Chapter 3

~~Darian~~

The journey was not as easy as he’d been hoping. It was a fool’s hope to think it’d be a casual stroll down in the country, but still, he had pictured himself in a simple tunic with Medusa beside him, walking at leisure wherever they desired. Instead, he was weighed down in armor with provisions and a bedroll strapped to his back, not to mention a shield, a sword, and a spear.

He looked at the beautiful creature next to him, his one saving grace on this fool’s quest. Medusa kept her snake eyes on the horizon, and her bow at an easy place to draw by her shoulder; he didn’t need to teach her to be watchful, she’d long figured out how to do that on her own. Maybe she wouldn’t mind if he strapped his packs to some of her snake length, like a pack-mule gorgon? The idea made him chuckle under his breath, but he kept it to himself.

“Not a sssoul for miles,” Medusa said. She hissed a lot less than she used to, but every so often her long tongue would get stuck.

“Traveling has largely gone unchanged since you were last here. People still hate roads and a take boat when they can, with roads as a last resort. No one travels far without a nearby city to rest at an inn. So out here, in the open country, it’s just us, the animals, and our quarry.”

“Are we hunting this Chimera?”

“In a sense. I doubt he’ll just decide to help us after all. We’ll probably have to force him,” he said. The idea of forcing the Chimera to do anything seemed difficult, or impossible. But that, he admitted to no one but the quiet of his mind, was part of the allure. The last time he’d dealt with the beast, it had become an epic battle, one that had nearly killed both him and Pegasus. So why was he looking forward to it? Much as he hated the Fates, he was still addicted to the thrill of an epic quest.

He knew he’d have to offer the Chimera to join him in his future meeting with Athena as a bargaining tool. The beast had just as much reason to hate the gods as he did after all. But if he did that, the animal could very well compromise the real purpose of the meeting: helping Medusa. He gritted his teeth and repeated it several times in his head. Help Medusa, help Medusa. The meeting with Athena is for her.

“How did you defeat him when you fought him?”

“I smashed the side of his face in with a rock ... after I’d stabbed him a dozen times.”

She turned her head to stare at him, as did her snake hair. He shrugged and gave her his cocky smile.

“This Chimera sounds ... terrifying.”

“Yeap.”

“And immortal.”

“Maybe.”

“B ... but! But you are a hero blessed by the Fates, and I am no weakling. We can defeat him, I’m sure. I’m sure...” Medusa’s voice started to waver, and she unhooked her bow to hold it ready in both hands. She was nervous.

He wanted to tell her to brighten up, everything would be fine, but it’d be a lie. This fight was liable to get him killed if he made even the smallest mistake.

A smile crept onto his face. He had to look away to hide it, and force it down. But images of his battle with the beast danced in his mind, and made him smile yet again.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine! Fine, just...” He knocked himself in the temple a couple of times and shook his head a few more. “Fine.”

It took a day of walking, but not long after dawn of the next day, the grassy hills and short forests broke way into a rocky basin. A huge crater as wide as Medusa’s whole island, and as deep as the mountain, was cut into the plains as if Gaia herself had scooped it open like a child playing with sand. Few trees and only some shrubs grew along the edge of the massive crater, and they stopped all together after thirty or forty feet deep into its awaiting maw. Nothing but rock waited below.

“That ... is a huge hole in the ground,” Medusa said.

He couldn’t help but laugh.

“I remembered the Chimera saying he came from this land, deep in the earth. I’d seen this crater before when Pegasus and I explored this region. I remembered ... that.” He pointed down to the base of the crater, deep and deeper into its shadow. There was a cave.

“We-we’re going down there?”

“I am. I ... want to tell you to stay here, but you won’t.”

Medusa slithered closer to him and shook her head, eyes wide and frowning. “I won’t!”

“And it’d be really selfish of me to ask you stay behind, in case you got hurt.”

“It would!”

He put up his hands in surrender. “Alright alright, just stay behind me.” At least she’d agree to that.

