Demiurge (a Poseidon self-insert in Percy Jackson)

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.

He found his father on a Californian mortal Beach at the surface world. The Lord of the Oceans had switched from a mature god to the form of a young adult just entering their twenties. From his head until his head sprouted luscious curly hair.

The sky over them was dark and moody. The sea that could be seen from where they were were wild and raging showcasing the true feelings of their master Poseidon.

His father had noticed his presence but hadn't said anything. They stayed both of them in silence contemplating the world around them, a world built on suffering and cruelty.

“We made all of this” his father said finally breaking the silence his gaze lost in something that Triton couldn't see.

He continued” We created a world kinder, more beautiful than when we found it and yet in moments like those, I wonder if it shouldn't have been destroyed since the beginning”.

The god finally turned his attention toward Triton. His eyes had changed Triton thought. Mortals had a quote saying that the eyes were the windows of the soul and that through them, you could discern somebody's true nature.

They were wrong on most things but not on that. Even when not in their divine, their true forms, the eyes of a divinity could show their true nature. It was the reason why even demigods were shown most of the time something that they could understand be it a colour or a pattern that they could understand or almost understand.

His father had inherited the eyes of his mother that also inherited hers from her mother, the earth itself. The Olympians may have inherited their cruelty and pettiness from their fathers but what made them dangerous was the fact that they were Rhea's children.

He had once asked his mother what did she fell in love with his father and she had answered by the fact that he had beautiful maddening eyes.

Watching his father in the eyes had always been difficult. It had always felt as if a nail was being forced into his brain. Not something debilitating but something unpleasant.

Now, looking at his eyes, it felt worse than before. He felt as if a jackhammer was hitting his skull again and again and again. More than that, he could hear whispers, their words unintelligible but oh so grating.

It reminded him of the past when a young Triton had looked his mother in her eyes and had even though he was a god lost consciousness for six days.

It felt like that but lesser. His father was changing, becoming something else which should have been normally impossible for a god except that this was what was happening.

Triton downed his sight from his father's eyes.
He could feel the elder god's gaze on him as if dissecting him, watching everything that made him to the atom.

The god sighed and turned his gaze away from Triton to watch the horizon.” I'm sorry” the king of Atlantis said to his heir.

Triton stayed still like a statue. His father would have normally never done such a thing.
” For what?” Triton asked.

“For allowing the murderer of Pallas to go away when he should have paid for what he did” the sea god spoke.

Thoughts of confusion and hatred bloomed in Triton making him really feel since the end of the first olympiomachy a true emotion.

“Do you know that my father hadn't swallowed me at my birth? It's what the myths say when it's not the truth.” Poseidon told his child changing the direction of the conversation.

“What are you talking about?” The conversation had taken a direction Triton didn't expect.

“ My mother is before all a goddess of motherhood. It's in her nature to be a mother and mothers be it with humans, simple animals, monsters and even Gods protect their children”. Poseidon grabbed a fistful of sand in the right hair and threw It in the air where it began to spin before beginning to take the shape of a woman.

Triton had never met her before but just by seeing her knew who it was. She was a beautiful woman Trifon had to admit. She had the royal and proud face shape of Hera, emanating from her even if it wasn't truly her kindness like Hestia. She also had given to the lord of the dead her eyebrows and to Zeus her hair. The eyes that she had were perfect replicas of those of his father.

His lord father continued” My mother loved us all but she was also the Goddess of the earth and nature and nature, the world itself had never been kind to differences”.

“We were born something unfamiliar, new. We were born more than our predecessor's Titans. Kronos after dethroning his father had been prophesied by the daughters of Ananke to be a victim of the same fate” The god laughed “and here we were, newborn divinities already as strong as the most powerful titans”.

“Our father saw in his eyes not his children but the cause of his future doom and because of that hated us from the beginning. The wise titan king that was respected, and loved that had ushered a golden age had fallen into the grips of fear and paranoia”.

The first figure that Triton knew of Rhea was joined by another with golden eyes.
“The Titans had been strong,” his father said” but they were the weakest children of their mother Gaia with Ouranos, the sky. Their father saw them as disappointing things but didn't throw them in Tartarus because he at least wasn't also scared by their powers and strength like with the elder Cyclops or the Hecantoncheires”.

