Standing together on the landing, they looked at the barred door. They knew that behind it was their Earth Attunement that they needed, as well as the guardian that protected it.
The plan was for Josh to lift the bar and open the door. Sen would move in first and confront what was in there. If there was a chance to talk, spy, creep around, or reach a diplomatic solution over Limoncello— Great! If not, then Sen would be ready to “tank” whatever was facing them on the other side. Josh’s job was to strike at every opportunity until it was dead.
Reaching out with both hands, Josh moved to lift the crossbar–
The clacking from behind the Tartarus portal suddenly erupted fiercely. On top of that, its draw calling Josh to walk through the portal doubled. Josh knew then that something wrong on the magnitude of world-ending Armageddon would happen unless he went through the Tartarus portal. They didn’t need just to go there first... they needed to go there right now.
Sen, who had been less sensitive to its calling, also seemed significantly more affected now. Josh had his hands on the crossbar as Sen looked up at him worriedly. “Brother... should we at least check?”
“I don’t know, Sen. Tartarus is described as a place like... hell...” Sen looked confused, clearly not aware of the concept. Josh also got the same feeling of uncertain confusion through their Karmic Bond.
It’s weird to have no concept of hell. Just imagine it... “It’s an awful place where only terrible people go. The Titans– Gaia’s first children, were held there for a long time. Gaia’s grandson, Zeus, eventually let them out... I don’t know who could be calling from there.”
As Josh stared at the portal. For a reason that he couldn’t explain, one of his favorite lines from Tolkien crossed his mind. “A chance for Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to show his quality.”
Josh remembered reading Tolkien’s trilogy when he was thirteen years old. It was one of the few things his father had encouraged him to do. To be honest, reading the Lord of the Rings was one of the few good things he associated with his father... Consciously putting his daddy issues aside, Josh refocused on the thought of Faramir...
Faramir had been in a position to further his own cause. To make things significantly better for himself. But he would be screwing everyone else in the process, and Faramir knew it. There he sat with his choice. With absolutely everything up to him... and he made the right one... and it had made a difference.
In his heart, Josh didn’t compare himself to an epic hero in a tragic tale of good versus ultimate evil... Yet, Josh was here, hanging out in the downstairs landing of the Mother of the Earth after raiding her basement for the Titans’ ‘baby’s first weapons’... Maybe it wasn’t that much of a stretch after all...
He and Sen needed the Earth Crystals behind door number one. It was step numero uno for him to get back to Sophie and for Sen to return to Transcendence. It will further my own cause. Yet Josh could not shake the certainty that everything right to do was behind door number two: TARTARUS. A chance to show my own quality…
What the hell... literally. I probably should have been killed by Brundox... or against the cannibals... or by the draugr... What do I have to lose now?
~This is probably going to bite us on the ass, Sen.~
~Agreed.~
Turning ninety degrees, they went through to Tartarus.
The portal trip this time was decidedly different. Instead of feeling no discernible change from one step to the next... this trip was more like being strained through a colander made from razor wire.
Sen had stepped through first. To Josh, it seemed as if Sen’s body stretched out from where it crossed the portal’s threshold into infinity. His leading leg accelerated at incredible speeds while the rest of him stayed behind on the landing until that part passed the portal’s sill. The theoretical model of an object passing the event horizon of a singularity came immediately to mind. Spaghettification, his inner physicist, helpfully supplied the term. Then Josh felt an aching pain in his core and the center of his mind... along with, for lack of better words, a sense of dread concerning his Karmic brother.
Without thinking, Josh jumped through behind Sen. Whatever it was would at least have to deal with Josh’s short sword upside its head as it took them both down. They would stand or fall. But it would be together.
Upon crossing the threshold, the problem immediately made itself apparent. Not only did going through the portal look like passing an event horizon. It felt like going through one and still being alive. It was as if Josh got pulled through the eye of an infinitely long needle and then knitted into a chew toy for some cosmic granny’s galaxy-sized pit bull.
