Medusa: Fate's Game Ch. 01

What surprised him most was the blackness. It was supposed to be midday, where was the Sun? Did even Apollo curse him? The thought made him smile for a moment, but a crashing wave woke him. And then, the sound of screaming.

"We're going to die!"

"Get up Lucas!"

"Another comes from the East!"

"Get your swords up! It-"

The exploding sound of cracking wood and rushing water was all he could hear, until again the sea took another breath. Athenian soldiers were running around with their swords and shields, but the deck of the ship was a mess of chaos, with whole sections of the ship missing. More of the giant limbs were there, circling the massive ship like pythons, and strangling the ship to its last sliver of life.

Where there should have been a sun, there was only rolling crowds that snapped white against black with lightning. The thunder was just as deafening as the roaring waters and snapping timber around him.

"Zeus and Poseidon both rage against us!"

"Athena, what have we done to deserve such wrath?"

More pleas from the panicked crew. Many were just sailors, but the soldiers and guards were just as panicked and worthless. They screamed, cried, and swung their tiny swords at the giant tentacles that circled the ship, but they did nothing.

Darian took a slow breath, and walked out onto the deck. The masts had all been destroyed, snapped like twigs, and their sails were scattered over the chaos; he kept to the outside of the mess, and used a hand against one of the sail's to balance himself while he approached the railing of the ship.

"Is this all you can do?" he said to no one. No one could hear him anyway over the death screams and the madness. But he smiled anyway, and cast a snarl at the sea maelstrom, and another at the raging sky. "You'll have to do better than that."

The sea was listening. The water started to rise, like a dark mountain before him, and kept rising higher and higher until it blocked out the lightning clouds above them. Water poured over its mass like a waterfall until more and more of the thing's skin appeared underneath. It was as if the very sea itself decided to stand tall and face him.

Darian never did know how to keep his mouth shut.

Another mountain of water rose and split apart like an oozing wound over another of the thing's limbs. Thrashing waves of white scattered against the broken ship, rocked against it so Darian was forced down to a knee, even as he held onto the torn and toppled sail to keep from falling into the sea. Wind blinded him, stabbed him with biting cold that did not belong, and tried to lift him into the air.

Athenians, guards and soldiers alike, scampered and screamed like dying foxes before the wind ripped them from the deck and tossed them into the sea. Other prisoners lucky enough to get out of their cages cried even louder, their moment of joy and chance of freedom ruined as the ship groaned with its death. Only a few passengers still fought against the tentacles that engulfed the vessel, and they roared with worthless courage while their swords and spears bounced from the sea beast, or got stuck in its hide.

The monster had teeth, that much Darian could see in the chaos of the storm. High above and near the clouds, it faced down toward the vessel, and it roared in return. The heat of its breath and the stink of its meals forced struck Darian's stomach as much as his body, and the sound shook the waters until the vibrations dislodged broken masts into the churning death.

Darian just smiled. It was the only thing he was legitimately good at, after all.

A moaning so loud it deafened the storm forced Darian to bring his hands to his ears. When he looked up, the monster raised what could only have been an arm; massive as it was, everything it did was slow in contrast to its colossal shape. The motion of its hand moved the air, and blinds of light cast between its giant fingers from the lightning storm beyond it.

Its hand collided with the ship, and Darian watched on as the huge thing crushed a dozen men before it cracked the vessel. Like a child in a stream, crushing a twig against pebbles and shore. Darian, and the corpses of many flew through the air, scattered by the explosion of water, wood, and air.

Funny, all that waited for him was dark water filled with blood and splinters. And yet, he couldn't stop smiling.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sea water burned the lungs like a breath of hot smoke.

He woke up coughing on pain, and he raised his hands to his throat before rolling onto his knees and a palm. His coughing was loud and wheezing, and he tried to keep it down before he summoned whatever or whoever was within earshot. No luck. He only made things worse, and the salt burned in his throat all the more.

But ten minutes later, he was sitting up, and looking out over a beach. Sand covered much of his body, and his ragged clothes had somehow managed to achieve a status beyond ragged. He must have passed out under the sun for some time, as the great light was already setting, and his skin had burned a little under Apollo's brightness. Seaweed was in his hair and beard too.

