Duke Aliyah Kheresh wandered the streets of Khershatal, unable to leave the avenue of macabre statues, yet forced to plan for the next day. Forced to choose who would die tomorrow and who would live. Once upon a time, he’d considered the city to be impregnable, for what army could sustain a siege in the barren lands of Kheresh? Surely a human force or a felinid rebellion would perish for want of water. A resource he had stockpiled his entire life. All in vain. The gorgons were a force of nature that he had no answer for.

Duke Kheresh stepped over a slightly large mound of sand, noting its red hue and wondering if this was where the smithy should have been. Impossible to guess, for the surrounding buildings had also been demolished, leaving only dust behind.

Once grand minarets lay toppled, homes ground to dust, and the cries of mourning filled Kheresh’s nightmares. Long into the night, and even into the light of dawn, he remained lost. Wandering through the dust of his once joyful homeland.

Eventually he found himself on his knees, staring at the crystal fortress, waiting for the gorgon Queen to return. For twenty hours he waited, facing the desert, giving no thought or care to the pain of the sun, or the thirst of his lips. All earthly concerns would soon pass him by.

Yet, she did not come.

Eventually, paladins left the fortress offering water to the parched duke.

“I don’t deserve water. Let me die.” Said Kheresh, not even raising his eyes to look at Owen the paladin.

The older man nodded his head, understanding a warrior’s duty. Aliyar could not return home in defeat, nor did he possess the strength to fight on. So he prepared to die, to shield his people with his very life.

“Lord Alhusam will never admit this, but he has begged Calypso to show mercy. You are an honest and honourable man, one of the few worthy of their station. Maybe, just maybe, he can sway her mind before its too late.”

Aliyar lacked the energy to scowl.

“Look at Khereshetal. A third of the city is gone. If peace comes, we haven’t the ability to rebuild. What good is honour when all that we hold dies? Leave me. I have spoken.”

Owen accepted the dismissal with a bow. Confused at the rejection, but he did not trouble the Duke further, instead returning to the glass palace. Farad joined Aliyar, kneeling at his side, waiting for death with eyes that yearned for violence, and wept in impotence. Omar followed an hour later.

“Why have you joined me? A Duke’s duty is to perform those actions normal men cannot, while you are the best of Kheresh, I alone can barter my lineage to give you a chance of peace. Live on in my stead.” Ordered the Duke.

Neither man responded, too lost in their own sorrow to put words to their thoughts.

Eventually, Omar opened his mouth, “Dad was in the militia’s rear, my nephew in the middle, and my son commanded the vanguard.” He nodded towards the crystal fortress, “Over yonder is where they now stand, led to their deaths by my failure to protect them. I don’t deserve to stand by their sides, so I will kneel, may my memory of unworth be set in stone.”

Farad scoffed, “Always the damn poet. I’m just here to die. This isn’t a battle, but I’ll be damned if I don’t die at your side Aliyar.”

His foolishness brought a wan smile to Kheresh’s face, a pitiable grimace really. He considered ordering the men to return home, but knew their families were dead, Farad’s son had been close with Omar’s. If one was dead, then the other was surely at his side.

So the trio knelt, removing their armor and weapons of war, stacking breastplates and swords in an organized pile in front of them. And waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Fulminonimbus paladins brought them water, allowing them to wet their tongues as they endured the summer heat. Hour by hour, more Kharmite veterans joined their liege lord in defeat, offering their own lives so their sons and daughters and wives might live.

A day passed.

More soldiers joined the vigil.

Then two more days passed.

Throughout it all the paladins never stopped laboring. The crystal fortification doubled in height, with the internal hues deepening until it truly became a prismatic Crystal Palace. With towers, a grand gate of clear Quartz, complete with a portcullis of dark quartz. A deep cistern filled the Palace’s center, a tower full of liquid water, whose reflection glimmered in the noon sun, occupying entire floors and forever perpetuated by water magi. While the weakest earth magi continued to build their road of remembrance, smelting bricks with magic until their mana ran dry. Then they dug. Using hands, mattocks, shovels, and occasionally brooms to sweep away the sand, they entrenched the petrified militia in alcoves, slowly building a wall along the avenue to shield their memory for millenia to come.

Finally, the gorgons arrived.

Twelve gorgons slithered out of the sands, emerging as if they’d buried themselves for days, bows in hand, with arrows nocked to strings.

Yet they held their wrath, watching at the rows of kneeling warriors, men who’d voluntarily disarmed and now hung their sun-parched heads. Lips cracked in silence, and Calypso raised her bone staff once more, channeling power to petrify the remainder of Khereshetal.

“You are not forgiven.”

