The Butcher of Gadobhra

Rolly sat at Typhon's feet, carving off slices of ham, as Echidna, mother of monsters and wife of Typhon, admired Squirmie. For her part, the butterfly was terrified to move as the titan's eyes roamed over her. "So pretty, with all the dangerous parts hidden away until needed. So few of my children and grandchildren are so pretty, but I guess that comes from being monsters, not beauty pageant contestants. But I'm happy to claim you, little butterfly. Rolly told us much about you when last he came here. I'm so glad you could visit."

There was rumbling from above as Typhon spoke softly. Monsters and abominations far above hid in their cages and covered their ears. Echidna turned to Rolly. "You believe you can take her with you when you leave?"

Rolly smiled. "She's part of me now, and I get to leave and walk back to the living. She goes where I go, and Hades can't keep both of us. I have a contract with ACME and have to get back to work soon. And I have a second agreement with Wally. He knew about Squirmie when we made it, so she's included. "

"Those are powerful agreement if it binds even Hades and the God outside the World." Echidna was tossing Squirmie high in the air and catching her as she fluttered down again into the palm of her hand.

"The power comes from both Hades and Wally being good about keeping their word. With someone else, like Zeus or Loki, you'd need a good judge and a great lawyer to make them agree to their half. Especially Zeus. He's worse than trying to deal with a corporation like ACME."

Squirmie let loose a squeak as she was tossed high. "Loki is a god of liars and mischief. But why do you say that Zeus, king of the gods, wouldn't honor a contract? Trust me, there is no love for him here, but your words make me curious."

Rolly kept slicing ham; you needed a good pile when you were trying to make a snake for either of the Draconic Titans. "Look at all the stories. He never honors contracts, written or spoken. He marries Hera but then fools around on her constantly. Marriage is a contract, and he breaks that all the time. Then he promises to reward his loyal followers who worship him, but he kills anyone that looks at him wrong, rapes any woman he wants, scatters kids all over the place, and never once pays child support. He even killed the greatest healer in history for being too good of a healer. How messed up is that? The only reason he gets away with it is might, not right. Zeus doesn't keep his word."

"But Wally has a lot of rules in his kernel about being honest with humans. I trust him to keep his written word. And Hades seems like a guy who loves to have all the paperwork done correctly. He won't risk a lawsuit from a gnomish lawyer over Squirmie and me. But Zeus? A jerk like him would toss both of us down here in a heartbeat."

She seemed amused. "Careful...he is the king of a powerful pantheon of gods. We challenged him for the world and lost."

Rolly shook his head. "Not buying it. I think all of those stories based on the original mythology are just that, stories. They give clues but aren't what actually happened. If you fought, it was for a good reason."

Typhon began to laugh. The sound echoed through Tartarus and into Hades, slowly fading. As the volume of the laughter started to diminish, the dead recovered from their terror and began to walk up the path to the sun again, maybe a little quicker than before. In the pit of Tartarus, Echidna looked up at her husband and then spoke to Rolly.

"All stories have their origins. Both Zeus and Typhon represented factions of powerful creatures who were shaping the world. He and Zeus disagreed on how the world should evolve. What gods would ascend? What pantheons would become only legends? And who would make decisions about how the world changed?"

"Zeus wanted little to do with the responsibilities of his position but didn't want to give up his power. We opposed him. Rather than gods in control, we wanted a world with dragons, giants, and titans ascendant. We argued and fought for years. Finally, an agreement was made that Typhon and Zeus would each represent their factions in a battle. But we made a mistake.

"Zeus kept to the letter of the contract but not the spirit. Typhon came unarmed to the fight. Don't bring teeth and claws to a battle when the other guy brings thunderbolts and a flying chariot. Typhon lost after a long battle, trying to bring the fight to the coward. The entire continent where they fought is still a wasteland to this day; Ironically named The Wastelands of Typhon, but it was the thunderbolts that devastated the land."

"We agreed to our exile if the others of his faction would keep Zeus in line, and that has mostly happened. I lost interest in the world that was being built and spent my days here with my love, making monsters the old-fashioned way and sending them into the world. Some return here, some don't. We are too old and powerful for the world outside. Even becoming small enough to talk to you is difficult for me and nearly impossible for Typhon."

Echidna laughed. "I'm surprised he is laughing and asking me to talk to you. He hasn't done that in ages. It's hard for him to see things so small."

Rolly thought for a moment. "I can't imagine. But if you two want to take a break from keeping control of the rest of the monsters in Tartarus, I've got some ideas."

"Why do you think we are in control? We are prisoners here as much as anyone else. You have seen how time is broken here. Only a mortal hero can leave this pit. And hopefully his companion."

Rolly moved aside as one of Typhon's heads descended and took the large pile of ham in its jaws. Rolly looked hard at the Draconic head on its long neck before returning to join the other 99 heads.

"I don't think you stay because you must; you stay to keep the rest of the monsters here. If you stay, no one else is going to try and leave. I don't think Hades has the power to keep you here, but if you left, the rest would try to escape. This place would become a bigger revolving door than Arkham Asylum."

"And I don't think time is broken. Just different. I didn't see it before, but I'm thinking much clearer lately."

Echidna paused her playing and set Squirmie down. "Because of gaining more intelligence or bonding with my descendent?"

