Kosta’s will strained with the effort necessary to maintain a barrier over Acantha’s hissing head, but he didn’t dare falter. He bore the pounding rain with firm resolution. Be stone. Endure. Such thoughts focused his magic, made it a little more real, and bolstered his flagging strength.
The gorgon engaged in a tirade against him all the while.
“...an empty head!” Acantha’s head snakes hissed in agreement as she took a deep breath. “Do you even know what sorts of monsters stalk these woods?”
“Gorgons, apparently.”
Acantha ignored him. “You should’ve died thrice over,” she said. “The forests south of here are a thicket of monsters. You should have died!” The gorgon repeated, seemingly aghast at the idea that he’d managed to slip his way through.
Kosta could thank his and Pavlos’ mad hunting spree for that.
“But I didn’t,” Kosta said. “And my journey led me to you.”
“Foolishness!” Acantha declared, though she appeared flattered at the praise. Kosta noticed a trend there—he began to suspect that he’d come across a rather vain creature. But at least she wasn’t hostile. “You should value your own life more highly, dumb child.”
“My life? That’s been forfeit since my home was scattered to the winds,” Kosta scoffed. His fingers tightened around the comforting weight of his staff. The phaetra core shone brightly amidst the rain and bolstered his own power. “Every moment I live is one more than I deserve. Only my craft matters now. What I am is what I might create.”
Acantha met his eyes amongst the stone menagerie. Legions of frozen life greeted him with every step. Savage griffins, cruel-faced manticore, hordes of men and women in old armor…all had succumbed to the gorgon’s gaze.
Kosta couldn’t deny the trickle of fear that fed into his gut, but he found himself enthralled with her works all the same.
“You speak like an artist.”
“I am an artist,” Kosta said with pride. He glanced at her. “The Opal is beyond me now. It’s found a rightful owner already. But if I can’t have it, I’d love nothing more than to learn from someone who knows how to make use of it. I’d be ashamed to leave empty-handed.”
Acantha’s serpents hissed at him. “You should consider yourself lucky to leave this place at all!” The gorgon scowled at him, though it was far from intimidating. Kosta already had the sense that she wouldn’t harm him without cause, although he wouldn’t expect that protection to extend to a verbal lashing.
She waved a hand and the storm ceased for a moment. Kosta stared as the rain froze all around them, heart aching. This was the kind of power that might have stopped the Merakian Stelios in his tracks!
Acantha used it to inspect a lonely stalk of aconite. She smiled and her grey eyes flashed with a terrible power. Kosta’s breath hitched as the violet flower shifted to the dark hues of frozen stone. Petrification.
It was uncanny to watch up close. One moment the flower had been vibrant. Alive. And the next…
Acantha plucked the stone flower and tucked it into her chiton with a pleased smile. Her serpent hair wriggled happily.
“I will teach you what I wish,” Acantha said. “That empty head of yours needs something to fill it up.”
“Petrification?” Kosta asked hopefully.
Acantha sniffed. “As if! Petrification is a sacred art. It’s my father’s masterpiece, the foundation of the greatest Aretan’s path. You think you could command it?”
“I could try,” Kosta said. He meant his words. The shot at learning an Aretan’s own power…it wasn’t something he could ignore. While their arts were fairly common amongst the sects which rallied around them, the great techniques were still treasured. Each had raised their greatest users to scrape the peak of divinity. None treated such power lightly.
His new teacher laughed. The rain came down again, though the storm intensified after being held in stasis for so long. Kosta nearly buckled beneath the sudden surge, but stood strong. His staff shone like a bonfire as more and more of his power flooded the area to heat the air and still the onslaught.
“You’re still subject to the material,” Acantha said with some amusement. “The world weighs upon you, not the other way around. You’re yet to embrace the Dream. How could you ever master my father’s art?”
Kosta’s jaw tensed. “The same way I’ve attempted to master my art. I might not be able to still the rain or freeze flowers in stone yet, but I will. I must!” He declared. “One day it will be the least of what I will do.”
“Such confidence!” Acantha laughed. Her grey eyes flashed and preserved a great oak in stone forevermore. Kosta craved that power with all his being. Would it freeze Whiteflame? “What have you done to earn it?”
“I’ve survived the fall of Dytifroura. I’ve watched the destruction of my people and the triumph of my enemies,” Kosta said with a scowl. He held his staff high as its rosy-gold light penetrated the depths of the storm. “I’ve suffered this world long enough, and I’ll make it anew one day in my own image.”
