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Chapter Text

The sea smelled of a storm before the thunder announced it.

Odysseus knew it. He had spent too many years reading the signs of waves and winds. Even so, on that starless night, he allowed himself a fleeting moment of illusion: perhaps fate was finally favorable to him. Perhaps the gods had grown tired of playing with him.

“Ithaca…,” he murmured, clinging to that word as if it were a talisman.  

Penelope’s face appeared in his mind, the calm light in his son’s eyes. The only thing that had kept him alive through that endless journey.

But the men who accompanied him did not share his prudence.  

Temptation had gotten the better of them. Behind their captain’s back, they had sacrificed the sacred cattle of the Sun God. Roasting meat crackled over the fire, laughter drunk on hunger and despair. Odysseus had tried to stop them, but it was already too late. The crime had been committed.

And the gods do not forgive.

The sky tore open with a peal of thunder.  

Zeus’s lightning fell like a judgment.  

The ship split in two, the masts caught fire, and the foam of the sea was dyed with flame.  

The men screamed, pleaded, but one by one they sank into the darkness.

Odysseus endured. He clung to a plank, fought the currents that dragged him into the depths. As he swallowed salt water, a thought struck him harder than the waves:

“Why? Why must I alone live to bear this fate?”

The storm did not answer.  

Only Poseidon’s roar, mingled with the waves, seemed to mock him.

Day came.  

Odysseus woke on the shore of an unknown beach, his body covered in sand and wounds. There were no ruins of his ship, no men, no song welcoming him home. Only strange voices, harsh, full of incomprehensible orders. Armed warriors surrounded him; their helmets shone in the sun, their short swords pointed at his neck.

Bound with ropes, dragged like spoils, Odysseus understood that his journey was not over yet. And worse, that perhaps it would never end.

They did not execute him or sell him as a rower. He soon understood why: his size, the hardness of his gaze, and the strength he still had left marked him for a different fate—one where men were stripped of their names and turned into spectacle. The city’s games arena, raised in wood and stone, awaited him.

The city itself was a strange contrast: newly erected marble temples beside half-built houses, dirt streets trafficked by slaves hauling stone and timber under the eyes of guards. There was order, yes, but woven with brutality. There, the law was the spectacle.

Odysseus tried to resist with the only thing that had always saved him: his voice. In desperation, again and again, he repeated his name:

“Odysseus! My name is Odysseus!”

But no one understood, and those who heard him twisted their mouths, mangled the syllables, spat it out like a foreign sound.

At the forge, the bronzesmith asked no questions. He set a plate on the anvil and, with curt blows, sank in letters Odysseus did not recognize. The overseer grunted a couple of orders, and a guard, curious, read the strokes aloud with clumsy effort:

“V… LI… XES…” and then, in his own tongue, pronounced with force:  

“Ulixes.”

Odysseus clenched his teeth. He tried again to speak his name, but the overseer silenced him with a click of his tongue. He lifted the plate and pointed to the throat. That was what mattered: not what he said, but what the metal declared.

The collar was fastened to his neck. The cold turned to heat, and then to shame. Every guard who passed repeated the name like a taunt. Odysseus, in chains, heard his identity deformed in every echo: Ulixes, Ulixes…

In the square they hauled him onto a platform. The sun blinded him, and a magistrate recited in a harsh, sing-song tongue words he did not understand:

“—Uthuze, θuś lārθ, mi avil…”

Another herald rendered it for the plebs in a rough voice:

“—Ulixes! Servus Graecus!”

He was sold like any other slave.

Thus began his life in the arena. They trained him with weapons he knew well, but twisted for spectacle: a shorter bronze spear, a round shield of wood and leather, and a short sword meant for close clashes. The helmet, heavy and ill-fitted, cut off his breath. The city did not master Greek techniques, but it watched, copied, and distorted. Every movement was tested, corrected, and punished if it failed to reach the desired brutality. It was a cruel mockery: he fought as a foreigner, a Greek torn from his homeland, without honor and without a name.

