"Is… is this rock big enough?"
Cyd stood with his arms crossed, head tilted as he stared at the geological specimen Heracles had just deposited in the clearing. It wasn't a rock. It was a boulder. A house-sized, moss-covered, deeply inconvenient chunk of granite that looked like it had been pried loose from the mountain's very bones. It towered over him, casting a long, cool shadow.
"Well… it might be a tad excessive," Cyd admitted, tapping his chin.
To be fair, he'd asked for a 'big rock.' He hadn't specified coordinates. Heracles had just grinned, said "I'll find one!", and jogged off into the woods. Ten minutes later, Cyd had felt the ground tremble, and the demigod had reappeared, cradling the monstrosity against his chest like it was a slightly awkward basket of laundry.
"Don't worry about the size! I've got plenty of strength!" Heracles declared, rolling up the sleeves of his simple tunic to flex an arm that looked like it had been carved from seasoned oak and woven with steel cables.
"Yeah, the fact you carried it here one-handed was a pretty big clue," Cyd said, waving a dismissive hand. "But the plan here isn't to bury it in a rockslide. We need finesse, not just force."
Heracles looked from the boulder to Cyd, his brow furrowed in honest confusion. "You really think a rock, even this one, can kill it? Its hide turns aside iron. Bronze just bounces off. My club shattered."
"I know it's invulnerable," Cyd said, a slow, cryptic smile spreading across his face. It was the same smile Chiron had seen just before Cyd unveiled a particularly diabolical trap. "But dealing with 'invulnerable' things… that's sort of my specialty."
Heracles studied him for a long moment. The pale youth didn't look like a warrior. He didn't carry himself with a hero's bravado. But there was a sharp, calculating intelligence in his eyes, and a weary confidence that spoke of surviving things he shouldn't have. Heracles, for all his world-ending power, wasn't stupid. He knew brute force alone hadn't worked. This stranger had a plan.
"Alright," he said with a decisive nod. "I'll follow your lead."
It wasn't that Heracles lacked initiative. He just understood the situation. Cyd clearly knew the lion's habits, had been its prey for days, and had a scheme simmering. Heracles, by contrast, only had second-hand tales from terrified villagers. In a partnership, you listened to the guy with the map.
"Speaking of which," Cyd said, leaning against the cool surface of the boulder. The sun was beginning its descent, painting the clearing in long, golden stripes. They had time before the lion tracked them here. "Why are you hunting this thing, Heracles? Really."
Heracles settled onto the ground with a soft thump, his keen eyes constantly scanning the tree line. "Why are you here?" he countered, not defensively, but with genuine curiosity.
"Got lost. Made a stupid mistake. Got stalked," Cyd summarized with a shrug. "Simple, pathetic story."
Heracles nodded, as if that made perfect sense. He sat up a little straighter. "I heard the whisper of Arete. The spirit of Excellence and Virtue. She told me people were suffering, that a great evil was here. So I came."
Cyd looked at him. The demigod's face was open, sincere, utterly lacking in guile. He wasn't boasting. He was stating a fact, as simply as saying 'the sky is blue.'
"Huh," Cyd murmured, looking down at his own pale hands. "Vice is always easier. Cheaper. Faster. Choosing virtue… that's hard. The fact you can even hear that whisper… you're going to be one hell of a hero." The words came out softer than he intended, tinged with something that wasn't quite envy, but a profound sense of distance. They were from different worlds.
"I think you could be too," Heracles said, his gaze intense and uncomfortably direct. "If you wanted to leave, even now, I wouldn't stop you. But you have the heart for it."
You're currently gripping my shoulder with enough force to pulp a normal man's collarbone, you walking natural disaster! Cyd screamed internally. Outwardly, he just rolled his eyes. "Flattered. But right now, I'm just trying to get a persistent pest off my back. You're here for others. I'm here for me. There's a fundamental difference. I don't hear whispers from Vice or Virtue. I just hear my own voice telling me to survive."
"Your reasons don't change the act," Heracles insisted, giving Cyd's shoulder another of those friendly, bone-jarring pats. "The people who will sleep safely tonight because of what we do? They'll sing praises for the hero who saved them."
"I have exactly zero interest in folk songs," Cyd said, squirming under the demigod's radiant, overwhelming sincerity. "Remember our deal. No glory. I'm a ghost."
Heracles's expression softened into one of profound understanding. He nodded slowly. "I remember. It's just… it makes sense now. Your hair, your skin… they're pure. Unmarked. Like your motives. You ask for nothing in return. You simply act because it is the right thing to do. I respect that. I respect you."
Cyd opened his mouth to correct this wildly inaccurate, saintly image Heracles had painted of him. He was about to say, No, you colossal himbo, I'm just a selfish guy who wants to be left alone!
A low, familiar growl vibrated through the clearing, cutting off his words. It wasn't loud. It was a promise, rolling out from the darkening woods.
Cyd's playful demeanor vanished. His eyes sharpened, his body going still. "It's here. On time."
