In one instant, everything changed. Perseus traded a world for a new one, divinity for mortality, and futility for possibility. Awakening on a remote island, the once-god finds a whole new world at his fingertips.
Only, there is rot here. Men stand on the throne of the world and proclaim themselves gods, treating others as toys and tools. Death, slavery, suffering. This world needs a new god.
As ever, the sea provides.
Current summary doesn't mention it, but this is planned to be a Fox to Phenex style smut story. Percy acts a lot more like a god, including lots of lovers and (eventually) plenty of kids. Although like Fox to Phenex, he starts young and has to take some chapters to get older first.
Without being able to see anything, Percy understood everything around him. It was always this way in the ocean. He floated forward, his feet hovering about a foot above the thick sheets of abyssal clay making up the Mariana Trench’s floor.
Percy stopped, reached down, and hoisted a handful of fine grains. He let them slip between his fingers. The water made their fall a slow one.
He sighed.
Boring, Percy thought.
He lived a long and full life. A happy life, one that brought him to old age. Of course he had a few regrets, every mortal did. But he was happy.
So why did he look like he was eighteen now, without any wrinkles or signs of age?
Twice in his life, Percy had turned down the chance to become a god, each time coming after he helped save the world. Although the gods respected his decision (or stomached it, in some cases) by the end of his life, Percy had left such a mark on the world that it had been decided: he would become a god, just as Hercules did before him.
Given what Hercules was like, it was a dubious honor. Still, it was an honor that was his. Perseus Jackson, a minor god of the sea. His domain was currents. Specifically, he encapsulated the freedom of the sea; its unwillingness to be bound and controlled.
Percy did his duties. He had been alive for centuries now. The world had become very different. He no longer recognized the cultures or countries compared to those he grew up with. Performing his duties felt hollow and gave him little joy. He would never toy with mortals the way that other gods did when they grew bored, so he sought another kind of excitement.
He went exploring.
After visiting the most extreme places all over the world, meeting with gods from other pantheons in the process (those who were still around; more disappeared every century) Percy set his sights on the last great frontier for him.
His home. His domain. The sea.
Percy had been wandering the trench for a bit now. Probably around ten years. He spoke with the fish and listened to the stories they told him. Down this far, all the way on the floor, there were no fish anymore. The only living things were strange and small creatures, odd amoebas and small organisms that could withstand the devastating pressure, none of whom were capable of speech.
The trench was huge and he was in no rush. Time was the one thing he had no shortage of. Percy had still only explored a portion of it, moving slowly and investigating each section in detail. He memorized vents, areas of volcanic activity, and patches with especially high densities of the non-sentient local life.
Percy chuckled, sending bubbles fluttering away from his mouth. He imagined telling his sixteen year old self that one day, he’d have the patience to float around the pitch black ocean for more than a decade, just to see what was there.
Even crazier, he was enjoying it.
Somewhat.
He enjoyed it compared to the mundanity of ordinary immortal life. Still, there had been a flare to life as a mortal that was just a distant memory to him.
He missed his friends. He missed Annabeth. No lover he’d had since filled the void of her death. Most of all, Percy missed the spark that came from knowing time was limited and death was possible. As a god, nothing ever felt definitive. He had no purpose to commit himself to. He just… was. Eternal life. Unending boredom and the losing fight against it. What an honor.
Percy sighed.
It wasn’t the first time he had these thoughts. It wasn’t the tenth time. It wasn't even the hundredth. Down here, they kept coming back. He did what he had learned was best and ignored them. Sensing some kind of volcanic vent right on the edge of his senses, Percy went toward it.
He was roughly halfway to it when his sixth sense started to get… confused. Percy frowned. Excitement started to flicker inside his chest, although it was just a distant and muted hint.
On the cusp of it, whatever it was, Percy stopped. He’d been wrong, and he wasn’t usually wrong; this wasn’t a vent. It was something else. A hole in the ocean floor that not even his immortal senses could find the bottom of. This had to be the deepest place on the entire planet, given where he was and what he could sense of it. Percy considered it might be an alternate entrance to Tartarus, which was the only reason he hadn’t already swum inside.