He stood up, plucked out the seaweed, brushed off the sand, stretched out his muscles, and laughed. He laughed, laughed louder, and laughed until his voice could probably be heard by everyone everywhere. But fuck them all, he didn't care anymore.

"I live! I live! Fuck you!" He picked up a rock and threw out into the sea. It went far, very far, until it nearly disappeared over the horizon. They could try, but they'd never kill him. It wasn't going to happen. He wouldn't allow it.

He took another sigh before scanning up and down the beach he was on.

"An island...." The pebbles that lined the beach were smoothed against the sand, and beach wood was scattered everywhere. The Aegean sea was full of islands, and he had seen many of them, but this one didn't tickle his memory. "No idea then." No idea where he was, marooned on an island, with the sun setting, and an empty belly. Delightful.

He turned his back to the sea and looked at what would probably his home for a while, until he could figure out what to do. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to just hide from the world for a while. The V on his forehead wasn't going to just vanish after all. Slave for life. The thought made him grit his teeth until his jaw clicked. Slaves could often eventually earn a living, or even freedom, but he had no such opportunity now that he was marked.

He would kill Proetus and Iobates if he could ever get his hands on them. Glorious images of their brutal deaths danced through his mind, their wriggling bodies skewered on spears. People would call him the Kingslayer. Did he care if people called him that, or even knew? A part of him cared if they knew; old habits die hard after all.

He knocked himself in the temple with a knuckle. Stop thinking about the future and fantasies, think about now. Survive. First thing's first, explore and search for some water. Food, even shelter could wait; they meant nothing if he was dead from dehydration.

There were a few trees along the karstic landscape, just small cliff faces of white stone, worn with time. The center of the island seemed to rise into a mountain, and it was lined with trees that must have hidden pools of water; these sort of islands always did. And that meant some wildlife. Better than nothing.

It was a longer island than he figured it'd be, and he started to jog along the beach as he tried to circle it. There were other islands on the horizon, but he could see no landmarks he could recognize from the distance. No ships either. Trade ships could come by, but they might not. He could very well be trapped. Maybe he'd die an old hermit? The thought made him laugh again. Would that be just deserts? Maybe.

But, the island started to form shape. Far in the distance against the beach edge, he could see a rising crest, something that stood tall and buried in the silhouette of the island's center mountain. It was definitely something man-made, or god-made, and as much as it pained him, that meant he had to know. It could be his way off the island. It could mean a trip to Athens to be sold. He kept walking toward it.

A statue, connected to a dock of stone and wood. The statue itself was something weird, some strange shape he could not understand, but it stood well over fifty-feet tall. And, as he got closer, he could see that it was actually two statues, and they were poised ready to pounce upon the ships in the dock. A terrifying sight and beautiful craftsmanship, but the statues had no legs with which to pounce.

That wasn't entirely true. He approached the dock with peeled eyes, and using what little light was left from dusk, he crept closer to the dock. Only one ship was moored, a small one, and only a few sailors were on it. He recognized it as an Athenian scouting vessel, and no guards, no soldiers, no one of risk was on it. But the ship was moored with long ropes, far too long for him to use as a bridge or ladder, as if the sailors were afraid to be near the island; he would not be able sneak aboard the vessel. So close, yet so far.

He kept to the bushes, and looked up to the statues that faced the nearly empty dock. Two gigantic gorgons, nude, with scaly skin, snakes for hair, horrifying, distorted faces, and huge fangs. Instead of legs, they had long, long snake bodies that melded into the earth, as if they were part of the very island itself.

"... Stheno... Euryale." Immortal gorgons indeed. The artist responsible for the design of these gorgon statues was inspired. Unless it was Hephaestus's work, then it was just a sick joke.

Beyond the two statues was a stone stairway, long and wide, that scaled up the mountain that crested the island. At first, it seemed like dozens, maybe hundreds of people were walking the stairs, but they weren't moving. At all. They were perfectly still.

