Chapter 7: Spring Training
I've spent days jumping over waves of sand. I've spent hours swimming in a circle to speed up my pace. I've spent minutes counting the pearls, placed inside the royal paintings. The seconds, I've wasted, on picking up trash in the abandoned kingdom and placing the trash into the appropriate bin. To say training was brutal, was too kind. Triton didn't know what the word sleep was. He didn't talk about much, except when he felt the need to remind me to keep training.
At night, we would spend hours sitting on the edge of a trench and waiting for the sun to rise. We never talked while we sat by the trench, just sat there in silence, thinking about… well nothing really. I got up one morning, early before Triton would rise and walked around the abandoned kingdom. I first stopped by the gift shops, each one still filled with merchandise that was never bought. I took a hat that read 'Better than Atlantis, that's why there's a two in front' and wore it while I walked around.
Benches and trash cans lined the walkways and undersea plant life had claimed most of the outside of buildings. Barely any fish were swimming around, occasionally one swam by, here and there, but it felt like this spot of the sea was left to rot and decay. I saw a group of houses that sat in a roundabout neighborhood and most of the doors were busted open, leaving behind splinters and chunks of wood. I walked into one of the houses, slowly taking my time entering to make sure no one was around. Some oil based paintings sat on the wall depicting a family sitting on a couch and smiling at whoever stared at the photo. In the air around the sitting family was a baby that sported a fish tale and held a stuffed dolphin in its hands.
The house looked like any normal house, except for the Greek decorations that depicted ancient battles of the Gods. Whatever had happened to the kingdom must have been brutal because most of the family's stuff was still left in its proper spot, untouched for what seemed like years. I entered the nursery and saw walls covered in moss, the windows were blasted in on itself, leaving a gaping hole in the wall. A crib sat on one side of the room, torn to bits. Toys were left scattered across the floor and some debris floated around in the water. I found the stuffed dolphin and picked it up to look at it more closely, the stuffing seemed to be deflated over the years and it was missing one of its eyes.
"My biggest failure" Triton's voice scared me as he appeared out of nowhere in front of the hole in the wall. "Come, it's time to train" Triton started to swim off towards the training grounds but I wanted some answers, "Wait! What happened here? Why is this kingdom abandoned?". Triton turned around to look at me, I could see some sadness in his eyes but whatever emotions he was feeling, he was keeping under control not showing any signs of emotion. "It's an easy day today, I'll tell you a story while we wait tonight".
Easy day was definitely a choice way to describe today's training. Never would I have thought that scraping barnacles off of toilets would be better than one million undersea push ups. June came rolling without any warning speeding along time, except for when we sat down by the trench at night. The endless nights of not talking, it drove me mad, staring down at a black void for hours can do things to the mind. Often I thought I could see something moving below the darkness but never anything clear or in the light.
"This was my first attempt at building something great" Triton started to talk out of nowhere, breaking the silent night finally. "Father had given me my duties and a corner bedroom at Atlantis. Days turned into years, then years turned into decades of just watching waves. I was a part of the original Children of Olympus. Hercules, Perseus, Melinoe, and Me all were the heroes of our parents. Fought monsters, traveled from Greece to the edge of the world, and then it fell apart. Hercules and I had some disagreements and one thing led to another then we fought, which led to the fall of the Children of Olympus. Father wanted to give me more duties since I was wasting away in his castle and sent me to guard over the Kraken" I stared at Triton as he paused in his story.
I knew very little about the Kraken, but I did know that it was a ginormous monster that could kill anything or anyone, maybe even a God. Triton started to get up from the edge we were sitting on and swam out towards the trenches opening. "Follow me, I've got something to show you" I swam after Triton as we began to descend down the trench into the darkness. The darkness enveloped us and instantly blinded me until I saw a bright blue light come over where Triton was swimming. "Keep up, it's quite a swim. I found the Kraken eventually and used the waves to keep him at bay. More time passed and I sat around still not doing anything until I had a dream. I dreamed of a kingdom that sat in its glory and would provide entertainment for all sea creatures. I was driven mad about building this dream, I spent years making plans, spotting locations until I had another dream".
As we kept swimming, I couldn't help but notice small gleams of light glowing in the walls of the surrounding trench. I moved closed and saw gems of different colors, glowing brightly in the dark trench. "I dreamt of this trench, I saw the land above, all the space I needed, but it had one major problem" Triton slowed down his pace and I noticed a loud sound of waves crashing against the beach. A loud roar was heard but the ground didn't shake, "This is where I keep the Kraken. I have waves enforcing a barrier around the creature, this seemed the best way to keep the creature contained rather than sending it back to Tartarus ". "Tartarus?" I asked not knowing what that word was. "It's a pit in the underworld that monsters go to when they die, to reform and come back to life. The Kraken is very dangerous and has caused so much trouble with Poseidon, that I figured what could be better than using it as an attraction. So I built my kingdom with haste and Gods was I such a fool" Triton stared down at the waves and I could see tears forming in his eyes.