Acantha raised her hand. Kosta gasped as his staff was torn from his grip by an invisible force and flew into her marble palm. He scrambled forward, intent on retrieving his focus, but the weight of the storm stilled him. Despite his anger, Kosta knew that he couldn’t allow a single drop of water to brush the gorgon.
He couldn’t risk losing his new teacher. Not before he’d learned a single thing from her!
“Pretty. Powerful, too,” Acantha murmured. Kosta felt a surge of pride, but grunted as she tossed the staff back to him. The brass wood pulsated when it touched his skin, pleased to be back with its master. “You forged this out of true inspiration. But it’s not enough to carve a realm.”
Hope flooded him. The rain had never felt lighter. “You know how to sculpt a world?”
“I’ve never had the inclination,” Acantha said and smothered all Kosta’s hopes in an instant. “But I understand the process academically, yes.”
“Teach me, please,” Kosta begged. He hated to think of himself that way, but how could he resist with someone who had everything he craved right in front of him?
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Acantha blinked at his sudden fervor. “Look at all this!” She motioned to the great valley, the peaks which cradled her mountain pass, and sky-dominating Oroneiros above it all. The gorgon looked to the oaks and pines, the moss and stone, the rain and wind. “Our beautiful world is a product of the Demiurge. The Aretans are pale shadows of our creator, worldbound as they are.”
Thunder tolled in the distance. Kosta hoped that wasn’t a sign one of the demigods had taken offense.
The gorgon paid it no mind. “I might pluck an island from the Dream, or perhaps forge a small home from the fires of creation. You, a boy ignorant to the mysteries of the cosmos…what could you hope to create?”
Kosta’s fist clenched at his side. The slate grey barrier over Acantha’s hissing head darkened as he fed power into the construct. “A world of unbridled creation. A world where it’s easier to build than it is to tear down. A world not built on a Dream, but where dreams become reality.”
Acantha’s laugh wasn’t cruel, but it did leave Kosta’s ears red. One of the vipers on her scalp caught his embarrassment and hissed in amusement. “You’d surpass the Demiurge itself?” She questioned, plainly entertained. “You’d go beyond the Dream?”
“If I must,” Kosta said. “I know what I saw in my Dòrognosis! It can be done, and I will see it through. I will chisel my world out of the void, and it will be a paradise for anyone with the will to build something beautiful.”
“There's that confidence again! Someone less charitable than I might call it arrogance.” Acantha chuckled as she led him past her legions of statues. She could animate an army with all the creatures frozen in her garden. That power entranced Kosta, though it prodded him with fear as well. “And all from a practitioner barely out of the cradle.
But he was beyond fear now. Kosta had stared death in the face a hundred times in the past few weeks. Perhaps this same feeling was what fed Clymere’s brazen nature.
“Laugh if you want,” Kosta dismissed Acantha. He kept his gaze fixated straight ahead into the oncoming storm. “It doesn’t matter to me. I know what I must do—it’s a distant dream, but it’s mine nonetheless. Even if all I can create is a reality the size of a grain of sand, then that’s okay. It’s my beginning, not my end.”
A dozen of Acantha’s vipers twisted to stare at him. Their yellow eyes watched him unblinkingly. Acantha herself was silent.
“Why do you create?” She asked after a time.
“To add something to the world. To bring out the potential I see everywhere around me. I create because I think the world can be more than it is,” Kosta said slowly, measuring each word carefully. “What we have is just a pale reflection of the Dream. I wish to draw out that perfection and make it real…and because it’s fun, of course.”
Acantha’s lips quirked upward at his words. “As good a reason as any,” she said. They stepped past a great wyrm which reared up in challenge, though its petrified form posed no threat. Its toothy maw gaped at Kosta, large enough to swallow him whole, and he shuddered as Acantha’s marble pale hand brushed against it affectionately. “At least you have a reason.”
They drifted through the petrified menagerie for what seemed like hours, though that was only due to the constant war Kosta waged against the rain. More than once he was tempted to let the barrier fragment and blow away like smoke in the wind, but his will carried him onward.
Kosta swore that they passed the same statues again and again, though it was impossible to tell through the veil of heavy rain and the cool mists that came with it. Was Acantha toying with him?
The gorgon questioned him on various topics as they traveled through the rocky pass. She questioned him about Dytifrourá and the Hesperians, the great figures which dominated the world, and a dozen other seemingly random affairs.
