Rise of the Gorgon (Myths of Stone Book 2) Read online

  Rise of the Gorgon

  Galen Surlak-Ramsey

  A Tiny Fox Press Book

  © 2019 Galen Surlak-Ramsey

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by U.S.A. copyright law. For information address: Tiny Fox Press, North Port, FL.

  This is a work of fiction: Names, places, characters, and events are a product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover art by Eddy Shinjuku

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2019943548

  Print ISBN: 978-1-946501-16-5

  Tiny Fox Press and the book fox logo are all registered trademarks of Tiny Fox Press LLC

  Tiny Fox Press LLC

  North Port, FL

  For Granny, whose power dwarfs even the gods’

  Table of Contents

  Chapter Monster Hunt

  Chapter Petty Heroes

  Chapter Hook Ups

  Chapter Bye Bye, Divineder

  Chapter The NFL

  Chapter New Pets

  Chapter Humiliation

  Chapter Arachne and Jessica

  Chapter Athena and the Lighthouse

  Chapter Calm Before the Storm

  Chapter The Party

  Chapter Cake and Scorpions

  Chapter A Goddess Snubbed

  Chapter Heph’s Place

  Chapter A Powerful Surprise

  Chapter Giant Fun

  Chapter A Meeting With Hera

  Chapter Cursed

  Chapter Pizza

  Chapter Clever Girls

  Chapter Airports

  Chapter Mount Etna

  Chapter Revelation

  Chapter An Unwanted Meeting

  Chapter Wish Granting

  Chapter Desperate Plans

  Chapter So, Hera…

  Chapter The Vault

  Chapter Stripped

  Chapter Reunited with Alex

  Chapter Nyx

  Chapter Cronus Stirs

  Chapter Goatman

  Chapter Return to the Mountain

  Chapter Foxes and Statues

  Chapter Lava Baths

  Chapter That Can’t Be Good

  Chapter A Crash Course in Alchemy

  Chapter Bolts of Lightning

  Chapter Into the Depths

  Chapter Fin

  Before you go…

  Acknowledgements

  Apocalypse, How?

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Rise of the Gorgon

  Chapter Monster Hunt

  Euryale had never been a fan of violence, despite being a gorgon. Never mind the propaganda about her and her sisters, Medusa especially. Sure, a few people here and there had been turned to stone over the centuries. Maybe a few others had been shot with arrows or stabbed with spears, but to be fair, they had all deserved it.

  Thus when Euryale was presented with an opportunity to avenge her sister’s murder, she happily seized the moment.

  The gorgon raced through the forest on a pair of supple legs. Her golden eyes darkened, and her claws lengthened as she closed the distance between herself and Perseus. The man, so intent on tracking the chimera which had eluded the heroes of Elysium for the past two weeks, never saw her coming. She kept a grip on her bow with her left hand and used her right to grab him by his curly hair and ram his head into a nearby tree. His bearded face made a satisfying crunch as it hit nose first, and for a split second, wood and skull had a competition to see who was the strongest.

  The wood won.

  Perseus moaned incoherently as he slumped to the ground and drifted out of consciousness.

  “I should cut your head off for Medusa’s sake,” Euryale spat. Long-dormant fires of revenge lit in her soul, and the vipers that slithered around her head hissed with anger.

  The gorgon had to spend a few seconds steadying herself to keep from morphing into her monstrous serpentine form. As she stared at the fallen hero, she wondered how long it would take the others to notice his disappearance if she threw his body into a pit and had her way with him over the next few centuries. As much as she wanted to, she knew she couldn’t, and that furthered her frustrations and rage. “You’re lucky Athena likes you,” she growled.

  “Euryale! Where did you go?”

  The sound of Alex, her husband, calling out to her extinguished her flames of hate, and by the time he cleared the brush and stumbled onto her handiwork, she had reverted to the sweet, loving woman he’d fallen in love with almost a year ago.

  “Please tell me you didn’t do what I think you did,” Alex said, coming to a stop and driving his spear into the forest floor with his muscular arm.

  “Do you think I came running over here moments ago when I heard him trip and fall?” she asked as she strolled over and draped her arms around his neck.

  “That’s what you’re going with?”

  “Depends,” she said before leaning in close and kissing him softly on the lips. “I can’t possibly imagine what else would have happened.”

  Alex tilted his head so he looked over her shoulder. “That had to be one hell of a trip.”

  “He was probably running too fast,” she replied, placing a hand on his cheek and redirecting his face toward her.

  Alex looked at his wife, and then at Perseus, and then back to her again. He played with his beard for a few seconds before glancing left and right. “It’s a good thing we aren’t hunting while it’s dark,” he finally said. “There’s no telling what pit he might have fallen in since he’s so careless.”

  “Exactly. On that note, maybe we should suggest one at night?” she said.

  “Now I think you’re pushing it.”

  “Am I?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Alex chuckled. “Next thing you know, you’ll have all the other heroes getting lost in a labyrinth, pitted against one another.”

