Chapter 21
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 21
Chapter Title: Echoes of Etna's Hammer
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Shaking the earth like the hammer blows from Mount Etna...
"Atalanta!!"
"Lady!"
After a fierce and grueling fight, Atalanta was finally subdued, forced to her knees—and to make matters worse, tears began streaming from her eyes. Seeing this, the nymph who had been fidgeting anxiously beside Chiron could no longer hold back and tried to rush forward.
Her name was Karyklo.
She was the nymph who guarded the forest of heroes, the woods protecting Messenia from floods, and known to all the heroes as their foster mother.
Almost every hero who had trained in the forest of heroes was her foster child, and they all loved and respected her for the boundless affection and care she showered on each and every one of them.
Even Heracles, who would rampage drunkenly, would meekly lower his head and calm down at the sound of her scolding.
It showed just how deep the respect and affection the young heroes held for her.
And only Chiron truly knew the depth of the love Karyklo, as their foster mother and godmother, poured onto them.
Among those children, Atalanta was the one who weighed most heavily on both Chiron and Karyklo's hearts, the one they pitied the most.
An unexpected accident had occurred in a moment when Chiron hadn't been watching closely.
Through that accident, Atalanta learned the truth of her birth in the most painful way possible. Afterward, she began to bare her fangs and reject everyone except the Chiron couple, trembling in loneliness.
For the couple who remembered the Atalanta of old—brimming with pride, brightening everything around her—it was heartbreaking to see the wounds deepening beneath her thorns.
Yet the night before, Chiron had confided in Karyklo that the new student Dianes, who had just arrived, might be able to heal Atalanta's wounds.
Dianes was the child who had drawn out a bit of Chiron's true strength for the first time in ages.
His feats were astonishing, truly, but Karyklo had objected—martial prowess and healing a wounded soul were different things entirely. In the end, though, she couldn't sway Chiron's will.
In the end, ever since Heracles joined, no one except him had ever joined the free combat morning run for breakfast. But Atalanta had been paired as Dianes's guide.
And inevitably, the two clashed.
And the result, as expected, was Atalanta's defeat.
Not content with that, Dianes had even tried to shatter her last pride—her swift legs.
Atalanta finally burst into tears.
"Let me go, Chiron!"
"Calm down, my lady! That boy won't harm Atalanta either."
At the sight of Atalanta—their most painful sore spot—crying so pitifully, Karyklo could no longer bear it. But Chiron's resolve was firm.
"If she doesn't break down the walls she's built around herself right now and step out, Atalanta will be chained to her past forever!"
"But... but..."
What mother in the world could stay still hearing her daughter's cries?
Atalanta's heartbroken sobs tore at Karyklo's chest like a knife.
"Look there. Dianes is holding back his strength as well."
As Chiron said, Dianes lifted his foot from Atalanta's knee and slowly backed away.
"Heh heh, what did I tell you? Just trust him."
"Ah..."
And that was not all.
He even extended a hand to the tearful Atalanta collapsed on the ground, personally helping her to her feet.
Atalanta had struck at what anyone could see—especially a man—was a deeply humiliating and vital point, a hundred times her fault. Yet Dianes, as the victor, showed mercy and magnanimity befitting a hero.
"From the first time we met, I thought he had a deep heart to match his competitive spirit. Good. Now Atalanta's wounds might..."
"...Chiron?"
"Yes?"
"Something feels off."
Karyklo pointed at the two with a perplexed expression.
Dianes, helping Atalanta to her feet and brushing off her shoulders, looked every bit the model hero...
"Gasp!"
"Chiron?!"
For some reason, Chiron's lips twitched at Dianes's smile, which sent chills down the spine just looking at it.
That smile.
It was unmistakably the same smile he'd seen on Pasos Island, just before Dianes turned Artemis's attire upside down...!
"Lady, stay here for a moment. I need to stop that boy quickly..."
-Boom!!
Chiron hurriedly tried to intervene with Dianes, but a colossal roar already shook the Colosseum, silencing everything around.
Like a thunderbolt had struck, everyone looked to the sky, wondering if Zeus was angry. Under the clear blue morning sky, they slowly lowered their gazes to find the source: the two of them.
Atalanta, with a fresh red bump on her forehead, had toppled backward.
In front of her stood Dianes, rubbing his reddened forehead and looking down at her with pity.
