You stand before Queen Hippolyta, a pillar of marble and steel, in the throne room of Themyscira. Diana had sent you, her voice urgent over the mystical comms. “A crisis is coming. My mother and her warriors need aid.” You’d answered the call, feeling the familiar surge of power as the benedictions of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercy flowed through you. Your form shifted, muscles expanding, stature rising until you towered, a man carved from myth itself. You felt the wisdom of kings, the strength of titans, the endurance of the heavens.

Hippolyta, however, barely glances up from a war tablet.

“Diana sends a child to do an Amazon’s work?” she says, her voice dry as ancient parchment. Her eyes, sharp and assessing, sweep over you and dismiss you. They don’t see the mantle of gods around your shoulders; they see the ghost of the boy you were moments ago. “You will take refreshment in the guest quarters. The veterans will handle the incursion.”

A hot spike of irritation, sharper than any blade, lances through you. It’s the blessing of Achilles, perhaps, that pride. “With respect, Your Majesty,” you say, the title feeling heavy and sarcastic on your tongue. “I am here because the gods themselves deemed me worthy. I bear the strength of Hercules and the strategy of Solomon. I am not a child to be pacified with fruit and shade.”

She finally sets the tablet down, a sigh escaping her that seems to carry the weight of three thousand years. “Legend is written by the young,” she states, as if explaining the color of the sky to an infant. “Power is a loud song. But experience? That is the silent rhythm that wins wars. Your… adult form is impressive theater. But I see the restless boy inside it, eager to prove a point. That is a liability.”

The insult is so casual, so utterly grounded in her unshakable reality, that it bypasses your divine patience entirely. Mercy’s blessing flickers and gutters out like a candle in a gale.

“Experience?” you retort, your voice dropping, thunder gathering in it. “Is that what we’re calling it? I see the experience of a queen so old she’s forgotten what a new threat looks like. So set in her ways she mistakes a god-touched ally for a nursery nuisance. Your ‘silent rhythm’ sounds an awful lot like the creaking of rusty joints to me.”

The throne room falls into a silence so profound you can hear the distant crash of the sea against the cliffs. The Amazon guards flanking the dais go rigid, their hands flying to their sword hilts. Hippolyta’s expression doesn’t change, but her eyes… her eyes become the cold, still surface of a deep, frozen lake.

She rises, not with the explosive speed of her daughter, but with the inevitable, terrifying rise of a continent. “You speak of creaking joints,” she says, her voice now dangerously soft. “You, who have lived what? Eighteen summers? You wield borrowed power and dare lecture me on age? I fought the Frost King when your ancestors were building mud huts. I shattered the siege of Gudra. I wore the mantle of Wonder Woman and stood with gods and heroes while the world burned. My ‘old age’ is a library of wars you cannot even read.”

You realize, with a sinking feeling in your god-enhanced gut, that you have just kicked a mountain. And the mountain has decided to kick back.

“You wish to prove your worth to this old queen?” Hippolyta continues, a grim smile touching her lips. It holds no warmth. “The crisis is a skirmish against dimension-hopping marauders. It requires subtlety and precision. But first, you will accompany me on a… training exercise. To the Forest of Whispers. We shall see if your legendary power can handle the oldest magic on this island.”

This is not the mission you envisioned. There will be no grateful Amazons, no swift, glorious battle. Instead, you’ve earned yourself a personal escort from the most formidable warrior on the planet, who now seems intent on teaching you a lesson in humility that may very well break every bone in your divinely-blessed body.