And a Wingèd Doom Alights

A forest creature, something with a fluffy covering and hard mouthparts and stalkless, recessed eyes and two thin and stiff stalks support it below. What was the word... Avian?

But birds were small things, kin of the laughing ravens. Nuisances that clawed through trashbags and left droppings as they flew. Not mighty presences that loomed taller than me, mouthparts curving to a point sharper than spears. A thing which stood and scratched on clawed feet like many knives.

They were wild creatures, too, and not things that wore armor. The plates gleamed metal, and the wide metal covering the breast was big enough I glimpsed a reflection it.

I stared, desparately curious how I looked to this bird. Was I an enticing meal? Had I gained new menace from my sojourn with the death god? Or was I still a feeble thing? I squeezed my eyes.

Foremost I saw a slender bell, a membraneous exumbrella dotted with breathing trachea. Around them, circling my exumbrella in a wave-like pattern peeked forth twenty-four rhopalia, lips blinking over simple eyes.

Dangling beneath them, four grasper tentacles upheld the weight and rested on fan-like pads. Eight flat tresses coiled around them, bristling with magical cnidocysts, like a rough ribbon rife with venom, and the fluted outlet tingled with dormant power. Wriggling in between them, sixteen short feeler-tentacles blew along the breeze. Centermost between them all, a single stalk came down in overlapping or segmented bulbs of membrane taut over cartilage.

The eyestalks were level with the bird's armored breast, and they turned upward to stare into the face of the beaked menace, head pivoted so that a single fiery eye stared into the jelly-bodied thing before it.

No helmet on the head, and this left you free to notice the fluffy golden down, colored like the metals on the finest altars.

In that fiery eye I felt --- recognized, measured, and known. The largest birds, the ones known only as morbid silhouettes in the distant sky, you knew to be wary of them. Only some preferred live meals, but the ones do had not yet learned to be wary of a medusa. (And you would wonder if they should, given what often result from such encounters.)

And this bird would dwarf any vulture or hawk.

It was an amusing thought, when it had first come. Will this be an end? Was it to be a gory feast of a death for me? Now, it seemed more a sober summation.

The feeling that thrilled through me --- electric and subterranean, the forceful will to live --- was none familiar to me. But still it struck true like lightning, with an utter verity that limned it as if it were a facet of pure reality surging through me. It was undeniable.

An assured me: I must live, I would live. I must escape, I would escape. And I would kill the high priestess of Avelt.

It was not words that filled me, not truly. But if it were, those would be the words.

Magic welled up mightily in my glands. The exhaustion, the dearth, had left me, and in its absence were rendered the tools of escape.

I absorbed a breath---

And it takes but a moment for all reality to be rent asunder.

"Do not be afraid."

It was --- it was the bird that spoke.

"Please speak to me, little medusa."

"What --" I choked. Something from the holy studies must have returned to me, on some other level than consciousness. I inquired, as one who inquires to a divine thing, and I asked, "Who sent you, O thou sublime? What purpose shall avail thee?"

"How formal. Relax. You may know me as Eythe, He of knowledge, the one who agnizes many things. I've come to speak to you, little medusa. Relax yourself."

"Are --- are you a god?"

"For your peace of mind, I shall say no. You may think of me as a mere symbol or pretense. It's all I ever was. But do not worry about me. I worry about you."

"Me? I'm useless. Below the consideration of --- anyone, whoever you are." The soft flesh of my exumbrella undulated in waves.

"But you have decided something, haven't you? I know many things, I know that you intend something quite monumental. Involving some high priestess, perhaps?"

I paused, waves freezing on face. "I could never accomplish something like that."

Why didn't that feel like a lie?

The words may as well have never been said, for all that the bird cared. He continues, "So, allow me to return the inquiry. Who sent you? For what purpose?" The head leaned lower, level with my eyes. He said, "Forgive me for insinuating that you wouldn't do this of your own volition but... you simply wouldn't."

I simply wouldn't. Somehow, I couldn't contradict the bird. What could I decide, on my own?

Who sent you? The inquiry had struck a match in my mind, and from its flame I could feel the earlier communion as if it were still happening. Perhaps it was still happening, and always would. There was something --- sublime to it.

The terminus. The god of death, he who traces the glory of the world. Doubt could persist, but it had to be him --- who else would tend to a demesne that smelt so overwhelmingly of rot, decay?

