Atlantis was a bursting hive of activity Triton thought. The impending war between the heavens and the sea had made every sea-affiliated or related supernatural being come back under the oceans.
Few of them liked Zeus and this war was a way for them to end the thirst for the blood of the Olympians that they felt.
Triton understood them. He understood their hatred, their anger, the way they wanted to lash out against the cruel sky god and his brethren even if it sounded suicidal.
Triton was born after the first titan war as the first child of Poseidon, the fifth child and second son of the titan king and the titan queen and of Amphitrite, the first and strongest child of Nereus, a primordial and of the Oceanid Doris.
It meant that he was born with the world at his fingertips. He lived in opulence that even some God kings in other pantheons didn't live in. It meant that he was born with enormous power at his disposal.
Gifts and luxuries had been rained on him since his birth. He never had to want or need for anything. It sounded like a perfect life, right?
It wasn't one. He didn't need to be told by anyone to know that there wasn't any existing love between his parents or it would be more accurate to say that it was a one-sided love from his mother to his father. Poseidon married Amphitrite for what she represented.
She was powerful, graceful and divine and Poseidon wanted Amphitrite to be his. Poseidon has been given the oceans to rule after the Titanomachy when there was already in place a strong ruler, the great Titan Oceanus.
The Titan had stayed neutral in the Titan war and still had sovereignty over the body of Pontus. Poseidon even though he was strong, even though he was the child of his parents needed two things to seat his complete dominion over the seas.
Poseidon needed legitimacy and somebody as powerful if not stronger than him to support his claim. Even though the ocean sang to every action taken by him, Poseidon wasn't born from it. For centuries, Poseidon tried to find a way to assume control over the oceans.
One of the allies he made in his conquest of the sea, The sea god Delphin proposed to him the idea of marriage and more precisely, marriage to the pearl of the sea, the only goddess that could by herself supersede the authority of all the others sea divinities combined except Pontus himself, to Amphitrite who was considered beautiful even among Goddesses.
The mortal myths say that his mother ran away in an attempt to hide when his father proposed to her. It couldn't be more wrong. Poseidon was the one that ran. He had found out that the goddess he had wanted to woo was more akin to a terrible abomination than a goddess.
Amphrite had inherited everything wrong or right depending on who you ask of her forefathers. Poseidon's action had done something that he would regret forever.
Poseidon made Amphitrite pay attention, he made her notice. Triton still didn't know what Amphitrite had seen in Poseidon but the Nereid had fallen in love.
She hunted after the god in the oceans. When he fled from the ocean to escape her, she followed him to the surface. Her mere presence upon the surface of the Earth created great floods, and tempests the world over.
Hundreds of thousands of mortals died being claimed by the sea. No god tried to stand in the path of the goddess. Meanwhile, Poseidon had hidden himself in Olympus with his siblings.
They hid Poseidon as long as they could but the Olympians weren't only masters of the natural world and its concepts but also of the lords and protectors of the mortals that were begging them to free them from their torment.
The Kronides chained Poseidon with their powers and gave him to the Sea Goddess to do with him as she wished. Amphitrite knew that his father feared her, and didn't love her but she had told herself that with time, love would eventually bloom between the two of them.
She built the city of Atlantis for the two of them and made Oceanus abdicate his crown for Poseidon. She made every sea creature swear for fealty before him in fear of Annihilation or banishment from the seas.
She made Poseidon stronger and Amphritrite taught him the secrets of the sea. She taught him secrets and knowledge that would make even some Gods go mad. She connected herself to him at a metaphysical level making sure that he would never be able to fade as long as she existed.
She gave him children, strong and beautiful children even among Gods. None of those things made him love her. Poseidon was a god known for cheating on his wife, to have multiple children divine or mortal out of his marriage.
Triton had once asked angrily feeling slighted for his mother why couldn't he stay faithful? His father had answered him with haunted eyes by the fact that he feared his queen. He had been shocked and appaled by his answer and had for centuries been cold toward his father.
His father made him heir, maybe to try to repair a relationship with his now estranged and cold first child. Triton had seen it as an insult. What was the point of the existence of the title of an heir when they were Gods?
