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LiFS Chapter 7 - Marooned
🕑 Added 2023-10-08 21:00:03 +0000 UTCHours later, curled up on a makeshift bed of soft sand and wrapped in a blanket of warm currents, my eyes finally closed as sleep took me into its comforting embrace. It had been a very long two days and I was utterly exhausted.
Despite my weariness, sleep did not come easily to me tonight. My conversation with the Undersiders had left me with far too many questions and far too few answers. They were just… people. Ordinary mortals with mortal problems and mortal ideas. Well, maybe they weren’t quite ordinary mortals, ordinary mortals didn’t have super powers after all, but they weren’t gods, monsters, demigods, or anything else I had ever seen in my life.
They were just so very human. These weren’t cartoon supervillains like I remembered seeing in movies, with their grand plans and impractical ambitions. Grue, Bitch, Tattletale, and Regent were all doing this for such… common reasons. Simple mortal greed and necessity combined with supernatural abilities. I didn’t know how I felt about it. How I was supposed to feel about it.
In the end, I’d spent about ten minutes interrogating the group before I finally let them go. Tattletale had proven to be a fountain of information, happily answering each and every question I bothered to ask about the other local villains. I hadn’t learned all that much more than what I’d already seen online, but I found hearing it again from someone to be much more informative than reading it all myself.
Somehow, the biggest shock tonight had been seeing a perfectly ordinary dog climb out of the fleshy remains of the monster I’d knocked aside. Bitch had cleaned the dog off somewhat with a towel and then done something that made a new meat suit to grow around it until there were once more three giant monsters. Well, not monsters. Just ordinary dogs in monster costumes apparently. That had been very, very weird.
Despite my curiosity, I had held back in checking if Riptide could hurt the dog itself. The information would probably have been rather valuable, but it would have also needlessly antagonized the dog-loving girl. It was something I would have to do sooner or later––it would be really, really bad if my sword suddenly passed through someone while I was fighting them instead of, well, stabbing them––but that could wait for now.
After I’d let the Undersiders leave, the villains bounding off into the distance on the backs of their dog-monster-thingies, I’d spent another few hours wandering futilely around the docks before finding an abandoned pier and diving back into the sea for the night. I needed time to process and decompress, and a full night’s rest in the depths of my dad’s domain sounded like just what the doctor ordered.
Of course it was never going to be that simple. It never was for a demigod. My eyes closed at the bottom of the sea and opened within the crumbling ruin of an ancient temple.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I mumbled, my voice echoing within the confines of my mind. “Of all the nights…”
The temple sat at the peak of a mountain, surrounded on all sides by little more than barren rock and scraggly bushes. A winding road led past the ruins and down towards a distant town. Far below I could feel the sea, gentle waves lapping the hulls of small fishing boats and crashing against high cliffs.
I felt at home. At peace. This was where I belonged. For a moment I could almost imagine that I was standing in the halls of Atlantis, surrounded by pillars of shining coral and warm water.
This place was mine, something familiar in an alien world. For the first time in days I could feel the comforting echo of my Father’s power, a boundless storm of the ocean’s fury lurking just out of sight, but tinged with warmth and love.
I took a step forward and ran my hand along sun-kissed marble. I could feel the sea in it, in every inch of once-pristine marble now worn and weathered by the passage of time and the hands of man. This place had been loved and cherished once. The target of countless pilgrimages and hopeful petitioners.
In my mind's eye, I could almost see the temple’s former glory. Echoes of prayer and sacrifice rang in my ears like forgotten song lyrics, ancient Greek words hanging at the tip of my tongue before fading into darkness. Burnt offerings filled my nose and I smiled as I remembered joyful meals at Camp.
The place was beautiful. Perhaps it was not the match of the temples I’d seen on Mount Olympus or within Atlantis, but so much more because this place had been made by mortal hands. Craftsmen had poured their lives and souls into this place, seeing the beauty within the marble and freeing it to see the light of day.
A statue of Poseidon dominated the temple, bronze polished to a mirror-gleam and easily thrice the height of a mortal man. His face was twisted into a dark scowl, but I could see humor glinting in his bronze eyes and the barest hint of a smile in his teeth. This too was mortal work and made so much more because of it.
Beneath it stood the altar, heaped with gifts and sacrifices. Bronze brazier burned with green and orange fires, casting dancing shadows on the walls and filling the room with warmth and light. A child sat against the back wall, staring up at the statue as she carefully whittled a stick with a bronze knife. She raised her makeshift trident into the air, comparing it against the statue’s bronze weapon, and smiled. The statue smiled back and she vanished into memory.
Faint shapes moved around me––priests, sailors, and countless others; shadows of shadows without mass or substance brushed against my skin and moved through me as though I wasn’t there. Some few were darker, richer than others. I could see faint impressions of familiar green eyes and black hair. They came and went bearing sacrifices and singing prayers for safety and fair weather.
