Poseidon's Scar Read online

  Poseidon’s

  Scar

  The sequel to Echo and the Sea

  Matthew Phillion

  Poseidon’s Scar

  Lost Continuity Press

  Contact:

  [email protected]

  www.theindestructiblesbook.com

  February 2019

  Printed in the United States of America

  © 2019 Matthew Phillion

  First Edition: © Matthew Phillion / Lost Continuity Press

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9979165-9-1

  Cover Design by Sterling Arts and Design:

  http://www.sterlingartsanddesign.com

  “Echo Diving - Silhouette” art by Matthew Phillion

  To Steph, the navigator

  and

  To Lucas – welcome aboard, little man

  CONTENTS

  Prologue: The hole in the bottom of the sea

  Chapter 1: New Tortuga

  Chapter 2: Something to make me feel human

  Chapter 3: Muireann

  Chapter 4: The old spymaster

  Chapter 5: Ghost ships

  Chapter 6: Autopsy

  Chapter 7: Water spirits

  Chapter 8: The vast emptiness of it

  Chapter 9: Scouting party

  Chapter 10: The man with no soul

  Chapter 11: You could have knocked

  Chapter 12: It’s not our fault, but it’s our fault

  Chapter 13: I don’t really call it home

  Chapter 14: A collection of facts

  Chapter 15: The Library of Atlantis

  Chapter 16: An ideal I may never be able to reach

  Chapter 17: Weird little town

  Chapter 18: Do I look like a Disney princess?

  Chapter 19: Theories on transmutation

  Chapter 20: New Scythia

  Chapter 21: Mother

  Chapter 22: The Queens of the Amazons

  Chapter 23: The Keepers of Athena

  Chapter 24: What we do for love

  Chapter 25: Blood in the water

  Chapter 26: Why are you here

  Chapter 27: Seeing the world through a blurred window

  Chapter 28: Splitting up always works so well

  Chapter 29: Shark meets crocodile

  Chapter 30: The pink dolphin

  Chapter 31: It’s a cult

  Chapter 32: The upside-down city

  Chapter 33: Slouching toward Bethlehem

  Chapter 34: You stole from who?

  Chapter 35: You put him into soul overdraft

  Chapter 36: First contact

  Chapter 37: The gods hate women

  Chapter 38: Separate directions

  Chapter 39: Raise the dead

  Chapter 40: Return to the Scar

  Chapter 41: The Priesthood of the Fallen Star

  Chapter 42: Wisdom from the mouths of were-sharks

  Chapter 43: A hole in the world

  Chapter 44: The going rate for a soul

  Chapter 45: A man in irons

  Chapter 46: As old as time

  Chapter 47: Red water

  Chapter 48: A town gone mad

  Chapter 49: Fight for your life

  Chapter 50: But how do they work?

  Chapter 51: Punch Cthulhu in the face

  Chapter 52: Holding the line

  Chapter 53: The ship will defend itself

  Chapter 54: The Needle of the Moon

  Chapter 55: The Eye of Dreams

  Chapter 56: Sharks, just falling from the sky

  Chapter 57: There is always a bond, wanted or not

  Chapter 58: The exit music to Jaws

  Chapter 59: Balancing a scale

  Chapter 60: Birthplace

  Chapter 61: Songs on the water

  Chapter 62: Atlantis

  Chapter 63: The Department of What, When, Where, Why,

  and Who

  Epilogue: The bargain

  Acknowledgments

  I’ll be honest: I didn’t know if there’d be a sequel to Echo and the Sea.

  I knew I wanted to write one, for sure, but sometimes writing feels like it’s done in a vacuum – you send a story out into the world and you’re not sure anyone will find it, or if they do, whether or not they’ll want more.

  I worked the comic con circuit this past summer, though, and I was incredibly encouraged by the number of people who came up to me asking when the next adventure of Echo and her friends would happen. I didn’t realize that people were waiting for the story to continue, and, because of them, I walked away from those conventions knowing I had a job to do – and knowing that there were people out there who cared about Echo and her crew and wanted to learn more.

