Storming Paradise (11 page)

“What did I do?” Hercules muttered before he—and several hundred captives around him—passed out in pain.

Campe crouched down on the circular stone platform beneath the open ceiling of the rocky cavern. There were souls all around her, trembling as their energies were drained, shaking in the cages, line after line of them crammed floor to ceiling, double and triple stacked and covering every wall. Others waited on the rocky outcroppings all around. These were tired creatures, free from the cages but their resistance long-since worn down, just shells whose lives had reached their ends. Some were still recognizably human, here a handsome warrior, there a woman whose hair was gray and listless. Others had lost their features, their faces smooth, fingers and toes webbed together where they had been down here so long that they had forgotten what it was to be human. These cursed souls bowed down to their mistress, chomping down on the metal bits that had been placed between their teeth—those that had teeth—each bit connected by a wire to a series of pipes and bubbling vessels at the side of the cave. Those without teeth had found other ways to hold the bits, their connections made through rents in their flesh, indentations in their own bodies, done willingly if not with any joy.

Rough-hewn from the rock, Campe's platform was at the center of all of this, held aloft now by the energies that were already coursing through it, its edges tottering as it hovered a few feet above the ground. The platform was barely large enough to accommodate Campe's long body, and her scorpion tail hung free, dangling below. The platform stood three feet in the air, raised on chains that were attached to it on four sides, a fifth chain, thick as a man's torso, ran through the middle of the rock, driven straight through so that it pierced a plug below, like a ship dropping anchor. There were other platforms too, waiting on the ground in a circle around the one that Campe occupied, large as banquet tables and rough-hewn from the rock of the cave.

Below Campe, the three Hecatonchire giants watched, working the delicate supernatural machinery that monitored and channeled the soul energy into the chains to launch the platforms. The machinery operated through scrying pools, great bowls of dark water carved directly from the rock, each change of the current prefacing a new step in the process. As the giants watched, the chains began to boil with color, crackling lines of energy running up and down their lengths, the fierce greens seen only in afterimage when one stares at the sun too long, burning reds like sunsets, the flickering blue of the ocean—all of them mixing together, forming new patterns, new blurs of fantastical brightness.

Campe squinted against that onslaught of color, feeling the platform beneath her begin to move as if caught in the aftershock of a quake. The platform trembled, shaking harder as those already brilliant colors became more brilliant still, as the greens and reds and blues were laced with great swooshes of gold and the relentless, blazing white found at the core of burning magnesium. Darker bubbles appeared across the chains and the rock platform as it started to ascend, like mushrooms budding in shadows, expanding in little clusters and cutting holes in the burning brilliance.

The platform rose faster, shaking beneath Campe's feet as it began to ascend towards a gap in the rock ceiling of the chamber.

With the ascent came a sound, the tortured cry of a thousand healthy souls being drained from their bodies, scooped unwillingly from the living vessels within which they resided. More cries joined those living souls, the sounds of a million dead, all the inhabitants of the Tartarus Pits enlisted to serve the ruler of this cruel place. The cries were spat through the clinging muzzles of the bits that had been forced between their teeth, some coming impossibly from throats that no longer had mouths to voice complaint. It was like an orchestra, one made solely of the agonized cries of tortured victims. It was the chillingly cruel anthem of the Tartarus Pits.

Suddenly, the platform holding Campe shot upwards, rocketing through the opening in the cavern roof like a launched firework, disappearing from the cavern of spiral paths. The chains detached as it was launched, their glowing links swiping at the room as they fell away in snaking coils.

The souls cried out in pleasure and pain, and their voices were joined by the distant chorus of other souls located in the Tartarus realm, from the network of caverns that surrounded this one, where the still-living and the newly dead gave their essences to power the supernatural elevator.

Campe felt the pressure on her dragon hide, the wind of passage wrenching at her long mane of hair. Crouched on the platform, Campe clung on tightly as it rose at astonishing speed, rocketing through the layers of the Earth, past Hades' realm and beyond, higher and higher in a tunnel of light and color and scents. Sparks of light seemed to descend at speed past her, like stars thrown from the heavens as the platform ascended faster and faster. The stars were pinpoints of light on the swirl of multi-colors, a twisting, turning spectrum of brilliance.

There came a smell too, like fresh fruit, surging to her nostrils. She was traveling through the barriers between realms, the way that her street trap had done over and over, only this time she was ascending farther than the surface of the Earth—this time she was destined for Elysium, the final resting place of the most noble warriors in all of history.

