Dear Readers: Back in the city by the seaside cliffs, sundown approaches, threatening the arrival of a vengeful pirate hungry for a sacrifice... can Cloe save her sister from the dreaded Cetus? o_o
Let's find out :)
_______________________
Scene 8: The Champion
2020 B.C.
Having bade her heart goodbye, and with no time to think or feel a thing about it, Cloe urgently scoured the city for a certain vital item. The only hope to save her sister from her plight: a sleeping potion. She knew that inducing sleep would be the surest and most feasible way to extricate Lachesis from her chains. She inferred that the poor Fate could not find sleep, as panicked as she surely was upon the rocks.
For the Fates had never thought to wonder what would happen, if they should die while in their human forms. Would their immortal souls simply return home, to the Cave as if nothing had happened? Or would they suffer mortal death—such that their souls would be sent to some other destination? Set adrift in another afterlife, among deceased men? Never to reach home again? These speculations assaulted Cloe’s mind, for the first time, as she frantically searched for a sedative.
And she was sure that the same worries wracked Lachesis, at this moment. How could they not? In some way, for some reason, the fearful Fate had braved another visit down to earth. And she now found herself chained to a cliff for sacrifice. Sleep could have come so easily, in a situation any less horrific. But certainly not on that precipice. Cloe had to help her sister fall asleep, to find her way back to the Cave and pull her thread off of the Loom, far from her doom.
She finally found the perfect potion, vended by a merchant who seemed trustworthy enough. But Cloe had no coin to her name and nothing else to offer up in trade, for this small vial of salvation…
“Its weight in gold,” a voice proposed from past her shoulder, proffering the vendor a handful of said amount. “Sold?”
Before Cloe could so much as blink, the vital solution was hers.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered to Chrysaor.
“Saying goodbye, with a gift for the road,” he explained, pressing a few more stolen golden coins into her palm. “You’ll need it, to make your own way in this world, without selling your body or soul.”
She thanked him, accepting only because she knew that she would need the currency, to carry out her plan to save her sister’s life.
“Glad I managed to find you in these crowded streets,” Chrysaor expressed. “Curious what you just acquired, but I won’t ask—could tell you needed it quite badly, so I hope that my small kindness helps.”
She shook her head. “It isn’t small; I can’t thank you enough.”
“Take it as advance repayment for not spilling our secret, eh?” he suggested with a smile. “Rider has decided we’re departing at dusk, leaving this place untouched. But you could still betray us, while we’re camped beside the hill close by… I hope you haven’t yet.”
She returned the smile, with sincerity. “I haven’t. And I won’t.”
“Well, good luck to you,” he bade, with a bow of his head. “I’d kiss you farewell, but Rider would kill me. Doesn’t even know I’m here.”
Cloe laughed and leant in for a friendly embrace. In his wake, she briefly clung to the spark of happiness that his presence had provided, on this dire day—just as he’d said that she had changed, he clearly had as well. At least a little bit, and certainly not for the worse.
She could not dwell on that for long. In great haste, by light of a sun slowly sliding toward the sea, she bought a flagon of dark wine and slipped across town toward the beachfront cliffs.
At the base of the crag to which Lachesis was chained, Cloe came across some sentries, as expected. Guarding against attempts to save the sacrificial substitute. She offered them the wine, into which she’d mixed drops of the sleeping draught—they hesitated only briefly, thirsty and tired anyway, charmed by Cloe’s benevolent brown eyes, and likely harboring secret sympathy for the enchained maiden besides.
As soon as they’d drifted to sleep, Cloe started the steep climb toward the face of the cliff. And just as she neared the shelf of rock below her sister’s feet, she spotted a ship on the sun-limned horizon.
“Clotho…!” Lachesis gasped as her sister approached.
“I am so sorry that this happened,” Cloe sighed, reaching for the vial, still half-full. “It must’ve taken so much courage, for you to return to earth… and now this! But I brought something that can save you.”
