Waking with a start and barely stopping a scream herself, Marta slipped from her room out to the crutch. And blood, the sacred blood of the dragon mixed with the tainted blood of the criminals, except this blood was Namahline's.

When she did finally dose off, her dreams were filled with terrible screams and vicious battle cries. How would they get that close to her without her knowledge? Was a friend or someone sent to collect the eggs before the hatching? All these thoughts kept circling in Marta's thoughts. She kept imagining the type of cruel people that would hunt a dragon, let alone a she dragon. She tossed and turned, beat up her pillow, changed positions a million times, covered up and uncovered, but sleep was not to be. Asking what the evolution of the Medusa myth discloses about our culture and ourselves, this book paints an illuminating portrait of a woman who has never ceased to enthrall. From an oil painting by Caravaggio to Clash of the Titans and Dungeons and Dragons, he delves into the many depictions of Medusa, ultimately revealing that her story is a cultural dream that continues to change and develop with each new era. Searching for the origins of Medusa’s myth in cultures that predate ancient Greece, Leeming explores how and why the mythical figure of the gorgon has become one of the most important and enduring ideas in human history. Why does Medusa continue to have this power to transfix us? David Leeming seeks to answer this question in Medusa, a biography of the mythical creature. She even gives her name to a sushi roll on a Disney resort menu. Today, she’s viewed by feminists as a noble victim of patriarchy and used by Versace in the designer’s logo for men’s underwear, haute couture, and exotic dinnerware. She has been immortalized by artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Salvador Dalí and was the emblem of the Jacobins after the French Revolution. Ever since Perseus cut off her head and presented it to Athena, she has been a woman of many forms: a dangerous female monster that had to be destroyed, an erotic power that could annihilate men, and, thanks to Freud, a woman whose hair was a nest of terrifying penises that signaled castration.

With her repulsive face and head full of living, venomous snakes, Medusa is petrifying-quite literally, since looking directly at her turned people to stone.

Drake of the 99 dragons