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At some point, certainly, Asher had read some version of the Odyssey -- it was, after all, a high school staple. For him, though, it hadn't stuck. The word "Circe" was more or less gibberish, not even enough to be recognized as a name, but he could recognize the somewhat worried expression on Griffin's face.

He was still processing it, eyes raking over the weaponsmaster's, when he turned into a ******** rhinoceros.

The half-eaten bowl of stew tumbled out of Asher's hands and his mouth opened just a hair, jaw hanging, any lingering skepticism banished in an instant. His first instinct was to reach for his dagger, standing, terrified that the beasts were going to charge, but before he could get it out they were gone.

He was left standing there, dagger out, blinking around him like an idiot.

"s**t. Now what do we do?" It was hoarse, the usual snideness of his voice tempered with something genuinely worried.

Zan sat in silence after his initial rebuke, sullenly spooning food into his mouth and sneaking glances at Arthur. He barely listened to what the others were saying for a change, too caught up in worrying about his own skin to contribute to theories about teenage witches and new-age crystals.

He couldn't help remaining rather hung up on his distaste at the thought of being shoved into some rodent's body, and when Chris and Brynn and Olivia and the others began to change he yelped, embarrassing and loud, and hopped to his feet, dropping his bowl and staring. The woman he and stick-up-the-a** cop guy had scoured the mountains with, Misha, quickly turned into some sort of wild cat and ran off, and chaos was mounting as people reacted to what was going on. It was in the food... of course it was. If he ended up turning into a chipmunk or something, he was going to find Hermes and gnaw his godly balls off.

After taking a minute to make sure he didn't have any new animal parts, Zan headed off in the one direction he hadn't been: toward town.

Sylvia grinned at Misha’s reference to a “trashy 90’s movie”. She had watched it years ago and remembered enjoying it well enough. She couldn’t blame anyone for watching any trashy movies – she was fond of 80’s, 90’s, and ridiculously cheesy Hallmark films herself. In any case, she raised knowing brows and gave a nod to Misha’s input.

The mob mentality was certainly a potential factor. She wasn’t sure that the bartender had mentioned that this had reached all the teens in town, as some seemed to think, and they had only run into one group of them, but who knew. She wasn’t convinced they were being controlled either, but she couldn’t rule it out.

Unfortunately, Sylvia hadn’t read up on Greek mythology since early college. She could remember bits and pieces, and she knew there were a lot of stories of transformation. Many times the gods would shift, but there were plenty of origin stories for how or why certain plants and animals were. She did remember, somewhere in her knowledge base, that there was a witch the Odyssey (right?) who had transformed people into pigs? She couldn’t remember the name, though. She wasn’t sure which stories were relevant, and she wasn’t even sure she remembered anything properly, so she wasn’t going to try and muddle through her potential misremembered info for the others.

Sylvia wondered at how best Arthur might communicate. She wasn’t sure a Ouija board was the most efficient way, but they didn’t have one anyway. Even giving him a pen might be a struggle – tiny raccoon hands might be rough to work with when you were used to having opposable thumbs. Though, the idea Misha had of at least writing out the alphabet could help somehow. Still wouldn’t be fast communication, but it would be more than nothing.

It was then, however, that Olivia spoke up. Circe sounded awfully familiar, but she couldn’t match the name with the myth. As she was struggling to remember, she didn’t notice the subtle changes in Chris, but she did notice when a thrashing alligator seemed to suddenly be in their camp, shaking off the tattered remains of clothes. Sylvia jumped up and shuffled away from him, though he wasn’t there for long as he ran off into the woods. It was only a matter of time before Brynn also changed, and the rest of the Chosen leaders, followed by Misha, and Tom. As more changes happened, Sylvia dropped her stew and backed away from the circle of them. What the hell was happening?!

