Medusa: Fate's Game Ch. 05

"I know you better than most. I tasted your blade." The giant leaned down, and sneered. "I know how someone like you would fight. A fox. Sneaky, fast, and strong when he needs to be. You would have walked into that forest alone, and where an army could not go, you would have. You'd have beaten the Amazons at their own game, and used the densest trees to force them into small skirmishes, a few of them against you at a time. And only when their army was too deep in the woods to flee on horse back would you have gone on the offensive. Only when their escape was impossible would you have shown your true skills, and slaughtered them one at a time, with the trees as your shield."

Medusa stared at the brute, mouth agape. How dare he! How could he accuse her Darian of such brutal tactics. But, when Darian lowered his head, her heart sank with it, and the heavy silence returned.

"... it was the only way," Darian said.

Chimera nodded. "I am sure it was a glorious battle."

Darian got up, shaking and shivering. His armor, which he refused to take off while they traveled, could not hide the wounds in his limbs. And when he approached the giant, Medusa could see the hole in the back of his armor the arrow had left. Chills ran down her snake spine each time she saw it.

"It was a slaughter," Darian said. Clutching his side with one hand, he reached up and pressed against the towering giant's stomach with the other. Of course, the Chimera did not move, and Darian growled at him.

The giant rumbled a laugh. "Do you feel remorse for their deaths?"

"I..."

Medusa got up, slithered over to the giant, and pushed him. Tail anchored, she pushed her hands into his chest, and forced him to take a step back.

"Leave him alone."

"It's ok Medusa. He knows me well. But not as well as he thinks." The small warrior waved a hand, dismissing the giant, before he limped over to the water and stared out over the sea. "Ok, so our target is somewhere, but you can't pinpoint them from the necklace."

Chimera nodded, and stepped over to stand beside the small warrior. From behind, the difference in their size was insane, and it made Medusa's jaw drop. Darian's head reached the giant's hip, and no higher. Even a tall man's head would not have reached the monster's waist. And when the giant held out his hand for the bauble, it dwarfed Darian's, like a kitten's paw in the hand of a lion.

The Fate's Child handed the Chimera the glowing necklace. Chimera raised it up, sniffed it, and eyed it like a banker eying his wares. Medusa slithered over the sand to join them, and smiled when she found the giant frowning. His face was always either stern or confident in its smile; to see him frustrated like an upset child was a pleasant change.

"Magic, but it does not smell of the Fates. Your taint is not here, instead—"

The necklace shattered.

Darian jumped back, Medusa slithered away with a snap of her length, and the Chimera stepped back with a grunt.

"... what in Tartarus." Reaching down, Darian got to a knee and scooped up the remnants of the necklace. What little white glow it had was gone, and all that remained was the shattered pieces of an ordinary pebble.

Medusa plucked a piece from his palm, then another, and frowned when her efforts to piece them together failed. But it earned a chuckle from Darian, and she smiled back at him.

"Chimera touched it last," Medusa said. Chimera grimaced at her, and she stuck her long tongue out at him.

"I don't think that had anything to do with it. It really did just shatter, and stop working, and... and I'm guessing whoever made this necklace doesn't want us using it. Does it still have a scent, Chimera?"

The giant got down to a knee, and Darian poured the remains into his huge palm.

"... no. The scent is gone. The magic is gone."

Darian collapsed onto his back, and stared up at the sky. The wind was sucked out of him, and Medusa joined him, laying down and putting her cheek on his chest. All that work for nothing. Nothing!

Chimera rumbled. "You are both children. Get up. You said Otrera is now a Fate's Child."

"... yeah."

"Then it is her Gaia sensed. She is out there, somewhere. We can find her again."

Medusa nodded. "Yeah, we can try again! And this time, we know what we're looking for. We'll catch this Amazon, and make her tell us where Pegasusss is!" She got back up, reached down, and scooped Darian up along with her to set him standing. "Chimera said, if they're on Earth, he can find them. If she's out there, she'll have to be back on land at some point, right? We'll catch her!" Tingles ran down her spine length. They'd succeed on this journey yet, rescue Pegasus, and meet Athena.

"Your enthusiasm is limitless," her lover said, and he slipped a hand around her hip to hold her to him. "And Andromeda wa—"

"Who?" Medusa said.

