The Battle with the Gorgons

They followed him through dust and silence.
But the silence betrayed them.
Now he is gone – and they must go on,
wounded, afraid, and completely alone.

Out of the red twilight above their heads, three nightmarishly ugly, terrifying creatures appeared at incredible speed.

At first glance they looked like women, their greenish, scaly skin glinting dully in the dim glow that passed for daylight here.

Reflections on the scene

⸻ ❦ ⸻

– ❦ –

Fido, the fierce little warrior of the Red Desert, seems unstoppable—until the moment he isn’t.

This scene jolts us. Not because of the gorgons’ monstrous appearance (though Diana’s illustration doesn’t spare us the horror), but because we see something shatter in the narrative: our assumption that loyalty and bravery are enough to win. Fido fights like a hero, protects like a guardian, bleeds like a legend—and still, he is taken.

But what really deepens this scene is what lies beneath the fight: the ghosts that ambush Fido aren’t strangers. They are his ghosts. Toys he broke. Bonds he severed. We’ve already learned this lesson with Anne—but Fido hasn’t. He carries his past like a closed box, refusing to look inside. And so the ghosts don’t haunt him from the shadows; they charge at him head-on.

This is where Ghost Desert turns the knife: even in a world built on magic and memory, no one is safe from what they haven’t made peace with. The forest is no longer just Anne’s trial—it’s a mirror for others, too. For Peter. For Fido. For everyone.

And then there’s the silence after the battle. A cloak dropped in the dust. A child crying for someone he thought indestructible. In a book full of whirlwinds and riddles, it’s the simplest moment that cuts deepest: the fear of losing someone who made us feel safe.

Fido is gone. And suddenly, we’re not sure this story will have a happy ending.