Chapter 33: The Hunter and the Anchor
Cyd had always been a thinker. His three years under Chiron had been less about mastering his "immortal" body and more about probing its limits. Where did the line between unbreakable and merely very tough lie? Could he be crushed? Drowned? Torn apart if the force was great enough? Chiron, in his wisdom, had never pushed him to that absolute edge. "Knowing you cannot die is a curse that breeds recklessness," the centaur had said. "I will teach you to fight as if you are mortal. That is the only way you will learn true skill."
Now, facing down a living earthquake of rage and bristle, Cyd abandoned thought. There was no time for calculation. The boar was a force of nature, and you didn't reason with a hurricane. You weathered it. Or you redirected it.
He planted his feet, spread his arms wide, and did not move.
"CYD, MOVE!" Atalanta's scream tore from her throat, raw with panic. She leaped from her tree, abandoning all tactical advantage, and sprinted toward him. Her legs, the legs that could outrun any mortal, pumped furiously. But the distance between them, a mere hundred yards, felt like a chasm stretching into infinity. Every grain of sand, every blade of shattered grass, seemed to slow her progress to a crawl.
Why am I so slow?! The thought was a razor in her mind. It wasn't her speed. It was the sheer, impossible scale of the violence about to happen. The boar was a tidal wave, and Cyd was a lone rock on the beach.
The boar hit him.
There was no graceful dodge, no clever flip. Cyd took the charge head-on. At the moment of impact, he threw his body backwards, using the monster's own momentum. His arms, strengthened by a sun-god's blessing and a will forged in survival, wrapped around the base of the boar's massive, slime-coated snout in a crushing bear hug.
The sound was catastrophic.
It wasn't a crash; it was the deep, gut-wrenching thoomp of a mountain falling. The earth beneath Cyd's feet didn't just crack; it subsided. A crater three feet deep exploded outward, swallowing him and the boar's head in a plume of dust and debris. The shockwave knocked Atalanta off her feet, sending her tumbling.
"No…" she whispered, scrambling up, her eyes wide with horror. She couldn't see him. Just a cloud of dust and the monstrous, heaving bulk of the boar, its front half buried in the new-made pit.
Then she heard it. A sound that didn't belong.
Crick-crack-CRUNCH.
Not the sound of breaking bones. The sound of compacted earth and stone giving way under immense, upward pressure.
The dust swirled, whipped by a sudden movement. Atalanta's emerald eyes widened, reflecting a sight that defied all physics, all sense.
The boar, the hill-sized monster, was rising into the air. Not jumping. Not charging. It was being lifted. And at the center of it all, hips deep in the shattered ground, was Cyd. His muscles stood out in cords of iron under skin lit with fading solar runes. His feet were planted in the pit's floor, his back bent with the strain, but he was heaving, using the boar's own forward lunge and his own unyielding body as a fulcrum.
With a roar that was half effort, half pure defiance, he pivoted.
The boar, its own weight now working against it, sailed through the air. It was a clumsy, ungainly arc, a small mountain turned projectile. It crashed into the rocky hillside a hundred yards away with an impact that shook the valley a second time, sending a landslide of stone and dirt cascading down.
Cyd stood panting in his crater, coated in dust and boar-snot. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then pointed a finger at the embedded monster.
"Tough break!" he yelled, his voice hoarse but triumphant. "But humanity didn't claw its way to the top of the food chain by just being strong! We're clever!"
"You just used brute force!" Atalanta shouted back, her relief manifesting as irritation. She stomped over and kicked him in the back of the knee. He wobbled but didn't fall.
"Nuance!" he protested, shaking out his aching arms. The solar patterns were fading fast, the borrowed power ebbing. "I used its brute force against it. Leverage. Simple mechanics." He glanced toward the stirring mound of rock where the boar was beginning to thrash. "So? Weak spot. Did you find it while I was doing the heavy lifting?"
Atalanta blinked. Then she flushed, turning her face away sharply. "It's… difficult to spot under movement. A concentrated, sustained assault is still the optimal strategy." She would not admit she'd been too terrified for him to look.
