Chapter 148: gods in chains
The laughter that answered was not carried on the wind—it bloomed inside his skull. It was ancient, cold, and maddening, like the shifting grind of glaciers under the sea.
"Child of mortality," Thalorin’s voice slithered, deep as the abyss. "You wear a god’s name like a mask, but names do not make gods. Power does. And mine is older than Olympus, older than time itself."
The waters around Poseidon darkened, a pulse of shadow spreading out from his chest. For a heartbeat, the ocean seemed to bow to something deeper than him, something buried. His lungs tightened, his hands trembled, and his trident flickered with unstable light.
"No," he hissed through clenched teeth, forcing his knees to lock. "I’ve already lived powerless once. I won’t live it again."
---
The storm cracked with lightning, the sky split open, and a tidal surge rose—not by his will but by Thalorin’s. The wave towered like a mountain, and in its curl, Poseidon saw faces. Faces of drowned sailors, gods in chains, monstrous leviathans shackled in kelp and bone.
He flinched back, his breath hitching.
Thalorin pressed harder. "You felt it, didn’t you? When you drowned in weakness. When your blood turned against you. That fear, that helplessness, is your truth. But with me—you will never kneel again. No god, no disease, no fate will chain you."
The abyssal wave came crashing down.
Poseidon raised his trident, planting his heels into the seafloor, and roared. His roar wasn’t just his—it was threaded with something older, something monstrous. The trident split into three beams of blinding aqua light, cleaving the wave before it could consume him.
The waters hissed into vapor. The sea churned, unsettled.
Poseidon gasped, shoulders heaving, his body slick with seawater and sweat. He had fought waves before, but this one had not been of the sea—it had been of himself.
"Not yours," he spat into the void, knuckles whitening around the shaft of his trident. "I’d rather break than be yours."
---
The response came not as words but as a sudden, violent tearing. The world around him warped, the ocean dissolving into a realm of obsidian water and pulsing veins of crimson light. A Rift. A prison, a memory—no, a battlefield.
Poseidon staggered as the ground beneath him solidified into blackened coral and jagged rock. The air was liquid, pressing on him from all sides, suffocating, heavy.
And there, in the center of this warped space, rose Thalorin’s form.
He was not whole—he was a phantom, a colossal silhouette of a man with tendrils of water for hair and eyes that glowed like drowned stars. Each step he took sent ripples through the Rift, shaking Poseidon’s bones.
"Do you think you have choice?" Thalorin boomed, his voice rattling like tectonic plates. "You are my vessel. The gods above already taste your scent. They will hunt you. They will tear you apart. But if you yield to me, if you let go of your pathetic human name—"
He spread his arms. The darkness writhed around him like worshippers bowing before their king.
"—then together, we will not be hunted. We will hunt."
---
The trident trembled in Poseidon’s grasp. He could feel it—how easy it would be to give in. To unleash everything. To drown Olympus in a single, merciless tide. His mortal heart pounded a rhythm of fear and fury. He remembered the hospital bed, the sterile white lights, the machines humming as his body failed.
He remembered what it was to die powerless.
But he also remembered hands holding his, voices whispering comfort, the humanity he had left behind. He remembered fighting not just to live but to matter.
And that memory cut through the abyss like a blade.
Poseidon leveled the trident at Thalorin. "I will never be your puppet."
Thalorin smiled. And then he attacked.
---
The Rift exploded.
Water condensed into spears, lashing forward with impossible speed. Poseidon spun his trident, deflecting two, shattering a third. The impact still knocked him back, his spine slamming against coral so hard the stone cracked. He spat blood, gripping his weapon tighter.
Thalorin moved like a storm given flesh—fists of current, whips of sea-serpents born from shadow. Every strike carried the weight of millennia, of oceans unbound. Poseidon was smaller, weaker, but his movements were sharp, desperate, alive.
He ducked under a wave-whip, drove his trident forward, and unleashed a concentrated burst of power. The sea itself answered his call, a spiral of azure energy slamming into Thalorin’s chest.
For a moment, the ancient being staggered. For a moment, Poseidon saw victory.
But Thalorin only laughed. His body reformed, the wound stitching shut like ink in water.
"You strike like a god," Thalorin rumbled. "But you think like a man."
---
The fight dragged on, a war of attrition. Poseidon’s muscles screamed, his breaths turned ragged, but he refused to drop. Every strike he made carried defiance, every wound he took carved resolve deeper into his bones.
And then—something changed.
The trident glowed not with just his power, but with a resonance deeper, older. It was as if the weapon itself had chosen to defy Thalorin, had chosen him. For a heartbeat, the Rift faltered, light splitting through the cracks of its darkness.
Poseidon felt it: a path, not of surrender but of balance.
"You want to drown the world," Poseidon growled, standing tall despite his battered frame. "But I won’t destroy the seas to claim them. I’ll master them."
The trident blazed.
He drove it into the heart of the Rift.
---
The world shattered.
Light consumed shadow, the crushing weight of the abyss peeled away, and Poseidon fell—back into the real ocean, back into the storm, gasping as though breaking the surface for the first time. His trident pulsed in his grip, warm and steady, no longer trembling.
But the voice lingered.
"You may resist today," Thalorin whispered, distant yet coiled like a tide waiting to return. "But every drop of blood you spill, every soul that drowns in your name, will be mine. And when Olympus turns on you—as it will—you will beg for me."
Poseidon sank to his knees, the waves calming around him, the storm slowly dispersing. His chest rose and fell, every breath a victory, every heartbeat a warning.
He was not free of Thalorin. Not yet. But he had drawn a line.
And somewhere far above—on Olympus—eyes were already watching.