Once upon a bye, before your grandmother’s grandmother was born, there lived a priestess in the forests of Navoor. A priestess under the thrall of a terrible curse.
The memory says she was cursed by a goddess or that she cast the curse on herself by mistake or else that it was not a curse at all but a blessing from Anzia, whom the priestess worshipped with love and devotion, a boon to help her protect her village from invaders.
The power of the goddess changed the priestess, grew her strong and strange. Her nails lengthened and hardened into edges so sharp and sure they could slice diamondese. Her skin faded to the color or iron and grew thick to guard against all manner of men’s weapons. Her hair became venomous snakes, a writhing collection of them striped crimson and violet and black. And most incredible of all were her eyes; any person on whom she turned her gaze would turn instantly to stone.
What’s more, the goddess was careful in reshaping the priestess. She did not just remake her for war alone. She gave her hands that could heal at a gentle touch of intent. She made the work of the priestess’ hands and the very scales of her skin and the blood in her veins gifts of luck that she might share with any she deemed worthy.
The eve of battle the priestess strode from her village in the heart of Navoor and in love and in wrath smote their enemies’ ranks. But when she returned home her village shunned her.
To their eyes her power was monstrous; they did not understand how a person could choose such an unillyrian shape. They had soldiers to fight for them under a king who, they were certain, had allies who might protect them. There was, they were certain, no need for such unnatural magic. She had, they were certain, courted dark gods to gain her power.
In their certainty, they chased her from the habitable places of the forest and into the depths of the tanglewood pines.
Betrayed and grieving, the priestess did lay a curse on the people of her home that the daughters of the king, and any king who succeeded him, would be born as she was. That the daughters of every man who had taken up arms and fire to cast her out would be born gorgons until the people of Navoor learned the truth: that the power of the gorgon was a gift.
Illyrians, as you well know, are fickle and small. Daughter after daughter was born with a nest of snakes on their scalps and they were drowned in the crystal spring. Again and again until the spring turned a mottled and dying green.
But not every gorgon-daughter died. Not every mother was so willing to let her child be drowned before their eyes lost their infantile, sky-green blindness. They learned to blindfold their daughters before their eyes turned. To feed the baby snakes on pureed meat and bone broth and to have gentle fingers and not pull on them, to sing them lullabies. These daughters grew up in secret until they were old enough to be sent away. One by one their mothers apprenticed them to the priestess far outside the village gates and the knot of gorgons in the deep woods grew many and close and made a village of their own.
The priestess died before the Navoor learned to understand the blessing of the gorgon and so she never reversed the curse on the village’s daughters. But while illyrian minds are slow they are not entirely stupid and in time the Navoor did come to understand the goddess’ gift to them.
Today, the gorgons are few but they are beloved by their people, their power sought far and wide and their skills are celebrated in poems and songs. And when daughters are born with knots of serpents wriggling against their scalps and nails that can slice diamondese they are not cast out but given the choice: to live at home or to study and worship in the deep wood.
The Illyrian Codices 