Not everyone changed. She stared down at her hands and waited for something to happen, but nothing did. Unfortunately, she heard someone nearby hurling, and she had a sympathetic gag reflex. Within moments she, too, was puking up their dinner. Once she was finished, she repeated curse words under her breath for a few moments before turning back to the others who were still human. “What the actual ******** class="postcontent-align-right" style="text-align: right">[ 493; 911 total ]

"Marisol," she murmured to the dark-haired woman softly, hand lighting on her hip in reassurance. "I'm maintaining my faculties. The others..." Rose drew in a slow, even breath as chaos seemed to erupt around them, friends and strangers alike turning into furry, four-legged beasts and fleeing.

To those that remained, she raised her voice. "We have to stop them from getting away! They're still the Chosen, we must help them!"

Ernst headed back to the camp at the head of the group, and though it seemed like he was opening his mouth to speak a few times, most of the points he wanted to be made were made by other people, who put them into words faster than Ernst could. Besides, he was preoccupied with the idea of real, hot food. He had no idea when anyone had taken the chance to cook this stew, but it looked and smelled surprisingly delicious, considering the contents couldn't be that great. Sure, he'd packed jerky - and he'd been snacking on his own periodically - but the sight of hot food was always welcome. So he partook gladly.

He couldn't say he had any idea what was wrong, and when he heard the "leaders" discussing the possibility of the ancient witch, Ernst had to admit he was boggling. He'd heard of Circe in his panicked Googling, but he hadn't really thought that, you know, ancient heroes and villains might ever still be relevant today. He was having a hard enough time adjusting to the possibility that gods might still be around! Wasn't it just them who were supposedly immortal? And maybe - maybe - a few random mythological creatures, like those birds had been. No one had mentioned people like Circe showing up. Which...meant he had a lot more Googling to do.

He was still shaking his head dumbfoundedly when Chris transformed, but he looked from head to head frantically as multiple other people followed suit. Including all of the experienced Chosen who'd come with them. Well - so much for them doing ********. What had happened? None of them had been near any damn witches, unless Arthur was one, too. Was it going to happen to Ernst? He looked around the camp frantically - what was the common factor? There were still people transforming...right? No. No, that was wrong. It'd been a little while since the last person had transformed. So it didn't have to do with the place. Or the places they'd been - there were people who'd been in all three groups who were transformed, as far as he could tell. The only common factor was - it was the soup. Or something. They'd all been to dinner - it was just that some of them had been hungrier than others. "Stop eating the food!" he called, for the first time all dinner, situating his hands behind his ears as his bowl dropped to the floor.

But what next? They needed to find the experienced chosen, probably...or some of those weird witch kids. And, yeah, Rose had a point - they needed to bring their companions back. Ugh. That meant labor again. At least they wouldn't be fighting anyone...right? "Davor? Erica!" Were they still around? He'd definitely seen Davor somewhere, and Erica - well, her problem was that she was tiny.

Diryas stopped caring about gleaning information from conversations around him when those conversations abruptly halted. His reaction wasn't as pronounced as some of the others, but Diryas did upend his own bowl and pour the stew out onto the ground. He would be eating no more of it, that was for certain. As for their leaders, and the others of their group... Diryas didn't know what to do, or how to help them. His specialty was toxicology, and this was far beyond the scope of any poison he knew of.

He wasn't terribly concerned about himself or Zebulon turning into animals, since the transformations were happening so quickly that he was certain that they were outside the scope of it already. Even still, he didn't fault Zebulon for the hard stare he received, his own heart beating wildly in his throat. He didn't know if he should chase down the turned Chosen and their mentors, or if he should look around for the cause of the affliction. Someone had to have--for lack of a better word--magically poisoned the stew so that they would turn into animals. So far, it was seeming to affect all but a handful of them remaining. Including Brynn and the others.

He was trying very hard not to dwell on that too much. They would figure out how to turn them back, he was sure of it. That was, if they could find them again...

Diryas got to his feet, resting a hand on Zebulon's shoulder as he looked around at the situation around them. His eyes were wide, especially for him, and he gripped the fabric of Zebulon's sleeve. It was an entirely reflexive action, but that didn't keep him from rocking up onto his toes to try and see better. Echoing the sentiment he was hearing, he murmured, "we should pursue."

