Even Poseidon Drowns

Current word count: 54,654

 

The old god sleeps in a forgotten cavern, his trident resting at his feet. For decades his conch horn has sat silent, collecting barnacles on the coral pedestal where it lay. It was silent here, in the depths where viperfish swim undisturbed.  His flesh grown white from lack of sun, his hair as silver as a vampire squid’s eyes, he rocks in placid slumber, reduced to a whisper, a ghost in the minds of those who’d never laid eyes on his magnificence. While the elders wait for him to rise and be the Poseidon of old, riding his ancient helicoprion through the kingdoms dispensing justice and ending wars, the youth rise up in rebellion, throwing aside the old ways and threatening to spill their conflicts onto land.

 

***

 

“You’ve got to be quieter,” Breton hissed “we’re going to get caught and as always father will blame me.”

 

“It’s my idea,” his twin brother, Dylan, said stubbornly.           

 

“It’s almost always your idea,” Breton said “but you’re his favorite so no one ever blames you.”

 

“Father has no favorites, he loves us both equally, you would see that if you would cease butting heads with him at every turn,” Dylan shot back as he skulked along the edge of a tall ridge of coral.

 

Fifty feet above them, dangling precariously over the edge of the crumbling rocky shelf, was the battered remains of an old wooden ship, half rolled on its side and sunk deep in the muck and mud after several generations on the ocean floor. Barnacles covered almost every inch of it and coral stretched across its bow, giving it a spooky air of being alive yet not.

 

Fish teemed in and out of the gaps between the boards while a large eel snaked through a huge fissure.  Dylan gulped when he caught sight of the haunting scene and hesitated to approach any further.

 

“Come on,” Breton grumbled. “You wanted to do this so let’s go so we can get back home before our tutors realize that we are missing.”

 

“Maybe we should forget about going inside. Father has warned us repeatedly about the dangers of being trapped in a shipwreck and didn’t Old Niviss say that something large made its home here?”

 

“It can’t be that large, look at the bow of the ship, it isn’t very big. I think that Old Niviss just exaggerated the size like every other story he tells. Come on, don’t be a coward. I think father would like that even less than a son who always argues with him.”