Medusa: Fate's Game
Chapter 1

Copyright© 2018 by Novus Animus

Fantasy Sex Story: Chapter 1 - Ancient Greece, in the time of the gods, monsters, titans, and heroes. Medusa, cursed and doomed to live her existence alone, makes a friend in someone she never expected. Friend quickly becomes lover, until the Fates intervene. Fantasy adventure ensues!

Caution: This Fantasy Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa   Fa/Fa   Consensual   Romantic   BiSexual   Heterosexual   Fiction   Fairy Tale   High Fantasy   Masturbation   Oral Sex   Petting   Squirting   Tit-Fucking   Voyeurism   Big Breasts   Size   Slow   Violence  

~~Medusa~~

Blood poured from her scales onto the smooth stones of the temple. There would be no hiding, not while she was marking the path behind her like a bleeding deer. Artemis would have laughed.

“Get back here!” The warrior’s voice echoed throughout the temple, empty as it was. No one but her, no one. Except for these fools.

The four of them poured up her steps, past the garden of statues worn with time, and into the vast nave. It too was filled with statues, but instead of the warriors that decorated the stairs of the temple, these were statues of simple men, women, and children, clamoring over each other to escape something from long ago.

She slithered as best she could among these statues, hiding in the dark, as pointless as it was. They had torches, they had spears and shields, and they would have no trouble dealing with her amid the standing stones. Each time a flicker of fire light crossed the faces of the dead, she looked away from their petrified eyes, and trembled.

“Found you!”

One of the warriors squeezed through the standing statues before lunging at her with both hands upon his spear.

“Leave me alone!” She twisted, veered, and slithered between the array of standing dead with practiced speed. The spear’s tip dinged harmlessly off of one of the stone, but the warrior was not alone. The three others were behind him a moment later, and were circling around her, using the statues of the dead as cover.

She slammed her tail behind her, ignored the pain and splattering red of her blood, and cracked its tip toward one of the warriors who approached. The bastard was too fast, and hid behind the stone dead as soon as she swung her tail. The weight of her body was far greater than the young Athenian could anticipate though, and the statue they hid behind cracked apart like a pebble on an anvil. Bits of the once loyal servant of the gods, now nothing but stone, shattered against the temple walls. The warrior on the other hand had managed to duck, and he dived back down into the shadows cast by their dropped torches.

Another warrior nearest to her, brave, or cocky, took advantage of the distraction. He leaped up onto the statues, and bounced on several pairs of shoulders before throwing himself into the air toward her.

She stared at him, and let the monster inside out. Her face bent, twisted, and elongated. Her jaw grew pointed, huge, her neck grew thick, and her fangs grew massive. Where there was once skin, snake scales emerged and covered her face, neck, even her arms and torso. Her voice came out only as a harsh hiss, and her snake hair grew into a mane of pythons as long as a man was tall.

They wanted to see the monster. Then let them see.

A bright, burning light of gold erupted from her horrible, mutated snake eyes. It lasted only moments, but it was more than enough to cast half the temple in the powerful gaze. The other three warriors were quick to hide themselves behind the many pillars of Athena’s once great temple, but the one in front of her had no such option. He landed only several feet away from the base of her snake tail, and was trying to stab his spear down into her with both arms.

But then he raised raised both his hands into the air, slowly, and with a grinding scream of pain to follow it. The crunch of the transformation was louder than breaking bones, and sounded like rock cracking under flame. With each stomach-turning snap, the Athenian bent and twisted in pain, and each time it was a little less as he was turned.

In only took a few seconds, but it was a few seconds of pain and misery, and she had to watch every unending second of it. The warrior was staring at her, eyes wide, mouth open, screams of pain his last moment before he was nothing but stone.

The deed done, she closed her eyes, and the monster hid itself back into her. Her skin reemerged, and her face molded back into a human’s shape. She was still half snake, but at least the monster no longer devoured her face, and she breathed deep with the effort, exhausted.

“Vile creature! Submit before the will of the gods and die!” Another warrior, hidden, creeping and blending in with the dead. Like wolves prowling among the trees.

“Leave me alone! I just want to be left alone!”

She tried to get breath into her as fast as possible, but there was no time to rest. She could still see glimpses of the others, the edges of their armor and weapons around the sides of the pillars. She bit down on her teeth until her jaw hurt, and snapped her tail, the whole length of it. The nearby statues, with their horrified faces and gaping mouths, gave way to the weight and speed of her body. They broke as ashes; she could mourn them later. For now, she had only one goal.

Her tail wrapped the nearest pillar with the harsh snap of a whip. The pillar shook from the impact, body parts from the destroyed human statues scattered across the temple floor, and Medusa clenched down on the massive muscles that filled her tail. She’d caught one of the intruders in her grip. The warrior on the other side of the pillar struggled for a mere few seconds before his crushed insides ruptured, and vomited blood spilled over her scales.

“Die, monster!”

She made a mistake. Her tail unwrapped from the pillar, and she tried to get away as fast as she could, but another Athenian hidden behind a statue of Athena capitalized and jumped toward her tail. His spear skewered through her scales, worked into the muscle past the ribs of her snake body, before her pained thrashing snapped the spear’s wooden shaft and knocked the warrior backward away from her.

“Please! Let me be,” she said, and started to drag herself away from the two remaining hunters. Don’t look at the spear sticking out of you. Ignore the stab wounds. Ignore the blood. Get away.

But she only managed to reach the pulpit of the temple before she collapsed. Her blood was leaking out of her, stars filled her vision, and her breath came out as nothing but pants. When she looked up, all she saw was the crying face of the temple’s largest statue of Athena. Medusa too started to cry.

“You defiled this temple, whore. A hundred years is too long for a monster such as you to live.”

The one who stabbed her, this time he had a sword and shield, and his face was crazed with rage and bloodlust; his Corinthian helmet could not hide them. He stepped closer and closer to her, up to her tail, past it to walk toward her human half, and he left sandal-prints of her blood behind him. The olive tree carved into the bastard’s armor, gentle and proud, stood in sickening contrast to Medusa. The sword gleamed against the last traces of light that broke into the tainted temple, and his shield glared at him with Athena’s face.

She spit on the shield, directly onto Athena’s cheek, and the warrior glowered in disgust. He raised his sword.

The crunch of twisted bone and flesh caught both Medusa and her would-be killer by surprise. She raised her downcast head to look toward the sea of statues, and the Athenian turned to do the same. They both gasped.

The twilight hour buried everything in massive, blurry shadows that twisted in torchlight, and the temple’s array of dead only added to the confusion, but both of them saw the other warrior collapse forward onto his knees. His head was facing the wrong direction.

Someone in the shadow took a step forward, someone with white, glowing eyes.


~~Darian~~

Not once in his life could Darian remember ever being this dirty.

He was trapped in a cage like a filthy mutt, complete with shit-covered feet, and dirt in every crevice and orifice. Fitting, he supposed. There were wood planks beneath him and ocean air misting through creaking wood, so that the cage had that pleasant odor of rot and fish. Each and every moment, he grew more and more unclean; a never ending journey of increasing foulness.

Darian put his back to the bars and turned to look at his guests. They were all much larger than he, either in height or gut, and hunched over with sleep or boredom. All of them - Darian too - wore the same rags for leggings and shirts of stained brown. No sandals to speak of. Sandals were too good for them. Splinters were apparently an intended form of punishment by their captors.

“Hey kid.”

Darian raised his head. He did look like a kid, or at least a young man. Unlike the fat, lumbering oaf calling for his attention, Darian was a fit and lean little thing. His brown hair was a mess of dirt and oil in his eyes, and his beard had grown scraggly from an obviously unkempt life. With his brown eyes and tanned skin, he must have looked like a farmer’s boy, all ready for the harvest.

“Yes?”

“What marked you?” The fat one approached him. His skin hung off his face with age, but his arms were massive and his scars spoke much. He came closer and reached out; Darian tensed, but the fat one simply put an arm to the bars behind Darian, well over his shoulder.

“Back off.” Darian put his hand against the fat bastard’s chest, and pushed against his rags and carpet of chest chair to get him away. Disgusting.

“Awh, the little boy has bite.” This time, the fat man put his calloused hand against Darian’s chest and pushed him back. The returned favor easily put the smaller man against the jail bars with enough force to rattle them. Darian was only a small thing after all, and this tall, thick trunk of a fat man was likely nearly three times his weight.

“I said, what marked you? What put the boy in here with a slave mark?” the fat man said.

“Yeah, what’d you do to get ruined so early in life?” another man said. This one was bald with burn marks over his skull. His teeth were gone, one of his eyes was nothing but a huge scar, and his lanky form was almost disturbingly bony. Another criminal who lived on stolen scraps, most likely.

“Ahahehee, I bet he banged someone’s daughter. Look at the pretty boy, not a scar on him. Well, except for that one.” And three made the triumvirate of his companions. The third was, what could most concisely be described as a lecherous old goat, complete with a long white beard and bug eyes. Those disgusting eyes were looking at the small V on Darian’s forehead, right between the eyebrows. He was the only one who had the mark.

“Slave for life is a pretty harsh punishment, little boy. Come, tell us what you did. We’re all family now, destined for slaves in Athens.” Back to the fat one. Coincidentally, or at least fittingly, he had a fat tongue too.

“ ... just leave it be, fat man,” Darian said. His voice was cold and his stance firm, even against the rocking of the ship.

“Ooho! Scary!” The old one let out a sloppy laugh and pat his own knee from his seat in the corner. Splashes of waves from the outside managed to creep down through the planks of wood and drip down onto his bald head, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

The fat one apparently didn’t like to be called fat, and demonstrated his frustration with some loud knuckle cracking. Darian didn’t budge or break his gaze, and kept his hands at his sides with clenched fists. Attack me, please, I dare you.

But he didn’t. Instead the fat one just shrugged and returned to his wasted idling. The old man though, he motioned for Darian to come closer.

Darian shrugged, but acquiesced. An old man could prove an unlikely ally, or at least a source of information.

“I recognize you?” he said.

Darian grit his teeth. “Not sure what you mean.”

“You seem familiar to me. May I know why you got marked.”

“Doubtful.”

“No no. Something is familiar! You ... you ... fucked some king’s daughter!”

Everyone burst into laughter, old man included, until they were in stitches and trying to stop before they hurt themselves. Even Darian smiled.

“You think I’d be here if that was true?”