The colored tunnel spun faster, the threads of fate twisting within it depths. The smells became more intense, the aromas of orchards in season, of strawberries freshly plucked.

As suddenly as it had started its ascent, the platform stopped. Campe was almost thrown free by the abrupt jolt, and her head was reeling as she clung to the stone platform, vertigo threatening to throw her from its surface where the jolt had failed.

Campe waited, closing her eyes against the pressure in her head, taking slow, steady breaths to calm herself. It was not done to travel like this, through realms. Even the gods did not travel to these places often, for the journey was too demanding, too taxing on the physical form.

Something inside Campe ached, a magnetic pull in her chest that threatened to drop her through the floor with its tug. It was her soul—lost, out of sorts, knowing in some inexplicable way that it did not belong in this new place, that she was an interloper in . . .

In where?

She opened her eyes, blinked hard against the brilliance of the sky above her, a sky without the sun of Helios in his chariot, instead a brilliant cerulean that seemed to be lit from somewhere within. It was beautiful—awe inspiring in its tranquility.

The grass too was brilliant. She was surrounded by it, perfectly trimmed blades of vivid green nudging against the edge of her rocky platform, spreading as far as the eye could see. Rolling hills lay all around, a line of towering mountains in the distance. The air was warm on her skin, the lightest of breezes stroking against her, and it had a scent of freshness like spring flowers.

It was paradise. She had made it then: Elysium, the home of the fallen warriors.

On death, the souls of mortals had two paths that they could take. The first led via Hades' realm to the Tartarus Pits, where the old monsters had been left to rot by the Titans. Tartarus was a holding place for the worst, and many would never see it—many would be held forever in Hades' realm, spending eternity in those Stygian depths hoping for release.

The other place where souls ended their journey was here, the fields of Elysium, a resting place for the most noble, a spiritual recognition for all the good that they had done. It was a place where the bravest warriors came to collect their reward, where the most self-sacrificing troopers, the most courageous fighters, the most brilliant strategists, found themselves when their final battle was fought and they were released from the burden of life. Elysium was a place where the greatest myths lay down to rest, their stories were finally told, and their adventures reached their end. It was from here that Campe intended to recruit an army to storm Olympus—who better to challenge the gods than the greatest warriors in all of Greek history?

Her stomach still reeling, Campe stepped, very slowly, down from the platform. The rings that had held the chains in place to the sides sparkled with untamed energies accompanied by the sighs of the few souls who had—through a combination of proximity and luck—made the journey to this paradise with Campe. Already these lost souls were being dragged back to the Tartarus Pits—for them there could be no escape.

The grass felt as soft as wool when Campe stepped upon it, its blades brushing gently against her feet as if delivering a loving caress. She smiled, taking in the astonishing vista more fully, striding across the plain of grass. She had made it. Impossible as it seemed, she had stormed paradise and, now that she was here, there could be no stopping her. Next step was to attack Olympus, to humble Zeus and his pantheon, and put herself and her loyal warriors in their place.

But first things first—Campe needed to recruit the greatest warriors, and that meant finding them.

She strode across the carpet of grass, gazing all around her at the tranquil sights of Elysium. Waterfalls sprang from the distant mountains, crystal clear cascades dancing in the light. A vast lake sat down below the hilly area where Campe's platform had arrived, its water a translucent blue that shimmered as a warm breeze played across its surface. There were people down there, Campe saw, playing on the shore and splashing in the water, and their laughter came to Campe's ears, echoing faintly across the plains.

Beyond the lake, Campe saw a huge building finished in white stone. The building was several stories tall and its façade was dominated by a semicircular arch that was the width of the building itself. Beneath this arch were columns and a grand doorway that led into the building itself. The structure stood amid the grassy plains like a great beacon, its white walls shining majestically.

Extending her wings, Campe flew low over the plains and towards the building, skirting the lake at a distance for she did not wish to be seen too soon. Within that building were the greatest warriors of all history, she sensed, resting from their many labors on Earth and finally enjoying their hard-earned reward. What those warriors would not give to do battle again; what they would not give to rule the planet the way that Zeus and his heartless brothers and sisters did; what they would not give to direct the battles, to command the fates themselves—Campe could scarcely imagine. She knew that her plan was flawless, here in the Elysium Fields, where a thousand mortal warriors hungered for one final battle, where the stakes would be ultimate rule over the battlefields in which they had laid down their lives. With the greatest army in all of history at her back, Campe would raid Olympus, overturn everything and seize control. She would be unstoppable.

