A dozen magi worked throughout the night, with Duke Kheresh himself raising walls of sandstone to hinder the gorgons. He knew it wouldn’t hold for long, but building them was all he could do. Farad and Omar evacuated as many of Khereshetal’s residents away from the south, moving them to empty homes across the city, for there were many. Duke Kheresh had not taken a census in three decades, because he knew it would only speak of a weakening city, one whose citizens fled to seek livelihoods elsewhere.
He couldn’t dodge the question any longer, how many had left? Could he sacrifice two thousand warriors for sixty thousand civilians? What if the city had dwindled to fifty, or forty, or thirty thousand. Tax revenue had dropped to one tenth what his father collected, could he sacrifice two thousand to save ten?
—
The Gorgons arrived at midday, slithering out of the desert like a nightmare given form, this time arriving in the open, without any fear of resistance. There were two dozen of them, advancing in a line that ran parallel to the city. Each a vision of terrible beauty, their faces eerily serene, framed by flowing locks that seemed to cascade down their backs like rivers of dark emeralds. Their upper bodies were slender and graceful, adorned with golden jewelry that glinted in the sunlight. Arcane items meant to boost their spells. But below the waist, their forms twisted into the coils of massive serpents, scales shimmering in shades of emerald and obsidian.
Calypso, the leader of the Gorgons was an unparalleled marvel, scintillating with all the colors of the rainbow as well as colors that Kheresh never knew existed. Upon her head sat a crown of twisted silver, and in her hand, she held a staff carved from the bones of some long-extinct beast. As she advanced, the ground beneath her withered and cracked, and the very air trembled with her presence. The Kharmite army stood their ground, forming a shield wall that bristled with spears. Yet Kheresh’s company was the third defensive line. For Farad had performed his duty. Ahead of them stood a skirmishing line of militia, peeking over the magi-constructed walls, old men and young boys who would flee at the first sign of danger. Cannon fodder to deplete the gorgon’s arrows. No warriors dared take to the roofs again, nor did any remain inside the buildings, for fear of Calypso’s de-construction.
Kheresh knew that conventional tactics would be useless against Calypso, but he had no choice. Tens of thousands called him Duke, they were counting on him to save them.
“I pray your lives are enough.” Whispered Kheresh, watching the gorgons appraise the first of the three battlelines.
Farad had managed to trace roughly forty warriors to the killings, a number that proved insufficient and had been expanded to anyone even tangentially related. Their cousins, brothers, the quartermaster who supplied the stakes, his dog, everyone who could be linked to the slain gorgons had been collected into the sacrificial company. Nearly a hundred and fifty men now knelt, save for one man who held the white flag of truce aloft. While their only officier, a corporal, bowed and extended his arm, offering the letter of Kheresh’s apology.
Calypso accepted the letter and unsealed it with a claw, reading its contents once, frowning, and reading it a second time.
She smiled sweetly at the corporal.
“I do not accept your apology.” Said Calypso, her hands flashed.
Disarming the corporal before slashing open his throat. Her claws passing through his neck with such speed that Duke Kheresh wondered if he felt anything. Calypso pressed the attack, striking out with terrifying speed, her serpentine tail lashing like a whip, sending her rattle through another man’s spine and launching his head into the flag bearer.
Not a man amongst the company could react before they were torn apart. One hundred and fifty men were disemboweled, beheaded, ripped in half, stabbed, poisoned, and crushed beneath coils in the span of a few minutes. A few dozen had the sense to flee, which is when Calypso unleashed her spell. A wave of prismatic fire rippled out of her rainbow scales, burning away the dead and flowing through the desert like an unholy tsunami. Running men were engulfed in flames, crumbling to cinders before they had time to scream. A soft breeze passed through the battlefield, scattering the ashes to the four winds. Exactly how Taloc meant to scatter humanity.
—
Duke Kheresh watched his sacrificial company vanish in the blink of an eye, utterly erased. One hundred and fifty men died, in less time than it took to think that thought. To one up herself, Calypso pressed her bloody hand to her lips, and blew Kheresh a kiss, one that blasted the stone walls he’d summoned into dust. More than walls, the kiss crushed three city blocks, burying the second line in sand and sending a dust cloud over the third. Men cried out for aid, suddenly finding themselves trapped beneath feet of sand.