He'd dared to tell me his name, even. The name. A terrible call that began with M.

How utterly I wished he hadn't --- I could well do without knowing. But telling me that name, it was a sign of trust. Even the hidden histories did not record the name of the god of death.

And he had given me his godsting. It was trust, so much trust.

It was not a sum that this god --- or pretense of a god --- would deign to match.

So be it. I was used to floating beneath notice, beneath caring by those important. I didn't sting, it didn't bother me.

No, it was the demand that pricked me. Who were they to know my master? My task?

"You are endlessly expressive, for a medusa." The bird cocked his head, letting the other eye rest sidely upon me. It blinked once, and when the beak opened again, a mournful caw emerged. "Perhaps I should apologize? It was not my intention to offend you. I mean no disrespect."

A wave snapped across my face. "So you don't mean what you say?"

A pause, and a back and forth motion of the head. Confusion was written deep in the posture, like a dune-dweller staring uncomprehending at rows of sunshields. A cognizance of a cultural divide.

(But it was misplaced caution; it was not a fault of translation, but a trap in words.)

"Of course I mean what I say. I disgorge only truth."

"Then you meant disrespect," I stated simply.

"I don't mean to wrestle in words, little medusa. I'm not here to play whatever status games it is you jellies get up to. I am concerned only with the growing, churning might of Him. He's planning something...

"And I can look into your soul, little medusa, and I can see the bleakness that awaits you. I can see your path ends only in tragedy -- grand tragedy. Does it speak lowly of me to seek to avert that? No...

"Be still and at peace with me. I am a god to your kind, and I can help but if you simply allow me."

I rose higher on my stalk. "Then grant me passage into the hollow reef of the sun."

A feathered head shaking. "That is not my domain. Aveltane knows those grounds, and I cannot overrule that."

"Well. As that is all I would like, it seems you cannot help me." One rhopalium angled up, an eye lifting to see the canyon wall I must climb.

It was a lie, a damn lie. Curse my pride.

The bird was striding toward me, born on those overly thin stalks, those legs coming down like swords, jointed tendrils stabbing into the glittering dirt. The head leaned toward me. When the beak opened, I could smell a meal on their breath. I knew what every cnidarian smelt like. The priests assured me the gods held no malignity at all for medusae --- but should I trust that it was only hydra meat I smelt?

The bird spoke, and the reek of its gullet imparted an dark undertone which was not there before. "Do not seek to use me, little medusa. I am not a resource to be exploited. Were I to assist you entering Aveltane's demesne --- what ailment of yours would that truly allay?"

I had decided I would kill the high priestess of Avelt. I knew better than to say it aloud, though. Not now. Indirection had its use, when speaking plainly obscures the truth. "It would fulfill my purpose."

A sharp, deadly shriek left the deep throat of the golden bird. And now they spoke in such a tone of prophecy, I could believe my doubt misplaced; I could believe this truly was the vessel of something alterior:

"Medusae do not have purposes. They are. They chose. They live. That is the right we carved out of the stone of the world for you. That is what we fought for."

"And I chose to serve. I chose to fulfill this task. Would you deny me that?"

"I can only imagine what soft words He fed you to provoke such determination. I can only imagine what darkness he plans you to undertake in Avelt's demenses."

"I could tell you, if you'd finally agree to help."

"No, I cannot assist Him again. We've --- He's done enough."

"I remain unconvinced."

"For now. I will break you from this geass, I will drag you from this path if I must. I assure you: my patience flies long."

My stalk flexed, and I rose from my fearful crouch, cartilage popping back in place. The words I'd spoken, which felt like echoes of M's truth, they bolstered. As if giving voice and word to that determination I knew only intellectually, as if that lent it some visceral life.

I twisted my bell, all wry, and said, "Is this conversation over, then?"

"For now. But allow me one parting gift, little medusa."

The bird stuck its head into the bag, woven of taut fabric gleaming like silk. It arose holding in the beak a tight, leathery band. Dried, treated ghost snail skin.

It wasn't new --- as if a god's vessel would ever buy a present for me.

Above, an eye closed as if winking. "I agnize many things, and I knew to expect you."

It was an old, torn and nicked thing. It was worn down by years of use. It had glyphs carved into