“Oh, I was praying that you would… I’d placed my thread near yours upon the Loom, in hopes that ours might cross, so that I wouldn’t be entirely alone should danger strike—and so it has…”
“You are safe now. I’m here.”
“I have been so scared… and that ship—it must be Cetus…”
“Here—drink up,” Cloe exhorted her, raising the vial to her sister’s trembling lips. “It will bring sleep, and send you safely home.”
Lachesis eagerly imbibed. And then they waited, for a moment. For a moment more.
But slumber would not come.
“Maybe the dose was not enough…” Cloe anxiously surmised. She glanced down toward the streets to make sure that no citizens could see her. Luckily, most seemed to have locked themselves inside their homes, for fear of Cetus’s arrival on these shores. “Drink the rest.”
“But you…!”
“I’ll slip away, and see you back at home,” Cloe assured her, tilting the remainder of the contents down her sister’s throat.
But just as she had feared, still nothing changed. The big blue eyes were wide awake, and ever widening in fear. And they both realized, in that instant, that immunity to manmade potions had to be another superhuman power that they retained in mortal form.
“It’s all right. It’s all right,” Cloe strove to convince her sister, struggling to believe it herself, as she stood steadfastly beside her on the cliff. “We’ll just tell Cetus the truth. That you’re not the princess.”
“That won’t do any good…” Lachesis sobbed. “He’d do the same to me, then ravage this entire city out of spite…”
Cloe knew that it was so. “Then let’s just hope that should we die, as mortals, we’ll simply return home. As if today had never happened.”
Lachesis nodded hopelessly. “Let us hope…”
“No fear. Just hope. Whatever fate befalls you, sister—I will share it,” Cloe vowed, clasping Lachesis’s limp hand through the chains.
“Fate,” Lachesis echoed, lip twisting into a sorrowful smile at the cosmic irony of such a word.
In moments, the ship had arrived at the shore. Cetus stood at the prow, towering taller than the ocean’s highest crest.
He hardly appeared human; Lachesis saw now why this man was called a sea monster. His bare head, bald or shaven, gleamed in the moonlight like a globe atop a scepter, a symbol of ominous power in itself. His sinewy neck was nearly as thick as his arms, and his grin was broad and bestial, front teeth filed into ferocious fangs.
“Two for the price of one?” he bellowed. Where he stood on the deck, he was still far below the precipice. But Lachesis could’ve sworn she felt his foul breath on her face, carried upon the briny breeze.
“You’ve paid no price. Not yet,” Cloe dauntlessly shouted down at him. “Not till your next life, in the fires of hell.”
The thought flashed across her mind that she’d condemned Rider to such hellfire, mere hours ago. Could Rider possibly deserve the same doom as this monster? Had she truly spun their threads from the same cloth, equally damned and dark? Then why did she despise this pirate—while feeling toward Rider the polar opposite of hate?
She could not afford to think upon such things. Not now, not ever.
Cetus let out a hoot of laughter. “What are you, her devoted slave? Here to share in her doom?” he jeered. “How will it feel, to watch us fuck and slaughter her before your eyes?”
Cloe shuddered. She then noticed, from the corner of her gaze, that some townsfolk had set foot outside their homes. To witness the sacrifice? The fucking sadists. She felt more disgusted with humanity in this moment than she ever had, in all her time on earth.
She did not notice that they’d come outside to behold an entirely different, unexpected spectacle occurring in the city streets.
Cetus came up closer to the prow, set to jump ship to scale the cliff. “I’ll take the pretty princess first. And then the stupid slave…”
“…is that even the princess?” one of his sailors interjected.
Cetus’s eyes narrowed and darkened, once the doubt was raised.
“She looks even more beautiful than I remember of Andromeda, from what little I’ve seen…” another pirate commented.
“So lovely that the queen’s boast may be true,” another chuckled.
