PROLOGUE
North African Island Group, Realm of Hades, 1545 BC

   In the caves of a North African island far beyond the Greek empire in the ancient days, there existed three horrible monsters whose gaze brought a swift and painful death to any who trespassed on their island. These monsters were known in both history and mythology as the Gorgons: three sisters of horrid power that brought hundreds of men to their deaths! However, on this day, death was brought to the one known as Medusa, beheaded by Perseus. As the story and estimates go, this myth has never been fully explained. Throughout history, this battle had been nothing more than a few lines in a paragraph depicting Perseus's victory over the Gorgon Medusa. No other recorded accounts have explained what became of Medusa's head or of the two other Gorgons, (Stheno and Euryale) at the time of her death. The story, as told by Medusa, will now be revealed…

* * *

   Over 3,000 years ago (roughly the time of 1545 BC), a horrendous murder took place! The Gorgon sisters stood in shock and revulsion having witnessed the brutal slaying of Medusa, their Gorgon sister. A large blade aimed from Medusa's back landed a brutal strike from over her right shoulder, severing three snakes from her mane of serpents and blood vessels in her neck. Hot red blood exploded into the air spraying the stone walls of the cave entrance. The severed snakes writhed, coiled and ceased moving. Medusa reached up her right hand to keep her head on her shoulders. On her face was a look of pain and shock. The Gorgon tried to turn and face her attacker but was not afforded the opportunity. From the left side, the blade sliced through her neck, making the wound uneven and jagged. Her head was then pulled off of her shoulders and disappeared. 

   Euryale shrieked as the headless body of Medusa fell to the ground convulsing, bronzed fingers clawed and reached for a head no longer there. Stheno hissed and roared at the murderer, cursing him and the gods. None of them could possibly imagine any mortal to have the courage to attempt this, let alone succeed. For over 150 years, the Medusa, Euryale and Stheno have slain hundreds, thousands of would be warriors foolish enough in a vain attempt to take the Gorgon's magical powers for their own means. Such quests sent men to their doom and provided amusement to the Gods of Olympus. However, this errand of murder was successful. Impossible to fathom, but a death of a Gorgon was a reality.

   Tugging at the decapitated body, Euryale cried out. "Someone has slain our sister!" She stood on her hind legs, wailed in anger and sorrow, her face buried in her bronze, clawed hands weeping.

   Stheno, the most vicious of the three Gorgons, coiled up on her serpent body. From the right side of her face, her fanged mouth spoke. "We shall avenge our sister!" The left side, a mouth with no teeth also spoke.  "Who dares to murder our sister?! Vengeance will be ours!" Stheno's face looked as if two faces were attempting to merge into one. Although she has two eyes, one nose, she possessed two mouths on opposite sides of her face, capable of speaking two different thoughts at once. Stheno raised up her body in preparation for pursuit. Her forked tails beat the ground of the cave viciously. Her wings extended for flight.

   Euryale raised her head from her hands and sniffed the air. She caught the scent of the assassin. She cocked her head to the side and listened. The sound of frantic wings flapping filled her ears and renewed her thirst for vengeance. Small wings, to her understanding, made a panicked and hurried escape from the cave.

   "I hear someone fleeing, Stheno!" Euryale cried out. "He will not escape!"

   "To flight Euryale," Stheno bellowed as she started slithering toward the cave entrance, past the now still body of Medusa. "We will grace this male foe with the pleasure of our gazes! And I will feast on his eyes as he burns to ashes!"

   Despite modern mythology, the Gorgons were different in their appearance and particular power of the damnation gaze. If one stared at the face of the first Gorgon Stheno the naga serpent, the body, save for the eyes would be reduced to a frozen, charred skeleton. Stheno took great pleasure incinerating men and feeding on their eye as if they were boiled eggs.

   Gazing upon the deformed face of Euryale will cause the internal organs and flesh of the body to burst from within and expose the bones. At times, Euryale fed on the flesh of the deceased or plays with the entrails, watching organs quiver and cease moving. Sometimes, Stheno would join in on the flesh feeding frenzy. Only Medusa had the power to freeze a being in their tracks by turning them to stone. She was considered to be the most powerful of the three.

