Rolly was doing all he could to protect Squirmie from the maddened pig, desperately trying to keep his pet safe, even as he himself was gored and pummeled by the Black Sow. He would die, but it was worth it. Squirmie was afraid of dying and going somewhere bad. Rolly wasn't. So as things went dark, he just accepted it.
As he awoke there was a feeling of being pulled in two directions. In one he caught a glimpse of a comfortable bedroom. In the other direction, a stone platform surrounded by several caged monsters. He chose the monsters and began to fall. Again, the feeling of two things happening. Did he fall for nine days? Or was it instantaneous?
He landed hard on rocky ground. Above him stretched a tall chasm with no end. A thin, stony path started from where he fell, and twisted back and forth until it came to a higher island of stone; the path continued up after that, past the point where he could see it.
"Damn, looks like it's a long walk home. At least I'll see some cool stuff."
"Oh, indeed you will, mortal. You will see things that will leave you begging for someone to tear out your eyes. You will hear screams of the tortured that will never again allow you to sleep. You will suffer unending hunger, but no one will feed you. And as the interminable eons go by, you will go mad and beseech the gods to forgive your terrible sin. None will come for you because time here is broken. You can suffer an eternity and yet if you escaped, no time at all will have passed. No one can intervene for you. Their prayers to the god you offended have not formed in their thoughts or passed their lips. Expect to be here for a while!"
Behind Rolly was a large cage of twisted metal vines with foot-long thorns. Laying down on the ground with a bored look on its face was a huge creature that seemed to be part lion and part scorpion, with the face of a very handsome human male.
"Oh, cool, a manticore? Do I call you that? Mr. Manticore? Sir Manticore? Or do you have a proper name? Nice stinger on the tail. I bet you get some great extension with that. Catch a lot of folks by surprise?"
"Come just a step closer, and I can answer that question for you. You seem the polite sort. You may refer to me as 'The Manticore', for indeed I am the finest specimen of my breed; but when it comes to idle chit-chat between close friends, I go by Harkruk. I haven't decided on our level of familiarity yet. Perhaps you could come a bit closer? I'm terribly hard of hearing."
After a small pause, Rolly stepped closer, "Glad to oblige."
Faster than most mortals could see, the beast rolled forward, came to its feet and shot the long scorpion tail forward through a gap in the vines towards Rolly's heart - which was no longer there. Rolly continued to move forward and to the side, just enough to avoid the wicked spike on the end of the tail.
Before The Manticore could retract its tail, Rolly wrapped his arms and legs around it and used his full weight to force it down onto the metal vines where two of the thorns pierced into it at a joint. The Manticore froze, moving not at all, its eyes now very active and watching to see what Rolly would do next.
Rolly was looking at the end of the tail, then back to the cage, "Nice! You really do have some great extension when you strike that way. And the roll forward added some distance. I bet you nailed some heroes stone-cold-dead with that move." He continued to hang onto The Manticore's tail, to the creature’s discomfort.
"Yes. Yes, I did. And now that we have gotten acquainted, I'd be happy to tell a clever fellow like you the stories. Perhaps you have something you could trade me? A small favor perhaps? Such as not using my extended limb as a piece of acrobatics equipment?"
Rolly hopped off the tail, "Sure. Let me help you get it off the spike. Don't retract it until I heal the wound up."
Confused by what was going on, The Manticore allowed its tail to be freed and its wound healed. It pulled its tail carefully back and didn't even try for another attack. The 'dodge and trap the tail' maneuver had been smartly done and The Manticore was very out of shape when it came to dealing with heroes - which this young human certainly must be.
Rolly sat cross-legged in front of the cage, in obvious striking range. He waved a hand in the air and produced a large smoked ham, "Speaking of unending hunger, I'm ready for some ham. Want some?"
"...food?...why, yes, YES!...I would greatly enjoy a slice of your fine ham. Please, call me Harkruk. And how should I refer to you, oh most generous of heroes?"
Rolly formed his hand into a large sickle-shaped claw, sliced off about a quarter of the ham, stepped up to the bars and held it out. A large extended claw daintily speared the meat and with great restraint, Harkruk began to slowly lick it.
"My current title is Roland, Lord of Ducks, but my friends call me Rolly. You should too." Rolly went to cut himself a slice of ham, and noticed that none of the meat was missing.
"Oh, neat. I guess this is an aspect of 'Time is Broken'? My Ever-Ham just reforms immediately."
Harkruk looked with disbelieving eyes as Rolly sliced off more and more chunks of ham, and yet the original piece of meat was always whole. It looked at the chunk it had been licking, swallowed it whole, and asked politely, "Might I trouble you for a few more slices? And then I will begin my stories."
Harkruk told three stories of outwitting brave heroes and feasting on their hearts. At any pause, Rolly would toss him a huge chunk of ham carved off the bone of his legendary item. At the end of the three stories, Rolly didn't seem like he was ready to depart, and Harkruk was certainly not going to turn down more food, so he told three more stories. These involved lesser-known tales of Zeus and what happened to him when he didn't outwit Hera after dallying with mortals. Harkruk noticed that the hero wasn’t concerned with hearing this slander of the king of the gods. He even told a joke of his own:
“What’s the difference between Zeus and a sedge bull?”
“I confess to not knowing the specific answer to that riddle. What is the difference between Zeus and a sedge bull?
“A sedge bull would be embarrassed to turn into a Zeus to get laid.”
After it had quit laughing, Harkruk followed his earlier yarns with the nine tales of how the Nemean Lion wooed the Queen of Scorpions, dying the first eight tries but succeeding on the ninth, thus begetting the first manticores. Rolly loved the stories and had him tell them again.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Some indeterminate time later, Harkruk realized two things. He was full, and he had run out of stories to tell his new friend, the mortal hero, Rolly.
