Virtual Fantasy: The Gorgon’s Eyes

By and ©

DragonLady of Avalon, all plagarisers will look into the eyes of a gorgon

I find the axe shoved into my hands so fast, I don’t know what to do but tremble. It’s too heavy for me, way taller than my erect torso, the blade bigger than my head with my snaky hair fully extended, and gleaming dangerously above me.

Do they really intend for me to use this thing?

The armsman looks down at me and smiles. Kind of a reassuring smile, but not quite. More like he knows I can succeed and is trying to nonverbally tell me that I have nothing to worry about.

Then he slithers out of the door, and the heavy gate closes behind me with a mighty thud.

Apparently they do.

I look around nervously. There are no faces, no masks, no constantly moving snakes. All the adults and the other students have gone away, to the upper chamber, in the Viewing Room, watching through the transparent floor, darkened so that they can see me by the torchlight in here with me, but I cannot see them.

I remember the armsman’s smile. It was reassuring, wasn’t it?

I wait in the dark for a minute or two, not sure what I should do. I peer down that long, dark hallway, wondering if the dragonoid cub is watching and waiting, or if there is another room, and arena, where I’m supposed to go. I’ve forgotten.

When nothing happens and I can sense my mother’s anger, I slither forward, my belly scales pushing me forward something like how a caterpillar crawls, not the side to side motion that small snakes use.

I drag the axe’s poll along the ground, the metal scraping noisily. Then I stop and jerk, raising it up off the cobblestones again. I shouldn’t be so loud, that makes the enemy aware of me.

I raise it up and try to carry it that way, but it’s so heavy and makes my arms hurt. I’ll never be able to fight with this stupid thing once I find the dragonoid!

I glance behind me at the thick extension of my body, smooth and black, glistening the way snakes do, with a kind of slickness betraying dry scales. My tail is strong, long, and prehensile. Maybe I can carry this stupid thing until my muscles get strong enough for me to carry the axe by hand…or at least until I reach the dragonoid!

I pass the axe and wrap my tail around it, holding it tightly in place, and then I turn around and slither onward. It’s so quiet in here, I can hear my blood pounding in my ears. It seems like I slither forever, the back of my neck prickling and my snakes swiveling around, always looking for that dragonoid to stick its head out of the darkness and bite me in half.

See, it’s my Choosing today. Based on how I do with the dragonoid, they’ll determine what weapon I’ll use when I’m put to field patrol. Right now it looks like they think I’m an axeman.

I think they're crazy.

My name is Niagra. I am the only son of Medusa, the dungeon mistress who trains neonates. She is a tall and strong woman, who started out—like all dungeon mistresses or masters—as a field monster.

Every Gorgon neonate hopes to make it that far, even to be a miniboss in the final dungeon, the fortress the master and his family makes their homes in. It is the only thing we’re good for, we Gorgons.

See, our purpose is to serve the master, Kranos, and his family in ruling and taking over Armanthia. We our his soldiers and servants. His family conquered our nation generations ago, and since then bred us for our terrible faces to use against those that would stand against him.

My father was a miniboss in the Moration Fortress once. He and my mother were both unusually blue, my father with flecks of copper and mother with flecks of black. There was a history of unusual pigmentation in their bloodlines, axanthics, xanthics, albinos, and a bunch of other strange color and pattern anomalies. My mother figures her and my father to be cyanomorphs, but she isn’t sure.

If she isn’t, I certainly am. Well…maybe partially. I’m piebald, see. I have alternating stripes of pure white, without even the classic yellow smears of true albinos. Thick stripes, one wrapped around my waist, one that covers my neck, almost vanishing into my mask, and three on my tail.

I get a lot of trouble from being colored so strangely. Albinos sometimes have health problems, like bad sunburns and worse, so no one expects me to be very good at field patrol, let alone anything else.

Of course, I could probably be pretty good at dungeon patrol because I don’t have to be in the sun at all. Dungeons are usually pretty dark, anyway, with just a little torches or maybe a lava pit.

I smile broadly. Maybe if I fight really good against the dragonoid, the master will automatically assign me to dungeon patrol in a low-level dungeon. Maybe he won’t make me have to do field patrol at all!

I slither on, smiling, fantasizing about how good things will be if I manage to fight the dragonoid. I almost hum a little bit, but I can’t make any noise or the beast’ll hear me before I can hear it.

I come to a crossroads, a big, wide opening with three more doors besides the one I came from. I move into the middle of it, on a soft, dusty carpet with a torch at each corner, and look around shyly, curving arm hand up to my chin and nibbling on my right index finger. Where should I go next? Mother and the armsman never said anything about having to navigate through a whole dungeon on our own, not yet.

How is it the hero manages to pick a door? What happens if I go into the wrong one? What if they forgot to disarm all the traps? This is my mother’s dungeon! It’s very high-level! What if they forgot to take all the monsters out?

Thump…thump…thump…

I turn around and feel all of my eyes widening as I look at a massive, black shape rising out of the shadows, its rancid breath stirring up sand around my scoots.

Uh-oh…