The crater’s side, barely more than a cliff face, had enough of a slope with various flat steps that they could more-or-less walk down. Each step had to be careful, any mistake would mean falling down a mountain side. After spending as long as he had working in a quarry, the touch of stone on his hands was oddly comforting. He’d hated working in that quarry, but he was good at it, and it’d been, despite the curse of it all, a nice distraction from the life he’d left behind. Forced to leave behind.

It took time to reach the bottom, and the path took them down in a spiral around the crater. Darian kept looking behind him to see if Medusa was handling the slopes well, but he found himself surprised. Her long body had better grip on the rock and stone than his sandals did. He really needed to stop worrying about her so much, before his worry got him killed, looking behind when he should have been looking forward.

The lower they went down, the hotter it got. The ridiculous armor the Fates arranged for him kept him cool — surprising given its black color — but Medusa was another matter. Again he was worrying about her, and he glanced back over his shoulder to see if the heat was getting to her. He slipped.

“Darian!”

“Fine, fine.” Hating himself for his stupidity, for doing what he just told himself to not do, he leaned over the edge to watch the rocks he knocked over fall. They made more than a little noise, cracking against stone and knocking other rocks around to only repeat the chain of unwanted noise, all the way down to the bottom of the pit. He gulped, and waited.

Nothing, not a rumble or a groan. He would have wiped the sweat off his brow if it wasn’t for his helmet.

It took another fifteen minutes of slow descent to reach the bottom. The cave was natural, and low-hanging. He’d figured the monster would have lived somewhere with a much taller ceiling, but the cave was only four feet tall. He couldn’t fight in there; not that he’d want to. It was pitch black in its depths.

He looked at Medusa, and she looked back at him with the same surprise and a shrug.

“He can’t be a very big creature, living in there,” she said.

It took all his will to not burst into laughter.

The area around them was several hundred feet wide, circular, a good place for a fight. And there would be a fight. The ground beneath him was hard stone covered in a shallow layer of pebbles, making each step both slippery and brutal to fall on. The edges of the crater were sloped upward, so he might be able to use it as a wall for some maneuvers. The sun was starting to enter the canyon’s eye, so he’d have several hours of light if needed. He took stock of anything and everything he thought he might need, and pointed at them with his spear for his mental checklist.

He looked at his spear in hand, long, shaft of the same irregular color as the rest of his equipment, with a coil of silver moving down its body. He looked at his shield, the silver thread drawn onto its face, and checked its weight and balance against his arm; not big enough for a phalanx, but more than enough to defend himself in one-on-one combat. Stabbing the spear shaft into the ground, he reached over to draw his sword, and took a moment to look at the grip. It too looked like thread, and his fingers had good traction against the grip of the short blade. Short enough for a Spartan warrior’s more upfront and direct combat. He sheathed the sword, removed his pack, tossed it to the side, and removed his helmet from his head. He held the glorious, disgusting thing in his hands, and turned it over to look at the beautiful silver etchings in the obsidian design. It exposed only his eyes, and a vertical slit down the center to show a sliver of his mouth when worn. Atop its crown it displayed a great white crest, made of something Darian did not believe to be from a natural animal. He put the helmet back on, got to a knee, and touched the ground beneath him. The canyon bed was loose rocks, pebbles, and jagged harsh gravel. The air was dry, and deep in the crater, it was dead silent.

Images of what he would do flooded his mind, where he could roll, where his greaves would protect him against the rough terrain, and where they would not. Where he could sustain a blow with his shield, and where he could not. He breathed deep his battlefield, and stood back up.

“Medusa, I’m going to handle this fight, if I have to fight. Stay back, and—”

“I know, I know, don’t intervene.”

He turned to look at her, brow quirked. “What? No, of course intervene! If I’m about to die, I expect you to save me!”

He smiled — best in the world — and she erupted into giggles. Such a lovely sound to hear from a beautiful woman.

“Darian, this is no time for jokes! I...” She went silent.

Pebbles, rocks, and the grinding of stone against them. It started quiet, just a bit of background noise, but it grew closer, and closer, until the echo of rocks being knocked aside filled the cave before them. The crater held the sound around their ears, and soon it was like listening to a huge wagon fighting against the rocks of a cliff, dragging stone to scrape stone.

