Elf Creek Games

I, Medusa

By Caleb Wilson, Elf Creek Resident Storyteller

A telling of the Atlantis Rising: Monstrosities story from medusa herself!

Iwas a good Empress. I was kind when I could be, yet quick to quell injustice. I was a fair ally, to the Atlanteans on their gleaming isle. I thought I lived in such a way as to please the gods. But one morning my chamber attendants shrieked on opening my bed-curtains. I had been made monstrous.

I thought it was random chance that had distorted me. My kindness faltered then. I shattered every mirror, unwilling to witness my skin hardened to scales, or the serpents that writhed upon my head. The court priests fled rather than confessing the source of my curse.

I learned it myself, from reading the roiling clouds and waves. My friendship with the Atlanteans had ruined me, the gods having determined that I must share their terrible curse.

My advisors begged me not to go. They suggested I hide in my palace, letting nobody see what I had become. In the weird light of my round dragon’s eyes, the blood drained from their faces and their flesh shriveled to stone. I stepped over them--fallen, broken statues--and boarded my auto-trireme. This gift of the Atlanteans, powered by their own mystic energy, would bring me to their beleaguered island. On the journey the sea-water lensed, unseen forms frolicking in the depths. Whirlwinds harried the isle, a-buzz with the harpies’ foul feathers.

I crashed the auto-trireme on the shore below the clustered Atlantean cities. Blue sparks danced in its wrecked mechanisms. A ravenous anger had overtaken me. The scales over my skin creaked and groaned. I staggered down the ramp onto the beach. The six-armed isle smelled of terror and incense.

Up the shore path I stumbled. No music filled the happy peninsula today, no lyres to play the cosmic songs of the gods, no drums to beat a pleasant pulse. The sky was bruised with gathering storms. Threads of gold lightning decorated the hideous realm of the harpies.

I wandered along the abandoned road. The houses had sealed their front gates. From some came wailing, from others laughter and the clatter of bowls and glasses at great, slobbering feasts.

A faint voice floated on the trembling

air: “Citizens of Atlantis, linger no longer in your homes, there is no safety there! We must pool our labor, now come with me, there’s work to be done!”

The crier, outside a beautiful housing insula, spotted me, dismay stamped upon their face like a mask. I raised an arm to them, and their flesh hardened to stone.

Behind me the rising waters swallowed the wreck of my auto-trireme. Sharks and rays explored the sunken buildings. How had I not noticed before that Atlantis was already half submerged? I set my eye to the high hills, where I could see the camps of desperate workers.

With each step I gnarled, deformed. Would nobody dare treat with me? Did I not deserve an audience? I would take what I deserved, even as the doomed island sank beneath the waves.

Meet Medusa and the other adversaries and allies in Atlantis Rising: Monstrosities. Coming Q1 2023.

Pre-order your copy today at anja@elfcreekgames.com.