Triton continued to listen attentively. After all, his father if not never rarely ever talked of the before of Olympus. What the god was telling him were things most Gods didn't know unless they were high enough in the hierarchy made by Olympus or they were part of those events.

“Gaia loved her children more than anything” the god narrated” She couldn't accept to be with somebody even if she was also their mother that could hurt her children so she left and would found comfort and her tears dried by the upper air itself. They would together make one child”.

The sand figurine of Rhea had now exposed from her back tendrils of green light.” this child will be called Rhea and her parents made sure that she inherited from each of them almost everything”.

“Primordials are to gods what we are to mortals his father said while pointing to foolhardy humans with boards of wood trying to ride the waves produced by the wild ocean.

“How could the titan Triton even with a weapon gifted by their mother be able to reach and hurt The sky itself?” the sea lord asked him.

Mortals going against Gods even minor ones Triton thought always ended by one thing, by the demise or punishment of the mortal. The only way for a mortal to fight a divinity and even have a slight chance to win was either being of divine descent themselves and/or” having the help of a divine being” Triton whispered.

“Bingo,” the god said. “The one that helped the Titans at the request of her mother was Rhea. Rhea was the only reason why the Titans hadn't had all their essences dispersed all over the world.

“My father,” the Olympian continued “had never been the strongest or the wisest of his siblings. What made him stand off from his brethren was his cunning. He saw the power of my mother and knew that with it, no one would dare to go against him”.

“It sounds a lot similar with...” the sea prince stopped his sentence. His father that had appeared calm all this time was gone. The mask had been broken and left bare before the world the hatred and madness of his father.

The god was now standing and tempestuous winds were blowing. The mortals that were riding the wave had lost control and fallen into the raging ocean trying to not drown. His hair behind was blowing in the wind like a demented beast. Triton had forgotten for a moment that the god he was talking to was one renowned for his changing and mercurial moods.

Triton took a step back. The God may have never directly hurt him even after the Olympiomachy but he looked as if he would this time.

Triton readied himself for a possible attack. Poseidon looked as if he wanted to tear him in many pieces but something stopped him. maybe it was his sanity regaining him or for another reason, the God calmed himself and sat back on the sand.

The God continued to talk as if nothing had happened.” Kronos when Hestia was to be born knew that he had to trick Rhea into allowing him to end the menace that his children represented to him”.

“ He made her believe that the children coming from their union were deformed, cursed, suffering and tainted. what kind of mother the titan king told her she would be if she had allowed her children to live a life of immortal agony.”

“My mother, “ Poseidon said “had learnt to trust and love her husband. After all, he was kind, handsome, brave and he had told her that he loved them. She thought that he would never lie to her”.

Pallas had been Triton light since her birth. Triton couldn't understand why others be they gods or mortals could hurt their own children, and not want to care for them.

Texts when talking of the mother of Gods always talked of kindness, of how she loved her children and was torn apart each time she had to give a child to her husband. They talked of her as an innocent, loving, tragic and powerless figure when if anything his father was saying was true, it was all the contrary. She hadn't been the victim. She had been an accomplice.

“ So what changed,” he asked his father,” you told me that you hadn't been swallowed like your siblings before you.”

His father pointed his eyes“What changed was that I was born with them”.

The elder god continued” I was born with my mother's eyes, unlike my other siblings which meant that I wasn't malformed. I had also inherited from her. Eyes are the window of the soul and mine were just like hers. Admitting that I was deformed would mean that she was too”.

The rhea in the sand now had a baby in her arms. She was dotting on him.

“My mother gave to trick my father Kronos a foal that she had infused with divinity. He saw nothing wrong with it”. The god’s eyes were clouded as if he was relieving the story while he was narrating it.

“Rhea gave me to be raised in secret by a spring nymph. Her name was Arne”.

I“What happened to her” Triton questioned.

“She died” The thunder accompanied the words of his father.

