But he was far from ordinary now. With deliberate focus, he altered his breathing pattern to match the subtle rhythms of divinity that pulsed through the mountain realm. Each inhale drew in not just air but the raw energy that sustained immortal existence.
"There," he whispered as the first tendrils of power flowed into him. "Like drinking sunlight."
The sensation began as warmth spreading from his lungs throughout his body, then intensified into pleasant electricity dancing along his nerves. His skin tingled as though touched by a thousand feather-light caresses.
Behind closed eyelids, patterns of light bloomed in fractal complexity.
"Come to me," he coaxed the divine energy. "Recognize what I truly am beneath this mortal shell."
Minutes stretched into hours as Donatos remained motionless, his only movement the steady rise and fall of his chest. Gradually, the god-essence accumulating within him reached a critical threshold.
Something fundamental shifted—a lock disengaging, a door swinging open to reveal forgotten chambers of possibility.
His eyes snapped open, now glowing with inner light. "My heritage stirs."
The transformation began slowly, then accelerated with breathtaking speed. His unremarkable servant's hair, cropped short for practicality, began to grow—not just lengthening but changing texture and hue. Dark brown lightened to pink-gold, then to a shimmering platinum with subtle rose undertones. It cascaded past his shoulders, down his back, each strand perfect in placement and luster.
"Mother's gift," he acknowledged with a bemused smile. "Always with the dramatic hair."
His facial structure shifted subtly—cheekbones rising to elegant prominence, jaw defining itself with aristocratic precision, lips gaining a natural fullness that poets would struggle to describe without resorting to fruit metaphors. His nose, once slightly crooked from some forgotten servant's accident, straightened to classical perfection.
Most dramatic was the change to his eyes. The ordinary brown irises dissolved into liquid light, reforming as kaleidoscopic wonders—primarily a piercing fuchsia pink, but shot through with facets of rose, and gold that shifted with his emotions and the angle of light.
"Aphrodite's eyes," he whispered, catching his reflection in the river's surface. "The eyes that launched a thousand ships—and sank twice as many."
His body underwent equally profound changes beneath his simple servant's garb.
Muscles reconfigured themselves according to divine proportions rather than mortal necessity. Strength aligned with beauty rather than mere functionality. His entire frame lengthened, gaining several inches in height while simultaneously becoming more graceful, more balanced.
Donatos rose to his feet, marveling at the perfect coordination of his transformed body. He flexed his hand, watching as the muscles rippled beneath skin now glowing with subtle radiance.
"Not yet the god I was," he assessed critically, "but no longer the mortal I appeared."
He gestured toward a small boulder at the river's edge—a stone that would have required three strong men to budge. With casual ease, he lifted it one-handed, feeling only the mildest exertion.
"The Blood of Atlas serves its purpose," he murmured with satisfaction, tossing the boulder several yards downstream. It landed with a splash that sent water fountaining into the night air.
Then came the most fascinating discovery. As he extended his hand toward the falling water droplets, a peculiar energy surged through his arm—not the expected lightning of Zeus, but something uniquely his own.
A flash of brilliant pink electricity arced from his fingertips, striking the water and momentarily illuminating the entire grotto in rosy light.
"Pink lightning?" Donatos laughed, the sound musical even to his own ears. "How perfectly ironic. Zeus's power filtered through the essence of love."
He experimentally fired several more bolts, each more controlled than the last. The pink energy responded to his will with increasing precision, dancing between his fingers like an affectionate pet. It carried all the destructive potential of true lightning, but with an unmistakable signature that marked it as uniquely his.
"Mother would find this amusing," he mused, watching the electricity play across his knuckles. "Her son, wielding the weapon of the King of Gods himself, but in her own color scheme."
His euphoria was short-lived, however, as a sobering realization dawned. This divine form—beautiful and powerful though it was—would instantly mark him as more than mortal to any god who glimpsed him.
His careful anonymity would be shattered.
"I need concealment," he muttered, concentrating on another gift inherited from Aphrodite—one less known to the pantheon at large.
Illusion magic shimmered around him like heat distortion above desert sands. His mother was mistress of appearance, not just in creating beauty but in manipulating perception itself. It was a talent she had shared only with her true-born son, considering it too intimate a power to teach even her lovers.
"Show what they expect to see," Donatos commanded the magic flowing through him. "The unremarkable servant, nothing more."
The transformation reversed itself—or appeared to. His gloriously long hair seemed to recede, his enhanced physique diminished, his perfect features blurred back into pleasant ordinariness. To any observer, he would appear exactly as he had that morning—the same forgettable servant who had polished platters and folded linens.
Yet beneath this magical shroud, his true form remained. The illusion was perfect—not a mere visual trick but a comprehensive deception that would fool all senses. Even the sound of his voice, the weight of his footsteps, the sensation of his skin if touched—all calibrated to reinforce the façade of mortality.
"Perfect," he declared, examining his disguised reflection in the water. "Not even Athena herself could penetrate this disguise with mere perception. Only Mother might sense something amiss, and I must stay far from her gaze."
Secure in his concealment, Donatos spent the remaining hours of darkness testing his newfound abilities. He raced through the forest at impossible speeds, leaving barely a footprint in the soft earth.
He lifted boulders that should have been immovable, tossed them playfully as though they were pebbles. He practiced controlling his pink lightning, learning to modulate its intensity from gentle sparks to devastating bolts that left small craters in the riverbank.
"Progress," he reminded himself when frustration threatened, "takes time. This is merely the first stage."
Indeed, he could feel how much farther he had to go. The capabilities awakening within him were impressive by mortal standards but pale shadows of what he once commanded as Alexios. His former power had made the pantheon itself tremble—this was merely a promising beginning.
As dawn threatened the eastern horizon, Donatos restored his illusory disguise to full strength and began the journey back to the palace. He moved with deliberate restraint, careful not to betray his transformation through unconscious grace or speed.
"Patience," he counseled himself. "The servant must play his role while the god beneath grows stronger. Day by day, night by night."
He paused at the edge of the forest, looking back at the secluded river that had witnessed his partial rebirth. A smile touched his lips—not the bland expression of a servant but the confident curve of a predator who has tasted first blood.
"Soon," he promised the distant peaks of Olympus, "you'll learn that some servants carry thunderbolts of their own."
As if in answer, a flock of doves—his mother's sacred birds—took flight from a nearby olive grove, their wings catching the first gold of morning. Coincidence, surely. Or perhaps, just perhaps, the first whisper of recognition from powers too ancient to ignore the stirring of destiny.