Deep under the ocean’s surface, Araiso swam back to the large city. He looked around a bit, swimming through the courtyards and trenches of alleyways where crabs and other sea creatures lurked.
Araiso stopped, coming to a floating rest above a podium in the center of a circle surrounded by six ten-sided pillars reaching at least twenty feet high carved of stone.
Out of the cool silence of the sea, eels and underwater snakes rushed up to Araiso. Several wrapped around his legs, binding them together. A few more around his hips and waist, holding his arms close to his body. And a few more up around his torso and shoulders, a snake even around Araiso’s neck.
“What the heck is going on?!” Araiso snapped, trying to wriggle the serpents off of himself.
A chuckle came as Navy and his guards came up to Araiso. “Well well, you just don’t learn. I’m not even sure I want to know how you got out of that cave.” Araiso gritted his teeth in anger. “What are you doing here, de-crowned prince? You have no powers and still you force your way to return.”
“I’m here to stop you,” Araiso answered, squirming.
Navy chuckled again, “No powers, no hope… And you’re already caught.” He took a long pause, “Araiso. Can’t you understand what I’m trying to do?” He swam around the prince a bit. “The humans advanced wonderfully, and now they carpet the planet, sucking the poor beauty dry. They have no thoughts of other life, and think they are the only best. Such a flawed race. Why Gaia doesn’t punish them, is beyond me.”
Coral, the woman of her bright orange and golden colors nodded, “So we’re going to set in motion what Gaia should be doing. We’re putting the humans back in line.”
“In line?” Araiso blinked.
“Gaia’s allowed her children to carpet the planet and suffocate all that is precious to us, the other children.” Coral replied.
Navy nodded, “Procne, Guardian Angel of the Sky, and her beloved angelic children of multitude of colors and beautiful wings… Their homes are being polluted by toxic gases.”
Coral continued, “The rains come and the gases fall down onto the sweet earth of Gaia, or into our vast seas. The humans are destroying us and we have to stop them!”
Araiso shook in fury, “You’re going about this all wrong! Why not ask the gods to do something about it?!”
“About it?” Navy chuckled. “From the very start, the gods have thought of no one but themselves! The old stories of our father, Poseidon, punishing Odysseus for his traitorous acts of adultery and murder - that raider of cities got his just desserts!”
“And the Atlantians, punished by the hands of Procne and Poseidon both - their island taken away so swiftly.” Coral answered. “The humans incur the god’s wrath that falls upon all of us. The mighty goddess of the skies, of the land and the father of the sea- the humans don’t understand!”
Navy nodded. “We’re going to shake up their world and finish them to numbers back to the thousands.”
“But if you do that - what’ll happen to all the life on the land as well?” Araiso asked, sadness sweeping over him. He never thought his own kin could think like this.
“Sacrifices must be made.” Navy answered, turning to Araiso. He pulled a sword from one of his guard’s, “And if you dare to stop us in our cleansing of the planet, your life will know The End.”
Araiso glared fiercely, “Even if you kill me, that doesn’t mean Poseidon will accept my soul back into his being. He may just rebirth me.”
“And then we’ll keep slicing you down.” Navy smirked. “Again and again, and by and by, there’ll be nothing left of you to be reborn.”
“Why you--”
Araiso’s protest was cut short.
Navy had thrust the gleaming sword at him. It pierced Araiso’s stomach right at the belly button mark. Through the intestines and the stomach, and all the other organs there. Through the body of muscle and barely scraping the spine to not sever it.
Araiso’d been pierced all the way through, like a thick bullet.
He gasped a moment, bubbles of air coming from his mouth. Slowly he looked down.
Araiso only saw the glimmer of the blade as Navy yanked it out, pulling blood and insides with it. The violent tear caused Araiso to rear back in pain, screaming so loud the water shook.
“Death comes on swift wings, as they say.” Navy smirked, pulling his arm back to stab Araiso again.
On the thrust forward, the blade vanished, and the creatures binding Araiso swam quickly away. The Children looked around in worry as the water’s temperature dropped quickly. Everything grew cold and dark, ice forming its path on the pillars.
Araiso was holding his stomach, falling slowly to the podium to rest on it. He was screaming and moaning in pain, feeling the blood escaping him. Soon, he’d bleed to death.
As the water grew cold, it grew stagnant and for a moment everything stopped.
Slowly, like flames catching light upon land to spread a wildfire, small fish gathered together and a tall large body formed from it. A tall man, towering over the Children appeared.
He had a long silver pitchfork, a long silver blue beard that fish ducked in and out of, and his skin was piercing white. His eyes were a fresh teal green, and his body was nothing but the fish’s scales solidifying into his form.
“My Children, how your arguments have dismayed me.”
“Poseidon!” the Children gasped in fear, cowering down onto the sea bed.
“Have the acts of the Children of the Land upset you so? The terrible crimes they have committed, is it in your hearts to see that you must make amends for their crimes?” he asked, his voice thundering and wise. “Is it to such a thing that you use your power, gifted from me, to tear it by force out of a sibling?”
The Children didn’t answer.
“Such disgrace.” Poseidon shook his head. “I set upon you a punishment. Up to the Land you will go. Without powers or ability to return to the forms you love, as humans you will be. No speech and no ease of death. Even if you try to die, you will not. You will know the pain and suffering of the humans, and you will suffer with them until the end of time itself - when the world stops spinning long after the moon has been spun away from us.”
“Father please!” Pleaded desperately Coral. “We only mean to try and salvage ourselves from the plague!”
Poseidon glared at her. “So much so that you’d kill your own?” He asked in an angered roar, pointing to the dying prince, struggling to remain conscious atop the podium.
“That was-” Navy tried to answer.
“Silence! I will hear none of your excuses or reasons. Take my punishment as a whole.” Poseidon declared, slamming down his pitchfork.
As it hit the ocean floor, all of them, the guards, Coral, Navy, and any other in the sea who was part of the act, were wrapped in fierce blocks of ice and yanked up to the surface. Breaking the ocean waves, the ice shattered, revealing helpless clothes less humans fighting to get to shore. All of them.
Now, Poseidon’s eyes turned to Araiso.
“Araiso. My dear Araiso. Such pain in your heart.” Poseidon sighed a breath over the prince, casing him into a block of ice. “Take this, my Child, and live. The wound shall turn scar, and your powers returned. The fate of the humans, their mighty storm of death, will come in five days without warning.”
Poseidon vanished, his form too as all the fish scattered far away. The water returned to normal, warming up slowly.
The ice Araiso was in floated up to the surface, and the unconscious prince fell to sleep on the shore bathed in seaweed and kelp.
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