Campe flew towards the grand citadel on the edge of forever. Its towering arch loomed before her, dwarfing even Campe's colossal stature. Landing, she climbed its steps and stopped before the twin doors. Twice the height of the dragon woman, the doors were constructed from oak and tooled with images that ran down their great lengths. The images showed mighty warriors at war, re-creating the siege of Troy and other magnificent battles.

Campe pushed the doors open, striding into the great hall beyond. She found herself in a grand atrium of bewildering proportions. Like the doors, the floor depicted a grand battle in motion, the likenesses of soldiers and monsters captured in tiles, creating a swirling, almost circular mosaic that could be viewed from any angle. The ceiling was eighty feet above her, and it housed a great skylight that showed the brilliant blue sky above, framed like a painting. Columns stood to left and right, towering up to that impossibly high ceiling, set at regular intervals, twenty feet apart. The columns seemed almost to direct a visitor to the far end of the room, where a clear window looked out upon a breathtaking view. The view looked out over a mountain, its summit brushed with cotton candy clouds, its imposing peak and ridges still far below the window itself. Campe strode the length of the colonnade to get a closer look, her envious eyes fixed on that incredible view. It was Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, framed within a window located at the edge of paradise. Even as Campe watched, a flash of lightning fired out from somewhere amid those cotton candy clouds, Zeus venting his prodigious anger perhaps, or maybe Hermes testing a new pair of running sandals.

Campe smiled, gazing longingly at the towering edifice that was Mount Olympus. “You'll be mine soon enough,” she hissed, yellow eyes narrowing with longing. “And all your little games and intrigues won't matter one iota.”

Turning away from the window, Campe made her way back along the colossal walkway, heading towards the doors located in the shadows of the columns beyond which the greatest warriors in all of history were waiting—waiting to join her in her campaign of deicide.

Hercules shuddered in his cell as Campe took hold of his soul. He could feel something plucking at his innards, engendering such immense pain that he could barely think at all.

Several cells distant, Iolaus felt the same intense pain as the energies contained within his very soul were pulled at, sucked away and diverted into the streams of flowing energy that powered the furnaces of Tartarus, and from there channeled into the rising platform upon which Campe ascended. It hurt him from the inside out—a pain, a cancer, eating away at him from within, raging through him like locusts through a cornfield. Iolaus opened his mouth to scream, to vent some of his agony in that most primal form, and around him a hundred other prisoners took up the cry, each one of them being pulled at, their souls plucked from their bodies, wrenched away from them as they fought hopelessly against their chains.

Iolaus screamed, the pitch rising, the pain multiplying into something that seemed too impossible to endure. He blacked out—like those around him, Iolaus fainted, the pressure of his soul being torn just too much to bear.

His screaming stopped in that moment but his body continued to shake, the energies coursing from it through the medium of the manacles, each one connected in sequence to Campe's platform, delivering enough power to send her to Elysium.

Hercules ached too, feeling the probe of that supernatural technology as it tried to wrench his soul, his very being, from his body. His head ached as the pressure mounted, and he grit his teeth against indescribable pain.

Neither man could know that their souls were being drained, a splinter chipped away to power Campe's platform. Neither could know the amount of energy that was needed to do that, the sheer power required to send one individual up the ladder of the realms from Tartarus into Elysium. Living souls were stronger than those of the deceased—that was why Campe had sent her street trap out into the world, to snag the unwary and add the power of their souls to her wicked machinery, to use the living as fuel to stoke her plans of world domination.

Neither man knew when Campe's platform rose. They were caverns away, a whole series of captives held between them and the room where the platform was moored. They neither saw nor heard as that rock platform shot through the open ceiling within the Tartarus Pits and hurtled on its incredible journey to Elysium, crossing plains that never should be crossed.

Had Hercules blacked out? He could not say with any certainty. He had felt the pain welling within him, as if something was burrowing through his body from the inside out.

His mind was flip-flopping. He saw faces from the past, his stepmother grinning insanely at his predicament, finally victorious over his willful disobedience. It was hallucination, nothing more, and Hercules knew that . . . and yet it wanted to take hold of him, pull him down into despair. It was his soul fragmenting, his very being ripping apart in shreds.

“No,” Hercules spat, the word forced between clenched teeth.

There were tears on his cheeks, streaming from his eyes in thick, salty streams. His face was red with pressure, the veins at his temples bulging.

“No,” he insisted a second time, seeing the face of Hera his stepmother as if she was right here in the cell with him. He saw her reach for him, laughing, always mocking.

