The mist rolled in from the sea, thick and cold. Within it, the baying of hounds echoed—a sound that made the blood freeze. Arawn, the Grey King of Annwn, stepped from the fog. He was a shadow in a cloak, his sword drawn, surrounded by the Cŵn Annwn, his spectral dogs.
Athena stood waiting in the olive grove. She held her spear loosely, her polished shield resting against her knee. She did not look afraid. She looked calculations.
"You bring winter to my city, Shadow King," Athena said, her voice clear and sharp.
"I bring the end," Arawn whispered.
The Hunt begins
Arawn gestured. His hounds surged forward, ghostly jaws snapping for Athena’s soul. Arawn himself vanished, using the Mantle of Annwn to shift position, appearing behind her for a killing stroke.
Athena didn't turn around. She simply raised her shield—the Aegis.
The face of Medusa, embossed in bronze upon the shield, flashed with a petrifying dread. The spectral hounds whined and scattered, their supernatural courage broken by the Gorgon's gaze.
Arawn’s sword struck the Aegis with a ringing clang. Athena spun, her spear darting out like a viper.
"Predictable," she noted. "You favor the flank."
Wisdom over Death
Arawn retreated into the mist, using his magic to conjure illusions—phantom armies, dying screams. He tried to unnerve the strategist.
Athena closed her gray eyes. She didn't need to see; she needed to think. Strategic Foresight allowed her to analyze the battlefield. The wind direction. The density of the fog. The displacement of air where Arawn moved.
She calculated his trajectory.
She threw her spear. Not at Arawn, but at a specific olive tree to her left.
The spear struck the trunk, ricocheting off the hard wood at a precise forty-five-degree angle.
It plunged into the mist. A grunt of pain followed.
Arawn stumbled out of the fog, the spear shaft embedded in his shoulder. He looked at the goddess, stunned. "How?"
"Geometry," Athena replied, drawing a short sword.
She advanced. Arawn, wounded and with his pack dispersed, knew the battle was lost. He could not out-fight the goddess of war, and he could not out-think the goddess of wisdom.
He dissolved into smoke, fleeing back to the Otherworld before she could finish the job.
Athena retrieved her spear. "Sloppy," she critiqued, wiping the blade.