"I thank you for the fine meal, friend Rolly. Truly you are as clever as Ulysses to smuggle such a legendary item into Tartarus where it would become even more miraculous. But it also brings up philosophical questions."
"Ooh, I like those. Most of them don't have answers so I can't get them wrong and if you twist them, you can always get them right."
Harkruk pondered that statement. Generally, he tried to find the ultimate truth of a statement, but there was some merit in finding multiple truths and taking your pick, "Let me pose one for you then. Why does your ham never decrease when a day cannot pass in Tartarus?"
"Easy. You said it yourself. Time is broken. No time means no time restrictions. Another way to look at it is to apply quantum theory. If we really are between moments in time, then two things can be true at once. My ham can be in both a depleted state ready to reform at the end of the day, or in a state of fullness, ready to be cut. Both are equally true and I pick full. Full is better."
"ZOUNDS! And that could explain my belly not clawing at me as well. Are you saying that I am both full to bursting on ham, and yet at the same time famished from an eon of not eating?"
"What eon? Time is broken. I don't know who wrote the rules for this place, but once you start splitting infinities and mucking with time, lots of stuff gets weird. I like weird though. Lots of wiggle room." Rolly stood up, wiped off his hands, and stowed his ham.
"Great stories, thanks. I'll be sure to stop by next time I die. I should get going though. Time doesn't pass, but I'm missing my buddy Squirmie. What's the quickest way out, do you think?"
"I'm not sure there is a quickest - I know of but two ways to leave this black pit. The first is to climb forever past countless monsters imprisoned here by the gods. Should you ever die you will begin your climb again, but from even further down the path – and the path is long. Tartarus is said to be a distance below Hades equal to that of Olympus above the mortal plane, and that it takes nine days to fall from either."
"And the other way?"
"The other way is fraught with great peril. One must follow the path downward until one enters the abode of the Draconae Titanus. There you must vie with the mightiest of them, Typhon, and somehow defeat him. I would not advise this course. Only Zeus has defeated him with might, and Typhon is cleverer than a Sphynx with a law degree. There is no riddle you can ask that he does not know. It is said that if you defeat him, you may leave by a small crevice in the back of his domain - too small for a titan, but a mortal can squeeze through. Should you fail, he exacts a terrible price."
"And you say I can get there by going down?"
Harkruk wished he had just said to start climbing and left it at that. He forgot how oblivious to danger were mortal heroes. It was one of the things that made them so dangerous, but equally easy to trick.
"Yes, you can't miss it. You will encounter all kinds of fell creatures, but if you stay to the center of the path and don't draw their attention you might make it. Use stealth to pass the hydra, it's always sleeping. Any of the dogs you can outwit by giving them a piece of ham. Make sure you feed each head. When you pass the Hive Queen I advise running - and don't try to grab one of her offspring, no matter how cute. It never works out well."
With a wave, Rolly went on his way. He left behind a thoughtful Manticore trying to convince himself that if he was spending eternity in punishment, he was also forgiven and free to go. Time was broken, and no one could hold a grudge forever, could they?
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After quite a few adventures, lots of running, sneaking, and feeding large puppies, Rolly arrived at the bottom of the path. In some ways it had been a lifetime, but had also taken no time at all.
Before him were two creatures that defied description. He tried to tell Ben later when he explained how he had left Tartarus, but never felt that he did them justice.
"Echidna was a beauty, and there was a lot of her! Her tail wrapped around and around the cavern with all the colors of the rainbow in her scales. She had a lot of eyes, all of them beautiful and watching in all directions. And claws to die for, but in that dainty sort of way that says 'mom'."
"You can see how Typhon fell for her, even with their differences. He was older by a few ages and bigger than a mountain. Makes you wonder about the wedding night. He was similar to her down below, all scales and snake tails, but he also had wings that any dragon would be jealous of. And heads! I don't count sheep anymore to go to sleep; I count Typhons. He had one big dragon head and at least a hundred smaller ones weaving around; hard to count."
Ben tried to pin him down on details, but Rolly's descriptions seemed to be as fluid as the creatures he described. Of the encounter, Rolly only gave the barest details.
"At first he didn't even see me. I chatted with Echidna for a long time, and we ate together. She's always pregnant and needs her calories.”
"She knew right away about Squirmie, which is why she didn't eat me too. He's related somehow, but a long way down the family tree. She's really happy we get along and are helping people to get pets of their own. She loves all of her children: just a kind, grandmotherly sort of ancient horrible monster.
But eventually, Typhon heard her laugh when I told her about dying to the Black Sow, who's also related to her somehow. Not sure because that's when there was this horrible noise like the earth shattering. Typhon said something, but when you’re as tall as the sky, your words just rumble like thunder."
"He sent down one of his little heads to talk since his big voice is so loud. He asked if I was there to be eaten as an offering or if I really meant to challenge him.”
“I'd been wondering about something as I walked down to see him, so I asked him about it.”
"If time is broken, and you try to fix it, how long does it take?"
"It got really quiet after that, and finally he told me that I should go find out, and come back and tell him. Echidna pointed at the little cave and told me to hurry home to Squirmie. Oh, and to come back and visit. Next thing I knew, I was home."
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Joe figured he’d seen it all, but had to admit that the bottom of a charnel pit cracking open and someone climbing out of it was new. He and Makken simply stared as Rolly climbed out. With only a wave, he started running for Gadobhra where his pet was curled up and sleeping in the ground to heal its injuries. “Time to wake up, silly bug, Grandma said to give you a hug for her.”