He felt Hera press her hand against him, felt her sharp fingernails cut into his body like tiny knives, splitting his flesh apart.

“Nooooo!” Hercules howled, pulling against the manacles that held him to the bolt in the wall.

The chains rattled, the manacles strained, and the wall behind Hercules began to shake.

The pressure within him was a terrible thing, a thunderstorm inside his lungs, a forest fire around his heart. Hercules closed his eyes and pulled harder at the chains, ignoring the pain inside him, ignoring the face of his spiteful stepmother where she loomed before him, her fingernails drawing blood in long, swirling lines from his chest.

What was real and what was not?
That was the question, Hercules knew. Whatever the tainted manacles were doing with their magic, it was making him break apart, casting his senses adrift so that they made their own narrative, one so bleak it was almost more than he could stand. No wonder the caged captives seemed so beaten down. They had endured this already—some of them for weeks.

Hercules' mouth widened in a scream as he pushed past the hallucinations, past the pain, and past the inferno rampaging through his innards. The scream rose in a room of silence, four-hundred cages still and quiet where their own occupants had already passed out, their minds sucked into the unreality of their darkest thoughts and fears.

Hercules screamed and the scream was loud, even to his ears, where they seemed disconnected from his mind. He heard himself shriek, felt the ache inside his dry throat as he bellowed for freedom, bellowed against the pain.

He had to break free, he knew. He could remember the manacles on his hands, could no longer feel them but still remembered, recalled the way they were connected to the wall by hoop and chains.

Hercules pulled, wrenching forward with his whole body where he was sat in the cell, yanking the chain taut, forcing his arms apart. No one was here to see, no one heard his frustrated calls as he fought against the chains, the hallucinations, and the draining of a demigod's soul.

If he could have seen what he was doing that might have made it easier, but Hercules could only see the hallucinations from the darkest pits of his soul as it was pecked at by Campe's sorcerous machines. So instead, he used those fears, those dark, dark thoughts, to spur him onwards, pulling at the chains, wrenching at their links, putting all the strength he had, all that he had left, to wrench himself free.

There came a sudden crash, and Hercules found himself falling forward, crashing to the barred floor of the cell in a waking tumble. His fall was followed an instant later by a hunk of wall striking him from behind, slapping across his shoulders like a battering ram.

He lay there, breathing hard, sweat pouring down his brow, feeling the pain across his back where the chunk of wall had struck him. And something else too—that the hallucinations had retreated, that he was alive in a cramped cage beside dozens of similar cages, each one holding the unconscious figure of a chained captive.

The pain had retreated too, the pain that had been burning him up from within, the excavation of his soul. He was alive.

Slowly, his body reluctant to move at first, Hercules pushed the block of rock from his back and rose to a kneeling position. The manacles were still on him, linking his wrists to a chain that snaked away to a hoop in the rock. The rock, however, was no longer a part of the wall—he had pulled it away, broken a great chunk from the wall, the same chunk that had struck him from behind. A mess of wrenched metal lay against the wall, torn like paper.

Hercules looked down at the manacles, testing his strength against them. The pain had subsided, but its echoes remained, fluttering through his body in cruel memory. He strained at the manacles, and when he found that did not break them, he pressed his foot against the chain that connected them and used that to snap himself free. The wristbands of the manacles would remain in place for now—this wasn't the time to worry about that.

What next?

“Iolaus?” Hercules called, gazing through the bars of his cell to where he thought his friend was imprisoned.

No answer.

He tried again, pressing his hands to the sharpened wooden bars at the same time and testing their strength. The bars were weak, at least so far as Hercules was concerned. He snapped three of the bars apart, ripped two more from their housings until there was space enough for him to duck through and exit the cage.

Hercules peered through the gap he had made in the bars. There was another cage beneath him, its occupant a woman who was writhing in pain as she slept, her ankle clasped by a manacle similar to the ones attached to his wrists. He could not worry about her now, he had to keep his eyes on the bigger picture.

Hercules slipped sideways through the bars and leapt down to the floor of the cavern. He peered around, searching for signs of the colossal guards or anyone else who might raise an alarm. Other than the people in the cages, there was no one here.

Hercules paced along the cages to his right until he spotted Iolaus. The man was on the third cell in a tower, one level above where Hercules had been and two cells over. He was currently hunched in a fetal ball, rocking in place, eyes clenched shut.

“Iolaus?” Hercules hissed, his cupped hand to his mouth. “Iolaus, wake up.”