“Maybe. No king would risk the wrath of the Erinyes and kill a guest. Maybe you were a guest?”

It was Darian’s turn to laugh. “You’re a fool if ... never mind.”

No father would walk away from that.

He shrugged, turned away, and put his hand to the bars. They weren’t worth getting upset over, just a few nameless prisoners on the way to Athens, same as him. At least they weren’t slaves for life, as he was.

The floor creaked with the rocking waves, a little louder this time, enough to draw his attention. Maybe a storm was coming? Under the deck, he couldn’t see anything, and the cell had no windows. The smell was atrocious.

“Poseidon seems angry. If we’re forced to abandon ship, I’m leaving the four of you to drown.” A guard sat across from them, the bars between him and the inmates, and he fiddled with a knife with all the care of a child. Athenian, he wore a basic breastplate, and some robes underneath, but that was all. The poor fool did not hold even a helmet. His loss.

Just one more day, Darian thought. Just one more day to Athens, and he would be free again. It would be a simple matter to trick the guard to coming near, and then he would smash the bastard’s head into a mess of blood and bone against the bars. He’d fight his way out, he’d done it before, and then he’d vanish into the forest. Corinth was to the West, perhaps he’d head there?

The ship rocked to its side, this time with enough force that Darian had to catch the bars to keep from falling back. The others in the cell were quick to grab onto whatever was around them, but all they had was a bench, and other than the old man, the rest of them fell over with the sudden rocking. The guard too fell over, and was on his feet a moment later to fix his stool.

“Blessed Tartarus, that is a wicked storm. Captain! Everything all right?” the guard said. Of course, it was all buried underneath the growing roar of the sea. The moaning of bending wood, and the howls of blowing winds were becoming all too bold, to the point the guard gave a groan of frustration and started up the stairs to the main deck.

A cold shiver caught Darian’s spine. Had they found him? Darian pried at the bars; no good, even with his strength. He tried to stick his head between them to see if he could see up the passageway and perhaps get a glimmer of the outside, but the bars were too close together. Again he tried to peel the bars apart, tried until his knuckles turned white and he started to see stars. The slightest bend, but not enough to mean a damn thing.

“The hell you doing kid?” the fat one said. “Ain’t no getting out of here. Besides, slave’s life ain’t so bad, and you’ll be worth some copper I’m sure. Guard won’t let us drown.”

“Least of my worries.” Darian took a breath, and started to shake the bars back and forth. They didn’t even shudder. Whoever built the ship, or at least the cell, really had an art for the craft.

“Watcha mean?”

No point in answering, they were all dead anyway. He’d survive though, if he had anything to say about it. But the ship’s rocking only grew, and the howls of the wind ascended to a crescendo that started to rumble the bulkhead itself. Each moment he was trapped in his cage, with that storm growing stronger and stronger, was a moment robbed of his chances to escape and live.

If it was even his life the storm was after; it could have all been in his head. But another wind howl, shrieking a banshee’s cry, said otherwise, and the crack of thunder that followed it shook him to his core. Eyes were on him, he could feel them. More eyes than the ones in his cell could account for.

He started shaking the bars again. “Help me you damn fools, before we drown!”

“We’re not going to-”

Darian turned and gave the fat man a ‘I will fucking kill you’ glare, and it shut his face fat up in an instant. As if to emphasize his rage, the storm howled again, and this time the ship shook with something harder than waves. It felt like something hit it.

“It’s coming, so get over here and help me before-”

Too late. He really should have just asked for their help earlier. Hubris indeed.

The explosion of water and splinters crashed into Darian before he could even move. The side of the ship collapsed inward, metal bars and wooden beams broke under the weight of something large and dark, and the outcry of cracking wood erupted through the water until Darian could feel it in his bones. He couldn’t see what was happening, he had to close his eyes, but he could feel himself bounce against the lower deck, then something sharp against his leg, and then his head against what could have been anything.

The water pulled back with the same aggression, but he reached out to grab onto whatever it was he just collided with. Sure enough, when the water flooded back out through the giant crack in the ship’s hull, Darien was left holding onto one of the beams, outside of the cell. As the water rushed to and fro, he collapsed from a height and landed on his knees against the deck floor; the water must have crushed him against the ceiling.

He coughed and sputtered on the salt water as it burned his lungs. Get up. Get the fuck up. He would not be this thing’s prey. He would not allow it.

Opening his eyes took a few seconds, and he had to blink several times to make sure he wasn’t seeing just an elongated blur. But no matter how hard rubbed at his eyes, hoping it was just an eyelash on his pupil, the colossal thing was still there. A giant, long slab of seafaring flesh, colored a blue so dark it would have blended with the deepest of the seas. Barnacles covered its skin, like freckles of white along its shape.

The sea groaned, and the giant limb moved in a slow, lumbering way. It was easily ten feet across, and wherever it started and ended were lost in the darkness of where it came from. It had crushed the ship under its weight, and had smashed the cell he was trapped within, only for the rushing water to send him and the others about in a whirlpool. His lean body had slipped through the damaged walls.

The others were not so lucky. The fat man was dead, crushed and filling the water with red. The bald one with the burns was snapped like a twig. The old one was trapped.

“Oh gods ... oh gods oh gods!” he said. Terror and pain were in his wide eyes, and he was pressing his hands against the giant limb. His legs were underneath it, but the creature’s tentacle had cut down through the deck; the old man’s legs were probably just strands of flesh and clothes by that point, and much of the blood pooling around the fat man was probably the old man’s too.

“K-kid! You gotta help me! Come on!” He grabbed at some of the raised and splintered wood, pulled, and got nowhere. “I-” The limb moved, and dragged the old man a foot further back into the water, enough to pull his head under the splashing waves. He kept flailing though, flailing and begging.

Darian got up and started to force his way through the rising water. The icy sea bit at him, and knocked his light body side to side while he gripped at the wooden beams around him. He gave a sideways glance to the old man and the growing pool of swishing blood, and kept going.

He’s not worth it, just another sheep. Just keep going. Survive.

The stairway up to the deck was like a waterfall, and every time the sea took a breath, it flooded down over him so hard his feet flew out from underneath. He had to keep his grip on whatever bits of broken, bent, or sharp wood was nearby, and let the water rush past him between breaths. Progress was slow, and splinters started to build on his hands where he had to squeeze for his life, but it didn’t matter. Pain didn’t matter. Just keep moving.

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.

The old thrill crept up Darian’s spine like dancing fire. He clenched and released his fists slowly to listen to the cracking of his knuckles, to breathe deep the kill, the sensation of flesh and bone breaking under his grip. He looked down at the collapsed fool, his backward head, and he put his bare foot against his breastplate in the most primal act of victory.

A familiar white started to blur the edge of Darian’s vision, an old friend that hid in the corner of his eyes whenever he let the monster out. Time for another kill.

The crack of the warrior’s neck was so loud in the dead silence of the temple, both Medusa and the single remaining warrior looked his way. Darian knew he was in the shadows, and would only be a silhouette to their eyes. He also knew they would be able to see his eyes, and the white glow that filled them. He must have looked like a spawn of Tartarus come to kill them. And it made him smile.

He reached down, grabbed the sword of the man he’d just killed, and started to walk toward the remaining warrior.

“By Zeus! Who are you? You ... Marcus! Marcus!” they screamed. Raged flooded their face, overriding their fear, and blood-drunk with anger, the warrior charged Darian.

Darian gripped the sword with both hands, and slammed it down toward the oncoming sheep. The Athenian blocked the attack as expected, but the warrior did not expect the power Darian put behind it. Darian’s attack was not only enough to knock the fool to the ground, it was enough to push Darian up into the air a few inches before gracefully landing upon his bare toes. The shield rang loud until the temple echoed the force of the impact. Darian took the opportunity to jump forward, and with both hands, slammed the sword down at the fallen enemy.

But the warrior was skilled, trained, and rolled to the side. Darian’s stolen weapon broke against the stones, the blade flying off into the shadows, leaving him weaponless. Damn. The warrior saw the opportunity, roared with courage, conviction, and all the typical garbage Darian expected of an obedient peon, and charged Darian again.

Darian stepped into the charge with the speed of a striking viper. There was a sudden moment of shock on the warrior’s face, and Darian used it like a sign. How many had he killed with that expression on their face? That single second of shock that costed them their life? Every time, it was the same result, and every time Darian danced in that single second where he ruled. He drove his right hand, open-palm, straight up into the larger man’s neck, and gripped his throat tight. His left hand was free, and he used it to grip the man’s sword wrist, and squeezed. His wrist snapped with a loud, dull crack.

The warrior tried to scream in pain, but Darian’s grip was absolute. He squeezed harder, hard enough to strain the warrior’s muscles, tear at skin, and block his breathing. He pushed up harder too, hard enough to lift the larger man into the air, and then walk him back against a nearby pillar, where Darian pinned his body. The fool was so surprised, he did not bother to kick at Darian, or hit him with his shield arm. All he could do was grip at the fingers crushing his throat with his only remaining hand. Futile.

“You come here,” he said, and he squeezed both hands harder, “to kill in the name of Athena? Or some other god? Or for some king? Or just because you want glory?” He shook his head, and stared into the panicked eyes of the dead man. “I heard her, you heard her! She just wants to be left alone!” He could taste the kill, beckoning him, burying any mercy he may have had in a torrent of adrenaline and bloodlust. “So fuck you. Fuck your gods. Fuck your kings. And die.”

A crushed throat was too good for this filth. A crushed throat was a warrior’s death, and this warrior deserved an insect’s death. Darian raised the man higher, grinned at him, and slammed him back against the pillar hard enough to crack his skull inside his helmet. He let go of him then, and the man collapsed onto his butt on the floor, only for Darian to put a hand against the side of his helmet, and smash it against the pillar again. And again. And again, until the blood was pouring from the bastard’s nostrils, and Darian was sure that all could be found inside his helmet was pulp.

He stepped back from the dead man, and breathed deep. Two more kills, and they tasted sweet. He wanted more, but when he glanced over his shoulder, the sight of the wounded woman struck him sober. Get air into the lungs man, calm down, let the blood settle. The white that circled his vision started to fade. The hunger in his hands for violence dripped away, along with the blood of his kill onto the temple floor.

Until, after several moments, there was nothing but the silence of the temple, his quiet breaths, and the panicked breathing of Medusa.

“D-don’t ... don’t come near me! Get away!” The great serpent tried to slither away again, but was struck with enough pain to make her scream in frustration and misery. The trails of curved blood stains she left behind were plentiful.