Even that didn’t stop him for long. He got out once. He could get out again if it came to that. If Tartarus couldn’t even hold a loser like Krios forever, Percy would be out within a measly ten years.
Percy entered the hole. As he did, he was possessed by the sudden impression that he’d entered a mouth. This maybe should have scared him, but it didn’t. His heart was beating. So far, his exploration of the trench had been a mild amusement, mapping out the natural phenomena at a snail’s pace. This, for the first time, felt like he was exploring.
The hole went deep. Percy swam down it faster than a dolphin and STILL he couldn’t sense an end. He could feel something sucking on his body. It wasn’t strong enough that he couldn’t swim up if he chose to but the suction was still getting stronger.
Just as he was sure that he was about to be spit into Tartarus, the feeling changed. He sensed something both incredibly fresh and impossibly salty. Percy felt his body start to tremble and turned into his true form, the mere sight of which would vaporize a mortal. Despite the power his body held, he sensed something encroaching on him. It wasn’t a being, just a phenomenon. Percy felt something he could only compare to the sheer force of being blasted out of a volcano, only in reverse, sucking him in rather than hurling him out.
Perseus Jackson, minor god, experienced something he hadn’t gone through since his youth.
He blacked out.
LINE BREAK
The sound that woke Percy up was a seagull. Its squawk cut right through the fog inside his head. His senses felt muffled. Not his sight, hearing, smell, touch, or taste. The grains of sand lodged under his tongue were as gritty as ever. The kelp wrapped haphazardly over his body stunk and felt slippery on his skin. His eyes could see details on the leaves above his head, as well as pick out clouds in the blue sky past that.
The sense he was missing was one he’d only come into when he became a god. It was a sixth sense that accompanied ascending from mortal life. Things in the world were just revealed to you more naturally, as if your will itself was a cloud around your body, informing you of things in your surroundings.
This was gone now, so Percy rolled to his feet and hopped up. Rather than alarmed, he was more excited than before. It was a rare treat to not understand something.
As soon as he got the balls of his feet down on the sand, Percy discovered that this place was big. The trees were taller than he thought, while the nearby beach was long, and the waves tall.
No, that wasn’t right.
This place wasn’t big. He was just small.
Percy looked at his hands in fascination. They were tiny. His entire body was much smaller than it should have been. He was a child, somewhere between five and ten years old.
“How weird.” Even his voice was squeaky.
He couldn’t change his form, even though it had been as easy as a single wish for the last few centuries, ever since his ascent to godhood. Even his mind felt a bit strange. He had stronger urges than he used to, finding them hard to resist at the same time. As the desire struck him, Percy took off running toward the beach and left footfalls in the sand.
He was slow. It took him thirty seconds to cross the sand and get close the water. He should have been able to cross a distance like that instantly with his powers. The humid air suffocated his skin; Percy actually started to sweat. Instead of stifling him, these limitations invigorated Percy. Suddenly, he felt alive!
“Ow!”
Percy stopped as he felt a stabbing pain in his foot. He’d felt worse a thousand times, yet something about this injury, this time, stopped him. He held onto his ankle and pulled until he could look at the bottom of his foot.
It had come down on a sharp rock, at the wrong angle. His skin had been sliced. Normally, he would have written it off as a random coincidence. Except it drew blood. Red blood.
“By Zeus’s shriveled shrimp dick, I’m mortal!” Percy said.
And the sky didn’t split with thunder. No rain, no lightning, no wroth, just humid air and a hot sun with gulls flying in squawking circles.
That was the moment he decided he was in a new world.
Maybe he should have tested more before making that jump. Annabeth would have. Percy, though? He always ran at least partially off of feelings. Those were something that couldn’t be taken from him, even if his body changed and his senses changed and the very blood in his veins reverted to the way it had been when he was born.
The fact that Zeus hadn’t heard him only confirmed a feeling Percy already harbored. That hole had brought him somewhere.
He set his leg down and walked to the water, leaving dabs of blood in his footprints. Percy submerged his foot for a moment. When he took it out, he was healed.
“Once of the sea, always of the sea,” he said.
There was a feeling in his stomach, starting at the bottom and moving toward the top like a soda that’d been shaken. He looked out to sea, then back at the island he’d appeared on. It was big, much too big to see all of, with a big rocky peak in the middle of it and rolling hills of dense tropical forest.