Shifting. Skin on rock. He stepped away from the cave entrance, readied his shield upon his left arm, and held the spear as a staff in his right. How long had it been since he’d stood on death’s door like this, and just waited for it to come to him? His blood was already pumping, his fingers felt cold and tingly, and his toes flexed down against his sandals. It’d been a long time since he’d had a good fight.

How quickly he went from dreading the fight, to savoring it. He couldn’t stop smiling.

A hand came out of the shadow of the low cave. A human-looking hand, but Darian knew better. Another hand emerged, and the beast followed them in a slow, cumbersome motion to ease his towering body out of the small hole. Then a head came out, a lion’s head, with two enormous horns behind each ear that coiled back into a magnificent display of animal power. It wasn’t the lion’s head Darian was worried about though, it was the thing wearing it.

The Chimera managed to pull his body free of his hole, and stand tall. The sight made Medusa gasp, and Darian took a step back. He gulped.

A giant. Not a tall human, or a wide human, but an actual giant. The Chimera stood at least ten feet tall, tawny skin not unlike Darian’s, but his skin was covered in more scars than Darian could count. He was naked except for the huge lion pelt on his head and back, and some animal furs for a loincloth. His hair was brown, long, as was his beard, and his body was a slab of muscle, defined and huge. A large, nasty gash cut into the brow and cheek of his left eye, but the eye itself remained, and it stared at him.

A long tattoo of a snake rode the brute’s massive right arm.

The giant looked between him and Medusa, and grumbled a low noise under his breath that Darian could feel vibrate the earth. “ ... Bellerophontes.” He reached up, took one of the goat horns that stood from the lion’s head, and pulled it back to let the pelt dangle behind him and around his neck where its lion arms were tied like string.

Well, he remembers you Darian, so that’s a plus, right?

“Chimera.”

“I had hoped to slumber beneath the Earth for an age, until you were old or dead, and I could roam the surface once more.” His voice was gentle, but also gravely, and deep enough Darian could not help but picture the ocean and its black depths. Hearing him speak surfaced dozens of harsh, terrifying, thrilling memories for Darian, and all at once, the small warrior felt like he was standing before something ancient. Ancient as stone.

Darian gave a quick glance back at Medusa; her jaw had dropped, and she was staring up at the beast. It was probably the first time she’d had to look up at someone in one hundred years.

“Sorry,” he said, “but hey, you’re alive. That’s good, isn’t it?”

The Chimera growled again, just enough that Darian could see a couple fangs in his mouth. His teeth were big, like a lion’s.

“No thanks to you.” He ran a couple of his fingers down his face along the gash over his left eye.

Darian found himself smiling. This was like talking to an old friend that you parted badly with. A falling out that ended with a battle. There was something enjoyable in that comparison.

“I came here to ask for your help, Chimera.”

He expected a laugh, or a smile, or some sort of human response. But then that was part of the problem of course, the beast wasn’t human. Instead, the Chimera stood there and glared at him like a lion stalking prey.

“Where is your companion?” He made a slow, sweeping gesture that ended with his palm open to Medusa.

“Pegasus is ... that’s...” Darian stabbed his spear’s shaft into the sand and glared up at the giant. “That’s part of the reason I’m asking for your help. Pegasus has been captured.”

The giant stared at him, eyes as dark as Darian’s ebony shield, anger and animal savagery on his face. He started to pace, left and right with titanic, slow steps. Each step was like watching a hulking wall of meat and power move, and despite it, the beast made each step with dead silence. The giant kept his eyes on Darian as he walked, and he snarled something inhuman before licking one of his fangs.

“You almost killed me. But you expect my help?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It’s a favor for the Fates.”

The Chimera shook his head, and clicked his fangs across his teeth. “They do not concern me.”

“But the gods do.”

The ancient beast growled and took a step forward. “What of it?”

Darian took a step back. “If I do this, the Fates arrange a meeting with me and Athena, to try and reverse her curse,” he said, and he tilted his head in Medusa’s direction. “I want to help her as much as I want to save Pegasus. If you come along, you get a crack at Athena once we’re done with her. After Medusa and I have talked to her.”

He had no idea how to kill a god. But maybe the Chimera did.

“Tempting.” The brute took another step forward. “I accept. On one condition.”

