The Awakening

by Joe Jackson

“Of course! Tell me what you seek, and I will see if the plants will guide us to them.”

  “Leighandra,” Max said, turning to her. “Are there any sorcerous powers you can call upon to protect us should this be a medusa?”

  “Well, I can create reflective surfaces to use against it, if I have the proper features of the land to work with,” she answered. “We might be best served battling it in its cave, if that’s what it turns out to be. Open, flat ground would provide the fewest opportunities to fight it in such an abstract manner.”

  Max pulled his shield down from his back, but neither the front nor the back was of any use for reflections. Likewise, the ice-like blade of the Sword of the North Wind provided him with little to work with. Ironically, his armor was the most reflective thing he possessed, and as he realized that, he leaned in and stared at his image on Galadon’s armor. “This is going to be tricky,” he muttered.

  Delkantar and Starlenia reached the cave and began to peer into it from opposite sides. They were almost perfectly obscured by the statuary, but the ranger fell to his rump when something flew past his face and tinked off of one of the statues.

  “They’re being shot at!” Leighandra yelled, and everyone looked up toward the cave.

  Max turned and ran up the hillside with Galadon close behind. To their credit, they only went about ten paces before they realized they were charging uphill in plate armor. Galadon looked over his shoulder at his steed but must’ve concluded that the charger wouldn’t be much better – or better off – for running uphill. The knights slowed their pace but continued to press forward, and they kept their cool even when Starlenia hissed in pain and grabbed her arm.

  The rogue collapsed and fell over a moment later, and everyone lost their composure. Even Audrei and Yiilu began the ascent, and Vo’rii skirted around to get to the fallen rogue. Delkantar had strung his bow and nocked an arrow, and he leaned in and took a blind shot only a moment before an arrow sank into his thigh. He yelped in pain and jumped back, and his eyes went wide before he, too, slipped to his rump and then slumped over.

  “No!” Leighandra heard herself shout as she passed the paladins.

  Yiilu paused partway up the rise and began to call upon her druidic power, and Audrei took up a protective position in front of the elf. A strong gale whipped through the valley, and the next arrow that came forth from the cave was ripped from its path and flung harmlessly away. The druid kept her hand forward, her eyes narrowed in concentration, and the winds stayed consistently disruptive.

  Max and Galadon pressed up the hill, the weight of their gear and the limitations of their armor making it arduous. They didn’t even stop when the creature finally made its appearance.

  Leighandra’s jaw dropped; it was a medusa…

  The woman was tall and lean, dressed in a tight-fitting white tunic and an ivory skirt. Just as in all the legends, her skin – if it wasn’t scales; Leighandra couldn’t properly tell at that distance – had a greenish tone to it, her “hair” was in fact a mass of writhing snakes, and she had a bow that she bent in a deadly arc as she took aim at the two men coming up the hill toward her. Unlike the tales, she didn’t have a serpentine lower body. She was completely humanoid but for those obvious differences. The creature yelled something in an unknown tongue before she loosed an arrow at Max.

  The luranar deflected the shot with his shield without breaking stride, and his other hand gestured Galadon to fall behind him so he was out of her line of fire. Max hadn’t drawn his sword yet, keeping the weight out of his hand until it was time to do battle. He kept his shield up before him and began to sidestep westward, trying to take advantage of Yiilu’s summoned wind.

  Something was wrong with the medusa’s eyes, but Leighandra couldn’t tell what it was from the distance between them. It suddenly occurred to her that she was looking at a medusa’s eyes, and she averted her gaze somewhat. “Max! Galadon! Don’t meet her eyes!”

  The creature pulled forth another arrow and fired it at Leighandra. The chronicler expected the wind to protect her, but the medusa’s shot seemed to take the wind into account and cut through the barrier to strike true. Leighandra cried out as the arrow sank into her left side, and she expected whatever poison the creature had put upon its arrows would soon kill her or render her unconscious like her friends. When no such thing happened, the chronicler made her way toward Audrei and Yiilu.