A kiss overcame his magic.
“We never stood a chance.” He whispered, knowing that for all his own magical might, the gorgons were on another level.
Aliyar always knew his copy of the Teutonic Codex was censored, but did not comprehend the depth of censure until Calypso’s powers were seen. It had been scrubbed of Calypso’s true powers. Corrupted by humanity to keep others from curling into a ball of panicked depression and dying of thirst. Then, for the second time in as many days, the gorgons visited the crystal palace. And though the walls were largely opaque, Calypso’s scintillating hues could be seen from –now distant– Khereshetal, every color sparkled throughout the fortress, as if the walls had been specially crafted to adorn Calypso’s form.
—
Day 3 of the siege.
The gorgons had been testing Khereshetal until today. Now they came in full force, wearing steel armor across their torsos and elongated gorgets to protect their necks and faces. On they came, singing in their own language as their arrows slew the Kharmites. They would loose an arrow then rush forward, connecting with the ballista crews. In a flash the gorgons hit the Kharmite line, spears snapped between their clawed fingers and shattering shields with their tails.
Thirty six coiling queens moved with a grace that belied their size, weaving between the soldiers, their ancient claws slicing through bronze and flesh with ease. The militia soldiers fought bravely, but their weapons barely scratched ancient scales. Or were turned aside by their new armor. For these were Medusa’s sisters, ancient, fortified, impenetrable vipers, not the soft scaled daughters of a meager decade or two. Calypso stood apart, unarmored, yet more terrifying than the very gates of hell.
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She raised her bone staff, and a pulse of hideous green energy rippled outwards. Striking the front lines of Kheresh’s army in an arcing wave, and instantly the men were transformed into statues of stone, their faces frozen in expressions of agony. The petrification spread like wildfire, and in moments, the once proud ranks of militia were reduced to a field of lifeless statues.
Kheresh swallowed, freezing as he fought desperation.
This wasn’t possible.
There were thousands of dead men frozen in time.
Nothing from Pandora’s portals, not even the demons who could not be wounded by mortal means were this potent!
“Fall back. Farad! Omar! Order a retreat! We must stop this massacre!” Shouted Kheresh.
In seconds, the great duvals pounded a retreat, and the once thousand-strong militia fell away, a few dozen survivors escaping the petrification by luck or the will of some unseen god or the unforgiving hand of fate. They fled between the veterans, who opened a port in the shieldwall for the survivors to pass through.
“We’ve awakened an avenging archdemon, one who’s come to slay us all.” Said Omar, stating the dire forecast as if it were nothing more impactful than a spring breeze, or a grain of sand.
At his side, Farad trembled, his sword shaking as the man’s whole body seemed to shiver and quake.
So, even Farad the ‘Fury of Kheresh’ trembles in terror at the sight of the gorgon’s true power.
“Omar, unwind your turban and give it to me, I cannot endure another moment of this slaughter.”
“My lord! You can’t mean to parley in the middle of battle!” Exclaimed Omar, eyes going wide.
“Fool, this is no battle! Every one of theirs is equal to a thousand of ours! We haven’t the magi to rival them. No Omar, this is a slaughter of caged sheep to a dozen ravening werewolves.” Snapped Kheresh.
Omar opened his mouth to speak but Kheresh interrupted him.
“I have spoken.”
Without another word, the turban became a white flag, tied to a spear and raised aloft as Duke Aliyar Kheresh walked alone through the forest of statues.
“Hail! Victorious gorgons! I am Duke Aliyar Kheresh I seek parlance with your queen.” He cried, marching forward.
Internally he was petrified of the gorgons, but a lifetime of courtly intrigue had taught him to meter his emotions. That experience kept his back straight, his eyes forward, and his knees unbent. Despite his quaking heart.
A rainbow turned towards him, bringing the full weight of her gaze to crush him. The arcane power that could turn flesh to stone. But instead of being petrified, he felt a searing pain as his spear melted into dust, scalding his hand as the turban floated away.
“Foolish mortal,” the Gorgon hissed, her voice a cold whisper that sent shivers down his spine. “Did you truly think we would forgive you so easily?”
