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Odysseus had experienced many strange and nearly incomprehensible things in the past year, but what he saw now was still exceptional in terms of weirdness. The instant Penelope activated the sarcophagus the world went black. Odysseus could no longer feel the bed beneath him - in fact, he could no longer feel anything, not even any sense of up or down. Within a heartbeat, ephemeral white lines appeared around him, tracing away and back to create shapes, like a tapestry being woven impossibly quickly. He regained his sense of direction when the lines filled in around his feet, establishing a clear 'floor', before creating little frames that formed the shapes of rocks and grass. As he watched, the shapes filled in with color, the patterns at first looking like broken mosaics, but then coming together to form recognizable textures.
Odysseus heard and felt the wind start to blow, carrying the smell of brimstone and bowel, and soon thereafter he heard a man's screams. He rushed towards the sound and found a gash in the earth. At its center a stone slab was surrounded by slowly moving volcanic lava, that radiated enough heat to burn Odysseus's face when he looked at it. A black-skinned man with blazing red hair was chained to the rock, and a vast, black-feathered bird of prey was slowly, deliberately emptying the entrails from his abdomen with its hooked beak.
Odysseus backed away from the ledge - he didn't have his bow, his sword, or his spear in this world, how was he supposed to fight a monster like that.
"Fret not Odysseus," a familiar voice came, "I sent you prepared."
"Athena?"
"A simulation of your patron," the goddess appeared in front of him the same way the rocks and grass had, lines stitching together to form a shape, but the colors didn't fill in, leaving the figure a framework of intricate white polygons. "Explaining everything you would see before you came here seemed inefficient, so I added a tutorial to the crystal you installed in your sarcophagus, as well as what Kasios would have called a 'cheat' menu."
"Cheat...? What is this a game?"
"In a way," Athena's simulation said, "Many ages ago, on our ancestral homeworld, this technology was used for entertainment. Now, as you can see, it has been perverted to far more sadistic ends."
"What do I need to do?" Odysseus asked.
Athena waved a hand and a bracelet appeared on his wrist with a number of colorful gems, "Press the yellow button to create a portal out of this realm into the next adjoining one - do not press it, though, until you are ready to move Prometheus through it - the portal will disappear the instant the program completes a full cycle, so it may last no more than a few seconds. Press the blue button to find weapons and tools that will help you free Prometheus."
Odysseus pressed the button and a list appeared in the air in front of him. Most of the entries in the list were just combinations of letters and numbers, like 'Alpha Rho - 14'. Even the intelligible names of the weapons were bizarre, "I have no idea what a muon disruptor is..."
"Well, don't point it at your feet," the simulation said, "If you become absolutely desperate, press the red button three times in quick succession to activate god mode."
"What's that do?"
"It tricks the simulator into thinking you're one of us, and gives you all of our abilities and attributes."
"Well why don't I just do that now?"
"Because the program I created will hide a mortal from the security scans, but if the simulator registers the presence of an unidentified titan, Hades and Persephone will be summoned immediately."
The simulation of Athena disappeared, leaving Odysseus alone to study the list of items in front of him. Eventually, Odysseus found some recognizable basics - a bronze kopis, a xiphos, and a composite recurve bow. He studied the numbers next to the entries and realized that one of the numbers represented the effective range of the weapon - the kopis had a range of 0, the xiphos had a range of "10 feet (thrown)" and the bow had a max range of about 600 feet. From there he worked out that another one of the numbers represented either weight or durability - the bow was either ligher or more fragile than the sword and dagger - but couldn't figure out the remaining values.
Odysseus began scanning through the other items in the list, and found that most were more durable than the sword and had longer range than the bow. The "Shaped Blade," "Wrist-Mounted Energy Deflector," and the "handheld magnetic-accelerated particle catapult" seemed like they had good stats, so Odysseus poked their floating names with his finger to highlight them, and then tapped the floating box that said, 'Arm'.
The list disappeared back into the bracelet, but a gauntlet appeared wrapped around his arm, and a belt appeared around his waist with two devices on it. He assumed the gauntlet was the 'energy deflector' and when he raised it, it produced a barrier of blue light in front of him about as large as a standard shield. One of the items on his belt had a shape that reminded Odysseus of a shrunk down caduceus, and the other was sort of an 'L' shape, with a ring inside the angle and a toggle inside the ring. Neither of the devices looked like a blade or a catapult, but both had apertures in them which Odysseus guessed released something dangerous.
He took the L-shaped weapon in his right hand and pointed the hole away from him with one finger through the ring and squeezed the toggle hesitantly. The weapon kicked in his hand as a glowing white projectile streaked out of the barrel with a loud crack, and obliterated a nearby rock. Odysseus guessed that was not the 'shaped blade', but his musing on the matter were interrupted by the realization that a large shadow had fallen over him.
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