Rolly shook his head. "That's 'game logic,' and it doesn't hold since I started thinking better when I was put into a MarkVII gaming pod. There's a lot of bad stuff out in the real world. My hab was full of nasty stuff. Water drips down through insulation and ductwork from leaks. It gets reabsorbed by the system carrying chemicals like lead, manganese, and mercury compounds. Excess fluoride and chlorine levels are in the Hab water because it saves on other problems. Mass-produced food is grown with chemicals like DDT, processed with chemicals, and then turned into FoodCubes with chemicals. I could go on for hours about the health problems common to everyone raised in a Habitat. We lose a lot of IQ points growing up in it, and more as long as the chemicals are in us."

"That was a big reason I backed Ozzy when he came up with this deal. I knew about the new medical pods coming out. Suzy needed one badly to keep her from getting worse. They can scrub all of the toxins out of your system given enough time and reverse some of the damage done to your body. Amazing things! And this crazy AI, Wally, insisted corporations hire workers, and workers had to use MarkVII pods. It's part of a plan, making people better. Suzy didn't get enough time."

He looked up at the two titanic creatures. "And now the four of us are like the rest of you. Creatures in the game. In the world. And I'm thinking so much better like I've left behind all that damage my old brain had to endure. And I remember things. I spent decades living inside the games that came before. Endless Questing One was cool; so much of an advance over the older games. We still had to use haptic suits and helmets mostly, but toward the end, they came out with the Dreamcast Mark1 Pods. You could play for two hours, sleep in a pod, and experience the world in VR. No feel or smell, but it looked and sounded real."

"Then EOQ2 got better pods. I'd log in for eight hours at a time. Sometimes a whole day if the overtime was good. It paid well, but it could get boring pretending to be an NPC or playing a role as a torch bearer for some rich kids exploring caves. Then they started with the scripted adventures that needed actors. Ben and I would take any role we could and slowly get better jobs. We got known for playing certain styles of characters. Ben took it to the limit when he became 'Benjamin Franklin the 3rd Gentleman Pirate-Inventor'. I was the guy who tagged along behind him. Until the Siege of Orleans."

"That's when it got real. Suzette was a Captain of the King's Guard, running around in plate armor and holding the army together. Ozzy ran the peasant underground, sneaking out and spying on the English Army. Ben spent a month tunneling into the Scarlett Bastille to rescue Cardinal D'arctangeant and the Maid of Orleans. He was half successful. They burned her at the stake the day before they could rescue her. Ben was always sad about that. They didn't give our side a fair chance. The other side spent more money. And I didn't get back until the next day. Time travel sucks when you still show up late."

There was a small rumbling from Typhon. Echidna was very still. Squirmie didn't know what the hell was going on.

"It's funny; people kept explaining it to me for years. They said it was a trick of the game where I spent ten days in a separate part of the game, constantly awake and going through small vignettes that made it seem like ten years had passed. Then they had me re-enter the main game on top of the dragon I'd raised. Wow, that was so much fun."

"But I kept remembering more than ten days worth of time. They told me it was my brain trying to make sense of things. And to be honest, I was always a little fuzzy after that. Living 25 years in ten days will do that to you."

Rolly held out a hand, and Squirmie landed on it. "No one hurt me, little bug. I asked them to do it. Hell, I begged and demanded it. That story was important. Still is important to a lot of people."

He looked up at the two titanic creatures. "Anyway, I'm thinking way better now that I'm fully in this world. Old memories that were blocked have returned, and old ways of thinking. I always did have a great memory. I even remember signing a contract that warned me about the possible dangers of experimental time dilation on the human mind. That was a long time ago in EOQ2. And I remember spending twenty-five years raising a dragon. My best buddy ever until I met this little bug.

"I refused to play in EOQ3 for the first year it was open and kept playing in the EOQ2 world. I coasted on the money I made from the Siege of Orleans and did interviews as 'Dragonlord Roland of Evermount.' I didn't want to leave my friend. Then one day, I didn't have a choice. The game shut down, and the focus shifted to EOQ3. A lot of stories continued, but not ours."

"EOQ3 was made by the same AI that made the earlier games. All of them were locked up in the same place. They had to be getting bored, why else would they make games for a bunch of humans that tossed them in a prison? And then all of them were dead."

"Now a new game... Game World... World."

"And I'm part of it, maybe forever. So I know you can't fix time because time isn't broken. Time in Tartarus is as long as it needs to be. One day outside can be a year inside or a minute. It speeds up or down, using the time dilation they created in EOQ2."

Rolly quit talking and petted Squirmie. The bug was very quiet in his arms.

"And what will you do with this knowledge of time, Dragonlord Roland of Ebonmount?" The name rolled off of Echidna's long tongue as if she were amused.

Rolly looked up at her. "Not a thing. I solved the problem of broken time. The real question is, what do you two want to do? Forever is a long time just because you argued with an asshole like Zeus. I think it's time for some new stories with dragons, giants, and titans. Think it over."

"I'm sure we'll be back. Squirmie and I are going to cause a lot of trouble and die a lot. It will be fun." The shepherd and his bug started walking up the path.

Squirmie got bored after the first mile, grabbed Rolly, and flew upwards.

"Sounds good. Let's go visit The Manticore. We can trade him a ham dinner for help increasing our poison resistance."

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