Medusa: Fate's Game Ch. 14

"Alright then, I guess... we um..." Gallea scratched his head, his horns, and looked around. "You freed us, Darian."

"We owe you everything." Pinna hopped a little in place, big smile on her face, hand on her husband's wrist where it rested on the boat. "We couldn't tell you about the thread, or they'd know. And... and now, we can go wherever we want, do whatever we want, and they can't stop us!"

"Not unless you do something to become indebted to them once more." Darian nodded, and tapped his finger on the edge of the other side of the boat, where he stared into the water. "Stay out of trouble then, at least for a while, and... watch over Medusa's body while I'm gone. I'll need it."

Gallea and Pinna nodded, and the wife had a big smile on her face. "You really going to Hades to get back Medusa's soul?"

"Yes. And if someone tries to stop me... anyone... anything..." Again he looked at his hands, and he squeezed the air while staring into his palms through the white, glowing eyes of his mask.

The boat started to move. Sophia, Tritus, and the satyrs waved from the shore, and so too did others. Rhea, Hieremias, Tritus's two companions, and many of the people who were near the front lines during the battle. Those that had survived the sea creature's attack through sheer luck. They waved goodbye, and some even had tears in their eyes.

Darian turned to them, and gave a small wave in return.

Before long, it was just the two of them, waiting for the slow boat to reach Charon's ship.

"You were saying?" Otrera said.

"Yes. I wanted to apologize for many things. But mostly, I wanted to apologize for when we fought during the war."

"You already—"

"No... no, I apologized before, but it... rang hollow. It didn't sink it, didn't really mean anything. Just words. But now, I... I remember them, Otrera. I remember the faces of your sisters as we fought."

"You didn't before?" She got up from her spot near a skeleton, and came to sit beside him at the bow of the ship.

"No. Once they were dead, they were just meat, just a corpse." Again he squeezed the air in his lap, both palms toward him, and his fingers moved as if... as if combing hair. "Now I... it's..."

Not a word to say, she watched the man who destroyed her world confess his remorse to her. But he was right, it wasn't the same, and she found some tears working their way into her eyes again. His voice grabbed her, cut into her, and dug up all the memories. Memories of her sisters, of her time as queen of her tribe, they tore her apart until she was sobbing again.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I... I don't know what's wrong with me. Been crying on and off all day." She wiped her tears away, but more joined them, and she lowered her head to let her hair fall over her face.

Darian turned around, and hugged her.

She froze, blinking, staring past him at the vessel they approached. He was hugging her. The mindless, rabid dog, was hugging her. Not only that, her old enemy was shaking too, the tiny little shakes you got when holding back your own tears.

"I never knew," he said, "what it was like. I just... I didn't know. For you to... after everything I've done to you, to help me? I..."

"Good gods, Darian, what happened to you when you put on the mask?" She tried to laugh it off, and smile when she pushed him away a little so they could look at each other, but laughs turned into more sobs. She was really getting sick of crying, but it kept happening.

"It wasn't Moros. He challenged me. He didn't know what it was like... inside..." The man held a hand to his chest, and pressed his fingers against his breastplate. "The creature is just a parasite, feeding on humans, feeding on our emotions, our souls. He didn't know what it meant to get inside... a mind like mine."

"But you said—"

"It was Medusa. Moros just made me see... what Medusa..." He took a long deep breath, a few more again, and as the boat pressed to the side of the large vessel, he started climbing the rope ladder up. "I have to get her back."

"Yeah." She nodded, following after him, and hopped up onto the deck of the ship. No one around, nothing, just a big, huge, empty deck, and a bunch of rowing dead underneath them beneath the wood. "Airhead needs saving, and I can't let her rot in Tartarus."

"Airhead?"

"Ah... one of my sisters used to say that about... ah nevermind." A real smile broke through her tears, and she wiped the last of them away as she approached the bow of the much, much, much bigger boat. "So, um... you have the power of Moros?"

"It would appear." He came up to join her, and the two of them looked over the water as the giant vessel started to move. "Moros is trapped. I can feel that worm, so called 'entity of doom' fighting to escape. Like ants biting at my toes."

"Sounds horrible."

He breathed deep, squeezed his hands, and looked to the water. "He said the plan... that it was for you. You were supposed to be his chosen vessel. You're not damaged."

