half of him there. You see, Rex had also been part of the army and unlike Maximus he had planned to stay till he died. But all that changed when he came back to the barracks one day seriously wounded and bleeding. He had survived, but not entirely. He lost his left arm, eye and horn that day. After that he was forced to leave the army. After all, half a soldier would only be a liability on the battlefield. Or at least that's what the superiors thought. But Maximus had seen Rex fight while they were scavenging, and he was still scarier than most of the soldiers he had seen. But no matter how many times Maximus asked, he still never told him how he had gotten wounded so badly.

"Come on Max, I told you to get here a bit early, you know the pickings are scarce right now," Rex said.

"I know," Max replied, "but I really don't think those five minutes are gonna make a difference."

"Shows what you know, ya runt," Rex said, "but at least you bought all your stuff right?" Max nodded and checked to see if Rex had bought all his weapons as well. When he was in the army, his weapon of choice was a huge battle hammer that literally shook the earth with each strike. But ever since he lost his arm he had to shift to a smaller one-handed sledgehammer. The hammer in question was still bigger than a bowling ball. Other than that he had a pistol and his army knife fastened to his belt. The knife had 'VII-52H' inscribed on it where 'H' stood for the heavy weapons division. He still wore his army dog-tag around his neck.

They started walking towards the entrance to their hunting grounds. But when they reached the stone gates which separated the trenches from the outskirts they saw a huge crowd gathered there. Rex moved forward and asked a fellow scavenger what was going on. "The soldiers ain't letting no one to the grounds," the man said, "say it's off limits for now."

"They figured out what the new monster is," another one chipped in, "it's a bloody Manticore." Now this was really surprising news. Manticores were really ferocious beasts, very hard to track and even harder to kill. A manticore was a monster with the head of a lion, the tail of a scorpion, six legs and the size of an elephant. Maximus had never seen one himself but had heard about them from other soldiers. There were three types: the ground manticores, winged manticores and the emperor manticores. Maximus asked around what type it was. "It's a ground manticore, a pretty big one too. It attacked four hunters yesterday. Only one person survived and he's in really bad shape," a centaur hunter told him.

Centaurs were another very common race in the kingdom of Mars. They were creatures who had the top half of a human and the bottom half of a horse. This meant that there were four legs instead of just two. This made them really fast runners. They were also excellent marksmen with all sorts of long range weapons such as crossbows and guns. In fact, a large part of the army's 'long range division' consisted of centaurs due to their outstanding aim. Maximus headed back to Rex to see their next move. "So what do we do now?" he asked.

"Not much we can do is there?" Rex answered. "Since the army's barricaded the main entrance we'll have to slip out some other way. But I think that we should maybe head back to the 'cannon' for now and see what the others are up to". Maximus nodded in agreement. If you ever needed information about anything happening in the trenches the 'loose cannon' was the place to go. It was by far the most famous pub here in the trenches and was always crawling with travellers and hunters, which meant that a lot of information got passed around here. Also it was a great place to pick up work. The 'loose cannon' had a huge bulletin board on one of its walls. People would put up requests on these walls and offer rewards to those who completed them. As they reached the entrance of the cannon they noticed it was crowded as usual. Like most buildings in the trenches the loose cannon was also a run-down old place. The paint was faded and the wooden doors seemed like a good kick would break them. The windows were already broken from the countless number of bar fights that happened there. It also had an iconic century old cannon placed outside near the entrance. The cannon hadn't been fired for years. In fact one of its wheels was broken, and there was a cat sleeping in its barrel right now.