Chapter 328: The Drowned army 2
From beneath the waves, shapes began to rise. Not mortals. Not beasts. Not living.
The first were sailors — bones wrapped in kelp, skulls glowing faintly with abyssal fire. Their sockets burned with Poseidon’s will, and they clutched rusted swords that dripped brine. Their armor was mismatched, stolen from wrecks centuries gone.
Then came warriors of empires long buried, their bronze helmets green with corrosion, shields heavy with barnacles. Spears jutted out from their ribs, but still they marched, step by step, forming lines in the rising tide.
And then came things older still. Creatures that had drowned before mortals walked the earth. Serpents made of coral and bone. Leviathans whose spines arched like bridges. A thousand voices roared together — not in unity, but in rage.
The Drowned Army had awakened.
"Abominations!" cried Seraphin, goddess of flame, wings igniting into a blaze so bright it seared the tide back for a heartbeat. "He dares wield corpses against the divine?"
Aegirion, the young tide-god who had once walked beside him, gripped his trident with trembling hands. His voice was hoarse. "Not corpses... memory. He has called every lost soul the sea has ever taken."
From the heights of Olympus, Zephyros, lord of judgment, lifted his great spear. His golden eyes narrowed. "Then we shall break the sea’s memory. Burn it from the marrow of time."
The coalition of gods surged forward. Fire, storm, stone, and light crashed into the tide. Their powers carved craters into the flood, vaporizing waves, scattering bones, breaking shields. The drowned army staggered — but they did not fall.
For every soldier shattered, three more rose. For every beast slain, another clawed free of the depths.
The sea was endless. And Poseidon had given it a voice.
"Rise higher!" Poseidon thundered, spinning his trident in a great arc. The waters obeyed, forming a spiral wall around Olympus itself. "Strike them not as soldiers, but as waves!"
The drowned surged as one.
Thousands leapt in unison, carried not by muscle but by current. Rusted blades clanged against divine steel. Rotted shields absorbed blasts of holy fire. Leviathans snapped their jaws shut around lightning-charged chariots, dragging them screaming beneath the flood.
Seraphin’s flames seared dozens at a time, but the smoke only thickened the air. Nymera’s shadows cut through drowned flesh, but every fragment only sank and reformed again.
The gods began to understand. This was not an army that could be slain. This was an army that was the sea itself.
And the sea did not die.
Zephyros descended with a roar, spear wreathed in thunder. He struck directly at Poseidon, cleaving through waves, scattering drowned warriors in his path. The force split the tide for miles.
But Poseidon met him head-on.
Their weapons collided. The trident caught the divine spear, and the shockwave tore through heaven and sea alike. Mountains crumbled. Storms bled. Mortals miles away fell to their knees as reality quaked.
"You were judged once, Poseidon," Zephyros spat. "Banished for the crime of your abyss. Yet you return to poison the world again."
Poseidon’s laugh was low, dark, and relentless. "Judge the tide if you wish. See if it listens."
He shoved forward. The sea surged with him. Zephyros staggered as a wave the size of Olympus itself crashed against his wings, dragging him into the flood.
A cheer rose from the drowned, not with joy, but with the fury of countless unfinished deaths.
But the gods were not idle.
Seraphin soared high, wings of fire spanning leagues. She spread her arms, and a sun ignited in her palms, white-hot and merciless. With a cry, she hurled it down, burning through thousands of drowned in a single instant. The flood hissed, boiling into steam.
At the same moment, Aegirion lunged through the waves, striking at Poseidon with his trident. "If you will not relent, then I will end you myself!"
Their tridents met.
Water clashed with water, but it was not equal. Poseidon’s ocean was endless, abyssal, while Aegirion’s tide was shallow in comparison. The younger god faltered, waves splitting around him.
"Still clinging to Olympus," Poseidon sneered. "You were never meant for chains."
He drove Aegirion into the flood, forcing him beneath the surface, where a thousand drowned hands grasped at him like anchors.
Poseidon lifted his trident high, and the drowned army roared in unison.
"NOW!"
The sea itself bent.
The flood did not simply crash — it inverted. Water rose in pillars, twisting into massive serpents of brine and bone. Each one carried hundreds of drowned warriors along its spine. The serpents struck, coiling around Olympus’s towers, dragging divine structures into the abyss.
The gods fought back desperately. Spears of light skewered serpents. Chains of gold wrapped drowned leviathans. Flame scorched the waves.
But for every serpent slain, another climbed free of the trench. For every chain, the tide only grew heavier.
And at the heart of it all, Poseidon’s voice carried through storm and flame:
"You chained me once. You cast me into the Rift. You thought the sea could be forgotten."
He thrust his trident into the flood.
"Now remember what it means to DROWN."
The drowned army surged again, a tidal wave made of souls, beasts, and salt. Olympus itself groaned under the weight.
The gods faltered.
The sea was not meant to breach Olympus. Its waters belonged below, chained to the mortal world. Yet now, rivers of salt cut through the sky-palace, waterfalls crashing from the heavens to the earth.
Mortals below looked up in terror as droplets of divine flood fell upon their fields, burning them to salt. The war above was no longer contained.
Zephyros, dragging himself free of the flood, shouted over the chaos. "If we do not stop him now, Olympus will fall!"
But Seraphin’s flames flickered. Aegirion struggled in the grasp of the drowned. The gods bled, their light dimming.
And Poseidon only grew stronger.
The drowned army chanted without voices, their skulls alight, their empty sockets turned upward. Every soldier was an echo. Every beast was a memory. Together, they formed the single truth that all the gods feared most:
The sea had no master but itself.
Poseidon stood tall amid the chaos, his trident raised, his army endless. For the first time in eons, the gods looked not at a rival... but at inevitability.
And Olympus tilted under the weight of the tide.