Four legs. This is... disorienting.

  The ground was too close. The sky too far. My new body stumbled—chaotic puppet of unfamiliar instincts I didn't know how to control. My coordination was all wrong. Signals from my brain arrived at limbs that responded in ways I didn't expect.

  I lurched forward. Paws skidding on pine needles like a toddler on ice. Beside me, Lena—now a lioness of sun-baked earth and simmering fury—was already moving with terrifying, natural grace. Her powerful muscles bunched and released as she circled. A silent predator seeking a flank.

  Right. Instinct. Not thought. I stopped fighting the wolf's impulses. Let them flood in—a torrent of sharper scents and clearer sounds that reorganized the world. The forest resolved into a map of smells: pine resin sweet and sticky, our own blood copper and warm, the cold ozone scent of divine metal.

  My target was clear.

  I launched myself at Peleus—a grey-furred blur aiming to knock the mountain from its feet. My jaws clamped onto his armored greave. Metallic CRUNCH. I couldn't pierce the god-forged metal. But the force traveled up my neck—solid, satisfying connection. He barely rocked back on his heels. Balance impeccable.

  He looked down at the dire wolf latched onto his leg, then over at the lioness poised to pounce. A slow, genuine smile returned to his face.

  "Better," he said, approval warming his stern voice. "Instinct over intellect. Good."

  He didn't seem angry at the transformation. If anything, he looked more interested. Engaged. We'd presented a new puzzle.

  Lena pounced. A silent golden streak of muscle and claw aimed at his exposed side.

  He moved with impossible economy. His spear wasn't a weapon—it was a lever, a pivot point, a teacher's rod. He sidestepped the swipe, using the haft to redirect her momentum harmlessly past him like water flowing around stone. He didn't counter-attack. He's not even trying to hurt us. He's dissecting us.

  I released his leg and circled right. Lena mirrored left, her tail lashing. No words passed between us—we couldn't speak in these forms—but the wolf-mind supplied the pattern: Pack tactics. Separate. Flank. Strike as one.

  I feinted low, snapping jaws with no real commitment. Peleus shifted his weight. Spear tracking my movement with lazy precision. That's when Lena struck. She launched from his blind side, claws extended, aiming for the gap between his pauldron and cuirass. Clean opening. Should be perfect.

  He pivoted. Not fast, but efficient. His shield rose to meet her mid-leap. The impact—CLANG—echoed through the pines.

  She rebounded hard, landing in a crouch. Golden fur bristling with frustration. A pained grunt escaped her leonine throat. But I was already moving. The wolf-instinct screamed: He's off-balance! Now!

  I lunged low, jaws clamping onto his ankle where armor met greave. My teeth scraped divine metal. Couldn't pierce. But the PRESSURE— He grunted. The first sound of effort I'd heard from him. His stance shifted, compensating for the weight dragging at his leg.

  Then the spear butt came down. Not lethal. Instructive. It cracked against my shoulder blade with surgical precision. White-hot pain exploded through lupine nerves. I yelped—a humiliating, canine sound—and released, scrambling backward on unsteady paws. The shoulder joint screamed protest with every movement.

  "Better," Peleus said, his breathing slightly elevated. "You're learning to coordinate."

  The lioness and the wolf locked eyes across the clearing. Human thought surfaced through animal instinct: Again. Together. Don't give him time to reset.

  We charged simultaneously. Lena went high—a leap aimed at his chest, claws spread wide. I went low—targeting his planted rear leg, jaws open. He can't block both. Nobody can defend two angles at once.

  Except he didn't block. He flowed. His shield rose to catch Lena's momentum, redirecting her over his shoulder. She crashed into underbrush behind him with a furious snarl. Branches snapping under golden bulk. His spear butt swept down in the same motion, catching my charge mid-stride. The impact flipped me sideways—pure disorienting force.

  I tumbled through pine needles. The world spinning into a blur of green and brown. When I scrambled upright, dizzy and panting, Peleus hadn't moved from his original position. He stood centered in the churned earth. Not even winded. His stance as perfect as when we started.

  From the treeline, Pan's nervous bleating drifted through the air.

  Lena extracated herself from the bushes. Leaves caught in her mane. Her ember eyes met mine. The message was clear in the tilt of her head, the set of her haunches: Different approach.

  "You're thinking like mortals," Peleus said, not unkindly. His golden eyes tracked both of us as we circled again. "Using animal forms with human tactics. Choose one or the other."

  The wolf-mind supplied an answer: Pack. Trust. Move as one.

  I stopped thinking. Just moved.

  Lena and I exploded toward him from opposite sides in perfect sync. No strategy. No plan. Pure coordinated instinct. Teeth. Claws. Weight. Momentum.

  For just a second—one beautiful, fleeting second—Peleus actually had to work. His spear became a blur of defensive motion, redirecting my charge while his shield caught Lena's weight. His feet shifted. Adjusted. Compensated. We're pushing him back.

  Then his Sthénos pulsed—just a flicker of golden energy. CRACK! The butt of his spear caught the lioness across the shoulder. Not to maim, but to correct her form, like a master adjusting a student's posture mid-lesson.