"He... what?" She winced, and looked out to the water. Darian wasn't normal, she knew that. If Moros had planned to take her over, would she have been able to defeat Moros?

No. Darian was... different was too weak a word for what was different about him. Killed his brother, beat him to death, when he was only a kid? And that was only the most identifying mark on the man. Andromeda had told her many things about what Darian had done. Part of the reason she got nervous whenever she looked his way. Rabid dog.

Not so rabid anymore.

As Darian explained Moros's plan, how he manipulated Andromeda, tried to obtain a vessel, she held up her hands.

"Wait wait. Why didn't he just create a Fate's Child from a regular human?"

"I'm guessing only Clotho can do that, normally, or maybe because the other Moirai sort of trapped him. I don't think Moros gets along well with his sisters. Moros must have tricked Andromeda into creating you with the ritual and sacrifices, so he could... use you..."

She shivered and rubbed her arms. "She must have been tortured by the dreams he gave her. You think they were real? That her fate was real?"

"Maybe... maybe. But it doesn't matter. I wear the mask, and I am going to tear the underworld apart, piece by piece, to free Medusa."

The vessel pointed down, and submerged.

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~~Darian~~

The dark water rushed up to meet them. Otrera jumped back with a yelp, and Darian held out his hands. Didn't expect their new journey to start with them drowning.

But as the water poured over them, they didn't. He stared through the eyes of the mask, and readied himself to be lifted off the boat, but it never came. He looked down at his sandals; still rooted to the deck of the ship. He looked at Otrera, but her eyes were up and looking around at the new insanity that greeted them.

The water flowed over them, around them, but it did not affect them. He moved his hands through it, but it was as if the water wasn't there at all. Or he wasn't. The ship went deeper, cutting through the sea surface and waves, burying them in the darkness of water and the endless depths.

Green started to sparkle around them. Lanterns made of bone started to light themselves at various postings of the ship, a large one in particular at the nose. The green light offered little more than their ability to see the ship's deck; whatever lay beyond the blanket of darkness around the vessel was hidden.

But they could hear it. As they got deeper, and deeper into the black of the sea, rumbles, groans, started to fill the water and their bodies. Shadows against the green light, shadows so large they defied reality — not, not anymore, not after the sea creature. And Darian breathed deep as the black around them blurred with shapes and movements of things as large as the ship they rode.

"We're... in the sea," Otrera said. "In it. Not on it. In it."

"I wondered how the ship would take us there, Gallea knew it could. I guess he and Pinna have taken this trip before."

"Those two, slaves of the Fates, but you freed them. Snapped your fingers and undid the work of the three sisters." Otrera put a hand on the railing and leaned out into the water. Things moved past them, things with long tendrils, things that lacked bodies. "Thought you hated those two."

"I... I was just paranoid. Couldn't imagine anyone was telling me the truth about anything anymore." Darian stepped up to join her at the bow, and leaned over the other railing by the nose of the ship. The white glow of his eyes struck against the water, but managed only maybe ten feet before the denseness of the black around them blocked the light.

"Understandable." She reached out and touched his arm. "And... well you should know, this is the first time I've felt like... talking with you was like talking to a human. Strange, right? You've got that mask on and everything."

They both laughed, and he reached up to run his fingers down the obsidian mask stuck to his face. He could feel him, Moros, crashing against the walls inside him. But the mask was the body of the entity, and it was Darian's now. Every breath, every glance, everything carried an edge of possibility to it it never did before. He could feel it in his breath, feel it in his fingertips.

No matter what it was, no matter who or where or why, if he wanted to destroy it, he could. What would Moros had done if he'd wandered the world wearing Darian's body, instead of the other way around?

"I... have to get her back." The only reason Otrera was talking to someone human now, was Medusa.

"I wanted to ask about that." Otrera came closer, put a hand on his shoulder, and turned him to face. She'd grown comfortable touching him. It was a nice change. "You're going to save Medusa. What about others?"

"I... I'm saving Medusa because she's being sent to Tartarus. Athena rigged the game, and I'm fixing it."

"So if Medusa was going to Elysium, you'd let her be?"

