Chapter 4: King Mithridates of Persia
Two hours had passed without any of the group in the cabin sinking into Sam's mind again. They'd used the time for planning and research.
Over the past hour, Sam had started whimpering in his sleep, and despite repeated applications of holy water a dark purplish color had begun to slowly take over his left leg, creeping downward from the punctures left by the manticore's spines. While Dean talked with Claire, working through ideas for ending the perverse standoff, he alternated between compulsively checking his brother's condition, and pacing the floor. His voice was slowly building in volume as Sam continued to worsen.
His frustration grew until, "We're not GETTING ANYWHERE."
Claire winced, but returned the older hunter's glare with one of her own. She was getting used to his temper, but didn't like to have it directed at her. She hadn't tried to eat his brother. "We are getting somewhere. We're narrowing in on the manticore's location. You still have holy oil. Our plan is sound. We track down the monster, come at it from three directions, and push it against that ridge you found using small burns of holy oil. You tossed the stuff on it, and even without you needing to light it, the thing ran. He's afraid of it. We can use that."
Dean stopped his pacing and opened his mouth to shout again, but Claire spoke over him, "It's a GOOD PLAN."
"IT DOESN'T MATTER that it's a good plan. It relies on all three of us BEING THERE. It'll take all three of us to trap and burn the manticore. We'll have to all be here in the physical world, or we have to figure out a way to take holy oil with us when we pop into WHEREVER again. This won't work if the manticore traps us in there again without our weapon. Bottom line, we're not going to be able to trap the thing if we keep getting kidnapped. We're gonna have to either get Sam out of there so the manticore can't take us in there, get Sam to make the thing so busy and distracted it can't start another riddle and pull any of us in, or take holy oil in there with us the next time we get zapped!" He lifted the bandage on Sam's leg again, seeing the purple bruising which had now crept past his brother's knee. He threw the bandage across the room with an inarticulate growl. After a pause, his voice lowered and a note of fear entered it as he continued, "And Sam's leg is not going to last much longer. He's…"
Jody raised her hand to stop Dean's voicing what they were all thinking. She looked up from the computer she'd been using for research. Her eyes were hopeful. "I think I may have something."
"On how to get the manticore out of Sam's head? 'Cause I'm all ears." Dean didn't look 'all ears.' He practically vibrated, caught somewhere between pissed and exhausted.
"Um, no. On how to keep ourselves out of the manticore's dreamworld while we trap it. And maybe how to counteract that poison in Sam's leg." Now Dean really was paying full attention. "I was reading about poisons in ancient Persia…"
"Of course you were," Dean mumbled.
"Shut up," replied Jody in a distracted fashion, earning a surprised look from the elder Winchester. "Listen, 'During the time of the First Mithridatic War, a group of Mithridates' friends plotted to kill him with poison.' He was king of Persia," she explained.
Dean waved his hand in a 'continue' motion. This sort of storytelling was more Sam's thing than his.
"The king survived the plot, found those responsible, and killed all of the conspirators. First he paralyzed them with the same poison they'd given him, and then he made them disappear. People figured he tossed them into the Persian Gulf. It's thought that he did the same to all of the plotters' families and friends, but they don't know for sure. The entire families and close friends of the plotters disappeared. They were never seen again. People said it was like they'd never existed." She looked up. "Sound familiar?"
Claire came to stand beside her, reading over her shoulder. "What did he use to paralyze them?"
"It doesn't say; but it does say he survived their attempt to kill him using something that came to be called Mithridate, named after him." She pointed to her screen, "I've got the recipe right here."
Claire studied the screen carefully before asking incredulously, "You found the recipe for manticore poison antidote on Wikipedia?"
"Apparently," she replied, "I'm gonna have to spend more time on Wikipedia if I'm going to be helping out you crazy hunters."
Claire read from the page, "Mithradates is said to have so fortified his body against poisons that when he tried to kill himself, he could not find any poison that would have an effect, and had to ask a soldier to run him through with a sword. The recipe for the antidote was found in his cabinet, written with his own hand."
Dean was over the explanations. "Great. What's in it?"