It meant nothing and changed nothing. Those days had been days where he lived more like a machine than a god. He stopped caring, he stopped trying, and he stopped loving. Knowing how to Pretend was his true inheritance.
It lasted like this for centuries until the birth of his miracle, his light, of his baby girl, of his unique child, of his daughter Pallas. She gave back through her existence warmth to his cold heart.
She gave him the desire to try, the desire to be better, to live and not exist for the first time in his immortal life. Through her presence, she reconciled his father and him.
Through her, they bonded again and tried to build a new, better relationship than what they had. Because of her, his father tried to be a benevolent God. He began to be more merciful and less prone to anger. He even stopped cheating and tried to begin to build a relationship with Amphitrite.
Everything seemed perfect. He should have known that his happiness wouldn't last forever, that the Fates, cruel as they are wouldn't let him have a happy ending.
It all began with the birth of Athena, daughter of Metis, goddess of wisdom and the first queen of Olympus. Zeus had acceded to his throne by toppling his father in the same way the titan king did with the help of his siblings and his mother.
Zeus was Scared of a future child dethroning him the same way he usurped his own father so he went to the daughters of Ananke the unescapable, the Fates. He asked them how could he maintain his throne and not be usurped like his predecessors before him. He asked them how to break the cycle.
They had laughed at Zeus' face. They had told him that nothing was eternal, that his reign will end the same way others' reign before him did. Zeus had been prophesied by them that a wise child will be born from Metis, a child stronger and wiser than Zeus that would usurp him.
Zeus grew fearful. He made a plan to ensure that such a future wouldn't happen when he should have known that the thread of fates spared no one. He invited Metis into the wild and made sweet love to her. He acted as the perfect husband.
Near the end of the day, he proposed a contest with her and Metis, the Oceanid was wise but unfortunately, more prideful than wise. Zeus told her that if she won, she could ask for any boon that she wanted. She accepted. To her credit though, she almost made it.
She was supposed to be a prey animal and him a predator. She had to reach Olympus before being caught by Zeus or she would lose. Metis almost won. She would have if Zeus hadn't made a deal with the dryads of the forest where they had been when he proposed the challenge.
She lost and Zeus swallowed her and the pregnant babe she had in her belly.
Zeus completely subsumed the Titaness and usurped the domains of wise council and prudence from her. Her last act would be to use her divine power to allow the survival of her daughter and clothe her daughter with arms and armour.
If she hadn't done this, Athena wouldn't have survived. When she was born from the skull of her father, the first action that was taken by him was to blast her with the master bolt.
She survived and fell from Olympus into the oceans, the original home of her mother where she would be raised by Triton and Amphritite alongside Pallas.
She grew wise and strong in the ocean with Pallas. They were more than sisters. It could even be said that they were soulmates.
One day, while they were sparing out of the protection and surveillance of their guardians, on the surface, atop an Island, Zeus saw his chance and tried to kill Athena. He sent with all of his might an attack on the turned back of Athena.
It wouldn't have killed Athena because she was a Goddess but Athena was still young and weak and such an attack if it had struck her would have made her as close to death as a god can be. She would have suffered a somatic death if she had been struck. She would have been made undone which meant that she wouldn't be able to dethrone Zeus, something Zeus wanted.
Pallas saw the attack coming and didn't think. She dodged a sword jab from Athena to put herself before her unprotected back with all her divine powers as her shield and barrier.
She did save the war goddess at the cost of her life. Pallas didn't have enough divinity in her to be even considered a minor goddess. She was only immortal in the sense that she could have lived forever and that only the strongest divine attacks could have ended her.
Triton remembers the rage that he had felt and how he was still feeling it to this day. The death of Pallas had broken and fragmented his family even worse than it had been before her birth.
Triton had never thought that the most precious thing he had in the world would be removed from him so violently. Was there anything worse in the world than losing a child? Was there anything worse than burying them?
Triton after that had closed himself to the exterior world. What was the point of anything without his child? Athena apologized to him, and asked for his forgiveness, saying that it was all her fault after Pallas's burial.
