Location: Tartarus, High Security Chamber, Server Theta Twelve
Time Remaining: 1 Day, 17 Hours
Penelope was just as confused by the transition to the dreamscape as Odysseus had been, but had no time to adjust to the hellish environment or the giant blue version of Adresteia with the magic sword squaring off with her husband.
"We have to go!" Penelope shouted, "Now!"
"More meat!" Nyx shouted eagerly and started towards Penelope, but Odysseus ran and tackled the titan's legs, trying to unbalance her, but mostly annoying her. She shook him off, but then began trying to stomp on him with her talons, like a rooster trying to kill a mouse. Odysseus rolled back and forth to dodge, and used the shield to block the blows he couldn't evade. Finally, he rolled over on to his front, and then used his arms to throw himself onto his back, sweeping the shield so that the edge of it struck Nyx in the side of her knee. The impact dropped Nyx to one knee, and Odysseus rolled to his feet and struck her against the side of the head with the shield, nearly spinning her off the small cliff, and knocking the sword from her grasp.
"What's going on?!" Odysseus demanded as he grabbed the sword, "What are you doing here?!"
"Heracles and Adresteia are trying to kill each other, and our sleeping bodies are in the middle of the fight, so we really NEED TO GO!"
"Are you wearing a bracelet that you didn't have before?"
"Yeah, yeah I've never seen this before..."
"Press down the red gem stone three times," Odysseus said, "And keep Nyx busy while I free Prometheus."
"KEEP HER BUSY?!"
"Push the red gem!" Odysseus shouted as he slid down the cliff above Prometheus's rock.
Penelope frantically pushed down on the gem stone as Nyx came after her. She felt an intense surge of energy roiling through her - it was intoxicating. Nyx slashed at her with her talons, but when Penelope raised her arms to protect herself, her skin hardened into stone. The titan's claws skittered off the rocky skin, striking sparks that flickered in Nyx's very confused eyes. Penelope pulled back, and then punched Nyx as hard as she could with one of her stone fists.
While Penelope brawled with Nyx, Odysseus unstrapped the shield from his arm, took a deep breath, and stepped onto the loose rock that dropped away towards the lava at the bottom of the cravasse. He slid, stones tumbling into the churning molten river below him. At the last moment, he tossed the energy shield onto the lava, jumped, and bounded across the floating shield an instant before it was consumed. He sank the energy sword into the rock Prometheus was chained to, and pulled himself up.
"Who are you?" Prometheus asked.
"Athena sent me," Odysseus said, "I'm here to rescue you."
"Who is Athena?"
Odysseus pressed the blade of the sword against the iron chains binding Prometheus and began cutting through them.
Above them, Penelope was discovering that she could do all sorts of things. Penelope had had lucid dreams before on many occasions, and this seemed no different from those. If she could imagine something and bend her will upon it strongly enough, she could make it happen. When she wished for a weapon, her father's bronze sword appeared in her hand in a sparkle of light. Beaming with the happiness of a child living out their favorite fantasy tale, she attacked Nyx, the blade feeling lighter than ever. Nyx produced her own bronze sword and parried her attack.
"Let's see how well you fight blind!" Nyx cackled and with a wave of her hand she wreathed Penelope's head in a veil of darkness.
Penelope summoned all of her newfound strength and punched straight down. A massive shockwave cratered the ground and sent Nyx flying. The titan took to the air, but lost control of her blinding spell as she turned back into a giant predatory bird.
"Anything you can do I can do better," Penelope said confidently. She threw down her sword, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine herself becoming something scary. She grew in size, black scales slid out from under her skin, powerful claws erupted from her hands, and her body elongated into a slithering terror as she spread her bat like wings. With a powerful flap, she lifted into the air and began snapping at the now smaller bird with a long toothy maw.
