Chapter 13: Aunty Em's Garden - Part 2
The garden became a killing ground in seconds.
Medusa moved like liquid death—centuries of practice translating into combat mastery that made Alaric's copied techniques look like amateur hour. Her snake hair struck independently, each serpent a weapon with its own predatory intelligence. Venom dripped from fangs, hissing where it hit stone.
"Mirrors!" Alaric shouted. "Don't look directly at her!"
He summoned shields—bronze polished to reflection—and created a defensive perimeter. Twenty portals, thirty, his blood potency straining to maintain them all. The shields caught Medusa's gaze and threw it back, forcing her to dodge her own curse.
Percy charged from the left. Riptide gleaming celestial bronze, moving with the natural athleticism that came from Poseidon's blood. But Medusa had fought heroes before. She twisted, snake hair whipping out, and Percy had to dive to avoid being bitten.
Annabeth attacked from invisibility. Her Yankees cap making her impossible to track, dagger striking at Medusa's blind spots. But the gorgon's snake hair sensed movement through vibration, through scent, and struck at empty air until Annabeth had to retreat.
Grover's panic music created discord. The pipes' magic made Medusa hesitate, confusion bleeding through her ancient awareness, but she adapted quickly. Three thousand years of isolation had taught her to fight through worse than fear.
They were losing. Not obviously—not yet—but the trajectory was clear. Medusa was too experienced, too powerful, and they were exhausted from two days without proper rest.
"I could use Chimera Genesis," Alaric thought desperately. "Transform into hybrid form, match her power-to-power. But that would reveal too much. Show Percy and Annabeth exactly what I'm becoming. And I've only got ten minutes in that form before complete collapse."
A stone satyr exploded. Medusa had kicked it, sending fragments flying like shrapnel. One piece caught Grover's leg and he went down bleating in pain.
"Grover!" Percy's distraction cost him. Snake hair wrapped around his wrist, pulling him off balance, and Medusa's hand shot toward his face—going for his eyes, going to blind him before the killing blow.
Alaric moved without thinking. Summoned a spear mid-throw and sent it flying, the weapon catching Medusa's shoulder and driving her back. Percy scrambled away, Riptide raised defensively.
"You're good," Medusa admitted. Blood—actual blood, not ichor—dripped from her shoulder wound. "Better than most heroes I've killed. But you're still mortal. Still vulnerable. And I've got nothing but time."
"We don't want to kill you," Alaric said. The words came out ragged, desperate. "You were wronged. We know that. Let us leave. We'll tell people your story, tell them what Athena did, what Poseidon did—"
"Tell people?" Medusa's laugh was bitter as ash. "Child, the gods control the narrative. They always have. They'll make me the villain no matter what you say, because that's easier than admitting they created me."
Her snake hair struck en masse. Dozens of serpents lunging simultaneously, and Alaric's shields couldn't cover every angle. Three snakes got through. Fangs sank into his forearm and pain exploded—not just venom, but the sensation of petrification starting, his flesh turning cold and heavy.
His dracaena scales absorbed most of it. The transformation slowed, stopped, reversed. But the warning was clear: one good bite and he'd become another garden statue.
"Alaric!" Percy's voice, terrified.
"I'm fine!" Alaric summoned a hammer and brought it down on the snakes still attached to his arm. They dissolved into regular snake corpses—kill the snakes and they stayed dead, unlike Medusa herself. "Keep moving! Don't let her corner you!"
Annabeth reappeared, invisibility cap off, and threw her dagger. The blade caught Medusa's cheek, drawing blood, and the gorgon hissed in fury. Her stone gaze swept across the garden, and Alaric barely got a shield up in time.
The bronze mirror reflected her curse back. For a heartbeat, Medusa saw her own eyes in the reflection, and her snake hair screamed—recognizing the danger even as she twisted away. But it bought them seconds.
"Annabeth," Alaric gasped. "The sphere. Bronze sphere, polished surface. Where?"
"What sphere?" Annabeth looked confused.
