He was Chiron, born of the Titan Chronos, Lord of Time, and the nymph Philyra. A being of pure divinity, a centaur—yet unlike his wild, savage, and often cannibalistic kin, he was a paragon of wisdom, restraint, and civilization. He was the Sage of the Centaurs, the Tutor of Heroes. To learn even a single art from him was to earn a place in song and legend. His students' names were a roll call of destiny: Heracles, Achilles, Jason, Asclepius, Theseus.
He was immortal, a true god, yet his purpose was found in the teaching of mortals.
And at this moment, he was profoundly… perplexed.
"Self-defense… techniques?"
Chiron's rich, cultured baritone held a note of genuine bafflement. He looked down at the pale young man who had collapsed onto the sun-drenched grass just outside his cave, his legs still jelly from the traumatic aerial delivery. The boy's hair was a shocking white, his skin like alabaster, and he was currently trying very hard to appear non-threatening, which only made the whole situation more unusual.
"Yes," Cyd nodded, pushing himself up to sit more properly. He winced as he put his right hand down to brace himself, his palm landing squarely on a sharp-edged piece of flint half-buried in the soil. "Just… techniques to defend myself. The kind where, no matter how someone attacks, you can neutralize it. Safely. For everyone involved."
Chiron's keen eyes, which missed nothing, noted the action. A normal human would have yelped, jerked their hand back, seen blood. This boy didn't even flinch. He registered the pressure, shifted his weight slightly, and continued speaking, his expression unchanged. It wasn't a lack of pain receptors. It was that the stimulus was insufficient to cause pain. The stone's edge had simply… failed to penetrate.
This child's body… Chiron thought, his analytical mind clicking into gear. It has been altered. Fundamentally.
The centaur folded his equine legs gracefully, lowering his human torso so he was closer to Cyd's eye level, an act of inherent kindness. "Before we discuss curricula, I must ask: why do you seek these skills? What is your goal?"
"To stay alive," Cyd said, the answer blunt and unadorned. "To survive wars, disasters, bandits… the general chaos of the world. To be able to walk away."
"Only to walk away?" Chiron's voice was gentle. He reached out and plucked a stray leaf from Cyd's disheveled white hair. "The arts I teach can be used for far more. To protect kingdoms. To win glory. To shape destinies."
"Master… may I call you that?"
"You may," Chiron said, a genuine, warm smile softening his weathered features.
"Master, the life I seek runs completely opposite to the path of a hero." Cyd's pale eyes met Chiron's warm brown ones, holding them with a seriousness that belied his youth. "I want a quiet life. An ordinary one. Nothing written in the stars."
"Ordinary…" Chiron murmured the word as if tasting a new spice. He straightened up, his full height imposing yet not intimidating. "In all my centuries, my students have sought the extraordinary. The radiant, the legendary. You are the first to ask for… the mundane." He extended a large, calloused hand toward Cyd. "But a student is a student. Whether your path leads to blinding fame or quiet contentment, if you commit to my teaching, I will pour all my knowledge into guiding your steps."
"Master…" Cyd felt a surge of gratitude that was almost painful. He reached up and clasped Chiron's hand, his own hand swallowed by the centaur's grip, which was firm, dry, and reassuring.
"Before we begin, perhaps you would like to meet some of your… future peers?" Chiron suggested, his smile turning slightly mischievous. "They are scattered, but some visit. It is good to know one's lineage."
"NO!" The refusal was instantaneous, sharp, and filled with such visceral panic that Chiron's eyebrows shot up. "Absolutely not. With all due respect, Master, no."
Cyd's mind was a frantic slideshow of disaster. Heracles. Ajax. Theseus. Walking, talking cataclysms wrapped in muscle and divine favor. Running into the son of Zeus himself? That was a one-way ticket to being an anecdote in someone else's epic poem ("And then the great Heracles, in a fit of divine pique, accidentally hurled a boulder that tragically flattened a strangely pale bystander…").
