Twenty
When we caught up to her, the angelic woman was in the middle of a nasty fistfight. Her opponent? A freaking gorgon, fresh from the world of magic. The pair of women were battling atop a rockface overlooking the greater Eastport area, countless acres of towering trees that eventually gave way to the sprawling skyline of downtown. Golden sunlight glinted off the distant ocean as the sky flooded with purple and orange in preparation for dusk. It was a beautiful backdrop to a potentially lethal cat fight.
Gabby’s golden band had transformed into a round shield which she was wielding as both a barrier between herself and the razor sharp claws of the gorgon’s hands and a battering ram to try and bash open the monster’s skull.
Already her dress was in tatters from several slashes across her unarmored abdomen and thighs, and the angel was leaking golden ichor across the rocks. Her movements were already stiffening as the gorgon’s venom began to slowly transform the angel into stone.
“Guess we know what came through the anomaly,” Derek muttered under his breath. “That ain’t no ordinary gorgon, folks. Humanoid, no tail, and albino? That’s an alpha gorgon right there. Gabby’s fucked without her powers.”
I can’t get a clear shot, Tabitha reported, annoyance creeping through our bond.
I thought you didn’t like her, anyway, I teased her.
I don’t! She’s just… an asset to the mission.
Uh-huh, sure.
Gabby cried out in pain as the gorgon scored another slash, this one across her bicep. Even though she was not one of my girls, hearing any woman cry out in that kind of pain was enough to set my blood boiling.
“Do you have a spell that can get me up there?” I asked Derek.
“Uh, well I could use telekinesis to give you a boost, would that work?”
“Do it. When I jump, boost me,” I commanded, taking off at a dead sprint and leaping high into the air. Suddenly my legs and arms gave off a faint white light and it felt like I was being pulled up by a dozen arms at once. It did the trick, as it got me up onto the rocky ledge alongside Gabby.
I’d fought a gorgon on a rooftop on the south side of town a while back. The trick was to unfocus your eyes so they couldn’t petrify you, cripple their legs or tail from afar, then finish them off with a quick decapitation when they started crawling towards you.
Leveling my pistol at the gorgon’s left leg, I walked three rounds up from her ankle. The first one skittered off the rocks. The second one tore through a few layers of flesh on her calf. The third reduced her kneecap to a fond memory and a splash of blue gore on the rocks.
Gabby wheeled around, shield at the ready, and prepared herself to defend against this new attacker. Instead she found me. The relief in her eyes spoke volumes about how well she thought the battle was going until I arrived.
Unfortunately, this particular gorgon was no pushover. Her knee was already fully healed.
“Hold on, Ryan, I’ll be right back!” Gabby promised, suddenly darting through a cave entrance I hadn’t seen from down below and vanishing, leaving me alone to face the freaking super-gorgon.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” I cursed.
I brought my gun up and unloaded the rest of the clip into the gorgon’s center mass. Bitch barely flinched, and just kept strutting towards me. Her nest of vipers hissed and seethed, and I made sure to keep my eyes low and off to one side so that our eyes didn’t meet.
I holstered my pistol and drew the other one, firing three shaky rounds that blew out both of her knees. The gorgon dropped to the ground and I averted my gaze over the side of the rocky ledge, spotting Derek and Tabitha slowly picking their way up towards me as quickly as they could while still being safe.
Stop, I ordered Tabby, don’t come any closer. Just set up and hit her with your rifle. Tell Derek to work some magic. I’ve got this.
Though I could tell that part of her absolutely wanted to argue, Tabitha followed my lead. She knelt down and took aim, firing short controlled bursts into the gorgon that distracted it.
I rushed forward with my blade and tried for a decapitating swing. My inability to stare her down directly–doubled with her lightning-fast reflexes–meant I only managed to lop off a couple of snake-heads and leave them crumbling to dust at our feet, but at least I dealt her some damage she couldn’t heal from.
Putting some distance between us with a well-timed roll, I fired a few more shots towards her head. One of the other snake-heads hanging off her head just opened his mouth and sucked in the bullets like some kind of magical vacuum. Which was actually bullshit.
She rushed me, interrupting Tabitha’s ability to land clean shots, and slashed me across the chest before darting away. Searing pain tore across the fresh wounds and then quickly faded, though not from my healing factor. In an instant my chest was stiffening, my breaths becoming labored and my skin taking on the gray hue of the rocks beneath me.