"I... uh..." He took a small breath, looked to the sunset, and wiped away the grimace sneaking onto his lips. "Let's build a fire. I'm awake now, I'll tell you what happened."

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"She killed Proetus! And Stheneboea?"

Medusa was coiled tight, her human half lying along her scales, and Darian was leaning back against it again, the fire in front of him. Chimera sat across from them, legs folded underneath him, lion pelt hanging behind him from his neck, and ancient eyes staring into the fire. The sun was gone, and the night was misty, the breeze cool and wet.

"She did, yeah. And... and... ." Reaching behind and over his shoulder, he found her hand, and pulled it to him to tuck it against his neck with her fingers trapped in his. "I don't know. I was there, and I could have killed them both, and... and I didn't. She did it instead, just to spread word that I'm a killer. Proetus, he... gods, he knew. He knew the whole time, about his wife, about what she did, he knew the whole thing was a lie."

She eased her torso a little further along her scales to bring her chin to his shoulder from behind him, and rested it there on her hand where she caressed his collar.

"Just because he loved his wife," she said.

"Yes! Yes I... I'm such a damn fool. One phrase, one sentence and it... fuck, it just wiped my anger away. Stopped me dead."

"Darian, that is good. Good! It's not a bad thing to let go of your rage every once in a while." As she knew all too well.

"Yeah, I guess. I did manage to get out of there without killing anyone. Maybe even earned an ally in Patrius some day."

"Maybe. But what of Andromeda?"

"Otrera said Andromeda was the reason she was able to get so close to Proetus. She's someone important. But I don't recognize her name."

Medusa shrugged. They both looked at Chimera, and he rolled his eyes. Human names were probably as important to him as the color of silk.

"What I don't understand is how this Amazon can be a Fate's Child. You told me only men are Fate's Children," she said.

"Yeah, they are."

"And that the Fates bless them when they are very young."

"They do."

Forked tongue licking the air, she nudged her hair of snakes into her man's neck. "You said she was not so blessed when you defeated her when you were helping King Iobates. So, someone must have done this to her, and if it wasn't the Fates, then... the person who stole the Moirai mask?"

The small warrior nodded. "That's what I'm thinking. Whoever stole the mask, and is capable of hiding from the Fates, has to be powerful, powerful enough to maybe use the mask to do... Fate-ish things, like creating a new Fate's Child."

The Chimera stirred from his stillness, and reached out to poke at the fire with a stick. "Andromeda may be this person."

"Maybe," Darian said. "We'll have to ask Otrera more when we catch her."

"We have to wait for Gallea and Pinna if we want to pursue her though, wherever she may be. Chimera says she's out there," she said, and she gestured to the sea down along the beach, "and without a ship, we aren't going to make it far."

"Yeah, especially now that people are looking for me... and you."

Medusa tilted her head. "Me?"

"You let some of the soldiers escape. Word will spread that Medusa is on the mainland."

"I... I couldn't... I—"

"It's ok. It doesn't really matter, someone was going to find out sooner or later, and it's not like it affects how people are going to react when they see you."

Memories of every man she'd met since her transformation surfaced. "I guess not."

"And him too." Darian gestured to Chimera, who grunted in return. "We'll have to try our hardest to avoid being seen unless we want a local city hunting us down like a mob."

"A mob..." She sighed, and settled back onto her coil. A host of people, marching, screaming, torches and rocks and pitchforks. Farmers and soldiers and everything in between. For her? She shivered.

A touch on her knuckles brought her attention back, and she smiled at the small warrior pulling on her fingers. He was looking over his shoulder at her, concern painted on his face.

"You ok?" he said.

"Me? You're the one who I had to yank arrows out of. You... were screaming, and there was blood everywhere."

"Yeah." He got up, crawled over her coils, and lay down across a couple rows of her snake length.

Without his armor on, and dressed in his punctured, ruined, stained tunic, he looked so... normal. In his armor, he was a grand warrior, chosen by the Fates, and invincible. He didn't seem so invincible when he was screaming in agony when she had to push an arrow through his leg to get it out. The one in his back though, she was sure was going to kill him tearing it out of him.

But he lived. He smiled at her, and when she frowned at him, he raised his tunic to show her his back. Not even a scar.

"It'll take more than—"

"You were lucky, Darian." She shifted her human half across her coils and laid it atop him. With him on his back on her coils, and her head on his stomach, she looked up at the misty sky, and sighed. "And you were lucky with Chimera. Without Pegasus... if I hadn't been there..." He'd have crushed you. "And luck won't last forever."