He turned to face her, but lowered his eyes when the reality set in. He scared her. He had scared her, him, he had scared Medusa. The gods were probably laughing at him.

“I ... I’m not going to hurt you Medusa. Please.” He walked toward where the half-spear till jutted out from her scales, and reached for it.

“Don’t kill me! Please, just leave me alone ... I...” She was terrified, terrified and bleeding to death. Her massive snake half was pooling red blood everywhere, and he had to stop it if he wanted to save her.

And of course he wanted to save her, like a damn fool. It made him smile again, but he washed the smile away quickly, and reached out to steady her snake half. Her scales were so beautiful, even where blood was smeared along the vibrant green.

“I’m not going to hurt you ... well, removing this will hurt. But please, Medusa, I’m not going to kill you.” No use in bracing her for it. Just get it over with. So before she could even respond, he yanked the spear head from her body.

She screeched again, pain making her whole snake length – damn it was long – shake and wriggle with muscle convulsions. But, after the worst of it passed, and Medusa’s noises had reduced to whimpers instead of cries, she stopped trying to slither away.

“I ... you ... I don’t believe you! Liar! Li-”

“I’m not lying! Look!” He gestured to the two dead warriors, and then to the V on his forehead. “I have no desire to hurt you, or get back to Athens. I ... just please listen to me. Come on, I have to dress these wounds before you bleed out. Are there any dressings in this temple?” he said, and he walked up to her human half.

So close, he found himself staring, and his mouth parted a sliver. Her hair of snakes were green like her snake half, with black patterns of spiraling triangles, and their eyes were yellow like hers. Her belly scales were a soft bronze, not unlike the sand of a beach, and her human skin was pale, a stark contrast to his. Her lips were gentle pink, and her eyebrows were actually two subtle lines of scales. She wore a common white wrap tight around her large breasts, and her hips sported a tight white wrap too, covering where her human half and snake half met.

She was beautiful.

“You’re ... not ... going to ... kill me?”

“No! No but if you don’t tell me where I can find some dressing, you’ll be dead anyway!”

“I...” She was staring at him, jaw dropped. He could see her huge fangs curled back inside her mouth, and her forked tongue. “Um ... there are blanketsss. They are very old, but-”

“Good enough.”

He knew the temple structure well. He still had no idea why it was so obviously a temple dedicated to Medusa though, with its crying Athena statues, snake carvings, and gorgon colossi – none of those things were found in temples dedicated to Athena – but at least he knew where to check in the back for the rooms temple servants would use. The temple was almost entirely just the nave for worshiping, but there were at least several rooms, including a vestry, and they had blankets. Old, but still sturdy.

When he came back out into the nave a few minutes later, it was very dark, with only a bit of fire light from the Athenian’s dropped torches in the distance, and it took time for his eyes to adjust. Medusa was still there, but she had managed to bring her snake half closer together into a loose coil. With over thirty feet of snake length, and a human half, she truly was massive.

She looked at him with the same shock as when she first saw him, but her breathing slowed a little after a moment, and after she saw the several blankets he carried in his arms. “You’re ... you’re real.”

“Of course I’m real.” He approached the first wound he could see, closer to the tip of her tail. It must have been the first wound she suffered in this encounter. “We’ll need to wash these later, but for now...” He reached down, lifted her snake body up – she flinched openly when he touched her – smiled at the sensation of her smooth, dry scales along his skin, and wrapped the blanket around the wound before tying it into a tight knot. He’d never dressed the wound of a snake before, and he barely knew how to dress a wound in the first place. He could only hope it was better than nothing.

“You can’t be real.” She shook her head and tried to stand, or at least what a gorgon would do when standing, but she just collapsed back onto the altar at the Athena statue’s feet again. “Your eyes ... are you a ssspirit?”

He laughed, softly; it seemed like the right kind of laugh for the situation. “I am no spirit. Flesh and blood, same as you.”

“But ... I don’t underssstand. How did you...”

She had a hard time with her words, he could tell. She hissed a little on some of them, and considering how much solitude she experienced on the island, and how long she’d been on the island, she probably didn’t talk much. Her voice was soft.

“Marooned here. I had no idea you were here.”

“Oh...”

“I had no idea you were even real. Thought you were just a myth. A one hundred-year-old myth.”

“One hundred years ... has it ... been that long?” She raised her hands and looked at them. They were perfectly normal, human-looking hands. And she herself looked no older than thirty. It was quite the curse, that she must live for so long like that. And yet...

“You don’t look a day over twenty-five to me.” He smiled at her, the nicest smile he could muster behind his dirty face and ruined beard, and moved toward her next wound with another blanket.

She blinked at him, and a mixture of expressions crossed her face, as if he’d said something unfathomable. So he just kept smiling – what he did best after all – and tied another blanket around her snake half, nice and tight.

“I ... I don’t...” She shook her head, and the snakes on her head drifted around as if bewildered. “I don’t understand. Why are you helping me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because! Becausssse ... because I am cursed. Athena’s curssse.”

Darian rolled his eyes and moved to the final wound. This time, he had to step over a couple loops of her body to get in the center of her coils, closer to her torso again, and he grimaced a little when Medusa recoiled. Any time he moved too quickly, lifted a hand too fast, she braced herself for an attack. So he kept his movements slow, and started to wrap her wound with as gentle a touch as he could muster.

“Athena can fuck a goat. Athens can go fuck a goat too,” he said. “All I know is the story of Medusa. And ... I heard your pleas.” And I could never say no to a woman begging for mercy.

Real, genuine anger crossed the gorgon’s face. Darian’s heart stopped, and for a moment he thought his life was over. All she had to do was hit him with that serpent’s gaze to instantly kill him, but it apparently drained her horribly to use it. And, as her anger faded, he breathed a sigh of relief; she didn’t seem to want to use it on him anyway.

“What ... is the story?” she asked.

Oh, she didn’t know. Shit. Shit shit.”Um ... that ... Athena cursed you for defiling the temple,” he said, and gulped before the final part, “ ... because Poseidon...” raped you in it.

Her eyes opened wide, and again he thought he was dead. But she reached out, and this time it was her touching him, her tight grip on his shoulders. “They ... they sssay that? They all know!?” Then, over the course of painful seconds, an invisible weight dragged her down and made her shoulders slump. “ ... of courssse they know. I should ... I knew but I didn’t want to...”

“Um, they-”

“I ... I ... Poseidon, he...” Her head lowered then, her fingers released him, and she collapsed back onto the altar. He wasn’t sure if she was exhausted or furious, but after a moment, he could hear her crying from behind where she laid her head in her arms. Her snake hair laid flat against her neck and shoulders, and their yellow eyes cast their gaze downward, in what could only be a snake’s way of showing sadness.

Her wounds were bandaged, as best as he could manage anyway, so he got up, and sneaked out from her coils with careful steps between each loop of her length. She was sobbing, and it was because of him. He shouldn’t have said anything about the legend; he never did know when to shut up. People were shit for just accepting Athena’s punishment of the victim, god-fearing shits.

“I...” He scratched at the back of his head where his hair had grown long, and was matted with dirt and strands. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry!?” She screeched at him again, putting her fangs on full display along with her forked tongue, before lowering her head back to her arms again. He froze, deathly still for that moment he thought he was dead – again. Her energy was returning, at least.

He looked at her with a tilted head, let out a slow, heavy breath, and turned to leave.

“W-wait ... I’m ... sorry,” she said.

He looked over his shoulder. Her yellow snake eyes reflected just a fraction of light in the dark, and tears were on her cheeks. She pushed herself back to sit up straight, if being coiled up could be called sitting, and tried her best to give him a smile. She failed horribly, with tears dripping off her chin.

“Please. Don’t go.” She looked out to where he’d bandaged her, and put her hands on the improve bandages. “You, you’re ... the first one in so long, and ... please. Ssstay.”

Gods, her snake eyes were so damn beautiful, and seeing them ache with sorrow the way they did tore his heart apart. He really was so damn easy to break; all it took was a sad woman’s eyes to turn him into a helpless fool. But, right then, he really didn’t mind.

He walked over to her, and sat down on the altar next to her. A grave insult to the gods, but that was half the reason he sat on it. “Have you really been on this island for a hundred years?”

She wiped away her tears, but nodded, and even managed a tiny smile. “Yessss.” The drawn out yes was accompanied with a small flicker of her tongue, as if it was perfectly natural to taste the air with your tongue. “Athena cursed this temple ... and me. All I remember is a great white light, and then the temple had changed.” She gestured to the crying Athena statues, and the coiled snakes on the pillars. “It was the middle of a ceremony, and...” She gestured to the array of stone bodies that filled the temple.

She was struggling to say it, Darian could tell. The words must have stung in her throat, and as she said them, he could see more tears build in her eyes. Was he really the first person she’d gotten to talk to about this, or in general, since it happened?

“That’s horrible,” he said.

She nodded again, and her snake hair nodded with her. Darian tried his best to not smile at how ridiculously cute that was, it really wasn’t the time.

“She cursssed me, because-”

“You don’t have to say it. It-”

“No!” she said. Darian went wide-eyed at her sudden volume, but she looked desperate, as if she had only this one chance to speak to him before he vanished. “One hundred years ago, I served this temple. I served the gods! And one night when I was alone here, Poseidon, he... , “ she looked away, and the shame on her face was palpable. “I am cursed for his crime!”

Darian clenched his fists until his knuckles cracked. It wasn’t right for him to embrace this anger as if he was personally slighted, it was arrogant of him and greedy of him, but he couldn’t help it. It was all fuel for the fire.

He didn’t say anything though. It wasn’t about him. This was about her. The least he could do for the poor soul was listen. When she looked up to him, him still sitting on the altar, he offered her a weak, sad smile. What else could he do.

“You...” She forced herself up a little, until she was a little higher up leaning against the altar, and she wiped away her new tears. “You ... you’re...”

He tilted his head to the other side, and waited for her to speak on her own.

“I’ve ... I’ve always wanted to ... tell someone,” she said. “For so long, it’s just been people ... coming for my head. They never listen to what I have to say.”

Even if they had listened, Medusa, they already knew. It wouldn’t have stopped the mindless sheep from serving their gods, and trying to kill you.

“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what that’s like,” he said.

“And you, you...” She gestured to the bandages he’d made for her, and the corpse by the pillar. “You ... out of nowhere, you show up, and ... your eyes ... your strength.”

