Chapter 327: The Drowned army 1
Nymera, the Shadow-Walker, clung to the shifting mist at the edge of the floods. Her face was pale, her robes torn, yet her voice still carried venom.
And Aegirion, the youngest of them, battered and bleeding from where Poseidon’s waves had crushed his ribs, still clutched his trident. His voice was hoarse, but his spirit burned.
"You’ve taken half the world into your tide," Zephyros thundered, voice echoing across the deluge. "But we are not broken, drowned god. Olympus still stands. And we will not let you claim the rest."
Poseidon tilted his head slightly. The faintest smile touched his lips.
"Olympus." His voice was low, rumbling like shifting tectonic plates. "You mistake yourselves. I do not care for Olympus. I care for the debt it owes. The seas did not forget the shackles you forged. And neither did I."
Water rose behind him, sculpting into colossal shapes—serpents of brine, warriors of foam, the memory of drowned titans. Their hollow eyes stared at the gods like accusations.
Nymera’s laugh was bitter. "Debt? You speak as though you are still one of us. But you are no longer Poseidon. You are abyss made flesh. You are Thalorin in all but name."
At that name, silence fell.
Poseidon’s eyes narrowed, and the tide around him trembled.
"Thalorin is dead," he said, though his voice cracked the ocean floor beneath him. "What lives now is not abyss alone, not god alone. I am what your fear created. I am what your silence nurtured. I am the tide that remembers."
He raised his trident.
The ocean screamed.
Whirlpools spun faster, dragging broken citadels and shattered ships into their maws. The sky dimmed, as though the sun itself bent beneath the weight of his will. And then, without warning, Poseidon surged forward.
The clash began anew.
---
The Clash of Storm and Sea
Zephyros struck first. Lightning spears rained down in a blinding torrent, each bolt large enough to split mountains. But Poseidon did not dodge. He lifted his trident, and the lightning met the tide. For a moment the sky was filled with steam—hissing clouds rising as saltwater swallowed light.
From the mist, Poseidon’s figure lunged. His trident tore through air, and the force of it ripped apart entire swaths of stormcloud. Zephyros barely twisted aside, his wings scorched by the backlash.
Nymera struck next. Shadows thickened like ink, binding Poseidon’s legs, clinging to him like chains. They writhed upward, trying to choke the ocean god, trying to strangle the abyss within him. For a heartbeat, the sea stilled.
And then Poseidon laughed.
The shadows turned liquid. Black water surged back into Nymera’s throat, gagging her with her own power. She staggered, coughing seawater that had never touched her lips.
"You cannot bind what has no end," Poseidon said coldly.
But Aegirion did not hesitate. His trident, glowing with divine azure light, pierced through the waves, stabbing straight toward Poseidon’s chest. This time, the strike landed.
Steel bit flesh. Blood, dark as the deep sea, spilled into the water. The ocean shuddered with it.
Poseidon’s gaze dropped to the wound, then rose to meet Aegirion’s furious stare.
"Good," Poseidon murmured. "You’ve learned to strike the tide rather than fear it."
Then his hand closed around the shaft of the trident. With a twist, he snapped it in two.
Aegirion screamed as the backlash burned his veins. Poseidon’s counterstroke hurled him across the battlefield, his body smashing through waves and crashing against a half-submerged mountain.
---
Olympus Watches
Far above, where mortal eyes could not see, Olympus itself watched. The gods not present in battle clustered around the divine mirrors, their voices clashing like weapons.
"He bleeds, but he does not fall!" cried Seraphin, flames dancing from her lips. "What god can bleed so much and not weaken?"
"Not a god," muttered the reef goddess bitterly. "A ruin given flesh."
The arbiter’s voice cut through their panic: "Poseidon must not be allowed to triumph. If he breaks these three, no one can hold him back. Send reinforcements. Summon the ancient wards."
But another voice, trembling and soft, rose among them. "Or perhaps... we face what we made."
It was Aegirion’s sister, one of the youngest goddesses. Her eyes glistened as she watched Poseidon’s endless tide surge against her kin. "Perhaps we do not kill him. Perhaps we listen."
The chamber roared in protest, but she did not back down.
---
The Drowned Memory
Back on the battlefield, Poseidon paused for the first time.
Blood still seeped from his wound. It darkened the water, staining it. But it was not weakness in his eyes. It was memory.
His gaze grew distant, unfocused, as though the world itself had fallen away.
Beneath the sea, in the marrow of his being, something whispered.
Not Thalorin.
Not Dominic.
The drowned voices of mortals. Cities long lost. Sailors forgotten by the gods. Kingdoms swallowed whole, left to rot in silence.
They cried out through him.
We did not forget.
We did not forgive.
Poseidon’s fingers tightened on his trident. His voice thundered, not to the gods before him, but to the world itself.
"You called me drowned god. Then hear the drowned. Hear the silence you left in your wake. Every tide is a grave. Every wave, a memory. And I—" his eyes blazed, "—am their answer."
The ocean convulsed. From its depths rose towers of coral, wreckage of ancient ships, bones of leviathans. A graveyard reshaped into an army.
Zephyros, Nymera, and the broken Aegirion braced themselves.
For the battle had only begun.
The battlefield was no longer a field. It was a graveyard of shattered heavens.
Clouds churned black, lightning cracked against tides that rose higher than mountains, and the very skies of Olympus bled saltwater. The gods had come in force, three pantheons aligned in one terrifying coalition. Their banners burned like suns above their heads, their weapons gleamed with the brilliance of ages. They had gathered to end him.
But Poseidon did not kneel.
He stood waist-deep in the flood he had conjured, hair dark and matted, eyes glowing like bottomless trenches. Around him the sea pulsed, heavy with hunger, waiting for his command.
"You think me alone?" Poseidon’s voice rolled like a storm surge, shaking the mountains of Olympus. "The sea remembers. The drowned do not sleep."
He raised his trident.
The ocean answered.