Elementals 3: The Head of Medusa

by Michelle Madow

  “So why come to us now at all?” I asked. “Why not let Typhon rise and the Titans take over the Earth again?”

  “Because…” Nyx smiled slightly, as if she were about to share an inside joke. “Just because we’re not supposed to fight with or against the inhabitants of the planet, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have preferences about how we wish present events to play out. I care about all of the planets in the universe, especially those that contain life. So I am here now because I believe that those living on Earth deserve a chance to save this planet. The horrors in the realm of Kerberos are enough to drive someone mad after a few days, let alone three thousand years. The Titans have been locked in there for far too long. If that portal does open, and if the Titans are unleashed, then make no mistake—it will be the end of Earth as you know it. And as a deity that has come to care about this planet, I most certainly prefer that not to happen.”

  “As would we.” Danielle nodded. “But the spring equinox is in two weeks. How are we supposed to know how to defeat Typhon by then?”

  “That is not for me to tell you,” Nyx said, smiling conspiringly. “But as the Goddess of Night, I am also the Goddess of Shadows. Whenever you’re in doubt, remember to look to the Shadows as your guide.”

  Before we could ask any more questions, she swished the train of the dress around herself, and disappeared into the night.

  CHAPTER SIX

  We all agreed about what Nyx meant—she wanted us to ask the Book of Shadows for information about how to defeat Typhon. What she said also made me wonder: Did Nyx have anything to do with the Book? Was she the one who’d created the scavenger hunt for us to find it, and who was providing answers to us through it? And if so, why did she come to us in person just now to warn us about Typhon’s escape?

  Unless she visited us again, we might never know the answers. But we all agreed about where we had to go next, so we hurried back into the van and headed to Darius’s house. Once inside, we caught him up on everything that had happened tonight.

  “A visit from the original Goddess herself.” He sat back and looked around at us as if he wasn’t sure he believed it. “Are you positive that it was Nyx?”

  “Who else could it have been?” Chris asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Darius said. “Perhaps a monster in disguise, or an Olympian tricking you. I hear Aphrodite can be quite talented at changing her appearance.”

  “It wasn’t a trick,” I said, since while I couldn’t say why, I was sure of it, down to my bones. “It was Nyx. And there’s only one way to prove it.” I knelt down in front of the Book of Shadows, placed a hand on the cover, and said, “Tell us how we’re supposed to defeat the monster Typhon once his soul joins with his body.”

  My hand tingled, and everyone else hovered around me, waiting.

  “Did it work?” Kate asked, looking like she was about to jump out of her seat from the anticipation.

  I didn’t answer, instead simply opening the Book and turning to the Table of Contents. A new section had been added—The Head of Medusa.

  “Yes,” I said, turning to the page number specified. “I think it did.”

  Kate knelt down next to me and pulled the Book closer, ever eager to learn new information.

  “The Head of Medusa,” she read the section title out loud. “How come I didn’t think of that? Medusa can turn any living thing to stone with a single glance. And if she’s beheaded, her powers still work.” Her voice rose in volume, and she pulled the Book closer, clearly coming up with a plan. “We won’t even have to fight Typhon. We just need to behead Medusa, bring the head to Mount Etna, and have Typhon look into Medusa’s eyes the moment he comes out of the mountain. He’ll turn to stone in an instant.”

  “There’s only one problem,” Danielle pointed out. “To do that, we need to actually have Medusa’s head. Which, in case you haven’t realized, we don’t.”

  “Does the Book have any instructions about where we can find Medusa?” Blake asked.

  “That’s the spirit.” Chris smiled and gave him a high five. “After we slayed the hydra, beheading Medusa should be easy.”

  “It doesn’t say where Medusa is.” Kate read over the rest of the chapter, frowning and shaking her head. “But that’s not our biggest problem. It says here that after Perseus slayed Medusa the first time, she was sent to Tartarus. But when the Titans broke out of Tartarus all those thousands of years ago to start the Second Rebellion, many monsters made use of the escape door as well—including Medusa. Most of them supported the Titans in the Rebellion and ended up locked in Kerberos.”

