Danmachi: My Adventure With a High Fairy Queen, Vol. 1

The Genesis of Tyratryx

I have had many names over many lives, but one name in particular was feared by all that heard it: Medusa. It meant queen, or ruler. It wasn't an unfitting name, and that was what I was most commonly known as in the lower world. For as long as time existed, humans, demi-humans, monsters and even gods have dreaded the very name Medusa. They were all united in their fear of me, from the very day I crept up from the deep floors of the Dungeon to the surface.

But there is a little known, disquieting secret behind this all: my first life was not one of a monster, but as a mortal girl who lived, and died, long before the gods descended. Hailing from small, peaceful village, I met an untimely demise at the hands of marauding bandits, and my essence was consumed by the depths of the Dungeon and reincarnated into a monster known as a gorgon. I was reborn as Medusa.

From as far back as my powers of memory can serve me, all creatures everywhere were both in awe and in terror at the very mention of my name. My body was concealed with thick scales that shimmered like a stygian burnish, and my visage both mesmerized and petrified all that met it. I had only one desire: survival at all costs. I prowled the surface realm, searching for prey to sustain my existence, driven by a primordial and single-minded instinct of self-preservation.

Soon, there arose a name that I dreaded myself: Perseus. His polished armor adorned him, and his sword was brimming with a celestial, sacred radiance. This hero, chosen by the gods, was the first to turn his fear of me into defiance. We fought to the death, locked into a vehement strife that only one of us could survive, both of us had an indomitable disposition to best the other. But it was he who got the better of me, severing my head from my shoulders with his sickle, adamantite blade. I had met my end at the hands of this Perseus.

Except this wasn't the end, but merely the beginning of a bounding to a never-ending cycle that I was determined upon, or which I was condemned to. The Dungeon would not grant me the luxury of death I longed for, and revived me into this world, my enervated soul placed into a newly crafted body. As I walked the Earth once more, I was as powerful and terrifying as ever. But I was condemned to the same fate every time: my murder at the hands of Perseus. The cycle would then repeat. Each Perseus was different from the last. Sometimes they were a man, other times a woman. They came from every race and every walk of life and every corner of the Earth. But they all had one thing in common: the inexhaustible steadfastness to put an end to me.

There was no end in sight to this non-stop loop of death and rebirth. The only meaning to my life was to be born and born again only to die by Perseus's hand. Each existence was only a single tone in an evermore sonata, a musical passage without the arrival of a cadence, continuing perpetually.

Every time I was reborn, my power grew. I began to master the art of the dark magics that resided within my blood, to take queenship over the rudderless monsters, and to even reshape creation into my image. But it was all for naught, as I was consigned to the same fate every time. A deep hatred, a dark flame, burned away my heart. An obsession for retribution against Perseus consumed me. I wanted power, no matter the cost, to break free of this boundless curse of death and rebirth.

For I am Medusa, I am all that ever was, and all that ever will be. I am the mistress of death and rebirth, I am the wave of darkness that will cleanse the world and make all the lights go out.

I died one final time to the hand of Perseus...

My life ebbed away, reducing me to a hollow husk. The shadows etched the perpetual, inescapable circle of death and rebirth. I sank into the endless void, formless and without shape, waiting for the inevitable rebirth to take its course. It felt like eons had passed within a nanosecond. My soul found its way to its new body, and I was born into the world once more. Only this time, it would be different...