His first bout marked him forever: cunning, tricks, even the words that had so often saved him on his travels, did him no good there. The opponent advanced without hesitation, with a ferocity that left no room for deceit. Odysseus barely reacted when the enemy blade sank into his right arm, tearing flesh and staining the sand with his blood. Then he understood: this was no duel of honor, no game of wits. It was kill or be killed.

The fight turned brutal, an exchange of frantic blows where pain clouded his mind but not his instinct. The enemy sought to kill him, and Odysseus—wounded and staggering—found the only way out the arena left him. With a final effort, he drove his short sword into the adversary’s throat, feeling life gush away in a torrent of hot blood. The man collapsed, convulsing, until he lay still.

The roar of the enclosure exploded around him: cheers, applause, shouts of jubilation that were lost in the chaos of his mind. For the crowd it was glory, but for Odysseus it was another chain.

And yet, he survived. Because within him still burned the fire of one who had faced so much. He survived not for glory, but out of the stubborn refusal to give the gods the pleasure of seeing him broken.

As months went by, each fight became another mark on his skin. A new scar joined the others; some closed with difficulty, others festered and consumed him with fever, but even so he remained standing. The games arena knew no compassion, much less its masters.

Once, one of his opponents yielded. The man, exhausted and covered in blood, let his sword fall, and in that instant Odysseus believed he could still choose. That he could still show that not everything inside him was lost. He tried to grant the man his life, lowering his spear… but before mercy could be carried out, a foreign blade sank into the defeated man’s throat. The crowd, implacable, had decided the outcome. Blood spurted dark, and the body crumpled at his feet.

He could not sleep that night. Nor the next.

Impotence devoured him. In a desperate fit, he tried to turn his weapons into tools of escape, secretly planning an impossible way out. But his attempts did not go unnoticed: they punished him harshly, denying him food and water for seven interminable days. Every bone in his body felt heavier than iron, every wound burned like fire, and every thought of freedom dissolved in weakness.  

Little by little, he stopped resisting. He stopped even thinking about who his next opponent would be. He only answered what the crowd demanded: death. Death by his hands, blood spilled to sate a people hungry for spectacle. Each bout was another step toward degradation, each cry of jubilation an invisible chain that kept him enslaved.

His body was covered in scars, and his mind sank into a deepening silence. In time, even that name “Ulixes,” which the Etruscans shouted with fury and devotion, clung to his skin like a curse. He hated it, despised it… but on nights when he managed to steal an instant of sleep, it was that name, not his true one, that echoed in his mind.

One afternoon, as they were taking him back to the cells, a young guard looked at him with curiosity and said something in that language he did not understand.  

The veteran, impatient, pointed at the bronze collar. The youngster then spoke once more:

“Quo nomine vocaris?”—and, without waiting for an answer, dropped his gaze to the bronze—“VLIXES.”  

He tried to repeat it, slowly, as if savoring the novelty:  

“Ulixes.”

The name bounced off the stone walls and sank into the hero’s memory. This time there was no mockery, only a statement, as if the bronze dictated the truth. And so it remained.

Weeks became months, and months an entire year. His body was covered in scars that traced the story of each fight won, each time he had teetered on the brink of death. The city celebrated him, venerated him as beast and hero of the arena. To him, each applause was a dagger driven into his pride.  

The cunning of old rusted between mud and blood. His thoughts grew darker and darker, trapped in a fate he could not even defy with words.

There was no hope left in him. Each day he woke was only a repetition of torment, a reminder of what he had lost: his land, his men, his glory. He felt a traitor to all he had defended, a king who was now nothing but a slave in a foreign arena.

That bout found him empty. His body no longer responded with its former agility, and his mind had no strength to weave strategies. He barely raised his shield when the adversary’s spear came down on him. The iron glanced off, but not entirely: the edge slid, tearing his cheek, carving cruelly upward until it furrowed his left eye.

The world turned red. A hot torrent blinded him, and searing pain lanced through his skull. He knew in that instant he had lost the eye. His judgment clouded; the air burned his lungs, and his legs barely held him. For the first time in years, he accepted the thought that this would be his end. That he would die like so many other slaves, bled out and forgotten.

