Medusa: Fate's Game

Chapter 14

~~Darian~~

"... Bellerophontes."

The world stopped. The air petrified, the breeze ceased, and the crickets and birds faded away. The world died around him until it was as if sitting atop a stage, lifeless. Cold crept along his skin until he thought his tears might have frozen on his cheeks. They weren't, but every sense in his body told him they should have been

The mask was alive. Or at least something was talking through it.

"Bell...phontes...." The voice sounded buried, like something speaking through rock and dirt, and it was a raspy voice too. Someone who hadn't had a drink in a long, long time.

"Who are you?" He forced down his tears and sobs, and got to his feet. No sword or shield to defend himself, no helmet either. Just him, his armor, and a mask.

"My sisters... sent you on mission... knew what would happen."

His sisters? Darian took a step back and stared down at the slab of onyx.

"... the Fates?"

"Yes. They... Athena... knew would kill Medusa.... once Athena learned... your plan."

Darian sighed and wiped away his tears. Wetness and salt. He'd never known them before, not from his eyes.

He walked over to the mask, and stared down at it. "I asked you who you are."

"Yes...."

"So tell me."

"... no."

Of all the insufferable shit. He picked up the mask, and stared into it eyes, into the white glow of its mouth. A white glow he was all too familiar with.

"If your sisters are the Fates, I... I don't know who you would be, or how you can talk without a conduit." The mask wasn't strapped to a skull, no one had died to fuel it. How was it talking?

"Deep within... blackness... I speak." It laughed, a hushed sound, barely more than a whisper. "Sisters... would prefer... lock me away."

He blinked at the mask, and held it out at eye level.

"... why do you speak to me?"

"Because... it was to be... the Amazon. But the Fates... I was wrong. It... is you."

Darian snarled and squeezed the mask. Whatever the material was, no strength he had was going to bend or hurt it, but as he choked down the wrenching muscles in his gut, he squeezed it anyway.

"What is me?"

"... vessel."

Darian dropped the mask with a jerk, and stepped back. "I know what your kind do when a human wears them! I've talked to the Fates, I've seen the corpses they leave behind, the skulls."

The mask sank into the ground like a large slab of stone as it landed.

"You... not die... Bellerophontes. Fate's Child... survive."

He snarled, and started to pace in front of the mask, hands in fists at his side. "I have no reason to trust you."

"No reason... to not.... Help me... defeat sisters."

Defeat sisters. Defeat the Fates? Kill, not kill? The mask grated on him with every vague word.

"They fear me... Bellerophontes. Sisters... gods... bow to me.... I will... ruin them."

"So you're an all powerful entity? Big talk. I have no reason to trust you, no reason to wear you, no reason to listen to any of this shit."

"I... take you... to Medusa. Be... with Medusa."