* * *

   The boy Perseus, protected by the armaments provided by the Goddess Athena, used the enchanted sandals of Mercury to fly fiercely from the cave and island of the Gorgons. Although the helm of Hades made him invisible or more precisely cast his form into a shadow realm of illusion, it did not cover his scent or the sound of his flying sandals. Pressed not to look back, Perseus flew directly away from the island and into a large cloud bank. Fast on his trail, the two Gorgon sisters pursued him into the clouds. Sensing the stench of the Olympic gods, killing him would assuredly bring the wrath of the gods to their island. With the murder of Medusa on their minds, they welcomed a battle that would most likely shift the power of world to their favor. Whether it would transpire or not, the remaining Gorgons would be patient and see. Knowing the gods, they would send their armies of men to the island and there they would all meet their fate: DEATH!

   As he raced through the clouds, he clutched the fractured sword that beheaded Medusa and the purse in which her head rested. Tightly gripping them with such force, the knuckles on both hands turned whiter than snow. He heard the desperation of the Gorgons fast behind him. He thought to use Medusa's head on them, but as he observed in the shadows and in the reflection of his small shield, the Gorgons were not affected by each other's gaze. With the mist of the clouds covering his escape, he prayed to Zeus for his continued protection. In the midst of his prayers, the snarls of the two Gorgons grew louder as they closed in on him. It would be a matter of minutes before they caught up and ripped him apart. But with Zeus' godly and timely intervention, the clouds parted, revealing a calm course back over the sea and back toward the islands of Greece. Zeus heard his prayers!

   However, the King of Olympus was not so kind to the Gorgon sisters, for which he foiled by causing the clouds to erupt with lightning and intense winds blowing them off course. They fought the winds as best as they could. The pursuing Gorgons, no match for the might of nature, lost their quarry in the sudden maelstrom. The two Gorgons righted their course and being a bit disoriented, continued to pursue Perseus in the opposite direction. Perseus was safe from pursuit. He was able to escape to the east as the sisters were forced into the lands of the west and south.

   Taking a precautionary look behind him, Perseus saw the shadow outlines of his pursuers fly in the other direction. For the first time since starting on his "adventure", Perseus relaxed. He was able to make off with the head unscathed (more or less) and if fate was with him, he would be in time to stop the wedding of King Polydectes and his mother. A sense of pride and accomplishment filled the young son of Zeus when he suddenly felt something moving within the purse. The head of his trophy, the head of Medusa, was still alive in a sense. The snakes moved as if they were searching for an escape from the enclosure of purse. The feeling of pride was replaced with dread and fear. He half expected the purse to burst open and the eyes of Medusa to be set upon him. Thoughts of death by petrification certainly terrified him.

   Medusa attempted to speak but it was impossible since her vocal cords were cut and blood dripped from her severed neck and snakes. Her mind was slipping in and out of consciousness. She could not maintain a thought or realize how she could have been beaten so easily by a boy of all beings. Additionally, who was responsible for sending this boy to carry out the death sentence? She already knew that answer; the Goddess Athena! One hundred and fifty years prior, Medusa served the goddess of wisdom loyally and faithfully until, that night, Poseidon paid Medusa a visit under the guise of captain of the guard, Theron. What appeared to Medusa as a forbidden sexual encounter with someone she admired and secretly loved became an act of assault and rape by the god of seas. The high priestess never invited Poseidon to the temple or to her body, but found herself fighting and pleading for mercy. None came from either Poseidon or Athena. Medusa was punished, cursed, banished and became a demon scourge of the ancient world.

   Another thought crossed her fading mind. How was it possible she was still alive, or better still aware that she was not yet dead? She knew her soul would either be confined to the realm of Hades or blessed to be sent to the Elysian Fields, paradise for a hard life. Instead she found her consciousness stuck in between life and death. Could this be another aspect of her cursed powers? To linger between worlds, conscious and never die? At the very least she wished to die and not linger as an undead trophy in the possession of this mortal young boy.