Green energy coiled around the bone staff, tainting the desert as power collected. She took her time, making sure every magi knew exactly how much power flowed through her– how irresistible she truly was. To Duke Kheresh, it was like a butcher who paused his slaughter to sharpen his knives. Honing the implements of their deaths while looking them in the eye. If he emptied his armory, drained every drop of enduring magic from his ancestral home and looted Ansit’s grave for artifacts, it wouldn’t match one hundredth the power in front of him. Nor could he hope to wield such mana with greater precision or purpose.

“Your statues will stand as a warning. Do not slay us, lest you wish to perish.” Said Calypso, her eyes meeting Duke Kheresh’s as she leveled the staff at his chest and unleashed the spell at him.

Liquid green petrification flowed out of her bone staff, dancing around the Duke like a flock of forest pixies, searing his skin to stone–

–it jerked oddly, abruptly.

Its course changed, flowing into the ground beneath the duke and rushing past him, rushing along the brick road to the Crystal Palace, changing form as a three foot tall –three and a half, (half feet are very important to four year olds)-- elf guided it. Bricks became the substrate for power to use as a template, compacting raw sand into refined sandstone. The once humble footpath between the Crystal Palace and Khereshetal, nearly a mile long, was now a solid quartz road, complete with a ten foot tall wind breaking wall. The alcoves of sandstone were now clear quartz, so polished that one could see their own reflection in the memorial. A shield to keep the desert sands from abrading the statues. Though tinted an unpleasant green, somehow matching the statues entombed there. Yet there was more power still, the Crystal Palace shimmered, green energy running through the walls, roof, floor, corridors, and defensive towers, mingling with the citrine shades of magical quartz and the rich amethysts to create a rainbow, with blues and greens to compliment the yellow, browns, and reds. The resemblance to Calypso’s own scales grew intense as Liam mingled his yellow lightning with her spell, weaving in a touch of purple darkness and a spritz of life to lock the mana in place, giving the Crystal Palace an iridescent shimmer that brought a tear to Duke Kheresh’s eye. If he could have survived this day, then the palace would have become a wonder of the world, far more impressive than King Aldric’s many palaces; it would have stood equal to the great northern bulwarks of obsidian. Yet it shamed the darkness of Pandora’s bones, forever glittering with beauty and warmth.

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“Calypso, we’ve,” Liam raised a hand with a six foot long Quetz coiled around it, “found your fallen daughters. I have restored their bodies and you may bury them wherever you desire, but there are only twelve, and you’ve slain nearly two thousand humans.”

“--And i’ll slay two thousand more!” Interjected Calypso.

“What would that achieve?”

“Justice, a concept I wouldn’t expect a toddler to comprehend.”

“Justice? Those who murdered your daughters are dead, as are their families and friends. Look at their corpses Calypso!” Said Liam, waving to the statues. “Justice ceased a week ago! Continuing now only spreads terror among their own children. You have crossed beyond the pale and become the monster they took you to be. It’s time to stop. Else the world will never cease cursing your kind. You cannot be in every land and every city, nor do you seem capable of keeping your daughters on the Argos. If humans do not learn your language and guide your daughters back to you, then who will?”

“As if they could! The guidance of humans leads to bottomless swamps and a blade in the neck. We will crush and burn, rip and tear until humanity trembles at the whisper of our name. Just as men have done for millenia!”

Liam shook his head, bouncing across the sand with Quetz wrapped around himself. Somehow defying gravity and closing the gap between serpent queen and Lightning Lord in great leaps.

“The paladins have completed our offering to Therun Perun Taloc, we will be leaving this land soon. But what then? Will you massacre an entire dukedom?” Asked Liam, arriving at Calypso’s tail.

“We’ll crush any who have harmed our daughters, Greenwood is only a few years travel aboard the Argos. I’ll sail there and recover Phaedra, retrieving any lost daughters along the way.” Said Calypso, as if the answer were more obvious than sunlight.

“And you’ll cause twice as many to die before you can rescue them.”

Calypso’s eyes narrowed at Liam, sensing she had fallen into a trap, holding her breath for the half second it took the bear trap’s jaw to slam shut.

Liam smiled, meeting her eyes. They both knew whatever he was about to offer would be accepted. There was no other choice. After all, a million slain humans could not revive a single gorgon.

“What do you want?” Hissed Calypso.

“Peace. Obviously. But peace isn’t attainable, you never hold peace in your hands, it is a state of careful balance that you strive for, perpetually dancing on the razor’s edge.”

Calypso nodded, intrigued by his offer. “I’ve been known to dance from time to time.”

