Chapter 32: The Calydonian Boar is Not a Piglet
This world, Cyd had come to accept, was firmly in what one might call the "Age of Ridiculous Monsters."
He'd seen the Nemean Lion, a beast with a hide so tough it turned blades. Though in reality, it was just exceptionally thick skin, and the lion itself was... lion-sized. Impressive, but within the realm of zoological possibility, if you squinted.
He'd heard tales of dragons—great, fire-breathing lizards with wings. He'd always privately dismissed them as anatomical impossibilities. What kind of bone structure could support that much weight in flight? Pure fantasy, he'd assured himself. An exception, not the rule.
All those comforting rationalizations shattered the moment he laid eyes on the Calydonian Boar.
It wasn't an animal. It was a landmass with tusks.
"…That's the 'piglet'?" Cyd's voice was flat, all emotion vacuumed out by sheer, staggering scale. The thing standing in the trampled valley below them was the size of a small hill. Its back was a landscape of coarse, black bristles like petrified trees. Each tusk was longer than Cyd was tall, curved and yellowed, scarred from gouging stone. Its breath, even from this distance, was a visible, hot plume that smelled of rotten earth and iron.
The journey to Calydon had taken days. During that time, Atalanta's transition from rigid, furious hostage to someone who napped against his chest with a resigned, almost comfortable familiarity had been startlingly rapid. The moment her full strength returned, her first act had been to try and sink her teeth into his throat with a crunch that would have severed a normal man's spine. To Cyd, it still just tickled.
Frustrated, she'd immediately reached for her bow—the one blessed by Artemis herself—with clear intent to see if a divine arrow would have better luck puncturing his annoying hide. That was the moment their quarry announced itself.
By plowing through a mountain.
Not around it. Through it. A distant peak simply exploded in a cloud of dust and flying rock, and the behemoth emerged, shaking debris from its shoulders like a dog after a bath.
"He said he couldn't lie to me, yet he filled me with all that 'you can do it' confidence anyway," Cyd muttered, pulling Atalanta behind the broad trunk of an ancient oak. He peered out, watching the mountain-pig root up an entire grove of olive trees with a casual flick of its head. "Classic Hermes."
"So," Atalanta said, her earlier irritation forgotten, replaced by the keen, focused light of a hunter who's finally found worthy game. Her fingers twitched towards her quiver. "What's the plan? How do we kill it?"
"With an army, maybe. You'd surround it, harass it, bleed it slowly over days. But it's just the two of us." He stared at the creature, a knot of pure tactical despair tightening in his gut. "And besides…"
Athena's words echoed in his memory. 'Use your martial prowess to please Ares. Show true, unvarnished courage.'
"Will she even be watching?" he whispered to himself, scratching the bark of the tree. "What if I go through all this and the one god I need to impress is off picking a fight with somebody else? Maybe we should scout more, find a—"
THWIP—THUNK.
An arrow, fletched with green feathers, sliced through the air and buried itself to the feathers in the boar's hindquarter.
Cyd's brain stuttered to a halt. He turned his head slowly, mechanically, to look at Atalanta. She was already nocking a second arrow, a look of intense satisfaction on her face.
"Atalanta," he said, his voice dangerously calm. "What did you just do?"
"I hunted." She didn't even look at him, tracking the boar's reaction.
"I can see that. I have eyes. But why? I wasn't ready!"
"It's just a big pig," she said, and rapped him on the forehead with her bow. "Stop overthinking."
"Just a big—!"
ROOOOOAAAAAARRR—!
The sound wasn't a pig's squeal. It was the deep, grating roar of tectonic plates shifting. The boar whirled, its tiny, intelligent eyes pinpointing their position with unnerving speed. It lowered its head.
Then it charged.
It didn't run. It unmade the landscape between them. Centuries-old trees were vaporized into splinters. Boulders the size of houses were kicked aside like pebbles. The ground itself trembled, a localized earthquake chasing the titan's wake.
Cyd's instincts, honed by Chiron and tempered by survival, fired before his fear could. He grabbed Atalanta around the waist and leaped straight up, just as the boar's mass obliterated the oak they'd been hiding behind. They soared above a tsunami of dirt, wood, and pure, brute-force destruction.
"This is a bit more than 'a big pig'!" Cyd yelled over the cacophony.
As they began to fall, Atalanta twisted in his grip, drawing and firing another arrow in one fluid motion. It struck the boar's snout and snapped in half. "Stop whining!" she shouted back, her hair whipping in the wind of their descent. "You have two choices, Cyd! Run away like a scared dog with your tail between your legs, or—"
The boar, seeing them falling, adjusted its course, a living avalanche aiming to crush them into paste against the shattered ground.
"—be a damn hero and kill it!"
Her words, reckless and fearless, cut through the panic. She was right. There was no more plan. There was only fight or flight. And running from this, after coming all this way, felt… hollow.
Cyd's left wrist began to burn.
"Fine!" he roared, his voice finding a strength he didn't know he had. He held Atalanta tight with his right arm and thrust his left fist, bracer gleaming, toward the sky. "If this is a performance for the gods, then let's give them a show worth watching! LET THIS BATTLE BE FOUGHT UNDER THE EYES OF OLYMPUS!"
The response was immediate. The sunlight, already bright, seemed to intensify, focusing on him like a spotlight. The orange-gold crystal of Helios on his bracer blazed like a miniature sun. Radiant, sun-wheel patterns, intricate and burning, erupted from the bracer, racing up his arm and across his torso in fiery lines. Power, raw and dazzling, flooded his veins—not just strength, but the absolute, unwavering presence of a hero in his moment.
