Cerberus

1

Professor Vericht

"From beneath the rockslide entombing the cave came a forlorn, moaning melody, carried through on tufts of briny wind. As we unearthed its mouth, a second gust of chilling harmony bellowed forth, and finally the crescendo of a third, until their foreboding song swirled and whipped around us.

Peering across a chasm of millenniums, I felt the weight of something forsaken in those depths, compounding itself into unreachable corners of the mind until it slept within a crushing vortex.

And yet, I knew the miasma of its breath, and I knew its many names, for long has it lived in the solitude of these pages. A shield, perhaps, this moleskine, like that shield held by Perseus, bearing the fatal weight of Medusa's gaze. Perhaps it would be so, if Perseus had ever been a man, or Medusa's threat ever so trivial.

These agents, these money men, their heavy feet splashing down behind me along the dripping, howling descent, were divorced from sentimentality. I was spared the contention of being a blasphemer or fringe theorist, and for that I was grateful. They cared not if this were the lair of the Three Sisters, or Athena's temple, or the gateway to Hades. But it was all these things, and I feared the consequence of bringing these men near such power.

At the bottom of the descent, we had entered a towering hall, where a ceiling of fog poured tendrils down the slick and squarish features of its walls. Snakes glistened and slid through fissures down into the dark water at our feet.

The moaning song of the winds now hushed to a perpetual gasp. Gaping mouths seemed to draw this breath from the shadows, from recessions in the walls, where wide, hollow eyes framed by furrowed brows shot forth the yellow-green light of eternal flames. They were gorgon statues, bodies arched in ecstasy, hands forever tussling their serpentine hair.

The rust eaten, bronze husks of ancient adventurers had begun climbing the walls here. I did not question their forensic significance, but saw now the ecstasy of the statues as that of Pinocchio in his moment of becoming real. A sinister puppeteer had foreseen the time of death here: a gasp of rapture met by a gasp of horror; a concept of Medusa made real in the mind; a trigger whereupon the body must slay itself.

The mechanism behind this, like so many things, lay between the lines. For though Geppetto gave shape to Pinocchio, it was not Geppetto that gave life to the impudent, talking log that preceded him. The entity had always been there. It was in the wood—it was in their blood.

I quickened my steps, envisioning the true caduceus, the herald of this biological weapon. A veil of water fell from the hall's end, and through it I saw the pallid face of something that sat upright, that seemed it should move, but did not move.

Pressing through the sheet of water, I was seized by a biting frost. The billowing clouds of my breath cut short as I saw her, confounded by the integrity of her remains.

Medusa appeared relatively ordinary, save for a pale yellow light that colored her vacant eyes from within. No snakes, nor hair adorned her head. It had at once been severed on and joined to an armor bust of wicked design, seeping green liquid at the neck, where small, shelled creatures had clustered to bond it.

At my feet lay the black feathered corpse of Perseus, the avian, tangled in the end of a chain and barb whip. A creature of such wit and swagger that history had obscured him—in the fluff of archaic drama and the hint of winged sandals, indeed—to sate the pride of man.

Looming above was the true caduceus, intricately manifested in painted stone. Where the winged staff would have been was instead the length of a human spine. Two snakes wrapped once around the spine, forming an X, then ascended on each side to a clavicle, where they bore their fangs. Near the axis of the spine, a thick and thorny vine sprouted, becoming a wreath of roses that surrounded the snarling head of a hellhound.

The fake caduceus had then been the memorial stake of this beast, symbolic of a deactivated threat. Yet, before the establishment of this secret treaty, a raven had been sent to dispatch Medusa. What unseen weapon had he brandished? Poe's raven had quoth—and now I saw Perseus alight upon a sleeping Medusa, and had quoth something powerful in her vulnerable state.

The beast had begun the destruction of its primary host, leaving a trail of shattered ash approaching Medusa's morbid altar. A concoction of ocean broth appeared to flow through the armor bust from below, sustaining her in a most rudimentary state. But the beast, lulled back to slumber, must have nested in the brain, and seemed her intended beneficiary.

Was this, then, the realm of Hades? A parallel world dug into the brain by snakelike parasites? And, like that hound Cerberus, protecting their prisoner, unless the host somehow escaped—

From the waters at the chamber's rim, I heard the rippling passage of some massive creature. My light, shone through the water, was sapped by the darkness of its form.

A lance of air burst through the water, catching me, yet the agents carried on with their protocol, and now she was staring at me, watching me with lucidity. Could they not see how the darkness encroached, leaving only the pale moonlight of her eyes? How, in the harbor of her gaze, that light played across the crushing waves like a vile requiem?

If only I could call for Miriam, just say her name. Just remember. I can't speak her name, my throat gripped by paralysis at every attempt.

I'm home. I'm in the living room. She says, 'Alan? Is that you?' Smoke erupts from my lungs when I respond. The burning is unbearable. I'm on fire, the house is on fire. I throw off my wedding ring to make it stop. I turn away from a nameless bride, but I can feel the void behind her veil, and the obliterating cold of space quenches me. I can breathe again. I can speak.

