The Gates of the Damned, Part 1

“Are you alright?” Raven Knight asked.

“I should be asking you that,” Sam replied.

They had just escaped Medusa’s temple on the Ceryneian Hind’s back while the ancient horror looked on from the shadows of its entryway with an angry scream spilling forth from her monstrous mouth.

She had tried and failed to stop their escape with a tail strike that whipped across Sam’s face and left his left cheek bruised and bloodied. Despite her violent attack, Sam had resisted the urge to fall off his mount with a combination of pure grit and the Ceryneian Hind’s remarkable ability to keep its rider from falling off no matter what.

Quick as a pegasus, the hind had brought them out of that horrible basement, up the temple proper, and out into what construed as fresh air for the underworld. Now, they were free and safe from Medusa’s reach, which was lucky, as the ancient gorgon’s eyeballs were already healing from Sam’s last attack.