Darian tried to hide his frown. Medusa was pointing out the obvious he was ignoring: this wasn’t a coincidence. He escaped Zeus, escaped Poseidon, only for ... no, don’t think about it. Just ignore it. None of it mattered. They couldn’t get him here. Hopefully.

“W-who are you?” she said. “How did you get here? You sssaid you were marooned?”

He pointed at the V on his forehead. “Slave, marked for life.” And of course, that was a story he didn’t want to tell, and he hoped pushing past the subject was enough of a hint for her. “I was on a trade ship and being taken to Athens, when something in the sea attacked it.”

“Something in the sea?”

“A creature of some sort. Big enough that it destroyed the whole ship. I washed up on the shore here.” He gestured at himself, his dirty, bloody rags, horrible hair, scraggly beard, and tanned-to-burnt skin. “I doubt I would have tasted good.”

Medusa giggled, just a soft, tiny noise mixed with a quiet cough and residue sob, but an actual laugh nonetheless. “And your strength? Your eyes too; I thought for sure a demon had come for me. Are ... are you related to Cadmus?”

“It’s ... it’s a blood thing, yeah. Probably not Cadmus, but you never know.” It was true, sort of. He could tell her the details later, just not now. No reason to drag her into it. “Something in the blood that lends me the strength of a ... well, not a god, but enough to deal with vermin like them.” He motioned to the dead warriors.

“ ... you must really despise the gods.”

“You don’t?”

She looked down at herself, then at the warriors, and then to him. “I did, and I do, but it’s been so long, and ... with only myself to talk to for ssso long, I...” She leaned out over her coils, and put a hand on one of the wounds to press against where it bled. “It faded away.”

Faded away. He chewed on the idea for a moment. Letting the hate fade seemed wrong, but then, he hadn’t spent a hundred years alone. Damn, it was such a long time to be alone.

“I’m Darian.”

“ ... Darian.” She smiled at him again, tear-filled yellow snake eyes on full display. “T-thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He hopped off the altar, and started to walk to the recent dead. “I’ll deal with the bodies. Some sailors were waiting by the dock, and-”

“They come every decade or so. They will leave when their heroes do not return.”

He nodded. That made sense. “Are you going to be ok? You were stabbed ... multiple times.”

“I’ll be fine. I heal well. And...” She pressed down on the wound again, and winced a little, but she was smiling all the same. “I’ll be fine, thank you. And ... you ... you won’t...”

He quirked a brow at her, but realization dawned on him. Her eyes were downcast, her hands fidgeted along her scaled length, and her hair drifted about with its noses pointed at him. She was worried to the point of fear.

So he did what he did best, and smiled. “I’m not going anywhere.”


~~Medusa~~

She watched the man walk off, with a corpse over each shoulder. He was strong for a small man, strong for a man in general. Strong, and brutal. He hadn’t just killed those two men, he had ruined them. The first, he’d almost torn his head off, and the second’s head was nothing but soup inside his helmet. She shivered a little with the memory of it, of those white eyes and his silhouette murdering with such savageness in front of her. Terrifying.

But this Darian was anything but terrifying. He was ... cute. He was short, and lean, and he most desperately needed a bath, a trim, and a haircut, but those brown eyes of his, they were so confident.

And it had been a century since she had talked to anyone. By the gods, she needed to talk to someone.

As the minutes went by, and she stroked the horrible wounds her snake half had suffered, she started to panic. Her breath came out faster, and her eyes started to flick up to the temple entrance over, and over, and over. Please come back, please come back, please come back.

“Sorry, I realized I had no idea where to take the bodies, so I threw them down the mountainside.”

Relief washed over her when the man came back into view, the night sky’s stars behind him at the temple entrance. He carried an air of carefree to him, like a boy who knew the world was his toy, but she knew there was more it than that. He had avoided details about himself, she noticed, but she wasn’t going to push him on it. Anything, anything she could do to just have someone to talk to, if even for a little while.

“Thank you. You’re ... thank you.” It was more than she had talked in so long, she was running out of words.

“I don’t suppose you have a place I can sleep? I think we could both use some rest, considering.” He approached her, and she flinched a little. Just seeing movement coming her way still shocked her, and she had to take a breath to force herself to relax.

“Um, yes ... there’s a home behind the temple, where I ... yes, yes you can sleep there. Come.” She started toward the the side entrance, and almost fell over. The muscles in the long length of her snake half struggled to bend and weave like they wanted to, with the three holes that had been cut into them. She had to concentrate to slither forward, and not contract the muscles that had been stabbed. It took control, but she’d had a long time to practice. A long, long time.

“You sure you’re alright?” Darian said. He matched her pace beside her, and he was casting glances back at her slithering shape. He wasn’t repulsed, he wasn’t scared, he wasn’t even disturbed, he was just concerned.

More than once, she caught his eyes looking her emerald scales from tip to hip, and each time, his gaze showed only intrigue. Intrigue! She almost vibrated with excitement. No sleep would come for her, not tonight. She wanted to talk! She wanted to do anything!

Outside the temple, they were high up on the mountain of the island, where there were few trees. The horrible storm that she had seen way off to the West was gone, and now the sky was completely clear. The stars were shining brightly.

It was disgustingly perfect, and every part of her expected her first moment of happiness in a century to be dashed against the rocks of the mountain side. What had caused all this, a man coming to her island, saving her life from a potentially deadly fight, and now ... no, stop. Don’t think about. Stop ruining it. Just stop.

It wasn’t much of a house really, just a single floor home made of white stone. It no longer had a door, lost to the centuries, and only had a large, single room within and a couple store rooms. But, there was a reason the temple had been built on the tiny island, where nothing else was to be found. And it was the spring.

Along a cliff face of rock, there was a huge crack, and from it poured water. Clean, clear, crystal water. A pool had been built, carved into the rock beneath them and smoothed under an artisan’s hand to let the water fill a large basin, large enough even for swimming, before the water poured over a spout that lead it down the mountainside to create a tiny stream. The lifeblood of the little island, and the small amount of life it supported.

“H-how is this ... what?” Darian stood at the edge of the water, jaw dropped, and stared.

“Some said it was Poseidon’s blessing, others said it was Athena’s.” She shrugged, and slithered over to the water to scoop some up with her hand, and drank it. “I do not know where it comes from, only that it has been unending, since even before my time.”

“That’s amazing.” He got down his knees and also took sips of the water. His face brightened, and he took another sip, and another, and another. The poor man must have been thirsty. It warmed her core to see her water help him.

“It’s the only reason I could stay on this island. And,” she said, and slithered over to the open entrance of the home, “this is where I sleep. And ... it’s, um...”

Darian got up to join her, a new bounce in his step she noticed, and stood beside her. When he looked inside, he laughed. And not just a small laugh, or a tender one, like he’d been careful to use around her. This one was almost a roar, and he put a hand on the stone wall to steady himself.

She blushed so horribly, she could feel her face about to ignite. The room, what once held furniture for people to sit and eat, was now filled with nothing but blankets. A giant pile of blankets, which she slept on and had made a glorious mess of.

“Th-th-there’s another room ... and, uh ... you can ... here!” She slithered into the room, winced at her forgotten wounds, and reached down to find one of the most recently washed blankets. “It’s clean! I ... yes, please. Please follow me.”

So awkward, so terribly awkward. But, when Darian followed her into the home, she breathed a sigh of relief, as if crossing the threshold would have somehow whisked away the illusion. But Darian walked right up to her, smiled, and took the blankets from her, like it was the most normal thing in the world. Did he not realize no one had ever, ever looked upon her in this form without hate or fear in their eyes?

“Thanks. I think I’m going to pass out in seconds. Are you sure you’re going to be alright? You were bleeding badly, and you looked ... it was bad. I thought you were going to bleed out. You don’t want to clean those wounds right now?”

“I will be fine. This has happened many times before. My snake half is ... it is no concern. It will heal.”

“Alright, if you’re sure,” he said. Then he smiled again, like they were endless to give, and turned to head into the small room off to the side. It too had no door, but the room, once a storage room, was empty, and it had plenty of space for him to lay the large blanket out and sleep upon it. He poked his head out, gave her another nod, another smile, and vanished again. When he laid down, she could still see his feet, just the edge of them around the doorway.

Half of her was ecstatic, and boundless energy poured through her from head to tail. She wanted to go to him, stand him up, and start talking again. She wanted to ask about Athens, and Thebes, and Sparta, and Corinth and Argos and Boetia and even Macedonia and Thessaly. She wanted to ask about any new poems or stories she may not have heard. She wanted to ask about anything! She’d talk about the weather, anything.

But, exhaustion grabbed her. In the rush of so many things happening at once, her body had forgotten the battle from earlier, and the wounds it had sustained. Ache joined it, and she found she had to lay down. The large room really was filled with blankets, old but soft, and she coiled onto the familiar softness as any snake would. With her head on her arms, her arms on her snake body, she closed her eyes. Excitement fought off Hypnos and his sleep, but only for a few minutes until weariness dragged her under.


Waking was always a slow process. The night was a little cool, and that meant her body cooled with it. It wasn’t until the dawn started to warm the mountain that she woke up, and a little while after that before she warmed.

She ached. Why did she ache? She pushed herself up so her weight was on her hands, hands on her coils. Some blankets were wrapped around her snake half at a few different points. Right, she’d been stabbed when some more ‘heroes’ had come to kill her. And the ache in her chest came back with the memory. More people she had killed.

But she hadn’t killed all of them. Two of them someone else had killed. Someone else ... Darian! She looked to where the man had slept, but she couldn’t see him. And when she got closer, the room was empty. Was it a dream? Please gods no, not a dream. Please don’t let it be a dream.

She slithered out the front door, into the clearing behind the temple where the pool was. The sun had just finished rising over the horizon, its warmth energizing her, and she looked around with a hand held up to her eyes to block its light. Where was he? Did he exist? What -

Only a few feet away, Darian sat. He no longer wore a shirt, and his waist had one of the temple priest loincloths she had never bothered to throw away. His legs were dangling in the water, and his hand held up a mirror in front of his face. In the other hand, he held a small dagger.

He turned the mirror then, and she caught his gaze in its reflection.

“Good morning,” he said, like he’d said it a million times to her before.

She had almost panicked, afraid that it had all been a dream. But he was there, smiling at her in the mirror, and ... shaving his neck. Not only that, he had cut his hair too, short like the Athenians did, and from what she could see, he had trimmed his beard down short as well. Short, and groomed.

