It had been a long climb up here, and in the end, had almost been worth it. Minos stood for a moment, staring longingly at the entrance to the cave, wondering through what pure luck he had managed to stumble upon the very packland that used to belong to his brother. It was a place he had been imagining bitterly for some time, skewed in his dreams to be a formidable place fit for the highest of kings, and yet now he was here it seemed… Normal. Just a hole, in a cliff side. No thrones, no jewels, no armies of dogs willing to throw themselves on the line at the whims of their master. It was an anti-climax, and Minos wasn’t sure whether how to feel about it.

Pressing forwards, he managed to squeeze himself in the narrow entrance to the cavern, his scar-flecked flanks pressing hard into the sharp stony walls. There was more than one occasion where he doubted he would be able to get through the relatively short passageway at all, but all thoughts of turning back were long hidden the recesses of his mind. He had to get in, he had to feel it. To stand in the place where his brother (of all the dogs in all the world!) had managed to grab a piece of power, if only for a short while. Dreams of leadership had occupied Minos’ head for as long as he could remember, and his brother beating him to the post had been eating him up inside ever since he had entered this city. Maybe, somehow, seeing where the pack had resided would put to rest at least some of those feelings.

But as he finally found himself standing in the cavern, half-destroyed as it was by the cave-in he had heard about, none of the bitterness went away in his stomach. Instead, looking around and imagining a hoard of dogs with his good-for-nothing brother standing at the helm only fuelled the flames. Frowning resentfully and prowling up to the rocks that had crashed down the back of the cavern, he pulled himself up onto one of the more sturdy looking ones and lay down heavily, leaving his paws dangling over the edge and his head raised in a sphinx-like posed, almost noble, almost regal. There was no doubt in Minos’ mind that one day the position his brother has held could be kept by him, if only there was a right time, or a right place. Right now, neither seemed likely.

His first thought at seeing the dog – annoying not old enough to pose a threat, and not young enough to kick to the side – was to ignore her completely, or maybe even get off his makeshift throne and go find somewhere else to sulk. He had never been the best conversationalist, even in the best of moods, and usually it was something others could pick up on. Today, however, would clearly prove different.

Raising a single eyebrow slightly, he checked over the stranger before sliding back up onto his haunches and sighing dramatically, visibly sagging and generally looking a whole lot more forlorn than his usual arrogant self. This place was bringing him down, he could have told anyone that from the moment he faintly recognised where he was. Was this Thalassa an old packmate of his brother’s? Had the two been friends? Had she looked up to the cowardly brute, with the naivety and stone-cold ignorance that his sibling had always displayed (at least in his older brother’s eyes)? A dog less concerned with pride would have asked all these questions at once, but Minos was never one to appear as if, in any way, he needed help or information from others. “What’s right?” He huffed irritably, looking away from the female for a moment to clear his mind and make a decision on whether to walk away right now or stay. Considering the fact he was relatively comfortable and the journey home would be a long one, the latter was looking surprisingly appealing. “I’m Minos.” He sighed, knowing full well he was descending back down into the most loathsome of interactions, the getting-to-know-you chatter that went on every day for dogs more sociable than he. “And you’re an awfully long way from anywhere, Thalassa.”

Saving people? Helping people? He had been found by your regular do-gooder here. It took all the strength he could muster not to roll his eyes at the grinning pup, but he managed to choke back his criticisms and instead stare back at her, his pale yellow eyes as languid as indifferent as they almost always were. Her inquiry about heroism that followed, however? Even his best efforts couldn’t restrain some sort of reaction, and an uncharacteristic chuckle pealed forth from his jaws as he turned away, almost unable to look at her anymore. “Heroes?” He replied, stifling his mirth enough to form a sentence at least. “Do they even exist anymore?”

He swung his wide head back around to glance at the female again. It was naivety that led her to ask such questions, he guessed. Sometimes seeing dogs at their worst – and for most of his life, that was all the experience with them he had – could do a damn fine job of murdering all the childhood heroes you had heard about in your dreams. Luckily enough for Minos, his own idols had barely ever been more than flickering ghosts on the edge of his comprehension, spectres lurking in the dark that got deeper and deeper everyday. Perhaps it was his first time in the fighting ring that had blown them away; or maybe they still existed, in some dark corner of his mind that was unlikely to be revisited any time soon. “You tell me what a hero truly is, I’ll tell you why they all died long ago.” He continued, shrugging his muscular shoulders and sighing once again. In a weird way, he liked this kid – maybe it was just for the break in the monotony, or maybe it was just because meeting someone so unaware to what he and others had seen seemed almost comical.

The slumping posture of his brother was something Minos was becoming used to more than anything, and so he treated it with an edge of disdain more that curiosity. His sibling’s apparent willingness to let himself be talked down to in such a way matched perfectly with the golden dog’s constant need to have his ego stroked, and he wouldn’t accept any less. No matter how his brother’s demeanour could change towards the rest of the world, he had always assumed his attitude towards him was a result of his incompetence.

As the two dogs introduced themselves to one another, Minos could only sit back and watch disinterestedly. It had been a long time since he’d seen his brother interact with anyone else but him, and the slight change in a demeanour was a slight surprise. Mention of Thalassa’s mother brought questions that would probably instantly jump into any other dog’s mind slowly creeping around – why was she out here all alone? Didn’t she have a family to go bug somewhere else? Minos had never had a chance to get close to his own parents (truth be told, he couldn’t even remember what they looked like), but he had seen plenty of pups cavorting around with their families in the past spring, and now he really thought about it, maybe it was unusual for this one to be all alone. “Yeah, why don’t you go talk to her about heroes and villains, huh?” He added bitterly, fully aware he didn’t have much in the way of constructive conversation to offer the pair.