Chiron sighed, a sound of long-suffering patience. "You cannot avoid them forever if you walk this world, child. The threads of fate have a way of tangling."
"I will weave my thread into the smallest, most hidden corner of the tapestry," Cyd vowed with grim determination.
---
Three Years Later
The forest on the slopes of Mount Pelion was dense, ancient, and alive with the chatter of birds and the hum of insects. Through this green cathedral, Chiron moved with a tranquil, ground-eating grace. He carried a simple wicker basket laden with bright red apples, his expression one of serene contemplation as he followed a familiar, winding game trail.
"Cyd, your presence is as subtle as a thunderclap at noon," the centaur remarked conversationally, his voice carrying easily in the quiet woods. Without breaking stride, he lifted a foreleg high and stepped over a nearly invisible tripwire of braided horsehair strung between two saplings at ankle-height.
He took two more steps, then paused. His ears twitched. He shifted his weight, and with the delicate precision of a dancer, brought one heavy, iron-shod hoof down on a specific patch of leaf litter.
CRUNCH-WHOOM.
The earth gave way. A perfectly circular pit, three feet deep and lined with sharpened stakes, yawned open where he had been about to step. Dust and dry leaves mushroomed into the air.
"An excellent pitfall for boars or unwary bandits," Chiron observed, peering into the hole with academic interest. He selected a particularly fine apple from his basket. "The trigger mechanism is clever. But the depth is insufficient for larger prey, and the stakes are too blunt to be truly disabling."
He took a small, graceful leap, clearing the pit easily. He landed before a particularly thick patch of ferns and brambles, his basket held loosely at his side.
"You're probably right~" Cyd's voice floated from the ferns directly in front of him, sounding resigned.
Chiron's eyes, perpetually calm, narrowed a fraction. The voice was clear, the tone correct… but the origin was wrong. It was a half-beat too early, projected not from the dense foliage before him, but…
"But, Master!"
The attack came from behind.
A figure erupted from the shadowed pit itself, having been lying flat in a shallow trench dug into its side. It was wrapped head-to-toe in dark, mottled cloth, becoming a blur of motion. In its hands was a staff of hardened oak, as thick as a man's forearm, swung in a vicious, whistling arc aimed at the back of Chiron's human skull.
Simultaneously, the tripwire Chiron had stepped over earlier, now pulled taut by the attacker's emergence, yanked a hidden release.
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!
From the heart of the fern patch, three heavy iron bolts shot forth in a tight spread. They weren't arrows; they were short, brutal projectiles fired from a concealed, multi-armed crossbow rig. They aimed not for the centaur's broad chest, but for the vulnerable targets: his eyes and throat.
"You're always so composed!" the shrouded figure grunted, putting all its weight behind the staff swing.
Chiron didn't turn. He didn't even drop his apple.
"Indeed," he said, his voice still a model of calm pedagogy. "Your growth continues to surprise me, Cyd. It is… most gratifying."
In a single, fluid motion that defied his size, Chiron brought the wicker basket up and around. It interposed itself perfectly in the path of the three bolts. There was a series of dull THUNKS as the iron heads punched through the weave and embedded themselves in the apples within, stopping dead.
At the exact same moment, his powerful hind legs, possessing the strength to shatter stone, lashed out in a backward kick. He didn't aim to kill; it was a controlled, precise strike. The iron-shod hoof connected with the center of the dark-clad figure's abdomen.
The sound was a sickening, air-bludgeoning WHUMP.
The figure—Cyd—folded around the impact. All momentum reversed. He was launched backward as if fired from a trebuchet, a human projectile screaming through the air. He crashed through the undergrowth, snapping young trees like kindling, tearing a swath of destruction for thirty feet before slamming back-first into the thick trunk of an ancient oak. The impact shook the tree, raining down leaves and twigs. He slid to the ground in a heap, the dark cloth wrapping him loosening.
