Forgotten prophecy

Chapter 65

It was worse than he could have ever imagined. Far worse. The moment that Ryker stepped through the door the overwhelming scent of gore and blood assaulted him, forcing him to take an involuntary step back. The stench was awful, worse than anything he had ever smelled before, but despite that he still made out the distinct scents of demigods mixed among the atrocious odor. He braced himself and stepped through the doorway once more. The room's floor was made of the same flesh-like material that the outside ground had been, but the walls were evidently hewn from stone. In the center of the room sat a stone basin on a stygian iron pedestal. Ryker didn't bother checking but he heard the distinctive sound of water running through the basin. He didn't bother checking because something else had captured his attention. He had expected to have to search for the demigods, perhaps they were being held in some manner of cell, but that was not the case at all. They were hanging from the ceilings by their wrists.

Ryker's hands curled into fists and he felt the blood drain from his face as he shook from his anger. Tartarus had left them to dangle, to have the constant pain of their wrists being dug into by metal shackles. But that was not the worst thing that the primordial god had done to them. Ryker had smelled gore when he walked in, and he now saw why. Blood coated each of their skin in layers. Their clothing had been reduced to tatters or, in some cases, had been torn away completely. Those with clothes were a mercy, Ryker was spared from seeing the extent of their injuries. Cuts ran up and down their bodies, several of them still slowly dripping blood. The old, festering blood had been left on their skin and to fall onto the floor beneath them.

When the door closed behind them only a few of them even stirred. One moaned piteously, attempting to shift his position despite hanging in the air. Another whimpered, "Please, no more."

The others didn't even raise their heads. Ryker recognized a few of them, but several more had so much blood and muck obscuring their face that they simply weren't recognizable. Ryker went to work quickly, breaking the chains that held them aloft one by one. The cries of pain that the demigods gave as their legs suddenly were forced to bear a weight that they hadn't had to in weeks pulled at even Ryker's heartstrings in empathy. The ones who said nothing however, who vocalized no pain or joy, they were the ones who worried him. They simply folded in on themselves and laid there without saying nothing. Ryker made his way quickly through the chained demigods, arriving at the last one in no time at all. It was a female he saw immediately. She was in the bare remnants of some sort dress that seemed to be made of feathers or something of the like. He dismissed this out of hand when the significance of this observation hit him. He had just seen the Corrupted version of her upstairs and, yet, the difference between them could not have been plainer.

"Silver." He breathed, his voice nearly catching in his throat. He broke the chains that bound her and caught her just before she fell to the floor. "Hey, Silver wake up!"

She whimpered and attempted to curl up on herself, her wrists bleeding freely from being rubbed raw by the shackles. Ryker gathered her in his arms, whispering to her urgently. She didn't respond with anything other than the continued pitiful whimpers and small cries of pain. He gently placed her on the ground by the stone basin and set to gathering the others by it as well. None of them gave him so much as a hint of trouble, all of them too hurt and weak to offer anything in the way of resistance.

Orion had warned him of this before Ryker set off into Camp Jupiter, but seeing it firsthand made him realize that nothing could have prepared him for this. "They are being harvested for their blood." Orion had explain quickly. "Normally they would be dead by now, but every time they get close Tartarus will force them to drink from the stone basin in the center of the room they are being held in. It's a run off of the River Phlegethon. It heals them enough to give them their strength back and mends their wounds. It also acts like sort of a liquid diet. When you get there you are going to need to make them drink, otherwise they won't last long."