   A presence, never felt by Medusa since being cursed, spoke within her mind. "Stay alive! Stay awake! You must take your revenge! We cannot die! Stay alive!"

   This voice shocked her at first. Then Medusa thought this voice came from deep within her mind and resigned to the fact it could be suffering a form of delusion being decapitated and stuck between realms. However, with her vast studies of various topics (medicine, astrology, mystic arts and psychology), her analytical mind dismissed the notion of madness. She would have done so years earlier when she looked into a mirror and watched her beautiful black hair turn into hissing vipers. Weakly and cautiously she inquired the voice. "Who are you?"

   "I am from damnation itself! Stolen from the realm I call my home and joined to you by those who claim to be gods. They are the fallen, lesser deities who claim to be the Alpha of all. Perversion!" The voice paused and then continued more calmly. "You must survive! I will do all I can to keep you alive!"

   Medusa, in more shock than medical science can measure, replied to voice. "How can the head survive without its body?"

   "The body will find you. You will be whole again! Until then simply stay alive!" The voice grew silent.

   Medusa could not have fathomed what had transpired but that voice was very powerful, very strong, insisting she needed to fight! If anything her emotions were turning from fear to revenge. Not so much for the killer, the boy named Perseus, but for Athena. It was not enough to be violated and accused by Athena, but to make Medusa into a hideous monster, to live among horrible monsters on a ghastly land far from her former home. Death would not be granted to her nor would her soul be allowed to travel into the afterlife, wherever it may go. With her luck, she may find her head in the possession of Hades in the underworld. Fitting as Medusa and the other Gorgons guarded one of the entrances to that dark, lost realm.

   Her thoughts began to cycle in an endless loop: jealousy from Athena toward Medusa, raped by Poseidon, cursed by Athena, exiled, destroying armies of men who would claim her head and finally succumbing to the blade of Perseus. She forced herself to break the cycle and focus on a single point of thought. That thought was now directed at Perseus.  She moved her eyes in an attempt to penetrate the shield that granted the assassin invisibility. But she was unable to do so. However, she was able to ascertain other facts about the boy. Gathering what strength she could she moved her lips and spoke. "Boy…they are using you. These gods, they are using you to do what they fail to do themselves."

   Perseus nearly dropped the purse as he heard a faint female voice come from the bag. His heart raced faster than when he traveled to the isle of the Gorgons to kill Medusa. He almost looked into the bag to check if the voice came from the purse, but doing so was foolish not to mention deadly.

   "If you defy the gods, you deserve your fate," Perseus replied harshly.

   "I was abandoned and cursed by them. I was once a beautiful high priestess, loyal and steadfast in my obedience, and my reward was your blade. What do you think will happen to you if you defy or merely challenge their authority?"

   Perseus began to think for there was a long silence. He mentally commanded the sandals to fly faster. Over the seas and onto rugged shores of Greece, Perseus would soon be at his destination to present his prize to the King and his court to save his mother.

   "I don't have a choice. Your head will save my mother and stop an unholy marriage," he sorrowfully replied.

   "If you found the courage and strength to cross the seas, surmount impossible odds and face me and my sisters, you could have saved your mother. Instead, you chose to end my life and set events out of control." Medusa's words trailed off.

   From where ever she got the strength and ability to speak was now exhausted. She pointed her eyes downward and saw the land of Greece. She didn't know if she was dreaming or seeing things to come to pass. Her mind's eye saw the faces of kings and queens being petrified. The faces of people wearing strange clothing dying by her gaze. She saw a land in turmoil; people were running in all directions fleeing from fire and strange creatures. And then the vision that horrified Medusa the most came into her mind; Athena sitting on a golden throne with dozens of people kneeling at her feet. She appeared to rule not only the Greek Empire but of the entire world. The vision faded into darkness as she heard the words of Perseus drift into her thoughts.

   "I regret the series of events that have befallen you."