Chiron, meanwhile, had already turned his attention to the fern patch. He reached in, his hands moving with unerring knowledge of leverage and mechanism, and withdrew a complex, cocked crossbow made of wood and sinew. He examined it, turning it over in his hands.
"You've even constructed a ballista," he mused, admiration clear in his tone. "The torsion is impressive. A little rough on the release, but the engineering is sound."
He walked back, stepping over the ruined tripwire and around his own pit trap, to where Cyd was groaning and pushing himself up onto his elbows. The young man peeled off the dark cowl, revealing his face, now pale for more than one reason. He was taller than he had been three years ago, his shoulders broader, though he still possessed a lean, wiry frame rather than a hero's bulk. His white hair, which he'd neglected to cut, now fell to his shoulders.
"Master… that thing took me months to make. Please don't break it," Cyd wheezed, clutching his stomach. "And… you really don't hold back. I don't have your immortal constitution."
"In my professional opinion, your current constitution may be more practical than my immortality," Chiron said dryly, placing the captured crossbow gently into his basket alongside the bolt-pierced apples. He approached Cyd and offered a hand. "The Styx did more than harden your skin, boy. Your muscles absorb impact like layered leather. Your bones have the density of seasoned oak. A kick that would pulverize a bull's skull left you with… what? Bruises? A fleeting nausea?"
Cyd took the hand and let Chiron haul him to his feet. He prodded his abdomen experimentally. It ached with a deep, profound soreness, but nothing was broken, ruptured, or even badly torn. "It still feels like I got kicked by a horse. Because I did."
"And you are taller," Chiron noted, reaching out and ruffling Cyd's white hair with a paternal affection that had grown over the years.
"Am I?" Cyd ran a hand through his own hair, a little self-consciously. It was getting long.
"You are. Though you still stand a head and a half shorter than Heracles," Chiron mused, a thoughtful frown on his face. "Perhaps it is a matter of nutrition? You are… diligent with your tributes. Perhaps too diligent. Sacrificing your own sustenance is not piety; it is foolishness."
"I think my height is perfectly normal," Cyd sighed, reaching for the basket. "His is the aberration."
Over the years, Chiron had, perhaps mischievously, perhaps pointedly, dropped anecdotes about his other students. Heracles, son of Zeus, was a frequent subject. The tales were not always of glory. There was the story of the music tutor, Linus, who had struck the young demigod in frustration. Heracles, in a rage, had struck back with a lyre… and killed the man with a single blow. Linus had been a son of Apollo. The tangled, bloody web of divine and semi-divine relations made Cyd's head spin. The only silver lining was that Heracles had turned himself in for the crime and been acquitted—a point in the demigod's favor, suggesting a moral core beneath the titanic strength and tragic madness. (The rumors of his prodigious romantic exploits, rivaling his father's, were less comforting.)
"Normal?" Chiron handed over the basket, his expression turning serious. "Cyd. A question. How long has it been since you interacted with another human being? A traveler? A trader? Anyone besides me?"
Cyd froze, the basket halfway to his hip. He thought back. The flight from the Caucasus. The encounter with Thetis. The years here, in the forest, with Chiron. Hunting, setting traps, practicing the "arts of peaceful disengagement" as Chiron called them—throws, locks, trips, ways to use an opponent's momentum against them, ways to create distance and escape.
"I… think it's been three years," he said slowly, the realization dawning on him with unexpected weight.
Chiron's face settled into an expression of decisive finality. He placed a heavy hand on Cyd's shoulder.
"That is no longer acceptable. The world is not a forest, and people are not targets in a training exercise. You have learned to survive the wilderness. You have learned to defend your body. Now you must learn to navigate your own kind." He gave the shoulder a firm, encouraging squeeze. "Your training here is complete. It is time."
He met Cyd's widening eyes, his voice leaving no room for argument.