But then he heard it.  

Amid the crowd’s roars rose a different clamor, a desperate plea. Voices asking for his life, beseeching the arbiter and the gods not to let him fall. Odysseus, turned into a beast of the arena, had become the people’s favorite.

A nobleman, dressed in a white toga and gold adornments, raised his hand. With a solemn gesture he decided his fate: there would be no death that day. Pardon was granted, not out of mercy, but for the spectacle his endurance provided. Before he lost consciousness entirely, Odysseus barely felt himself being dragged out of the arena. He had been bought, claimed as valuable property, as a treasure to adorn another man’s pride.

And so, with one eye less and his dignity in shreds, Odysseus kept breathing.

Darkness had devoured him, and when he opened his eyes again—or what was left of them—he was not in the arena, nor among the piled bodies of the defeated. He found himself in a cell unlike the one he knew, larger, with walls of polished stone and a rough cot covered with clean straw. It wasn’t ostentatious, but compared to the mud and damp he was used to, it felt like an impossible luxury.

His left eye was wrapped in firm bandages, soaked in herbs that burned against the wound. Even so, the pain throbbed, reminding him that he would never see the world whole again.

Odysseus tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t obey. Silence surrounded him until he heard the creak of the door.

A man entered. He was not dressed like the guards or the slave traders. His tunics were simple but immaculate, his steps assured, his bearing imposing. And what most unsettled Odysseus was that, despite being in a strange city, the newcomer seemed a Greek of noble blood.

“Ulixes Invictus…” he pronounced calmly, savoring each syllable as if it were a title that belonged to him. “Looks like your streak almost ended today, doesn’t it?”

The voice rang clear, not in that foreign tongue, but in Greek. The language of his home—the sound of words he hadn’t heard since the sea—struck him like a lost memory.

Odysseus blinked, incredulous. For months he had heard only the curt orders of trainers, the savage cries of the crowd, the jeers of the soldiers who watched him. Now those familiar words fell on him like unexpected thunder.

With effort, he raised his head. His voice trembled, broken by pain and exhaustion.

“Do you… know me?” he asked, barely more than a thread of sound. “Do you know who I am? I’m Odysseus, king of Ithaca… I have a wife, a son who waits… I… I don’t belong in this arena. Help me… by the gods, tell me you know me…”

Tears burned in his eyes, not from the wound, but from a plea he had never thought he would utter. To beg. He, the cunning one, the victor of Troy, reduced to imploring recognition in the language he loved.

The man watched him in silence for a moment, and then a deep, cruel laughter broke the air.

“Know you?” he repeated, with a smile that wasn’t compassion but mockery. “I only know ‘Ulixes,’ the crowd’s favorite. The warrior who bleeds for the roar of the multitude. That’s what you are here, and nothing else.”

Odysseus stared, stunned, as if the words tore away what little still held him together.

“No… you don’t understand… I’m not a slave, I am—”

“You are what I bought,” the man cut in coldly. “And I’ll make that purchase count. You will keep fighting, you will keep spilling blood in that arena until your body can do no more.”

The Greek lowered his gaze, his throat knotted with despair. The hope that had flickered for an instant went out like a flame smothered by wind.

The stranger turned on his heel, leaving behind a dry, rasping chuckle that echoed against the stone, crueler than any wound in the arena.

The days that followed passed in a strange penumbra. The noble had paid a healer with steady hands, one who knew the secrets of herbs and bandages. Odysseus endured the pricks, the sting of ointments, bones set by force. The man treated him efficiently, not compassionately; as one cares for a valuable horse that must still run more races.

Odysseus’s body recovered grudgingly, but his spirit… that remained battered, chained between hopelessness and obstinacy.  

It was the noble who broke the routine.  

With a single order, the guards took him from the cell and, for the first time in days, sunlight struck his skin. Heat ran through his muscles like a forgotten balm. He breathed deeply, without the stench of the arena or the iron of blood in his nose. The air tasted like glory, though he knew it was borrowed.

People recognized him along the way. Voices hailed him, hands rose:  

“Uthuze! Ulixes!”