  THUMP! A shield bash clipped my side, sending me rolling across churned earth. More dazed than wounded. But the message was clear: You're still not good enough.

  We scrambled to our feet, circling again. My wolf-lungs heaved. My shoulder joint ground with each step—that earlier hit did more damage than I thought. Lena favored her left side. The corrected shoulder probably fractured or deeply bruised. In the distance, voices. Hebe's? Too far to hear clearly.

  Peleus planted his feet, satisfied. A pulse of golden energy—his Sthénos, pure and authoritative—washed out from him in a silent wave.

  The polymorph magic shattered like glass. One moment I was a wolf, all scent and impulse and primal hunger. The next, I was Nihl again. The world rushed back to human scale as I hit the ground on my back with a winded grunt.

  Beside me, Lena staggered back into her human form. Sweat plastering her red hair to her forehead. Chest heaving. We were both panting. Utterly spent. The animal adrenaline receding to leave only bone-deep exhaustion.

  I pushed myself up, wincing as every muscle protested. My shoulder—where the shield bash landed—was already swelling. I could feel the heat of the bruise forming beneath torn leather. I'd be wearing that for a week.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Lena wasn't better. She favored her left side, her breathing shallow and pained. Her knuckles were scraped raw from where she'd tried to punch through divine armor as a human, before the transformation. Blood welled in the abrasions, mixing with dirt. We looked like we'd gone through a meat grinder.

  Peleus had exactly one bead of sweat on his forehead. He lowered his spear, looking down at us—not with pity, but with the assessing gaze of a master blacksmith studying two lumps of promising, but poorly worked, ore. "Instinct is the foundation," he said, his voice quiet in the sudden silence. "But without form, without Enkráteia—control—it's just noise."

  He took a single step back, giving us space. "You have heart. You have cleverness." He glanced meaningfully toward the treeline where Pan was hiding. "But you lack discipline. You lack a true weapon."

  He wasn't attacking. The fight was clearly, definitively over. He was waiting. For our surrender? Our defiance?

  He cleaned a few beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist—the only sign the exertion had cost him anything at all. "This reminds me of the training grounds of the Imperium's coliseum," he remarked, almost to himself.

  Then his eyes hardened. The mentor was gone. The soldier returned. "But playtime is over."

  He squared up. His stance shifting from instructive to terminally efficient. Lena and I scrambled to our feet, mirroring him on instinct. Our bodies protesting every movement. We were ready to launch ourselves at him one last, futile time.

  He opened his mouth to speak. I gritted my teeth, gathering breath to shout my defiance. Lena let out a low, human growl.

  And we all spoke in a perfect, absurd chorus.

  "I can't let you steal the instrument for Apollo!" Peleus declared, his voice firm and final.

  "I won't let you take Pan's flute!" I snarled, the words ripping from my raw throat.

  "You're not getting his damn pipe!" Lena roared, her fists clenching.

  Silence. Absolute, ringing silence followed the overlapping declarations. The words hanging in the air like smoke.

  Peleus blinked. Processing.

  I stared at him, my mind scrambling to recalculate every assumption of the last hour. Lena looked from him to me. Her rage evaporating into pure, unadulterated confusion.

  The three of us stood frozen in a perfect triangle of mutual misunderstanding. The lethal tension didn't snap—it just... evaporated into bewildered nothingness.

  Then Pan's head popped out from behind a thick pine trunk. His eyes wide as moons. "...For Apollo?" he squeaked.

  -?-

  Before anyone could process that earth-shattering correction, two voices cut through the clearing like a blade.

  "Stop this right now!"

  Hebe—Dia—burst through the treeline, slightly out of breath from running. Beside her, King Midas stumbled after, his golden robes catching on branches as he tried to keep up. They must have been following the sounds of combat.

  The scene they'd stumbled upon must have looked insane: a scorched and churned clearing dotted with smoldering vines, two of her retainers beaten, bloody, and covered in dirt, and the illustrious Captain of the Apollo Guild standing over them. All seemingly engaged in a violent debate about a musical instrument.

  Peleus was the first to recover. He let out a long, weary sigh, and planted his spear in the ground. Leaning on it like a walking stick. He pinched the bridge of his nose.

  "Let me guess," he said, his voice thick with dawning realization. "You thought I was here to steal Pan's new flute for Lord Apollo's musical duel."

  It wasn't a question. It was the only thing that made any sense now. And it made us all look like monumental fools.I tilted my head. Confusion ratcheting up another notch. Apollo wants the flute? Why would he want Pan's instrument? And how did Peleus even know about it?

  I pushed myself to my full height, wincing as bruised muscles and strained joints protested. I brushed some dirt from my already tattered clothes. Futile gesture toward regaining dignity.

  My eyes found Hebe and Midas. My expression an open question. "Do we have some explanation for this?" My voice was rough with exhaustion. "Because I'm seriously lost."

  Hebe sighed, shooting a stern look at Midas. "Perhaps the King can explain. But keep it brief, Midas. We don't have all day."

  Midas adjusted his golden robes with a nervous flutter of fingers. "Well, it all started when Lord Apollo and Lord Pan met to finalize details for their upcoming musical duel."

