Zaphir....

"Wha-"

There was a familiar itch on his skin, but on the whole body. All his tattoos started crawling into the goats mouth as if devouring them. Then he felt it. His blood felt like it increased its speed glowing through his veins and arteries.

He fell to his knees, he saw his hands: it turned into a gorilla...he was turning into gorilla. It was not over his whole followed, changing into a gorilla and growing in size.

After ten seconds he had fully transformed, his clothes melted into his skin. But he dint stop growing, he took few steps back as he dint want to crush anyone accidentally.

Max stopped growing after half a minute now 100 feet, bigger than King King. Max immediately thought of reverting and he did. After changing back he gave a look at Artemis, who was just as shocked as he was.

When he asked what had gone wrong seeing her expression, she replied, "I had tweaked your blessing so that you could turn into the animal you draw power from. But your blessing from your father, had drawn a bit of divinity from me and changed what I did. This is really some blessing you have, Maximus. But do not worry my divinity did not affect you, just strengthened your blessing."

Max chest was beating hard with excitement, he asked, "If that was not the surprise then what is?"

"I had reset your powers, you can now extract more powers without losing your previous set of powers. You can use them as long as you remember the animal. I would say, you can even use other powers of animals while you are transformed." Artemis replied, a hand on her chin, clearly intrigued.

"Well, this is a bigger gift than you had intended, but I would be a fool to refuse. And a fool, I am not. By the way, what do I do with this?" Max asked holding up the flask of blood he had collected earlier.

"The Calydonian Boar close to a divine beast, that regenerates after it is killed. Its blood offers the same to those who slay it on their own, without help. But I wouldn't suggest you to ingest it, for those who had previously done are just mindless beasts who can never die. Other than than that I see no use to it." Artemis said shaking her head. [Ehhh? Then why did she tell me to collect it. Whatever I'll find a use for it.]

After a few exchanges they had left for camp, the rest of the week, the whole camp was buzzing with the news of Max's new powers. Especially Nico and Percy, kept asking him to transform into a cheetah to take them for a ride.

----------×----------×----------×----------

Back to present, Max now had a new tattoo. It was a single huge tattoo of a tree on his back, twisting branches snaking up his shoulders, arms and lower back. Each branch represented an animal. He had taken the advice of Annabeth to help choose the aninals.

So far he had two new ones, he had drifted with a Peregrine falcon when he visited the same zoo where he drifted with a cheetah. He had to trap it with a tree branch before drifting with it. He released it, but just like Dee he did not want to leave the bird behind. So giving in to his selfish desires or was it fate? he did not know nor care. Max placed him on his new perch: on his shoulder.

Now he had another companion to take care of. Although he did mind taking care of another, he was constantly worried if it was a good decision on his part. After all he keeps getting into bloody fight all the time, sometimes searching for it himself.

Max had named him Zaphir (actual greek word- Zapheíri) meaning sapphire. He decided to go along naming them after gemstones in the greek language and since the actual word was a bit feminine for his taste, he changed it a bit. The short form for his name being Zee.

Both his companions took to each other very well and Max discovered something rather amazing. When he was training with Percy and Nico: who were becoming staunch friends and rivals, his right eye started giving him a different vision. He was seeing himself from the sky.

He immediately looked up to see Zee looking at him. He immediately understood what had happened. He tried the same thing with Dee, but got nothing. He started practicing the shared vision with Zee with amazing results. Zee even understood what Max was telling him, emotions and all.

The promised month end had come, time for Max to face the traitor, Luke Castellan.