That name he hated had become a collective cry, and yet it was a title that kept him alive in those lands.

The noble led him to a newly erected stone temple. It wasn’t large, but at its center rose a figure Odysseus could not mistake: a trident, unyielding symbol of the god of the sea.

“Pray, slave,” the noble ordered, his tone dry. “Because thanks to him you’re still alive.”

Odysseus knelt. His pride burned hotter than his wounds, but he obeyed. He could not risk losing this small respite. He bowed his head, murmured prayers—but not to that god. His secret words, drowned in the shadowed chamber of his mind, were for Athena. His mentor, his guide in war, his only hope in misfortune. He begged like a lost child.

When he raised his gaze, the noble looked at him with a sheen of barely contained scorn, as if he had read what Odysseus had done in silence. But he said nothing. He turned and led him back.

On the way to the enclosure, Odysseus dared.

“Master… would you grant me the honor of knowing the name of the one who holds my life in his hands?”

The man regarded him without any emotion, with that calm more humiliating than fury.

“You are not worthy of knowing my name, Ulixes.”

Odysseus pressed his lips together and nodded. He did not reply—he could not. But inside him a spark refused to die. This man dressed like a Greek, spoke his language as if born in Ithaca itself. How could he not know him? How could he be so near and so far at once?

He asked, almost casually, how it was that he knew his tongue, why he wore those clothes. The noble shrugged.

“Gifts from other lands,” he answered indifferently.

And said nothing more.

When they arrived, a guard shoved him without ceremony back into his cell. Darkness received him as always. And so another day passed: without answers, without an exit, with freedom barely touched like a cruel dream that vanished the moment he opened his eyes.

Yet his recovery was not a gift, but another form of torment. The noble had paid for unguents, clean bandages, and richer food than he had ever tasted in his time as a slave. Each day his body regained strength, and each day the noble appeared, like a hunter who does not want his prey to die before the hunt.

It was not compassion. It was calculation.

The noble watched him while he ate, while the healer changed his bandages, even when Odysseus tried to sleep. And little by little, with soft words laced with venom, he began to insinuate himself.

“You could have a better life, Ulixes,” he murmured with a faintly crooked smile. “Not only as my slave… if you swore loyalty, if you gave yourself over completely, you would never lack for anything.”

Odysseus listened in silence, brow furrowed, unable to fully grasp it. Was he not already his slave, bought like any object? The bargain seemed absurd, as if there were a second, deeper captivity he had yet to perceive.

As days passed, Odysseus began to notice details about that noble that had escaped him until then. His bearing was not that of a common barbarian; his face was marked by strong features and a set jaw. His hair, black as the sea’s abyss, fell with an almost solemn order. But what most disturbed him were the eyes: two chasms of deep blue, like the sea he had not seen for over a year. The sea he might never sail again.

The night before his return to the arena, the noble appeared again at the cell. He inclined his head slightly, wrapped as ever in that dangerous calm.

“You still have the chance,” he said in a grave voice. “Swear loyalty to your master. Give yourself to me, and your life will cease to be suffering.”

Odysseus looked at him with the only eye he still had, and for the first time he neither begged nor kept quiet. His voice carried a wounded dignity, but it was firm.

“If what you offer is true… then give me more than chains. Give me a way to return to my land, to see my wife, my son. Do that, and you will have what you ask.”

Silence grew heavy, as if the walls themselves awaited the answer. The noble let out a dry, mirthless laugh. The mockery on his lips soon hardened into a gesture forged by anger.

“You are not the one who sets the terms, Ulixes,” he spat, with the cold of an approaching storm. “Never forget to whom you belong.”

That night they brought him no food.

The sun scorched the sand of the arena when they hurled him back into the center. Odysseus, now one-eyed, heard the crowd’s roar rise like a wave that engulfed him. They hailed him. They desired him. The favorite had returned, and the people shouted his deformed name:

“Uthuze! Ulixes!”

His opponent emerged from the other gate: a hulking man, almost a beast, with two axes in his hands, each one gleaming in daylight. The crowd erupted in cheers. The promised meat was served.