  Euryale furrowed her brow, and her green skin hardened as the faint outline of scales appeared. “You mean as Aphrodite did to us?”

  “Well, yeah,” Alex stammered, immediately regretting the comparison. “Bad example, I know.”

  Euryale’s voice darkened. “Don’t ever liken me to that vile goddess.”

  “That wasn’t my intention, honest,” he said, wrapping his arms around the small of her back and drawing her close. “I didn’t mean for this to be such a big ordeal. Can we get back to the hunt? I want to bag this one before the others do. I haven’t made a kill in, well, ever. I think the guys are feeling like I’m not earning my keep.”

  “You, not earn your keep?” Euryale said with a light laugh. “I don’t remember any of them fighting Ares on their own. If anyone has nothing left to prove, my love, it’s you.”

  “Thanks,” Alex said.

  Euryale ran her fingers through his hair and then trailed her fingertips across his cheek and down his bare chest. The act further helped to center her on what was important. “Maybe tonight you could show me what sort of hero you really are.”

  “When are the kids coming back?” Alex asked, grinning like a teenager who had just been told his parents were going to leave for the weekend.

  “Not till tomorrow,” she answered. “Dad wants to build sandcastles with them one more time.”

  The wind changed, and with it, Euryale picked up a new scent. Her vi
pers tasted the air as she tried to place what exactly it was. It only took a second. It was the scent of chimera blood, faint but there.

  “Come,” she said, scooping up her bow. “It’s close. And try and stay quiet this time. You’re still about as stealthy as a minotaur in a china shop.”

  Euryale took off running, making less noise than a gentle breeze. She darted around thick scrub and between countless oak trees before working her way up a small rise. Near the top, she crossed a small, babbling stream as she continued to follow the coppery scent for another ten or fifteen minutes. Finally, she slowed at the sounds of heavy breathing and tracked them to the bottom of a large overhang.

  Underneath that overhang lay a giant chimera on its side. Dark blood caked the rocks around the creature, and a grievous wound to the ribs looked both painful and crippling. Its large wings were sprawled across the ground, while its lion head panted, resting on a small rock. A second head, this one of a goat, lay twisted to the side with its eyes closed, mouth open, and tongue hanging out. Only the monster’s third head, that of a snake that happened to be at the end of the creature’s serpentine tail, took note of the gorgon’s arrival. When it did, the chimera staggered to his feet like a prize fighter on the verge of a knockout.

  The lion bared his teeth, and the goat lowered its head to point its horns at Euryale. Though it took a crouched stance that was an obvious prelude to a pounce, the gorgon could tell the last thing the beast wanted was a fight.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” she said, outstretching her right hand and slowly lowering her bow to the ground with the other. “This doesn’t have to end like this.”

  The monster inched backward.

  “Easy…easy,” she said, her voice as soothing as any divine balm. “We monsters have to stick together. I promise I’m only here to help.”

  The chimera lowered its guard and let out a soft grunt.

  Euryale stepped forward cautiously, and when the beast didn’t run or strike, she relaxed and smiled.

  The chimera jerked its heads to the side and growled at the sounds of approaching heroes arguing and laughing with each other about whose turn it was to kill what and where.

  “No! Please!” Euryale begged.

  A heartbeat later, the chimera attacked.

  Chapter Petty Heroes

  This is getting ridiculous,” Perseus said with a scowl on his bloodied and bruised face. He wore the usual attire for heroes on the island this time of year, nakedness, and he wore it well. Thousands of years of constant exercise had shaped his body into a sight that would make any man or woman swoon. His skin had bronzed to perfection, and even though his cheek was cut and his right eye swollen shut, he lost none of his rugged handsomeness. “This is the seventh one we’ve lost.”

  “What do you propose we do?” asked Heracles. The hero’s hero stood a pace to Perseus’s side and was everything Perseus was twice again. He had biceps that were the size of a small country and whose chief export was pain. His abs looked like they could double as emergency stops for runaway rocket engines, and his legs probably had to deadlift Jupiter just to get warmed up. The only thing the man didn’t have twice as much as Perseus did was hate. Instead of the anger and frustration so plainly showing on Perseus’s face, Heracles had eyes that smiled and a grin ten times as bright.

  “What we do is, we lay some ground rules. She can’t keep stealing kills like this.”

  Heracles chuckled and looked to Euryale who was casually leaning on a stone chimera. “Would you like to weigh in?”

  “It’s not my fault the rest of you are so slow,” Euryale said with a shrug. “I think the lack of true challenge has made you soft.”

  “If you’re offering to be that challenge, then count me in,” Perseus replied, narrowing his dark eyes at the gorgon. “I’ll take your head the same as I took your sister’s.”

  “While I’m sleeping?” Euryale growled. “Truly a courageous act to brag about. Or will you come back and lie as you did before? Perhaps tell a story where we fought to the death, and it was only by your sheer strength and cunning that you bested me?”