With a flick of her wrist, she sent Kheresh rolling across the sands, crashing to the ground, his armor dented and cracked. He struggled to rise, but the Gorgon pressed her staff against his chest, pinning him in place.
“Your city has already fallen, what could you possibly offer us to make amends for the daughters you’ve slain?” She spat, her eyes narrowing. “All that is left for you to do, is watch as we slay your family, just as you slew ours.”
She turned, her hand glowing with a rich brown –earthy– color, and aimed at the nearest house. Power rushed from Calypso into the adobe building, unmaking the once welcoming abode. It melted, incinerated into the same glass sand of the wastelands. But the spell continued onward, obliterating a dozen homes behind it.
With a flick of her bone staff she snapped Kheresh’s femur. Pain exploding as the strongest bone in his body snapped and buckled, bending more than the knee could. He cried out in pain, hitting the sand a second later.
A tingle of mana ran down Kheresh’s spine, making the scales over Calypso’s skin shiver and stand on end. Then a light appeared, no, not appeared, it was so brilliant that Apollo’s chariot, with Sol in tow, would have been less impressive, even if Sol bounced off Kheresh’s forehead. Thunder reverberated in his bones. An apocalypse of magic, as if Calypso held an orb that encompassed the sun, moon, and stars within her palm. Tears flowed from Aliyar’s eyes, knowing that this was Kheresh’s third –and final– cataclysm.
“That’s quite enough for today, Calypso.” Said a voice.
How it cut through the gathering storm was incomprehensible, but the voice was unmistakable.
Tufan Biliam Alhusam had finally left the fortress of crystal. If a rainbow could stare death, it would have been in that moment as Calypso stared at Tufan. Hate filled her vertical pupils, and her hands flexed, extending and retracting her claws.
“You are courting death.”
“Am I? You’ve won. Kheresh will never be the same.” Said Liam, pointing to the thousand statues of men around them. To the hundreds of dissolved buildings.
“Calypso, they’ve turned over the offenders, and died by the hundreds, give them a few days to mourn the dead.”
“Just like they gave me time to mourn?” Snapped Calypso.
Mana seeped from her spell, empowering her words. They pierced the air like a dozen freight trains, battering Liam and his cadre of paladins, staggering them back and knocking Liam to his butt.
“Calypso! Think woman! I know the pain you feel. My mother was slain alongside your daughters. I’m not asking you to forget their sins, nor am I asking to forgive. Just give it a day. Walk away. If you seek to torment them, then so be it. Khereshetal will live in terror, those who are able will flee. They will carry word of what happens if you slay a daughter of Medusa. Let the survivors build a monument of these statues!” Shouted Tufan, his voice never quailing.
Calypso slithered towards him, lowering her face to the toddler’s eyes–
–Until Quetzalcoatl appeared.
Something unspeakable passed between their minds, and calypso raised herself tall, planting her staff into the orb of unspeakable power above. Mana returned to the rod, dwindling until it vanished into the staff. Without a word, she slithered into the desert, and not a single snakelock looked back.
Tufan found his feet, brushing himself off as the gorgons retreated.
“Should I even bother trying to heal anyone?” Asked Liam, waving a hand for Thaddeus and the other paladins to enter Khereshetal.
They found few in need of healing, for magic could not repair tragedy, nor could it resurrect the dead or turn dead statues into living beings.
In the end, the paladin’s only job was to collect the statues of humans. Grim tombstones that were unsuitable to be buried. So they didn’t. Thaddeus ordered the statues placed along the sandstone road leading from Khereshetal to the crystal fortress. There they would stand on stone, holding the line in death, just as they had in life. Placing them on one side so all faces were visible. A graveyard that led to a fortress monastery.
Women and children soon sought out the paladin’s council, seeking comfort from the church. Their men had been strong, honourable warriors, yet they were now entombed in stone, dead, yet so alive in appearance that you could reach out and touch their faces. Where was Taloc to prevent this endless calamity?
Liam couldn’t stand their questioning and isolated himself within the crystal fortress’ inner sanctum, in particular, a cubicle of gray tinted quartz, a room that was only three feet high, and elevated off the ground by sandstone blocks he had forged himself.
Alone he wondered a question he never wished to ask.
Would Sirin have mourned for him, the way the mothers of Khereshetal now mourned for their sons?