Odysseus raised his shield of wood and leather, the spear in his other hand, but he knew his incomplete vision was a crueler enemy than the giant stalking him. The first clash was brutal: one of the axes punched through his guard and opened a gash in his left thigh. Blood sprang at once, warm and searing, and his leg trembled.

The crowd roared, celebrating the wound as if it were glory.

The colossus charged again. Reeling, Odysseus managed to lift the shield at the last instant, trapping one axe in the leather’s fibers. The other descended like lightning, but Odysseus deflected it with the spear and his short sword in a desperate motion. The effort was too much: both weapons flew from his hands and dropped into the dust.

The shield was nothing but dead weight now, splintered and pierced. The hero stood bare before his adversary’s fury.

The only thing he had left was his body.

The next minutes were a hell of blows. The remaining axe caught his face, reopening the scar that crossed his cheek, now carving toward his nose and cruelly grazing the lid of his sound eye.

The colossus slammed him down into the sand. The cheers were deafening, baying for blood. But then Odysseus’s instinct—the wild beast they had made of him—surged to the surface. With a sharp twist, he slipped past the blade descending on him, climbed like a shadow onto the giant’s back, and looped both arms around his neck.

The opponent snarled, struggled, dragged him across the sand, crashed against the wooden walls, trying to shake him off. But Odysseus did not let go. Every fiber in him focused on squeezing, on denying the other man breath.

The man fell to his knees. The sand turned to blood and sweat. The roars mingled with the colossus’s gasping until, finally, he collapsed. Dead.

Odysseus remained atop him for an instant, breathing like an animal, his body covered in wounds and blood he could no longer tell was his or another’s.

The crowd erupted in ovations, pounding like a hammer in his skull.

They dragged him out of the arena. His thigh burned, blood drenched his side, and the wound on his face left him almost completely blind. He could barely stand when the guards shoved him back into the cell. The echo of ovations still throbbed in his ears, like a poison reminding him that the crowd celebrated his pain.

When the door shut, the noble’s shadow filled the threshold. His white toga was still immaculate, as if the brutal combat he had watched had nothing to do with him.

“‘Ulixes Invictus’…” he intoned with that cruel calm so much his own. “You survived again. I’m beginning to think death doesn’t want you.”

Odysseus, kneeling in the filthy sand, could scarcely lift his head. His sound eye looked up at him in despair, with a broken pride that mingled with tears he could not hold back.

“Enough…” he murmured, barely a voice. “No more. I can’t go on…”

The noble smiled, leaning toward him like an executioner caressing his victim.

“Ah, and what do you say now, Ulixes? Do you accept, at last? Will you give me the only thing you have left? Your loyalty and your will?”

The Greek trembled. He had sworn to resist, had implored the gods, had tried to flee… and all he had gained were heavier chains, deeper wounds, endless nights of hunger and punishment. The gods’ silence had broken him.

“I accept,” he whispered, his soul in pieces. “I’ll do whatever you ask…”

His master’s laughter filled the cell like thunder.

“That’s more like it.”

From that day on, his life changed. He no longer slept amid mud and chains. He was moved to spacious quarters, with marble floors and walls adorned with tapestries that told stories that did not belong to him. His wounds were treated by the finest healers; the pain in his thigh and face faded with time, leaving only scars hard as iron.

He was no longer a warrior hurled into the arena each day. Now he accompanied the nobleman on his walks, served him at banquets, walked beside him like a living ornament. They offered him wine, bread, a comfortable bed. It seemed like paradise compared to the hell he had endured.

And yet, it was a prison.

Each dawn he felt it: that disguised freedom was crueler than chains. He could see the city grow, the temples rise, the crowds gather… but he could never step out of his master’s shadow. He was a luxury slave, a trophy of flesh.

At night, when silence fell over the house, Odysseus closed the only eye he had left and saw Ithaca in his dreams: the blue sea, the walls of his home, Penelope’s face, Telemachus’s gaze. The distance was an unbearable torment.

More than once he tried to speak with his master. He sought a crack in his will, a promise, a bargain.

