CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT
Chimera, Part 1
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Despite Sam’s eagerness to chase after Chimera’s agents, the Endless Maze had him stumped. A horror waiting behind nearly every door, ghostly phantoms mingling with the will-o’-wisps floating in the air, and revenants of lost heroes charging out of the fog were just some of the varied attractions within its warped space.
“This maze is so godsdamn confusing,” he’d often complain.
If it wasn’t for Farsight’s power of probability—and even these insights were hit and miss—Sam wasn’t sure they would have ever caught their enemy’s trail.
“We’ve taken a wrong turn, haven’t we?” Jackboot asked after they’d met their latest dead-end passage.
Farsight’s response was to kick hard at the ground. “It’s all these damn probabilities...like finding the needle in a haystack of infinity!”
To her frustration, she even failed to find that all-important trace of the fabled Ariadne’s String. That lucky happenstance belonged to Sam. It was right after they’d dropped into a long hallway heavy with the stench of a horror’s negative energy when he finally saw it with the help of his Argonaut’s Mask.
Chiron had suggested Sam activate a new feature in the mask that he had unlocked after Sam reached level thirty, a fact that the hero had completely forgotten.
What’s the point of leveling up if you’re not going to take advantage of it, lame-brain, Chiron criticized.
“I was a little busy trying not to die in here...” Sam grumbled.
That’s no excuse... You’re always in danger, Chiron reminded him.
“I know,” Sam sighed.
“Sam’s talking to himself again,” Farsight teased.
They were running single-file through the seemingly endless hallway while trying to think happy thoughts to keep themselves from being influenced by the psychic waves of anger and resentment permeating all around them.
“It’s like ants are trying to crawl into my brain,” Thunder complained.
“Big nasty red ants,” Jackboot agreed, “with big nasty pincers...”
The team was beginning to think they were running around in a loop as they had seen the same fixtures in the walls more than twice already.
“Guys...hold up,” Sam called. “I was just remembering that I have this thing I can do...”
He tapped a finger on the right side of his mask, and his vision shifted from full color into shades of gray.
Hawk Vision will let you see the unseen so you might know the unknowable, Chiron explained.
Visible within the gray matter all around him was a single sliver of golden string that snaked across the bottom right side of the long hallway.
“Whoa,” Sam breathed. “I can see it...”
“What can you see?” Thunder asked from her spot behind him.
“Ariadne’s String...I think,” he answered.
“That can’t be... Only the users of the artifact should be able to see the string,” Dr. Hearthstone said.
“But I can see it,” Sam replied. “Let me take the lead for a bit, Ash.”
Sam moved to the front of their line and led the team through the endless hallway while his eyes followed after the golden string which snaked to the right and into the wall just ahead of him.
“Here,” Sam said as he stopped in front of the right-side wall which was a bookshelf that stretched from one end of the corridor to the other. Ariadne’s string was stuck to one of the books on the top shelf.
“What are you doing?” Farsight asked.
“I think it’s a secret door,” Sam guessed, grinning suddenly at the thought of discovering a secret passage. “Please be a secret door...please be a secret door…yey.”
He pulled out the book, which wouldn’t come out all the way, and heard a clicking noise from within the bookshelf. Seconds later, this part of the wall slid sideways to reveal another door hidden behind it.
“Holy Horus,” Jackboot exclaimed.
“Wait...how come you saw this and I didn’t?” Farsight whined.
Sam happily tapped on his bronze mask. “Hawk Vision.”
He pulled open the door and led the way through it and into another hallway that was a mirror image of the previous one.
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“Alright, I’ll say it...we’re in the same bloody passage, aren’t we?” Jackboot sighed.
“No, we aren’t.” Sam could still see the golden string floating in the air to his right. “It’s just the maze trying to confuse us... Come on. I’ll lead the way.”
One big change in this new hallway was how they couldn’t hear the angry whispers in their minds anymore. The sound of his supple leather boots stepping lightly on the wooden floor was all Sam could hear, and this eerie silence unnerved him even more than the crazy whispering.
“We should be nearing the end now,” Sam promised after a while.
Ariadne’s String led them to another bookcase with another hidden path behind it that led the team into a spacious hall of marble floors and pillars which Thunder recognized instantly as the Eisenhower Museum’s original lobby.
“This is where it happened,” she said.
They could all see the dead bodies scattered across the marble floor like perverse stone sculptures preserving the moment of their deaths.
“Are these your...” Sam couldn’t bring himself to finish his question, but Thunder answered anyway with, “Yeah...they’re my classmates.”
“Bloody Duat,” Jackboot breathed. “This is...”
“Dark as Fu—”
“Language,” Dr. Hearthstone chided Farsight.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Great…now we have two boy scouts in this team.”
Thunder knelt by the body of a curly-haired, gray-skinned girl whose face had been frozen in an anguished expression. Her hands were clutched to her gut.
“This is Jessica...she was my friend,” Thunder said.
Thunder didn’t touch the body. Although she sat by it and didn’t budge until Sam walked over to her and squeezed her shoulder with his hand.
“I know we’re just here for the clue, but since we’re already near the heart of the place, we might as well cleanse it, too,” he said softly.
“Yes,” Thunder answered as he helped her up. “It’s about time we gave these people peace...”