Mercy decided to sit down by Rob once they made it back to camp, spotting Sid on his opposite side, smiling and waving while everyone shared theories and ate stew. It was too bad that she wasn't exactly hungry, otherwise, she would've partaken in the nomming of the good food. However, at the mention of a witch named Circe, her attention was really on the conversation going on around her. If they were dealing with a witch, all kinds of s**t could hit the fan and while she was all for adventuring and rescuing their fellow chosen, she had no knowledge of dealing with witches. Hell, she was firm in the belief that they didn't exist!

There was the fact that they were all chosen by an Olympian god, which she thought was just a myth up until recently. So why not have witches be real? at least it wasn't a witch like on Left 4 Dead...Ugh...Witches on that game can stay fake. Either way, the fact that the chosen were all animals, according to the racoon that could apparently communicate with them all? She wasn't sure she believed that either. Mercy was about to fall asleep when she saw their appointed group leaders begin to morph and turn into animals themselves. Hokay...So the witch thing and the chosen animals were real...

But how?

She didn't see any witch floating around here, wriggling her fingers or anything, so how on Earth are the transformations taking place? Mercy looked around, trying to remain calm while some of the chosen around her turned, then it hit her:

The stew!

Mercy sat up and finally registered all the chaos that was happening around her, unsure of where she needed to go. She didn't want to get mauled, but she somehow lost her two chosen buddies somewhere in this mess. She briefly saw a head full of blonde dreads and called out Rob's name before heading in his direction, only to lose him the moment she thought she had him. Since Rob was gone, that meant she needed to look for Sid.

[ WC: 359 ]

[Previously...]

Mathilda entered the camp, still silent. Some may have thought it was the weather that had put her into a bad mood, but she wasn't too keen on talking to anyone, not at this rate. The terrain of this new environment bothered her. It was too crowded, had too many places to hide, not her ideal location at all. Her instincts were yelling at her to constantly be on alert, the need to be aware and to protect taking up the forefront of her thoughts, The Alps had been fine, the snow a pain, the chill annoying, but at least easy to spot the enemy. The swamp was the opposite. Plus, apparently they were dealing with a witch, which seemed a little bit out of of their current skill range. Metal birds were bad enough, but they had very limited attacks. Witches did not.

Walking up to the pot, she grabbed a small spoonful of the stew, before finding the first open seat. Eating slowly, Mathilda laughed to herself at the conversation about the raccoon. It was interesting to hear that it might be a Chosen. Changing humans into animals seemed like a basic skill every witch had.

Looking down at her food, she continued to listen to the conversations around her. Everyone seemed to have a different viewpoint of the same events, some focusing on the good, others on the bad. She took note of important things, like all the supplies that had been found, as well as noting down the differences in everyone's experiences.

It was funny to see everyone's reaction to addition of witches to the terrain. While she was still shocked herself, it was still refreshing to see the shocked faces.

Taking her bowl with her, she stood up and wandered around the room, listening to the mix of information and introductions. It seemed a lot of Chosen wanted to go back into town, that, if the option was presented, she would go. It would be good to meet more Chosen, as well as keep an eye on everything.

She stopped wandering with the leaders of their group began to speak. Circe, now that named sounded familiar. That was slightly worrying, if her memory on the myths revolving around Circe were accurate, then things could get crazy real quick.

And when some of the leaders began to look sick and suddenly took the shape of animals, she knew they were screwed.


(Now...)

It took her a while to figure it out, but the second the stew was said to be bad, Mathilda threw the bowl away from her person instantly. She watched as fellow Chosen began to turn into animals, and was being to worry about her own personal safety. After a few moments, and constantly taking stock of her body, she sighed in relief as nothing had changed. She was a bit miffed that those in charge allowed something like this to happen, but after seeing them change, it made her less mad.

Sighing as the animals scattered, she stood up, and looked around for recognizable faces.

(Mathilda is open for interaction! Yay weekend!)