Piezo – Greek term meaning "to squeeze"," to press", or" to force". As in the method a constrictor uses to immobilize its prey.
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I was not born so much as I was created. The wonder of conception and development not efficient enough to fashion the kind of creature I was intended to be. No magical ability or supernatural talent to speak of. A failure of both biological and supernatural proportions. The bane of my parents' existences. How could such a thing be possible? The child of an arch witch and a powerful warlock reduced to the status of a mere human? It was simply unheard of.
No one would ever know. They mustn't. How could they? My mother had gained her position in the hierarchy through sheer power and magical ability. No witch dared trifle with her lest they become mere dust beneath her feet. The clan of dark magic worshipped her talent and facility. She showed no weakness and gave no mercy. None would oppose her position other than Maba herself. She was like a goddess, immovable, unreachable, and perfect in every way. The quintessential being of magic. Her other daughters were some of the most powerful witches the world has ever known.
So I was kept hidden. Away from the eyes of the community and known only to those my mother deemed worthy of her consortion. If my existence were ever brought to the attention of our enemies, primarily those witches seeking my mother's position of authority, mutiny and defiance were certain. I would be thrown before Death and his loyalists in a moment. But that wasn't my mother's plan for me. No. I held a much darker purpose in her grasp for the future. Not my future, pray tell, but as a vehicle in her search for the ultimate means of control: knowledge.
A scientist in the most ridiculous sense of the word. A pawn of happenstance she could not understand. A being of all things supernatural attempting to understand the mechanisms of the natural world. Ludicrous. Mind boggling. Futile. Except that I was in all fairness, human, myself being governed by those same mechanisms she sought to understand and ultimately conquer. I was an empty tome in which she could write the new laws that would govern her new world, one in which all would bow to her whim. She would shake the foundations of creation and break apart the very atoms with despair and madness.
No. I was much too precious to be disposed of easily. I was not yet broken. I was not yet fashioned. I could be molded and shaped into whatever she desired most. I would take whatever form she saw fit. She hated and loved me even more than that bitch of an eldest Arachne. And I despised her for it. I hated my mother with every fiber of my being. She promised to make me a witch. Swore it, in fact. Threatened me with death and the pledge of a new existence.
"You, filthy thing, are not yet born. You are nothing but a sprite, a fetus. You are not my daughter yet, Medusa. But you will be. I say with truth and with verity that you will become a witch. Even if I have to turn you into one of them in the process."
I was such an arrogant, impudent fool.
"One of what, moth-?"
"-Don't call me that, vermin!"
She never showed it, but I knew she took delight in my fear, and scoffed at my trembling. "…One of what, Lady Ceto?..."
That smile. That horrid, wretched smile. It is possible that I despised that crooked grin even more than the demon herself.
"Isn't it obvious, little monster? I speak of the kishin, of course."
Prologue and first chapter all in one. The rest of them will be much longer, I promise. I still have yet to decide where ultimately I want to go with this, so only a taste for the moment. Just know that this is my take on the origins of Medusa, why she is the way she is, with lots of Stein thrown in the mix. Debauchery!