The boar was upon them. Its hot, foul breath washed over them. Its tusks, each a lethal monument, filled Cyd's vision.
At the last possible second, Cyd twisted in mid-air. Instead of trying to dodge, he dropped like a meteor, his sandaled foot aimed not at the boar, but at the space above its charging head.
CRACK-BOOM!
His heel connected with the crown of the boar's skull. The sound was less an impact and more a localized thunderclap. The beast's charge didn't just stop; its entire forward momentum was converted downward. Its snout plowed a twenty-foot trench into the earth as its skull was hammered into the ground. Cyd used the colossal recoil to flip backwards, landing lightly in a crouch several yards away, setting Atalanta on her feet beside him.
She stared at him, then at the dazed boar struggling to pull its head from the crater. A slow, fierce grin spread across her face. She clapped him on the shoulder. "Now that's more like it."
"This is a nightmare," Cyd breathed, but he was grinning too, a wild, adrenaline-fueled thing. The thrill of the dodge, the successful strike, the divine power singing in his blood—it was terrifying and electrifying.
They didn't have time to celebrate. The boar wrenched its head free with a shower of dirt. It shook itself, beady eyes locking on Cyd with a hatred that was almost intelligent. This wasn't just an animal being attacked. This was a divine punishment feeling challenged.
"Its hide is insane!" Atalanta nocked three arrows and let them fly in quick succession. Thwip-thwip-thwip! They struck the boar's flank, shoulder, and neck. Two shattered. One stuck, buried a pathetic inch into the dense mat of bristle and flesh. The boar didn't even flinch. It was a fly bite. Its focus remained entirely on the one who had actually hurt it: Cyd.
"No kidding!" Cyd yelled, already moving. He didn't run away. He ran towards it, zigzagging between the few remaining trees. The boar bellowed and charged again, a living bulldozer. Just before impact, Cyd leaped, planted a foot on a surviving tree trunk, and launched himself into a high, graceful backflip. He sailed over the boar's back as it smashed the tree to pulp. At the apex of his flip, he tucked and dropped, driving both heels into the base of the boar's neck with the force of a falling anvil.
THUD!
Once again, the boar's face met the dirt. It was a perfect, humiliating maneuver.
"Your arrows can't pierce its skin!" Cyd called, landing and rolling to his feet.
The boar roared in pure frustration, throwing its head up to gore him. Cyd was ready. He caught the upward motion, planted a hand on the rising tusk, and used the momentum to somersault high into the air again. As he came down, he repeated the move—a devastating stomp to the same spot on its head.
CRUNCH.
Dirt, again. The boar was learning. It was also getting angrier. A deep, rumbling growl vibrated the earth.
"And your attacks are any better? You're going to stomp it to death?" Atalanta called, firing another futile arrow.
"Trust me!" Cyd shouted back, snatching one of her arrows out of the air as he landed. If he could keep this up—dodge, stun, repeat—he could disorient it, maybe even concuss it. It wouldn't be a clean kill, but it would give them an opening. "Just keep it distracted! Find a weak point!"
"Sorry, but blind trust isn't in my nature!" she retorted, already moving to a new vantage point.
On the third head-stomp, the boar's tiny brain finally devised a counter. Instead of lifting its head for the inevitable blow, it dropped its massive shoulder and rolled.
Cyd, already in the air for his next strike, saw the wall of black, rolling bristles coming and his stomach dropped. He landed not on a skull, but on the moving, mountainous curve of its back. It was like trying to stand on a barrel tumbling down a hill—a barrel the size of a temple. He scrambled, running along its spine as the world spun crazily around him, the beast trying to crush him under its own colossal weight.
"It has to have a weakness!" Atalanta yelled, desperation creeping into her voice. She fired at its eye. The boar simply blinked. The arrow sparked off its armored eyelid.
"Don't rush! Everything alive has a weak spot!" Cyd pushed off the rolling boar in a desperate leap, landing hard but safely on the torn-up plain it had created. He was breathing heavily now, the solar blessing burning hot but not infinite. "We just have to find it! Then the victory is ours!"
The boar stopped rolling. It heaved itself to its feet, snorting great clouds of dust. It ignored Atalanta completely. Its world had narrowed to the pale, defiant figure standing in the open, daring it to charge. It scraped its front hooves against the earth, digging deep trenches. The message was clear: this next charge would end it.
"Cyd, what are you doing?!" Atalanta screamed from her perch. "Get back! We'll do it your way, we'll wear it down!"
Cyd didn't move. He stood his ground, rolling his shoulders, cracking his neck. The fiery patterns on his skin glowed brighter. "That only works if you have an army. We don't." He looked over his shoulder at her, his expression calm, resolved. He gave her a thumbs-up, a gesture so stupidly optimistic it made her heart clench. "I'm making you an opening."
"Cyd, no! It's a suicide run!"
"It's the only run we've got," he said, turning back to face the monster. "It goes against every smart, careful instinct I have… but sometimes you have to bet everything." He widened his stance, bracing. "I believe in you, Atalanta. Find the flaw in the armor."
The boar lowered its head. The ground shook with its building power.
"And then," Cyd whispered, to himself, to the boar, to any god who might be listening—especially a certain red-haired goddess of war, "we end this."