  I exchanged a glance with Lena. Of course it did.

  "Apollo... flashed Pan. A burst of divine radiance. As a joke." Peleus let out a long, weary sigh.

  "Pan retaliated with a panic scream. But there's a nymph named Eco in those caves—renowned for mimicry. She copied the scream perfectly, but the echo distorted it somehow. Both gods fell into profound paranoia, convinced the other was plotting sabotage."

  Silence. We all processed the sheer stupidity of what we just heard.

  Peleus interjected. "Hence why I was dispatched to 'secure the instrument for Apollo.' Preemptive action." He looked directly at me. "And you, obviously, believed I was the thief."

  Hebe threw her hands up. "It's a complete farce! They're behaving like spoiled children!"

  I could only stare. My brain struggling to process the sheer cascade of nonsense. A god-flash. A panic-scream. An echo-nymph. Divine paranoia. And we almost died because of it.

  I turned to look at Lena. Her face mirrored my own disbelief—a canvas of dirt, blood, and slack-jawed astonishment. She met my gaze. For a second, I saw the same absurd thought pass between us.

  She broke the silence. "You're kidding me," she said flatly, her voice hoarse. "We just got our asses handed to us... because two gods are having a divinely amplified misunderstanding?"

  "Over a flute?" She looked from Peleus to Hebe. Her tone was so perfectly, devastatingly deadpan it sliced through the remaining tension.

  Hebe nodded. "The nymph, Eco, is renowned for her mimicry. And her profoundly mischievous nature."

  Peleus raised an eyebrow. "If both gods are poisoned by suspicion, and this Eco is the source... she may be the key to unraveling this idiocy."

  Then he did something that shifted the world again. He bent, picked up my spear from where it fell during the chaos, and offered it to me, haft first.

  "Here. You'll need this."

  I took my spear from his hand. The familiar weight of the wood was a grounding anchor. So that's it. No Keres. No grand conspiracy. Just two prideful gods, one bored nymph, and a cave with an echo problem.

  I looked at Lena. She gave me a tired, knowing smirk. Her eyebrow arched. She was thinking the exact same thing. We nearly got killed over a bad joke.

  Before I could speak, she cut in. "We're going to the same place." Her voice was flat. Exhausted. She looked from Peleus to me. "For the same stupid reason."

  She planted her fists on her hips, addressing Peleus directly. "So either we keep fighting over nothing and probably all end up dead, or we walk together and split the babysitting duty."

  She jerked her thumb at Pan. "I vote walk. I'm tired, my everything hurts, and you—" She pointed at Peleus. "—hit way too hard for this to be worth it over a flute."

  The clearing went silent.

  Peleus blinked. Then that sharp smile returned. Dangerous and interested. "The lioness speaks sense."

  He looked at me, as if seeking confirmation from the "clever" one that the "brawler" just made the smart call.I straightened up, meeting his eyes directly. "She's right. It's a one-day trip to the Dacian Forest. We're both headed there to protect musical instruments from imaginary threats."

  "So why don't we stop trying to kill each other... and just walk together?" I gestured between our two bruised and bloodied groups.

  The question hung in the air. Simple and profound. It wasn't just about safety in numbers. It was about transforming a farcical tragedy into a merely awkward comedy. Peleus stared at me for a long moment. His expression unreadable. Then he began to smile—sharp, more interested. The smile of a man presented with a novel, if unorthodox, tactical solution.

  "A joint escort mission," he mused, his voice low and thoughtful. "Between Hebe's clever, brawling fledglings... and Apollo's Sunlance."

  He touched his chest. The golden armor gleaming. "My title, in case you were wondering."

  He looked to Hebe for the final verdict. She looked uncertain. Her eyes scanning our injuries, then Peleus's imposing figure. Finally, she gave a reluctant nod. "Very well," Peleus said, the decision made. He planted his spear in the earth with a definitive thud. "We travel together."

  He turned his golden eyes back to me. The temperature in his gaze dropped a few degrees. "But make no mistake... this doesn't make us allies." He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a tone meant only for Lena and me. "It just means the test isn't over yet."

  I held his gaze. Matched his intensity. "Wouldn't expect anything less, Captain."

  "See that you don't disappoint me." His smile sharpened. Dangerous.

  Lena groaned. "Great. So now we're babysitting a goat-god AND being tested by the legendary drill sergeant."

  "That's the job, Lee," I said, testing my weight on the spear. My shoulder protested, but held. "I want a raise."

  Pan piped up nervously from his hiding spot. "I could compose a ballad? About your valor?"

  "Shut up, Pan," Lena and I said in unison.

  Peleus watched this exchange. His expression unreadable. "We leave in five minutes. Keep up." Then he turned toward the forest road.

  As he walked away, Lena muttered under her breath, "I really hate gods sometimes."

  "Only sometimes?" I asked, limping toward my scattered gear. "Fair point."

  We started gathering our equipment—my staff, her weapons, the dignity we lost somewhere in the pine needles. The road to Dacian Forest stretched ahead—one day, one test, one mischievous nymph who started this whole mess.

  This is going to be a long trip.