“I don’t know if your clue to the Golden Fleece is here,” Dr. Hearthstone nodded toward the double wooden doors at the other end of the lobby, “but I’m pretty sure we’ll find answers through there.”
They could all sense the great bundle of energy leaking out of those doors. There was way too much of it—more than the alpha rating this dungeon had. It didn’t matter, though. They were here to do a job, and they were going to get that job done no matter what. At least that’s what Sam believed.
The Endless Maze had one final surprise for the crew of the Argo VII though. This arrived in the form of more hounds, one for each of the heroes, and each one was bigger and meaner than any hound they’d faced previously.
Better watch out, kid... these things are bordering beta-level, Chiron warned.
“It’s okay.” Sam pulled Gram out for the first time since acquiring it. “We’re highly motivated right now.”
Despite the strength of their foes, Sam and his friends worked as one unit, moving to fill the roles that Dr. Hearthstone suggested for them earlier to make a group fight easier for them.
Dr. Hearthstone would aggro the horrors with a taunt of his, “Smoldering Glare!” drawing them to him so he could tank them all. Meanwhile, Sam and Jackboot were the close-range damage dealers who focused on one horror at a time while Thunder and Farsight supported them from the rear. With this setup, the team managed to eliminate these powerful horrors one by one with little difficulty and even lesser wounds than before.
“You know, I’ve always wondered why there are so many horrors inside a haunted zone when only one of the blighted bastards is responsible for making it,” Jackboot commented.
“Lesser horrors of similar emotional states are often drawn toward the stench of powerful horrors...that’s how packs are formed,” Dr. Hearthstone explained.
“And it’s why leaving a haunted zone alone for too long could be dangerous to a community,” Thunder added.
“The drop in nearby real estate value is significant too,” Farsight chimed in.
Deciding there was no time to take a short rest to refresh themselves, the team hurriedly moved over to the double doors at the other end of the lobby.
“Are we ready?” Thunder asked.
Sam nodded. “Let’s do this...”
The pair of them pushed the doors open, and then they all stepped through together with determined faces that were quick to morph into ones of confusion at the sight that greeted them. They were in a room that mirrored the previous one; marble floors and pillars surrounded by staircases and doors floating in an empty void wrapped in gray fog. And they weren’t alone.
Here was a hound more massive and lordlier than anything they’d previously encountered. Bristling red fur covered muscles that would have made Sam’s old enemy, the cannibal boar, look tiny by comparison. It had jaws filled with sword-sized fangs that could have swallowed Sam whole. Then there were the eyes. The only part of the monster that still resembled the human it had once been. They blazed red with uncontained rage and malice.
“I reckon we’re late to the party,” Jackboot commented.
Despite its terrifying appearance, the hound was pressed against the ground. Held there by the black chains that wrapped across its massive wolf-like form.
“Makes our job easier,” Farsight replied.
Standing guard over the hound were five of Chimera’s agents. They were all that remained of the white-clad group as many more of their allies lay dead on the marble floor.
Sam’s eyes took this carnage in before honing in on the two people standing to the right of the hound’s shackled snout.
The smaller of the two was a tan-skinned girl dressed in a Greek-style white robe and gossamer sandals. She wore a bronze breastplate over her robe which seemed her only protection against attack. Her head was wrapped in a silk shawl that covered most of her face. Only her eyes were visible, which, to Sam’s surprise, were teal-colored like his. Wrapped around this girl’s hand was a small pithos; a stylishly carved clay urn capped with bronze. It was this urn—not the giant hound on the ground—that radiated the massive amount of energy Sam and his friends could now feel.
“That couldn’t be—”
“Pandora’s Box,” Thunder finished for Sam, “which makes her Pandora the 8th...”
Eight in the line of women who were sacrificed to the gods’ cursed relic which had supposedly trapped all the worst evils of the ancient world inside itself. This was the fate of Pandora, guardian of the cursed box, which was probably the reason they nearly always became villains.
“You’re very well-informed,” spoke the woman standing next to Pandora the 8th.
She was a tall, gaunt woman with long, thin, dark hair framing a pale, almost doll-like face; almond-shaped purple-colored eyes, a pointy-ended button nose, and darkly painted lips. She wore all-white clothes; a blouse and skirt that hugged her shapely figure with a thick sash wrapped around her waist that pressed various tools to her body.
The woman’s eyes, which were alight with a purplish glow, snapped from Sam to Thunder and then back to Sam.
“You,” she whispered.
Seeing Sam caused her to frown almost as if she recognized him. She stared at him for a long moment before her frown disappeared, replaced by a sly smile that made Sam’s body tingle uncomfortably.
“No, you’re not him...but you wear my Jason’s mask,” she said in a bubbly tone that belied her ghoulish form.
“H-how did you know this was his mask?” Sam stammered.
He didn’t think anyone but Thunder and Chiron would know about the Mask of the Argonauts in this era.
“How could I not. I made it for him,” she replied.
The aura of dread emanating from this ghoulish woman was comparable to the urn in Pandora the 8th’s hands—and that realization worried Sam.
“W-who are you?” he asked.
The woman’s smile widened, and malice flashed across her face. “I. Am. Medea.”