Location: Tartarus
Time Remaining: 1 Day, 23 hours
Hades’s Kingdom was not remotely what Penelope expected. The large door led to a gently sloping road made of a – as far as she could see – seamless black stone lined with red-orange light on either side. That road descended into a vast, round cavern, with five other roads visible in the distance, all traveling to the center of the cave like spokes on a wheel. Much of the cavern was flooded, rippling water pooled in the wedges between the roads. As nearly incomprehensible as the scale of the place was, more remarkable was the ceiling - six inverted rivers flowed from the edges of the round ceiling to the center, matching the roads beneath.
The edges of the rivers were illuminated by some sort of light – the color and intensity of a full moon. A large tower ascended from the central lake, with part of it actually in the column of falling water. Arrayed around the tower were six massive, triangular buildings made of the same polished black stone as the road, and beyond those were smaller structures of the same shape, with the spaces in between filled with much smaller pieces of stonework. Those stones reminded Penelope of tombstones, but without knowing how deep the dark water around them was, it would be impossible to guess their true size and shape.
“Where is Elysium?” Penelope asked, “The Isles of the Blessed? Tartarus, even?”
“No such thing as Elysium,” Heracles said, “There is no afterlife; you get one life to live, and you have to make it stretch.”
“I don’t believe that there is no afterlife,” Odysseus said, “but I am confident in thinking that it is not here. Not Elysium or the Asphodel Meadows, anyway – I doubt you can reach either through a hole in the ground.”
They walked warily down the road. Without jumping into the mysterious water, which everyone understood was something you did not do in the underworld, there'd be no way to hide from anyone investigating Cerberus's escape. Of course, they quickly realized that any pretense of hiding at all was in doubt. It took a few minutes for their eyes to adjust to the darkness, but once they did they could see movement. Some sort of small, pale-skinned humanoid creatures ran about in the dark, jumping across the tops of the tombstones and occasionally scurrying across the road ahead of or behind them. They carried boxes, tools, bags and the like, apparently more concerned with their day-to-day routines than with informing their landlord of a trespass.
The intruders followed the owl to one of the outlying buildings, which were guarded by a pair of skeletal warriors. Herakles ambushed the guards and dismembered them - Odysseus was fascinated with the remains, which he noted were made of metal, rather than bone. Heracles urged him to get on with their task though, and after fiddling with another one of the arcane-puzzle locks, Odysseus opened the door into the building.
The owl flew ahead of them into the darkness, triggering a cold, flameless illumination. The interior of the building was packed with closely spaced shelves that stretched dozens of feet into the air. A walkway with rail-lined openings passed between them. Upon the shelves were what looked like countless sarcophagi, standing on end. Each had a window shielded by that same nearly-invisible material Odysseus had discovered on his trip to Africa. Odysseus and Penelope cautiously approached one and looked in. There was a gaunt human body, surrounded by a faint yellow light.
“This truly is the realm of the dead after all,” Penelope said.
Odysseus looked around, checking the other sarcophagi - they were filled with a variety of people with no discernible commonality among them. "Who were these people?" he wondered aloud, "Why keep there bodies here?"
"You talk like they're dead," Herakles said, "but they ain't. Dead crops don't bear fruit."
"What are you talking about?" Penelope asked.
"I'll let you in on a little secret," Heracles said, "People like you and me, well, faithful devoted people, the gods live off of them. That fabled ambrosia? It's made from people honey. But not everyone stays in line - there are heretics, atheists, and infidels a-plenty, so the gods round them up and put them down here where they can extract their sustenance more forcefully. They may be as good as dead, but they ain't dead."
"They all look too weak to walk," Odysseus said.
"What, you're wanting to free them?" Heracles scoffed, "These are the forgotten - even they probably don't remember who they are now. You might as well try to free vegetables from a garden."
The owl flew down through of the openings in the walkway, and more lights appeared, revealing multiple floors filled with more sarcophagi, descending well below the waterline outside. They found a stairwell and descended until they reached the floor the owl was on, and then followed it through a narrow passage that connected the building to another. The passage was like a long thin tunnel, shrouded in the transparent material that vexed Odysseus, and filled with metal structures that reminded Odysseus of a weed's roots running through the ground. Between these metal roots, they could look out into the water-filled spaces between the buildings. Everything was too murky to make out fine detail, but Odysseus saw lights that reminded him of a small city under the water; he wondered if there was a settlement down here similar to the one Thetis's people hailed from.
They passed through more buildings using more tunnels, until everyone but the owl was thoroughly lost. Finally they reached a chamber that seemed to have been built against an older wall. Water trickled through the seams where the walls met. In the older wall was a large door with strange lettering on it - the symbols looked similar to those used in their own writing, but they were arrayed in a spiral, and attempting to sound them out resulted in unintelligible nonsense.
"What is it?" Penelope asked.
"Old Minoan, I think."
"What does it say?"
"I have no idea." Odysseus found a panel with some blinking lights on it, and tinkered with those for a while, but proved unable to open the door. Finally, Heracles stepped in and began running his hands along the large door, tapping it occasionally and listening to the noise.
"What are you doing?" Odysseus asked.
"Opening it manually."
"None of the seams are large enough for you to get a grip on the door - or are you just going to knock it down?"
"Not quite, but I ain't gonna be gentle boy." One of Heracles's taps sounded distinctly different, so he tapped rapidly around that area listening to the change in pitch. Finally he punched that spot, caving the door in near the bottom, and opening it up at the top. He slipped his fingers into the gap he'd created, and pulled the door down forcefully, mechanisms around the door grinding and sparking in protest. "I hope Prometheus is close," Heracles said, "someone will notice that, sooner than later."
They didn't have to journey too much further. They found more sarcophagi, but these clearly did not house mortals; most of the beings inside were wonderfully strange in one way or another - too many arms, too few eyes, strange colors, hooves, horns, wings, etc. Fortunately, unlike the ancient door, the signage inside the chamber was more familiar, and the interred individuals were identified by name, with many of the names being quite familiar to the Greek intruders.
"Aether, Nyx, Phanes, Pontus, Hekate..." Penelope read the names, "These were all titans. Here we go; Prometheus."
"And hey, we have our choice of empty bunks," Odysseus slapped a sarcophagus that was clearly empty.
"Why do you need an empty one?" Heracles was confused.
"Freeing Prometheus isn't as simple as popping the lid," Odysseus said, "I have to go in after him."
"Do you remember what we have to do?" Penelope asked.
"It's not that complicated. The purple crystal goes in Prometheus's pedestal, and the green crystal goes in the other one.
"You mean the green crystal goes in Prometheus' pedestal..."
"That's what I said," Odysseus answered as he pried the top of the pedestal off to reveal its intricate workings. He plugged the crystal in to the slot, and then did the same with one of the empties, which he promptly climbed into. "Hit the button and send me to hell, honey," Odysseus said cockily.
Penelope shook her head, "Don't make me come in after you."
No comments:
Post a Comment