   The world went dark…

End of Prologue

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PROLOGUE
North African Island Group, Realm of Hades, 1545 BC

   In the caves of a North African island far beyond the Greek empire in the ancient days, there existed three horrible monsters whose gaze brought a swift and painful death to any who trespassed on their island. These monsters were known in both history and mythology as the Gorgons: three sisters of horrid power that brought hundreds of men to their deaths! However, on this day, death was brought to the one known as Medusa, beheaded by Perseus. As the story and estimates go, this myth has never been fully explained. Throughout history, this battle had been nothing more than a few lines in a paragraph depicting Perseus's victory over the Gorgon Medusa. No other recorded accounts have explained what became of Medusa's head or of the two other Gorgons, (Stheno and Euryale) at the time of her death. The story, as told by Medusa, will now be revealed…

* * *

   Over 3,000 years ago (roughly the time of 1545 BC), a horrendous murder took place! The Gorgon sisters stood in shock and revulsion having witnessed the brutal slaying of Medusa, their Gorgon sister. A large blade aimed from Medusa's back landed a brutal strike from over her right shoulder, severing three snakes from her mane of serpents and blood vessels in her neck. Hot red blood exploded into the air spraying the stone walls of the cave entrance. The severed snakes writhed, coiled and ceased moving. Medusa reached up her right hand to keep her head on her shoulders. On her face was a look of pain and shock. The Gorgon tried to turn and face her attacker but was not afforded the opportunity. From the left side, the blade sliced through her neck, making the wound uneven and jagged. Her head was then pulled off of her shoulders and disappeared. 

   Euryale shrieked as the headless body of Medusa fell to the ground convulsing, bronzed fingers clawed and reached for a head no longer there. Stheno hissed and roared at the murderer, cursing him and the gods. None of them could possibly imagine any mortal to have the courage to attempt this, let alone succeed. For over 150 years, the Medusa, Euryale and Stheno have slain hundreds, thousands of would be warriors foolish enough in a vain attempt to take the Gorgon's magical powers for their own means. Such quests sent men to their doom and provided amusement to the Gods of Olympus. However, this errand of murder was successful. Impossible to fathom, but a death of a Gorgon was a reality.

   Tugging at the decapitated body, Euryale cried out. "Someone has slain our sister!" She stood on her hind legs, wailed in anger and sorrow, her face buried in her bronze, clawed hands weeping.

   Stheno, the most vicious of the three Gorgons, coiled up on her serpent body. From the right side of her face, her fanged mouth spoke. "We shall avenge our sister!" The left side, a mouth with no teeth also spoke.  "Who dares to murder our sister?! Vengeance will be ours!" Stheno's face looked as if two faces were attempting to merge into one. Although she has two eyes, one nose, she possessed two mouths on opposite sides of her face, capable of speaking two different thoughts at once. Stheno raised up her body in preparation for pursuit. Her forked tails beat the ground of the cave viciously. Her wings extended for flight.

   Euryale raised her head from her hands and sniffed the air. She caught the scent of the assassin. She cocked her head to the side and listened. The sound of frantic wings flapping filled her ears and renewed her thirst for vengeance. Small wings, to her understanding, made a panicked and hurried escape from the cave.

   "I hear someone fleeing, Stheno!" Euryale cried out. "He will not escape!"

   "To flight Euryale," Stheno bellowed as she started slithering toward the cave entrance, past the now still body of Medusa. "We will grace this male foe with the pleasure of our gazes! And I will feast on his eyes as he burns to ashes!"

   Despite modern mythology, the Gorgons were different in their appearance and particular power of the damnation gaze. If one stared at the face of the first Gorgon Stheno the naga serpent, the body, save for the eyes would be reduced to a frozen, charred skeleton. Stheno took great pleasure incinerating men and feeding on their eye as if they were boiled eggs.

   Gazing upon the deformed face of Euryale will cause the internal organs and flesh of the body to burst from within and expose the bones. At times, Euryale fed on the flesh of the deceased or plays with the entrails, watching organs quiver and cease moving. Sometimes, Stheno would join in on the flesh feeding frenzy. Only Medusa had the power to freeze a being in their tracks by turning them to stone. She was considered to be the most powerful of the three.