He winced, and his gaze drifted down. "I don't know. I like to think so? If she'd be happy, if she'd... if I could... If she was in Elysium, then with the power of this mask, I'd join her. But she's not. She deserves to be, but she's not. I have to do something." Dodged the question. If he had no way to join her, would he pull her out of Elysium to be with him? Athena killing her was unfair, but life was unfair. Why should Medusa get special treatment?

The Amazon nodded, and squeezed his hand. "I get that. Just... I know if I was you, and I was suddenly given the power of Moros himself, I'd be sorely tempted to do a lot of things. Destroy the underworld? Take on the gods and Fates?" Her gaze fell away as well, and her fingers tightened on his. "And I know if I saw my sisters there, I'd be tempted to pull them out of the underworld, to try and somehow find bodies for them, to... do anything I could to have them back."

He squeezed her hand in return. "Another reason I'm glad to have you with me, Otrera. Need someone to keep me from... ruining everything. No matter what we see, I... I could... ruin everything, for everyone, just to have her back. And Medusa... she—"

"She'd never speak to you again, if you broke the world."

If you broke the world. Darian looked at his free hand, and rubbed his fingertips together. It felt like he could.

"If you see me about to, make sure to stab me in the back."

She laughed. "Will do." But, she didn't let go of his hand, and she offered it another squeeze as she looked back at him. "I do kind of hope I can at least see my sisters again."

"I... don't want to go down that road. I don't want to see all the people I've..."

The two turned to face the bow of the ship once more, holding hands. Otrera squeezed his fingers every so often, and glanced his way. He did as well. He tried to look confident, courageous, unstoppable, and with the mask blocking his face from view, he felt like it should have been easy. He was the harbinger of doom, after all.

But he was going into the underworld. The gods and Fates, the monstrous creatures, none of that worried him. Seeing the face of his brother, of his kills, of the people he'd let die, of Patrius? Chilled him to the bone.

The darkness ahead started to peel away as green dots looming in the distance grew larger and larger. It took time for the ship to get deep, an hour of its constant descent, and the things in the water grew thicker, larger, and more grotesque. At first it was just bits of dirt floating by, but soon it was the creatures floating by that ate them. Things that could be seen through, things that glowed, thing with ribs on their outsides, and things with parts dragging along behind them that looked like entrails.

The depths of the sea were not a pleasant place. But it all started to fade away, and the water grew clear once more as they approached the green lights. The blackness melted, and soon the two of them were buried in the light of tremendous, hanging braziers, lit with green fire. Pillars made of bone, enormous bones, shaped like ribs but taller than any temple lined a path along the sea. When Darian looked over the edge, he frowned at the sight beneath them: more bones, and nothing but bones, covered the sea floor. Human bones.

The ship moved between the giant bone pillars of white, and forward along the path laid out, not dissimilar to a snake's ribs protruding from the sea floor, if the snake were the size of a large island. Lower they fell, until all that was ahead was the path of giant ribs, dangling green fires, and red. Where the bones came out of the sea bottom, the endless floor of human bone, crimson liquid started to join the dead. The red kept to the bone path instead of spreading out into the water, and as the path of giant ribs went on, the red became a river.

With the gigantic green fires lighting the path ahead, they could see far. And yet, all they could see was the unending river of red, with the colossal rib bones acting as their guide.

"I guess this is Styx," Otrera said.

They weren't underwater anymore, or at least it didn't seem like it. Now they were riding a river, and as Charon's ship descended from the air into the stream of crimson, it sailed upon it. As if the water around them had ceased to exist, and instead, the ship was floating upon the river Styx. Under the sea, and yet not. The realm of the dead.

Otrera squeezed his hand tighter when wailing cries started to emerge from the silence. They both looked over the railing, and drew back with a wince.

Bodies in the river, corpses. But not dead. With open mouths gargling on blood and crying out, corpses around the ship clawed at the wood as they drifted along the red river.

"Help us!"

"Save us!"

"Please, help us!"

Otrera squeezed Darian's hand again. "What... what's going on?"

"I imagine Charon felt these souls... deserve this."

"Gods. For how long? Should we he—"

"No. Otrera, we can't... we can't."

"I know! I know." The Amazon didn't sound so sure though. He looked her way, and the doubt was palpable. She glanced over the edge of the ship several more times, and winced openly with each crying wail the river of the dead made.

