Poseidon's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Poseidon stood on the black cliffs above the water and watched his ocean refuse him. He raised his golden trident and struck the stone. Nothing answered. The tide did not turn. The waves did not part. His trident sat heavy in his hand, its prongs cold, its light gone dim. Somewhere below the surface, a kingdom he had chosen was waiting to be lifted. He had no way to lift it, and even if he could, he had no one to fill it. The kingdom was Atlantis. He had circled its drowned skyline for weeks in his sea chariot, four hippocampi pulling him through the green dark. Broken columns leaned in the silt. Wide stairs climbed toward nothing. He had picked this ruin because it had once been a city, and a city was what he needed. Zeus held a summit throne on a mountain. Hades held a realm of the dead. Poseidon wanted a throne of his own, above the water, on stone he had raised with his own hand. He walked back to the chariot and set the trident against the rail. The hippocampi shifted in the shallows, scales flashing. He spoke the old command that used to lift reefs. The water only slapped the rocks. He tried again, softer, the way a man asks. The sea did not obey. He understood then that even if he forced the city up, the towers would stand empty. No fishermen would kneel on the steps. No guards would walk the walls. Any brother could sail in, plant a banner, and call the ruin his. He led the chariot down into the shallows and then deeper, until the surface closed over him. Atlantis rose in front of him like a broken jaw. He tied the reins and walked the drowned avenue on foot. He passed a courtyard where fish drifted through a doorway. He passed a fountain choked with weed. At the base of a wide stair he stopped and pressed his palm flat to the stone. He said, out loud, that he would not raise a corpse. He would find subjects first. He would find people who would swear to him, and only then would he lift their city into the sun. He climbed back into the chariot and turned the hippocampi toward the open sea. He knew where fishermen drowned. He knew where sailors were lost in storms and where cities had slid off cliffs into the water. Below him, in the cold, there were souls without a god. He would offer them a kingdom in exchange for their loyalty. He gripped the dull trident tighter. The obstacle had shifted. He no longer needed the ocean to obey him. He needed the drowned to answer.