Chimera rumbled. She hissed.

His hand slipped into her snake hair, and she melted against his hard stomach as his fingertips massaged into her scalp.

"You're right. The plan was a bad one. But at least we know something now, right?"

"Yes, that is true."

"One step closer to rescuing my friend. A step closer to meeting Athena," he said.

One step closer to them all getting run down by a mob, she thought.

"Hey, come on," he said. Mind reader, the small man took her hand, and held it against his chest. "We'll get through this. I'll be more careful, and... we'll come out on top. And hey, what do you want to do once we're done?"

"Done?"

"Yeah, done. When Athena turns you back human, if we can convince her, what do you want to do?"

"I..." She brought a hand up to her lips, and looked down at the ground. The idea was so ridiculous and fantasy, she'd never really considered it. "I don't know. And... and what if she doesn't?"

Darian shrugged. "Either way, I'm not going anywhere." He flashed one of his perfect, amazing smiles the sly little bastard must have been practicing since he was five, and tugged on her hand. "I was thinking we find some place secluded, live off the land, just... disappear for a good long while, maybe forever."

She wrapped her arms around the man's neck until he was coughing and struggling to breathe, but she didn't let go. He always knew what to say to make all the problems seem so small, and make her heart roll right out onto her palm and into his.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~Darian~~

He awoke a few hours later.

Proetus and Stheneboea were dead. The reality of that was a stone in his gut. Not happy. Not sad. Not angry? Just... stopped. Revenge on the gods was a fantasy he entertained in his head, but revenge on those two was a real thing he could have taken. But he didn't, he gave it up for Medusa. He wasn't an idiot, he understood how self-destructive and ruinous revenge could be. Being in Medusa's arms was better than a moment's satisfaction in killing two fools.

But it wasn't just their deaths. Proetus had betrayed him knowingly. It changed everything. He felt better about it, and that was just absurd. His old friend betrayed him for his wife, just because he wanted to make his wife happy, not because he believed his wife over him. It was so strange to be satisfied by that, but at the same, he could understand it. He could understand doing anything for the woman he loved.

The woman he loved. He tripped on the thought, picked it up, and held it in his mind's eye. Love. Gods, careful Darian. Remember what happened with Philonoe?

His bed roll stirred, shifted on the grass, and roused his eyes. Weight pressed against his back, and another source clutched at his chest. A split moment of adrenaline told him to jump up, kick, attack, defend himself, but it passed when the familiar touch of Medusa pressed into his neck. Her snake hair liked to cuddle with him when she slept, like puppies in a dog pile against his shoulder. She must have sneaked in closer during the night, and decided to spoon him.

The fire was to their back, just gentle embers now, and the Chimera was up on the hill that looked over their spot where the beach met the grass.

He smirked, and raised a hand to hold hers where it rested on his stomach.

"You alright?" he said.

"Just... ssstill worried about you." She pulled him tighter, and shifted some of her snake length so the soft snakeskin of her snake belly lay over his legs. "I was crying, you know, when I had to get those arrows out of you."

"You were?"

"Mhmm. I was crying, and ssscreaming at you, and crying some more. And you were spitting up blood and screaming too." Her whole body was shivering, snake half too, and her grip on his body grew tighter. "I was so ssscared."

The whole event was a blur. He could remember muddy clouds of green and red, movement, sounds kind of like screaming mixed with thunder. Pain was normal, with how he grew up and lived, but he hadn't been near death in a long, long time.

"... I was too."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He squeezed her fingers tighter, brought up to his lips, and kissed their tips. "And it's my own damn fault. I let Otrera live, and I made everything harder by not killing anyone on the way out. But..."

"But you wanted to, for me." Lips pressed to his neck, and he sighed happily when they traced up to his earlobe. "That means a lot to me. It may have been a stupid idea, considering the situation you were trapped in, but I... I am very happy you didn't kill anyone."

He rolled onto his back, and smiled at her while she got comfortable in the nook of his arm. Soon, her head was resting on his chest, her breasts pressed to his side, and his arm was hooked behind her, holding her back.

"It was pretty stupid."

"It was. Don't risk your life if you don't have to."

