https://serpentsong.com/chapter-3-in-progress/Mount Olympus has been destroyed. Its gods annihilated, its people extinct. A terrible revolt, centuries in the making, has erased the world as it once was.
But now a new world has grown from the ruins. Strange and wondrous life has evolved, along with a new breed of deities and spirits. But there are some creatures that have survived the cataclysm, who now find themselves in bizarre and unfamiliar lands.
Stheno, one of the legendary immortal Gorgons, is one such creature. Once a dreaded monster in the old world, she is now just another oddity. Searching for her siblings that survived the great upheaval, she wanders these strange lands, encountering the new races and cultures that now populate it.
Desperate to alleviate the boredom of immortal life, Stheno disguises herself as a commoner, and crosses paths with Chuz, a Shomu vagrant on the run from the law. Stheno tags along with Chuz, who begrudgingly accepts her help in his quest for revenge against the bandits who betrayed him.
After recovering his stolen belongings (revealed to be simple Shomu chin pendants) Chuz proposes his plan to use Stheno to get revenge against the bandit gangs who have wronged him. The two of them travel to board the walking waytown of Hadu-shad, a diverse city of bustling commerce, full of myriad races of strange creatures.
Stheno and Chuz steal precious stones which Chuz hopes will bribe Kuss, a bandit gang leader, into aiding his revenge plot. Meanwhile Skolum, the only survivor and witness to Stheno’s massacre of Chuz’s old gang, is visited by Darumi, a mysterious human who has taken a keen interest in his account of Stheno and her extraordinary abilities.