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The white space was blinding after the dimness of the cage, but as the sound of screaming and the smells of torture and sulfur left his senses, Sam began to be able to concentrate again. He'd survived. His family had survived. Innocent people – people who belonged in Heaven or on Earth – wouldn't have to stay in that…that…place. He hadn't doomed his family. His body shook, an uncontrolled shuddering reaction to the picture that came to his mind of Charlie and Lisa and Ben sentenced to the cage for eternity. They were innocent, and the innocent should never know that place exists; let alone… He forced the thought away and controlled his breathing.
The manticore sat, patiently regarding his prisoner like a cat with a mouse. When it seemed Sam was cognizant of its presence again, it tilted its human head to one side. "I see inside of you, human," A low growl underlay its tone, "I am one thousand years old, and even I am shocked by the evil you remember. What sort of a human remembers such things?" It began to pace away with a determined air, and Sam followed for lack of a reason not to. "Your friends are resourceful. And you love them." It said thoughtfully.
When Sam didn't answer, the growl grew louder.
"I will find us another playground." The monster kept walking, and after a few minutes it seemed to step in normal stride from the white space onto a dark, two-lane highway which stretched, lonely, into the distance before and behind. Unlike the other two places the manticore had taken them this one was cold, and a light misting rain sprinkled down on the two visitors. The manticore looked up, its mouth twisted in disgust. It seemed almost petulant as it said, "I told you that you have no proper respect for good weather. This is no fitting place; it is barely any sort of place at all. And yet, it is the place you feel most at home. You, Samuel Winchester, are a strange beast."
"Home?" Sam asked, incredulously. "This isn't my…" And then it was. Baby was parked just behind a turn in the road. Her passenger door hung open.
Almost…it was almost home…but not quite. Dean wasn't seated behind the wheel.
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Most of the ingredients for Mithradate's antidote were quite easy to find – probably shouldn't have been surprising, considering it was on Wikipedia* Dean thought – but measuring and mixing the nearly 40 different components was time consuming. When it was finally ready, Dean mixed it with honey as instructed and took a generous amount in a bowl to the couch where Sam lay.
The younger man remained unconscious, his head furrowed in pain now rather than the fear Dean had seen when the manticore took his baby brother back into that accursed cage. Sam was shivering slightly under his blanket, but Dean had no idea if that chill came from the manticore's hallucination or from the poison's effects.
Dean lifted Sam's blanket off of where the puncture wounds had been. Those wounds were red and raw now, and the black liquid from earlier was back. More terrifying, however, was the look of the leg around them. Sam's leg was now black from mid-thigh to toes, as if someone had dipped it in coal, and the coloring was visibly moving upward toward parts that Dean was sure his brother would rather remain unaffected. Dean gently once again rinsed the wounds with holy water; Sam stiffened and groaned slightly as the water came into contact and nearly immediately evaporated in a cloud of steam. Dean closed his eyes, biting back his own grief at causing his brother pain.
And then Dean dropped the holy water and antidote, falling still across his brother's body.
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Dean woke on the side of a misty, dark road. Sam and the Manticore were both there, of course, but so were many more people. Most, he recognized. Others were strangers. Each, including Dean himself, was standing in a long line along one edge of the road. Sam leaned against Baby at the start of the line some 50 meters from the elder Winchester. Dean tried to move to his brother's side, but found his feet fastened by some invisible force to the graveled verge. The line of men and women spread long beyond Dean, well off into the distance and around a bend where Dean could not see it.
Sam's eyes met his own. The younger man was obviously in pain, favoring his leg and holding onto the dream of Dean's car as if to remain upright. Did dream-world Sam feel what was happening to his real-world body? Dean attempted a reassuring smile and flashed his brother a faux-confident 'thumbs-up', but Sam saw the truth behind the gesture. Dean was tired, and worried. Sam's expressive face pinched before he stood, trying to hide his pain. He fooled Dean no more than he'd been fooled.
Noticing the exchange, the manticore rolled its shoulders in an annoyed way. It growled under its breath, once again staring at the cloudy sky as if it existed to give him some type of personal insult. Sam's eyebrow rose – it wasn't like the monster hadn't picked the weather itself. Certainly there were roads in Sam's memory which were clear and sunny. Sam remained silent, though, having learned to hold his tongue so as not to encourage the beast to further cruelty. His impatience matched the monster's.
He didn't need to wait long. With a half-human grunt, the manticore rose from its haunches and began pacing down the line of memories it had assembled. Sam saw that the line contained family, friends, and old school mates going back throughout Sam's varied life. The line stretched on and on as Sam followed the manticore. As they moved slowly past Dean, Sam's older brother tapped his left wrist with his right hand. Sam took a deep breath. 'Stall for time.' Sam nodded once and hoped he could.