  “So Medusa’s in Kerberos?” I figured the question was rhetorical, and continued before Kate could reply. “What’re we supposed to do—go in there and get her?”

  “Absolutely not.” Darius sat straighter, his voice firm. “The five of you cannot, under any circumstances, enter Kerberos. The portal isn’t stable, and we can’t risk losing any of you.”

  “And Nyx said that a few days in Kerberos is enough to drive a person insane,” Danielle added. “So going into Kerberos is a terrible idea. We won’t be any good in a fight if we’ve lost our minds.”

  I pictured the brown, muddy portal that led to Kerberos and shivered. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I agreed with Darius and Danielle. We wouldn’t be able to save the world if we lost our minds from crossing into Kerberos, or worse, if we ended up stuck there forever.

  “Would you all please stop getting ahead of yourselves?” Kate asked. We all stopped talking, and I looked at her, surprised at the sudden outburst. “We don’t have to go inside of Kerberos because Medusa is not, and has never been, locked inside of there.”

  “But I thought she escaped Tartarus with the Titans?” I asked.

  “She did.” Kate nodded and pointed to a line in the Book. “But it says here that once she realized that the Olympians were winning the war, she made a deal with Athena. She promised that she would fight with the Olympians in the Rebellion, and that she would no longer turn any creature into stone, as long as Athena ensured that no one could ever behead her again. And so, Athena made Medusa’s skin as hard as a diamond, impenetrable by anything except for the Golden Sword of Athena itself.”

  “The sword that can cut through anything it touches,” Danielle said breathlessly, resting her hand on the hilt of her own sword. “It actually exists?”

  “Of course it exists.” Darius scoffed. “But no one’s used it since Hercules, when he cut off the hydra’s immortal head. Afterward, the gods decided that the weapon was too powerful for any mortal to possess. Since it’s impossible to destroy the sword, they sent it to the end of the world itself, where it’s been guarded by the snow goddess Chione and her ice nymphs for the past thousands of years.”

  “That only means one thing,” I said, and Blake nodded at me, apparently having already figured out where I was going with this. “We’re going to the end of the world—and we’re getting that sword.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Good plan.” Danielle laughed, and it was clear from her tone that she was being sarcastic. “Let’s stroll on over to the end of the world—wherever that might be—and storm past a goddess and her nymphs to steal this sword.” She rolled her eyes and leaned her elbows on her legs. “Now… let’s be serious,” she continued. “What other options do we have?”

  “This might sound crazy,” Chris started. “But maybe we could just ask Medusa to work with us? She might want to turn Typhon to stone as much as we do. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about beheading her at all.”

  “Maybe…” I shifted in place, the idea of working with Medusa making me uneasy.

  “Absolutely not,” Kate broke in. “Medusa is an ancient monster—we would be naïve to trust her, knowing that she could turn any of us to stone with a single glance. We can’t risk it. We need to get her head.”

  “Which brings us back to Nicole’s idea,” Blake said, turning to Darius. “You said that the Golden Sword is at the end of th
e world. Do you know where that is?”

  “That I do.” Darius smiled, as if remembering an adventure long past. “The snow goddess Chione resides at the geographic South Pole itself, in the continent of Antarctica.”

  “So we can portal there and get the sword,” I said. “And who knows—there’s a chance that Chione wants Typhon gone as much as we do. She might want to give us the sword.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Darius said. “Chione is a very… diplomatic goddess. She has her palace in Antarctica where she guards the sword, and it’s understood that as long as she bothers no one, no one will bother her. She’s peaceful, and she doesn’t take sides.”

  “If she’s peaceful, then maybe she’ll at least talk to us,” I said. “If she hears us out, we could convince her to work with us. After all, if what Nyx said is true and the return of Typhon means that the entire world will be destroyed, that would affect Chione on Antarctica, too.”