'Chrysaor,' I say. My name is Chrysaor? Christopher. I would have at least introduced myself, but they were wailing at the sight of me."

—Professor Alan Vericht, Expeditions Journal, A. Vericht, February 1st, 2014.

2

Arsaya the Seeker

Arsaya hovered on the ocean wind, scanning the glimmering shoreline for new activity. Broken mirrors jutted from the sand, scattered like tombstones in gardens of shattered glass, children's toys, and ragged portraits. Crude shrines were surrounded with memorabilia intended to ward off medusas. But this was The Quiet, and all was still.

Arsaya fluffed her hackles, softly saying, "Ooh," to comfort herself. She would never forget the cacophony of human rasping and guttural screaming, and the ceaselessness of their agony, until their cities had became volcanos of bodily vapor, scenting the winds with that of the sweetest roses.

She tilted her head and blinked, focused on the rippling fabrics of the pants and jacket worn by a prone body. She dove towards the edge of a grove of palm trees, where the human shape spilled out of its clothing into the sand.

When she landed on the arm of its jacket, the arm beneath shifted and gave way. "Medusa!" she whispered.

She burrowed into the pockets of the pants, searching for identification—for identity—a priority target of her role in the New Order.

Her beak grasped what felt like a notebook. Her efforts to loosen the notebook from the pocket uncovered a stack of money in the ash beneath the jacket. When she flapped her wings and lifted the notebook out, she uncovered a second stack. She knew by the color of the cash straps that the two stacks should contain $10,000 each.

The pocket notebook was a black hard cover, clasped by an elastic closure. Gold lettering on the front read, "A. Vericht". She recognized this brand of notebook, and used her beak and tongue to gently open it to the flyleaf, where she could appraise it.

"In case of loss, please return to: Miriam Vericht."

There was an address, followed by the line,

"Reward: $20,000."

She hopped to the collar of the jacket and dug into the ash beneath. Her talons found a ball chain necklace, weighted by a dog tag. Emblazoned on the tag was the symbol of a clenched fist with a snake wrapped around it: the Resurgence.

Her analysis of the notebook marked it as a high value relic surrounded by death and treachery. She would take it to the Capitol immediately, before anyone, or anything, came looking for it.

Arsaya took flight with the black notebook in her clutch, ascending to begin her journey inland. She gasped as a flurry of blue-grey feathers clipped her side, bruising her beneath her gilded armor.

She twisted quickly, releasing the notebook, and sliced the attacker with the gleaming edge of her wings. As she tucked her wings and plummeted, retrieving the notebook, she heard the wail of a peregrine falcon.

She was a dark missile careening towards the shore, until she somersaulted and opened her wings, plunging the notebook into a mound of sand and broken glass.

Now she began a wide circle around her cache, soaring along the ground, weaving between broken mirrors, using reflections to track the falcon. When she saw it dive, her wings thrust her forward at a furious speed.

The sound of air breaking over the falcon almost eclipsed her. She rolled and caught the falcon in her armored talons, riding it into the ground with an explosion of sand.

The hard grip of her talons controlled the falcon's claws as she boxed the falcon with her wings, barking and growling like a wolf she had studied. She pincered the falcon's neck into the sand with her beak until the falcon rested in submission.

She released the falcon with a triumphant cry, observing the banding of the Resurgence on one of its legs. Their falcon would return as a messenger of defeat.

3

Katanehi the All Seeing

Rays of yellow and blue-violet sunlight beamed through a stained glass portrait of a blue water lily, illuminating Katanehi as she slept in her throne, half submerged in freshwater. The soft, golden light of her eyes appeared as she awakened. Her mask, held by robotic arms, descended to fit her as she rose.

The majestic midnight feathers and blue and yellow stripes of her mask framed a black beak accented with gold paint. She'd accepted this identity while becoming a medusa variant for the New Order, along with her secret life in the Pyramid of the new Capitol. Before, she had been a seclusive orphan. She'd felt she wasn't leaving much behind.

She ascended to the chamber beneath the pyramidion, which contained technology designed to amplify her variant ability. From here, she could travel into the memories of any medusa preceding her in the viral record contained by Cerberus. With a relic, she could even connect to another medusa in real time.

Holding the notebook given to her by Arsaya, Katanehi closed her eyes and stood before a house engulfed in flames. Her eyes flickered as she harnessed the passage of time, until she heard a ring hit the floor. Shifting into the house, she penetrated the blackened air with the light of her eyes and found the discarded ring.

Now she was a shade kneeling beside Christopher Valance while he slept. She slid the spectral ring onto his finger and took his hand. They both saw the bride, and both saw her lift her veil and felt the elation of seeing Miriam again. As Cerberus expelled the liquids from his body, Alan was consumed by love, and consumed by fire.