Medusa Tollens

To Perseus' relief, the island was misty, providing concealment. A slight motion: a figure emerging from the mist? Shield up!

Viewing in the mirror... no, just a rock. Of course, it was not just any rock, but a reminder of what carelessness would earn.

Ever so carefully, he explored, listening, keeping his eyes down. There were other petrified warriors.

The voice echoed, shocking him. "Why did you come? Here to heap injury on insult and injustice heaped in turn on more injury? Or do you seek vengeance on me for defending myself?"

He wasn't ready for that. A monster, they'd said. Seething, pure rage. Her voice was certainly angry, but it wasn't particularly enraged. More... bitter. And, more to the point, the echoes kept him from pinpointing the direction. He had to get her to speak again. "No. I made a rather foolish promise."

"Of what?" It was a challenge, defiant.

"To get anything the king desired. He requested your head."

A pause. The voice, when it returned, was no longer vehement. "Why did he want you dead?" It didn't echo this time, and he turned in its general direction, shield up, looking under it at the ground.

"It's more that he wanted me out of the way. You are not easy to find." As he walked, it occurred to him that if she lay down and he walked over her, she'd get him. He stopped. He needed to think this through.

"Then why did he want you out of the way?"

Though her voice was somewhat distant so there was no risk yet of running right into her, that was a severely distracting question. "He wants my mother, and I helped her avoid him. So it's really not so much to keep my promise, but to protect her. I need to get back soon."

He heard a shuffling sound off to one side. Too light to be her footsteps. But then her voice came from that direction. "To save a woman from an unwanted suitor. I could have used that sort of help." It was barely recognizable from before. Still bitter, but calm.

"How so?"

"I don't know what the story is these days, but I was once reasonably pretty."

That was putting it mildly. "It is said that you held yourself in, ah, higher regard at the time."

"Myself? No; as I saw it, there were several prettier among the other Parthenal virgins. But Poseidon's lust rose upon seeing me. His presence was... immense. Simply his leer was overwhelming. I knew it would not end well."

Perseus turned and tilted his shield - she was sitting on a rock, hands on her crossed knees. Even with the distortion of the mirror protecting him from the deadly effect of her gaze, her ugliness was breathtaking. She was outrageously fat wherever she was not bonily skinny. The skin of her shins and forearms was not merely scaly, but blotchy and covered in bumps, and one of her arms looked as if she had a compound fracture, though she moved it without apparent agony. She wore mens' clothing, probably stolen from one of the failed heroes. Even through the shield, he didn't press his luck and look on her face. Now that he had his eye on her, he held back, curious.

She continued, "Poseidon found me alone and declared me the fairest of all females, fairer than Aphrodite, and statelier than Athena. And he took me."

There was something missing here. "Then who is the offspring? I've never heard of a god failing to conceive."

"I bear it still, have borne it since your mother was a babe. It is the least of my indignities. For when I returned to the temple, I found no sympathy. None would hear that I did not beg for him. None would hear that I did not place myself above the goddesses. I begged, I pleaded, but was treated as if I had sought him out, boasted, and offered myself." Her voice raised slightly toward the end, but it was a mere crackling breaking up the long smolder.

If so, "That doesn't seem particularly fair, but... you are saying you were cursed by Pallas Athena the wisest, for no particular reason?"

"The wisest? What is your name, warrior?" - "Perseus." - "Perseus, what were my first acts upon being cursed?"

This seemed like dangerous territory. "I have heard that you petrified hundreds. Nearly an entire village."

Her ire was rising once more. "Yes. Now, if you were laying this curse on me, what would you make absolutely sure to do?"

Perseus thought. "Place you away from civilization."

"That would help a little, but mainly, you tell me the nature of my curse!" This was the first angry shriek he'd heard that was worthy of her reputation.

"Oh. Wouldn't it be obvious?"

"Only after killing a few dozen people by complete accident! And who's the one who brought killing into this? Does Athena's story make any sense in the first place? 'Medusa thought too much of herself, so let's kill a bunch of people and blame her for it!'?"

Athena must have anticipated the result. "But... why?"

Medusa sighed. "I don't know. It didn't have anything to do with them - they were good people - well, most of them - and worshiped her to the last. The best explanation I can find would make her out to be abnormally petty and a hypocrite besides, and even I dare not bring my estimation of her that low. But do you know why I am on this island, buried behind magical baffles, as close to Tartarus as can possibly be arranged?"

"I'd heard you were exiled here."

"Self-imposed. Putting a sack over my head helped, but eventually some curious man would rip it off and then it'd be another round of running and killing to survive." Long silence, and Perseus let the shield drop, so he was merely facing away from her. A shuffling sound, cloth on cloth, as she stood up. "But if I travel with a companion, I think it can work. Shall we go bring your king my head?" Footsteps, approaching from a distance. "Along with the rest of me?"

Perseus was dumbfounded. "Why would I trust you? I have the advantage here." He raised the shield and caught sight of one of her legs.

She continued her approach. "Surely you can see why I would want to help you?"

Perseus readied his sword and adjusted his shield to see her better. He saw her head.

Or rather, the sack over her head. She had disarmed herself. Even her relatively harmless hands were out to the sides. He nervously eyed the petrified warriors around him. Had they been similarly lured?

No: they stood with weapons raised, or at least in a wary stance - not recoiling from a relaxed position. On the other hand, he was the first appropriately armed with a distorting mirror. He tensed.

Medusa had stopped before coming too close. "Afterwards, we'll need to come back together. I don't want to have to return here alone. Do you agree to escort me back?"

And here she is thinking about the long term. Would she think of that if she were who I came here thinking she was?

She began backing away. "Perseus. Please." Her voice was the scratch of spear on rock. How unlike a siren's call. There is no magic in it. If it is a trick and I'm falling for it, it was made by pure guile, no enchantment. And this is against the character she was said to have. Not just that - she is utterly unlike what I was told to expect. What else could they have been wrong about?

He sheathed his sword. "Let's get that tied on. I'd feel a little safer."

"So would I."