Chapter 9: The Thorn of Tantalus

Chapter 8

Dante had it right when he said that this was Hell.

Flight of the Valkyries played from speakers surrounding the fields of punishment as flying beasts dive bombed some of the prisoners, hell hounds chased people around. Alex slapped her necklace and was covered in body armor.

“When did you get that?” Steve asked.

“Mark gave it to me for a birthday gift,” Alex said.

“When? I remember you -” Alex smacked Steve before he could finish.

“Oww, you hit harder with that thing on.”

“Don’t piss me off then. Where are we going anyways?” Alex finished. That certainly was a good question. People were screaming and running around, or tap dancing, There was no indication of where we needed to go, and that blue hell hound was staring at us angrily.

Blue hell hound? Weren’t they black? Then I remembered, the hell hounds that Luke had taken out to help us, they were blue too.

“Whats with the blue dogs?” I asked.

“What blue -” Before Alex could finish the sentence the damn thing pounced, and it was fast. Faster than normal hell hounds. It tackled her and tried to bite her arm, but the new armor was preventing it from succeeding. Steve looked like he wanted to blast it with fire, but was worried about Alex. I brought out Ignus and started forward. Alex calmly flipped out the blade on her forearm and stabbed the dog in the eye. It faded away.

“That blue dog. They are usually black, what happened?”

Steve looked thoughtful for a second, then he spoke.

“What if Caligula figured he would be followed, and went through the front on purpose?”

“Why would he try to be obvious about invading Hade’s realm?” Alex asked, but I started to catch on to the idea.

“He wanted the guard forces to go after him. Like last time when we followed him into the Junkyard he activated the automatons to help him, this time he is controlling the guards. Turning them against each other to cover his running around rampant down here.” It made sense. Whoever was following him would be slowed down by having to destroy the corrupted creatures to free them, allowing Caligula to walk right in, do whatever it was he was here to do and get out unhindered.

“And that is why Luke isn’t helping us!” Steve finished the thought.

“What?” I asked. What does Luke have to do with it?

“Luke is in the employ of Hades, his priority is to guard the fields of punishment and keep the monsters who also guard it in line. He cannot run in to deal with problems like Caligula when the more obvious problem is the monsters, so he lets us in, making sure the uncorrupted guards don’t bother us, and takes care of the corruption.” Alex finished that thought.

“Okay,” I said, “then lets hop to it and handle business while we have an opening too. Pay attention though, looks like we have some friends waiting in hiding for us.”

For the next few minutes we were silent, following the most direct path we could to the tortured giant in the distance. We ran into a few blue critters that attacked us, but without the element of surprise or overwhelming numbers, they were easily dealt with. The horrors we witnessed being visited on most of the residents will always stick with me, but I did my best to ignore them.

Then we heard a rumbling. Up ahead we saw a hill, which seemed somewhat out of place to me.

“Sisyphus.” Alex and Steve said at the same time. I looked at them.

“Sisyphus greedy in life, killing travelers for their riches and using information he stole to gain more money, and in death he cheated Thanatos so that he would not be imprisoned in the Underworld. As a punishment for claiming to be able to outwit the Gods he is stuck trying to get a boulder, the one that is riding him down the hill at the moment, to the top of the hill. A task made impossible by the gods.” Steve summed up.

Well. That sucks.

We waited for Sisyphus to finish his trip, and then he and the boulder rolled to a stop in front of us. Sysphus’s body was battered and broken from the fall. He looked up at us.

“Go ahead, laugh. That damn Roman put this accursed thorn that makes the boulder hit me every time it falls down. I cannot move now, but the curse makes my broken bones try to lift the rock and push it. So laugh godlings. I will get you when I escape!” He was screaming at us, hysterical from the pain.

This was horrible. I understand the original punishment, the man considered himself able to solve every problem, and he was confronted with a problem he could not solve. That would be killing him. But then make it so he could not complete the task physically and intellectually? That ruins the point of the punishment. I looked at Steve.

“Can you do something about this?” I asked. He had some skill with healing magic, not as much as a child of Apollo, but I don’t think he needed that much for this.

“I think I can deal with this. The thorn is the problem, not the injuries. Being dead should fix those so long as I remove the underlying cause.” He grabbed Sisyphus’s dangling leg and examined where the thorn was placed.

“Oh, take it out. Why didn’t I think of that?” Complained the broken man. Steve flicked his hand and a purple band of energy closed over Sisyphus’s mouth, shutting him up. He might have been upset about this, but we couldn’t tell because all he could do at the moment was flop his torso around. Steve then summoned a purple construct that looked like a pair of pliers and grabbed the thorn. This got a reaction, Sisyphus screamed so loudly we could hear it through the magical gag and his broken limbs started to fly about. Steve yanked at the thorn, it didn’t move but the patient continued to scream and writhe in pain.

One more yank, and the thorn came out. Sisyphus arched his back and flopped his arms out to the sides. The breaks in his arms and legs started to glow and heal, but the cuts remained.

“Oh sure, only do half the job.” Sisyphus complained. I figured we did what we needed to and started to head around the hill. Alex began to follow, but Steve continued to examine the thorn.

“This is strange.” He said. We looked at him.

“What is?” I asked.

“The thorn here. Its not any kind of magic I recognize...”

“Oh that. It’s from the tree of Tantalus. Kinda like how the liquid makes it impossible for you to eat or drink anything else ever again, the plants that grow have similar properties. Such as that thorn. Once injured with it, you cannot heal ever again while it’s in you, and you cannot take it out yourself.” Sisyphus supplied.

Someone must have really hated this Tantalus guy.

“If its from Tantalus’s punishment, how did you get it?” Alex asked.

“Some Roman Emperor who used to be set a few punishments over brought it over to me.” Sisyphus commented as he grabbed the rock and started to climb up again.

So, we were on the right track.

Chapter 10