"You must go out into the world."He was Chiron, born of the Titan Chronos, Lord of Time, and the nymph Philyra. A being of pure divinity, a centaur—yet unlike his wild, savage, and often cannibalistic kin, he was a paragon of wisdom, restraint, and civilization. He was the Sage of the Centaurs, the Tutor of Heroes. To learn even a single art from him was to earn a place in song and legend. His students' names were a roll call of destiny: Heracles, Achilles, Jason, Asclepius, Theseus.
He was immortal, a true god, yet his purpose was found in the teaching of mortals.
And at this moment, he was profoundly… perplexed.
"Self-defense… techniques?"
Chiron's rich, cultured baritone held a note of genuine bafflement. He looked down at the pale young man who had collapsed onto the sun-drenched grass just outside his cave, his legs still jelly from the traumatic aerial delivery. The boy's hair was a shocking white, his skin like alabaster, and he was currently trying very hard to appear non-threatening, which only made the whole situation more unusual.
"Yes," Cyd nodded, pushing himself up to sit more properly. He winced as he put his right hand down to brace himself, his palm landing squarely on a sharp-edged piece of flint half-buried in the soil. "Just… techniques to defend myself. The kind where, no matter how someone attacks, you can neutralize it. Safely. For everyone involved."
Chiron's keen eyes, which missed nothing, noted the action. A normal human would have yelped, jerked their hand back, seen blood. This boy didn't even flinch. He registered the pressure, shifted his weight slightly, and continued speaking, his expression unchanged. It wasn't a lack of pain receptors. It was that the stimulus was insufficient to cause pain. The stone's edge had simply… failed to penetrate.
This child's body… Chiron thought, his analytical mind clicking into gear. It has been altered. Fundamentally.
The centaur folded his equine legs gracefully, lowering his human torso so he was closer to Cyd's eye level, an act of inherent kindness. "Before we discuss curricula, I must ask: why do you seek these skills? What is your goal?"
"To stay alive," Cyd said, the answer blunt and unadorned. "To survive wars, disasters, bandits… the general chaos of the world. To be able to walk away."
"Only to walk away?" Chiron's voice was gentle. He reached out and plucked a stray leaf from Cyd's disheveled white hair. "The arts I teach can be used for far more. To protect kingdoms. To win glory. To shape destinies."
"Master… may I call you that?"
"You may," Chiron said, a genuine, warm smile softening his weathered features.
"Master, the life I seek runs completely opposite to the path of a hero." Cyd's pale eyes met Chiron's warm brown ones, holding them with a seriousness that belied his youth. "I want a quiet life. An ordinary one. Nothing written in the stars."
"Ordinary…" Chiron murmured the word as if tasting a new spice. He straightened up, his full height imposing yet not intimidating. "In all my centuries, my students have sought the extraordinary. The radiant, the legendary. You are the first to ask for… the mundane." He extended a large, calloused hand toward Cyd. "But a student is a student. Whether your path leads to blinding fame or quiet contentment, if you commit to my teaching, I will pour all my knowledge into guiding your steps."
"Master…" Cyd felt a surge of gratitude that was almost painful. He reached up and clasped Chiron's hand, his own hand swallowed by the centaur's grip, which was firm, dry, and reassuring.
"Before we begin, perhaps you would like to meet some of your… future peers?" Chiron suggested, his smile turning slightly mischievous. "They are scattered, but some visit. It is good to know one's lineage."
"NO!" The refusal was instantaneous, sharp, and filled with such visceral panic that Chiron's eyebrows shot up. "Absolutely not. With all due respect, Master, no."
Cyd's mind was a frantic slideshow of disaster. Heracles. Ajax. Theseus. Walking, talking cataclysms wrapped in muscle and divine favor. Running into the son of Zeus himself? That was a one-way ticket to being an anecdote in someone else's epic poem ("And then the great Heracles, in a fit of divine pique, accidentally hurled a boulder that tragically flattened a strangely pale bystander…").
