Free Rampage! by Leo ; Julia; Hartas Wills Page A

object in the Underworld. Crafted from a wide circle of bronze and coated with silver, its face was dominated by the Gorgon Medusa’s head. And I mean the Gorgon’s head. You see, years ago, Athena’s nephew Perseus had borrowed the shield to kill the snake-haired monster whose stare turned people to stone. Using the shiny inside of the shield like a mirror, he’d stalked Medusa through the cave-tunnels of her lair and, using her reflection to avoid her deadly gaze, had killed her. Triumphant, he’d brought back her severed head as a present for his aunt Athena, who’d magically fused it into the shield, seamlesslymelding the monster’s head beneath the metal, veiling Medusa’s face in silver. The goddess never let anyone else carry it, never mind take it out of her sight.
    Jason prodded the Gorgon’s lumpy face rudely with his finger, making Alex flinch. You see, even though visitors to the Underworld Zoo still shivered fearfully from behind her ghost’s stare-proof screens, Alex was truly fond of her. After all, it’s hard to be terrified of someone once you know how they like their porridge in the morning, and now he found himself hoping that Hex would remember that Medusa liked hers steaming hot, with a squirt of grasshopper syrup.
    ‘Observe!’ smiled Athena and lifted her hands high into the air. ‘I, Pallas Athena, command you to awaken and reveal!’
    A sudden wind sprang up from the back of the cave and whistled around the shimmering walls, snapping at the curls of the goddesses’ hair and making them squeal. Then, twisting back through the group, it rattled the shield furiously before sweeping out of the cave and gusting along the beach, leaving a trail of spinning sand dunes in its wake.
    Alex stared. The surface of the shield was rippling, its lustrous coating running like liquid, shuddering over the Gorgon’s features and dribbling over the etched scales of the snakes. Suddenly the Gorgon’s eyes snapped open. Two orange topazes, glittering like fire, replaced the monster’s deadly eyes and they sparkled furiously as five living snakes spiralled out around her head, likeparty poppers, from the squirming mass of asps below. With their tails held in the metal of the shield below, they rocked and hissed, slithering over one another, luxuriating in the cool air.
    Aphrodite screamed and ran out of the cave whilst everyone else stepped backwards. Everyone else, that is, apart from Alex, who, recognising them from their ghost-twins at the zoo – the sandy-brown horned viper, an adder with a bumpy snout, a black-and-white striped krait, a rather elderly, copper-skinned cobra and a grass snake, no more than a whip of greenish grey 19 – wished he’d brought his jar of dried locusts with him.
    The Gorgon slid her blazing eyes sideways to look at Athena. ‘What do you want?’
    ‘You’ve a mission,’ said Athena.
    ‘Miss-s-s-ion?’ muttered Cobra, fluttering his collar sleepily.
    ‘Is that it?’ growled Medusa, screwing up her face. ‘Wake me from the middle of a wonderful snooze for this, would you? I’d just dreamed that my cave was filled with a thousand statues of hunky men. Now it’s blasts of wind under my chin, a deafening clang in my ear-holes and everybody up!’
    ‘You’ll be travelling with a hero,’ said Jason smoothly.
    The Gorgon glanced in his direction. ‘Oh, lucky me.’
    Alex stifled a smile. After all, if it hadn’t been for a hero like Perseus she’d still be wearing her head in its proper place: on her shoulders. He blushed as her blazing eyes caught sight of him and winked, knowing that her head was psychically linked with her ghost back in the zoo, and that she would realise that Alex was the one who cared for her.
    Lifting the shield from the rock, Athena slid it on to her forearm and held it out in front of her as the snakes continued to writhe. ‘These are the Serpents of Strife!’
    ‘S-s-soldiersss in s-s-scalesss!’ hissed Krait, swishing out so that his