With a shrill screech, Helios swooped back to their party and alighted on the perch attached to Apollo’s barding. “There’s others in our camp,” he stated aloud a moment later to the rest of his party, one ear twisted back to listen while the other remained pricked forward, focusing on the strangers rummaging around. Though his bow and arrows remained at his side for the moment, he remained alert, his muscles tense, poised and ready to shoot forward at a moment’s notice like one of his arrows. “Do either of you know them?”

Neither I nor Athena know them, he didn’t say. He didn’t need to. It lingered in his question instead, simmering just beneath the surface along with his irritation at these interlopers.

“What?!” Athena’s irritation, as always, wasn’t so subtle. She stomped one hoof and pawed the stone floor below them, ears pinned back against her skull. Pallas, her owl, fluttered his wings and shifted his talons on his perch on her barding, which was nearly identical to Apollo’s. “Who the hell do they think they are, rummaging around in our camp?!” As she spoke, the massive sword at her side began to glow a pale red as it swung up and around to brandish itself before her, poised to strike.

Apollo’s head turned towards her sharply. “Wait.”

"Know them?! No! They're stealing our stuff… Again!" Quill lamented as he looked at the other coursers ruffling through their things. It wasn't the first time that he'd had a run in with unsavory types, but it wasn't any easier for him. Quill had an outlook on life that bordered on sunny and overly cheerful. He was more willing to lend a helping hand than to try and fight. However, he'd been fooled once by this type, and they had almost lost the fight. He wasn't about to be followed again by it. 

"Come on, Walter! Let's get 'em!" Quill's words were a battle cry. Whatever caution Apollo's words brought were ignored as he dashed forward with reckless abandon. The goose on his back pulled its dagger out of the sheath, and rose to the air with a muffled honk. Soaring above Quill momentarily before he dove down at the thieves. Not a single glint of mercy within his beady goose eyes.

If it were only her brother - always the calmer, more calculating one - Athena would’ve waited. She wouldn’t have enjoyed waiting, but she would’ve done it. Thankfully for her, however, Quill rendered Apollo’s request moot. With a battle cry of her own, Athena charged forth, sword swinging down towards one of the thieves. Apollo simply sighed at his sister’s behavior, though his bow glowed and drew itself with an arrow in the space of a breath all the same. If it was to be a fight, then he would do so gladly. Both Pallas and Helios launched off their perches to fly ahead of their charges, screeching their own rage as they both swooped down to grab and peck and tear at these audacious scoundrels.

Elrim watched quietly from behind the party as the two of them charged forward, Apollo's sigh echoed with his own as they all readied their weapons to be able to fight. The dungeons were changing Quill, he noted. Sometimes in small ways like the way he walked more quietly, or the confidence that grew when he did something that he couldn't before. Sometimes in greater ones, like how he now knew fear, or how he once would have approached the thieves with an offer of a meal - and perhaps asked them what they were looking for - and now chose violence. He had hoped that he would have been able to keep protect him from most of it, but the battles behind them were pale in comparison to some of the battles ahead. 

Each new courser they met came with a certain trepidation that they would befall the same fate as the ghosts that lingered in his peripheral vision, phantom limbs brushing against him both in fragmented memories of anger or despair.

Elrim shook his head quietly again, chasing away the thoughts of what could be almost debilitating. His party didn't need him worrying; they needed him fighting. 

"Squish, make sure they can't leave," Elrim ordered the gelatinous cube as he grabbed the cleaver from his back, shadow elongating as something raced along with him. Gnarled, shadowed fangs visible only right before his hooves struck the ground.