For Medusa Gorgon, everything was in the process of falling apart.
It was her own damn fault, she thought to herself in that strange, calm, reflective state of mind that overcomes people when such enormous catastrophes occur. It was her own fault for putting all her eggs in one basket without even realising it. She had thought that everything had been going so well. The weapon Ragnarok had been captured and subdued. The latest strain of black blood was performing beyond her wildest dreams. It would be a simple matter to combine the two, and then the work of a night at most to transfuse the resultant mixture into the host.
But that was the problem right there, wasn't it? The host. Not any host would do any more. This new strain of black blood had to be carefully calibrated for maximum effect. It had to be attuned to the recipient, and the recipient in this case would be Crona, her weak, snivelling boy-child that the fates had chosen to grace her with instead of the strong, powerful witch daughter she had begged them for.
And Crona was about two seconds away from getting impaled by a dragon.
Again, it was her own fault. She had tried to get him used to killing even before injecting him with the black blood, to get a head start on his madness. To that end, she'd had him slaughtering small animals for a while now, mostly ugly and vicious things that he ought not to form any emotional attachment to at all (but yet always did, turning every kill into an hour-long melodrama). The dragon pup had been a bit ambitious, but she'd taken the necessary precautions. Its fuel glands had been milked, its claws blunted and its wings broken to render it harmless. Unfortunately, with her head full of the euphoria of the recent successes with the black blood, she'd forgotten about its damn tail.
She had stood on the opposite side of the room from Crona and the dragon, a psychological trick to try and get him used to being on his own in combat. She was certainly regretting that now. Panicking, she sent a storm of vector arrows at the dragon as it swung its tail right at Crona's frail chest. The boy howled in fear and raised a hand in a futile attempt to protect himself. The sword he had been carrying lay on the ground next to him, quite forgotten about in his terror.
The arrowhead-shaped tail pierced Crona's chest and carried right on through him like he was made of tissue paper. Less than a second later Medusa's vector arrows slammed into the dragon, effectively shredding it and leaving little more than a large red stain and a few lumps of meat. But the damage had clearly been done. Crona tottered and fell to his knees, a look of enormous surprise on his five year old face. Slowly, he reached up and pulled the now-severed tail from his body.
Medusa gave a scream of fury. Months of research, years of planning, a lifetime of work… all of it gone. If by some miracle Crona was still alive, she was half-tempted to kill him herself.
And then, shakily, breathing unsteadily, Crona got back to his feet.
For a moment, Medusa was convinced she was going mad. It would not be surprising, considered the dangerous substances she worked with. An accidental exposure to black blood, even uncalibrated, and it would be easy to hallucinate that her son was stood before her instead of bleeding out her hopes and dreams all over the floor. But somehow this just seemed too… too real.
She walked over to Crona (not running, no matter how much she wanted to, she wasn't about to fawn over him like some human mother) and placed a hand on his chest. There was no ragged tear in the dress he wore, the one she had bought for the daughter she'd prayed for and never received. No gaping wound. No blood, no hot, raw flesh and cold white bone.
It was as if he had been made of smoke.
It was impossible.
And Medusa smiled a smile that terrified Crona, one that he had never seen before and which he therefore assumed was about to lead to some horrible punishment.
It was a smile of glee.
Author's note: I have absolutely no idea where this will head, if it heads anywhere at all. I think the next chapter might go into a bit of detail about Crona's new-found powers, which, if I'm honest, I still need to have a bit of a think about. Still, let me know what you think!