When he set the mirror aside and turned to look at her, she caught her breath. Now, with his tan skin clean of dirt, his hair and beard trimmed and shortened to a mere inch, his brown eyes shown through. The small man was delightfully cute, and shirtless. His small stature betrayed the muscles of his body when he was clothed, but now that she could see everything, she found herself blushing. His lean form hid nothing. She could see the indentation of each muscle along his back. His body lacked for body hair as well, as if someone had rubbed his skin with a pumice stone to groom him; perhaps his youthful appearance was to blame? He had no scars either! He looked more like a well-groomed prince.

She blushed all the harder. She liked what she saw. How could such a young fellow have been so brutal the night before? His smile was beaming, and his brown eyes carried a confidence she could not fathom.

“ ... g-good morning,” she said.

“You were taking a little while to wake up, so I explored the temple. I hope you’ll forgive me. I just had to deal with this mess though,” he said, and gestured to his head and face, “and take a bath.”

“You...” Could she compliment him? Would that be weird? “You ... it suits you.”

He chuckled. She blushed, regressed to the wee girl of her youth from so long ago. A hundred years of solitude had done many things, but it had also robbed her of her ability to talk. Darian didn’t seem to mind though, he just smiled some more. It was a handsome smile.

“Thanks. I was working as a prisoner in a quarry for almost a year, before they shipped me off to Athens. I have a year’s worth of grime to wash off.” With a sigh of joy, the man pushed his weight forward, and let himself sink into the pool his legs were dangling within. The water stopped at his chest, and he turned to face her. “You have no idea how thankful I am. Not just for the pool, I mean, but a place to rest my head, and good company.”

She had to look away then, and combed her snake hair to hide her obvious embarrassment. Could the man not see what his overt and social demeanor was doing to her? She would have to ease into this.

“You are w-welcome. But, good company?”

“Yes, good company! I expected Medusa to be a wicked and ugly creature, based on the legend, but you are not wicked, and are certainly not ugly.” He turned around a few times in the water, even splashed around a little, and she watched from the corner of her eye. His hands wiped at his skin, apparently trying to wash away dirt he had already washed off. But, if he had spent a year working in a quarry as a prisoner, she could not blame him his need for cleanliness.

“Not ugly? Did you not see me ... transform ... when I turned that Athenian to stone?”

“I did. That was scary, I admit. But that lasted what, three seconds? I see you now and all I see is a beautiful woman with some snake features?” Again, he shrugged, not a trace of blush or embarrassment or shyness to him. “And besides, snakes are elegant, lovely creatures.”

Too much, way too much. All she had known for so long was the occasional hateful group of men, calling her monster and trying to cut off her head. This man and his words, cast so lightly at her as if they were obvious, were threatening to make her explode from how much she was blushing.

She took a long, slow breath. Talking. Humans talk with each other. And despite her snake half, she was still largely human. She slithered over the last remaining feet to the pool edge, took another breath, and settled into a coil.

“The ... transformation. It takes over when I cast that ... gaze.”

“I am sorry. That is a horrible burden to bear.” He shook his head, and scratched at his neck where he had cut the beard to almost nothing. “After what you told me last night, about Poseidon, I ... it really is.”

The memory of it made her whole body tense, every last, scale-covered inch. So long ago, so damn long, but she could still remember the awe that went through her when a god had come to visit her, one lonely night in the temple. She could remember kneeling and bowing her head to the great and mystical entity. She could remember him pinning her down, and the twisted grin on his face.

She had lowered her head, she realized, to avoid Darian’s sad gaze, but the man had swam up closer to her. He raised his hand as if to touch where her scaled length was nearest the pool, but he stopped short when her eyes met his.

For a moment she thought maybe he was afraid to touch her; he would not be the first one. But, the look in his eyes carried no revulsion, no fear. He was just ... sad for her.

Part of her wanted to be angry about that. How dare someone be sad for her? But that part of her had faded long ago, when she had accepted the truth of the situation. She’d been raped by a god and cursed by another for something not of her own doing. She deserved a little self pity, and maybe even a little sympathy from others. She just never expected to get it.

Get out of your head, Medusa. For the first time you have someone to talk to. Do it.

“Do you ... truly not find this a monstrous form?” Her hands ran down her hips and followed her scaled tail, until she had turned about to continue tracing her coiled length. “Or this?” She ran one of her hands through her hair of snakes again, each with its own snake head, and each with its own desire to expose her every emotion. “Or ... this?” She leaned toward the man in the pool below her, just a little, and widened her eyes at him. Yellow snake eyes, speckled with almost invisible green undertones, all around black vertical slits. She didn’t even have eyebrows, but just several more green scales that lined where eyebrows should have been.

And for the whole thing, the small hero in her pool kept his hazel eyes on her. In fact, when she had leaned in, he had swam a closer again, and stared straight at her with an unblinking gaze.

“No. I don’t.” Another smile. “And I’ve been meaning to ask, just ... a little presumptuous of me, but can I ask a favor?”

“P-please do.”

“Can I stay here? For ... well, until I’ve worn out my welcome? I’ve nowhere else to go, not really, just a pile of pain and misery waiting for me back in Lycia and Tiryns. I’m in no rush to deal with it, if ever.”

He wanted to stay! But, that would mean she would have to share her island with someone, her home. Someone else, a man no less, would be near her while she slept, while she ate! Her solitude would be lost, both the misery it brought, but also the protection, and the cave for her shame.

Were it long ago, she would have said no. But now, she had to stop herself from diving into the pool and squeezing the man in a snake hug. Too much, that would definitely be too much.

“Of course! Yes, I ... there is...” She scratched at the scales near one of her wounds. “There are plants to eat here I think, fish, bird, and boar. I think it can be done.”

His face brightened like a child’s. “Thank you! But, uh, you sound surprised about the plants and fish and bird. What did you eat while you lived here?”

She blushed again, but this time a frown followed it. “I survive as a snake would. Once every couple of weeks, I devour a creature whole. Usually wild boar.”

“That ... is amazing.” He pulled himself up over the rock to stand up beside her, as close as he could with several layers of coils between him and her torso half. “A whole boar. In one gulp? Damn. So you-”

“Yes, I must transform, as with the stone gaze, to eat.”

“Right. I uh, then I can understand if you’d want privacy while you do that. But ... you know...” He rubbed at his chin with a finger, and offered her another one of those confident smiles he had in endless supply. “If you are comfortable enough to show me, I would like to see that.”


The next week went by with unusual speed. Normally, her days were long, empty, and incredibly dull. It was a snake’s life of laying about and watching the sun or stars go by, and every so often eating something. A hundred years of such dullness had nearly driven her insane.

But then suddenly, every day had become full of surprises, full of dialogue, interaction, full of possibilities. It was such a little thing, she realized when she thought about it, that one outcast on a lonely island had become two, but it didn’t matter. A gift’s value was in the eye of the beholder, and Darian’s confidence and enthusiasm were not only unending, they were addicting.

She knew there was something hidden behind that happy, childish smile of his, private thoughts that ate at him. But as the days went by, her fear that it was about her relented. Whatever it was, it was personal, and she did not wish to violate his trust.

Her wounds did heal quickly, so quickly that Darian assured it was more than just natural. Perhaps it was because she had been touched by a god? For better or worse, it would appear. At least she could find the silver lining in that.

She helped show Darian where animals could be found on the island, and how the mountain contained a deceptive amount of animal life in its twist and turns. She knew them all. Darian showed her how to spear fish on a beach, which required some trickery and amazing reflexes. But, whatever changes that had happened to her body had drastically changed her taste for food; no fish for her. Birds though, they interested her, and Darian used his unusually good aim to down several with throwing rocks.

Capturing a boar though, that was her domain.


It was just before the dawn. Medusa slithered down along the grass and bush, and with a century of practice, she did it without making a sound. For her, hunting required a more savage and reptilian approach, and that meant she had to get down onto her stomach and hands. Normally she would slither while her torso remained upright at the hip, but now she needed to crouch low, as low as the grass. Instead of her soft, white wraps she normally used for her breasts and hips, this morning she went nude, and let the monster out. Her skin, all of it, had become snake scales; she could press her stomach straight into the ground without hurting sensitive parts anymore. Her neck had spread out much like a cobra’s, and her snake hair had grown into huge pythons that grabbed nearby branches and brush. Her face was an elongated, hideous combination of snake and human, and much larger than either, but that didn’t matter, she couldn’t see her own face without a mirror. And it wasn’t her that wanted a massive meal, it was the beast inside.

She could see the large family of boar. There were several families on the island, and they had no predators, none except for her once every few weeks. Her only source of food before Darian had arrived to help. Perhaps she would treat herself?

She struck out from the brush with the speed of a viper. It was only for twenty feet, and for twenty feet she could strike with a speed even Darian could not. Thirty feet of powerful snake muscle launched her forward.

The family of pigs squealed and bolted, but surprise was on her side; she had waited until they were asleep. They all took to the brush in random directions, panicked, but one of them did not.

This one was fatter than the others, slower, and normally she would have avoided eating it for fear it would hurt her with its size and thrashing. But not this time. She sank her huge teeth into its neck, gripped it with her now scale-covered hands, and started to wrap the thirty feet of her length around it in coils. More and more she circled the huge, struggling monster of fur and flesh, until it had disappeared inside rings of her body.

And she squeezed. Bones snapped, and with her teeth lodged onto the boar’s neck, she could hear them break as if they were her own. But she’d long lost her squeamishness; this was her lunch. Tighter she squeezed the struggler, tighter, until it could no longer move. Tighter again, until it could no longer breathe. Tighter, until it was dead. To kill it took a long time – it was a huge boar – but after well over ten minutes of wrestling, it was at last nothing but a dead thing trapped in her coils.

Then, for the final act of animal brutality. She pushed her head forward toward its body, unhinged her jaw, and began to devour the beast head first. And that too took a long time, much longer than she liked. Fifteen minutes of vulnerability, fifteen minutes of just laying there while she slowly worked its massive girth into her gullet. It must have been over three-hundred pounds.

But there were no predators on the island, none except her. The boars feared her, huge as she was, and would not attack her even when exposed like this. So she took her time, did it right, clenched and unclenched her whole length’s array of musculature until the meal was past her stretched and malformed upper body, and down past into the deep, long canal of her snake half.

