“Whateveritwas?” Hecate snapped out of fear, not unkindly.
“Yes.” Aeëtes nodded, rubbing her shoulder before releasing her. He unsheathed a sword that Hecate hadn’t noticed he had been carrying, and Pelias did the same. At the sight of both men arming themselves, the entire crew followed. The sound of twenty swords ringing through the air created a sharp-pitched whine. “That wasn’t a rock or a sand dune.” He turned to look at Hecate. “This isn’t going to be pretty.”
“What are you implying?” she hissed back at him, and Aeëtes let out a grunt.
“Not that you aren’t strong enough for whatever this is, that’s—” Aeëtes was cut off as the ship rocked from impact, this time from the other side of the boat. It wasn’t nearly as big as the first crash, and the crew righted themselves shortly, but the boat was now perilously rocking from side-to-side. A dull, roaring sound had started to pick up on the winds, sounding muffled as if it was coming from fifty yards beneath them in the depths.
“You’re not in the Underworld anymore, little witch,” Aeëtes yelled as the sound got louder and louder. “Now would be a good time for you to abandon your mortal pretenses!”
“Hera will—”
“Umm,” Pelias cut Hecate off, “I think she knows where we are.” He pointed with a shaking finger over the side of the ship where the entire crew had gathered. As if it were happening in slow motion, Pelias, Hecate, and Aeëtes ran to the railing, peering over to see what was emerging from the blackness. The roaring sound was now loud enough that Hecate could barely hear either of the men beside her. A dark, churning mass was rapidly moving through the clear water up towards the bottom of their ship.
“You don’t think…” Aeëtes started, but Hecate answered immediately.
“I do. It’s Hera.” She could sense the overly sweet and rotten magic in the water. She would know that scent anywhere, and it meant that whatever creature was coming after them had been sent by her. Sailors began running in all directions before the beast had even breached the water, some grabbing more weapons and others climbing up to the sails with bows and arrows.
“How did she find us?” Pelias yelled over the confusion, ripping another dagger from his belt.
“I had to release some of my magic. It must have alerted Hera,” Hecate took a few steps back from the railing, red sparks erupting over her hands like flames. “I was just hoping that we’d already be in Colchis.”
Aeëtes had somehow managed to find a second sword, too, and all three of them slowly moved backwards until they were at the mast. Without warning, the sea quieted, and the noise vanished, leaving the entire crew in still, utter silence.
“That’s not good,” Aeëtes muttered.
“Ssh,” Hecate hissed at him as the entire crew began to slowly look around. Everyone was now armed to the teeth, moving only a few paces from side to side…waiting. Hecate could feel something in the water lurking below them, its power reeking of Hera and her control, but something about it was wrong. There was something she wasn’t seeing.
“Whatever it is,” Hecate turned to Aeëtes, her voice a whisper as they waited in the terse silence, “it’s controlled by Hera; it’s not in its right—”
A massive wave crested up over the side of the ship, crashing down on the deck and knocking half of the crew off their feet. The silence was broken by a horrendous screeching sound like that of a bird of prey. As the wave washed over them, a monstrous face emerged from the sea foam. It was the face of a woman, mottled with green scales and bright red eyes, her hair matted down to her skull. She opened her mouth and let out another terrifying scream, her teeth filed down to points, and the sailors began to scatter.
“Scylla!” One of them screamed, running to the other side of the ship and jumping into the water.
“It’s not supposed to be in these waters!”
“The Scylla!” The screams of men were drowned out by the creature’s terrible noises, echoing all around them as if they were coming from inside their own heads. Six different heads burst up abruptly from the side of the ship, each of them a massive sea serpent.
The Scylla rose on the surface of the water, looking down at the crew as if she was looking for someone, and she was. Her eyes were not hers, her body manipulated by the equally monstrous queen of the gods. The Scylla was as tall as the mast, with a woman’s head and torso that disappeared into the body of a snake. The six additional heads of the sea serpent all wound together at her waist, snapping with teeth the size of a man’s leg.
Aeëtes and Pelias wasted no time, quickly recovering from their shock and rushing towards her with their swords held high. They split up and went after different heads of the sea monster, jumping in front of them and saving some of the sailors who were too shell-shocked to move. With each of them preoccupied with only two of the six different heads, Hecate took a few steps back and felt her power consume her.
Hecate’s body was drenched in undulating waves of thick, red magic, covering the deck with the scent of cinnamon, rosemary, and…death. She began to rise, the heads on her shoulders whispering, the low baritone voice echoing over the water and causing ripples across its surface. Hecate expanded as her eyes went red, matching the Scylla’s, and the lower half of her body disappeared in maroon clouds. She kept growing until she was as tall as the mast herself, looking the Scylla in the face, and began speaking in the language of the dead.
The language of witches.
The language of women.
It caused some of the men on deck to drop to their knees and cover their ears as the heady, melodic chanting shook them to their bones. This was like no other god or goddess they had ever seen before; this was a goddess from the Underworld, whose gifts invoked life and death. Aeëtes only paused for a moment, looking up in utter awe of Hecate, before he narrowly missed getting swallowed whole by one of the serpent’s heads.
The sailors engaged with the many-headed sea snakes below them, and Hecate and the Scylla squared off eye-to-eye thirty feet above them. Magic erupted from the clouds of Hecate’s power, and red snakes poured from the fog at her feet, joining the sailors and hissing, snapping their jaws at the other faces of the creature.
Hecate’s face remained impressively stoic as the ship began rocking beneath them, the Scylla throwing her weight against it. The ship wouldn’t last more than a few minutes from the constant impact, and it would capsize.
“Hera.”Hecate’s mouth didn’t move as she spoke, the other two faces on her shoulders spinning webs of spells and counter spells around them. The air was thick with magic as written incantations of protection appeared in shining red letters on the bodies of the men fighting below.“Release this woman.”Hecate knew the legend of the Scylla, and her heart went out to her. She would not see another person destroyed by a man’s folly or by Hera’s wickedness towards women.
When the Scylla opened her mouth, her voice was not her own.“I told you that all you had to do was hand Aeëtes over to me. If this woman suffers, it is because ofyou!”
Hecate smiled, the faces of the virgin and the crone doing the same, creating an utterly eerie effect. She shook her head slowly, her hands rising as her fingers reached out for the Scylla.“This is not my doing, Hera, nor is it yours. A jealous nymph turned Scylla, the maiden, into a monster. You’ve pulled her from hiding to act as your blade, andthatmakes thismyjob.”There was a nearly wicked gleam in Hecate’s eye as she stretched her arms out, and snakes came tumbling from her fingers. They moved over the deck, flickering with magic, coming down from the sky like rain.