Darian took another step back. “Yeah, what’s that?”

The giant’s foot swung out like a monstrous hammer. He heard the air split as the titanic limb moved toward him, nothing more than a blur of speed and mass. Darian only had enough time to bring his shield to bear before the monster’s foot collided with it, and sent him flying. He was lighter than most men, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to get sent flying through the air. Ten, twenty, thirty feet he flew until his back smacked against the slope of sand and stone. He laid there against the cliff face, frozen with shock, before his body slid back to the earth and fell to his knees. He couldn’t breath. Pain tore through him once the shock faded. His ears were ringing. The shield on his arm was still vibrating. He’d dropped his spear.

“Defeat me.”

Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. He grabbed at the dirt with his free hand and tried to get his bearings. Everything was moving in a blur, the world was spinning, and his stomach was already fighting to upturn its contents. Get a grip, Darian. Nothing is moving, you’re just dizzy. Compensate, adjust, adapt.

“Darian!” Medusa said.

“I’m good, I’m good.”

For the first time, he heard the Chimera laugh. It was a powerful, boisterous laugh, and it shook the walls with its deep volume.

“It is a different battle when you’re on the ground, little human.” The Chimera traded his light, stalking steps for the stomping, quaking steps of a giant, powerful enough that Darian could feel the vibrations get stronger the closer the beast got.

When the giant made another kick, this time for Darian’s face, the small warrior managed to roll to the side. In the spinning motion of the roll, he got a heel into the dirt to keep footing while he drew his sword, slashed out as he moved by, and rolled forward again onto his feet. A splatter of blood marked the stones, and lined the edge of Darian’s sword.

He expected a scream, or at least a roar from the giant. All he got was a grunt.

“You were always a fast, tiny thing,” the Chimera said, and he walked after Darian with all the hurriedness of a tortoise. A long gash lined his shin, and dark blood dripped from it onto the monster’s bare feet, but for all Darian could tell, the giant didn’t even notice.

Darian took a deep breath, and looked at the sword in his hand. A xiphos blade, one-handed and elegant in its simplicity, gleamed in the sun. A beautiful blade, made to sit on display in a king’s throne room, not for the battlefield. But the sight of blood on its edge was splendid, poetic, and it fueled him. For just a split moment, looking at the bleeding sword, it was like looking at exactly what he was meant to be: a handsome warrior, fighting monsters, going to battle, for glory and to live immortal in the tales of Greece.

He could see the Fates’ threads around his hands and feet, making him dance, and he did not care.

White started to blur the edges of his vision again. It gave him focus, narrowed his attention to his goal, and demanded all his energy and power be driven into his objective. Glowing white eyes that marked him a child of the Fates and their games. One on one, him against a giant, without the wings of his old friend to carry him? Sounded like a challenge.

He jumped straight up, body soaring through the air, landed onto the Chimera’s chest, and stabbed downward.

The sword cut cleanly down into the beast’s shoulder — what a ridiculously sharp blade — and pulled down through muscle. Blood gushed over the blade and onto Darian’s greaves where his feet were planted against the giant’s stomach. He pushed himself away, flipped back through the air, and landed with perfect grace. Adrenaline pumped through him, made his fingers tingle and his breathing quicken. Time slowed down. The taste of battle was on his tongue once again.

The Chimera took a step back from the unexpected assault, and he patted his wound with his good arm. But, it only took a few seconds for the wound to close on its own. The cut was still there, red with blood, but the bleeding had stopped, and when the giant shook his arm about to test it, Darian could already tell the bastard’s wound was mostly healed. Killing a giant was no easy task.

“Another scar,” the Chimera said. He cracked a small grin, enough to expose one of his animal fangs. “White eyes.”

Darian bolted forward. He was fast, fast enough that he left a cloud trail of dirt behind him, and when he threw his weight down into a heel, he skidded forward underneath the beast. The Chimera reached down to try and catch him, but Darian slipped underneath his hands and got behind him. Darian swung the sword at the monster’s leg from behind, speed and weight into the slash. It was enough to pierce the brute’s skin and leave another gash.