"Right. That was in the books. A convenient plot device. Doesn't exist here because I changed things, because there's four of us instead of three, because—"
"Forget it!" He summoned more weapons. Exhaustion was creeping in, his blood potency straining. "Percy, water! Can you manipulate the garden fountain?"
Percy's eyes widened. Understanding dawned. "Yeah. Yeah, I can!"
The fountain in the garden's center still ran. Decorative, ornamental, but water was water and Percy was Poseidon's son. He reached out with his power—Alaric could see it, the way the water responded to Percy's will like it recognized its master's blood.
The fountain exploded upward. Water surged, creating a massive bubble that hung in the air, and Percy shaped it with desperate focus. Curved it. Made it reflective. Turned it into a liquid mirror twenty feet wide.
"Medusa!" Annabeth shouted. "Look at this!"
The gorgon turned reflexively. Saw her own reflection in the water mirror. Her stone gaze met itself, and for a terrible moment, her entire body locked up—caught between turning herself to stone and resisting her own curse.
Percy moved.
He didn't think, didn't hesitate, didn't let morality or sympathy slow him down. Riptide swung in a perfect arc, and three thousand years of suffering ended in a single cut.
Medusa's head separated from her body.
Both dissolved into golden dust before they hit the ground, the curse finally broken, and the garden emporium fell silent except for four demigods breathing hard.
Blood splashed across the stones. Not ichor—real blood, mortal blood somehow, as if the curse had stripped away even her divine nature. It splattered Percy's face and chest, painting Annabeth's arms, coating Grover's hooves.
And hitting Alaric's open wounds where the snake bites had broken skin.
His body reacted automatically.
The Bloodline Devourer activated without his permission, without his conscious choice. Medusa's essence flooded into him through the open wounds—not just blood but her entire nature, her curse, her power, three millennia of existence compressed into a single terrible moment.
Alaric screamed.
Pain exploded through every nerve. His eyes burned like someone had poured acid into them. His spine arched, muscles spasming as foreign DNA tried to integrate with his own. Snake characteristics tried to manifest—scales rippling across his arms in patterns that fought with his dracaena bloodline, hair writhing like it wanted to become serpents, his vision splitting into fragments as predator instincts slammed into his consciousness.
He tasted copper and venom. Felt the weight of isolation, centuries spent alone, the desperate hunger for connection mixed with the curse that made connection impossible. Medusa's memories bled through: Poseidon's violation, Athena's cruelty, the first time she'd turned someone to stone and realized what she'd become.
"No no no I didn't want this I didn't want her power I didn't want to steal from a victim—"
Percy caught him before he hit the ground. Strong hands on his shoulders, sea-green eyes too close, concern and horror mixing on his face.
"Alaric! What's happening? What's wrong?"
"He's absorbing her," Annabeth said. Her voice was clinical, detached, but Alaric heard the fear underneath. "The blood contacted his wounds and he's absorbing her bloodline. I've never seen it happen before. It's..."
She trailed off. Probably because what she was seeing was disturbing. Alaric could feel his body changing—eyes shifting structure, pupils becoming slits before forcing themselves back to round, his skin temperature fluctuating wildly as gorgon cold-bloodedness fought with mammalian warmth.
"Make it stop," Grover bleated. His empathy sense must have been picking up Alaric's agony. "Please, make it stop!"
"I can't!" Alaric gasped. His hands clawed at Percy's shirt, desperate for something solid to anchor to. "Body does it automatically. Can't control it. Just—just hold on. It'll pass. It always passes."
But this was worse than previous absorptions. Medusa had been old, powerful, cursed by gods. Her essence was fighting the integration, trying to remain distinct, and Alaric's mind was the battleground.
Images flashed: temple floors cold under bare feet, Poseidon's smile before it turned predatory, Athena's face twisted in fury, the moment of transformation when beauty became horror—
"You're still you," Percy said fiercely. He was holding Alaric's face, forcing eye contact, refusing to look away even though Alaric's irises were flickering between human and serpentine. "Whatever's happening, you're still Alaric. You're still my friend. You hear me? Still my friend."