"Maybe," Cyd said, his smile fading as he watched the hillside. "But I don't think it's going to give us time for a siege."
The boar wasn't just getting up. It was changing.
Enraged beyond measure, its beady eyes now glowed with a sickly, divine red light. It began to root at the ground, not just digging, but consuming. It tore up entire trees, swallowing them whole with horrific, crunching sounds. It gouged mouthfuls of earth, stone, and vegetation, its body shuddering and groaning as it did.
And it grew.
Before their eyes, its already colossal frame expanded. Muscles swelled under the bristly hide. Its tusks elongated, becoming jagged spears of yellow ivory. Within minutes, it was a third larger than before, a true walking fortress of wrath.
"It's… eating dirt and rocks," Cyd murmured, more fascinated than afraid. "What's its digestive system even made of?"
"Who cares about its biology?!" Atalanta snapped. "It's too big now! You can't lift that! It'll crush you into paste before you can get leverage!"
"You're right," Cyd said, his voice dropping, becoming focused. "I can't throw it again. So we end this on its next charge."
"How?" The single word was loaded with dread.
Cyd looked at the monster, then at her. A slow, determined smile touched his lips. "Actually, by making itself bigger, it did us a favor. It created the perfect shot. So, Atalanta…"
She met his gaze, her jaw set. "I'm not leaving."
"I know," he said, his smile softening. He shook his head. "I need you right here. I need your strength."
He held out his hand.
Atalanta stared at it. The trust he was asking for was absolute she couldn't see any doubt in those stupidly pretty eyes. Her pride warred with the certainty in his eyes. With a soft, frustrated sound, she placed her hand in his. "Just… just this once. Don't make me regret it."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Then he pulled.
It wasn't a gentle tug. He yanked her off balance and into him, spinning her so her back was against his chest. His arms wrapped around her from behind, his left hand closing over hers where she gripped her bow.
Old habits, born from days of enforced intimacy, kicked in. For a split second, she relaxed against him, her head tilting back against his shoulder. Then the reality of the position—the closeness, the control he was taking—ignited her temper. She bucked, trying to elbow him. "What do you think you're doing? Let go!"
"Trust me!" His voice was a command and a plea, pressed against her ear. "This is the only way. The only shot we get."
His right hand reached over her shoulder, dipping into the quiver on her back. He drew a single, ordinary arrow. With movements that were surprisingly smooth and sure, he guided it, using her hands, nocking it on the string of the Heaven's Bow.
Atalanta stopped struggling. She felt the solid wall of his chest at her back, the steady, if rapid, beat of his heart against her spine. His arms were like iron bands, but they weren't restraining her; they were anchoring her.
"This…" she whispered, her anger melting into awe. "This is something only we can do."
"Damn right," Cyd murmured. He focused. On his bracer, the orange-gold crystal of Helios—Apollo's blessing of the sun—began to pulse. But instead of the power flowing into him, he willed it outward, through his skin, through his hands, and into the divine wood of Artemis's bow.
Tendrils of warm, golden light, like captured sunlight, coiled up the bow's limbs. The ivory felt warm, almost alive, in Atalanta's grasp. She could feel a new power humming within it, a celestial heat waiting to be released.
"Apollo's solar fire… channeled through Artemis's lunar bow…" Cyd breathed, his voice full of reverence for the paradox they were creating. He adjusted their stance, his larger frame perfectly supporting hers. Together, they began to draw the string. The bow, now bearing the combined essence of sun and moon, didn't just bend; it sang with pent-up energy. "Atalanta… the final shot is yours don't miss."
A wild, fierce grin split her face. All hesitation burned away in the face of this impossible, perfect synergy. "Who do you think you're talking to?"
The boar had finished its grotesque feast. It was now twice its original size, a true titan of bristle and hate. It saw them, the two insignificant specks locked together. It lowered its head, a movement that now seemed to block out the sun. The ground trembled as it scraped its hooves, gathering itself for the final, obliterating charge.
"There's only one chance," Cyd said, his voice calm now, a rock in the storm of her adrenaline. He shifted their aim slightly, his eyes laser-focused on a point beneath the charging behemoth. "Aim for the opening."