  “To talk to Chione, you have to get to Chione,” Darius said. “And since a portal can’t be created that will drop you off in her palace—the gods have protection spells for the sake of privacy—you’ll have to get past her guards first.”

  “The ice nymphs you mentioned earlier,” Kate said. “Well… this will be an adventure, to say the least.”

  “A very cold adventure,” said Danielle, who had been playing around on her phone for the past minute. “It’s negative forty degrees there right now—and that’s considered warm for this time of year. Even if we could beat the ice nymphs—which, for the record, I believe we could in normal conditions—in that kind of weather, we would freeze before we had the chance.”

  “I could keep a fire going,” Blake suggested. “But since we’re fighting ice nymphs, they might be able to use their powers to put out the fire.” He glanced at me, his eyes ablaze. “I won’t let any of you get hurt because we weren’t careful enough.”

  Even though the statement was directed toward everyone, I knew he was thinking about me. Which I understood completely. I wouldn’t want to put any of us—especially Blake—in any unnecessary danger. If we were going to do this, we needed a better plan. Something less risky.

  “You all are forgetting something important,” Danielle said, and we looked at her to continue. “Nicole can kill with a touch. Why don’t we get her close enough to Medusa to touch her, and kill her that way? Then we won’t need the sword at all.”

  “And haul Medusa’s whole body to Italy with us when we go to turn Typhon into stone?” Blake asked, taking off his leather jacket and laying it down next to him. I took off my hoodie as well—it was getting hot in here. Or else we were both thinking so hard that it was making our blood race. “I guess it’s feasible…”

  “No.” Kate pushed her sleeves up, fanning her face. “It’s not. The Book says that Medusa’s powers still work when she’s beheaded. We don’t know what will happen to her if Nicole uses her powers on her. What if the black energy that Nicole uses to kill destroys the part of Medusa that turns living creatures to stone? Then we’ve ruined our one chance of doing this right. We have to get the sword. It’s our only option.”

  Sweat gathered on my brow, and I wiped it off, wishing I had more layers to remove. My long-sleeve shirt felt more stifling than ever. “Is the heater broken?” I asked Darius. “It feels like it’s a hundred degrees in here.”

  “Yeah, it does,” Blake agreed. “If it gets any hotter, I’ll have no choice but to take off my shirt.”

  I raised an eyebrow, unable to keep myself from smiling at the thought of him shirtless. If he was trying to get me to not want the heater fixed, then he’d certainly succeeded.

  “Don’t remove any more articles of clothing,” Darius said, standing up and rubbing his hairline. “I’ll check it out and see what the problem is.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Chris said, and at the sound of his voice, I realized how uncharacteristically quiet he’d been for the past few minutes. “The heater isn’t broken.”

  “How do you know?” I asked him. “It definitely feels broken to me.”

  “Because I’m the reason why it’s so hot in here.” He smirked.

  “Really, Chris?” Kate rolled her eyes. “You’re going there? I always thought Blake had the biggest ego of the group.”

  “I actually have quite a nice sized ego of my own, thank you very much,” Danielle said with a flip of her hair.

  “Good point,” Kate agreed. “It’s a toss up between the two of you.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” Chris laughed. “I meant it literally. I’m using my power over the air to make the molecules in it move faster.”

  Kate’s eyes lit up in instant understanding. “And because heating up air molecules makes them move faster, you’re using your powers to imitate the effect,” she said, beaming at him. “You’re heating up the room.”

  “You got it,” Chris said. Thankfully, he must have stopped doing whatever he was doing, because the room returned to normal temperature. “I can do the same thing in Antarctica. I’ll heat up the air around us so we’re able to fight without freezing to death.”

  “You’ll be able to focus enough to keep that up and defend yourself at the same time?” I asked.

  “Probably not,” he said. “But I trust the four of you to take care of the fighting. Unless one of you has a better plan?”