Darian gulped. Sweat started to grow on his palms. His knees started to shake.

A joke. It was all a sick joke. He survived so much, spit on the gods, spit on kings, spit on the strange creatures that walked the world and hunted for men. And now, he was trapped on an island... with her.

He walked toward the stairs, too far from the ship to be spotted. The stairway was lined with huge columns, each with a snake carved into its shape and coiling up its height. They made the winding stairway seems so grand, so amazing, so... terrifying. And at the top of the stairway, far in the distance and up the mountain, he could see the grand entrance of a mighty temple.

And yet, he kept walking, up onto the stairway of carved and smooth white stone. He passed a statue, a warrior from Thebes, and another statue, this one a warrior from Sparta. There were other statues too, older, worn down and smoothed with what must have been decades of storms, statues that were running away from the temple. His mouth went dry.

But he kept going.

He knew he shouldn't. He knew what was happening, that he was being drawn to the danger. But his feet just kept taking more steps. He passed a woman, holding a baby wrapped in cloth to her chest. Stone. He passed a screaming child, mouth wide and tongue exposed. Stone. He passed a cluster of people holding each other's hands and running, except the group were all knocked over, as if they had turned to stone mid run. Parts of their bodies were scattered over the stairs.

The stories were true then. And yet, he kept walking.

The amount of people on the stairway grew, and their expressions of terror grew in tandem. Worse, the amount of stone warriors on the stairway facing the temple also grew, and almost all of them had their shield up to block something. Shields would not stop death from her gaze. If they could be considered dead.

Maybe he could get onto the vessel in the dock? Maybe pretend to need rescue? Maybe.... His eyes drifted back to the temple at the top of the stairway, bathed in the final waves of light from the setting sun. Was Medusa really in there?

He gulped again. It felt like swallowing large pebbles. He'd fought many things, but something that could turn him to stone with a glance? That wasn't something even he could fight. He didn't want to fight! Just, no matter how much he tried to pry his eyes away from the temple, he couldn't stop walking toward it.

So he crept forward, and entered the temple. The nave was grand, with massive walls of glorious stone carved with more snakes. Why snakes? What happened that had actually earned an artisan's efforts to build these grand structures? Between the magnificent columns, there were statues of Athena, and in each one of them, she had her hands to her eyes, as if saddened.

A crying goddess, surrounded by snakes, in a huge room filled with more dead. Chills danced down his spine and into his bare toes. The nave was almost packed with stone people, each one of them frozen in a moment's terror, all with their hands held up to try and block something. Their eyes were wide, and the temple walls had managed to keep the years from deteriorating the horror in their faces. Looking at the gaping mouths and wide eyes set his heart racing. One wrong move, and he'd end up like that.

"Found you!"

He jumped and turned toward the temple pulpit, where the largest statue of Athena stood. There was movement, weaving between the dozens of stone people, and the slap of sandals on the floor. And then, the sound of spear and sword against stone.

He got down low, crept among the stone bodies, and hid among the shadows. The sun had set, and Apollo's glow on the distant horizon offered the slightest light through the template door. But inside, torchlight cast wicked, flickering shadows of the dead along the walls. The walls nor pillars held torches though, they were being held by men.

"Leave me alone!"

A woman's voice. He moved toward it, not thinking at all, just reacting like he always did. It'd get him killed, but fuck it, he wasn't dead yet, so he kept following his instincts, and stalked forward in the shadows of the frozen bodies.

A soldier, a warrior, dressed in Athenian armor and wielding a spear, crawled onto one of the statues, and jumped straight over Darian. The man looked up just in time to see the other overhead; the warrior didn't see him. Instead, the warrior jumped from the shoulders of one statue to another, and then leaped high into the air before pointing the spear down.

Darian stuck his head up enough, and gasped.

Medusa. The snake woman was slithering between the statues with surprising speed, with a long body of green scales coiled and bracing against pillars and statues alike to push herself forward. So long, easily thirty feet, and followed by a trail of blood.

The creature turned to face Darian's direction, and for a split moment, he thought he was dead. But, he wasn't stone, not yet, and he couldn't look away.