Percy made a snap decision not to head into the sea, trusting his instincts once again. He headed toward the heart of the island he’d appeared on. It occurred to him that he had NO idea what he might find, and that he was vulnerable again to danger.
He put a name to the feeling he had been experiencing, the one that was starting to seep into his veins.
Adrenaline.
Percy put his hands in front of himself and cracked his knuckles.
“Let’s see your secrets!”
LINE BREAK
A boar three times the size of those on earth tore through the forest. It trampled ferns while screeching a deafening cry.
There was a blur and a fierce breeze. The boar’s screech ended in a brief squeak. Its body fell sideways, landing with a thump. A deep cut had appeared along its flank, left by a young boy now crouching in front of the fallen boar, a bronze sword in his hands.
Percy straightened and grinned. Riptide shrank in his hand back to a pen. He turned and looked admiringly at the animal he had cut down. Nine years old now, he was a bit taller and had shaggier hair full of uneven edges (it was hard to cut your hair with a sword!) along with an outfit change, wearing a shirt and kilt made out of animal hides.
He was about to investigate his kill when a tremendous noise behind him made him jump.
Percy whipped around to fend off an attack… Only to discover that the sound was from his OWN attack. The tree in the direction of his sword slash split halfway down. The nearest three trees around it followed, collapsing in different directions. This brought down even more trees in turn and caused a huge ruckus.
Percy scratched the side of his head.
“Oops?”
This world was different than his original one; likewise, his new body was different. He was clearly mortal. Percy aged, bled regular, and needed food and water and sleep. To survive, he’d known he would need to train. This island became his private training ground. Hunting would train his ability to fight, building a home would train his strength, while he used his powers over water and earth to secure resources, drawing a fresh spring out of the ground and shaking coconuts from trees with localized quakes.
That’s when he first learned it. Here, Percy was young, but he was powerful!
His powers resembled those he wielded when he was a god. Meanwhile, his strength and speed were initially in line with his age and appearance.
After a week of training, he was faster and stronger than an adult.
After a month of training, he had reached the level of a demigod warrior.
Now, twelve months after his arrival, his speed and strength were beyond any monster he’d seen except the likes of Typhon. He could cut massive boars in half with one swing if he really tried. Clearly, trees had no chance against him either. Sometimes he moved so fast that the old mortal Percy from back then wouldn’t have been able to see the new him move. On rare occasions, when Percy ventured further and saw other humans living together, he’d seen feats from them too. He saw a lumberjack cut down a tree in one swing. While they were nothing like him, he could tell that with proper training, these people were stronger and sturdier than those back home.
“The things humans can do here are so unreal…” Percy said to himself. It still surprised him when he thought about it.
After a moment, Percy snapped out of his reverie.
Giving more evidence of his strength, Percy put Riptide’s pen form into a crude pocket in his homemade clothes. He hauled the boar up and stacked it on his back.
Bending his knees, Percy headed home.
LINE BREAK
Six months later, Percy took a big bite of boar meat, eating it off the bone. A roaring cooking fire had more meat roasting over it, brown grease dripping into the flames. Percy felt a breeze blow across his face and inhaled deeply.
“What a view,” he said.
The sea spread in front of him, lit up with deep orange light. He could see for what felt like forever. Between him and the sea was a carpet of green. If he looked backwards, he’d see the distant lights of a small human settlement. Next to him, right at the peak of the rocky mountain he’d seen when he first woke up, sat a wooden bungalow. It was a little crude. It didn’t even have windows. Affection still blossomed inside Percy as he looked at it. He’d made it with his own hands. It was home.
When he first arrived, Percy only intended to poke around a little bit before moving on. However, a few things changed his mind.
The animals here were huge and dangerous. They were on par with monsters, although they lacked monsters’ sadistic streak. This discovery made him more cautious, a feeling that was compounded by another discovery: he was weak.
At first, it had been a struggle for Percy to survive. He would hate to die before he got to see what this world had to offer, that would be so frustrating. So he decided he’d spend a little bit of time training. A decade was his current plan. That would pass quickly, then he could leave the forest.