Chiron sighed, a sound of long-suffering patience. "You cannot avoid them forever if you walk this world, child. The threads of fate have a way of tangling."
"I will weave my thread into the smallest, most hidden corner of the tapestry," Cyd vowed with grim determination.
---
Three Years Later
The forest on the slopes of Mount Pelion was dense, ancient, and alive with the chatter of birds and the hum of insects. Through this green cathedral, Chiron moved with a tranquil, ground-eating grace. He carried a simple wicker basket laden with bright red apples, his expression one of serene contemplation as he followed a familiar, winding game trail.
"Cyd, your presence is as subtle as a thunderclap at noon," the centaur remarked conversationally, his voice carrying easily in the quiet woods. Without breaking stride, he lifted a foreleg high and stepped over a nearly invisible tripwire of braided horsehair strung between two saplings at ankle-height.
He took two more steps, then paused. His ears twitched. He shifted his weight, and with the delicate precision of a dancer, brought one heavy, iron-shod hoof down on a specific patch of leaf litter.
CRUNCH-WHOOM.
The earth gave way. A perfectly circular pit, three feet deep and lined with sharpened stakes, yawned open where he had been about to step. Dust and dry leaves mushroomed into the air.
"An excellent pitfall for boars or unwary bandits," Chiron observed, peering into the hole with academic interest. He selected a particularly fine apple from his basket. "The trigger mechanism is clever. But the depth is insufficient for larger prey, and the stakes are too blunt to be truly disabling."
He took a small, graceful leap, clearing the pit easily. He landed before a particularly thick patch of ferns and brambles, his basket held loosely at his side.
"You're probably right~" Cyd's voice floated from the ferns directly in front of him, sounding resigned.
Chiron's eyes, perpetually calm, narrowed a fraction. The voice was clear, the tone correct… but the origin was wrong. It was a half-beat too early, projected not from the dense foliage before him, but…
"But, Master!"
The attack came from behind.
A figure erupted from the shadowed pit itself, having been lying flat in a shallow trench dug into its side. It was wrapped head-to-toe in dark, mottled cloth, becoming a blur of motion. In its hands was a staff of hardened oak, as thick as a man's forearm, swung in a vicious, whistling arc aimed at the back of Chiron's human skull.
Simultaneously, the tripwire Chiron had stepped over earlier, now pulled taut by the attacker's emergence, yanked a hidden release.
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!
From the heart of the fern patch, three heavy iron bolts shot forth in a tight spread. They weren't arrows; they were short, brutal projectiles fired from a concealed, multi-armed crossbow rig. They aimed not for the centaur's broad chest, but for the vulnerable targets: his eyes and throat.
"You're always so composed!" the shrouded figure grunted, putting all its weight behind the staff swing.
Chiron didn't turn. He didn't even drop his apple.
"Indeed," he said, his voice still a model of calm pedagogy. "Your growth continues to surprise me, Cyd. It is… most gratifying."
In a single, fluid motion that defied his size, Chiron brought the wicker basket up and around. It interposed itself perfectly in the path of the three bolts. There was a series of dull THUNKS as the iron heads punched through the weave and embedded themselves in the apples within, stopping dead.
At the exact same moment, his powerful hind legs, possessing the strength to shatter stone, lashed out in a backward kick. He didn't aim to kill; it was a controlled, precise strike. The iron-shod hoof connected with the center of the dark-clad figure's abdomen.
The sound was a sickening, air-bludgeoning WHUMP.
The figure—Cyd—folded around the impact. All momentum reversed. He was launched backward as if fired from a trebuchet, a human projectile screaming through the air. He crashed through the undergrowth, snapping young trees like kindling, tearing a swath of destruction for thirty feet before slamming back-first into the thick trunk of an ancient oak. The impact shook the tree, raining down leaves and twigs. He slid to the ground in a heap, the dark cloth wrapping him loosening.