Only then could she relax, and let the monster return to its slumber. Her human torso reemerged from the armor of scales, her neck and head returned to their normal size, and her snake air did too. She patted her body to make sure the transformation was complete; she was always a little afraid she’d never return to her normal self. As normal as a gorgon form was, at least. Better the half-snake than a giant snake monster.

“Wow,” Darian said. The small man approached from her back, a small courtesy for her nudity. From behind, all there was to find was her back, and the scales of her snake length that met her just above the hip, and below the small of her back.

“See? It’s a grotesque act.”

“Surprising, sure, but grotesque? It was like watching a giant snake with arms eating.” He hoped down from his tree – agile as a monkey, he was – and landed down next to her snake body. “That’s so much food!”

“Yes, it... !” She gasped at the sight Darian was staring at. There was a bulge ten feet down into her snake body where the boar sat in her digestive track. She threw her human half in between the unsightly display, and at the same time covered it with her hands. “Don’t look! Please, it is embarrassing!”

Darian nodded, turned, and looked away, complete with a whistle. But she could see he was struggling to not laugh.


By the end of the day, the horrible display of stretched flesh and scales along her snake belly was gone, thank the gods. Part of her was angry at Darian for his small teasing, but many parts of her were happy that, after only a week with another person, she could socialize like that again. She was even smiling again.

Tired, sleepy from with the morning’s hunt, and unable to completely hide her constant smiling, she coiled up next to the pool. With a satisfied sigh, she laid down her human body along her scaled length, hugged her arms underneath her head, and rested. Comfortable, fed, and oddly at peace with the gentle sounds of Darian swimming in the pool.

Plus, she liked to watch him swim. Such a delicious, lean, muscular little creature. She pictured coiling around him, holding him, and just easing herself down onto ... She shook her head. Don’t be ridiculous.

“Medusa,” Darian said, “can I ask a question?”

He swam up to her, but avoiding touched the tip of her tail that was dipped into the water. He never did touch her, ever.

“ ... if you will answer one of mine after.” She bit her bottom lip, worried.

But the offer only made Darian’s beautiful smile grow. “If you think you’re up to it.”

“I am!”

“Alright.” He swam back and forth in front of her in a slow and leisurely way. “Do you hate people? They know that you are the victim, and they still hunt you.”

She shook her head, sighed with the weight of that question, and rested her chin on her arm along her coiled body. “People. They ... they are good people. Afraid of the gods, and ... and ... just afraid.”

Darian winced with her answer. He seemed dissatisfied. “People are mindless, god-fearing insects. You give them too much credit.”

She tilted her head at that, and it was her turn for a question after all. “ ... why do you hate people so much? I ... I saw what you did to that warrior from Athens when we met. You had defeated him, but then you ... destroyed him.” And I could practically see the hate pour from you when you turned his skull into a splattered mess inside his helmet.

Maybe it was too much to ask. Fear swept through when she saw Darian stop swimming and look away, but after a moment, he looked back to her and sighed much the same way she did.

“ ... I was betrayed by many people. Betrayed by family, betrayed by kings, betrayed by ... everyone.” He pointed to the V burned into the center of his brow. “Betrayed because they are fools who mindlessly follow the gods, gods unworthy of any respect or loyalty, let alone worship.” Again he sighed, and he sank his face into the water before raising it. Water dripped down his tanned skin, along his nose and his lips. He normally looked so young, but right then and just for a second, she could see an age to him. “The world of men and gods is just ... I want no more part of it.”

“I ssssee.” Darian had a twisted history then. Perhaps she could find out more, later.

Darian got up out the pool and started to walk past her, naked except for his loincloth. Something on his face, something stern, something angry caught her eye, and she slithered after him to catch his hand.

“Darian, I meant no offense. Please.”

He stopped. She stopped. Everything froze. He turned his head slowly, and for a second she thought she’d see an angered Darian for the first time. But, his face carried only a hint of sorrow, and also ... surprise? His gaze, she realized, was pointed at where she held his fingers in her palm.

“I’m sorry, I-”

“No, I’m sorry,” he said. “Just, it’s a sensitive topic, and I’m the juvenile brat who gets upset about it. I don’t know how you deal with it. I can’t even think straight when I remember my betrayal, and ... it makes my blood boil.”

Oh gods, if only he knew. “I have had many, many years to deal with mine, Darian.”

“Heh, true.” He smiled at where their fingers touched, and his thumb stroked her knuckle. It was the first time he had ever touched her since the night he’d treated her wounds, but now his thumb, wet with water and softened by it, just lightly grazed along her finger.

She almost melted.

“You ... you always avoid touching me. I thought ... I thought I ... I don’t know, I revolted-”

“I didn’t want to upset you.”

“Upset me?” she said.

He turned to face her, but now it was him holding her hand, and his usually loud, boasting smile had softened into a gentle thing. “After what happened to you, I figured the last thing you’d want is a man you just met touching you.”

Oh. She should have believed him when he said he wasn’t repulsed by her; the man was just trying to avoid offending her.

“For a time, I did think of men as ... vile, sick creatures,” she said, and she gazed down at where their fingers were touching.

“We are.”

She blinked, and her snake hair lowered before pointing its many heads at the man. Darian had looked away again, down at his bare feet, and a sad frown had replaced his smile.

“You ... did not strike me as the brooding, serious type, Darian.”

That got a smile from him. “Sorry. Happens to the best of us.”

“And ... I do not think you are vile.”

His smile brightened even more, until he was almost back to his usual self. “How can you be so nice? A hundred years? If I was you, it could be a thousand and I’d still be hating the guts of every god and any thing with dangly bits between the legs.”

She tugged on his hand a little and brought him a few inches closer. “I can’t help it. Aphrodite and Eros were those I looked to with fondness, but it was Eleos I held most dear.”

“Oh wow, you worshiped Aphrodite and Eros?” Darian scratched at the back of his head with his free hand again, and laughed with his usual warmth; whatever storm haunted him had passed once more. “If I had known you were one of ‘those,’ I would have been trying to get into your bed from day one.”

“Do not tease me, Darian!” She frowned at him and yanked on his hand a little. From so close, she could stare at him with her snake eyes like an angry mother hen.

“What, you don’t think I would?” He wiggled his eyebrows at her.

Wait, was he serious? Could he possibly be serious? She frowned again, but his smile did not waver. He met her gaze with unrelenting confidence, and where they still held a hand, he caressed the back of her fingers with his thumb, and winked at her.

Her heart stopped. Her eyes went wide. Her mouth parted just slightly, just enough that she must have looked a fool. As if turned to stone herself, she stared at the beautiful man who had just challenged her. He couldn’t have been serious. He must have been kidding. What if he wasn’t kidding though? What if all she had to do, was keep hold of that hand, and pull him toward her bed. What if all she had to do, to have something she wanted so badly, was just take it.

His smile turned into confusion, and his right brow quirked along with it. After a time though, he lowered his eyes and tried to step back.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “that really was rude of me. Now I feel horrible, saying that after what you’ve been through.”

He tried to let go of her hand. She didn’t let him.

He couldn’t have been serious. But he had said she was beautiful, that he thought snakes were beautiful, and more than once his eyes had drifted to her clothed breasts. Was it all a game to him? Or did he actually want to...

“ ... Medusa?”

She tried to say something, but nothing worked or made sense. She could just proposition him back, but it seemed so absurd, so ridiculous, a monster asking a human for ... She bit her bottom lip, careful to keep her massive snake fangs within her mouth, but enough to chew on her lip nonetheless. Darian was such a nice man too, the nicest she had ever known. All it took was a few words from him to turn her into a silly child, and now she felt like a girl just barely old enough to crave a man, and overwhelmed by it.

“Medusa, you alright?”

She gulped, and opened her mouth one last time to say something, but all she could find was silence. She would not throw this away though, this gift, this chance. So get out of your head Medusa, and do something.

With a lowered gaze – eye contact was impossible at this point – she started to slither towards the small home that contained their beds.

She did not let go of his hand.

“Whoa, Medusa, I didn’t mean you should-”

“You ... do not want to?” Finally, words!

“I do! But I put you on the spot, and-”

She started slithering toward the house again, this time a little faster. He wanted to. He wanted to. The words made her giddy; she could feel her snake hair practically dancing on her scalp.

“Medusa, I’m trying to apologize!”

She ignored him, afraid he’d say something to put her burst of courage to an end. Instead, she pulled him along into the dark room, and further, and further, until he was in the center of her pile of huge blankets. Then, with jitters trembling up and down the length of her entire body, she started to circle him, and circle him, and circle him again until she had circled him thrice. There was still plenty of room for him within her coils to move about, but for her, it was as if she had created walls to protect them both from prying eyes.

She lowered herself down into the center of the coil, and faced the small man. His confidence was shattered, and he looked very nervous, as if a snake had just captured him and was ready to devour him. For a moment, she thought perhaps he truly was afraid, but a moment later, Darian took a step back, rested his palms against the smooth scales of one of her coils, and looked up to her with wide eyes. He looked ... entranced, even in awe. And that made her smile more than she thought she could.

Darian was dressed only in his loincloth, soaked as it was, and every bit of his body was open to her. So close, so very close, she wanted to reach out and touch his lean and defined body, his tanned skin, his ... everything. And like as if a bubble had burst inside her mind, she realized with a wave of exhilaration, that she could do just that.

So she placed one of her hands upon his neck, and the other against his chest, and she squeezed with just enough pressure to feel the hardness of the warrior’s body. He was a little short, and his shoulders did not have the width of the typical warrior; and yet, it was all so ... perfect. It fit his soft but confident smile, his short and trimmed beard and hair, his playful gaze that could turn cold when it wanted to. It was most definitely not cold then.

She lowered both her hands, one to drift down his arm and tease along his bicep, elbow, and down to his wrist. The other traced the indentation of his abs, and when she noticed his breathing was getting faster, she rested her hand against his stomach to feel his breathing quicken.

He was excited too.

“Medusa, we don’t have to-”

The hand upon his arm reached for his face, and she pressed a finger to his lips to shush him. But once there, she shivered at the sensation of his lips and breath upon her skin.

Her boldness surprised her. Everything about this surprised her, and she knew it was all this man’s fault, teasing her, making her laugh, making her smile. She wanted to return the favor, and she wanted to enjoy returning it.

She reached to her neck with both her hands, and behind it to undo the knot that held her wrap in place. It slipped free, letting the weight of her heavy breasts pull down against her ribs, before she tossed the fabric aside.