“Let me go back,” he dared to say one night. “Give me a ship, a course… I swear by the gods you will never be forgotten for your mercy.”

But the answer was always the same: cold, curt, unyielding.

“No.”

One word that sank him deeper into despair.

And so, days turned into months. And months, into years.

His body was whole. His life was comfortable. And yet, he began to suspect. How could that man, who knew his language, who understood the rites and customs of the Achaeans, ignore his name? How was it possible he had not heard of the Trojan War, nor of the man who had brought down Ilium’s walls by cunning? Why was he so determined to keep him close, holding him as if he were a sacred piece?

Desperation drove him to seek another path. He tried to return to the amphitheater, not for pleasure, but to win with blood and sweat enough gold to buy at least a small boat. A chance, a narrow breach to flee. But his master discovered him before he could even set foot on the sand.

The fury was relentless. Odysseus was flogged until his skin opened in burning furrows, until his pride itself was shattered. In Ithaca he had never seen slaves punished so brutally, and yet he found himself reduced to less than a servant.

Afterward they forced him to labor on public works, to haul stones under the sun, sweating among men who did not know him, who looked at him as just another slave. Day after day, the humiliation drowned him.

There were nights when he thought it would have been better to return to the enclosure’s arena, let a spear run him through, and bleed to death, rather than keep living as an object at the service of an inscrutable master.

The days of torment had taught him to see the invisible in his master’s gestures.  

Suspicions grew like a wound that would not heal.

The hands that had punished him with inhuman fury.  

The eyes that, under dim light, seemed to move like deep waters.  

And those visits to the temple… so unnecessary, so intentional.

That night, when he found him alone, Odysseus could no longer keep silent. He knelt, his pride reduced to ashes, his breath trembling.

“Master…” he murmured, almost afraid to say it.  

“Is it you…?”

The silence became unbearable. The noble looked at him, and in that instant his lips curved into a smile that was not human.

“And who do you think I am, Ulixes?” he replied with venomous softness.

Odysseus felt the weight of tears collecting in his single eye. He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to admit what he intuited. But the words came out as a plea.

“Poseidon…”

The smile widened. The air grew dense with a damp echo, like waves breaking against stone.

“At last your wit serves you,” the god laughed, stepping close enough that Odysseus could smell the salt on his skin. “Yes, mortal. The one who sank your ships, who diverted your steps, who stole your glory.”

Odysseus fell on his face, hands spread in supplication.

“Forgive me! Please… do not condemn me further… let me return to my land.”

But Poseidon offered no clemency. He only gazed at him with cruel delight.  

“Here you are where I always wished to see you. Without name. Without homeland. Without power. A slave among thousands, whom I can use, punish, or save as I please.  

Return to Ithaca?” He laughed with a deep rumble. “Not even your ashes will reach it, unless I desire it.”

His laughter echoed like distant thunder, and Odysseus understood that the question he had feared to ask had sealed his fate.

Years turned into invisible chains.

He was no longer “Ulixes Invictus.” That name had faded away between the arena’s sand and the murmurs of a foreign people. To everyone, he was only a slave, a servant in the service of a foreign noble. Only his master used that name, like a whip, a cruel reminder of what he had been.

Poseidon took pleasure in his taunts. He dressed him in Greek tunics, sat him before banquets full of wines and breads that reminded him of Ithaca, took him to temples with crooked columns where the echo of his mother tongue was deformed in alien mouths. Even in those gestures, he reduced him:  

“Look how well you wear this, Ulixes. You almost seem to remember who you were,” he would say, with his storm-tossed smile.

Thus time passed.  

Obedience.  

Humiliation.  

Hollow devotion.

In the foreign city no one remembered him as the warrior who had faced the best. Only as the slave who served his master in silent submission.

And yet, in the shadows of his gilded prison, Odysseus learned to be grateful for every gesture that brought him closer to his lost land: a fish prepared in the Ithacan way, the murmur of the sea in the god’s words, the distant memory of Penelope and his son. Time wore him down, and in that wearing, he began to blur. His captor was the only one who returned to him, even if in cruel fragments, the memory of home.