Heracles was on his feet in an instant, rolling his massive shoulders, cracking his knuckles. A fierce, eager grin replaced his thoughtful look. "What's the play?"
"First," Cyd said, leaping nimbly onto the top of the gargantuan boulder. He crouched low, placing his palms flat on the sun-warmed granite. "You're going to pick this up. With me on it."
Heracles blinked. "You want me to… throw you? At the lion?"
"You're not throwing me," Cyd corrected, his voice calm, almost hypnotic. "You're throwing the rock. I'm just along for the ride. Trust me."
Just six words. Trust me. From anyone else, to Heracles, they might have been a joke. But something in Cyd's pale eyes—the absolute focus, the lack of fear—cut through the demigod's doubts. Heracles nodded once, a soldier accepting orders.
His body shifted. The playful giant was gone, replaced by something primal and tectonic. The muscles in his back and shoulders corded, swelling beneath his tunic. He bent his knees, wrapped his arms around the base of the boulder, and with a grunt that was more a release of pressure than effort, lifted it. Not over his head, but cradled it against his chest, one hand splayed across its bottom for support. Cyd, crouched on top, swayed but held his position, his fingers digging into cracks in the stone for purchase.
The growling was closer now. A snapping of branches. The lion wasn't hiding its approach. It was announcing its rage.
"What now?" Heracles asked, his voice a low rumble, his gaze fixed on the tree line where the sound originated.
"Now?" Cyd whispered, a wild, reckless smile touching his lips. "You wait. You wait until it shows itself. And then you throw. Throw it as hard as you've ever thrown anything in your life. Don't aim at it. Aim through it. The rest… is up to me."
"I trust you," Heracles repeated, the words simple and absolute.
"Then Victory is already standing behind us," Cyd said.
ROAR!
The Nemean Lion burst from the foliage at the edge of the clearing. It was a vision of wrath incarnate. Saliva dripped from its jaws. Its amber eyes, blazing with hate, locked first on Heracles, then on the figure perched on the rock. It saw the setup, recognized the threat, and charged without hesitation, a golden streak of annihilation.
"It's on you, big guy!" Cyd yelled.
"HAH!"
Heracles didn't throw from his arms. He threw from his core. He took one giant step back, his right foot sinking six inches into the solid earth. Every muscle from his calves to his neck engaged in a single, symphonic contraction. The air around him seemed to thicken, to press inwards. Then he unleashed it.
The motion was too fast to truly see. There was a sound like a thunderclap happening at ground level. The very ground beneath Heracles cratered, a circular shockwave of dirt and shattered roots exploding outwards. Trees at the edge of the clearing whipped backward as if struck by a hurricane.
And the boulder was simply… gone.
One moment it was in Heracles's grasp, the next it was a grey comet screaming across the clearing, trailing a wake of torn air and dust. The speed was unreal. It crossed the distance to the charging lion in the space of a heartbeat.
Cyd, flattened against the rock's surface, felt the G-forces try to peel him off and hurl him into oblivion. Only his preternatural grip, his fingers sunk like pitons into the stone, kept him anchored. The wind tore at his hair and clothes, howling in his ears.
So this is what it feels like to be fired from a god's catapult.
The lion saw the projectile and, in a display of terrifying battle instinct, did not try to dodge. It couldn't. Instead, it planted its forepaws, lowered its head, and braced. Its plan was clear: use its invulnerable skull as a ram, meet the rock at the peak of its velocity, and deflect it upwards, over its body. It would use Heracles's own immense power against him, creating an opening to strike at the momentarily off-balance demigod.
Heracles, watching, clenched his fists. He saw the lion's intent. "Clever beast!"
"TOO LATE!" Cyd's voice, a triumphant snarl, cut through the roar of wind and beast.
The lion's eyes, fixed on the incoming mass of stone, widened in the split-second before impact. It hadn't seen him. In the fury of the charge, the blinding speed of the throw, it had missed the human-shaped speck on top of the missile.
Cyd wasn't a passenger. He was the guidance system.
As the lion committed to its headbutt, Cyd exploded into motion. He reared back, not away from the impact, but into it. His right fist, clenched so tight the knuckles turned whiter than his hair, drew back. He wasn't aiming for the lion. He was aiming for the rock beneath him.
"USELESS! USELESS! USELESS!" he roared, channeling a bizarre, focused fury he didn't know he possessed. His fist became a piston, hammering down onto the granite surface of the boulder not once, but a dozen times in two seconds. CRUNCH-CRACK-POW! Each blow was localized, precise, not meant to shatter the entire rock, but to destabilize it, to transfer chaotic, vibrating force through its structure at the exact point of contact.
The lion's head met the rock.
KER-THOOOOOM!
The sound was earth-shattering. The lion's plan half-worked. The boulder didn't crush it; its invulnerable skull held. But Cyd's furious pummeling had turned the solid missile into a shuddering, fracturing mass. The lion's head didn't glance it upward; it drove into it, up to its shoulders. A spiderweb of cracks raced across the boulder's face. Dust and stone chips exploded in a cloud.