"Opening day came and people were too happy to come live here. Weeks went by with no problem, the water park was always full, the theater was constantly playing shows, and more people were visiting my kingdom instead of fathers. I was finally happy, everyday felt like a vacation, but it wasn't made to last. After a year, my duties towards the Kraken became… less important than running my kingdom. The screams are what I hear when we sit on the edge and watch. I was too late when word got to me, everyone had been eaten and the monster just went back in the trench. It knew that it could escape but it didn't want to die. I put the monster back and cursed the waves to keep it at bay. Now all I have is ruins of my buildings, nothing left to manage but my own failures" Triton started to swim back up to the top of the trench when the Kraken roared again and this time the waves started to part a little.
"Why not just kill the Kraken, keep sending it back to Tartarus and give yourself a break every once in a while?" I said, swimming back up to the top of the trench. "Because, when a monster dies it can take anywhere from a day to a lifetime for them to reform and being immortal, time flies by like seconds" Triton was swimming over to our rooms, opening the door to his room and slamming it behind him.
I tried to sleep but I couldn't, something inside my gut kept turning and turning. I decided to go for a swim and clear my head from Triton's story. I couldn't tell how deep we were from the surface and didn't really want to go too far. I swam around the outside of the kingdom, looking at the outside painted advertisements, telling people to visit the water palace of their dreams, when I noticed small bubbles rising from the trench. The bubbles weren't that big and the pace they were going up was becoming more constant. I swam slowly down the trench trying to see if I could find the source of bubbles and quickly found my trident in my hand and the prongs were glowing a bright green, providing me with some light.
The trail of bubbles led me back to the glowing gems embedded in the trenches walls. One bright blue gem that was glowing a little dimly was letting out the bubbles from behind its placing. I tried to pull on the gem to move it out from the wall and stop the trail of bubbles but the gem was in the wall pretty good. I started to use my trident, banging it against the wall trying to break away some rock to loosen the gem. Smack, smack, smack The trench wall vibrated with each hit and eventually the gem came out of the wall.
I grabbed the blue gem and the trail of air bubbles stopped. The sounds of the crashing waves below stopped. A loud roar came from the bottom and the whole trench shook. I felt the turning in my stomach change to a full washing machine. A large tentacle came bursting out from the bottom of the trench and I couldn't have swam faster in my life. I reached the top of the trench and swam towards Triton's room. I banged on the door with my fist and Triton opened the door in his trident covered pajamas. "What in Hades is going on out here?" Triton stepped out of his room and looked down the hallway and saw the approaching beast. "Damnit, what did you… that's it, you're leaving after we fix this!" Triton walked over to his dresser and pulled open the sock drawer and pulled out a conch shell.
With a snap of his fingers, his clothes changed into his armor and his trident appeared in his hand. We both swam down the hallway but were stopped when a tentacle smashed down through the ceiling and blocked our path. I took my trident and stabbed down into the tentacle, instantly making the appendage recede back up into the air. "Don't kill it, we need to trap it" Triton blew into his shell and a giant wave formed right in front of us and moved towards the giant monster. As we entered the courtyard I could see the Kraken fully in the moonlight, its millions of tentacles swinging around and destroying anything they smashed into. Its skin was dead gray, with stab wounds across its side and parts of its flesh was hanging on by a tiny bit of skin.
Triton once again blew into his shell and more waves formed and crashed against the Kraken but the waves didn't move the monster. "Your waves aren't helping, we need to kill it" I yelled at Triton. He took his conch shell and jabbed it on one of his trident prongs and started to bang it against the ground. This time a tidal wave appeared and slowly approached the monster, this time when the wave hit the monster it moved back, staggered a little bit but still kept its ground. "Follow my lead with your trident" Triton then slammed his trident down again and I followed suit. We started to move our tident's in circles, forming multiple tidal waves and making a strong current that was pulling at our feet.
The feeling in my gut was starting to relax as the water crashed against the Kraken sending it back towards the trench. Its tentacles couldn't grip onto anything as the current was too strong and most of everything was covered in moss. "When this last wave hits it, slam down one more time and I'll push the beast back!" Triton started to move towards the Kraken, riding atop the wave that just formed and I followed his instructions and slammed my trident down. The wave Triton was riding on grew in size and I watched as he pulled the conch shell off his trident and started to blow into it. The wave started to shape around the monster and soon it was trapped, with the only way to go was back down into the trench. The monster let out a loud roar and Triton blew again in his shell.
I watched as the waves beat down on the beast and heard the roars died down as the monster receded further into the trench. "Stay down there next time!" Triton yelled down the trench and forced a wave down with his trident. Before he could swim away a tentacle came out from the trench and grabbed Triton. I watched as my brother was picked up and banged against his own kingdom. Whatever Triton did to keep the Kraken down, it didn't work. The Kraken carried Triton in its tentacle as it rampaged through the kingdom.
Great, now I've got to kill the Kraken, what on earth am I going to do that?