Page 50 of Scion of Chaos

I shudder at the gruesome sight, but what did I expect? We are a level removed from Hell—or Hades, I guess. At least Asterius doesn’t seem to take pleasure in the violence on display.

His jaw is set and his gaze is hard when we move to the next room. Inside, another deep pit yawns, but this one features a steep ramp extending down from the ledge we stand on all the way to the floor. The inmate within could easily escape if he just climbed up.

Several yards below, however, I see a huge round boulder being rolled inch by inch up the incline, its mass obscuring whoever’s rolling it.

“Sisyphus, king of Corinth, was punished for imprisoning Hades and disrupting the natural order of life and death,” Asterius says. “He is condemned to push that boulder up the hill for all eternity, but it always rolls back down before he reaches the top.”

And true to his word, the boulder shifts mere inches from the top, topples to the side, and rolls back to the bottom again. The man behind lets out a curse as he stares after it in defeat. He looks up at us then, his dismay still etched on his face. He’s so close to us I could reach out and give him a hand up, but he shakes his head.

“I can’t,” he says in a strained voice, backing up as if in fear before turning and running back down the ramp to the bottom to resume his futile task.

“Why doesn’t he just leave?” I ask when we exit the cell. “He was so close.”

“He’s compelled to complete his task and may not leave until it’s done.”

“He’ll never succeed, will he?”

“He has been here for eons. Without divine intervention, it is unlikely.”

The next two rooms feature equally futile torments for the inmates within. One contains Tantalus, who Asterius informs me tried to feed his own son’s flesh to the gods. For his crime, he’s condemned to stand in a pool of water beneath a tree with beautiful fruit just out of reach. Each time he attempts to drink or eat from the tree, the water recedes or the branches rise too high for him to grab.

The other is a man bound to a flaming disc that spins eternally in a darkened room. “To Ixion, it is as if he’s eternally spinning through a void,” Asterius explains. “This is his punishment for attempting to seduce the goddess Hera.”

The next room is not even a cell; it’s a vast landscape featuring a worn and muddy path that disappears down a slope into the distance, ending at the shores of a wide river. A long line of women in tattered robes trek the path, carrying pitchers attached to yokes upon their shoulders.

From our vantage atop the hill, I count forty-nine women who take turns filling their vessels in the river then turn and make the trip back up the hill to a well a few feet away from the cell door. But along the way, the earthenware jars all begin to leak, water streaming out the bottoms while they walk. Yet they don’t stop to patch them, and by the time each one reaches the well to tip their jars and empty them, not a drop of water remains to fill the well.

“The Danaids,” Asterius says in a low voice. “They murdered their husbands on their wedding night, and now they must fill these pitchers with water from the river Styx and transfer it into this well. When the well is full, their sentence is complete.”

“But their vessels leak. This is just as bad as Sisyphus. Maybe he deserved his sentence, but do these women deserve theirs?”

Exhaustion and defeat are etched on each woman’s face when she reaches the well only to find her pitcher empty. I step forward and touch one on the arm. “Excuse me, but did you murder your husband?”

She glances fearfully at Asterius, who nods her way, permitting her to answer.

“My sisters and I were taken unwillingly and forced to wed and lie with our uncle’s sons. Our father told us the only way to be free of them was to kill them, so we did. All of us but one are here paying for the crime.”

“That’s awful.” I turn to Asterius. “Seriously? These women wereforcedinto marriage andrapedby their own cousins. How is this justice?”

Asterius just gives me a helpless look, and I huff and push past him back through the door. “I know, you’re just doing your fucking job. You guys have been living under a fucking rock if you think this kind of shit still flies in the twenty-first century. Get with the fucking program.”

“I’m sorry, Nemea.” He rests a gentle hand on my shoulder, his big palm engulfing me. It’s a comfort, and I don’t pull away this time, but he doesn’t linger.

Finally we reach another large, circular room with a deep, dark pit, yet this one is empty, the heavy grate that once covered it thrown back. A thick vine climbs out of it, lush with leaves and beautiful, aromatic flowers.

“This was where Hyperion and his brothers were held. They managed to break their chains and climb out, thanks to Pan’s carelessness.”

“And thanks to my influence. What exactly did he do? He never told me what really happened that day. I just remember how damaged he was when I found him. His horns were nothing but bloody stumps.”

“It’s rather crude,” he says, casting me a sidelong look. I raise an eyebrow.

“Don’t tell me you’re too proper to tell me all of a sudden.”

He snorts and shakes his head. “He was complaining all day about needing to blow off steam—begging Vesh for an outing or bothering me and the others for a romp. When we said no, he took matters into his own hands just a little too close to this pit.”

He walks around the rim to where the vine emerges. Obscured behind the foliage is a low bench resting beside a pulley and a bucket that still contains what looks like a moldy bread crust.

“So he sat here and jerked off, is what you’re saying?”

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