Iolaus did not respond.

After a moment, Hercules clambered up the sides of the cages, using their stake-like bars to haul himself up the structure until he was hanging before Iolaus' cage. He wedged his feet between two of the bars and then, holding onto one for balance, he reached for the bar to the farthest right of the cage, where a simple catch had been placed on the outside of the cell. Not wishing to waste time, Hercules crushed the catch in his right hand and tossed it aside, so that it fell to the floor of the cavern with a splintering of wood. Then, still wedged against the cage, he pulled the door towards him, letting himself swing with it as it opened.

A moment later, Hercules had climbed over the open door, careful not to stab himself on the sharp points that characterized the tops of the wooden bars, and dropped down inside Iolaus' cell. Iolaus was still curled in a ball, arms held above his head by the manacles, eyes squeezed shut in pain, droplets of sweat pouring down his face and body as if he had a fever.

“Iolaus, wake up,” Hercules hissed, leaning down close to his chum.

Again Iolaus did not react, which confirmed Hercules' suspicion that his friend was either unconscious or entirely in the clutches of a hallucination similar to his own concerning Hera.

Hercules reached for the chain that linked the manacles to the wall, grabbing a link in each hand. Then, squeezing the links so hard that they began to bend in his hands, he wrenched them apart, ripping the manacles from the wall. Without the manacles holding him up, Iolaus slumped to the floor of the cage.

“Well,” Hercules remarked to himself, “I guess my strength is returning at least.” He had not really thought about it until that moment, but it was suddenly becoming clear how much being wrapped in those supernatural chains had affected not just his mind but his strength as well.

Hercules bent down and brushed the hair from Iolaus' face. “Come on, Iolaus,” he said softly, “snap out of it.”

Iolaus writhed on the barred floor of the cage for a few moments, shaking away the hallucinations he had been wracked by. His eyes fluttered open and he saw Hercules smiling down into his face.

“Whoa, hey,” Iolaus said with a start.

“Iolaus, are you okay?” Hercules asked.

“Yeah, I think,” Iolaus said without hesitation. “What just . . . where are we?”

“The Tartarus Pits,” Hercules said. “You were knocked out by one of the guards when we tried to raise the street—you remember?”

Iolaus pulled a face, wiping sweat from his brow. “Kinda,” he said, shaking his head. “How long was I out? And where . . . ? Wait, yeah, I remember this now. They put me in this cell. You too, I guess?”

“Yes,” Hercules confirmed.

Iolaus winced and began rubbing at his tummy. “My guts are . . . did we eat spicy food?”

Hunched over in the cell, Hercules shook his head. “Campe and her people were doing something to us,” Hercules said. “To everyone, I think,” and he indicated the other cells. “I don't know what.”

“Feels like my insides have been trying to make a break for it,” Iolaus said.

“Mine too,” Hercules agreed. “Now come on, there isn't a moment to lose.”

Iolaus winced as he tried to stand, clonked his head on the low ceiling of the cage, and then sat down hard on his backside.

Crouched over, Hercules offered his friend some words of advice. “Watch yourself. Low ceiling.”

“Yeah,” Iolaus said, wriggling out of the cage after Hercules.

Hercules leapt down to the ground, landing in a crouch. He checked right and left for danger while Iolaus climbed more carefully down the front of the towering cages, peering sorrowfully at the people locked within.

“So, we gonna let these people out?” Iolaus asked once he had reached the floor of the cavern. “I mean, we can't just leave them here.”

Hercules nodded in agreement. “My strength's come back,” he explained to a confused Iolaus—who didn't know it had ever waned. “I estimate that there are approximately two hundred and forty people in this cavern, plus many others elsewhere. Freeing them all will take time—unless you have any ideas.”

Iolaus looked at the metal bracelets that were still clamped around his and Hercules' wrists from the manacles. “There's a lock on these,” he pointed out, “which means that there's a set of keys somewhere. Chances are that the manacles all use the same key, or maybe a couple of keys. If we could get the keys . . .”

Hercules was trotting towards the far end of the cavern, a sly grin on his face. “I'm with you,” he said.

Iolaus frowned. “Then where are you going?” he asked, jogging down the warren of cages until he had caught up with his friend at the cavern mouth.

“I'm going to find our jailers,” Hercules said, stepping out into a larger cavern full of wailing souls, “and see if we can't negotiate like reasonable gentlemen. With our fists.”

“Oh boy!” Iolaus sighed.