* * *

   The boy Perseus, protected by the armaments provided by the Goddess Athena, used the enchanted sandals of Mercury to fly fiercely from the cave and island of the Gorgons. Although the helm of Hades made him invisible or more precisely cast his form into a shadow realm of illusion, it did not cover his scent or the sound of his flying sandals. Pressed not to look back, Perseus flew directly away from the island and into a large cloud bank. Fast on his trail, the two Gorgon sisters pursued him into the clouds. Sensing the stench of the Olympic gods, killing him would assuredly bring the wrath of the gods to their island. With the murder of Medusa on their minds, they welcomed a battle that would most likely shift the power of world to their favor. Whether it would transpire or not, the remaining Gorgons would be patient and see. Knowing the gods, they would send their armies of men to the island and there they would all meet their fate: DEATH!

   As he raced through the clouds, he clutched the fractured sword that beheaded Medusa and the purse in which her head rested. Tightly gripping them with such force, the knuckles on both hands turned whiter than snow. He heard the desperation of the Gorgons fast behind him. He thought to use Medusa's head on them, but as he observed in the shadows and in the reflection of his small shield, the Gorgons were not affected by each other's gaze. With the mist of the clouds covering his escape, he prayed to Zeus for his continued protection. In the midst of his prayers, the snarls of the two Gorgons grew louder as they closed in on him. It would be a matter of minutes before they caught up and ripped him apart. But with Zeus' godly and timely intervention, the clouds parted, revealing a calm course back over the sea and back toward the islands of Greece. Zeus heard his prayers!

   However, the King of Olympus was not so kind to the Gorgon sisters, for which he foiled by causing the clouds to erupt with lightning and intense winds blowing them off course. They fought the winds as best as they could. The pursuing Gorgons, no match for the might of nature, lost their quarry in the sudden maelstrom. The two Gorgons righted their course and being a bit disoriented, continued to pursue Perseus in the opposite direction. Perseus was safe from pursuit. He was able to escape to the east as the sisters were forced into the lands of the west and south.

   Taking a precautionary look behind him, Perseus saw the shadow outlines of his pursuers fly in the other direction. For the first time since starting on his "adventure", Perseus relaxed. He was able to make off with the head unscathed (more or less) and if fate was with him, he would be in time to stop the wedding of King Polydectes and his mother. A sense of pride and accomplishment filled the young son of Zeus when he suddenly felt something moving within the purse. The head of his trophy, the head of Medusa, was still alive in a sense. The snakes moved as if they were searching for an escape from the enclosure of purse. The feeling of pride was replaced with dread and fear. He half expected the purse to burst open and the eyes of Medusa to be set upon him. Thoughts of death by petrification certainly terrified him.

   Medusa attempted to speak but it was impossible since her vocal cords were cut and blood dripped from her severed neck and snakes. Her mind was slipping in and out of consciousness. She could not maintain a thought or realize how she could have been beaten so easily by a boy of all beings. Additionally, who was responsible for sending this boy to carry out the death sentence? She already knew that answer; the Goddess Athena! One hundred and fifty years prior, Medusa served the goddess of wisdom loyally and faithfully until, that night, Poseidon paid Medusa a visit under the guise of captain of the guard, Theron. What appeared to Medusa as a forbidden sexual encounter with someone she admired and secretly loved became an act of assault and rape by the god of seas. The high priestess never invited Poseidon to the temple or to her body, but found herself fighting and pleading for mercy. None came from either Poseidon or Athena. Medusa was punished, cursed, banished and became a demon scourge of the ancient world.

   Another thought crossed her fading mind. How was it possible she was still alive, or better still aware that she was not yet dead? She knew her soul would either be confined to the realm of Hades or blessed to be sent to the Elysian Fields, paradise for a hard life. Instead she found her consciousness stuck in between life and death. Could this be another aspect of her cursed powers? To linger between worlds, conscious and never die? At the very least she wished to die and not linger as an undead trophy in the possession of this mortal young boy.