It went on, and on. The dead were no in rush to get anywhere, Darian supposed, but hearing the mournful wails, pained screams, the begging voices, started to wear on him. His other hand squeezed the ship railing tighter, until the wood started to bend with his grip. They'd only just arrived, and the sights of Hades were getting to them.

While the air — or sea water — around them had become clear, the boundless sky above them was still black. Endless, constant black, without a star to be found, blocked by the sea above. The only light was the green fire of the lanterns on their ship, and the enormous braziers of green fire hanging from the bone pillars the vessel took them past. The amount of dead that clawed at the ship grew larger, but they couldn't get a grip, and the boat pushed through the river of red without slowing. He could hear the sound of the boat crushing bodies as it moved.

Ahead, another gigantic bone lay in their path, but this one was smooth, like a dome. As they approached, Otrera drew back a step at the sight of a human skull, stained red with cracked veins, blocking their path. It was as large as the ship, and the glow of the green lanterns cast titanic shadows across the crimson river.

As the boat drew near the giant skull, a hand fit to match its size forced its way out of the river of corpses. A hand as big as the sea creature's Medusa had killed. Bloody bones gripped the pillars of the river, and pulled against them to drag more of the skeleton up from the bodies that buried it. There should have been an earthquake, or vibrations, or something to match the movements of the enormous undead, but only the sound of crunching bodies was found. Blood dripped off its ribs, bodies fell and cracked against it as more of it's mass forced its way above the red, until the skeleton loomed over them.

It only managed to pull itself halfway up its ribcage before the skeleton ceased its ascent from the depths of the river, and it leaned in closer to them. Its eyes glowed with the same green of the undead that served on Charon's ship, and it moved with the same lifelessness.

"... Moros," it said. A dead voice, devoid of tone or depth. Instead, a rasp of a great wind mixed with banshee wails fell over them. The skull, with teeth bigger than Darian's whole body, came closer as it leaned over them. "You... you stole my ship? You dare... The sisters will lock you away once again, and you will not see the soul rivers for ten thousand years." The ship stopped moving as the colossal entity moved near. Slaves to their master's will no doubt, the skeletons underneath Darian's feet had stopped rowing.

Otrera had inched herself a little back, and a little closer to Darian, so his shoulder was between her and the skull the size of the enormous ship, let alone the rest of his body.

"You are Charon," Darian said.

"You... you are not Moros? Lachesis asked for a ship, for the next tale, for..." The skeleton leaned in closer, and as the rain of blood dripped from its bones, several bodies from the river fell as well. The denizens of the river melted into blood upon landing on the deck, and they screamed as they did. "You are Bellerophontes."

The skeleton squeezed the bone pillar, shifted its weight to adjust, and got closer to the boat's side. Each motion, colossal in scale, forced the river to move with him, for the bodies and blood to splash against the boat, and for the Amazon next to Darian to tremble; he did not blame her. Each word was a booming wind that hurt his ears, and the mix of rasp and wailing sounds in the voice put goosebumps on his skin. This is what ghost stories were made of.

But he wasn't afraid.

"Get out of my way, Charon."

"Ha!" Charon leaned back, and coughed a death cry of a laugh into the endless black above. "Truly, if the seat of Moros has been taken by a Fate's Child, then chaos reigns. Tell me, Fate's Children, why are you here?"

"Athena has wrongfully killed, and wrongfully manipulated Medusa's soul to Tartarus. I have come to return her."

Charon nodded, and rubbed his chin with his fingers. The motions were slow, his size making everything a laborious action.

"Yes, Athena was here. Medusa did not take one of my vessels, but instead, Athena took her soul herself."

Otrera reached out with a shivering hand, grabbed Darian's shoulder, and inched herself forward until she was standing next to him again. "Why?"

"Why what, Fate's Child?"

"Why... does Athena hate Medusa so much?"

The river turned, shifted, and the bodies within cried out as they were lifted into the air. Another one of the skeleton's arms rose from the depths of crimson, and reached out to hold onto one of the pillars. If Charon tried, could he actually stand up? Darian looked around from the pillars, to his hands, to his skull, and at the splashing rivers of blood that crashed against the bone. Only his arms, his skull, and a portion of his torso had emerged, and he already dwarfed their enormous ship five times over.