Scene 1 — War Pigs and Old Blood
"You came an ogre this time?"
The question came from one of the smaller goblins as I towered over my kin, the cave-mouth wind tugging at my new, heavier frame. Three other fresh ogres trudged behind me, each carrying a slab of hunted meat or bundled herbs on their backs as we returned from restoring the war pig hunting team.
Our whole squad had evolved past hobgoblins after that brutal fight.
We lost five of our best warriors—burned, broken, buried under boar tusks and human steel. Their bodies didn't make it back, but their struggle did. Our Lord saw it. That was the only reason we stood here now, bones stretched, muscles knotted, skin darkened with power.
Another blessing.
Another step.
We all remembered the dream.
He had stood in that place-between, where there was no sky and no ground, only an endless sea of stars. One by one, He called us forward, showing us shapes that could be ours: not just the wiry strength of hobgoblins or the thick-boned weight of the ogres we now wore, but other forms. Giants like walking mountains. Things made of shadow and flame. Forms that looked more like gods than monsters.
He told us to choose what fit us best.
I chose this—ogre. Heavy. Solid. A wall for the tribe.
But the part that dug claws into my thoughts wasn't the new power. It was how He spoke about hobgoblin.
Not as a step up from goblin.
As the start.
He described it as if our kind were meant to begin there. As if what humans called "goblin" was a mistake. A curse. A fall.
As if we were once more than the weak cave vermin they crushed under boots.
That was something I needed to ask the elder shaman.
The oldest being on this planet. The one whose soul was braided directly into Earth Mother herself.
Ignoring the stares and half-bowed heads of my smaller kin, I walked straight through the camp. Past the crackling cookfires and the crude stone altars stained with blood. Past the newly rebuilt pens for our war pigs, where the beasts snorted and stamped, already restless for the next hunt. Past the wooden totems carved in our Lord's image—each one a little different, each one wrong, because none of us had truly seen His face.
Into the shaman's cave.
The air cooled the moment I stepped inside. The sounds of the camp dimmed behind me, replaced by the slow, sleepy pulse of the earth. Roots hung from the ceiling like the ribs of some buried giant, each one glowing faintly with green and brown mana. I followed that glow deeper and deeper, my heavier footsteps echoing in the narrow tunnels.
The smell of damp stone and old smoke wrapped around me. My shoulders brushed roots thick as my waist.
At the rear of the cave, the passage opened into a hollow lit by a single, pulsing crystal. There, seated on a stone grown smooth by time, was the elder.
A massive tree root ran from the ceiling into his spine, fusing into his hunched body like a second, living backbone. Bark and skin had long ago stopped pretending to be different things. Moss climbed his arms. His hair was a tangle of leaves and grey.
His eyes opened before I could speak. They were old and clear and heavy.
"Old man shaman," I said, dropping to one knee despite my new size. "I saw another dream from our God again."
The root along his back throbbed once, slow and deep, like the earth itself was listening.
"Speak, child," he rasped.
"This time He showed me there are more evolutions than just hobgoblin… and even this form He calls an ogre." I looked down at my hands—thick fingers, knuckles like stones, veins glowing faintly with the Lord's fire. "Yet it was the way He described hobgoblin that bothered me. As if that is the true point of our kind. As if we were once more than goblins."
I hesitated, then added, softer, "It felt like He was… reminding us. Of something we lost."
The elder's eyes closed halfway, not in dismissal, but in memory.
"Hmm. A story of old," he murmured. "One I wish we could always relive."
The root at his back tightened, sap-light flaring through the lines in his skin.
"The Lord is correct," the shaman said. "There was a time we were not born as pitiful goblins. Our children opened their eyes as hobgoblins, as ogres, as things humans whispered about around their fires. We were war-kin. Hunt-kin. Chosen of Earth Mother's harsher side."
My heart beat faster in my chest.
"What happened?" I asked. "Why did we fall?"
His gaze sharpened on me, old and heavy and suddenly very awake.
"Take a seat," he said, gesturing to the stone before him. "There is much to learn if our Lord is truly giving us a chance to regain our glory."
As I lowered myself down, the low hum of drums began to creep in from outside—the first beats of the daily feast and the song of offering we played for our Lord. The sound traveled down the roots and stones, pulsing through the elder's back and into the air around us.
Each beat felt like a heartbeat.
Mine.
The tribe's.
Something older.
"Listen," the elder said, as the drums grew louder. "And I will tell you why the world remembers us as goblins… and why your Lord seeks to change that."
The cave dimmed. The roots seemed to lean in.
I listened.
Scene 2 — Monsters and the One Who Reins Them In
Tasey POV
Swinging my axe, I aimed to bisect this woman.
Athena's shield caught the blow, metal ringing as she turned it just enough to send my weapon sliding past her side. She stepped in as if she'd been waiting for that exact angle, spear already snapping down toward my knee.
