Chapter 13: Teleport Room

Chapter 12

This time when I woke up, it was Steve’s face in front of mine.

“I liked the last time I woke up better,” I mumbled. I heard Alex laugh in the background.

“Mark, focus. How do you feel?” Steve asked me. Well, that was a dumb question.

“Like I got mauled by a bear, then a cat, and then tossed into a pile of boxes. How else should I feel?” I replied a little testily.

“The Panter’s claws were poisoned, we didn’t even know you were injured until Growlz moved your coat to show us your wound. How was the jacket not damaged, but the shirt and shoulder was?”

“Must have been the Nemean bear’s pelt or something,” I mumbled as I pushed myself to my feet. It took far too much energy to do that much. There was something in my hand that I didn’t remember about, but that could be investigated later, so I put it in my pants pocket.

“Umm, there was no Nemean Bear Mark.”

“What else would you call a Bear who’s pelt is impervious to man made weapons? Who, apparently, drops its pelt as a trophy for vanquishing it. By the way, the pelt probably fixed my jacket - magic absorption or something like that. That is an issue for later.” Alex got under my shoulder and helped me walk for a little. I grabbed more ambrosia from one of my pockets and chewed on it. My shoulder felt a little better, my energy levels were still pretty low, but better than it was before.

“Lets get moving after that bastard who brought us here,” I grumbled.

“This way, can you walk on your own?” Alex asked. I grunted in the affirmative and she moved away, blushing a little. Steve led the way this time, with me in the middle and Alex following up. He lead the way into a square building that was actually a circular room. Do not ask me how that worked out, I am not sure. The room itself looked to be multiple levels, with a staircase going up and down the middle. The floor we were on had a bunch of doorways, each appearing to lead to a different place. One was closed, made of gold with the symbol of the Greek Omega. The rest showed different places; Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, the White House, Pyramids in Egypt, some strange building building on top of a factory, and some burger joint I could not identify.

Steve closed his eyes, then lead us down one more level. It also had a bunch of rooms, but this time no door was closed. He walked up to one of the doorways that lead to a desert filled with what looked like broken machines lying around, all made of bronze. An automaton graveyard. In the very front of the doorway was Caligula, moving in slow motion - Ares shield still on his back. I started to hobble forward with Alex when Steve stopped us with a raised hand.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Take a look at the clock up there,” he replied, pointing at a pair of clocks just above the doorway. One was completely unusual, ticking the seconds away like all clocks do. The other appeared to be broken. Under each clock there were some words in a language I did not recognize, and between the two clocks there appeared to be a fraction of some sort.

“Ok, so weird words and strange mathematics, why are we stopping?” I asked again.

“If I am reading this right, those words indicate that time moves differently here than it does on the other side of the portal. We can rest up before going after Caligula, he wouldn’t take more than three or four steps before we finish resting,” Steve replied. Rest. That one word sounded like the best idea in the world.

“I do not want to rest with him right in front of us, we need to catch him and stop him. No way am I going to risk that he put that stuff up there to trick us into thinking it was safe to rest, only to find out that he sole Ares’s powers and ran off. We are going now.” I replied, and stepped forward.

Human teleportation sucks. Let me tell you that right now. It really, really sucks. My stomach felt like it was flying in one direction, my body in another. My pants pocket felt like it was about to break because it was so heavy. My head was spinning in three directions it seemed, and then I shot out of the doorway into the desert heat.