  I always have an idea for the next story when the previous one concludes, but I also always want to make sure that each tale has a true ending as well. But clearly, Echo and the Sea left a few things unfinished. It was time to get back to work.

  I will say that almost everything about Poseidon’s Scar surprised me. The enemies were not what I first envisioned, nor were all of the character arcs. New heroes emerged I didn’t know existed until they first appeared on the page. I also found some connective tissue to the overarching “Indestructiverse” that more directly ties Echo’s crew to the other heroes in the world she inhabits. I stumbled across mythological references I’d never heard of and took the characters places I never expected.

  So my first thank-you goes out to those readers who approached me at the conventions this year to say you wanted more of Echo, Yuri, Artem, and Barnabas. You’re the reason this book happened right now. Thank you for your inspiration.

  I have to thank all the usual suspects who make these books possible as well. Editing props go out to Christine Geiger and Jay Kumar for saving me from myself over and over again from typos and grammatical errors and my inability to spell “dinghy” right. Thanks to Stephanie Buck for being a sounding board for not only the story but keeping me sane on the business side of writing as well, all the time, every day. Colin Carlton took time from his own writing work to offer awesome feedback on story and motivation, and Christian Sterling Hegg, as always, created yet another beautiful cover and let me harass him endlessly about imagery and color palettes.

  And last but not least, thanks to my family, who puts up with the weird uncle who is always in superhero tee shirts and talking about worlds that don’t exist. I appreciate that you bring me back to the real world so I don’t get lost at sea.

  Now then. Hope aboard the Endless with me and let’s set sail. There’s sea monsters to fight and strange lands to explore together.

  .

  Prologue: The hole in the bottom of the sea

  The afanc had not felt pain in hundreds of years.

  For centuries, the beast had been the undisputed king of the stretch of ocean it called home. Nothing threatened the afanc; smaller creatures fled in terror at the very hint of its presence. Once, perhaps three hundred years ago, another of its kind challenged the afanc for this territory, and the water became clouded with red as they fought a silent, elemental battle. But that was the last time this creature had felt anything resembling pain.

  Until that were-shark sunk tooth and claw into the afanc’s snout, rending and tearing, a feral, relentless fury that drove the afanc to flight.

  This raw, ragged pain drove the afanc mad. And it felt something it had not experienced for as long as it could remember: fear.

  After the battle with the were-shark, the great beast took shelter in the ravine that lacerated the ocean floor beneath its territory. The Atlanteans called this long, narrow wound Poseidon’s Scar, but the afanc had no need for names. It was simply a place where it sometimes basked in the warmth created by lava flows below. It had certainly nev
er reached the bottom. Nothing lived there. No prey, no mates. Nothing but emptiness, a great black void occasionally lit by slow-moving snakes of molten rock.

  But now it was safe harbor, shelter from the mad thing that had turned the afanc’s snout to meat.

  The beast stayed in the ravine for several days, healing and waiting. It didn’t understand, in its simple, ancient mind, that it remained out of fear. The afanc lacked the self-awareness for that. But the monster, bigger than a school bus, remained in hiding, soaking in the warmth from the lava, safe from prying eyes.

  A few days later, it saw the bomb fall.

  During the battle the Atlanteans had driven some sort of vessel into the seabed near the Scar. It lay there like the corpse of a metal whale, a sunken vessel never to be found. But the sands shift in this part of the ocean, and the vessel had disturbed the ground upon impact, unsettling the whole area. The metal frequently creaked and groaned as the dead submarine settled.

  At a certain point, a cylindrical object rolled out.

  The afanc had no point of reference for what this object might be. If any of the Atlanteans saw it they might have guessed, but this was a forgotten, hidden place, rarely frequented by them.