   A presence, never felt by Medusa since being cursed, spoke within her mind. "Stay alive! Stay awake! You must take your revenge! We cannot die! Stay alive!"

   This voice shocked her at first. Then Medusa thought this voice came from deep within her mind and resigned to the fact it could be suffering a form of delusion being decapitated and stuck between realms. However, with her vast studies of various topics (medicine, astrology, mystic arts and psychology), her analytical mind dismissed the notion of madness. She would have done so years earlier when she looked into a mirror and watched her beautiful black hair turn into hissing vipers. Weakly and cautiously she inquired the voice. "Who are you?"

   "I am from damnation itself! Stolen from the realm I call my home and joined to you by those who claim to be gods. They are the fallen, lesser deities who claim to be the Alpha of all. Perversion!" The voice paused and then continued more calmly. "You must survive! I will do all I can to keep you alive!"

   Medusa, in more shock than medical science can measure, replied to voice. "How can the head survive without its body?"

   "The body will find you. You will be whole again! Until then simply stay alive!" The voice grew silent.

   Medusa could not have fathomed what had transpired but that voice was very powerful, very strong, insisting she needed to fight! If anything her emotions were turning from fear to revenge. Not so much for the killer, the boy named Perseus, but for Athena. It was not enough to be violated and accused by Athena, but to make Medusa into a hideous monster, to live among horrible monsters on a ghastly land far from her former home. Death would not be granted to her nor would her soul be allowed to travel into the afterlife, wherever it may go. With her luck, she may find her head in the possession of Hades in the underworld. Fitting as Medusa and the other Gorgons guarded one of the entrances to that dark, lost realm.

   Her thoughts began to cycle in an endless loop: jealousy from Athena toward Medusa, raped by Poseidon, cursed by Athena, exiled, destroying armies of men who would claim her head and finally succumbing to the blade of Perseus. She forced herself to break the cycle and focus on a single point of thought. That thought was now directed at Perseus.  She moved her eyes in an attempt to penetrate the shield that granted the assassin invisibility. But she was unable to do so. However, she was able to ascertain other facts about the boy. Gathering what strength she could she moved her lips and spoke. "Boy…they are using you. These gods, they are using you to do what they fail to do themselves."

   Perseus nearly dropped the purse as he heard a faint female voice come from the bag. His heart raced faster than when he traveled to the isle of the Gorgons to kill Medusa. He almost looked into the bag to check if the voice came from the purse, but doing so was foolish not to mention deadly.

   "If you defy the gods, you deserve your fate," Perseus replied harshly.

   "I was abandoned and cursed by them. I was once a beautiful high priestess, loyal and steadfast in my obedience, and my reward was your blade. What do you think will happen to you if you defy or merely challenge their authority?"

   Perseus began to think for there was a long silence. He mentally commanded the sandals to fly faster. Over the seas and onto rugged shores of Greece, Perseus would soon be at his destination to present his prize to the King and his court to save his mother.

   "I don't have a choice. Your head will save my mother and stop an unholy marriage," he sorrowfully replied.

   "If you found the courage and strength to cross the seas, surmount impossible odds and face me and my sisters, you could have saved your mother. Instead, you chose to end my life and set events out of control." Medusa's words trailed off.

   From where ever she got the strength and ability to speak was now exhausted. She pointed her eyes downward and saw the land of Greece. She didn't know if she was dreaming or seeing things to come to pass. Her mind's eye saw the faces of kings and queens being petrified. The faces of people wearing strange clothing dying by her gaze. She saw a land in turmoil; people were running in all directions fleeing from fire and strange creatures. And then the vision that horrified Medusa the most came into her mind; Athena sitting on a golden throne with dozens of people kneeling at her feet. She appeared to rule not only the Greek Empire but of the entire world. The vision faded into darkness as she heard the words of Perseus drift into her thoughts.

   "I regret the series of events that have befallen you."

   The world went dark…

End of Prologue

Copyright © 2020, thegorgonmedusa.com, Tyrone Ross
Copyright © 2020, thegorgonmedusa.com, Tyrone Ross