A wildfire flared in Cetus, at those words. He strode across the deck toward the fool who had just spoken, the dimwit dumb enough to dare grant credence to Queen Cassiopeia’s brazen claim about her daughter’s beauty, the blasphemy against the memory of Cetus’s lost love. Framed the poor fool’s head in his huge hands. And with one jerk, twisted it off of the body.
“See what fury the royal bitch’s boast has raised in me? In Cetus, monster of the seas?” he roared, hurling the severed head onto the kingdom’s shores. “You thought to make a fool of me, with this false sacrifice? For such offense… you all must pay the price.”
At these foreboding words, the whole realm held its breath.
“Burn this city to the ground, boys,” Cetus ordered. “I will handle the imposter and her slave.”
But then, all of a sudden, the fire in his eyes froze up in fear.
A shadow sailed over the two girls’ heads, springing from somewhere behind them, having raced through the city streets and climbed the cliff. Leaping from it to land squarely on the deck—a great black steed. Soaring through the same-hued night as if on wings.
Nor was the stallion alone. A band of men on horseback followed faithfully at Pegasus’s heels, and soon the pirate ship was overridden.
What ensued on deck was chaos, blind and bloody. A battle of monsters and men. No one could blink, beholding what transpired.
It ended when the severed head of Cetus was upraised toward the sky. All of the sea monster’s men were incapacitated at the sight. The pirates surrendered, sank to their knees, pleaded for mercy.
Rider tossed their captain’s head far out into the sea. “Follow your leader,” he commanded them. “And never return.”
The city erupted in praise as the ship sped away. Rider and all his horses, all his men, received a hero’s welcome in the realm. They were brought straight to the palace, to be honored by the king.
“You have saved us, our family and our country, from a monster. Our fiercest and most formidable foe—one thought to be invincible, until this day,” Cepheus proclaimed before his court. “For this, you are a hero to our people. The champion of the land that you have saved.”
Rider was crowned with a garland of ceremonious pink blossoms.
“Though no gift could ever repay our debt to you,” the king continued, “we humbly offer our most prized and covetable treasure: the hand of the princess Andromeda.”
Rather than effusing gratitude and joy, as was to be expected, Rider paused. “The maidens, from upon the cliff—where are they?”
Queen Cassiopeia scowled, scorned on her daughter’s behalf.
Cepheus smiled in erroneous understanding. “Ah, I see… the substitute is fair indeed. Naturally, you may desire her hand instead, especially after your heroic rescue. That would be most appropriate.”
Rider firmly shook his head. “I had not meant—”
The king neglected the objection, bade an attendant to summon Lachesis. “We are delighted to oblige, O Champion. And of course, given the role that she played in the night’s events, standing in for Andromeda… and the fact that she herself comes from no wealth… it would be most appropriate to grant the royal dowry, with her hand.”
The princess flushed in shame; the queen silently fumed.
Lachesis was led in, Cloe ushered in tow far behind her sister. Rider saw only the gleam of her brown eyes. All else faded away.
King Cepheus beamed. “What say you, Champion?”
Rider slowly awoke from his trance.
“…Champion?” the king repeated.
“Perseus,” the champion uttered. “My name is Perseus.”
From where he stood nearby, Dictys’s gaze glowed with wistful warmth. The name of the boy, before he’d turned into the rider. The man the rider had become—who had bested the monsters, aboard the ship and in his own soul. The man who had made something of himself.
“And I say the hour is late,” the hero pronounced. “So let us sleep, and speak of marriage on the morrow.”
The king smiled and bowed his head in deference; the champion’s wish was to be heeded, all across the land.
But not by all. Neither by Cloe nor himself, the champion knew. She knew it, too. Her soul was set afire and frozen, all at once. Beneath his bay-blue eyes, set steadily on hers. Beneath the stars that crossed their racing hearts.
There’d be no sleep tonight.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
.... do feel free to share thoughts/feels/anything ^_^
Next scene, we'll head back to the Cedar Forest, to see what's happening with Atria and the avatars of Gilgamesh... And if you liked this one, please don't forget to vote! :)