  Heracles stepped between the warring pair and clamped a giant-crushing hand on Perseus’s meaty shoulder. “Enough,” he said. “She’s wed to one of our own and has the favor of more than one Olympian. Such infighting will only bring us trouble.”

  “And who am I?” Perseus asked with a snort of disbelief. He shook his head and shrugged Heracles off before wiping the dirt from his brow. “Tell me, hero’s hero, do I not carry Athena’s favor as well? Do I not carry it more than she?”

  “You do.”

  “Then stop protecting her,” Perseus said. “And why are you when her husband does not?”

  “Because she doesn’t need me to,” Alex said, breaking free of the tree line and coming to his wife’s side. He panted a few times to catch his breath before continuing. “Sorry, I’m late. What did I miss?”

  “That,” Perseus said, pointing to the petrified chimera. “I’m getting sick of your wife’s gaze. She’s ruining the sport. I say if she’s not going to hunt with bow, spear, or sword, she doesn’t get to come. It’s only fair.”

  “You wouldn’t know the first thing about fairness,” Euryale said. “You think you’re so grand running around here, slaughtering creatures for the fun of it, as if that makes you somehow a better person. Tell me, who are you saving? What towns do you keep from ruin or what widows and orphans are not made thanks to your hand?”

  “That’s a fine lecture coming from someone who petrified a monster moments ago,” Perseus said. “Again.”

  “I spared it from torment, nothing more,” she said.

  “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re protecting them,” Perseus said. “Once a monster, always a monster, right? That’s the reason your sister had to die. We couldn’t risk her leaving that island of yours or hope she’d ever be worth saving.”

  Euryale glanced out of the corner of her eyes to where her bow lay—her sister’s bow. She wondered if she was fast enough to scoop it up and get off a shot before any of them could react. How fitting would it be if she drove an arrow through his heart with her sister’s weapon? Not that it would kill the hero. No, he, like everyone else, enjoyed immortality here in Elysium, but it would feel damn good to make him suffer.

  Alex took Euryale by the hand and intertwined his fingers with hers. “I think we’re getting too heated here,” he said. “We’ll sit the next one out till we can figure out what to do. How’s that?”

  “No, Alex. We won’t.”

  “Listen to your husband, gorgon. It’s for your own good,” Perseus said. “He might be one of us, but you are not, and you never will be. I don’t care how much of a god your father is.”

  “I don’t need him to fight you,” she replied.

  Perseus smirked. “If you want a war, you can have one, gorgon.”

  Before Euryale could offer a retort, it was Alex’s turn to jump in the middle. He put himself between his bride and her attacker with his sword up and ready. “Ares said the same thing to me,” he said. “We both know how that turned out.”

  Perseus didn’t back down. His brow dropped, and he shook his head. “You disappoint me, Alex,” he said. “I’ll bite my tongue for your sake until you give me a reason not to, but I will say this: you would be wise to rein in your wife. Her favor with the Olympians is threadbare at best, and yours is only two strands better. If the two of you strike at me, you’ll quickly see who the gods support on this island.”

  With that, he waved to Heracles to follow, and the two disappeared into the forest.

  Several tense moments passed in silence before Euryale spoke. “Thank you,” she said softly. “For coming to my defense.”

  “Part of my job,” Alex said. He then laughed. “But it’s not like you need it. I’ve fought you when you’re angry. You’ve got the strength of a titan and enough venom in those snakes to drop a thousand legions of elephants. They wouldn’t sta
nd a chance.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice going soft and trailing. “I wish…I wish it weren’t like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “This,” she said, sweeping the area with her hand. “I hate being around them. I hate seeing what they do to ‘monsters.’ I hate how they’ll never treat me as an equal, or worse, our children. Do you honestly think they will ever look at them as anything but hideous creations fit only to hunt for fun?”

  Alex dropped his gaze. “I hadn’t thought about that, but would they really? Surely they know we’d both defend them to the ends of the earth, and that’s not even counting what The Old Man would do if he lost his newest grandkids. I dare say he’d unleash the leviathan so it could feast on their bodies for a thousand years.”

  The tiniest of grins formed on the gorgon’s otherwise downcast face. “That would only be the start. But still, Alex, even if they didn’t openly attack them, do you want our children to grow up in such an awful place?”

  “Where would they grow up? The real world?”

  “I don’t know,” Euryale said, clearing her eyes after a couple of sniffs. “I don’t like that place either. The people there are so cruel.”

  “Well, that cuts down on our options,” Alex said. “I don’t think there are any vacancies in Olympus.”

  “No,” she said with a laugh. “Not for us at least.”

  “For what it’s worth, no neighborhood is perfect, and this has to be better than living in exile.”

  “It is,” she said. “And I’m grateful for that. I couldn’t handle having to live alone again.”

  Alex took a few steps toward his bride and embraced her. She snuggled into his chest and spent the next few moments listening to his heartbeat. She would’ve fallen asleep had he not tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” she replied, looking up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, per se,” he said. “But when are you going to stop the charade?”