  The current toyed with the cylinder, rocking it back and forth. Over the course of days, it moved closer, and closer, and closer to the edge of the Scar.

  And eventually, it simply rolled over the edge, tumbling into the darkness below.

  The afanc watched curiously, knowing whatever it was, the object was not food, but not believing it to be a threat, either. The beast was no stranger to falling debris. With the calm curiosity of a creature who had all the time in the world, the afanc observed as the cylinder plummeted, crashing against the stone edge of the Scar, disappearing into the darkness below, occasionally lit gently by the reddish glow of a lava stream.

  None knew how deep Poseidon’s Scar really was. Perhaps the cylinder might have fallen forever. Perhaps it would reach the center of the Earth.

  But not this time. The cylinder—a surface to air missile, a weapon of mankind—landed nose-first in a pool of lava. It sat there for a moment like a knife jabbed into a countertop.

  And then it exploded.

  The afanc began to flee at the first tremor of the explosion, afraid for the second time in such a short order. Stone split and fell from the Scar’s walls. Bubbles of air escaped from below, pinned beneath the molten surface, rising to the surface filled with noxious poisons.

  The afanc regained its composure, if such a beast could do so, and, feeling suddenly more curious than fearful, swam deeper to investigate.

  The water where the explosion occurred was turbulent, tangy with a chemical taste the afanc had never experienced before. Something in the water burned the fresh wounds on the monster’s face. It drifted ever deeper, feeling once more like the master of its own domain.

  Then it saw the eyes looking up at it from below. Yellow eyes, many of them, blinking and glowing, watching and waiting.

  Something deep in the ancient instincts of the afanc told the beast to swim away. Three times, three times fear entered the monster’s heart after a millennium without. Old memories, thoughts that carried on through some inborn, genetic knowledge, screamed out at it.

  Flee. Flee now.

  The afanc turned to swim for open water.

  It felt the first teeth bite into its tail, sharp, needle-like pain it tried to shrug off and ignore. But then more teeth, nipping and tearing at its fins, at its sides, the water growing red with the beast’s blood and gummy with its own shredded flesh.

  The afanc had ruled this stretch of water for centuries. But in that moment, its reign was over, its body given over to the sea, as all things are.

  Chapter 1: New Tortuga

  Echo didn’t like to admit it, but she’d started to get attached to New Tortuga.

  The pirate haven—built like an M.C. Escher drawing of a Mervyn Peake novel—had become a temporary home for Echo and her crew after the events in Atlantis. Well, she thought, not directly after. They’d spent some time on the open seas, looking for trouble and looking to stay out of it, mostly avoiding anyone involved with Atlantis or its near-war with the surface until things settled down. But after a period of aimless wandering on the high seas, they’d settled here, among the other freaks and rejects, to try to get their bearings and figure out where to go next.

  She walked through the main marketplace, a net bag of fruit and breads casually looped around the prongs of her trident as she ate an apple with her free hand. The trident at this point was mostly for show, since it took only one incident in which Echo was accosted for the general populace of New Tortuga to know to leave her well enough alone. She’d thrown a cyclops—a literal cyclops, with one eye and a hands-y attitude—bodily over the edge of a rope bridge, screaming as he fell a hundred feet into the water below.

  Still, she carried the trident everywhere. She amused herself with how casual she’d become with it. Today it was an implement for carrying groceries. Other times it was a percussion instrument as she walked and whistled. Regardless, the weapon felt like a part of her, now, as if she’d been training with it her whole life instead of just a few months with Artem.

  Artem still worked Echo hard, trying to wake up further latent Atlantean abilities locked away in her mind, but he’d been distracted lately. She worried about the Amazonian. He’d lost his husband during a vicious attack on their home island, and while Artem had found the revenge he sought, Echo wasn’t sure he’d found time to process his loss or to grieve.