  A few seconds passed, and no one said a word.

  “This seems to be the best option,” Darius finally said. “We’ll need you to test this outside, to make sure you can do it in an open area.”

  “It works outside,” Chris assured him. “I’ve been practicing since we got back from Greece. As long as everyone is within sight of me, I’ll be able to keep the air around them warm.”

  “In that case, as long as you’re able to get past the ice nymphs—I believe this plan will work.”

  “We’ll get past the ice nymphs—especially with my power over water to help us out.” Danielle leaned forward and pressed the pads of her fingers together, her eyes gleaming with determination. “Hopefully they can only control water when it’s in solid form. Because I can control it in any form. Which will give me a big advantage over them.”

  “And don’t forget my power over fire,” Blake added. “They’ll melt before they know what hit them.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath and clasped my hands together. “So we need to portal to Antarctica, fight our way past the ice nymphs, talk Chione into giving us the Golden Sword of Athena, hunt down Medusa, cut off her head using the Golden Sword, and then bring her head to Mount Etna so we can turn Typhon to stone—all before the spring equinox.”

  I could barely get it all out in one breath. How were we supposed to get all of that done in two weeks? But then again, our mission to Greece had been crazy too, and we’d managed to accomplish that. Plus, if we didn’t do this, then the world would be lost to the Titans—and it would be our fault. I couldn’t live with myself if that happened.

  I also wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to my friends. I still thought about what Rachael’s body looked like after the hydra poison had killed her. Her death was my fault, because I hadn’t gotten to her fast enough. Memories of that moment had haunted my dreams every night since.

  I refused to make a mistake like that again. We would all make it out of this—I would use my powers to make sure of it. I’d been given my abilities for a reason, and I was positive that this was it. To make sure that the five of us made it through this alive. I’d already let Rachael down. I refused to let the others down, too.

  “I’ll call Hypatia so she can come over and create the portal to Antarctica.” Darius nodded. “Gather your weapons—you’ll leave as soon as she’s ready.”

  “Wait,” I said, and everyone looked at me, apparently surprised by my sudden outburst. “We’re leaving now? We won’t have a chance to go home and see our families first?”

  “We have fifteen days until the spring equinox
,” Darius said. “We have no time to waste.”

  “I understand that,” I told him. “But I can’t leave now. Not without talking to my family. They’re still clueless about everything—they don’t know about witches, or demigods, or the Titans, or any of this.”

  “I thought you wanted to keep them out of this?” Blake asked.

  “I thought I did,” I said. “But I can’t ignore the possibility that we might not make it out of this alive. If that happens—I want my family to know the truth. And I want to have been the one who told them.”

  Darius didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and I pulled at the threads of the rug, fearing he would say no.

  “While I do wish you’d discussed this with them earlier, I understand why you wish you tell them now,” he finally said. “And this is ultimately not my decision—it’s yours to make, as a group. So I’ll leave it to the five of you to discuss. Do you wish to leave immediately, or will you allow Nicole time to return home and speak to her family, and leave tomorrow morning?”

  Everyone unanimously agreed to wait until tomorrow morning. I appreciated their understanding, but I also suspected that they hadn’t agreed to it just because of me. They wanted a chance to see their families again, too. None of us wanted to believe that this trip to Antarctica could be the last trip for one—or all—of us, but as Nyx had said, the future was never set in stone. We all wanted time to say goodbye.

  “Do you want me to come with you when you talk to your family?” Blake asked me once we were in his car, on the way back to my house.

  My first instinct was to say yes. Because how would my family react? Would they even believe me? I couldn’t be sure. I also couldn’t be sure if they would support my decision to go forward with this mission. If Blake were there, at least one person in that room would be on my side.

  But while I would love to have Blake there—and as much as I appreciated his wanting to be there to support me—I didn’t need him there with me. I could do this alone. And since it was a family matter, it might be intrusive to have someone who wasn’t family there to witness it.