"I know, I... I know. I just... seeing Otrera again, all I could think about was the horribleness I'd done to her. I used to be ok with it, but now I... I agree with you. There's got to be a better way of doing things than slaughtering everyone in my way, like I did with her clan." And my shitty apology to her probably only made it worse.

"Good," she said, and she relaxed into his body. "It's good that you're willing. I know that it won't always be an option, but... it's good to look."

He nodded, closed his eyes, and set his head back against the blanket. On his back, with Medusa hooked under his arm and resting on his chest, sleep was inevitable.

But Medusa slipped her fingers out of his, where he held them against his chest, and slid them down to his waist. Without ceremony, kiss, or even a word, she wormed her fingers underneath his loincloth, and wrapped them around his testicles.

"Hey, what're you doing?"

"Enjoying myssself. Shh. I haven't touched you in a couple nights because you were hurt, and now I... I miss touching you. Take off your loincloth."

There was an edge of confidence in her voice, something not usually there. He nodded, reached behind him with his other hand, and undid the knot holding the cloth there.

"Chimera will probably hear, and see from where he is," he said.

She raised her head up off his chest, looked up the hill with her yellow snake eyes, shrugged, and put her cheek back against his torso.

"Let him see."

It was his turn to melt. Her grip, practiced and familiar on his body, caressed the soft skin of his scrotum, massaged the sensitive bits within, and eased the weight of them back and forth in her palm. She let go for a moment, long enough to take the edge of his loincloth, pull the whole of it away, and toss it aside, before putting her hand back on him. A minute later, his member was fully erect. It lay across his tunic, raised with the occasional flex of his inner muscles, and shifting as Medusa continued to play with the most delicate part of his body.

"These are ssso soft," she said. "Like, I could squeeze them, and you'd just break."

"Please don't." Chuckling, he tickled her spine with the arm hooked behind her.

"Do you think you could fall asleep like this?" Her grip, relaxed and gentle, squeezed around the contours of his testicles with a soft palm, before she slid her fingertips up to the base of his shaft, and wrapped her fingers around it. Then, in a slow and deep motion, she began to stroke him.

"I... probably could." He was a man, after all. Orgasms made a man tired, and he was no exception. He wasn't ready to fall asleep again just yet, but the edge of excitement that usually filled him when sex was imminent was replaced with calm tenderness.

And that was amazing. He sighed, breathed deep, and massaged Medusa's spine while she massaged his length. Neither in a hurry, neither rushing, Darian closed his eyes and relaxed. The gorgon's cheek was pressed to his chest; no doubt she could hear his heartbeat, and how it was steady. But no doubt she could also feel how aroused he was, with his cock in her hand, hard, and wanting.

He raised his hand up from her spine, slid his fingertips between her shoulder blades, up along her neck, and eased them into her snake hair. There, he teased and caressed her array of snakes, but combed them like hair as well, pulling his fingers out against the length of them, before hooking his fingers back at the base of her neck and sliding them into her hair again. She murmured quiet noises, nuzzled her cheek into his chest, and squeezed the base of his member.

"You're still hurt," she said, "so you should relax."

"I am very relaxed." He was too. His eyelids were getting heavier, his breathing was getting slower, and his body was sinking into his bed roll once more. Having his lover's head on his chest, her snake body over his legs, and her fingers wrapped around his hard girth, was comfortable. Like a warm blanket.

Love's embrace, that's what it was. He knew it, and it danced on his lips with taunting need. He wanted to say it, he did, but now wasn't the time; or you're just a coward, Darian. Bellerophon.

"How long would it take for you to cum, if I stay slow like this, and only use my hand here?" She squeezed his girth, stroked the length, but kept the motion slow and deep. From the edge of his glans, to the base of his cock above his testicles, she worked her hand in an almost circular rhythm, the same as he would if he was masturbating. But, she never increased her speed, keeping it leisurely instead until it was somewhere between sexual delight, and a deep, massaging feeling.

"You're uh... if you stay slow like that? Probably a good long while."

"Good." She turned her head, leaned into his combing fingers, and flicked her forked tongue up to lick at his neck. "I don't have one of these, so, it's nice to get to feel it in my hand. I like how it's kind of hard, but still soft enough I can squeeze it." And as she did, she pointed his cock upward, and used her thumb to knead his girth. Always gentle, never hard enough to hurt him, she experimented with the various places on his veined cock she could caress and massage.