Page 60 of Meduso
Their gazes shifted from Meduso to me, as I held my weapons in both hands.
“You!? You did this!?” Stheno screamed.
“M-Meduso!?” Euryale cried.
“You planned this all along! I should have never trusted you!” Stheno irately declared.
I heard the rage behind their voices. “I swear it was an accident!” I backed further up, away from them.
“Lies!” Stheno howled as she glided towards me, lunging at me with her claws raised.
I quickly placed Hades’s invisibility cap on my head. The second it was on, Stheno sliced at the air, completing missing me. The gorgon moved back, realizing I had disappeared, her eyes darting in all corners of the cave, unsure where I had gone.
“Coward! Show yourself!” Stheno demanded with a heavy screech.
Euryale, on the other hand, was doing her best to cope with all that had happened. She kneeled on the ground with a waterfall of tears flowing from her eyes, howling in pain. “Perseus! How could you do this!?” she wept. “My poor brother!”
I had no time to respond to Euryale. Despite my deepest sympathies for her, I knew that a single syllable from my lips would only reveal my location to Stheno. I had no choice but to remain silent and tiptoe out of the cave with Meduso’s head in the tote. I would not dare look back at the disheartened Euryale.
Yet, in thinking about how Stheno and Euryale were also suffering from their brother’s death, the empathy ate at my heart, devouring me from limb to limb.
My tears began to fall. I could not tell if they were invisible to the ground they struck or not while I was wearing the invisibility cap. Still, I deeply cried while heading straight for the small spring beyond Euryale’s garden, where Pegasus was tied to a tree. Right now, my only destination and means of escape from this situation was just as Meduso had revealed, which was to fly south of here on Pegasus.
This was the moment I finally had a second to breathe, now that I was safe from the clutches of Stheno and Euryale. A moment to think on all that had transpired. And with it came a fury of tears and curses against the gods. I threw my helmet off in despair. “Why!? Why did this have to end this way? Meduso… I’m sorry…” I pleaded with myself. “Meduso was everything, my sun, my moon, myKatasterismoi.” I pressed my head into Pegasus’s side in defeat before falling to my knees. “I did everything I could to protect you. I swear!” I cried to my lover.
Pegasus curled his neck to wrap his head around me, rubbing his snout against my face in a form of comfort. The horse could sense the sorrow overcoming me.
After taking a few minutes to compose myself, I rose to my feet, wiping the tears from my eyes. “We must proceed onward, Pegasus. Meduso wouldn’t want us to cry ourselves to death. No. He would want us to live and fight for the greater good.”
I stepped towards the tree Pegasus was strapped to and reached for Hephaestus’s sword to unsheathe it. With the blade, I cut the rope to release the white stallion. Hopping on the horse’s back, I clicked my feet against Pegasus’s side, motioning for him to take off. “Come on, boy. We must depart,” I whispered to him.
As we took off, I could hear shrieking cries coming from behind me. I recognized the voice it came from. It was Euryale’s. Her bellowing wails over her dead brother echoed for miles. It was a noise that I knew would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Pegasus and I were still in flight for a long period of time. Although I had no idea where I needed to head to, I still knew exactly what I was looking for. I recalled Meduso’s recent vision from the Fates, and so I scanned the sea beneath me searching for some indication of trepid waters.
As I searched around, something peculiar finally caught my eye. It was a gargantuan fin of a sea monster, synchronously slithering with the undulations of the water. I shifted my gaze upward to pinpoint where it was heading. In the far distance, I could make out a faint structure. Upon flying closer to it, I soon recognized that it was a rocky cliff overlooking the sea. I rubbed the horse’s mane, signaling for Pegasus to descend. Everything was now coming into full view. I could see that it was not just a bare cliff the monster was targeting, but a woman chained to it, just as I had anticipated. The very same woman from Meduso’s vision. The alluring prey of this vile, odious predator.
I squeezed Pegasus with my knees, leading the majestic stallion to glide directly toward the imprisoned woman. As we narrowed in, the massive tentacles of the sea creature made an appearance. Their billowing scales wafting a rancid smell in the air was enough to make me queasy. However, I kept my mind focused, ignoring the foul stench around me.
“Help! Please!!!” the woman mercifully cried, tugging against the chains with all her might. Her wrists raw and swollen from the sheer number of times she made a desperate effort to escape. An effort that was in vain.
The prodigious creature’s head rose out of the water snarling, displaying its countless sharp fangs. The blustering sound from the monster pierced through the ears of everyone within a mile radius from it. The female mortal again cried out in horror, begging for her life.
The massive face of the monster moved closer to her. She twisted her head to the side and clenched her eyes shut to avoid the horrendous sight before her. The woman knew her life would be over in a moment. Her fists tightened, imagining the worst possible pain that would overcome her just before her death.
Above her, I reached my hand into my bag, pulling out Meduso’s head. Pegasus swept right in between the woman and the monster. I flashed the head of my lover right in line with the vision of the vicious creature. As the sea monster stared directly into the bright flaxen eyes of the beheaded gorgon, it froze, unable to create any sort of noise or motion. The lower half of its body hardened, and the limestone quickly rose up the length of the monster’s torso, eventually reaching its face. The stoned corpse of the foul creature plummeted into the sea, submerging to the bottom of the ocean floor.
The chained woman still held her eyes shut, but slowly opened to peek out of them, shocked that she was still alive and could only hear the crashing of the waves against the cliffs from the sinking of the monster.
I hopped off Pegasus and broke right through the woman’s chains with Hephaestus’s blade, thereby freeing her. She rubbed her wrists, still aching from the tightness of the metal cuffs that held her captive. “You saved my life, warrior! I cannot thank you enough. Tell me. Who are you?”
“I am Perseus of Seriphos. Son of Zeus.”
Her eyes widened at the mention of the King of the Gods. “Well, hero, you have my eternal gratitude. I am Andromeda, Princess of Aethiopia.”
I raised my brow. “You are the princess of this land and yet you were barbarically chained to the side of the cliff as a feast for that sea monster?” I asked in complete disbelief.
“Yes. Poseidon cursed our land when my mother, Queen Cassiopeia, claimed that I was the most beautiful woman across the seas. She boasted that I was more captivating than even Poseidon’s nymphs. Because of my mother’s vanity, Poseidon sent this monster to stalk and wreak havoc across the coast of Aethiopia. The monster ravaged many men and women. No matter the number of sacrifices that were made, the sea creature still lingered. My father and mother sought counsel from an oracle who informed them that we would be freed from the monster only if I was offered up to it. I resisted this, and tried to run away, but was eventually found. They forced and dragged me to the cliffside against my own free will. But you, Perseus, have saved me! And not just me, all of Aethiopia as well.”