Darian’s gaze lowered to her bosom, eyes even more wide than before, bewitched. Her breasts were quite large, heavy, and they pulled down with their size, but that did not seem to bother the man trapped in her coil. She could feel the heat started to rise inside her; her nipples were already hard and swollen atop puffy, pink areola.

Then she reached down, and undid the knot of the wrap that hugged her waist and hips tight. With that tossed aside she was completely naked, and all her fears were laid bare. The snake half of her reached up to her pelvis and wide hips, even replacing her butt. But, at the bottom of the V where human flesh and snake met on her front, the base of her pelvis and her pubic bone, the last trace of human was her womanhood.

“I ... this ... I don’t have legs.” Blushing did not begin to describe how red her skin had become. “And so it ... the angle...” Her sex sat flat against the base of her pelvis and was pointed forward, toward the man in her coils.

Darian’s eyes had fallen to stare at the pink flesh she had just exposed, and Medusa had to fight the urge to cover herself. But, when she looked down at Darian, she could not help but notice that his loincloth, still dripping with water, was now wrapped tight against his erection. This man, this strange, carefree man, was aroused looking at her naked body.

She licked her lips. Fear and apprehension and shame were thrown down the mountainside. All that was left was one very, very aroused gorgon.

“D-don’t ... move, please? I...” She placed her trembling hands onto his body again, and massaged with tender touch along his chest and stomach. “I know I said I was ready, and I am, but ... please don’t move?”

He nodded, only barely, his mouth still parted and gaping. Those dark, brown eyes of his raised to hers, and then drifted back down to her naked human flesh, then back up to her eyes, and then down again. Like a young boy, he could not control his gaze.

A small memory dug itself from her mind. She could see herself, a tall woman, curvaceous and young, serving the temple and catching the eyes of men and women. It had delighted and excited her then, and it excited her now.

Poseidon would not take this joy away from her. She would not allow it.

She lowered herself a little more, until her torso hovered only a few inches higher than the man’s. Her hands found his hips, and she held them as handles to guide her while she leaned in.

Darian’s gaze was caught inside hers, and this time, it did not break. He just stared at her, the tiniest smile on his open lips.

She put her forehead to his. Her snake hair explored Darian’s neck and hair with slow, sultry motions, but their flicking tongues managed to pull a little, ticklish chuckle from the young man. Not a drop of disgust or fear or even annoyance on his face with how her host of snakes nuzzled into his warm skin, along under his jawline, against his cheek, his collar, the back of his neck.

Then she licked his lips with the tiniest, quickest flick. Her tongue was long, thin with a forked tip, and it flicked at the air the same way her snake hair’s tongues did. And still it did not bother Darian. He just returned her testing with a quiet laugh.

Satisfied, excited, and boiling, she finally pushed her lips onto his.

She had told herself to make it a small kiss, a fleeting thing – this was just about the sex after all – but it did not happen. Darian’s eyes drifted closed, yet she could not fully close hers. She had to see, had to watch what he did, had to be absolutely sure. But, all she found was the relaxed and enticed face of a man.

She could tell he was trying to not move, but he raised his head just a little, just enough to meet her kiss and offer her lips a gentle nudge. And she returned it with a loving sigh.

Her hands, still on his hips, hooked into his loincloth, and undid them.

The kiss finally broke, and they rested their foreheads against each other, both looking down. The man’s cock had already raised to stand, hard, waiting. His pubic hair was wet and flat to his pelvis, and looked so very different compared to her hairless skin.

“Medusa, you-”

She put one of her fingers against his lips again before she gripped his waist, and brought her body closer to his, and closer, until she could feel the underside of his cock resting against her folds. She was wet, and it wasn’t from the water on his body.

She stayed there, and let the head of his member rest against her clitoris. A small movement, up and down in a controlled, swaying motion by her hovering body, and she was able to keep it against the swollen flesh while massaging it. She took his body with both hands again, and leaned back while she kept her pussy pressed to him, and she stared down at where his cock rubbed against her. Each small movement of her hips sent blissful waves of pleasure from the swollen flesh into her body.

She was dripping. Part of her wanted to be embarrassed at how easily she’d become deliriously aroused, but it was a very small part. The heat had gone to her head, and now all she could think about was the sensation of his cock against her, and how she was rubbing her clit against it. Gods, she really was so very wet.

She raised herself a little higher, and pressed her body forward a little further. The angle pushed Darian’s member against his stomach, so she reached down with one hand and wrapped her fingers around his girth. Darian inhaled sharply, and she let go the instant he did.

“I’m sorry! I-”

“ ... don’t stop,” he said. His breath came out in quiet pants, and his own face was red with blush; it was the first time she’d seen him really blush.

And hearing him beg like that, it would have made her knees buckle if she still had them.

She gripped his shaft in her palm once again, her other hand on his shoulder to hold her hovering torso steady, and she aimed his member away from his body to point it straight at her. So close, so very close, she took a little time rub his cock against her soaked lips, and even prod just barely at her clenching entrance.

“You ... you’re quite the tease.” Darian still hadn’t moved, and she could see it was getting harder for him. Tiny groans slipped into his voice when she nudged his glans against her wet flesh, and his grip against her snake length where he kept his hands was getting tighter. She had put him on that edge of need where, as far as she knew, a man would lose control and start thrusting with reckless abandon.

But Darian did not. He wanted to, she could see it in his flexed arms, his hard and rising stomach, and his pained expression, but he didn’t attack her. Instead, he did not move, not a single inch.

“ ... I am teasing you,” she managed to say. Her, teasing someone, holding their sexual need in her hand literally and figuratively. How she had changed in such a small time since he arrived.

The least she could do was reward him.

She raised her hovering torso a couple inches, just enough to align his member with her, and she started to ease herself down and forward onto him. Darian groaned gently under his breath, but Medusa found she could no longer keep quiet. The sensation of his body opening her and penetrating her, all while she was in control, was intoxicating. Tingling waves of pleasure spread through her core and down into her snake body until the whole of her was shivering. Deeper. She let her body sink down onto the small man until she could feel every last inch of him within her clenching, dripping body.

When she managed to catch her breath and looked at Darian in the face again, she couldn’t help but let out a small, moan-filled giggle. Her breasts, annoyingly large as they were, overwhelmed his chest and pressed into his collar with the odd angle. She pulled back a bit so they could fall to her ribs once more, and with a little distance between them, it gave them both the angle needed to admire each other’s bodies. And she liked how Darian admired her body, eyes glued to her breasts, and where her pussy’s lips were spread open around him. She almost giggled with the euphoria and bliss of it.

“When ... I was young,” she said between quiet moans, “there was a temple to Aphrodite that I visited. One night, I found a man and woman, naked in the garden, touching each other between several statues of the Erotes.” She found a pleasant rhythm that was perfect for running Darian’s hard girth along her tender, swollen insides before pushing further into her, and she exploited it in slow, deep motions. “I was ... fassscinated, and I watched ... couldn’t look away. And after ... what happened, I thought I would never experience thisss...” Her body sank down onto him, further, and she pressed her pelvis toward the man in her coils until she could feel her folds against the base of him. “And ... I really wanted to ... experience this ... sssssslowly ... gently.”

It was like someone else had taken over. The words just came out, and they didn’t even sound like her. Whoever was talking was using a deeper, sultry voice, and they made no effort to hide their hisses.

She pushed her scaled hips forward, along with some of her snake length underneath her. It tightened the coil that circled them both, shrinking the space for her poor, captured human to stand in. It also edged some of her snake length toward him, and where a human woman would have legs, she instead pushed her snake length between Darian’s knees. She was in charge, she was in control, she was doing the thrusting between his legs, and it was blissful Elysium.

She hadn’t even noticed she’d started thrusting harder, faster, but before she knew it, she had tightened her grip on Darian’s hip with one hand, and the nook of his neck with the other. Faster.

Poor Darian. He was trembling slightly, his breathing was shallow, and tiny beads of sweat were starting to form on his chest. His hands had tightened into fists, but he still kept them behind him, bracing his weight against her nearest coil. His usually confident smile was gone, and instead his parted lips and begging eyes made her ache. He must have been so close. So very close.

She stopped.

“Ah ... h-hey...” He almost lifted his hands, but even on the edge of orgasm as she was sure he was, as she was, he managed to stay still. Perfect.

“Hold ... ssssstill.” She leaned back with one hand still on his shoulder, but the other released him and instead reached down to find her clitoris. Swollen and sensitive, it took only the lightest touch to send powerful jolts of sharp pleasure through her core and up into her chest when she grazed it. Darian was still inside her, buried to the hilt with her muscles squeezing on his girth between pleasure waves, but despite all that, he continued to hold still even as she massaged her clit. Her pussy clenched tight on his length, and with how she was leaning back, it made her body shudder and her breasts tremble against her, all on display for Darian’s gaze.

It took little time to bring herself to orgasm. On fire as she was, she’d been teetering on the edge for so long, so only a gentle, loving massage of her clit for a single minute had her cumming. She let go of the swollen flesh, put both hands on Darian’s shoulders, and collapsed forward against him while the orgasm tore through her. She quivered like a leaf, let out quiet mewls mixed with hisses, and hugged Darian tightly to her while she came. She soaked him in her juices, wriggled on him, clenched and squeezed his cock in rhythm with the waves of pleasure that worked through her, and through it all the poor man in her grip held perfectly still.

Eventually she managed to place her hands on his shoulders again, and push herself back so she could look at him once more. Still trembling with orgasm aftershocks, she tried to get her breath before speaking, but each attempt was met with quiet moans.

Darian looked ready to burst.

“You ... must be ... close,” she said.

“You have ... no idea...”

“Ssssorry. I ... really wanted ... to...” To be in control and just have you watch while I cum all over you. Her own thoughts embarrassed her more than the mess of juices she had made on the man.

“It’s ok. And ... wow.” Darian managed to smile at her, but she could see how he grimaced with frustration at being so near.

“ ... you ... you deserve...” She took a deep breath, reached for his hands, and guided them to her scaly hips. His hands were on her now, a man’s hands. There was a single moment of fright again, like a snap of whip on her back, and it made her freeze.

Darian did nothing though, except for smile, and wait. “You sure?”

That damn smile of his melted her into a puddle, and she again fell against his chest and pressed her breasts to him. This time she wrapped her arms underneath his, grabbed his back, and held him to her as much as her to him. With her face buried in his neck, she just held on, and let herself relax against him.

It was the first time she had relaxed in a long, long time.