I was in Greece––the Ancient Land. Maybe I wasn’t standing in the sea itself, but this place remembered that it had once been just as much within my Father’s domain as any ocean current. Cape Sounion. I mouthed the name, rolling it on my tongue and searching my memories.
I had never heard of it before, but the name was written in the waters around me. The Aegean Sea sang like no waters I had ever ventured within, danger and riches both hiding just beneath the surface. My silent question was answered by the sea-breeze and the crashing of the waves far below.
The Mist was thicker here. Just a little, but after hours of focusing the difference was instantly apparent. It lurked within the stone and billowed in the wake of nameless shadows. My voice joined in alongside a severe-faced priest’s prayer, my words inaudible even to me, and the Mist swirled and sang with every word.
I blinked and suddenly I was in another time. Looking to the horizon, I could almost see a fleet of black-sailed ships. Upon the cliffs stood a sobbing man in the garb of a king. He raised his hands to the sky and cast himself down the mountainside, plunging into the merciless depths below with nary a splash.
Moments later, he was replaced by a man that could have been my twin. Jet black hair and sea-green eyes stared back at me from an older, nobler face. This time I needed no aid to know before whom I stood. I soundlessly mouthed the name of one of my most famed half-brothers. Theseus, founder of Athens. Son of Poseidon.
He turned towards me and smiled ruefully. I smiled back. It felt almost like looking in a mirror. Here we were, two brothers separated by nearly three millennia, yet united by divine blood and the death of one uppity cow. Then he took one look down towards the sea, wiped tears from his eyes, and vanished beyond the horizon.
Countless more images flashed past me and the world changed with every moment. Priests came and went, the land shifted with the seasons, roads were built and washed away by rain, and wooden vessels grew more and more complex and sophisticated.
Finally, another black-haired, sea-green eyed man stood before me. He looked old. Tired. Barely more than the idea of a man. There was no priest in the temple. No sacrifice on the altar. No prayers echoing in my ears. He leaned heavily on a golden trident covered in barnacles.
I recognized him. How could I not? His smile had warmed my dreams as a child and in the past six months I’d spent more time with him than almost any demigod child could dream of. “Poseidon?” I called out. “Dad?”
He did not respond. A single tear ran slowly down his nose and then fell down, down, down to splash silently into the emerald waves. Waters raged and storm winds blew. When they passed, nothing but the faint smell of the sea and an invisible glimmer of gold remained.
Then even that was gone. “Dad?” I asked softly. There was no answer.
A profound, overwhelming sense of loss filled me, grief crashing against the hole in my heart where Annabeth had once been and knocking my legs out from under me. I knelt alone surrounded by sixteen weathered columns and bare fragments of once well-polished marble. I could still smell the sea, still feel the salty breeze ruffling my hair, but there was something missing.
I was there for what felt like an eternity, tears leaking down my cheeks like rain water pouring down a storm drain. I didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. What? Why? How? The world felt cold and empty. Something crucial was gone and the world knew it, even if people could not see the hole.
Eventually the tears ran dry. I rose to my feet and walked forward, stopping at the edge of the cliff where once King Aegeus had stood and looked out for the sails of his son’s returning ships. There was a storm on the horizon, dark and terrible, but painfully mundane. There was no eagle fighting a horse, no flying chariot or Master Bolt. Only water vapor, strong winds, and the faint smell of salt and ozone.
Something glimmered in the depths. Something gold. It called to me. The sight of it made the ichor in my veins twist and writhe in agitation. It was something familiar, but unknown. Mine but forbidden to me.
‘This is not the time,’ a voice whispered suddenly in my ear. Sand and rock shifted beneath my feet until I stood facing the temple ruins with my back to the sea.
There was something here. Something massive. Just out of sight. Just out of reach. The weight of countless millennia pressed down on my shoulders. The voice was weak and tired. It sounded small and scared, a child asking their mother to check for a monster under their bed, and yet it dwarfed me like a mountain dwarfs an ant. The voice was familiar, but not. A different note played on the same instrument
I looked up at the sky and found that it had been replaced by a sea of stars. Something lurked up there, two coiling shapes that blocked out the sun and dwarfed the moon. It hurt to look, hurt to see. There was something in the way, not the Mist, not anything I’d ever seen before, but a massive hand peeled back the curtain for a single fraction of a moment. ‘Know. Awaken, but do not forget.’
My eyes shot open, my brain feeling like it was about to burst out of my skull and burning knives stabbing my eyes. Well, that was certainly one way to spend the night. Not nearly as restful as I would have liked, but… informative. I had so many questions and no one to ask them. Just the way I liked it… Not. Sometimes it really did feel like the Fates hated me. Stupid old ladies with their stupid giant socks.