Chiron, meanwhile, had already turned his attention to the fern patch. He reached in, his hands moving with unerring knowledge of leverage and mechanism, and withdrew a complex, cocked crossbow made of wood and sinew. He examined it, turning it over in his hands.
"You've even constructed a ballista," he mused, admiration clear in his tone. "The torsion is impressive. A little rough on the release, but the engineering is sound."
He walked back, stepping over the ruined tripwire and around his own pit trap, to where Cyd was groaning and pushing himself up onto his elbows. The young man peeled off the dark cowl, revealing his face, now pale for more than one reason. He was taller than he had been three years ago, his shoulders broader, though he still possessed a lean, wiry frame rather than a hero's bulk. His white hair, which he'd neglected to cut, now fell to his shoulders.
"Master… that thing took me months to make. Please don't break it," Cyd wheezed, clutching his stomach. "And… you really don't hold back. I don't have your immortal constitution."
"In my professional opinion, your current constitution may be more practical than my immortality," Chiron said dryly, placing the captured crossbow gently into his basket alongside the bolt-pierced apples. He approached Cyd and offered a hand. "The Styx did more than harden your skin, boy. Your muscles absorb impact like layered leather. Your bones have the density of seasoned oak. A kick that would pulverize a bull's skull left you with… what? Bruises? A fleeting nausea?"
Cyd took the hand and let Chiron haul him to his feet. He prodded his abdomen experimentally. It ached with a deep, profound soreness, but nothing was broken, ruptured, or even badly torn. "It still feels like I got kicked by a horse. Because I did."
"And you are taller," Chiron noted, reaching out and ruffling Cyd's white hair with a paternal affection that had grown over the years.
"Am I?" Cyd ran a hand through his own hair, a little self-consciously. It was getting long.
"You are. Though you still stand a head and a half shorter than Heracles," Chiron mused, a thoughtful frown on his face. "Perhaps it is a matter of nutrition? You are… diligent with your tributes. Perhaps too diligent. Sacrificing your own sustenance is not piety; it is foolishness."
"I think my height is perfectly normal," Cyd sighed, reaching for the basket. "His is the aberration."
Over the years, Chiron had, perhaps mischievously, perhaps pointedly, dropped anecdotes about his other students. Heracles, son of Zeus, was a frequent subject. The tales were not always of glory. There was the story of the music tutor, Linus, who had struck the young demigod in frustration. Heracles, in a rage, had struck back with a lyre… and killed the man with a single blow. Linus had been a son of Apollo. The tangled, bloody web of divine and semi-divine relations made Cyd's head spin. The only silver lining was that Heracles had turned himself in for the crime and been acquitted—a point in the demigod's favor, suggesting a moral core beneath the titanic strength and tragic madness. (The rumors of his prodigious romantic exploits, rivaling his father's, were less comforting.)
"Normal?" Chiron handed over the basket, his expression turning serious. "Cyd. A question. How long has it been since you interacted with another human being? A traveler? A trader? Anyone besides me?"
Cyd froze, the basket halfway to his hip. He thought back. The flight from the Caucasus. The encounter with Thetis. The years here, in the forest, with Chiron. Hunting, setting traps, practicing the "arts of peaceful disengagement" as Chiron called them—throws, locks, trips, ways to use an opponent's momentum against them, ways to create distance and escape.
"I… think it's been three years," he said slowly, the realization dawning on him with unexpected weight.
Chiron's face settled into an expression of decisive finality. He placed a heavy hand on Cyd's shoulder.
"That is no longer acceptable. The world is not a forest, and people are not targets in a training exercise. You have learned to survive the wilderness. You have learned to defend your body. Now you must learn to navigate your own kind." He gave the shoulder a firm, encouraging squeeze. "Your training here is complete. It is time."
He met Cyd's widening eyes, his voice leaving no room for argument.
"You must go out into the world."