Holstering my useless gun, I reached within myself for my newest mutation, expecting to feel Hannah’s phantom powers at my beck and call. Instead I triggered a completely different power set that I had not been expecting.
My veins turned green, and my skin hardened to bark, halting the progress of my transformation into stone. The next time the gorgon came in to slash me all she managed to do was claw off a few pieces of bark. She completely failed to penetrate my skin whereas I stabbed her through the gut.
She hissed out in pain and rage and grabbed my chin, trying to force me to look into her eyes. I withdrew my blade and rammed it back into her chest cavity multiple times to no effect. She healed the moment the sword left her body.
I drew upon this strange new power and willed it to attack her, to prevent her from petrifying me any way that it could. A rumbling at my feet precluded a sudden burst of roots and vines which sprang up and ensnared the alpha gorgon, curling around her body and pinning her legs in place.
A vine decorated with sharp thorns shot out and bit into her arm in a vain attempt to break her grasp on my chin. But her grip was resolute. And her eyes were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Deep whirlpools of untamed darkness, a seething oasis of sin beckoned to me, calling my name out and drawing me into her firm embrace.
“Ryan!” Tabitha cried out faintly, as if we were worlds apart.
A beam of teal energy shot out of nowhere, and the gorgon broke her eyes away from me long enough to deflect Derek’s magical attack like it was an errant rubber dodgeball and she was a gym teacher going through a messy divorce, too busy looking at her phone to even be angry at whichever snot-nosed child threw it at her.
Our eyes locked again, and I felt myself slipping away.
Oh no ya don’t buddy, interrupted a new voice in my mind. It was my own, but it came from afar. Red Ryan! You don’t get to quit on me now. What happens if you go down and that thing turns on Tabitha? What about our son? You keep fighting, motherfucker!
New energy surged through me, as somewhere in the distance, I felt my other self… cum? What the fuck is Red Ryan doing out there while I’m fighting for my life? I reached for whatever this new power would be and suddenly felt a liquid current jolt through me like a second bloodstream. Raw magical energy blazed throughout my body and I overpowered the gorgon’s gaze, glaring back at her eye-to-eye.
Frowning at the fact that I was not turning into a statue, her eyes flared again as she redoubled her efforts.
Yet still I remained. Still flesh and blood, not stone.
“Whaaat is thisss? No mortal hasss ever withstood my gaze!”
“Surprise, motherfucker,” I uttered, right before headbutting her directly in her nose. Speaking from experience here, healing factor or not, you hit someone in the nose, their eyes water. Not much of an advantage, but I’d take whatever I could get.
I broke free of her vice-like grip and spun in place to build up enough momentum; slashing toward her neck with enough force to… hit nothing but air. Damn she was quick.
I pivoted, only to find her coming my way, at speed, feet-first. She planted a donkey kick to my chest that sent me flying over the edge and down towards the forest below.
Fuccck! I (Blue Ryan) mentally screamed.
Easy pal, think ‘wings’ and you should be fine, I (Red Ryan) instructed myself.
I did as I said, and suddenly I wasn’t falling anymore. Fairy wings suddenly sprang from my wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles. They were a very manly deep blue color (another lie, they were bright blue and they sparkled, and you know what? They fucking rocked because I’d have been dead without them) and didn’t really allow me to fly so much as they acted like stabilizer jets. I could hover, and maybe ascend or descend pretty well if my ability to halt a lethal plummet with just a bit of drag-time was any indication, but wouldn’t be going feather-to-feather with any birds anytime soon.
Still, the super manly fairy wings allowed me to guide myself back toward the rocky ledge so that I could keep fighting this gorgon so I wasn’t going to complain.
Whatever you’re doing over there, keep doing it, I encouraged Red Ryan.
Thanks man, you too. Just saying though I’ve already brought in two new powers and you haven’t done shit, so I’m way ahead of you!
I didn’t realize this was a competition. Game on… me.
You’re so weird, Red Ryan complained.
We’re the same person! I protested as I landed back on the ledge.
Suddenly I felt a mental barrier go up between the two of us, shutting me out completely from whatever was going down on his end. Guess that served me right. I did sort of block my other off earlier without warning or explanation.
My eyes narrowed as I glared at the charging gorgon. It was time to express some rage.
Tabitha readied her rifle and Derek cast a new beam spell right as the gorgon and I charged towards one another, both yelling out a war cry.