  Max finally reached level ground and approached cautiously, no doubt trying to figure a way to fight effectively without looking directly at his enemy. After a moment, though, he stood tall, quick-stepped directly toward the medusa, and slashed at her. The medusa batted his swing aside with her bow and then slapped the luranar across his armored snout with her weapon. It hit hard enough to make his armor ring, but he didn’t seem too badly stung by the attack. He moved to his left when Galadon approached, and they circled to flank the creature.

  “How badly did it sink in?” Audrei asked, inspecting the arrow.

  “I don’t think it’s deep. The armor slowed it enough that it just pricked me,” Leighandra said. “Just pull it free, please. I must get up there and see to our other friends.”

  “We are about to do the same,” Yiilu said over her shoulder. She ceased concentrating on her defensive winds. “If she is not loosing arrows upon us, we must take advantage and gain the high ground quickly!”

  Once Audrei pulled the shaft out of Leighandra’s armor, the chronicler felt the detached arrowhead fall down harmlessly within. The wound beneath was superficial, a minor sting that was easy enough to push aside. “That’s done it. Let’s go!”

  The three women dashed up the hill as quickly as they could, and Leighandra went to aid the paladins while the druidess and priestess split up to see to their fallen friends. The chronicler drew her saber and thought to set it aflame, but an idea occurred to her. She knew that reptiles – aside from white dragons, she mused – disliked the cold, and so she used the song of her sorcery to pull the heat from her blade, forming a frosty coating on it in moments. The medusa might not be a reptile, but it couldn’t hurt to try. Properly prepared, she took up her dueling stance and stepped into the circle of combatants.

  The medusa abandoned her bow, tossing it casually aside, and she pulled forth a pair of sickles. Her weaponry was unusual, but she had used her bow to deadly effect, and Leighandra had little doubt she could use the sickles in much the same fashion. From here, the chronicler could see the eyes of the snakes that adorned the woman’s head, some of them fixated on the duelist and hissing menacingly. Others watched Max while the rest watched Galadon, and the Medusa hardly had to turn her head to regard her enemies as they waited to attack.

  The medusa spun on Leighandra suddenly, and the chronicler hesitated just a moment too long, meeting the gaze of the creature. Nothing happened. The creature wore a veil of some kind, one that obscured even her eyes, but Leighandra was no fool. She averted her gaze, but it took only seconds to realize she couldn’t properly duel without looking at her opponent. How could she measure her enemy’s movements and intentions without looking at her?

  Leighandra tried to dodge when the creature leapt at her, but she wasn’t used to fighting this way. The medusa knocked aside the chronicler’s saber with two quick swipes of the shorter hooked weapons, and then her clawed foot came up and connected solidly with Leighandra’s face. Leighandra stumbled, and the medusa took the opportunity to put her foot into her back, sending Leighandra ungraciously to the ground.

  Galadon’s first swing cost him his weapon. The medusa caught the greatsword with one of her sickles, hooked the other over the blade, and used leverage to rip it from the paladin’s grasp effortlessly. She cast the weapon away down the hillside, and turned to the last of the three companions still armed: Max.

  The luranar prince threatened the medusa with his sword but used that feint simply to line her up with his shield. She was light of foot and difficult to overrun, but he harried her from behind his protective barrier, and
drove her away from his disarmed and prone friends. At the same time, he continued to badger her so that she couldn’t bother Yiilu or Audrei, or either of their downed companions.

  The medusa, apparently, didn’t see things the same way. She ducked behind several of the statues and dashed between them, coming out on the other side of Audrei from Max. Audrei rose to her feet and stared directly at the creature, but she made no move to either threaten the medusa or defend herself. Soon enough, she had a sickle to her throat, and the medusa hissed something in her sibilant language that stopped Max in his tracks.

  Vo’rii bit the medusa on the back of the leg and started to pull her down to the ground. The creature tried to angle to attack the wolf but couldn’t land more than a glancing blow with her sickle. That was enough to get Vo’rii to yelp and dash away, but it was all the time Audrei needed to fall back behind her husband. Galadon, too, approached with his greatsword in hand once more. And, not the least, Yiilu approached, the elf’s face a mask of barely-restrained fury when she saw that her companion had been wounded.