The words helped. Gave Alaric something to cling to as Medusa's memories tried to drown him. He focused on Percy's eyes—sea-green, human, real—and slowly, agonizingly, his body stabilized.
The serpentine characteristics faded. His eyes returned to their mismatched crimson and gold. The scales on his arms settled back into their usual dracaena pattern. His breathing evened out.
But the power remained. He could feel it settling into his cells: petrification resistance, snake affinity, enhanced vision that could see in multiple spectrums simultaneously, and underneath everything else, the knowledge of how Medusa's curse had worked. He couldn't replicate it—didn't have her divine curse—but he understood it now on a fundamental level.
"I'm okay," Alaric whispered. The lie tasted like ash. "I'm okay."
Percy didn't let go. "You're crying."
Was he? Alaric touched his face and his fingers came away wet. Tears he hadn't noticed shedding, grief for a woman he'd killed by proxy, guilt for stealing her power even in death.
"She was a victim," he said. His voice cracked. "Cursed by gods for being raped. And we killed her. I killed her by helping. And then I took her power like some kind of scavenger."
"You didn't choose to absorb her," Annabeth said. She'd crouched beside them, grey eyes studying Alaric with scientific intensity that didn't quite hide her discomfort. "It happened automatically when her blood touched your wounds. That's not your fault."
"Doesn't make it better."
"No," Annabeth agreed softly. "It doesn't. But Alaric—she was going to kill us. Victim or not, cursed or not, she would have turned us to stone. You saved our lives by fighting her. Percy ended it mercifully. And your power... it's disturbing, yes, but it's not evil. You choose what you do with it."
"Do I?" Alaric looked at his hands. They were shaking. "Because it feels like the power chooses for me. Every time I kill a monster, I drink them down and become a little less human. How long before I'm the monster everyone's afraid of?"
Percy's hand settled on his shoulder. Solid. Real. "You're not a monster. Monsters don't cry for their victims. Monsters don't feel guilty about gaining power. You're still you, Alaric. Just... stronger."
"And stranger," Grover added. He'd limped over, leg bandaged with torn fabric. "But we're all strange. That's why we're demigods. The question isn't whether you're weird—it's whether you're going to use your weirdness to help people or hurt them."
The simplicity of it cut through Alaric's spiral. Help or hurt. That was the choice. Not whether to be powerful, not whether to be strange, but what he did with what he was.
"I choose help," he said. "Even when it's hard. Even when I hate what I have to do. I choose help."
"Then that's what matters." Percy pulled him to his feet. "Now come on. We need to get Medusa's head, find transportation, and keep moving. The quest isn't over."
"Wait, we're taking the head?" Grover looked ill.
"It's a weapon," Annabeth said. She was already wrapping the head in plastic bags from the emporium's store section. "Anything that can turn enemies to stone has strategic value. Plus we can ship it to Olympus as proof of our success."
She was being practical. Tactical. But Alaric saw the way her hands trembled slightly, the way she avoided looking at him directly. She'd seen what he was—what his power made him—and it had shaken her. Her fatal flaw was hubris, needing to understand everything. But Alaric was something she couldn't fully understand, and that terrified her.
"She's right to be afraid," he thought. "I'm becoming something new. Something between demigod and monster. And I don't know where it ends."
But he stood anyway. Helped clean up. Followed his team as they salvaged what supplies they could from the emporium and planned their next move.
Because heroes didn't get to wallow in guilt. They just had to keep moving forward and hope their choices led to more good than harm.
Even when the line between the two became impossible to see.
They walked for hours before finding a service station. Alaric moved on autopilot, his mind still processing everything. Thirteen bloodlines absorbed now. Blood potency around 18%. Each monster he killed made him stronger and stranger and less recognizable as the person he'd been.
"Medusa said the gods make monsters of those who threaten them," he thought. "Am I becoming a threat they'll eliminate? Or can I stay useful enough, human enough, that they'll tolerate my existence?"
No answers came. Just the road stretching west, the quest continuing, and three friends who'd seen what he was and chosen to stay anyway.
Maybe that was enough.
It had to be.
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