I hopped back or lose a leg. Simple choice, terrible for pride.
Her shield slammed into my chest a heartbeat later. Air fled my lungs in a rush. I had to blast flames from my feet to keep from eating her follow-up thrust, landing hard and skidding across the training hall's scorched stone.
Yeah. Even Huginn and Baldur took this woman seriously for a reason.
Cani B couldn't afford a dead leader.
And yet here I was—letting Olympus' favorite battle junkie turn me into a test dummy again.
"You've learned to retreat," Athena said lightly, tilting her head. She was still in regular clothes, not a hint of that armor she wore when she got truly serious. For her, this was warm-up. "Which one forced that into your skull? Ares, or finally your own survival instinct?"
I clicked my tongue and came in again, dropping the wild swings. Time to test the new tricks.
Using the insights I'd stolen from dueling Lu Bu, I brought the axe around in a slow, deliberate arc. The world itself felt like it tried to hold my weapon back as I reproduced half of that duelist's favorite bullying technique.
I exhaled and let every useless thought burn out of my head.
Tear apart the heavens.
The swing looked casual, even lazy—slower than my normal attacks. The flames along the edge compressed, packed so tight the air screamed as it passed, a violet glare sharpening around Grim's favorite axe.
For the first time, her grin slipped.
Her shield flashed up.
Steel met steel.
The impact birthed a crater at our feet, flames detonating outward in a wave that rattled the reinforced glass of the upper viewing deck and kicked dust from the walls.
She still parried it.
The backlash kicked my arms numb. I barely had time to reset my grip before her shield pivoted and smashed squarely into my face. The world spun. I hit the ground on my back, teeth buzzing, vision full of sparks that had nothing to do with my flames.
"Oh?" Athena laughed. "My training dummy learned some new tricks. Was it the monkey or that idiot?"
She didn't specify which idiot. Fair. I knew too many.
I ignored the question, flames blasting from my feet as I launched myself forward again. She shifted, letting the jet of fire slide past, shield clipping me from the side and sending me rolling.
"I swear you and Ares never learn to plan out a fight," she said, not even winded. "Just destroying everything within the vicinity. So what are you going to ruin this time—with Grim, or on your own?"
I pushed myself up, spat blood, and charged.
Our weapons met again, my axe grinding against her spear as she braced the haft against her forearm. Her grin widened as she rode the impact, weight already sliding into the next counter. Her shield whipped around; I ducked under it, heat roaring through my veins.
If even Huginn and Baldur kept this woman in the "do not underestimate" column, then I had no excuse. If I couldn't at least touch her, I had no right calling myself Cani B's spear.
I spun to her flank and threw a punch instead of another chop.
She had to respect that one—mana flared around her hand, a tight shield forming as she caught my fist mid-swing.
I grinned back at her.
Then I slammed my forehead into her face.
Bone cracked. She actually staggered, eyes unfocused for half a heartbeat as I pulled back, blinking in surprise.
"That… shouldn't have worked," I muttered.
The answer hit like a pressure wave.
Her aura spiked, bloodlust rolling off her in a visible haze that made the air prickle against my skin. Her shield hit the floor with a clatter. The spear followed a moment later, tip gouging a neat line in the stone.
Frost crawled up her bare hands, coating them to the elbow in jagged white gauntlets. Her smile was suddenly bright and sharp, like she'd just remembered her favorite game.
"Relax, Cani B," she sighed. "If I really went all out, you'd end up like Ares the last time he mouthed off."
"Fu—"
Her fist buried itself in my ribs before I could finish the curse, the impact folding me around her arm and turning the world into a blur of stone and pain. I left the ground, slammed into the far wall hard enough to crater it, and slid down in a shower of dust.
She was back to her old methods.
Someone had to rein in monsters.
Apparently, that someone was her.
Scene 3 — Retreat Route
Grim POV
"Grim, should we help Tasey?"
The driver in charge of our retreat asked it without looking away from the road, one hand tight on the wheel, the other flicking a thumb toward the side window.
I lifted my eyes from the scrolling data on my tablet and glanced outside.
Beyond the cracked ridge, near what used to be the camp, clashes of flame and ice were tearing through the sky in vibrant colors. Every impact lit the ruined buildings in stuttering bursts—Tasey's fire, Athena's frost.
Although we hadn't expected Athena to show up, it still worked out in our favor that it wasn't Ares this time again.
"No," I said. "She's only interested in seeing how much he's grown. Her being there keeps everyone else from making it worse."
The driver grunted, accepting that, and focused back on not flipping our ride.
I let the duel fade to the edge of my vision and dropped my gaze back to the tablet. Keywords flickered as I refined my search, trying to squeeze use out of every second of this retreat.
With Zeus' actions, none of them can keep pretending this seventeen-year-old kid is a minor variable.
His choices have ripped off everyone's kid gloves.
No one is interested anymore in whether Oceanus knows or not.