Chapter 40: Bovine Education
Tonight, the Argo was a floating festival of noise and misplaced optimism.
The trial loomed the next day, a date with fire-breathing suicide, yet the mood on board was that of a crew already holding the prize. Wine flowed, laughter echoed off the timbers, and boasts grew taller with each drained cup. The heroes (a term Cyd used loosely) were in high spirits, and Jason, the man who should have been sweating bullets, was the loudest of them all. nstead, he was at the center of the revelry, wine sloshing from a golden cup as he regaled his crew with tales of his 'certain victory.' The other heroes, always eager for an excuse to celebrate—especially when the hard work was someone else's—joined in with gusto. The ship groaned with the weight of their noise.
[Cyd is the kind of man you can't help but trust.]
Jason remembered Heracles saying that, back when the demigod was just a looming, uncomfortable presence of actual competence. He hadn't believed it then. Now, with the warmth of wine and borrowed confidence in his veins, he did. He stood at the ship's rail, a golden cup in hand, staring at the glittering lights of the palace. It wasn't just the timely aid. It was Cyd's eyes. Pale blue like the sky, yes, unnervingly so, but in the firelight, they'd held no deceit, no hidden agenda. Just calm, unwavering certainty.
"Leave it to me."
Jason raised his cup to the star-dusted sky. "A pure white hero," he murmured, the title tasting of awe and absolution. He drank deeply, the wine warm and sweet, a promise of glory yet to be claimed.
He had no idea that his personal saint was currently creeping through the royal cattle pens like a particularly determined thief.
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The enclosure for the so-called "fire-breathing oxen" was less a barn and more a fortified bunker on the outskirts of the palace grounds. It was built of black, fire-scorched stone, with no roof, only a heavy iron grate. The air around it shimmered with residual heat, and the smell was a pungent mix of manure, ozone, and charred hay.
Cyd moved with exaggerated stealth, hugging the shadow of a column. Medea, walking beside him in a simple, dark cloak, watched his performance with undisguised amusement.
"There are no guards here, you know," she said, her voice a quiet melody in the hot night. "Father doesn't post them. What would be the point? The bulls are the guards." She walked past him without ceremony and peered through a gap in the stonework.
"Princess, it's the principle of the thing," Cyd whispered, though there was no one to hear. "And shouldn't you be in your tower? If your maids find your bed empty…"
"Someone is in my bed," Medea replied, not looking at him. Her violet eyes were bright with curiosity as she tried to get a better look inside the dark pen. "A very convincing substitute."
Back in the tower, a palace maid cracked the door to Medea's chamber, as she did every night. The room was dark, lit only by slivers of moonlight. In the bed, a small figure lay still, a cascade of long, violet hair spilling over the edge onto the floor. The maid nodded to herself, satisfied, and gently closed the door.
"Even so," Cyd grumbled, reaching out to snag the back of Medea's cloak. He pulled her gently but firmly away from the wall. "Stay close. If one of those things charges and you're in the way, this goes from 'covert operation' to 'royal tragedy' real fast."
"Fine, fine," she huffed, but allowed herself to be reeled in. "So, what's your brilliant plan? The greatest warriors in Colchis wouldn't dare face these bulls without a legion behind them. You're going to… ask them nicely to stop breathing fire?"
"More or less," Cyd said, cracking his knuckles. He took a step toward the pen's heavy iron gate. Immediately, the air temperature spiked. A low, rumbling sound, like stones grinding deep in the earth, emanated from within. The scent of ozone grew sharper, prickling the skin.
They were awake. And they knew he was here.
"If they could just 'stop breathing fire,' father wouldn't use them as an impossible task," Medea said, her hand dipping into the small leather pouch at her waist. She pulled out a vial filled with a swirling, opalescent liquid. "I have a potion here that can temporarily suppress their—"
"I told you. Trust the plan." Cyd cut her off, his voice calm. "You just make sure the sound and light don't leave this yard. That's all I need from you tonight."
"That part's already done," Medea said with a hint of pride. She snapped her fingers softly. A vast, intricate magic circle, glowing a faint, ethereal purple, flashed across the entire courtyard for a fraction of a second before dissolving into the stonework. The night sounds—the distant sea, the chirping of insects—seemed to grow muffled, trapped under an invisible dome. "But I really think you should take the—"
"Then we're good. Wakey-wakey, beefcakes!" Cyd bent down, picked up a fist-sized chunk of broken paving stone, hefted it, and with a casual, underhand flick of his wrist, sent it rocketing into the pen.
The impact wasn't a thud. It was a KABOOM.
The iron gate didn't just burst open; it was torn from its massive hinges and sent spinning into the darkness like a giant's discarded toy. Two colossal shapes, wreathed in roaring, white-hot flames, were catapulted out of the pen by the shockwave, landing with twin earth-shaking CRUNCHES that sent cracks spiderwebbing across the flagstones.
Cyd dusted off his hands. "See? Easy."
"That's not 'asking nicely'!" Medea yelped, clutching her potion vial to her chest.
"Relax. I'm just going to have a little chat with them." Cyd held up his thumb and forefinger, leaving a tiny gap. "A very… persuasive chat."
ROOOOOAAAAARRR—!
The sound was less a bovine low and more the scream of a forge given voice. The two bulls surged to their feet. They were monstrous, each the size of a small cottage, their hides not hair but plates of dark, metallic-looking scale that glowed cherry-red from the internal heat. Fire wreathed their horns, dripped from their muzzles, and streamed from their nostrils in angry plumes. They lowered their heads, targeting the pale speck that had dared disturb them, and charged.
Two living fireballs, each capable of melting bronze, accelerated across the courtyard.
"Tsk tsk. Livestock with an attitude problem. That's what happens when you skip obedience school," Cyd sighed, as if dealing with unruly puppies.