  The medusa pulled off her veil and everyone tried to look away, but she yet had some strip of gauze over her eyes. She can’t be blind, can she? With how accurate she was with that bow of hers? Leighandra wondered. If she was blind or her eyes had been torn out, it seemed to matter little. Unless the chronicler was mistaken, the medusa could see through the eyes of her snakes as well.

  On that note, the medusa recognized she was surrounded. If there was a time when she was going to use her petrifying gaze, this was it. She looked from enemy to enemy: luranar, human, half-elf, elf, and wolf. Audrei kept her distance, looking mystified by the fact that she had been held at death’s point just a moment ago.

  Galadon began the concerted attack, the wide swipe of his greatsword driving the medusa toward Max, Yiilu, and Vo’rii, who triangulated their answer. The medusa parried sword and scimitar with ease, but Vo’rii caught her again. This time, before the medusa could swipe at the wolf, the chronicler dashed in and added her own blade to the dance. Her saber bit through the medusa’s tunic, and a thin stream of red accompanied its exit. The medusa cried out, but not just a yelp of pain. The gauze about her eyes soon began to let tears through, running down her face to join the rivulet of blood in staining her tunic. She turned to and fro again, trying to keep all of them at bay, but her face twisted with the recognition that she was about to die.

  “Stop!” Audrei barked, coming forward. “Don’t hurt her again. Don’t hit her.”

  “Audrei, stay back,” Max said. “She nearly killed you! Let us do what needs doing.”

  The luranar woman touched her husband on the shoulder but continued past him, and she held her hands up as she approached the medusa. “She could’ve killed me, but she didn’t. And I think I know why.”

  Leighandra watched the priestess approach the creature fearlessly, and though the snakes hissed and spat at the luranar woman, neither they nor the medusa herself attacked. Audrei slowly reached up and peeled the gauze away, and the chronicler saw that her earlier theory was correct: The medusa’s eyes had been gouged out. Audrei said something softly to the medusa in the luranar tongue. Strangely, the woman replied in what also sounded to be luranar.

  “Did she just speak luranar?” Yiilu gasped.

  Audrei looked confused and shook her head. “No, not exactly. It’s like a dialect of our language I’ve never heard before, but it is remarkably similar.”

  Galadon approached, the tip of his sword turned down toward the ground, but he didn’t dare put it away. “Can you tell what she said?”

  “She asked for mercy, I think,” the priestess said. She pulled forth a strip of cloth and pressed it to the medusa’s wound. The creature hissed in surprise but made no move to attack. In fact, she hung her sickles from her belt and put her hands before her, together, palm-up.

  “Are the others all right?” Leighandra asked.

  “Asleep, but they seem otherwise in no danger,” Yiilu confirmed.

  “Disarm her and lead her over by the cave,” Max said. “Let us get her situated, and then tend to our friends, and then perhaps we can get some answers from her, should her words be close enough to our own.”

  “I may be able to make a neutralizing agent for the poison with some of my berries,” Yiilu offered. “I can see to that while you question her, once I tend to Vo’rii.”

  Audrei ignored the order to disarm the medusa, and led her by the hand, either ignorant to the fact that the woman could see through her snakes’ eyes or just being polite. She got the creature to sit down on an outcropping near the cave entrance, then crouched down before her and began to speak with her in the luranar tongue. Yiilu went through her pouches of berries, herbs, and flowers, looking for some combination that might rouse the others. Galadon sheathed his sword, but he met Max’s eyes, nodded toward the medusa, and made a throat-cutting gesture.

  “She can still see you,” Leighandra said, surprising the men. “She may not have her own eyes, but I’m pretty sure she can see through the eyes of her snakes. You might not want to do anything like that again while Audrei’s that close.”

  Audrei looked over. “Just don’t do it again at all. We’re not killing her.”

  “Has she told you anything yet?” Galadon asked.

  “She’s told me enough,” the priestess said. She laid a hand over the stab wound and closed her eyes. “Max, could you help me tend to this wound?”

  “Certainly,” he said, though his expression was far less confident than the answer.