The island he’d appeared on was pretty big. It was about the same size as the Big Island of Hawaii. There was one village on it, which Percy had only observed from far away. He planned to approach them once he’d spent a little time training. Making contact before that would be a risk.
Plus, there was something else that had Percy’s attention. In addition to training, he had something to keep him here.
Biting off the last meat from the bone in his hand, Percy got up and stretched. His body was growing taller every day, it seemed like. It made it challenging to keep his fine motor control sharp.
“Well, I guess it’s time to try again,” Percy said.
The mountain that had become his home was an old and dead volcano. The peak took the form of a ring about fifty feet wide on all sides. On one edge, Percy had built his bungalow. Nearby, he had forced a natural spring to form from the tough ground, creating a pool for his drinking needs. A second wooden building, much smaller than his main house, stored his supplies for daily life.
Percy didn’t go toward any of these. He walked to the rim of the volcano, looking down into the dark heart of the mountain. No heat touched his face. Percy rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. Without warning, he took a massive leap.
He entered the yawning darkness. Percy’s jump took him to the opposite wall of the chasm, which he kicked off of. This carried him back across it, where he hit the wall below where he’d originally been standing. Percy zigzagged his way down the chasm, using this strategy to avoid falling too far.
It got darker as he went down until his feet landed on a solid floor of cool stone. In the deepest part of the mountain, there was light.
It was a blue glow that gently caressed Percy’s face. Walking forward, he faced his greatest discovery.
“Is tonight the night you give up your secrets?” Percy asked.
The door didn’t reply. It was just a door.
An extraordinarily large door, with glowing letters of a foreign language written from the top to the bottom. It was indestructible. Percy had tried to break through. Still, ever since he first laid eyes on it, Percy had been possessed with a deep need to get inside and see what it was hiding. Was it just stupid curiosity? Probably. But the door definitely gave the impression that it was hiding something important behind it. He was a curious guy. This outcome was natural.
Since breaking the door down wasn’t an option, the only choice was to open it the proper way.
It was locked.
But there was a way to get in. Percy jumped halfway up, clinging to a groove. Inside an alcove a little taller than an adult man (the only gap anywhere on the door’s smooth surface) was what looked like an orb at a glance. Closer inspection revealed that instead of zero sides, it actually had an incredible number; more than a hundred. The tiny little sides each glowed with the same blue light as the letters on the door.
Percy hauled himself up, standing in front of the orb. He rubbed his chin and hummed to himself.
“Tonight, I’m feeling… This one!”
He poked one of the sides with his finger.
Immediately, there was a menacing hum. Nothing dangerous happened. The orb just turned red, followed a second later by all the letters on the door.
Percy groaned. “I really thought I had it tonight!”
Once, just one time since he discovered these doors, Percy had touched a side that made everything glow a brighter blue. The doors hadn’t opened. There must have been some kind of order or password. Guessing based on “vibes” was a terrible strategy… It was just the only one Percy had. He hadn’t been able to turn up any clues. The letters were just squiggles to his eyes.
“Oh well. Tomorrow night for sure!”
When the door turned red, it wouldn’t go blue again for a full day. Exactly 24 hours. Percy had tested.
It had become a nightly routine for him. More of a hobby than something he did with any real hope.
Turning around, Percy began the climb back out, leaving the same way he got in by doing a good impression of a human pingpong ball. By the time he’d climbed out of the mountain, the sunset was gone and night had fallen.
Percy walked back to his cooking fire, which had now burned out. He pulled off another piece of still warm meat from his latest kills and sat back, eating it with his head tilted up.
The stars were out. There were more of them here than he’d ever seen on earth. Percy took a big bite of meat and chewed it, wondering if these stars were the spirits of people like the ones back home.
It was thrilling to eat when he needed it to survive. Nature was so much more beautiful when you didn’t know how long you would be there to see it. He couldn’t think of a single thing he missed about his old world. Everything he cherished deeply had already disappeared, leaving him to rove around as part of a dull existence.
He couldn’t wait to see what this new world had in store. In a few short years, he’d get to see even more new things!
Little did he know, those things weren’t as content to wait for him as he was waiting for them…