"Well?" the scarred leader called, impatience edging into his voice. "What's it to be? The easy way or the hard way?"

One of the bandits, a stocky man with arms covered in crude tattoos, stepped forward, shoving Lyra roughly. "I say we just take it now. They're half-dead already."

Lyra didn't stumble. She held her ground, green eyes flashing with sudden, cold fury. "Touch me again and you'll lose that hand."

The tattooed man laughed, looking to his companions for appreciation of the joke. "Hear that? The little girl's got—"

Lyra's knife appeared at his throat, the movement so swift Apollo barely saw it happen. "I am not," she said, her voice deadly quiet, "a little girl."

Tension crackled through the clearing. The other bandits raised their weapons, ready to strike. Renna had her knife out too, standing back-to-back with Lyra in silent solidarity.

"Kill her," the scarred leader said casually, as if ordering a drink.

Thorin roared, axe swinging up as he lunged forward. Apollo caught him by the shoulder, fingers digging into the dwarf's thick muscle with surprising strength.

"Not yet," Apollo hissed, the gold in his veins flaring with warning. "They're baiting us."

The scarred man raised an eyebrow, genuine surprise crossing his features at Apollo's restraint. He gestured, and the tattooed bandit stepped back, though his eyes promised future violence.

"Smart," the leader acknowledged with a nod to Apollo. "Your dwarf friend would be dead now. Bardin there" he pointed to a lanky man with a crossbow "never misses."

The standoff stretched, seconds bleeding into minutes as neither side yielded. Apollo felt the bow's guidance pulling him still eastward, beyond this human obstruction. Whatever lay ahead was more important than this confrontation, yet there seemed no way around it.

"Last chance," the scarred man said, his patience visibly thinning. "Surrender your weapons, your supplies, and that bow. We'll even let you keep your lives. Fair trade, considering where you are."

Apollo opened his mouth to respond, to attempt negotiation, when the tattooed bandit lunged again, not at Lyra this time, but at Mira, grabbing her injured arm with deliberate cruelty.

Her scream shattered the tense quiet.

Everything happened at once.

Tomas drove his knife into the tattooed man's side, a desperate strike to free Mira. Thorin broke from Apollo's grip, his axe catching sunlight as it swept toward the nearest bandit. Cale moved with practiced efficiency, his sword finding gaps in the makeshift armor of the man to his right.

The clearing erupted into chaos.

Apollo nocked an arrow, the bow singing in his hands as he drew, then hesitated. Against the corrupted beasts, he'd unleashed its full power without qualm. But these were men. Misguided, dangerous, cruel, but men nonetheless.

The bow burned against his palm, hungry for release, eager to unleash the same divine fire that had consumed the wolves.

He couldn't do it.

Instead, he lowered his aim, sending a normal arrow, without the blue-gold fire, into the shoulder of a bandit charging toward Nik. The man fell with a cry of pain rather than the final silence of corruption's cleansing.

All around him, his companions fought with desperate intensity. This was different from their battles against the forest creatures, more personal, more brutal. No corruption fueled their opponents, just human cruelty and the harsh calculus of survival.

Lyra danced between two attackers, her knife opening red lines across exposed flesh. Thorin fought like a berserker, his axe whistling through the air with deceptive speed for one so stocky. Renna had dropped her bow in favor of twin knives, moving with lethal precision through the melee.

Apollo fired again and again, each shot precise but deliberately non-lethal. The bow protested his restraint, growing hotter in his hands with each arrow that flew without its full power. The gold in his veins surged with battle rhythm, yet he held back the divine strength that could have ended the fight in moments.

'These are not monsters to be purged,' he reminded himself as he sent another bandit staggering backward with an arrow to the thigh. 'They're men. Misguided, desperate men.'

The scarred leader seemed to realize their mistake in underestimating Apollo's group. He barked an order, and several of his men broke away, melting back into the forest with the practiced ease of those who knew its paths intimately.

Apollo found himself face to face with the leader himself, the man's filed teeth bared in a grimace of effort as their weapons locked, bow against sword. They strained against each other, a test of strength that Apollo could have won easily with his divine heritage, but he held back, muscles trembling with the effort of restraint.

'I could break him,' Apollo thought, the gold in his veins singing with barely contained power. 'One surge of strength and this would be over.' But something in the man's desperate eyes gave him pause, not just greed, but the hollow look of someone who had compromised everything to survive.

The scarred leader's sword wavered against the bow's pressure. "What are you?" he gasped, genuine confusion replacing his earlier confidence. "You should be dead. Exhausted. Weak."

Apollo pushed harder, forcing the man back a step. Around them, the battle raged with brutal intensity. Thorin's axe had found its mark in another bandit's chest, the blue glow of its enchantment flickering as it bit deep.

Cale fought with methodical precision, his blade opening red wounds that spoke of military training. Yet for all their skill, Apollo could see his companions tiring.

The bow burned against his palm, demanding release. The gold in his veins surged with each heartbeat, urging him to unleash its full power. Just one arrow, blazing with divine fire, would end this confrontation in seconds.

'But at what cost?' he wondered, seeing the fear creeping into the bandits' eyes as they realized they'd bitten off more than they could chew. 'What becomes of a god who burns down men for the crime of desperation?'

A scream from behind made him turn. One of the bandits had gotten past their defenses, his crude blade slicing across Nik's arm. The performer stumbled backward, blood streaming between his fingers as he tried to stanch the wound.

"Nik!" Mira cried, moving to help despite her own injuries.

The moment of distraction cost Apollo. The scarred leader's sword slipped past his guard, the point finding the gap between his ribs with surgical precision. Pain flared white-hot through his chest, the blade scraping against bone as it penetrated.

Apollo staggered, the bow nearly slipping from suddenly nerveless fingers. The gold in his veins responded to the injury with volcanic fury, flooding his system with divine wrath that demanded retribution. The bow blazed in his hands, no longer merely warm but burning with the fire of righteous anger.

'Now,' something whispered in his mind, not the bow, but something deeper, older. 'Now you understand the necessity of power. Strike them down before they can hurt your companions further.'

The arrow that formed on the bowstring was pure light, crackling with the same blue-gold fire that had incinerated the corrupted wolves. Apollo drew back, the weapon's full power flowing through him like molten metal. The bandits froze, sensing the shift in the air, the sudden charge of divine energy that made their hair stand on end.

One shot. That's all it would take. One arrow to end this threat, to protect his companions, to clear their path forward.

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