Okay… wow. This quest is important.
I clicked yes and steeled myself. Time to join the party!
The ground cracked beneath my feet, and I blasted into the sky toward him, my left eye tracking his movements as if they were telegraphed. He turned and smiled happily.
"Good, now we can really start!"
He muttered something in another language, and a holographic snake-looking thing blazed to life between us, casting a golden light over me. Even my enhanced eye had trouble following what happened next.
Its maw opened, a ball of blue flame forming inside. A loud hiss echoed. Suddenly I doubled over—my entire body seized up as if someone had coated my veins in gasoline and tossed a match in there. Rather than shooting out of the snake's mouth, the blue fire roared to life on my body as the breath was forcibly ripped from my throat. My jump ceased mid-air. I felt like a puppet whose strings had been snapped. My body lost all momentum.
"Urk!"
I couldn't even scream properly.
Before I could blink, Triton grabbed my neck and turned to my aunt and Aphrodite, who were glaring at him, cracks beginning to appear on their skin. I was teetering in and out of consciousness. The game glitched for a moment, the HUD short-circuiting.
— - —
~ Please wait… rebooting… please wait… complete! ~
— - —
Slowly I stopped fading in and out. The burning feeling eased. My throat opened back up. The weird feeling of my insides melting stopped almost a minute after it started—I don't think that was supposed to happen.
— - —
[Poison Countered]
— - —
Oh, boy.
The fire wasn't stopping, though. Its blue hue seared into my eyes, forcing me to screw them shut from the sheer brightness. Triton still thought I was unconscious, and I wasn't in any rush to correct him. I had to see where this was going. Time to play dead.
"You dare use their power?" Hestia snarled in a very uncharacteristic rage. Her fingertips must've been smoking—the smell reached my nose even from yards away.
The part that intrigued me was that my aunt never got mad. You were more likely to see Zeus tap-dance than see Hestia truly pissed off. Triton, bless his soul, had found a way to do so.
"What did you do to him?" Triton tauntingly bobbed my body up and down. I mentally grumbled—I felt like a baby being bounced on an older relative's knee.
"Dear auntie, you don't have me to thank for this—thank Agathodaemon! All those years ago, he made this discovery after all!"
"You… the Romans, too?" Aphrodite bristled next to Hestia. I could tell she was seconds from exploding. "Do you have any idea what you're doing? Mixing these pantheons? What does Agathodaemon have to do with anything?"
"Pantheons?" Triton laughed loudly. "Why, everything! He gave me the idea, after all. Atlantis sand produces hydrogen sulfide, which he noted makes a fiery poison. When I gave pretty boy the clothes to take you out, I smeared the inside with it. It activated a few hours after he got back up, and all I had to do was use a little tip I picked up from a friend. Dear old Agathodaemon is the only reason I pulled this off!"
I heard my aunt get closer, but Triton made a little noise.
"It's commendable how much you care for the boy, but sadly, you'll have your hands full trying to protect the children, won't you?"
There was a roar from behind us. I was sorely tempted to open my eyes, but that would blow my cover. Triton laughed again, and I felt us teleport out of there.
A few moments passed, and we appeared in what felt like some area underwater. My reflexes immediately got the boost, and my body gained that weightless feeling I'd come to expect underwater. My eyes snapped open just as Triton loosened his grip on my neck.
My brain began racing through different ways I could take him down. I was underwater now, which boosted my abilities a pretty good amount, but it probably boosted his too. Not that it mattered. If he could hang with two elders above ground, he'd probably destroy me in this state. That didn't mean I'd give up, though. Far from it.
Let's get to thinking.
In terms of speed, his was something I'd completely underestimated—he'd gotten us in and out of camp (which shouldn't be possible, by the way) before Hestia or Aphrodite could stop him. It's safe to say he outclassed me in that aspect. Power, too, was something he had a surprising amount of. My aunt and Aphrodite weren't offensively oriented gods, generally speaking, but even then he shouldn't have been able to mess around with both of them for as long as he had.
I wouldn't be able to purely outpower him. My best bet right now was the element of surprise. If I was lucky, I could land a critical strike or something.
"You can stop pretending, brat," Triton said, interrupting my thoughts and dropping me to the ground.
I tumbled onto the sand like a sack of potatoes. A sheepish grin formed on his face at my indignant squeak. Regaining my composure, I instantly went to attack him, but he raised his hands. As he dusted some dirt off his clothes, he urged, "Let me speak first."
Fine.
I looked around while he got comfortable. First observations—we were on the ocean floor, somewhere. Normally I could belt out coordinates, but there was a weird magic barrier off in the distance blocking my powers. Aside from that, the only light came from luminescent fish bathing Triton's face and the sand in a reddish glow. Great for the vibes, not so great for super-precise geo-locating.
"I've placed a barrier around us," Triton pointed toward the magic barrier I'd been looking at. "Just so we aren't interrupted—and you won't leave without hearing me out."
"Screw hearing you out! You attacked the camp, you fuck! After I was nice to you! How did you even pull that off? Gods aren't allowed to make the first move!" I seethed, angry and just a little betrayed. Words kept spilling out—looking back, I probably wasn't making the most sense. In my defense, there were so many things to hit on!
"That first part was easy. I don't know if you remember, but in our conversation, before you went up, you technically invited me to visit you. As far as camp rules go, that's enough permission—dumb, I know, but it isn't my first time going to camp. I know how to work the system. You also invited me to train, giving me the grounds to attack you—as if," Triton scoffed, taking a seat next to me on the ocean floor where I was still sprawled out. His tone was just a tad condescending. "If I really attacked you, you'd be dead. I love-tapped you. Let's make that clear."
"Okay," I said, uncaring that I'd been so easily duped. Yeah, that was on me, but the Ancient Laws were seriously flawed if they were that easy to work around. As far as I was concerned, that wasn't really my fault. I couldn't construct every sentence I uttered in the presence of an immortal with that in mind, or I'd go insane. Thanks, gods!
"So you'll still admit to being the traitor?"