“What Aretans rule today?” Acantha asked, blatantly curious. Kosta suspected she received few visitors. The inhabitants of the Pugnics didn’t seem the type to venture out and explore the world, and few would ever choose to venture into the harsh valleys when there was so much bounty to be found elsewhere. “Have they slaughtered each other again?”
“Not since the Westscour,” Kosta shook his head. He was hardly a loremaster versed in legend and history, but his mother had seen that he knew the truly powerful. They might as well have been myths, but they were the sort of myths that had a habit of reminding the world of the elder days. “Calix the Lesser rules Progi. It’s said that he seeks to unite the entire continent beneath his rule.”
Acantha made a pleased hum when he mentioned Progi, as if happy that she recognized the name. Her vipers squirmed on her scalp. How many countries had she seen rise and fall? It jolted Kosta out of his musings. She might appear no older than Evanthe, but this was a gorgon. He couldn’t grow too lax.
“And Argi? Does the Greatfather still command the isles?”
Kosta shrugged. “To the best of my knowledge.” Argi was one of the half-drowned lands to the south broken beneath the cataclysmic forces pitted against each other during the Westscour. Pappoús Deorsa was its master, a legendary figure who had held Argi’s tattered remnants above the waves. “Not many Argian traders cross the Glass Sea. We hear little from them.”
Their conversation went on like this for some time. Acantha was hungry for knowledge of the outside world. She gave little reaction to some news, though the survival of some figures would leave her scowling and her snakes hissing. Other tidings brought her joy—Acantha was particularly happy to hear of Kyromedes’ Challenge, for one.
“Let the world hunger for a taste of an Aretan’s power! It’s been stagnant for too long. The continent is much the same as when I left it,” Acantha sighed. Her face twisted in disgust. “And yet so different from what it was.”
She remained in a pensive mood for the rest of their walk. Kosta’s magic had just begun to fail when the gorgon finally stopped ahead of a petrified forest and raised her hand. Acantha whispered a word in a guttural, grinding language as her eyes (and those of her serpents) flashed a grey so dark it verged on black.
Kosta’s breath left him as the rain vanished in an instant. Great boughs of stone sprung to life and twisted to block the pelting droplets with their rocky limbs. Acantha laughed as Kosta finally allowed the barrier to collapse and came crashing to the ground, wheezing pitifully as the strength left him.
“I can’t believe the mighty world-sculptor was brought so low by a little chore like that!” Acantha chortled, though her words lacked the venom he expected. “Weak, silly human. You have a long way to go!”
“You’re right,” Kosta gasped as he pulled himself to his knees. A spirit-deep weariness befell him as the week of travel, his duels with Acantha’s pet Petranth, and the exhaustion of sheltering Acantha for hours upon hours in the rain took their toll. “My path has only just begun. Will you guide me?”
Acantha and her serpents peered down at him. Behind the gorgon lay an enormous tree frozen in marble, tall as a great hill and wide enough for the Merakian Stelios’ terrifying white griffin to curl up comfortably within its trunk. The marble tree bore signs of habitation: a kiln carved into its side, a cooking pit just outside beneath a thick stone root, and windows carved perfectly in its heights.
It was beautiful.
For a moment the gorgon hesitated. Kosta feared that she might send him away into the mountains empty-handed. She might have been centuries older than Kosta, but in that instant he thought she looked rather young. Scared.
How long had she been alone out here?
But in the end, it didn’t matter.
A white hand took Kosta’s and hauled him to his feet with inhuman strength. Her skin was hard as stone. Kosta raised his chin and met her deadly grey eyes even as her vipers twisted to stare at him alongside their mistress.
“Yes, I will teach you my arts,” Acantha said. Kosta had to fight the urge to cheer. “But I will not teach you the secrets you wish. Sculpting the world you desire would kill you a dozen times over. And if you wish to learn the wonders of Petrification, you will simply have to divine it yourself.”
Kosta’s eyebrows rose. “I—thank you,” he said. “I’m grateful, truly. But Petrification is the work of an Aretan. How am I meant to recreate it myself?”
Acantha smiled mockingly. She released his hand and stepped away. “You hope to surpass the Demiurge, don’t you? Stepping past a mere Aretan should be child’s play. It may be a worthy challenge, but it will be the least of your obstacles.”
He grinned despite himself.
That was a worthy first step, wasn’t it?