2.8 - The Fall of Asterion
“Your horns,” Medusa said. “Come here. Let me clean the blood from them.”
Asterion exhaled a heavy cracked breath, feeling the split in his side where the knight’s blade had pierced him.
“Thank you, my lady. It is drawn to me, the blood. Like the sun is drawn to the horizon’s gaping maw each evening. I am afraid I will never be free of it.”
He stared into the Medusa’s eyes, watching the swirling green eternity held at bay behind their glassy surface. Her brow furrowed and the coiling snakes around her head hissed in displeasure.
“It is not drawn to you, my dear. They hunger for it. Destruction is the only way they know how to create. The only way they know how to live.”
She took a wet cloth and motioned for him to kneel. He held his breath and placed a hand on his side, then heavily planted one knee on the floor of the stone chamber. In all of Atropha, Medusa had the most luxurious living quarters. The far wall was adorned with magnificent and dark paintings, the likes of which Asterion had never seen. Her bed was massive and canopied with pale green and black lace curtains, and along the wall opposite of it were gilded bookshelves haphazardly covered in books. In comparison to Asterion’s spartan space, it was a palace. She glided forward and gently began wiping the blood from his horns and the iron rings secured to them.
“The children were asking about you,” she said.
“I will go to them, soon. I do not wish for them to see me in such a state. What of the Human? How did she fare without me?”
The snakes around Medusa’s head hissed intermittently, which he recognized as laughter.
“She is...alive and unharmed,” Medusa said. “That is all I can say of her.”
Asterion huffed, causing Medusa to step back out of the cloud of hot breath.
“What did you do to her?”
“I told you, she’s unharmed. I did nothing. A few of the children may have...had a bit of fun. That is all,” she said, stepping closer. “Why you bother to entertain her I will never understand.”
“Because she represents a peace that I will never have,” he said. “She is unable to help us, this I know. But perhaps, one day, your children, or children’s children, shall be blessed with the harvest of my labors here.”
Medusa nodded, took the blood-soaked rag and stepped back.
“Let’s see the wound.” she motioned to his side.
He breathed in and pulled himself up to his feet, wincing as he did it. Gingerly, he pulled up his cloth shirt to reveal the two-foot-long horizontal slice across his midsection, blood still slowly leaking from it. Medusa closed her eyes and bowed her head. She cracked her knuckles and shifted her shoulders back, until they both popped, then pulled her chin in tight to her chest. Her snakes coiled and hissed wildly as thick smoke bellowed out from their mouths. The smoke swirled aimlessly for a moment before coalescing into a thin blade. It wavered in the air, moving closer to the wound, and then cut along it. It dissipated and the snakes fell limp, sapped of all energy. Asterion could still feel the sting of his wound, but he looked down at it and watched the snake-like stitches weave in and out of his flesh, sealing it closed.
“Thank you,” he said.
Medusa slowly opened her eyes and sighed.
“You are most welcome. Now go see the children. I need to rest.”
In the heart of Atropha, where the rocky ceiling was the highest and the bioluminescence of the fungus was brightest, Arges taught the children. Asterion had saved him from a pack of wild mercenaries paid to slay him and dig out his eye, and ever since, he only wished to foster the growing generation. When Asterion emerged from one of the many tunnels leading into the school cavern, he was beset by a chorus of small voices, delicate, full of life. Charging upward from the section of the cavern assigned as the recreational yard were seven small forms. Nemesis, the daughter of Medusa led the pack. Her snakes were barely three inches long but vital to her movement. She was too young to control the ageless power that roiled inside her eyes so she wore a thick cloth blindfold and relied on her snakes to guide her. Next came Cybele, her brain cage wobbling unevenly on her spindly wooden legs, leaving a trail of slime behind her where her long hairy tail dragged along the ground. In the slime slithered Dardanos, the last of his kind. His four small horns peeking up, but his thin snakelike body remaining hidden in the slime. The rest of the Cerastes, as far as Asterion knew, had been killed and harvested for their malleable skin. He had found Dardanos coiled up, shivering in an icy pool of water deep in a forgotten recess of Atropha. Hopping back and forth over the slime trail was Leander, his veiny translucent wings still too small to lift his jaguar body more than a foot off of the ground, namely due to the massive weight of his horse head. As he lifted off of the ground, his head would dip forward and pull him back down, nearly sending him end over end each time. Spinning on the heels of Leander was Pyrros, his human torso shifting left and right on top of the swirling eruption of fire that carried it. The rest of the children gave him a wild birth as the flames licked out more than usual. He had only recently been allowed to join the class after proving capable of leashing his flames enough not to burn the other children. Even so, in moments of excitement, they would spill out more than he intended. Fluttering overtop of him was Koronis, her buzzard chest expanding and compressing in tune with the bursts of fire from Pyrros, bellows of frost unfolding from the mouth of her ram head to keep the flames in check. Before any of them reached the Minotaur however, the ground in front of him split open and Ajax surged upward from it, each of their hundreds of inch long bodies tumbling over each other in a chaotic dance, until they resembled a weeping willow. Each hanging branch would drop body after body and they would rejoin at the trunk, creating a mesmerizing waterfall effect throughout the entire colony.
