Location: Tartarus, High Security Chamber
Time Remaining: 1 Day, 17 Hours
Penelope hovered over Odysseus's sarcophagus, watching his eyes dart back and forth under their lids. How long should this take? How long was too long?
Heracles was wondering the same thing, "I don't understand - what did he mean, 'go in after him'?"
"Well, like you said, these people aren't dead. There more like... sleeping, and as I understand it... they're all living out their sentences in some sort of dream worlds."
"So? You go to sleep to wake someone else up," Heracles said, "You make a ruckus!" Athena's owl ruffled its feathers and glared at him.
"We're not trying to wake up Prometheus," Penelope said, "Odysseus is trying to move him to a different dream."
"What? So we're not going to pop open his pod and help him escape?"
"No, if we do this all right no one needs to know we did anything at all."
That was problematic for Heracles. He was supposed to kill Prometheus, kill the witnesses, and make it look like he did so preventing Prometheus from escaping. Two men dying in their sleep would be hard to pass off as an escape attempt.
"That's a bad plan," Heracles said, "Hades could be down here any minute, and we'll just be standing around with our thumbs in our asses." Heracles moved towards Prometheus's sarcophagus, "Time to wake the old man up and drag him out of here," he lied.
Penelope intercepted him, "This was Athena's plan," she said, "we trust that she knows what she's doing."
"You trust Athena?" Heracles laughed, "You really shouldn't." Heracles shoved Penelope out of the way and began trying to rip open Prometheus's sarcophagus - it proved surprisingly durable. Penelope grabbed his arm and tried to pull it away, but when Heracles got frustrated with the machine he grabbed her instead.
"Show me how you opened the other one," he growled, wrapping his massive hand around her neck. Penelope tried to say something clever in response, but Heracles was cutting off her air supply. Heracles heard feathers flapping behind him. It was surprisingly loud for an owl, and he turned toward the noise when he felt something touch his shoulder.
Nemesis struck him with a right cross, knocking him back against one of the sarcophagi hard enough to crack the glass cover, set off the alarms, and loose Penelope from the demigod's grip. Heracles staggered and reached for his club, but Nemesis knocked it out of reach with a small bolt of lightning.
"So, I'm guessing we're related then," Heracles said, "Sister... or?"
Nemesis launched at Heracles with a flurry of talons.
Penelope watched the fight for a moment, she'd never seen Adresteia in this form before, and seeing it now, she wouldn't count the woman out of the fight, but Heracles was faster than he looked. He was blocking her attacks, and though she was drawing blood from his forearms with her talons, the sparks of lightning flickering from her claws seemed not to phase him.
Penelope picked up Odysseus's bow and fired a number of arrows at Heracles - it was hard to miss the massive man in the narrow hallway, but the arrows bounced harmlessly off of his lion pelt. Penelope was sure she'd be a liability if she tried to help Adresteia in close quarters, so she turned back to their ultimate task - Odysseus needed to be awake, now, and she only knew one way that would happen. She dug through Odysseus's traveling bag and found one of the extra crystals.
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