@anotheroceanid
Between Calypso’s island and his home, on a rocky shole surrounded by mile-high waves under a black sky, Odysseus became a monster. And like all monsters, he eventually watched all his loved ones die without him.
At first, he didn’t notice. In his relief to be home and his joy to get to know his wife and son again, Odysseus didn’t realize how strong he was until he reached out to hold his wife’s hand and accidentally snapped her wrist. After that, he couldn’t stop noticing how different he was. Everything felt fragile, like spun glass under his fingertips. His form flickered like the wind, one moment strong and steady with the face of a man, the next moment shadowed and looming and clawed and every inch reeking of danger. He could see farther than his son, hear further, and one day Odysseus looked Telemachus in his face and realized they could be mistaken as equals rather than father and son.
His family grew old while Odysseus stayed the same.
Well, not the same. Odysseus changed in far more horrifying ways.
Eventually, his family died. First came Penelope, weak and frail and beautiful as always, passing away gently in her sleep, in his arms. Then his Telemachus, decades later in a sickness that swept across the island. Then his son’s son, then that son’s daughter, and her son, and on and on until his last descendant drowned in a flood that buried the whole island for a day.
When he finally left Ithaca, the first time he’d left since he came home, the world had changed. And Poseidon’s children were everywhere.
Every single one of his son’s children were dead. Yet Poseidon just… kept popping out more and more bastards, like there wasn’t a target on each and every one of their backs. So Odysseus became the arrow.
Odysseus usually avoided eating demigods. There had been one son of Ares on Ithica who harassed his great granddaughter that Odysseus dealt with, but for the most part, he kept his human morals. But he always made an exception for the children of Poseidon.
They weren’t his favorite demigods to eat, by far–too fishy, and Ocean demigod meat always had a weird texture, like eel but tougher. But the joy Odysseus got from Poseidon’s screams of agony, screams Odysseus could hear every time one died, screams Odysseus could hear from anywhere on the globe, gave greater satisfaction than pleasure ever could.
Many demigods had been sent to kill him. At first it was only Poseidon’s children, seeking him out in revenge for their lost siblings; a noble cause, so Odysseus killed them quickly and properly buried them with payment in their mouths. Then it became quests, demigods sent for the “glory” of killing the Monstrous King of Ithaca. Those, Odysseus killed slowly, ripping out their stomachs with siren’s talons and leaving them to die in pools of their own blood. He didn’t even spare his old friend’s children, nor his relatives.
Then, the Prophecy.
Odysseus had lost track of time since the reveal of the Great Prophecy. At first, he’d kept busy by killing Poseidon’s children still; a few had survived the second moral world war and were already older than 16, so Odysseus could hunt them to his heart’s content. But as the well of available revenge dried up, so too did the demigods chasing after him become… younger. Children baby-faced and desperate to survive Odysseus in battle and Odysseus… he couldn’t kill them. Not children, so small and shaking and unable to hold their knife correctly as a child barely old enough to fight stared up at him with watery gray eyes.
Men, he could kill. Women, he could kill. But children?
Not again. Please don’t make him do it again.
So he disappeared. It wasn’t the first time he’d lay low out of the Gods’ gaze, so Odysseus let the decades wash over him until, finally, he heard rumors of Poseidon making landfall in New York.
He’d known his old foe would slip up eventually; it wasn’t in Poseidon’s nature to keep himself from ruining young women’s lives.
Slipping through the streets and alleys of modern New York, it took Odysseus weeks to catch the faintest trace of Poseidon’s scent. Demigods had a weak scent as long as they relied on their parents. It was meant to protect them. But the Kronide’s children always had strong scents, even as babes.
Odysseus couldn’t figure out how old Poseidon’s newest bastard was, but no matter how young they were, the child was strong. He could smell it in the back of his throat.
Triangulating the scent, Odysseus approached the rundown apartment building and scowled. Gone were the days where a lover of Poseidon was draped in fineries and set up in a golden palace. He took a moment to pity the poor mortal woman. She had to suffer the indignity of having that thing as a lover, without any of the perks her predecessors enjoyed; not only that, but soon she’d have to confront the reality of being a parent that has outlived their child. Odysseus pitied her, truly.
He didn’t want to do it. But he would. It would be better for the babe if it never grew up into a pawn of its father, and better for the mother that she wouldn’t need to die at the hands of a less considerate monster.
The sky rumbled overhead as the first fat drops of rain fell on his head. He looked up. Natural occurrence or divine attention? Either way, few gods would interfere with his task, if they noticed at all.
The lock crumbled under his grip and Odysseus crept into the building like a thief. Each floor stunk with humanity, of beer and tobacco and sweat, but the salt of the sea grew stronger with each floor until he finally found himself at a corner studio apartment a few floors off the ground.
This lock, he picked with ease. The sanctity of the home did not protect them as he snuck inside. The apartment was shockingly full, stuffed with oversized furniture that cluttered the already cramped apartment. A thin pathway carved between the back of one of three sofas and the wall led Odysseus to the back of the apartment. A bed had been pushed against the apartment’s sole window–lightning flashed outside–and against that bed, a crib.
He inspected the mother first. Young. Not as young as he and Penelope had been when they met, but younger than Telemachus had been when he returned home. She was thin too, lean but the baby fat still clung to her face. Poor girl.
Poor, poor girl.
His attention turned to the Sea Spawn. It wasn’t big, smaller than Telemachus when he left for Troy, and his scent was just a wispy hint of ocean. If he hadn’t been following Poseidon’s scent, he would have had no idea this child was more than mortal.
Odysseus loomed over the crib, studying the creature inside. With siren’s talons, he traced the pudgy babyfat of its cheeks. It huffed softly, struggling against the tight hold of its swaddle in their sleep, and Odysseus unconsciously smoothed out the wrinkle on their forehead with the soft flat of his finger.
They did not look very much like Poseidon. Maybe with their skin color, but little else. Though perhaps Odysseus wasn’t the best judge; he’d sworn on his life that Telemachus looked just like his Penelope, but she’d claimed their son to be his copy in every way. Odysseus didn’t see it then, and didn’t see his enemy now in this babe’s face.
Odysseus stood over the crib, his massive frame casting a shadow over the small, sleeping form. His claws hovered mere inches from the baby’s chest, but his hand trembled. This was Poseidon’s child. He could smell it clear as day, better than any other monster before him. Odysseus was practically made to murder Poseidon’s children, his very being honed to track them down and kill them, so why was he hesitating–?
Lightning flashed, the light reflecting off shiny words on the crib’s backboard. Painted above the baby’s head in streaky gold paint was the name Penelope.
His breath hitched. He blinked, his monstrous form stilling as though time itself had paused. Reaching out a hand, he touched his wife’s name. “Penelope?” he whispered, his voice barely audible, rough from disuse. He said it again, this time louder, as though speaking the name would summon a ghost from his past. “Penelope.”
The child stirred in sleep, her tiny face scrunching as if disturbed by the sound.
He could barely think over the ocean of blood rushing in his ears. Poseidon’s child was named after his wife. Had he…? Was this a deliberate offense or mockery? Had Poseidon named the child after her to taunt him, to twist the knife of his losses deeper? Or… his crimson gaze turned to the mother. Was this her doing?
Did she think naming her child after his wife would stay his hand?
Worse of all, was it working?
Odysseus knelt, his monstrous form folding into itself, making him seem smaller, almost human. He stared at the child who bore his wife’s name, his mind warring with itself. The rage that had sustained him for decades demanded he finish the task. But… Penelope.
What happens next?
Baby Penelope wakes up
Sally wakes up
Poseidon
