The Sixth Life of Medusa

3. Enemy of My Enemy

Medusa blinked; eyes fixed on the ceiling but seeing nothing. Her tears wouldn't stop flowing. They slid down the sides of her face in a consistent stream and disappeared into her hairline.

I killed Antonii.

Antonii becoming stone was the last thing Medusa recalled. Perseus had won. Where did he take her head? How did he even find her? Why was he so cruel? Why make her kill Antonii? Renewed anguish burned away her endless questions.

I turned Antonii to stone.

Rationality begged her to rise and consider her current situation but her body would not obey, and she was too weak to force it to act. For hours she lay still, her soul groaning under the crushing weight of grief.

Daylight crawled in. Her ears registered sounds. A cockerel crowed. When it crowed again, she decided to act.

Medusa frowned as she sat up. The expected feeling of a hundred versions of herself rising was absent. Her frown deepened when she took in the room she was in.

This...this was not her room at the farm yet there was something oddly familiar about it.

The smell of baking bread pricked an ancient memory. Two people talking as they walked past her door on quick feet. That language. Greek. A similar but altered version of the language from—

A woozy spell hit Medusa as a realisation struck. She was back to the genesis of her anguish. The worst life she ever lived.

Please, no.

Medusa's gaze darted about even as her heart thundered in denial. There was no mistaking that dresser, the ornate bronze mirror, and her neatly arranged dolls on the low shelf to the right. The wide bed she was sitting on. This was her childhood bedroom in Hesperides.

Unlike her other lives where she was born with her memories intact, something worse had happened this time around. She was back to her very first life in Cosmolith, this world where deities were far too involved in mortal existence.

Rolling off her bed, Medusa stumbled to the mirror on shaky feet.

Tears blurred her vision at what she confirmed.

A much younger version of herself stared back—perhaps nine or ten. Those accursed green eyes, thick dark hair, small mortal body.

Horrifying memories pressed in, memories she wished remained dead but they kept rising, scratching at her sanity, yelling to be acknowledged.

Poseidon.
Athena.
Perseus.

A knife. She needed a knife or anything sharp. With trembling hands, she shifted through drawers, desperately searching for anything to use to ruin this beauty before it ruined her once more.

"No." Stopping her frantic search, Medusa returned to the mirror and glared at her reflection. It mattered little if she was scarred or not. Soon, she would be carted off to Athena's temple.

That must never happen.

A single solution drummed in her head—a sure method to protect herself from what was to come in the future. What power does a feeble mortal hold against high deities? But in her hand was a rare opportunity, a last revolt against the gods.

Ripping her door open, Medusa sprinted down the corridor. Bare feet slapping against the rough marble floor, she gave herself to the memory of her childhood home, taking turns, rushing past servants who thankfully paid her no mind.

Her parents would not be up yet and even if they were, they were too wrapped up in themselves to be concerned about an airheaded runt. Nobody paid her mind and she was grateful for her invisibility.