Darian nudged his cheek against the side of her head, snake hair and all, and started to push his hips against her while using his grip to pull her into him. She mewled softly into his neck with each gentle thrust; everything was still so sensitive and wet, each motion sent another blissful wave of pleasure down through her body, into the tip of her tail.

Then he pushed a little harder, just a little, just enough to make her squeak. His aggression earned another orgasm from her, a smaller one that had her wriggling again on his cock. This time though, each of her little waves of pleasure were met with another thrust from the man, dragging out her orgasm for a few seconds longer, until at last the man stopped.

This time it was his turn to make noise, and he groaned quietly into her ear. He had stopped thrusting, but his hands on her hips kept moving her back and forth in a gentle rhythm. He was shaking too, not as much as her, but with her arms hugging his back, she could feel him shiver lightly as her pussy, still clenching like a vice on his girth, was pushed back and forth an inch by his hands on her hips. He was cumming inside her.

After a few more moments of gentle bliss, he let go of her hips and put his hands back onto the scaled length he was leaning against.

“No, wait. Please ... you can touch me...” She took his hands again, put them back where they were on her hips, and she stood up straight once more before putting her hands on his neck.

“Are you-”

“More,” she said, and she started the ritual once more. She squeezed on his cock, wriggled her body forward to devour it to the hilt, and held him there while she eased herself up and down in a subtle dance. “More.”


~~Darian~~

He woke up before she did. That was understandable he figured, given that she was a snake; she probably spent a lot of her time sleeping or laying about likes snakes do. Half snake. No doubt about the half part.

He smirked at the naked woman. Both of them had fallen asleep on her pile of blankets, and he had fallen asleep in the middle of her coils; she’d left him enough room to fully lay down on the blankets though. And with the sun only thirty minutes into the day, he got to watch the room fill with light and bathe her scaled body in the glow.

Such beautiful green. He reached out with a gentle touch, ran his fingers along the scales of some of the massive length of her snake half, and marveled at the smooth sensation of it on his fingertips. And those bright emerald greens, the patterned blacks, the sand-colored belly scales, it was all so beautiful.

And then of course there was the human half that was laying down on top her nearest coil, only a few feet from him. She was on her side, facing in toward the middle of her circle, and him. The way her snake hair also slept was absolutely adorable, curled up and coiled against her ears, neck, and cheek.

He leaned in closer to inspect her naked body; it was his right for waking up before her, after all. She really didn’t have a single hair on her body, scales for eyebrows, snakes for hair, and smooth pale skin everywhere else until the V of her pelvis, where the snake body devoured her hips and replaced her butt. Her mouth was open a little, and she was drooling a bit too. Better yet, her forked tongue was hanging out of her mouth, and every so often she took a deep breath that made her open her mouth so wide, he could see those massive, curled-back fangs inside.

She was a curvaceous woman, he’d noticed that the moment he met her, but it was a different thing entirely to see curves behind clothes, then see it naked and in your arms. Wide hips, a flat stomach, large breasts. Aphrodite would have bean jealous.

He frowned and grit his teeth. Poseidon had raped her, probably for the very things he was admiring.

But then, that’s why last night had happened the way it did, he thought. She’d taken control, and he’d been more than happy to relinquish it. Images of the curvy, slithering woman jumped from memory into his mind, her hips between his legs, practically dancing on him. And to be circled by dozens of feet of her powerful body through it all, like a trapped and all-too-willing participant. It had been a long time since he’d enjoyed someone’s bed as much, if ever. He was already starting to get excited again.

“Medusa.”

“N ... sssssss.”

“Medusa.”

“Sssssss...”

He chuckled, but did his best to keep it quiet. Gods she was cute. “Medusa, it’s morning.”

After a restful minute of gentle prodding, the sleeping beauty raised her head, and blinked her yellow snake eyes at him.

“I ... what? What ... oh!” She stood upright with a jolt, or as close as she could to standing, and brought both hands up to her mouth with curled knuckles. Her face turned bright red again too.

She really was such a shy creature, Darian thought. A different person had come out last night, very different, someone he had not expected. The one at night was definitely a sexual creature, but this one made him laugh and smile more than anyone had in a long time.

“Good morning.”

“Darian! I ... oh gods I am ... oh gods.”

She looked around for her clothes in panic, but Darian had them, hidden behind his back. Part of him wanted to hold onto them, just to keep her nude, but the morning after sex with a shy woman like her was not the time for such mischievousness; that could come later. For now, he held them out to her, and Medusa scooped them up while trying to keep her back to him.

“I’m so embarrassed. Last night, I ... we-”

“Nothing to be embarrassed about.” He got up, still naked himself, and stepped a little closer to her. “You are a very, very seductive woman.”

“I ... I am not!”

He smirked at her. “Extremely seductive. I loved every moment of it.”

That brightened her up a bit. She’d managed to get both the wraps back onto her waist and around her breasts, and had turned to face him again, but she was still covering half her face with her hands.

“ ... really?”

Gods, such a deadly and magnificent creature was such a shy and timid thing? It hurt that tragedy had befallen her. He wanted to pity her and tell her what Poseidon did wasn’t her fault, that wounds heal with time, but he stopped himself. She didn’t need any of that shit dumped on her. And she was doing fine getting over her past without his meaningless platitudes.

“Really.” He smiled – his one true talent – and stepped in close to her. “I half expected you to coil up around me until I couldn’t move, and take complete control.”

She shook her head like it was the most absurd and ridiculous thought in the world, but he saw that glimmer of intrigue in her eye. And of course, her snake hair laid her true feelings out for him to read with ease; they had all started slithering in his general direction with flickering tongues.

“ ... next time?” she said. Her voice had lowered to a quiet whisper, as if speaking in a hushed voice would hide the meaning of her request.

“Definitely.”

Medusa finally lowered her hands, and her shy grin took over. She leaned forward a little whenever she slithered, and she leaned forward then while she circled him in a slow, determined path. It wasn’t long before he was again surrounded by thirty feet of her powerful snake body.

He’d forgotten he was nude, and she was getting more than an eyeful. But he was also shameless, and he stood there with his ever faithful cocky smile. He knew what he looked like, a young man, small of frame, hardened to almost nothing but muscle, and not a single scar on his body except for the mark of his forehead.

And the snake woman was looking at him with hungry eyes.

“Now?” he said.

She nodded. “I ... I have much time to make up for.”

The silver lining; with an ageless life comes second chances.

“I’ll try, but you d...”

The telltale beat of a wings forced him to look up. Just a soft thing on the air, but they’d grown louder, and louder, and now the raised sun cast long shadows from the bodies that approached along the sky. Darian looked up, but the sun would not let him see.

He didn’t need to. Three pairs of wings beat louder, and louder, and as the bodies grew louder, his smile faded. He knew these wings.

“What ... harpies?” Medusa said.

“No. Worse.”

The gorgon hissed. More than hiss, she put her torso in front of him, and raised it up high. A snake ready to strike.

Before him, the three flyers came down to the stone in as slow and pretentious a flight as he was sure they could muster. They wore robes of white that flowed with the wind of their white wings, and their sandal-wearing feet touched down as a feather. Upon their heads, snake hair sat not unlike Medusa, but their snakes were dead, corpses on their scalp. The see-through robes exposed beautiful bodies, but their faces were mangled and distorted with unnatural age and hard, grooved skin like a Nile crocodile.

Medusa hissed again, but Darian could see the surprise on her face. More monsters. For all the horrible fates that had befallen her, she had spent her life in near-solitude from all. Her eyes were wide, and her tail was shivering with adrenaline and anxiousness.

Darian, on the other hand, just groaned. “Even here you find me. Was the attack on the ship not enough?”

The Erinyes looked at each other, confused. Maybe it wasn’t them? He found the thought hard to believe.

One of them snarled, spoke in some twisted tongue of slurring sounds, and the others returned the alien sounds. Then, with one hand, each of them held out before him their masters.

Each of the flying monsters carried in their right hand a large spool of thread, and from the thread dangled a mask. Metal, carved with lines of chaos and insanity no artisan could craft, and each mask was strapped to a skull. The skulls were not crafted, but actual bone. The masks’ metal mouths were parted, their eyes open, and through their eyes and mouths Darian could only see a glowing white, soft, and dripping from their orifices like heavy mist. A very familiar white.

“It has been over a year,” one of the masks said, “since we have looked your way.” A woman’s voice, but layered with an inhuman rumble that filled the air. Darian imagined the spirits of Tartarus would sound similar.

“Bullshit. Barely over a week ago and the sea, sky, and everything in it struck the ship I was on. You’re telling me that wasn’t you?” He slipped over Medusa’s coils, and tightened his fingers to fists as he approached the Erinyes. The horrific women looked at him, but they were just messengers. It was the dangling, metal masks they held he wanted to smash.

Another mask cut in. “We have-”

“Fuck you! If it wasn’t you, then you told Poseidon and Zeus where to find me!”

One of the winged women used her free hand to draw a sword when he got too close, a glorious thing with a handle that looked similar to a spool of thread. But it didn’t strike him, instead it held the mask in front of it, and each time the mask spoke, the glowing white of its eyes and mouth glowed brighter.

“We have left you to your delusions, child, and have spoke to no one of them. Zeus and his siblings know not where you are. And they do not care.”

Of course they don’t. Darian reached for his sword, but rage had made him forget: he was naked. It was probably for the best, before his anger got him into more trouble.

“Then what? What attacked me? Why are you here? What-”

“Enough!” The Fates spoke as a triumvirate, and the glow of their masks casts Darian and Medusa under a white light so bright it was blinding. “We have not come to apologize to the likes of you!” Their voices grew in volume until it was a choir of death, and for a brief moment, Darian thought he was hearing the voice of that giant sea creature again. So loud, he could feel the ground vibrate. He couldn’t see anymore, not with how the glow of the masks grew brighter, and brighter, until his eyes were watering and he had to close them. Their voices grew to a shriek, earsplitting, painful, and Darian fell to a knee before covering his ears and closing his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, Medusa had lowered her torso to hover next to him, even with her hands covering her ears. They barely knew each other and she was already ready to fight mythic entities with him. It made him smirk; she was as stupid as he was. But at least the masks of the Fates had grown silent. The Erinyes were undisturbed by the death choir; they truly were disgusting abominations from the Underworld.

Darian gritted his teeth and stood up. “Then what do you want?”

“We have need of you, Bellerophontes.”

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