  I know I haven’t, Echo thought, feeling guilty, as she often did, that her mother was not here to enjoy these adventures. She felt guiltier still that she found this life so much fun. I shouldn’t have had to lose her to be this free, Echo thought. Maybe I haven’t figured out how to mourn either.

  She spotted Artem in the market, holding hands with a staggeringly beautiful man with pale blue skin and an elegant fin rising from the center of his head. Echo had no idea what kind of being the other man was, but she’d seen Artem with him before, and she wasn’t sure of the right way to ask the question. She’d ask Barnabas next time she saw him, she thought, if the magician didn’t distract her as he usually did. Barnabas was having his own issues with processing the battle below in Atlantis, and being easily distracted was one of them.

  Echo finished her apple and watched Artem and his date part ways. Artem caught sight of her leaning against a post and grinned at her through his perfectly maintained dark beard, a curl of hair falling over his left eye.

  “Hey, dude,” Echo said as Artem reached her. “How’s that going?”

  Artem looked over his shoulder as the blue man disappeared into the crowd.

  “It’s fine,” he said, unconvincingly.

  “Artem, don’t be offended by this, but I think you’re having a rebound,” Echo said. “I mean, he seems very sweet and all, but… You know what a rebound relationship is, yeah?”

  “Is that when you are spending time with someone whom you may genuinely like, but know they are mostly a distraction from the sadness of a relationship you no longer have?” Artem said.

  “That’s… a pretty succinct definition of a rebound relationship,” Echo said.

  “I know exactly what I’m doing, Echo,” Artem said. “I’m not fooling myself. But Yenn is nice, and he’s very pleasant to look at and to be around, and he makes me feel less alone and less sad, and when we inevitably sail away from New Tortuga, I will only miss him a very slight bit. I left my heart shattered in pieces on the Island of Unwanted Things, and I have not yet put it back together again. But I get lonely.”

  “I’m sorry,” Echo said. “I just want to look out for you.”

  “I know,” Artem said. “And I do appreciate it.”

  Echo nodded and brushed her hand through her seafoam-colored Mohawk, grimacing as she realized her fingers were still a little sticky from the apple she’d eaten.

  “You’re lonely,
too,” Artem said.

  “Aren’t we all?” Echo said. She began walking back to the dinghy they’d rowed out from their ship, the Endless, where they’d left Barnabas.

  “I suppose we are,” Artem said. He lifted her net bag from the tip of the trident and withdrew an orange, which he began to peel perfectly in one winding strip. Echo found herself watching the process with scientific fascination. “I think we’ve been here too long.”

  “Maybe we have,” Echo said. “Is that your way of saying you’re ready to move on before you get attached?”

  Artem gave her a sad, gentle smile.

  “Maybe. But I also think you know what you want to do next,” Artem said.

  “Yeah,” Echo said. “I guess we should tell our pet wizard it’s time to go.”

  ***

  Echo found Barnabas Coy below deck, alone, tinkering in his workshop. The room was covered in arcane implements, spell books and components, strange animal parts, contraptions, weapons, and baubles.

  Barnabas was hunched over his desk, beads of sweat trailing alarmingly down his stubbly head. Echo walked up beside him to look at what he was working on.

  Laid out in pieces on the table were the remnants of a flintlock pistol. He’d carried a similar one when they first met, but it was not a functioning gun. Instead, it acted as a sort of focus for his spells, able to unleash lethal mystical energies. He called it a wand shaped like a pistol, which went along with his entire look—tattooed and scarred, wearing an almost comical approximation of a classic pirate’s garb, with striped pants and wide-topped boots, a long, loose coat over his shoulders.

  Echo winced when she saw his still-bandaged hand. He’d lost his flintlock wand by channeling a spell through it. The spell had been too powerful for the focus to contain, and it had blown up in his hand, breaking several bones and leaving the hand bloody and temporarily maimed. He’d been healing up nicely, all things considered. But he kept his ring and little fingers bandaged together for support, and parts of his hand showed signs of shiny pink scars.