The manticore, residing inside Sam's mind, of course noticed the interchange. It smirked and purr-laughed at these humans' folly. They always thought they could win. Sam had, in fact, done better than each of the other humans he'd hunted in this new land. They were an uneducated bunch, these people. They'd failed to remember the games and riddles of their ancestors. It had brought their quick demise, but hadn't really given the monster any enjoyment. This one…this boy and his friends which he called in his mind 'family'… this one was different. He'd passed the beast's two previous tests, and so the manticore would be merciful. He would spare the man's life. But the manticore needed to live too. He needed to eat. He would allow this human to choose WHO he ate. It was a mercy he reserved for few of his playmates.
The manticore's voice BOOMED throughout the dream world. "In Rome's army, in the time when the legions conquered the lands of my people, the generals had a tool. This tool was a great motivator for the Roman soldiers," it began, pacing slowly as Sam's mind cataloged the faces they passed. He had seen thirty men and women so far; one every two paces. The line still stretched on beyond sight. "The motivator worked," and here the beast purred his feline chuckle, "for nine legionnaires out of ten."
Sam's attention sharpened and his eyes snapped to focus upon the manticore's face.
The beast purred. "You have heard of this motivating technique." Its human eyes danced with merriment.
"Decimation," Sam answered grimly. "You're talking about decimation."
Behind them, unnoticed by the purr-chuckling manticore, Dean faded out of the dream.
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The first words he said, before he was even fully conscious of the cabin resolving around him, was "What the hell is 'decimation'?" The growl in Dean's voice as he said it would have impressed the manticore.
Claire stepped back from him, holding a glass of wine which she'd laced with the antidote they'd mixed. Her face was surprised and confused, but that particular voice demanded an answer. "I don't know," she responded, looking to Jody for help.
The sheriff was in the process of standing from the floor, shaking her head to clear it; Dean decided she'd probably been in that line somewhere too, and had been wakened with Dean by Claire's administration of the antidote. Jody, at least, knew where the question had come from. Looking at her ashen face, Dean was sure she knew the answer as well. He was not disappointed on that count.
"Decimation was a way Roman armies punished companies that ran away in the heat of a losing battle. The legion generals would line up all of the companies and give the company commanders a choice. They could either kill themselves, or one out of ten of their soldiers."
"One out of..." Dean's eyes flashed angrily, and his eyes came to focus sharply on the worried lines of his brother's face. "If you fall on your damned Roman sword, I'm going to freakin' kill you. You hear me? We're coming for you. Don't freaking decimate yourself in the meantime."
* Seriously. I found it on Wikipedia. The recipe for a legendary millennium-old Persian all-poison antidote can be found on Wikipedia. Sometimes research makes me happy (see earlier comments re: nerd-royalty). If you're interested, Mithridate is:
costmary, 1-66 grams; sweet flag, 20 grams; hypericum, 8 grams; Natural gum, 8 grams; sagapenum, 8 grams; acacia juice, 8 grams; Illyrian iris, 8 grams; cardamom, 8 grams; anise, 12 grams; Gallic nard, 16 grams; gentian root, 16 grams; dried rose leaves, 16 grams; poppy-tears (Papaver rhoeas, a wild poppy with low opiate content), 17 grams; parsley, 17 grams; casia, 20-66 grams; saxifrage, 20-66 grams; darnel, 20-66 grams; long pepper, 20-66 grams; storax, 21 grams; castoreum, 24 grams; frankincense, 24 grams; hypocistis juice, 24 grams; myrrh, 24 grams; opopanax, 24 grams; malabathrum leaves, 24 grams; flower of round rush, 24-66 grams; turpentine-resin, 24-66 grams; galbanum, 24-66 grams; Cretan carrot seeds, 24-66 grams; nard, 25 grams; opobalsam, 25 grams; shepherd's purse, 25 grams; rhubarb root, 28 grams; saffron, 29 grams; ginger, 29 grams; cinnamon, 29 grams.
The ingredients are pounded and "a piece the size of an almond is given in wine." It can also be mixed in honey and rubbed on the skin to prevent toxins being taken up in that way.
My nerd self sorta wants to see how it tastes. Probably not good...