  Leighandra was glad her thrust hadn’t bitten too deeply, but she felt conflicted by those very feelings. The world was proving to be a far stranger place than the one she often sang or recited poetry about. The epics were about heroes fighting monsters and evil; they rarely spoke of the heroes healing their enemies or talking to them like old friends. First the gnolls, then a dragon, now a medusa… Leighandra was at a loss. And her confusion was not mitigated at all when Vo’rii approached the medusa and licked her hand.

  Audrei asked a question of their captive, and the woman reached up and ran a finger along one of the snakes’ heads before she responded. The luranar woman’s ears stood straight. “She says her snakes produce several different toxins. She used a sleeping agent on our friends.”

  “Why did she attack us?” Max asked, satisfied to let his wife ask the questions.

  The priestess spoke with the medusa for a few minutes and tied the gauze strip over her eyes again while they did so. Delkantar and Starlenia both began to stir, and Yiilu stopped going through her herbal remedies. She hushed them and explained what was going on, and though the two were obviously still aggravated by the piercing wounds of the arrows, neither made any sort of hostile moves toward the medusa.

  “Someone ripped her eyes out?” Starlenia asked when she approached.

  Audrei nodded but didn’t interrupt the medusa’s tale. The serpentine woman continued speaking for some time, and when she finished, Audrei nodded again. The medusa rose and made her way into the cave.

  “Where’s she going?” Galadon demanded, moving toward the cave mouth, his hand to the hilt of his greatsword.

  “She is getting something for us,” Audrei answered, gesturing for everyone to stay calm. “I’ll explain everything shortly. Just be patient.”

  When the medusa returned, she had a dagger in her hands. The weapon was sheathed, and she handed it over to Audrei without reservation. The luranar woman drew it forth from the scabbard, and her brow creased when she saw it was made of bone. It was remarkably well-made just to look at it, but bone weapons were typically poor quality and splintered or cracked under even the most mundane use. It seemed like a lot of work to waste on a weapon that would never be all that useful, unless…

  “She says this is the Claw of Sirenox,” the priestess told her companions, and that name immediately brought a great epic to Leighandra’s mind. “She took possession of it when she slew the beast that lived in this ca
ve before she did.”

  “What’s this all about?” Delkantar asked while Starlenia and Yiilu worked to get the arrowhead out of his thigh and put salve on the wound.

  “Her name is Alissiri Alistoris,” Audrei answered. “Her people here in the mountains drove her out months ago. I can’t understand all the nuances of what she’s been telling me, but I can figure enough of it out. I think there was some political struggle among her people, and when things turned to violence, she used her gaze to defend herself. When she was subdued, they gouged her eyes out and exiled her here, to live nearly blind and defenseless in the lands of their enemies – and a great red dragon. The statues here were the people she had turned to stone, set to remind her of what she’d done to her own people, and why she was exiled.”

  Galadon made his way over to one of the statues and his eyes went wide. “These look a lot like those desiccated corpses we fought outside the cemetery in Solaris!”

  “Syrinthians,” Starlenia said, and that got the medusa’s attention immediately. “I think I get it now. Remember Rexis’ tale about their first dealing with the Tempis’ra?” That name, too, drew a reaction from the medusa. “He said there were three cities of syrinthians, and that they had to destroy them before they went after the Tempis’ra himself. One was in Laeranore, one was here in the mountains, and the other was somewhere south in what’s now the Khalarin. It sounds as if they didn’t quite get rid of all the syrinthians and… whatever this woman truly is… when they destroyed the city.”

  “Then history is repeating itself?” Galadon wondered.

  “Do we kill her, then?” Delkantar asked, at last getting back to his feet once Yiilu was done with her ministrations. “There’s always the enemy of my enemy is my friend to consider. Maybe she could lead us to the city of her people? We may need her to if we have to destroy it before we confront the Tempis’ra.”

  “We are not killing her,” Audrei said, laying her hand atop the medusa’s coupled hands. “This poor woman has been through enough. Even if she’s not exactly friendly to our peoples, she’s had everything taken away from her, and she only attacked us because she thought we were here to collect her head as a trophy. It would seem that was one part of Leighandra’s tale we didn’t get to hear: People sometimes take the heads of her kind in the hopes they can use their gazes as a weapon.”