“Welcome home!” it bellowed out in each minuscule voice at once.
Asterion regaled the children with stories from his time away, each story receiving a larger response than the last. Arges stood behind them all, arms folded, smiling. He had protested at first, but quickly gave in to the begging mob and called the school day early.
“Enough stories for today,” Asterion said, hours later. “Now, devilment was afoot in my absence, and some, if not all of you, are culpable.”
The children grew deathly silent.
“I know that the Human was besieged by rogues and rascals, and I am greatly discouraged by it.”
The silence continued.
“She came to us, at great risk, and for no gain of her own,” he said. “In fact, the very act of coming to us has elicited banishment from her people, and yet she stays.”
“She should just leave!” Dardanos shouted, then quickly coiled up behind Cybele. A few more children, less confident, murmured in agreement.
“Oh, how greatly I have failed if that is what you believe,” Asterion said, shaking his head. “If you wish for her to leave, then you wish for me to leave as well. We are the same, her and I. Born in different worlds, yes, but embracing the same hope of a world neither of us has yet to reach. When I am gone, she will be the last chance for you all.”
“What do you mean when you are gone?” Nemesis said.
“They will come for me soon,” he said. “They see it in me. I am more dangerous to them than anything they’ve faced because, in me, they see more humanity than they see in themselves. When they take me, you cannot allow the work I’ve done to go to waste. Continue on, with the Human. It is the only path.”
Silence returned to the cavern, save a distant trickling of water. Pyrros shifted forward, his flame a concentrated and bound pillar beneath him now. He nodded at Asterion.
“We will,” he said. “I promise.”
Asterion smiled and knelt down in front of him, holding back a wince as the wound in his side howled in protest. He took Pyrros’ head in his hands and pulled him in close, kissing his forehead.
“Each one of you, in your own way, is greater than I will ever be. You belong to each other, and to this world. Never let anyone take it from you. There is a magnificent peace in your future, but you will have to fight for it.”
A shrieking horn echoed through the cavern. The children collectively jumped in terror.
“Take them to safety,” Asterion said to Arges, as he stood. “They are here.”
Arges nodded and quickly began ushering the children away, despite their protests. Another shrieking horn, the battle calls of the mercenaries. Asterion hurried to the entrance chamber of Atropha.
When he arrived, Medusa was there with Orthus. The tunnel leading into Atropha from the surface was bathed in torchlight, and the rumbling of death could be heard in it.
“You must have upset them something fierce,” Medusa said.
“They don’t take kindly to being outsmarted by an animal,” Asterion said, drawing his labrys, the massive double-sided battle-ax only suited to his hands. Raucous howls and laughter filled the chamber as the source of the torchlight came into view. A band of fifty mercenaries emerged, each one looking more insane than the last. Their wide eyes spun in their heads, and their mouths hung open, drool spilling out onto their leather armor, and rusting bits of their chainmail. They carried flails, spiked ball maces, and clubs. Nothing that would cause an easy death. They savored the pain a bludgeoning weapon would cause and the repetition of the beating. Some whipped dogs in front of them, each beast covered in spiked metal plates. The Minotaur looked at Orthus alongside him, and both canine heads looked back and bore their teeth, in a grim smile. The first mistake of the mercenaries.
