“Who does your master work for?” She shook the Nereid by the shoulders. Its lips pulled back in a hiss as the rods of wood pressed back and forth inside its wounds, but it didn’t answer. It even appeared to be smiling. “I can make this last forever,” Athena lied.
“Time to talk, Swamp Thing,” Hermes growled. “Or we’ll do things to you that will make those piercings in your torso seem like Shiatsu massage.”
The Nereid looked at him fearlessly, and Athena ground her teeth. It was humiliating to be so weakened. It was humiliating to be chasing Poseidon’s tail. He was an overgrown puffed-up mermaid. He had never bested her in anything. And now her pompous, fish-eyed uncle was six moves ahead. He had to be working for someone else. He’d never been strategic before. He would never have had the foresight to plant spies.
“You think I fear that?”
Athena blinked down at the Nereid. Its voice was a thin, rasping croak. Air squeaked from its mouth as it tried to laugh.
“You can’t stop what’s coming, battle goddess,” it said, and peered at her with black eyes. “You’ll die, and he’ll die, we’ll all die! We’re all dead!” It grinned. Purple-black blood coated its teeth in a thin slime. Then it quieted and grew somber. “But my god will live. He will live a slave, but he will live.”
“A slave?” Hermes snorted. “Who could turn that trident-bearing prick into a slave?”
Athena looked down at the Nereid. It stared at them with almost delirious satisfaction, breath coming in shuddering gasps. It would be dead in seconds.
“Who are we fighting against?” she asked. “If you believe what you say, if we’re all dead anyway, then it won’t matter if you tell me or not.”
For a second the creature stared at her stubbornly. And then it blinked. Motion caught the corner of her eye and she watched its webbed fingers flicker in a hesitant, reluctant way, down toward its own thigh. Athena looked, but wasn’t sure what she was looking at. It appeared to be a series of scars, poorly healed and tightly puckered in fist-sized crescents.
“What are those?” Hermes asked, cocking his head and peering closer.
“They’re teeth marks,” Athena replied in a dull voice. She ran her hand over them gently, and the Nereid tensed. Athena shook her head to soothe it. The anger had leaked out of her as her fingers had traced those scars. She thought she could see wetness clouding the Nereid’s eyes and understood. They were tears of humiliation and powerlessness.
“Do you want me to see?” she whispered, and the Nereid strained toward her. She stretched out her hand and pressed her palm to the creature’s forehead.
The world was water. Clear greens and blues and diamond sand. Cold surrounded their bodies, but didn’t chill them; it was a constant breeze upon their cheeks. They might have been in any shallow cove anywhere in the world. Beams of white light cut through the water and illuminated the sea floor in rippling patches. And someone was screaming.
Many of them were screaming. It had been so still a moment before, glittering and calm. Now the water churned, it turned dark, it stank of blood. Sand was kicked up to mingle with the red cloud, a cloud that would attract no sharks, and continued to grow along with the sound of screaming. In the center, a bearded figure seemed to be nothing more than arms and teeth, reaching fingers and clenching jaws. He was eating them, wrenching their flesh loose, tearing their limbs free, cracking their bones. He called them and they came, because they always had, because they had to, and he swallowed them in chunks. Some died gratefully. Others, like this one, survived to swim away and heal, until the next time he called.
Athena jerked her hand away, and the Nereid’s head dropped to the floor and bounced. It was dead, and she was glad that it had died here, at the hands of those it called enemies, rather than be murdered by him that it called master, that it called father.
“Take a breath,” Hermes said. He had her by the shoulders and she put her hand over his. “What did you see?”
I saw Poseidon gone mad, Poseidon surviving in the way of the Titans, only worse than the Titans, more savage, disgusting.
She gestured to the bite scar. “Poseidon did that. He ate most of his Nereid’s leg.” Bile rose up into her throat and cold ran over her in waves. The Nereids were Poseidon’s most loyal servants. They had loved him, and he them, since the moment of their creation. They were his children. And he was eating them.
“That is … disgusting,” Hermes said. “It’s like sampling the family dog.”