The giant turned, and Darian rolled with it, barely low enough to get underneath a swing of the Chimera’s fist. Focus, dodge, underneath, stay close, slide on the ground. The Chimera kicked at him, and Darian jumped over it before landing on his knees and rolling underneath a following kick.

He could do this. He didn’t need Pegasus. He could chop this guy down like an axe to a tree. He could—

Everything went black. The ringing in his head increased a thousand fold. He remembered a fist coming down at him, and him bringing his shield up, but the brute force of the impact had smashed the shield down against his body and helmet. He was squashed into the ground like a bug.

“Hold still.” The Chimera took a single step toward him, raised a leg, and brought it down.

Darian managed to bring his shield up — he had no idea where his sword was anymore — and braced against the giant’s foot with both hands. He might as well have been trying to stop an avalanche. His arms started shaking the instant the monster started putting weight down against him, and Darian could feel his armor grinding against the stones underneath him.

“Heroes are meant to die,” the Chimera said, and he leaned his weight onto his foot. The bastard must have weighed almost two thousand pounds, and Darian could feel his bones threaten to break trying to keep the beast from crushing him under his own shield.

A familiar thud of sound eased the weight. Only when the giant removed his foot did Darian realize that he hadn’t been breathing, and he started panting with desperation when pressure against his back and arms was gone. It was like someone had lifted a boulder from his body.

When he finally managed to look up, he could see an arrow sticking out of the giant’s chest. And then another, and another. Each sank inches deep into the Chimera’s chest, and each earned a grown of pain and frustration from the huge beast.

“L-leave him alone!” Medusa said. “We d-d-don’t need to fight!” The gorgon had drawn her bow, and she’d fire several shots straight into the giant. When her arrows did nothing to hinder him though, Darian could see her jaw drop open and her eyes widen. She looked terrified.

“Serpent.” The Chimera roared, an actual roar, loud enough that Darian could hear it through the choir of pain in his head. He ripped the arrows from his chest, threw their bloodied and ruined shafts to the ground, and started to walk toward her.

The whole situation had gone from bad to a nightmare in a single moment. She’s trying to save you from dying, you stupid man. Get up. Get up! Darian rolled onto his knees, forced himself to breathe, ignored the cracked ribs and the concussion, and just moved. Do something you stupid, stupid man, before the only thing you care about in this world gets killed.

He slammed his shield into the giant’s leg. His weight was barely enough to even grab the giant’s attention, but barely enough was good enough. The Chimera turned around with a snort, reached down, and plucked Darian up like a toy, fingers around his neck. For a second, Darian thought for sure he’d been hiding his sword behind his back, and he was going to stab the Chimera in the neck. Or maybe he’d fallen on his spear and had grabbed the tip, hidden it in his palm, and was going to drive it into the Chimera’s eye.

But he didn’t have any of that, just a shield, and the Chimera was more than happy to yank it off his arm and throw it to the side. It was a really stupid plan, but at least he was focused on him again and not Medusa.

“Enough, Bellerophontes.”

The savage threw him, hard, and sent him colliding into the solid stone mouth of the cave the giant had been sleeping in. Darian flopped against the curve of stone like a fish before falling to the dirt. This time, he didn’t get up. He tried, pushed his hands against the dirt, but his muscles refused to lift him, as if the weight of mountains sat on his shoulders. Pain had blurred into a weird storm of highs and lows, each striking their own chord of misery, each knocking the wind out of him. And the Chimera was marching toward him.

“Your serpent friend can wait then, if you are so eager to die.”

He coughed up blood. The taste of it on his tongue was hilarious. How long had it been since he’d tasted his own blood? Probably the last time he fought the Chimera. The metal taste made him smirk, and he gave the giant the same smirk as the Chimera approached him.

The best smirk in the world.

The Chimera snarled down at him. “You mock me? Fine.” The giant put his foot out, and raised it. He was going to crush Darian’s head like a grape.

Fitting, Darian supposed. He’d crushed the giant’s face with a boulder after all. Gods, he really wanted to get up and save the day, to save Medusa, even if he died in the process. That would be the end he’d prefer.

He smiled at the ground, a small smile no one else could see. He’d known her for such a small time.