“Ahhhahahahahaha, blood, blood, blood, the heartbeats, we feast, we feast tonight!” the leader of the mercenaries yelled, then pointed his flail at Asterion. “You horned pig, you horned bag of meat, we will shred your skin and roast your children on a spit to feed to the hounds!”
The second mistake of the mercenaries. Asterion stepped forward.
“I am a mild creature. Long have I toiled against violence. It doesn’t suit me. However, it seems that everything has its time. The violence I will exact upon you, soulless beasts will reverberate through your being powerful enough to shock your rotting ancestors to life. Gasping through their dust-filled lungs, they will cry out for mercy from me, and I will grant them such, as I end every single one of you. Each of you will watch as your family tree is burned to ash before me, and I fill your mouth with it before severing your head and ending your miserable excuse of a life. None of you, not one, will leave this place. My home will be your grave, and humans will forget that you ever existed. You do not belong to them, nor to us, and you will die the way you lived. In miserable loneliness.”
Asterion nodded to Orthus who howled with both heads and instantly, the armored dogs of the mercenaries turned on their owners, sinking their fangs into the necks of their jailers. Asterion wasted no time, charging forward and wading through the mercenaries like the wind. With one swing, he cleaved three bodies in half, and with another, he split a mercenary from top to bottom. Medusa was hot on his heels, and he felt a chilling blast behind him. He turned just in time to see four mercenaries stricken with petrification, and then crushed as Orthus leaped on top of them.
“Yes, yes, yes, spill it all!” The leader of the mercenaries screamed. “Bring me his head!”
Ten of the mercenaries collapsed on Asterion, bashing his legs with their spiked mauls. The pain was overwhelming and he fell to his knees. The mercenaries howled even louder, like hyenas around a dying man. One took a shortsword from his belt and grabbed Asterion by the horn. He brought the blade to his neck and began to saw back and forth with the dull blade. Asterion roared, dropped his battle-ax, and grabbed the man by the head with one hand and the blade with the other. He spread his arms apart, ripping both the blade and the head away from the body. A geyser of blood splattered across the nine mercenaries around him, who continued to bludgeon him. He could feel bone after bone, shatter, and blood from his neck pour down his chest. Orthus swallowed one of them whole, and Medusa slithered around Asterion’s body, absorbing blows for him, all the while swinging her head wildly, turning six more of them to stone. One mercenary slammed Medusa in the side of the head with his flail, knocking her free of Asterion. They continued their onslaught. Orthus bit down hard on one, and even as life was leaving his body, he hammered and hammered at Asterion. His lungs began to fail, as a mercenary cracked his chest with an iron mace. He grabbed the man by his legs and swung him into another, breaking his body in half and clearing enough space to pick up his battle-ax again.
“Ehhhahahahaha, bring me the head, bring me the head, bring me the head, I want to taste!” The leader shouted. Asterion’s vision blurred, his legs quivered, all feeling in his arms was gone. A heavy metallic taste was forming in the back of his mouth. He took a step towards the mercenary leader, then another, and another. With each step, a mercenary would collapse on him, and each time, Orthus, or Medusa would end them. The leader’s laughter pitched higher and higher, until his was screaming. He lifted his club over his head and charged at Asterion. Before he could bring down the blow, Asterion swung his labrys through the leader’s forearms. The club, with hands still attached, tumbled to the ground. Asterion brought his weapon back around and severed his head from his body. As the head fell to the ground, so did Asterion, into the sea of mutilation he had caused.
“Human, it is your charge now,” The Minotaur said, “I hope that you see it through. The little ones are counting on you.”
His body drifted beyond the stone, beyond the sky, beyond the confines of the stars. The pain of his wounds vanished. He felt weightless and warmed by the blanket of space that wrapped itself around him, protecting his skin from the whirling debris of colliding planets. Nestled there above the world was an open door, welcoming him home.
And so the mercenaries were defeated, but Medusa and Orthus wept as the brightest light in Atropha faded before them.