Until one day, something changed.

Poseidon returned furious. The palace filled with pounding steps and shouted orders. His mask of noblesse slipped for an instant, revealing the storm he truly was.  

“She dares…!” he roared, thunder in his voice. “That wretched goddess… always sticking her hands where they don’t belong.”

Odysseus didn’t understand—until he heard the name.

“Athena,” the god spat, with rage. “Your mentor, your guardian, demands your release. She thinks she can snatch what is mine.”

The words struck like a blow.  

After years of divine silence, someone had spoken for him.  

Someone still remembered.

Trembling, Odysseus raised his gaze to his master. His single eye shone with tears he could not contain.

“Athena…?” he whispered, with a hope that hurt.

Poseidon’s answer was a bitter laugh.

“Yes, Ulixes. The gray-eyed maiden asks that I set you free. But I…” He took Odysseus by the face, forcing him to look with the only eye he had left. “I do not let go of my trophies.”

From the day Athena interceded, Poseidon changed.  

He showed no clemency, but he did show a fear disguised as control. If before he had used him like any other servant, now he wrapped him in luxuries as if they were chains of gold. He offered him meals fit for kings, gave him fine tunics, made him walk at his side in processions and banquets, as if to show the world that that man, that defeated Greek, was his alone.

Odysseus was not free.  

He was a guarded trophy, trapped in the gleam of a luxury that tasted of prison.

And still, Poseidon’s fury grew. Because Athena had not yielded. Before the council of the gods, she had pleaded for her lost hero, demanding his liberation. Zeus listened. The decree was made: Poseidon had to let him go.

But the god of the seas would not give up his pieces without exacting a price.

That night, the air hung heavy like a storm. Exhausted, Odysseus had surrendered to sleep when a different kind of cold woke him: a strong arm wrapped around his torso, pinning him against a body that was not his own. He froze, breathless, until he slowly turned his face.

There he was. Poseidon, disguised as a man, lying beside him in the half-light, watching him as if he had always had the right to do so.

Before Odysseus could pull away, the god lowered his face and, with a cruel smile, brushed the mortal’s lips with his own. A cold kiss, like salt water on an open wound.

“Stay by my side, Odysseus,” his voice resounded, deep, like thunder under the sea. “Not as a servant… as my lover. Forget Ithaca, forget your goddess, and you will be more than a slave. You will be mine.”

The name, long lost amid insults and chains, cut through the hero like a blade. A shiver ran down his back. For an instant he remembered who he was: Ithaca, Penelope, Telemachus… everything that still burned in his memory.

Trembling, he turned his face away.

“I… no,” he said, his voice broken but firm.

Poseidon’s eyes clouded with rage and desire. His smile twisted into a cruel rictus, and with violence he hurled him against the cold marble floor. The blow wrung a strangled groan from the hero.

“Then… it will be as always, Ulixes.” He spat that name with contempt, tearing away the last shred of dignity. “If you are not mine, you will be flesh for spectacle once more.”

Poseidon forced him to look up from the floor as he pronounced his sentence:

“One last time. One last condemnation. If you survive in the arena, if you wrest one more victory from death… then you will be free.”

Shaking with pain and humiliation, Odysseus broke into a plea.

“Master… please…” his voice cracked, torn. “Don’t send me back there. No more sand, no more screams. I beg you… let me go.”

His hands clutched at the god’s tunic like a castaway clinging to driftwood in the middle of the sea. Tears mingled with the despair of a man reduced to nothing.

But Poseidon did not answer. He only looked down at him, with the sea’s indifference to a drowning man’s cry.

Odysseus closed his eyes, feeling his soul split in two. There was no mercy in that promise. It was a game.

And even so, he had no choice.

The fate of Ithaca, of Penelope, of his son… hung on a final fight beneath the sea’s vigilant eye.

The sun blazed on the amphitheater’s white stones, and the murmur of the crowd rose like a storming sea. That day, every seat was filled, every throat cried for blood.