"Stop giving me orders," she hissed, but there was no bite in it. She took a deep, centering breath, aligning her sight with his will.
The boar surged forward. It was slower now, due to its immense mass, but its power was geometrically greater. Each footfall was a localized earthquake. It was a living avalanche, and they were standing at the bottom of the slope.
Fear. True fear was the mind's surrender to impossibility. Facing this, no one would believe they could win. But as the shadow of death fell over them, Atalanta felt… peace. A strange, profound calm. Was it because he was here? This infuriating, stubborn, impossible man at her back? Did she believe, in her core, that with him, they could not lose? Or was it something darker, more intimate—the thought that if this was the end, sharing the journey to Hades with him wouldn't be the worst fate?
A morbid joke. Not funny at all.
As the mountain of flesh and tusk filled the world, Cyd and Atalanta moved as one. They didn't try to outrun it. They dropped backwards, falling into a controlled slide along the churned earth, going under its trajectory.
Time distorted. The world became a slow-motion painting of dust, snarling jowls, and the monstrous, pale underbelly of the beast as it passed over them. The stench was overwhelming—blood, mud, and primordial rage.
"Arrogant beast," Cyd whispered, his eyes locked on a spot high on the boar's undercarriage as they slid. "You're just a monster. And monsters always have a blind spot."
"And I," Atalanta growled, her hunter's instincts merging perfectly with Cyd's guiding aim, "hate it when pigs look down on me."
At the perfect moment, when the boar's throat and the softer tissue behind its jaw were exposed directly above them, they released.
The bow sang a note of pure, resonant power. The arrow didn't fly; it became light. A fusion of silver moonlight and golden sunfire, it streaked upward like a reverse meteor.
It entered through the soft, vulnerable flesh of the boar's throat, just behind the jawline.
It exited in a geyser of black blood and fragmented bone from the back of the creature's skull.
The sound the boar made was not a roar. It was a wet, gargling choke, the death rattle of a continent. Its charge turned into a helpless, forward collapse. Its legs buckled. Its momentum carried it in a terrible, ground-shaking slide, plowing a fresh ravine before it finally came to a rest, a silent, twitching mountain.
Blood, dark and thick as tar, began to pour from its nostrils, ears, and the neat, smoldering hole in its throat. The crimson glow in its eyes faded, leaving only glassy, empty orbs reflecting the sky.
In the sudden, ringing silence, Cyd released his hold. Atalanta stumbled forward a step, then turned to look at him, her chest heaving, the bow still humming faintly in her hand.
They had done it. Together.
Cyd's legs gave out. He collapsed onto his back in the churned earth, staring up at the sky, a wide, breathless grin splitting his grimy face. The last of the solar patterns faded from his skin. Every muscle screamed, his ears rang, and he was pretty sure he'd swallowed a pound of dirt.
"That," he wheezed, the words full of pure, unadulterated awe, "was awesome."
Atalanta stood over him for a moment, her silhouette framed by the clearing dust and the colossal, dead mountain of the boar. Her bow was still in her hand, the celestial warmth finally cooling. She looked from the monster to the idiot on the ground.
Slowly, she sat down beside him, not gracefully, but with a tired thump. She hugged her knees to her chest.
"You owe me," she stated, her voice flat.
Cyd tilted his head toward her, his cheek pressed into the cool dirt. "Dinner?" he offered, the grin still plastered on his face.
She looked at him, then deliberately turned her gaze to the behemoth leaking gallons of blood not fifty yards away. Its sheer scale was still mind-numbing. "You are aware," she said slowly, "that we just killed a divine curse the size of a palace, correct? A feat that will probably become a legend?"
"I know," Cyd said, his eyes sparkling with exhausted mischief. "I was thinking… to celebrate… we could have some bacon?"
Atalanta stared at him. Then she let her forehead thud against her knees with a soft groan. "You are unbelievable."
And yet, she didn't scoot away. After a moment, she relaxed her posture, leaning her shoulder ever so slightly against his. A silent, solid point of contact in the aftermath of the impossible.