Chapter 338: Hercules...
The river itself had turned against them. And still, Hercules stood.
His chest heaved, muscles straining, but his grip on the great club had not loosened. It was no mortal weapon—it had been fashioned from the trunk of a sacred olive tree blessed by Athena herself. The weapon thrummed in his hands, heavy as fate, and each swing echoed like thunder through the valley.
From the cliff above, mortals watched in silence. Farmers, shepherds, villagers—they had fled the flooding tides, only to see a war between gods unfold on their doorstep. None dared speak the name of Poseidon aloud, for fear the sea would hear. But they whispered another name, one that burned on their tongues like fire:
"Hercules..."
Word spread faster than floodwater. Messengers carried tales of the demi-god who had stood firm where armies drowned. They spoke of the river itself rising to swallow Hercules, only for him to plant his feet and hold it back with nothing but raw strength and unyielding will.
"He held back a river," they whispered in taverns.
"He fought three of Poseidon’s spawn and crushed them beneath his fists."
"No mortal can do what he has done."
By nightfall, the whispers had become songs. By dawn, the songs had become prayers.
And Hercules, sitting alone on the blood-soaked riverbank, realized he was no longer just a man walking among myths. He was becoming one.
But legends came at a cost.
High on Olympus, the gods had watched. The council chamber rang with argument, voices overlapping like crashing waves.
"He defies us all!" roared Ares, slamming his war-spear into the floor. Sparks leapt from the marble. "That whelp has no place commanding the tides of battle against gods themselves!"
"He does not command them," Athena said calmly, though her eyes flickered with something unreadable. "He resists them. There is a difference."
"Resists?!" Ares bared his teeth. "He makes a mockery of us! Already the mortals chant his name louder than ours. Every time he raises his club, another prayer is stolen from Olympus."
Hera sat silent, her gaze fixed on the scrying pool that still showed Hercules standing amidst the dead. The queen of the gods saw more than the others: she saw the threads of destiny, tugging tighter around the demi-god.
Poseidon was rising. That much was undeniable. But now, a new figure stood between the sea’s fury and Olympus’s throne.
And the mortals were choosing him.
---
Hercules and the Wounded
That night, Hercules moved through the ruins of the flooded village. He carried no torch—the moonlight clung to him as if it were his birthright. Children peered out from shattered huts, and when they saw him, they did not scream. They reached for him.
He lifted fallen beams from crushed homes, pulled men from rubble, and carried water from broken wells. His arms that had slain monsters now cradled infants. His voice that had roared in battle now whispered comfort.
The people began leaving offerings at his feet—bread, wine, flowers plucked from drowned fields. Not offerings to a man, but to a god.
Hercules burned them all.
"I am not your god," he told them. "I am your shield."
But still, when he walked away, they bowed.
Three nights later, the river rose again. This time, not as floodwater, but as a beast.
From the depths of the current, a serpent of endless coils erupted, its body glistening with scales that shone like sapphires. Its head was crowned with fins, its jaws wide enough to swallow a warship whole. The mortals screamed:
"Hydra of the Deep! Poseidon has sent it!"
Hercules did not run. He planted his feet, his club raised, his jaw set.
The beast struck. The river split around its massive coils as it lunged, fangs dripping with venom that could rot iron. Hercules swung once—just once—and the club shattered one of its heads in a spray of gore.
But two more heads grew in its place.
The people wailed. Even Hercules’ heart faltered. But then he remembered the fire. The whispers of his old teacher. He tore burning timber from a ruined hut and pressed it to the stump of the serpent’s neck. The flames hissed and sealed the wound shut.
For every head he crushed, he burned the stump clean. Again and again, until the beast writhed, screaming like a thousand storms, and Hercules leapt onto its back. With one final swing, he crushed its skull into the earth.
The river boiled with its death. And when the waters cleared, Hercules stood bloodied but unbroken.
The mortals fell to their knees. Not in fear. Not in despair. But in awe.
"Hercules! Hercules! Hercules!"
The chant rolled through the valley like thunder.
And far above, even the gods of Olympus felt it.
---
Hera’s Watch
In the quiet of her chamber, Hera looked into her mirror of obsidian. Within, she saw Hercules standing among the people, their voices lifting him higher than any mortal had been lifted before.
Her lips curled into something that was not quite a smile, not quite a sneer.
"Your tide may rise, Poseidon," she murmured to the sea. "But so too does a storm you did not account for."
By the week’s end, Hercules’ deeds had spread across the isles. Sailors painted his image on their sails for protection. Blacksmiths carved his name into their blades. Mothers whispered his stories to their children at night, telling them that no monster, no flood, no god could ever break the man who held the world on his shoulders.
And Hercules, walking alone through the night, felt the weight pressing heavier with every prayer that reached his ears.
He had not asked to be a god. He had not asked to be Olympus’s rival.
But the world was already crowning him.
And somewhere, in the deepest trenches of the sea, Poseidon stirred, his laughter echoing like waves crashing against eternity.
The sea rose.
The legend rose.
And the clash between them would shape the age to come.