Years later, Orpheus would recall it as an awe-inspiring event: Artemis's huntress felled by a headbutt of tremendous power, reminiscent of Hephaestus's hammer strikes.
* * *
Atalanta's oldest memory was nursing at the bosom of her shaggy-furred mother.
When her mother stood on two legs, it felt like a small mountain rising.
When her mother roared, the entire forest shook, whipping up a minor tempest.
Leopards with sharp fangs and massive boars became meek lambs, trembling at a single swat from her mother.
The king of the mountains, the proud lord of the wilds.
Atalanta's mother was truly a mighty being.
Yet when she whimpered in hunger, her mother cradled her in that soft embrace and let her nurse.
When she fussed in her sleep, that sturdy back carried her endlessly through mountains and woods, soothing her.
Even after she began to walk, when venturing out from their cozy den to explore her mother's mountains, that reliable back was still hers.
Spring, when they gathered heaps of mountain strawberries glistening with morning dew and shared them.
Summer, licking the honey her mother brought under the cool shade of trees to escape the harsh sun.
Autumn, joyfully hunting fat salmon teeming in the river.
Winter, huddled in the warm den against the biting cold winds, snoring in her mother's arms.
Before she was given the name Atalanta, the life with her mother that she remembered was her most precious memory.
But as she grew, she began to notice something strange.
Her hands were small and delicate, unlike her mother's sharp claws, and she wasn't covered in thick fur or as huge as a mountain.
Puzzled, she asked her mother, but she only smiled silently and carried her atop her head through the mountains.
Later, when Chiron took her in and taught her human speech, Atalanta learned that her mother was a bear—an animal—and she was human.
The forest goddess Artemis, protector of woods and maidens, had pitied the abandoned girl and sent her bear to care for her.
When she came of age, at Artemis's request, Chiron had taken her in—that too Chiron told her, and she felt only confusion.
One day she woke to find her mother gone. The little girl huddled in the den, waiting.
To her, the world was the mountains she roamed with her mother, and life was the woods they walked together.
She wept sadly and begged Chiron.
Just let her return to the mountains, to her mother's embrace. She didn't need to be a hero or anything.
She just wanted to remain her mother's little child.
But Chiron firmly shook his head and comforted her.
'You are a great child. Raised with the care of Artemis, loved by the king of the mountains.
Do you intend to disappoint Lady Artemis, who cherished you so, and the king of the mountains?'
Those words stopped her tears.
Yes, I am a child blessed by the mighty bear who ruled the mountains, and by the beautiful, strong Artemis.
The king of the mountains she remembered never begged so weakly, and the Artemis in Chiron's tales was a proud, noble huntress.
If she, blessed by such beings, did not honor their names, it would tarnish their love and blessings.
Thus, the nameless daughter of the bear became the huntress Atalanta.
The lessons of forest and hunt from the lord of the woods were honed even sharper under Chiron's guidance, and the young heroes of the forest acknowledged the pride-filled girl as Artemis's daughter, standing shoulder to shoulder with her.
So passed happy days of pride and self-discipline as Artemis's daughter.
Growing ever more beautiful and strong, Atalanta raced mountains and woods, hunting the plumpest deer and boars to offer to Artemis and the mountain king who had become a constellation.
The feverish pursuits of young men enamored with the beautiful huntress set the forest of heroes and neighboring lands abuzz.
Then one day, soldiers pitched camp opposite the forest of heroes, blockading the entrance. Their herald raced to the forest gate and proclaimed.
"In the name of King Iasos of Arcadia, Chiron must return his daughter Atalanta to the royal house at once!"
She was bewildered.
She was Artemis's daughter. The bear's child nursed and raised by the king of the mountains.
Why would this King Iasos of Arcadia claim to be her father?
Absurd. Utterly absurd, of course.
But seeing her fellow young heroes seething at the demand to hand over their comrade, and her teacher Chiron looking troubled by the sudden army...
It seemed right for her to step forward and mediate.
So Atalanta left a note for Chiron and quietly slipped out of the forest at dawn, heading to the Arcadian camp.
She had no worries, though.
By her teacher's teachings, Arcadia's soldiers were honorable elites, not reckless.
If she responded with courtesy and pride as she had learned, they would reply with respect and esteem.
With such expectations, she appeared at the Arcadian camp.
Those expectations shattered into pieces.