Josh immediately cycled Essence to his whole body to help deal with the strain and heal his wounds. The difficulty was compounded by the fact that it took much longer to transit this portal than the storerooms. The spiritual machinery running the Tartarus portal appeared to be on its last legs.
Stolen novel; please report.
What felt like an hour and ten minutes later, but was only a fraction of a second, ended with Josh spit out onto a barren landscape of dark and forbidding shadows at every corner. There was no discernible light source. Just a low-level illumination from everywhere and nowhere. It felt like the spirit world in any video game he had ever played. Josh’s body tumbled and then slid over shards of igneous rocks like broken glass, ultimately coming to rest after crashing into Sen’s rising form.
Sen again pulled himself up and lent a hand to Josh. A stabbing pain told Josh he had gotten a twisted ankle somewhere along the chaotic tumble. Sen looked like he was in about the same shape.
They examined their surroundings while cycling Essence to heal their wounds and panting for breath. Several things came into sharp focus. Multiple shield volcanoes dotted the landscape in front of... to the sides... and in fact, all around them... Everywhere! And worse, said volcanoes were all simultaneously going through the final stages leading to pyroclastic eruption. Multiple dome failures were evident, with sporadic ash and magma explosions above many rims and visible clefts in the volcanos’ sidewalls. The air was already thick with dust and ash. It was getting harder to breathe by the second, and Josh’s super-science-know-how was screaming in both ears and the center of his brain in no uncertain terms that it had been a nice trip... but it was time to go!
A deep voice spoke from behind them. “This pocket is ending...”
Josh and Sen spun together as one. Seeing first, immediately behind them, a large cage. It was one hundred meters to the side and fifty meters high. Thick, overlapping iron bars ran horizontally and vertically, creating squares along the cage’s faces. A shining steel door five meters wide held court in its center. The cell was built into the corner of a cliff with perpendicular angles to the rear rock faces.
A man of solid build and average height stood facing them from the middle of the cage. Appearing to be in his late thirties, he had short, dark hair and a well-trimmed beard. He was also wearing clothes similar to theirs. However, it was impossible not to notice that his vestments had gold trimming in all the right places. He was also sporting a gilded laurel wreath tucked behind his ears as a crown.
Most notable, perhaps, was that despite standing amongst the end-stages of... well... everything, the man was the very image of calm and collected. His face had a superior expression, and he seemed to be entirely at leisure with his hands held casually behind his back.
“I am Cronus. It appears my children have forgotten me after releasing my brothers and sisters... It must be several millennia ago at this point... Would you be so kind as to pull that lever to the left and release me? The glyphs on this cage are preventing me from otherwise evacuating.” He smiled a bright, tight smile Josh had seen on judges and opposing counsel’s faces a hundred times before they started lying their assess off. “...And it will be… a bit troublesome to drag myself out of the ruin to a stable iteration.”
Cronus raised his hand and waved nonchalantly to the numerous early-stage pyroclastic eruptions. Simultaneously, a long string of icons lit up on either side of the door’s frame, glistening green and gold as if to make his point. Josh had no idea what the sigils meant individually. Translating them was most likely beyond his interface’s current abilities.
Sen straightened and started to the massive lever, a large gold ball topping a bronze rod rising directly from the ground. Josh also couldn’t help but notice it was just out of the arm’s reach of someone trapped in the cage. Some sadistic piece of work had built this thing.
Josh held up his hands to stop Sen. “Whoa, whoa! Sen, this is Cronus! You know, one of the classic bad guys. Child eating... father maiming... we should think about the ramifications of letting him out...”
A small smile touched the corners of Cronus’s mouth. “You know your history very well. But, please, do remember that only the victors write history.” He gestured around himself. “As you can see, I am no historian. Furthermore, I’m not as bad as all that. People are never as good or as bad as those with opposing agendas would lead you to believe... I would think that a young vampire who just finished raiding my childhood toy box would be well served to keep that in mind.” Cronus finished, supercharging his superior expression with a cocked right brow.