The lion, its head embedded in semi-crushed granite, let out a muffled roar of pain and surprise. It wasn't hurt, but it was stuck, blinded, and disoriented. It thrashed, its claws gouging deep trenches in the earth as it tried to pull free.
Cyd was already moving. As the dust billowed around the impromptu lion-headed monument, he leaped from the crumbling rock. He landed on the lion's broad back, his balance perfect. The beast felt him and bucked violently, but Cyd's legs clamped down with the strength of steel vices.
He didn't go for the hide. He went for the only parts not covered in the invulnerable pelt.
His hands shot forward, fingers stiff and aimed like daggers.
The lion, sensing the attack, tried to wrench its head sideways. It was a fraction too slow.
Cyd's thumbs, driven by every ounce of strength his Styx-tempered body could muster, plunged not for the eyeballs themselves, but for the sockets around them, seeking the softer tissue at the edges, the orbital bone.
There was a wet, sickening pop-squish.
The lion's thrashing became a frenzied, epileptic convulsion. A screech of agony, unlike any sound it had ever made, tore from its throat. For the first time in its immortal life, it felt true, penetrating pain. Two thick jets of dark blood and vitreous fluid erupted from its ruined eyes.
Cyd yanked his hands back, something soft and gelatinous clutched in each fist. He didn't look at it. He flung the gory remnants aside and backflipped off the lion's heaving back, landing lightly several feet away.
The lion staggered backward, shaking its massive head, blood painting its golden mane black. It was blind. It was in shock. And a new, fire-like agony was beginning to spread from the wounds, racing along its nerves like burning poison.
"Oh, right," Cyd said casually, wiping his hands on his torn trousers. He reached into a small pouch at his belt and pulled out a single, wilted leaf with a dark, crimson-stained edge. "Almost forgot. Before I climbed on the rock, I rubbed a little… wolfsbane paste… on my hands. Chiron's special brew. Nasty stuff. Supposed to be 'touch of death' for most things." He tucked the leaf away. "Guess your insides aren't as tough as your outside."
He took a careful step back from the blindly thrashing, poisoning colossus. "You relied too much on that fancy pelt of yours. Got cocky. That's why you lost. But hey, no time for regrets. Consider it a life lesson. Well, an end-of-life lesson."
The lion's movements were growing weaker, more uncoordinated. Its roars had become choked, wet gurgles. It seemed to slump, its life bleeding out through its eyes and its poisoned bloodstream.
Cyd let out a slow breath. It was over. Ugly, brutal, but over. He took another step back, ready to melt into the trees, to let Heracles take the final credit and the pelt.
The lion's body, which had gone still, twitched.
Then it exploded into motion.
It was a last, desperate, hatred-fueled act. Blind, dying, it used its remaining senses to pinpoint Cyd's location from his breath, his scent, the sound of his retreating footstep. It launched itself, a ton of muscle and fury operating on pure instinct, its jaws gaping wide enough to swallow Cyd's head and shoulders whole. It was a final, apocalyptic bite.
Cyd didn't flinch. He didn't even take his hands out of his pockets. He just looked at the oncoming maw of teeth and darkness, his expression one of weary resignation. "Still not done? I guess I can respect the hustle. But…"
A new shadow fell over him, vast and deep. It wasn't the lion's. The sun was at Cyd's back. This shadow came from above and behind him, blocking out the twilight sky.
"Heracles," Cyd said, almost to himself.
The demigod was a falling meteor. He had closed the distance while the lion was focused on its death throes. He didn't use a weapon. He didn't need one. His right fist, pulled back so far it seemed to touch the forest canopy behind him, was his hammer.
It descended.
CRUNCH.
The sound was final. It was the sound of a mountain settling. Heracles's fist connected with the top of the lion's skull, not with a slicing force, but with an omnidirectional, crushing, splintering pressure that ignored the invulnerable hide and transmitted pure kinetic fury directly into the beast's brainpan.
The lion's leap turned into a crash. Its head was driven into the ground so hard the earth erupted in a fountain of soil and rock. Its body went limp, then twitched once, a final neurological farewell.
But Heracles wasn't done.
He stood over the corpse, his chest heaving, not with exhaustion, but with the release of divine wrath. He raised his fist again.
"ORA!"
THUD!
"ORA!"
THUD!
"ORA! ORA! ORA! ORA! ORA!"
The forest clearing echoed with the rhythmic, percussive thunder of divine vengeance. Each blow was a statement, a punctuation mark on the end of a terror. Dust, blood, and tufts of golden fur filled the air. It was overkill of mythic proportions, a cathartic release of power that shook the very roots of the Nemean forest.
Finally, Heracles stopped. He stood over the pulverized, unmistakably dead lion, his fists bloodied, his breathing slowing. He looked up, his eyes finding Cyd's across the devastation.
The clearing was silent, save for the settling dust and the distant, frightened calls of birds.
Cyd took his hands out of his pockets. "Well," he said, his voice dry. "That should do it."