She looked human, at least from the waist up she did. He could see her hair was made of snakes, an array of a hundred snakes in the same way as the statues by the dock, and her eyes were yellow snake eyes, complete with the black slit down the center.

But it all changed in a single second as the legendary woman cast her gaze upon the leaping warrior. Her face distorted, twisted, morphed, and stretched into the nuzzle of a grotesque mixture of a snake and human features. It was like one of the gods had failed to correctly combined two creatures, and a hideous thing emerged from the failed result. Then the woman's eyes glowed, glowed so bright that Darian threw himself down so he could not see anything between the hundred legs of statues. The yellow glow filled half the temple, as if Medusa had cast a cone of magic wherever she could see.

A single man's scream filled the room, and there was a sickening crunch of... something, something he couldn't recognize. But when the glow faded, and Darian poked his head out over the shoulders of the statues, he could see where the warrior had landed. And now they too, were stone.

"Vile creature! Submit before the will of the gods and die!"

Darian crouched low again. Another voice, another warrior. In fact, as his eyes adjusted to the growing darkness, he could see three warriors, all of them hiding behind pillars and bodies like he was. So Athens had sent four of these warriors to fight Medusa. Some pointless quest to prove their worth, no doubt. The thought made his stomach turn.

"Leave me alone! I just want to be left alone!"

Her cries were filled with sorrow. He knew cries like that. When he looked her away once more, the grotesque distortion of her face had gone. She was panting with fatigue; the short-lived transformation must have exhausted her. Still she had snake hair, still she had snake eyes, and still she was snake below the hip, but she was anything but grotesque. This was the creature of renown horror, wickedness, and ugliness? She may have looked disturbing when casting her magical gaze, but when she wasn't, she was....

The sound of cracking stone snapped his eyes back to Medusa. Her tail, thick as the span of her shoulders, had snapped around like a whip, cracked through a couple of the human-turned-stone statues, and sent their remains scattering across the temple floor. One of the Athenians had been hiding, and dove out of the way just in time. But the gorgon was quick to snap her tail again, this time in different direction, and wrapped around one of the giant pillars with a vice grip. The warrior hidden behind it could not even scream, instead he could only gargle on the vomit of blood that erupted from his mouth. Crushed like a bug between the pillar and her tail.

He was dead in seconds. The long, thick tail of green scales that circled the pillar let go, now soaked in the warrior's blood, and joined the trail of serpent blood Medusa left behind as she slithered further away. Her slithering wasn't nearly as fast as it was before though; she really was exhausted.

"Die, monster!" One of the warriors jumped out from the growing shadows and toward the middle of Medusa's long body. His spear sank deep through the muscle before the wooden shaft snapped at the middle.

Medusa screeched in pain, and from what Darian could see, she tried to cast her gaze again. But, nothing happened. Was she too tired? She kept trying to slither away, but with the spear stuck in her hide, her speed was reduced to almost nothing, and with the amount of blood Darian could see, she must have been stabbed multiple times.

She collapsed at the base of the pulpit to Athena, and sobbed openly from her yellow snake eyes. "Please, let me be."

Looking at the Athenian approach the wounded woman had Darian grinding his teeth until his bones hurt. His fists had tightened until he could feel his fingers stabbing into his palm. His body was shaking. His mouth had run dry. He could taste his anger, burning his tongue and his eyes.

It had been a long time since he'd killed anyone. Old habits die hard.

"You defiled this temple, whore. One hundred years is too long for a monster such as you to live." The warrior walked beside Medusa's long snake half, and as he approached her human torso, prostrated across the Athena altar, he drew his sword. The other warrior, also armed with a sword and shield, walked up Medusa's mid section of her long, thick, bleeding tail, and raised his sword, ready to chop her apart like fire wood.

Darian wasn't sure when he had come out of hiding, but he didn't care. He was just going with his instincts, going where his blood told him to. And his blood told him to walk up behind the warrior near Medusa's tail, and snap his worthless neck so hard, the fool's head was turned around completely to face him.

There was a single moment of recognition in the dead man's eyes before they went blank.