“My mother even after all of this still loved my father. She thought that he also didn't know better. She asked him one year after my birth about the proof of his allegations against their children. They had the first dispute of their marriage. In it, Rhea slipped the fact that she hadn't given me to be swallowed. How do you think my father reacted Triton”?

“He got angry” the younger god guessed.

“He probably did” agreed his father “but he didn't show it. He apologized to my mother, and talked about freeing my siblings now that he knew the truth. He played the role of the perfect husband for three months”.

“I feel a but coming”. Triton said

“Indeed spoke the god. All of that was a ruse, a way to trick my mother and he succeeded. She brought him to the sanctuary where I was raised by Arne. He did nothing on the first and second visits when he was with my mother. The third time, he came alone and broke the promise he made to his mother. He tried to swallow me but Arne tried to act”.

Triton didn't need to be told to know how it ended. Kronos was the titan and had as a weapon a scythe made by a primordial that could hurt others' primordial.

“Arne was killed by the scythe of the titan king and I was swallowed really this time by my father. My mother when she learnt what happened left Ortis pregnant with Zeus and you already know the rest of the story Triton” his father finished.

Triton had to admit that It was a captivating tale but “What are you telling me this father”.

The older sea god sighed” Imagine eternal torture, a place where a second is as long as a thousand years, where every moment is painful torture because you are being submerged by the acids inside your father's stomach. Such things can make even immortals go mad. Maybe it's the reason for the behaviour of my siblings and me”. We're probably all mad.

The eyes of the god had turned into shining emeralds. They were showing him visions of the past, visions of suffering, of happiness, of the future.

“ And then came Zeus. He freed us from our torment. We bled all of us together. It was us against the world. When it was hard, we would talk about what we would do when we won. We talked about making sure that the world we will create will be a better one where parents protected their children. We promised to each other that we would always protect each other, that we would always be a family”. At the end of his sentence, the voice of the god sounded broken as if he was restraining himself from crying.

Triton imagined the elder Olympians younger dreaming and talking about making a better future, a better world, to always being there for each other. The past them would have probably chosen to fade if they saw their futures selves

“You still didn't tell me the reason why was the point of you telling me all of this Father”.

His father sighed” I loved Pallas me too triton. She was my granddaughter.”

“Don't you dare tell me this Father” Triton spat with a voice filled with venom. “If you had loved her, you would have pushed for the punishment of Zeus”.

“What did you want me to do Triton? Zeus was my brother. I loved him and deep inside even after all of this, I can not bring myself to stop loving him. I already lost my granddaughter at the hands of my own brother when we promised each other that we would be better. He did worse than our father. He swallowed his child and her mother. He succeeded halfway.” the kronide sounded tired.

“And look how it bit you back father. Without Mother's intervention, you'd be dead. You're the only one still thinking of family, of the past. Except for Hestia, all of your siblings stopped caring about family. They only crave one thing, power but you already know that”.

“Yeah, I know”. The god sounded defeated.

“I wished things were different Triton but even with all my power, I can not solve the problems afflicting me”.

Clouds Triton noticed had begun to drift away as if called. Triton focused on all of the drips of water in the USA. They were controlled by a divine presence, one that almost felt identical to his father except way weaker and not divine enough.

He turned toward his father. He smiled and radiated Pride.

“Is this the work of your half-blood?”

“That's the work of my boy” the older god answered proudly.

“It should be impossible at his age by a demigod of his caliber unless he's special. He's the child of the great prophecy, isn't he?

His father shrugged” maybe he is, maybe he's not”.

The world shook as if a nuclear bomb had been detonated not too far away. “ I watched you Percy and you made me proud,” his father said to the empty air

The attention of his father went back to him and Steel entered in the voice of his father” “You'll have what you want Triton. In less than ten years, you'll have your vengeance”.

His father even though it wasn't well known could see through the waves of time. He even had a name, Poseidon Epoptes, the watcher that was worshipped in the past because of his future sight. Apollo didn't have the monopoly on being able to see the future in their pantheon even if it was what a lot of people thought.

Triton had festered in his hatred for millenniums. He could wait for a mere decade. For once, since the death of his daughter, a true and happy smile bloomed on the face of Triton.