A loud whip snap, a blur, and a harsh wind sent the Chimera flying to the side. Darian didn’t see what happened, but when he looked to the side, the huge giant of muscle and scars was on a knee, and a massive crack had been made into the stone of the crater where he’d struck the wall.

“ ... wha...” Darian raised his head, and stared.

Medusa slithered between the two of them. Her snake hair had grown into a massive mane of giant pythons. Her neck had spread out into gigantic scales and the crown of a cobra. She was still wearing her clothes, but he could see that no human skin remained on her body; it was all scales. Her hands held immense claws, and her head had distorted into the long snout of a snake, but warped and gnarled with a hint of a human’s face.

“You will not touch him!”

That voice. Darian blinked at the giant snake creature, and shook his head, which of course sparked massive pain in his skull. Her voice was double layered, the soft woman’s voice he knew, and a monstrous, powerful voice layered on top. Like someone had taken a snake and given them the voice of a titan, the second layer of sound shook him to his core, awe-inspiring and terrifying.

“Serpent...” The Chimera pushed himself up to his feet, tilted his head to the side until Darian heard the crack from his neck, reached behind his shoulder to grab the lion head, and placed it back upon his skull.

He didn’t know she was Medusa, or probably who Medusa even was. Not that it mattered, they needed him alive; he was no good to them as a statue.

Medusa raised herself higher, and higher. With still twenty feet of her snake body on the ground, she could raise her head well above the Chimera, and she looked down at him with predatory snake eyes.

“We assssked for your help, not a fight!”

Her snake mouth had trouble with words, he could hear it, but when the words came out, her voice made Darian’s spine shiver. He remembered how her mouth had opened, exposed her giant fangs, and had devoured a boar the same as any snake would. He remembered how she transformed when she turned people to stone. To see her transformed in front of him now, so close, defending him, he could see all the details of her monstrous body. It made him tremble.

“You were a fool if you did not expect one,” the Chimera said. He leaned forward, and charged. His steps tore into the ground, destroyed earth and shredded it with the inhuman speed the hulking monster unleashed. Dashing forward, each step made the ground shake, and Darian blinked twice at the sight of the gravel around him vibrating.

“Medusa, get out of—”

Medusa charged into the giant. And instead of getting knocked back, she knocked him back and held on. Their hands locked, but it was the gorgon who pushed him back further and further, massive snake length gripping along the ground, until the brute was pinned against the crater wall. Trapped with his back to the cliff face, he wasn’t able to stop the enormous snakes on Medusa’s head, and a dozen of the long serpents snapped out at the giant. They bit into him, pulled and pushed against his huge muscles, and tore flesh open with their struggles. When he tried to use his bigger hands to overpower hers, her snake hair wrapped around his wrists and pulled his hands away.

The Chimera roared into her face, ripped one of his hands clear of her claws, tightened it into a fist, and drove it into the side of her skull. It was hard enough Darian could hear the impact, and it sent the gorgon down to the ground. The giant jumped, pounced on her, and mounted her before he started punching against her body. Each punch made a sickening thud of bone to flesh and scales.

She glared up at him, her eyes glowed yellow — but then stopped. She must have remembered he was useless to them dead. Darian almost called out to tell her to stone him anyway, but she braced a dozen feet of her thick snake body against the ground and rolled the two of them over before pushing him from her. When the beast tried to punch her again, she backed away, and started to slither around him in slow circles.

The Chimera kept his eyes on Medusa, but Darian could see a smile on his face, a smile he recognized. The dozens of teeth marks on his skin healed, but they also scarred, and joined what must have been centuries of battles. The creature’s skin was a canvas of history and death.

He charged again, making the ground quake like a rampaging buffalo, and he pointed his head down enough so the huge horns of his animal pelt stood up like a crown. Medusa caught them, but with the direction and force of the giant, she might as well have been run down by a minotaur.

Medusa screeched down at the giant when he collided into her chest, but she didn’t let him overtake her. She sank her claws into his chest and arms, and the two of them rolled over each other and skidded along the ground. Scales tore off, blood streaked where they left a crater of destruction, and the sounds of animals roaring and screaming filled Darian’s ears; all coming from Medusa and the Chimera.