A good twenty minutes of hiking through increasingly dense jungle later, and Cassandra was wishing she'd brought a machete, or a kukri, or some other sort of similiar blade. There was a diving knife back among the supplies, but it wouldn't do for this thick underbrush that kept slowing her down, forcing her to push through it with great effort and frustration.
"Friggin' tropical bu-" She was stopped short of swearing as she finally pushed through a particularly stubborn thicket and straight into... a camp. At least, what had once been a camp. One could still spot the tattered remains of tents, an old firepit, bags and boxes that had all been long ripped open and emptied. It looked old, terribly old - this camp had to date back centuries at least.
It was a strange sight that was soon forgotten as her eyes drew up to something far greater. Just a bit farther up the stream, hidden among the thick foliage, was a structure - a pyramid. Blocky in construction, just like the ones that might be found in old Aztec ruins, and absolutely massive. Its top very nearly towered above the highest trees around, and its base sprawled out to the width of a football field, easily.
A gasp left her mouth, followed by a fully completed expletive. "Holy shit!" She stared in amazement, approaching with mouth hung wide open. Unlike the camp, this place was absolutely immaculate! The stones of the pyramid were polished, their texture smooth and unblemished as if they'd only just been brought here. Maybe she needed to change her major to archaeology - she'd just made a career-making find, after all!
Of course, changing her major required getting back home alive, a possibility that seemed to grow slightly dimmer as she saw the one blemish on this amazing place. Seated at the base of the pyramid's steps, her blue eyes fell upon the unmistakable sight of a skeleton. Some sort of ancient garb was draped over the bones. Arms were outstetched, reaching towards what looked to be a club - a nasty one, with little blades of sharp rock sticking out all around the main body.
Curiousity thoroughly piqued, she couldn't resist the urge to reach out and grip the handle. The wood was still quite firm, not feeling the least bit old or rotted - but this was hardly worth focusing on. Not once she heard the thundering, feminine voice reverberate all around her. "A NEW HAND TOUCHES THE BLADE!"
"What the fuck?!" The phrasing brought images to her head, nightmares of another woman's voice shouting about beacons and mountains and temples. She jumped back, still gripping the strange weapon, and swearing mentally that if this voice told her to return it to that mountain in the distance, she was going to hop in the ocean and take her chances swimming home.
Thankfully, the accented voice's next words were not quite so awful. "A new defender for the temple!" There seemed to be a hint of glee in the way the voice spoke. Cassandra spun around, trying to find the source of it, only to get her answer a moment later. "Not around you! In your hand, foolish girl!"
Her eyes shot back down to the club, blade, whatever thing. "I - what?!"
"In your hands! The weapon! Like I just said!"
This couldn't be happening. She hadn't even been here a day - surely she couldn't be hallucinating already. "You're not hallicinating at all, girl!" The redhead's brow furrowed, but the voice kept going on. "Oh, and such a fine specimen to start with! We'll have to make improvements, of course, but such a better place to start than the last few!"
Her mouth opened a little to begin asking what in the hell that even meant, but she substitued questions for a gasp as the hilt began to emit a soft golden glow. She willed her hand to open and drop the freakish weapon, but her digits refused to respond. The glow spread, moving up the weapon, and soon her arm was being engulfed by the strange light.
She had expected it to hurt, thought for a moment that she'd picked up some cursed object that was going to eat her alive. Instead, it felt... warm. Pleasantly warm. It... even felt... kind of nice. Nice? What the - this couldn't possibly feel nice! There was freaky light spreading over her body! And yet... it felt good. Like a massage, almost, delicate hands traveling up her arm, tingling at her muscles.
'Good' transitioned to a much stronger feeling as the sensation spread to her chest. There was a sensation of being pulled, yanked forward by her bust and squeezed in the same. She gasped at the roiling wave of pleasure that was produced, eyes shutting tight as that same feeling seemed to join in with the inexorable tide of the spreading light. Comforting warmth turned to heat of passion that boiled in every muscle fiber. Her whole body seemed to feel yet more tugs, yanked and pulled in every single direction.
She dropped to her knees, one hand keeping a white-knuckle grip on the blade's hilt, the other grasping a handful of the dirt and crushing it beneath her fingers. Bent over, she panted heavily, breaths becoming loud moans once the blaze permeated her most private regions. She screamed, sending flocks of birds rushing out of trees and into the air, wishing she could will a hand to attend to the fire burning out of control in her womanhood.
It proved unnecessecary as the feeling finally cascaded over the last bits of her body, and finally, she found release. A burst of excitement greater than any she'd ever imagined, so powerful that it sent her sprawling out onto her back in a breathless state, eyes finally wide open and staring into the sky for... well, she had no idea how long. The aftershocks robbed her of all sense of time, of any feeling beyond the simple, carnal ecstacy that still lingered within her.
The sky was beginning to shift to orange hues when she finally rolled over, struggling to reach her feet. She looked out across the stream, blurry vision coming into focus as she looked at the forest around -
Forest?
Her mind began to shake awake at a far greater pace as she took everything in. The stream was the same, the roll of the land hadn't changed - but where once there had been thick jungle, there was now a thick forest. She looked at the pyramid once more, and where it had stood, there was no further trace of South American architecture. Instead she saw the rising white columns of an immaculate parthenon, a temple befitting a Greek god far more than any Aztec deity.
It was all off, and very quickly, she realized that it wasn't off merely for the change in scenery. Everything seemed... lower? She looked down, and was certain that the dirt was farther away, as if the body between her and the ground was... taller? But, no... really, it wasn't even her body. Not the one she'd gotten shipwrecked with, at least.
Beyond simply the greater height, her whole form was just... something else. Her muscles, just barely visible before, were now incredibly pronounced - still mounted on a slender frame, but rippling with definition, screaming of raw strength. Her hand moved to feel her chest, a hardened sick-pack greeting her before it bumped into... metal. And with that, she finally realized that her clothes had too changed, replaced with a leather skirt, bronze armor on her legs and forearms, down to the sandals on her feet.
Cast in the same bronze was her breastplate, a piece of armor that had the most difficult job of all. She'd always been a woman with a fairly average chest, but there was nothing average about the basketball-sized endowments that now hung from her front, pushed up by the straining leather and metal that struggled to keep everything contained. They should've dragged her down to the ground with sheet weight, but if anything, they felt lighter than before - or she was just monumentally stronger now.
"What... in the... fuck...?" She took an uneasy step forward to find the sword lying at her feet - an actual sword now. A short blade held within a leather scabbard. She leaned down, an act slightly more difficult with the new bulges on her front, to pick up the weapon, and was quickly met with a voice again. Its accent had changed, now far more Greek than before, but the tone remained unmistakable. "Ohhhh, you've come out so perfect, my dear girl! You'll be the finest protector this place has ever had!"