"Gorgon"

"Why won't you DIE?!" the Gorgon queen shrieked. Perseus squirmed in her grasp as she wrenched his face up to meet hers. Her claws sank firmly into his shoulders, splitting the iron pauldrons and burying into his skin. His gleaming shield clattered to the floor out of reach. The gorgon's frenzied serpent locks coiled and thrashed. Their fangs lashed at his neck and face with whip speed, drawing bright red streaks with every strike. 

Though beaten and battered, the soldier held her gaze. Long years of denial and deception had stolen much more from him than a little blood--his birthright, his dignity, his freedom. Fate had failed to petrify him before, and it would fail again now. He'd found something luminous beneath the cruel crust of destiny. Layer by layer, he'd labored to strip it away to reveal an armor more brilliant than Athena's shining shield, sharper than Hermes' harp-sword blade, and more confounding than Hades' helm of hiding. Their eyes grappled in a ferocious, motionless battle. "My will is already stone," he growled. His voice cut through the snakes' seething strain and stoked Medusa's ire. 

"So is mine!" she hissed. She drew as close as a lover until she could feel the man's hot, panting breath on her face and leered with the full weight of her curse. She scoured him for burden, something she could use to sink his soul, but she could find no purchase. Wide-eyed and furious, she heaped centuries of vanity and rage into a landslide glare to bury the man. Instead, she was met by immovable depths made of the same pressing, freezing emptiness she'd thought was hers alone--but polished, oiled, and honed. He grinned. 

"And so you see yourself," he said. And for an instant, she saw her own eyes in his--heavy, tarnished things rusted flat with regret, envy, and neglect. It was the reflection she'd feared for so long. Perseus watched her expression mollify even as her eyes hardened. It carved a bittersweet revelation onto her face. The tangle of writhing snakes grew blue and fell silent. Bones ground to a granite halt as her body went rigid and became an effigy of pain--just like any other.