He ignored her cries, he ignored her when she called him father the day after the funeral of Pallas. Athena went back to the surface world and found a way to cease the hostility that her progenitor had toward her.
Centuries passed and his parents had other children. They didn't say it but he knew that they feared that he would try to fade. They thought that other siblings would make him feel better and would make him focus on something else than the death of his daughter. He didn't care about them. The only thing that made him not choose to fade was hatred, deep, ugly and powerful hatred.
He wanted Zeus to pay, to lose everything he ever held dear. He waited centuries patiently and His wait was rewarded by an opportunity. The Archer twins, the goddess of the hearth, the goddess of earth, his father and Athena with other gods had betrayed Zeus and declared war on him.
It was the first and only Olympiomachy. The word shook, disasters hit the world endlessly. The sky screamed and the oceans roared. Nature raged and ichor fell on the mortal world like rain.
Countries were annihilated, maps redrawn, and ranges of mountains turned to dust. Triton had fought against the son of the second marriage of Zeus with his sister Hera. Even remembering today the screams that came out of the war god created a flicker of Warmth in his cold heart.
Athena was the one to put the final blow against her father. When it was time to give punishment to the defeated Gods, Athena advocated for mercy. She had watched him in the eyes as if to say sorry while advocating for it.
He raged against the decision. He had turned to his father sure that he would take his side. Poseidon didn't. The sky lord may have been a cruel and tyrannical god-king but it was his brother his lord father told him.
He knew when he retreated to the ocean that they had made an error. They didn't seem to understand that Zeus would never resign himself to a simple life.
What Zeus craved before all was power. For 1 millennium, the victorious gods reigned. They created wonders, and enforced peace and justice. They pushed for achievements never thought of before. They taught mortals how to write, how to build societies, and mechanical marvels that even to this day, they hadn't replicated.
None of that lasted forever. Zeus and his allies hadn't been idle. They had built their strength, built powerful weapons, they freed imprisoned titans to make them join their cause. They even added to their cause one of the most feared Mesopotamian goddesses, Ishtar to their army.
When they struck Olympus, Triton made sure that most sea creatures and gods wouldn't help the new regime. He stayed in the ocean watching. He watched and did nothing when past allies were tortured and dismembered.
The war between the new regime and the old one was a conflict destroying the planet itself.
None of that would have happened if they had listened to Triton. None of that would have happened if they had cared more for Pallas and not set her murderer free.
Athena seeing all the carnage created by the conflict abdicated her crown to her father. For that, her father didn't punish her but for the other gods like Apollo, Artemis and his father, they were punished harshly.
Zeus killed and raped before the eyes of his daughter all of her huntresses. For Hestia, he asked to abdicate her throne on Olympus and to carve out from herself part of her divinity. Apollo and his father were sentenced to the worst punishment possible for a god, mortal-hood.
They were to live as slaves of a king Zeus favoured until they died. It would have ended like this if his mother that had never left the oceans even during the Olympiomachy hadn't acted.
She went alone to Olympus, fearless and had threatened destruction on everything the Olympians held dear. She had by herself challenged all of them and told them that the death of her husband would equal the destruction of Olympus.
Zeus then changed the punishment given to his son and his brother. They had to build a wall for the king of Troy and after it would they be able to regain what was theirs.
His father has been changed by the defeat of the new regime. He began to hate Athena because in his mind, she was the reason they hadn't won. If she hadn't cared about the mortals, they would have won but Athena had as one of her more defining names the protector of men.
Poseidon had said nothing to Triton but he didn't need to for Triton to know that he was angry at him. In Poseidon's mind, if Triton had let sea creatures or gods join or even himself had joined, the new regime would have not been vanquished.
Poseidon saw it as a betrayal when he was the first one to betray. Since then, the relationship between him and his father has been broken. They were too alike. No one of them would ever forget what they saw as a betrayal.
The only inheritance that they all had received from their forefathers was betrayal and hate. They were rotten at their core even if they pretended to the contrary. It's how it was, is and forever will be.
