Hypotheon and the Centaurs of Mt Edgcumbe

I was walking along the coastal path of Mt Edgcumbe one day. As the path curved round and the woodland thinned a little I saw a colossal horse-like creature tromping around the coast. In the waking world, the coastline of Mt Edgcumbe slopes down to sea level but in this dream it was a daunting cliff that sheer dropped about 100 metres to the sea below. The horse creature was as tall as the cliff and freely stepped between land and sea. I halted my progress to watch the thing: it was moving rather aimlessly, along the beach at the bottom of the cliff. Then it started to turn around. As it turned, I saw its titanic animal body had the face of a human, equally as enormous. It paused briefly as if it had seen me, staring in my direction, but it continued its turn and jumped from the shore at the bottom of the cliff, into the sea throwing up pluming spouts of white water and sending forth powerful, surging waves.

I continued walking, knowing that to get to the path which would take me away from the titan, I first had to get closer to it. The creature was still very far away and I was confident that it had not detected me. 

I was wrong. 

As I walked, the giant moved, unseen, right to my location. The path was suddenly thrown into shadow as the creature craned its chimera neck over the trees above me, its human face staring right down at me. Here I got a closer, horrifying look at the thing's face. Its eyes were wide, blue, and did not seem to move or their pupils focus, I might have fancied they were unseeing. Its mouth was closed, neutral and impassive, but easily large enough to devour me, and the scenery around me, in a single bite. I was stuck to the spot, looking back at the creature like it would do me some good. The towering face pulled away and I hoped to hope it would dismiss me as harmless and go back to its tromping. 

It did not. 

Almost too soon did two prodigious human hands, attached to its brown horse limbs, reach down from the sky in an attempt to scoop, crush or otherwise capture me. I luckily evaded but watched as the hands moved straight through the earth as if the solid ground were not even there. They closed, and withdrew, taking the entire landscape within them cleanly away, almost with surgical precision. I looked at the newfound slope where roots and shoots, now exposed, jutted confusedly out. There amongst the soil was a human skull with a clean, scooping cut, showing the same fate as the terrain. I was not the first person this Goliath had attacked. I gathered my wits and fled. 

Later on, I dreamt (within the dream) of a symbol resembling the greek letter "Phi" but with two other lines within the character:

The symbol glowed in the dark with a steady orange, like fired metal in a forge. The name "Hypotheon" filled my head. Then the vision ended. 

I came back to Mt Edgcumbe, fueled by my fascination with the giant horse-human. Perhaps guided by the vision of "Hypotheon" I came to a low cave. I pressed into the stony dark and shortly came across a small wooden door bearing the symbol I had prophesied. I tried the door and it opened readily. Beyond the door was a small, dark chamber within the cave that had simple wooden furniture and a fire pit. It looked as though someone lived here, modest though it may have been. 

After a time the door opened and a hooded figure appeared quiet and dark through the doorway, not seeming to let the daylight in behind them. They were carrying a bundle of firewood that seemed to me too heavy for a human to carry. They did not start, or flee upon seeing me, it seemed almost like they were expecting me. The figure kept its hood raised but revealed to me its name was "Hypotheon"1.

Hypotheon explained to me that he was once one of three centaurs that lived at Mt Edgcumbe. Over time Hypotheon and his wife became more interested in the human world and had given up their wildness, becoming human in form but retaining some centaur traits, for example the increased strength. He then explained the third centaur had rejected his humanity and sought to become fully wild. This third centaur was the colossus I had encountered earlier. He explained that through seeking to be feral the creature had attuned to the power of the wild and grown to colossal proportions2. Hypotheon told me that he lived in this cave with his wife out of fear of encountering the colossus centaur. 

Authors notes: 

1: Hypotheon isn't necessarily a real name, but it does contain two elements that have meaning in Greek. "Hypo-" means "under" or "beneath" and "Theos" meaning "God". Put them together and you get "Under God", perhaps Hypotheon was a semi-deity, or lost his godhood in pursuit of attuning with humanity. This led me to affectionately naming the giant centaur "Hypertheon, "hyper" meaning "above" in Greek, though this was a decision in the waking world, not within the dream itself.

2: Hypotheon never made the transformation process clear, but I like to imagine the centaurs needed an element of humanity to transform, to have that kind of magic. As Hypertheon sought the wild and rejected his humanity, he lost his ability to transform before fully achieving horse form, meaning he was stuck forever with a human face and human hands. I never saw his hind-limbs but perhaps they were human feet.