Page 1 of A Contemporary Mythos Summer
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P O S E I D O N
For as long as I knew my wife, my Queen, I never knew her to be as distracted and not in the present moment as she was right now. As we’d been doing for the past several months, I signed into the game Tides of Atlantis to practice “owning noobs,” as she called it, in the fake environment I’d come to enjoy almost as much as the real Atlantis. Almost. In truth, I mainly played because she enjoyed it. Not to mention how adorable she looked with her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth when she concentrated hard enough.
In the game, each player created an alter-ego decked out in customized armor and wielded one of several varieties of weapons. When we met again for the first time in nearly a thousand years, I, incognito, convinced her to use the trident. And she’s used no other weapon since. She and I, much like in the real world, worked together like a well-oiled machine. We’d flank, attack, and watch each other’s backs through the match’s entirety. We were nearly unstoppable when we were both at our best.
When her character began turning circles aimlessly while looking at the sky I knew her mind was anywhere but the game.
“Cordelia,” I said through the headset’s mic positioned over my ears.
Her character continued to spin circles and I snuck a peek over my shoulder at her. Cordelia, formerly known as Amphitrite, sat in a slump in her gaming chair, eyes wide and staring at her controller. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, tiny whisps sticking out from her headset. Her thumb pushed the right analog stick, but otherwise, she remained transfixed. I caught a flash of another player nearing from her screen and snapped my attention back to my own screen.
“Shit,” I mumbled before rolling my shoulders and cracking my neck.
She’d worked so hard to improve her kill to death ratio, I sure as Tartarus wouldn’t let any of these punk asses take it from her because they ran into her distracted. I sighed. And for a good reason. The swell of the seas roiled in my chest, sea spray sparking in my eyes as I hyper-focused on the screen. Every dip and groove of the controller in my hands scratched my fingertips—my palms.
One player charged at Cordelia with a broad sword raised above their head. Smirking, I made my character hurl the trident, launching it into the player’s back. The character faded away, my trident clanking to the ground, as another player charged from behind a tree with a pair of Sais.
Sais? What weapons did this gamenothave?
Making my character run, I crouched to grab the trident before hitting the block button right as the player slashed at Cordelia’s still rotating character. One thing that impressed the shit out of me with a gaming headset was its way of amplifying the sounds around you. Sure, my godly hearing remained far superior, but it put mortals on an equal playing field. After all, the poor bastards had no idea who was behind the gamer tag: KingOfFish69. They probably thought I was a twelve-year-old hunkering down in their parents’ basement with an ample supply of Mountain Dew and Cheetos.
Focus, Seid.
The other player must’ve started spamming every possible button on their controller as their character jumped, ducked, swung the Sais, and rolled. I raised a brow, letting them have their little temper tantrum before performing a simple light attack, effectively stabbing the pointy prongs of my trident into the player’s stomach.
“Not today, chum.” Smirking, I glanced at the timer at the top of the screen counting down the match right as the remaining seconds dwindled.
The leader board blazed on the screen with KingOfFish69 coming in first and SaucySiren, Cordelia, second to last. Whipping off my headset, I leaped from my chair after shutting down my gaming system, quickly followed by Cordelia’s, hoping she hadn’t already seen it. All she did was give one slow blink.
Sighing, I gently coaxed the controller out of her hands and crouched. With about as much delicacy as a burly sea god could give, I swiveled her in her chair to face me. “Cory? Sweetheart?”
“Is the match over?” She asked, her voice distant and neutral. “Did we win?”
“We did.”
Her chocolate eyes finally met mine, and her brows drew together. “I died, didn’t I? I don’t even know what happened, I—”
Hoisting myself up, I curled a hand behind her neck and kissed her forehead. “You didn’t die. We always have each other’s backs. Remember? In game or out of it.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, the words shaking from her throat.
Ten seconds. I had ten seconds to fix this or the waterworks were bound to start. Not that I’d ever tell a soul, but any time she cried almost mademewant to cry.
“Starfish, I know what’s distracting you. You don’t even have to say it.” Crouching again, I held her petite face in my large palms, making circles on her cheeks with my thumbs.
She gave the tiniest smile, sending a curled wave crashing at my gut. “It’s eating away at me, Seid. If we don’t find a way to find her and find her soon, I’m afraid I’ll lose it.”
Her. Rhode. Our daughter. Swept away by the magic of Atlantis to another time—another place. All the powers the gods of the Pantheon possessed, and not one could time travel. The fucking irony of it all.
Her fingers found the blonde tendrils of hair that’d slipped from the bun I secured at the base of my skull. The tiny smile grew a bit bigger as she played with it, curling and twisting it around one finger.
“Did you know there’s Sais in this game?” I jutted a thumb at her gaming screen displaying the Tide of Atlantis logo on the menu.
“Sais? Like Raphael from the Ninja Turtles?” She raised one thin brow.
Not any mention of a turtle, mutated or otherwise, from any other person’s lips, could manage to give me a stiffy as Cordelia just had.