“Gaia gave us permission to take these,” Josh said, pointing at the swords. And we are cultivators, not vampires.”
“Tomato... tomahto… We both know that without an Attunement, you both are really just core feeders.” Cronus’s smile grew slightly, knowing his point was made.
Before Josh got to unleash what would certainly have been a multiversally devastating reply to the king of the Titans, the air pressure noticeably dropped around them. As if the whole dimension was inhaling an immeasurable breath. Then, the ground shuddered in every direction as a loud and steadily increasing rumbling filled their ears.
All three of them looked around for the cause. With wide-eyed horror, they watched several more advanced and, unfortunately, closer volcanoes starting apocalyptic pyroclastic eruptions. For the first time in a while, Josh was decidedly unhappy with knowing what he knew about the basic science of such eruptions, ‘helpfully’ provided by his inner volcanologist.
For instance, first, there would be a rapidly expanding and superheated gas cloud, greater than 752 degrees Fahrenheit, moving toward them faster than Tomahawk missiles could fly. Causing his, Sen’s, and likely Cronus’ incineration before the much slower-moving tsunamis of lava got to them. But they might last long enough for the overhead-rocketing boulders to crash upon them and the surrounding area. Obliterating everything larger than a pocket watch. Josh could see that many such boulders above them were the size of aircraft carriers and were already arching through the air to detonate upon the entire location where they stood.
Even Cronus’s ice-cold demeanor shook at these new circumstances. With his smile faltering, he started speaking marginally faster. “Very well. I, Cronus, King of the Titans, promise to do no harm to you, your families, clans, or city-states.”
Josh’s eyes narrowed.
Cronus quickly added, “And to do no injustice to those who locked me up and left me to ultimate destruction!”
Sensing the Titan’s desperation, Josh knew that was as good as any promise they would get if they were all going to get out alive.
Sen must have felt Joshua’s agreement through the Bond because he pulled the lever, straining with his fully Essence-enhanced strength. As it locked into place, the bronze gate ponderously slid from the left to the right along a track on Cronus’s side of the bars.
It took two full seconds. A length of time that all three of them felt was intolerably long as the sky grew darker and darker, obstructed by gas clouds and hurtling debris. The launched rocks, trailing burning pitch, and smoke, were well past the peaks of their arcs when the door opened enough for Cronus to step through sideways.
But, once through, Cronus’s return to full Titanic power was palpable. Even against the raging destruction around them, Cronus’s aura emitted a gravitational pull of strength. It was almost more fearsome than the falling rocks above their heads as he seemed... more real than even the failing dimension they stood in.
Still, Josh met Cronus’s eyes while Sen pulled him back to the wavering portal exit ten paces away. “See that you keep your word to us!” Josh yelled over the deafening sounds and continued explosions.
In the midst of performing a series of rapid hand movements that warped space in concentric circles, Cronus stopped and shot a piercing glance at Josh through the shockwaves and ash.
“You stand before Cronus. First and last of the Titans. I swear I will honor my word by my father the sky and my mother the earth below him.” He continued to speak while making a quick gesture, rolling his right wrist toward them. “Take this as a sign of our covenant!”
Josh partially saw a flash over his right shoulder, then Cronus finished with a brisk clenching of his right fist and was gone from the world. An instant later, Sen was pushing them through the flickering portal. At the same time, the first of the volcanic detritus crashed in enormous impact detonations where Josh and Sen had stood a microsecond before.
No one remained in Tartarus to see the cage, the landscape, and the portal they had fallen through, destroyed by the crashing of mountains and fire.
However, wherever he was, Cronus did take the time to send one last message directly to Josh and Sen. “Test me again, young vampire, and there will be an accounting between us... Joshua Elias Tanner.”