At the last possible second, as searing heat washed over him and the stink of burning air filled his lungs, he moved. Not away. Forward.
He stepped into the charge, his arms coming up. His hands, pale even in the hellish orange light, plunged directly into the coronas of flame surrounding the bulls' heads. There was no sizzle of cooking flesh, no scream of pain. The fire parted around his skin like water around a stone.
His palms slammed into the center of each bull's forehead, right between the blazing horns.
The charge didn't just stop. It reversed as the bull found itself suddenly being pushed back down its earlier path.
With a grunt of effort that was more annoyance than strain, Cyd dug in his heels and pushed. The bulls' forward momentum was arrested so completely it was as if they'd hit a mountainside. Their powerful legs scrambled for purchase, hooves gouging trenches in the stone. The flames around them guttered and flared in confusion.
Then Cyd shifted his grip, his fingers digging into the scaly hide. With a wrenching twist of his torso, he slammed both massive heads down, driving them into the cracked flagstones with a sound like shattering pottery.
Medea's jaw hung open. Every lesson, every scroll on thaumaturgy and mortal limitation, evaporated from her mind. Human beings were creatures of intellect, not brawn. They used tools, magic, poison—anything to bridge the impossible gap between their soft flesh and the world's hard edges. What she was witnessing defied that fundamental truth. It was raw brute strength, physical dominion without any hint of mana enhancement. A man, using only his hands, subduing forces of elemental destruction that her people had bragged about for years.
This… this is a hero, she thought, the concept acquiring a new, terrifying weight.
Cyd yanked the dazed bulls' heads back out of the craters. "Learned your lesson yet?"
The response was immediate and furious. Both creatures shook their heads, bellows of rage tearing from their throats. They opened their mouths, and twin jets of concentrated plasma, white-blue and hot enough to vitrify sand, lanced out, intersecting directly on Cyd's face.
"Cyd—!" Medea screamed.
The inferno engulfed him completely, a pillar of annihilation that turned the night into day for a three-second eternity.
CRUNCH.
The fire cut off abruptly. Cyd stood unharmed, not a hair singed, not an eyelash out of place. He had simply grabbed the bulls' muzzles again and forced them shut, mashing their faces back into the stone with even more force than before. The residual heat made the air above them waver.
He turned his head, his pale eyes finding Medea's in the sudden dimness. "You called?"
"N-nothing! It's nothing!" she stammered, waving her hands frantically.
"Alright then." Cyd's smile returned, but it had changed. It was wider, sharper, showing a lot of teeth. It was the smile of a predator who has just decided playtime is over. "Seems you two are the stubborn type. That's fine. I've got all night." He glanced at Medea. "The potion. Hand it over."
"Y-yes! Of course!" She practically threw the vial at him, her earlier confidence utterly gone. She didn't know what he planned, but the look on his face promised it would be memorable.
Cyd kept one hand pressing a bull's head into the dirt. With the other, he caught the vial, uncorked it with his teeth, and poured the shimmering liquid onto a scrap of cloth he pulled from his belt—the same cloth he'd folded so carefully earlier. It was Jason's discarded, muddy chiton.
"Is that…?"
"The finishing touch," Cyd said. He released one bull, grabbed it by a horn before it could react, and in one smooth motion, wrapped the potion-soaked cloth around its entire head, tying it tight like a grotesque blindfold. The bull snorted, inhaling the strange, chemical scent mixed with Jason's sweat.
"School's in session." Cyd planted a foot on the other bull's neck, keeping it pinned, then hefted the blindfolded one by the horn.
The bull, enraged and disoriented, unleashed its most powerful blast of flame yet. The cloth should have vaporized. Cyd's hand should have been reduced to bone and ash. Neither happened. The potion held. Cyd's grip didn't waver.
For the first time in its fiery existence, the bull felt something alien prick at the edges of its bestial mind. Not pain—it had felt Cyd's blows, but they were just impacts. This was different. This was the chilling realization that its ultimate weapon was useless. This was… dread.
"I said… STOP BREATHING FIRE!"
Cyd spun, using the bull's own mass as a counterweight, and hurled it straight up into the air above the courtyard.
Then he leaped to meet it.
What followed was not a fight. It was a corrective beating of mythic proportions.
THWACK-THWACK-THWACK-THWACK-THWACK-THWACK!
His fists became a blur, a storm of concussive impacts that rained down on the bull from every angle. The sound was a sickening, rhythmic cacophony of meat on scale, like a hundred blacksmiths hammering a giant anvil. Medea saw Cyd flip the massive creature in mid-air with a casual shove, ensuring both sides received "equal attention."
MOOOOOOOOOOOOO—!
The bull's bellow transformed from rage to a high, pitiful squeal of pure, unadulterated animal terror. The sound should have echoed for miles, but it hit the boundary of Medea's spell and died, trapped in the bubble with the perpetrator and the witness. She clapped her hands over her ears, sinking to her knees.
Finally, Cyd descended. The bull, now devoid of any flame, its hide a uniform, painful-looking pink, plummeted after him. It hit the ground with a final, sickening WHUMP, driving the air from its lungs in a defeated wheeze. Cyd landed beside it, reached down, and ripped the blindfold away.
The bull's eyes were rolled back in its head, a froth of saliva and bubbles dripping from its slack mouth. It did not move.
Cyd turned. He walked over to the second bull, still pinned under his foot. He leaned down, grasped its horn, and pulled its head out of the crater. The creature's once-fiery eyes were wide, pupils dilated with primal fear. It had heard everything. It had felt the ground shake with its brother's punishment.
Cyd leaned in close, his face inches from the bull's steaming snout. His smile was gentle, benevolent, and utterly terrifying.
"Your turn."