Prisoner

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Goddamn it. I wasn't that great with computers yet, so all of this shit was not the least bit helpful in finding the dude I beat up. No way did Hades let him go, or kill him. He would want to extract information on the Mother. So where the fuck would he hide this guy?

I turned in the chair to face the windows behind Hades's desk that looked out over the garden. I frowned and pushed myself to my feet to go to the windows, peering out. It was the perfect view of every entrance to the garden, including the path that I always took when I walked the grounds. I could even just barely make out the sight of Eumelia's bench, which meant Hades probably saw all those times I sat on that bench and talked to his dead wife.

Great. No wonder he thinks I'm insane.

I turned away from the window and went to the bookshelves, just skimming the books because I couldn't read much more than the titles and even then, some of them were just way too hard to pronounce. I reached up to finger the spine of a book titled Artificials: The Art of Creating Life, and surprise surprise, Hades's name was under the title. I raised an eyebrow as I pulled the book off the shelf and flipped it open to a random page.

So not only is Hades a fuckin' surgeon, a doctor, a god, a ruler, but he wrote books too.

Fuckin' figures.

Artificials are an incredibly complex and diverse entity, I read slowly, narrowing my eyes on some of the words in frustration, they require constant sustenance. My studies show that artificials eat three or even six times more than the average demon and are on par with trolls in terms of appetite. This appetite is not only required for them to maintain full energy level, but to maintain their magical level. Certain foods will sustain them much longer than others, especially when it comes to meat. My studies of the creature Cerberus reveal that a diet high in raw or even cooked meat can result in more magical energy. A comparison to raw vegetables or fruit reveal that the magical level is still there, but not nearly as high as it would be in terms of meat consumption. However, the consumption of a total raw diet can result in some dangerous magical levels as well as mental strain on the artificial. Artificials require very direct and constant care.

Hm. Beg to fuckin' differ, I thought dryly, but then noted something interesting. The Mother was very clear about our diets back home. We were severely restricted in what we were and were not allowed to eat, but if there was a constant to our meals, it was meat. We always had some kind of meat on our trays back at the compound, be it chicken or beef or even lamb.

I closed the book and slid it back into place and moved onto the next few, which were mostly just things about artificials or things about biomedical sciences... or whatever that is.

I sighed in frustration as I stopped in front of the fireplace to look into the soft flames that licked and sputtered from the logs inside. I frowned, staring into the fireplace as I noted something weird.

It was awfully clean for a fireplace.

There was hardly any soot on the inside of it, along the stones, even the floor outside the fireplace was spick and span and while I don't deny that they had someone keeping this place clean, I doubted Hades would let anyone come into his office to spot clean his fireplace.

There was a knock at the door, but I didn't look up as I looked all over the fireplace for some kind of button or lever that might trigger something.

"Excuse me, my lord-- Four?" River demanded as he opened the door. I looked up.

"Oh, good, it's just you. Can you come here and help me find, like, a button or a lever or something to open this?" I asked, moving to the other side of the fireplace to start pulling books out of the shelves, only to roughly shove them back in when nothing happened.