"Ha, you got bigger and uglier," Nyx said as she dodged, "but you don't need to be pretty to make a good dinner - more meat for me!" Nyx attacked one of Penelope's leathery wings, damaging it. Penelope roared and unleashed a torrent of fire that ignited Nyx's feathers and sent the Titan spiraling to the ground as a screaming fireball.
Nyx hit the rocky ground and shifted back to her humanoid form. Penelope came down on her hard, returning to her human size and shape but keeping all of the inertia of a seven ton beast falling from the sky. Nyx rolled out of the way at the last minute, but the impact caused the ground to buck and pop the titan back into the air. This time, though, Penelope jumped up and began punching her before she could take wing or fall back to the ground.
Nyx finally landed at the edge of the cliff overlooking the burning river, wings broken and burned. Penelope grabbed her by the throat and held her over the lava, prepared to drop her.
Penelope looked down and saw that Prometheus was free of his bonds, and was now leaning on Odysseus, one arm across the much smaller man's broad shoulders. Odysseus pressed a gemstone on his bracelet and a hole in space appeared next to the rock he was on.
"Time to get out of hell, hon!" he shouted.
Nyx writhed in Penelope's grasp, but Penelope cold cocked her with her free hand tossed her aside rather than throwing her in the flowing lava. She jumped down to the rock and followed the others through the portal out.
The torture world was replaced with a chaotic, sort of surrealist landscape. The trees teamed with brilliantly colored leaves that seemed to change color in the breeze. The grass was filled with bizarre wildflowers, upon which grazed a number of strange but elegant creatures. Through the trees and flowers wound a road made of iridescent bricks that gave it a sort of rainbow like appearance as it stretched up from the ground and wound its way through the clouds, upon which were purchased castles and massive statues.
"What the hell...?" Odysseus asked as he set Prometheus down against a tree, "Where did Athena send us?"
"Nowhere," a voice came from behind them. They whirled around to see a young-looking titaness with fair skin and black hair.
Penelope recognized her from seeing her sarcophagus outside, "Hekate!"
"Indeed," Hekate said, "Welcome to my humble abode." She pushed her way past them and knelt to examine Prometheus. The man was barely lucid - his abdomen was still a massive open wound, with only the nonsensical rules of the dream world keeping him alive.
"Hello lover," she said gently, "Do you remember me?" Prometheus said something unintelligible and began weeping. "It's okay," Hekate said as she held a hand over his abdomen and began healing the injury with one of her spells. "However long it takes, we'll put you back together."
She spoke to the young couple who'd rescued him, "Tell Morgania thank you."
"Athena sent us," Odysseus said.
"Well, I don't know who that is, but this sort of stunt has Morgania's prints all over it - and I should know."
"Why is this place... like this?" Odysseus asked.
"I was injured long ago, very nearly killed, but my friends were able to get me in here so that I could heal. Unfortunately, at the time they needed to make sure no one knew I was in there, so they couldn't connect me to the larger network, and I'm guessing Pandora was too pressed for time to create a special environment for me. As a result, when my simulated world loaded, it was all but a blank slate. Perfectly flat, featureless grassland stretching as far as the eye could see, with cloudless blue sky overhead. Of course, I know my way around Tartarus well enough that I was able to find the editing tools, and decided to pass the time by, well, creating art. It's been... centuries? I assume? So it's gotten a little crazy looking, but despite what it looks like it's kept me sane.
"It's beautiful," Penelope said.
"I suppose its too much to hope you can stay for a while?" Hekate asked.
"Our corporeal bodies are in real danger of being crushed by a petulant demigod, so no, I'm afraid we have to go, if you can show us the way out...?"
"Those bracelets, Pandora and I created those subroutines ages ago. Simply take them off, and you'll log out of the simulation."
Odysseus wasn't sure what she meant about logging out, but he unfastened the bracelet and handed it to her. As soon as he released it, the surrealist fantasy world was replaced by the claustrophobic confines of his sarcophagus, with Heracles's ugly face pressed to the glass.
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