Warriors of Poseidon 05 - Atlantis Redeemed

FLOWN—WILL YOUR MEMORY OF HER FULLY RETURN TO YOU, THUS
    ALLOWING YOU UNTIL THE END OF YOUR DAYS TO REPENT BRINGING DISHONOR UPON THE
    NAME OF THE WARRIORS OF POSEIDON.
    Brennan, robbed of any coherent response as the enormity of Poseidon’s curse sank in, just lay on the floor, stinking of blood and wine, still too drunk to comprehend the full extent of what was happening to him. “Bit harsh, don’t you think?” he managed.
    SHE TOOK HER OWN LIFE, FOOL, AND THAT OF YOUR CHILD SHE CARRIED; A CHILD THE
    ORACLES HAD DECREED WOULD BE OF GREAT USE TO ME.
    With a final crack of thunder, the sea god disappeared with a booming admonition.
    REMEMBER.
    The peculiar feeling of heaviness that always accompanied great power disappeared, and Brennan’s ears popped with a sizzling burst of pain as they adjusted to its absence. Warmth pooled in his ear canals and he wondered what had burst in his head and whether the healers would be able to repair what Poseidon himself had wrought, but the self-indulgent thought immediately vanished, crushed under the weight of Poseidon’s words. Corelia had taken her life?
    Denial burned through the alcoholic haze in his brain. Surely not. He would have heard.
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    Wouldn’t he?
    A child? His
    child? Pain beyond the imagining of it ripped through him at the thought, and he clutched his roiling gut and rolled back and forth on the filthy floor. She had killed herself and taken his child with her? Because of what he, Brennan, had done? No. No.
    No. It must not be true. He had offered to wed her and been ridiculed for his trouble. She’d made no mention of a child . . . But a god had said it. Poseidon himself.
    As the realization of truth seared through Brennan’s consciousness, he threw back his head and roared out his agony, slamming his fists on the stone, over and over. No. What had he done?
    What—what—
    What was happening to him? The pain was vanishing, slipping from his soul as easily as the clothing had fallen from Corelia’s body during their trysts. A bland numbness, hideous in its emptiness, settled over his senses. Suffocating him. A brief flash of terror at the alien feeling and then that, too, was gone. A vast nothingness established itself in its place.
    Dragging himself up off the ground, nearly insensible to the blood running freely from so many gashes on his arms, face, and body, Brennan sent his thoughts and focus deep, deep inside of himself to discover just how far the void had burrowed into his mind and soul.
    He stood there, alone, for minutes or perhaps hours, seeking some fragment of the anguish he’d suffered for Corelia and the babe. Searching for some remnant of his terror at Poseidon’s curse.
    Nothing. There was nothing. He did not feel pain, and he could not sense the terror. He felt precisely nothing, save for a vast, bleak emptiness in the wasteland of his soul, where—just moments ago—his emotions had resided. He slowly picked up his dagger from where it had fallen into the filth and made his way to the door. He must return to Atlantis and face the punishment for this transgression. He realized that he neither feared nor dreaded the outcome.
    Dread, then, was also an emotion. He dispassionately began a mental category of what he had lost, although he was unable to feel the loss itself. The irony was not lost on him, leaving him to believe that irony itself was merely an intellectual construct. Finding his dagger on the floor and shoving it into its sheath, he shouldered his way out of the door and through the tavern, intent on the journey to find seawater and thus the portal. The tavern fell silent as he made his way through it, and even the most foolhardy refrained from calling out to him, as if they could read his shame and dishonor on his face.
    But of course they could not, since he could feel neither except as distant realities. To Atlantis, then, although the better, easier course would be to shove his own blade through his heart now. It would be an easy death, though, and more merciful than he deserved for causing the death of an innocent and her child.
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    His child.
    An eternity of punishment could not be long enough for what he had caused.

Chapter 1
    Present day: Atlantis, the palace war room
    Even those cursed to feel no emotion could experience its paler cousin, curiosity. Brennan had always assumed it was a more