Herakles

I pulled on the hero I’d chosen for Plan B, reaching out and through myself and into the vast halls of legend.

“Set. Install.”

My body shot up, and in an instant, I was something like eight feet tall. My muscles swelled and bulged, went from the lean of my real body, shot clearly and rapidly past muscular and powerful, then came to a stop just shy of grotesque. My hair shortened, but not by much, and the soft curls I had inherited from my mother became a wild, flyaway tangle.

My gloves and bracers and even my boots became metal-studded bands that wrapped around my wrists and ankles. My pants became a skirt, armored with plates of metal, and a pelt of lion’s fur that wrapped around my waist. My vest shrank and expanded simultaneously, hardening into a sculpted leather cuirass with a snarling lion’s head in the center that outlined, contoured, and showed off every single one of the considerable muscles underneath it.

In one massive, meaty hand, I held the Hydra’s Bow, a beautifully crafted thing that looked like it would dwarf an ordinary man. It was not nearly the only weapon I could call upon.

It was an imposing physique, towering and lined with impressive muscle. I now stood head and shoulders and then some above everyone else, with the exception of the monstrously huge Leviathan, and the only one who came anywhere close to my height was the seven-foot-tall Narwhal. Even she had to look up at me.

This was not the body of a mortal man (or woman). It was the body of a god, or something so close to it that the distinction was hard to grasp.

I took one long, deep breath, and any trace of fear evaporated from my head.

[Stand strong. Don’t allow the beast an inch.]

“Make ready,” I said in a voice that boomed like thunder. I allowed myself an internal grimace around Herakles’ tongue and reoriented myself. “That won’t keep him down for long.”