Liam tried not to splutter, he somehow always forgot that underneath the venom and scales, that the gorgons were human women. “Ah, yes… Ahem, so…” He pointed at the floating island above them. “Quetz has surveyed your, uh- The Argos. You’ve grossly overpopulated it. Your people need new territory, a safe colony in a land humanity struggles to survive in, yet is close enough for some to reach you. Then you need water and a better way to retain it. This Crystal Palace wasn’t a vanity project, every brick and tile had a purpose, something I needed to teach the magi. You’ve seen our cistern, we can build a dozen of them for you, the glass roofs can even be used as saunas or steam baths which would let you enjoy both sunlight and water at once.”

Calypso’s brow furrowed, with a dozen new snakelocks focusing on Liam. As if she were attempting to read his mind.

“A new roof won’t save my daughters… Explain or I will use my claws.” Demanded Calypso, grasping Aliyar’s throat and lifting him off his knees with one hand.

“It is half of a peace. Kheresh is broken, desolate, burned by the desert sun and ground to dust by this glass sand. That was all before you arrived. The land is ruined, but… Taloc gave me a few ideas, if the sun is too much, Kheresh will have to grow crops in the shade. A shade that costs the Argos nothing.”

Wheels spun as Calypso detected the hidden offer in his words. Humanity would always seek to slay the gorgons, twas simply the nature of Medusa’s curse. But the gorgons were women, and would forever need human men. So they were at an impasse, with humanity striving to eradicate them and the gorgons perpetually crushing cities, which would turn more humans against them. How would growing food in shade matter? Sure the Argos could shade Kheresh, then humans could farm and repopulate…

While being dependent on the gorgons for their prosperity…

Calypso’s anger finally began to ebb. Tufan Biliam Alhusam wasn’t offering her a truce, or a ceasefire, or a city. He was offering what only a Lightning Lord could. An entire Dukedom, with a hundred thousand humans to act as a buffer between gorgons and the human world. A colony. One that came with saunas and baths.

A surprised laugh escaped her lips. Claws taped against scales as Calypso folded her arms, dropping the Duke as she pondered the offer. She hissed something in the gorgon tongue, a language understood by the gorgons and Quetz, but lost to Liam. Another gorgon approached, this one covered in vipers of various breeds, a thousand writhing serpents that swarmed around her, moving at her command. Several of the serpents burrowed in and out of the sand, tunneling into the desert earth. Words passed between them, as Calypso deliberated on Liam’s proposal.

“It won’t work, there’s not enough water for crops, rain would have to fall across the entire wastelands, and not just once. The climate would have to be wetter, less desiccated. Even now the desert has lost all will to survive, seeking only to be forgotten in the passage of time. You haven’t the magi to counteract its will, not unless every paladin remained here.” Said Calypso.

Liam swallowed, giving her his best smile. He hadn’t known what the burrowing serpents seemed to; and his affinity for water was low, too low to sense or manipulate the local groundwater. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Had he really come this far to fail at the finish line?

“A temporary setback, surely the Duke can find the water, if you spare his life.”

Calypso raised an angular eyebrow, not that gorgons had hair on their faces, but there was a distinct patch of interlaced scales that were ever-so-slightly darker, positioned just above each eye.

A gust of wind washed over the negotiations, and Liam felt the land of Kheresh tremble under a third archmages’ will. One who had remained hidden for centuries and only now revealed herself. Clouds appeared in the sky overhead as a second mage joined the spell, darkening the sky more swiftly than a flash flood.

Mana sight entered Liam’s perception and he traced the combination of wind and water to a distant home, but not any home, the very same home he and Sirin had squatted in. Two felinids, one elderly, one young, stood atop the structure, singing as they worked the magic of wind and water. In seconds raindrops began to fall, landing in little puffs as they wetted the parched corpse of Kheresetal.

Then they kept falling. One drop after the next landed in the desert, covering the city in water and washing away the bloodstains of the previous weeks. Maya was stunned to see the water fall from the sky, hiding under the elder eclipsiarch’s tail in a futile attempt to avoid the unknown. And Kheresh witnessed the first rainfall in over a decade, brought into being by those who –by law– were sentenced to a vivisection death by doing so.

Liam turned to Duke Kheresh. “You should secede. Break away from King Aldric’s folly. Had his laws not slain the eclipsiarchs, Kheresh would be green by now, and the desert wastes would be a highway to feed this continent and the next.”

“Secede? Ah… If it is the Lightning Lord’s decree, then Kheresh is her own country as of today.” Said Kheresh, finally playing his part in Liam's master plan.

“A delicate balance.” Said Calypso.

“Dancing on a three edged knife. Human, gorgon, and felinid.” Said Liam.