Years had passed since the first time they had flung him there, and now the place shone renewed, enlarged, built upon the same ruins that had devoured his glory. Those stones where his name had shifted from hero to beast. On the eve, Poseidon had stripped him of everything. He tore away the fine tunics, the bracelets, every insignia of false power he had offered during those years of servitude dressed as luxury. He kept not even the dignity of a distinguished servant: once again he was a slave, chained and barefoot, reduced to what he had been on his first day in that land.

That morning, they dragged him from his quarters like any prisoner. Iron bit his wrists, and yet, deep in his chest, a spark caught.

“If I win… if I survive… I will be free.”

It was a fragile hope, nearly a mirage. But it was enough.

The gates swung open, and the crowd’s roar engulfed him. Odysseus strode in, and the guards tossed him the amphitheater’s familiar weapons: a round shield, a spear, and a short sword. The same ones he had learned to wield in that hell. The same ones that had become extensions of his body, his only way to survive.

Before him, his opponent emerged. He was no ordinary man. Tall, thickset, his movements measured. And when he raised his weapon, the air turned cold: a trident gleamed in his hands, heavy, lethal, the twin of a god’s symbol.

Odysseus felt his blood chill. This was not a common bout. This was a message.

He lifted his gaze to the stands, searching, dreading to confirm what his instinct shouted.

And there he was. The nobleman. The supposed master. The god in disguise. Poseidon.

He was smiling.

Not like a satisfied man, but like a sea bent on sinking a ship. That smile said what words did not: “Today there will be no way out.”

Odysseus clenched his teeth. Sand clung to his bare feet, heat climbed his body like a blaze. And still, deep in his chest, a vow caught fire.

If this was the end, it would not be on his knees. If he had to die, he would do it as what he had always been: Odysseus of Ithaca.

The first clash was brutal. Odysseus recognized the technique at once: this man knew the movements of Greek warfare. Blocks, feints, measured turns… all of it familiar. But he soon realized his enemy did not rely on discipline—he broke it with barbaric ferocity, attacking with the raw force of the arenas. In the second exchange Odysseus managed to deflect the trident with his shield, spun, and drove the spear straight for the enemy’s chest. The point grazed him… and bounced away. As if it had struck steel. The man barely gave ground, and without hesitation lifted his weapon again, casting the trident toward Odysseus’s blind side. Odysseus barely slipped aside, feeling the air score his face.

And then he saw it. In the sunlight, for a fleeting instant, the adversary’s skin flashed with something strange: scales. And over the clavicles, small slits opened and closed like gills before vanishing beneath the illusion of flesh. The revelation struck him at once: this was no man. He was a servant of the god. And that spot, that blinking weakness, was the only path to survival.

The battle dragged on. Odysseus’s spear splintered in a desperate bid to block the trident. His shield, reduced to a board, could barely take another blow. The trident had raked his skin, opening new wounds and ripping open old scars. Each movement grew heavier, each breath hotter. But in his mind only one aim remained: wait, wear him down, find another opening.

The moment came when the enemy charged with overconfidence, bulling straight in. The trident came down with violence, and the shield, in its last act of resistance, trapped it in its splintered wood. The foe bore down with all his strength, trying to punch through. Pinned beneath that fury, Odysseus played his last card: he plunged his hand into the sand and flung a fistful of grit into the opponent’s eyes. A second of confusion. A breath with his guard down.

It was enough.  

With a roar, Odysseus seized the short sword and, without hesitation, drove it in above the clavicles, where the gills fluttered. The blade sank to the hilt. The adversary shuddered and began to drown in his own blood—bluish and strange, never seen in any mortal.

But even dying, he kept fighting. With a last effort he tore the trident free and hurled it at him. Odysseus, by reflex, twisted and knocked the blow aside with his back, feeling the steel bury itself in his right thigh. Pain doubled him over, but his opponent collapsed atop him with a final rattle, spilling blue blood across the sand.

Silence lasted only an instant before the amphitheater roared anew.

Odysseus had won. Once more.

Gasping, he heaved the dead weight off him. The corpse had pinned him to the sand, but with a colossal effort he turned, shoved, dragged the remains aside. Pain in his leg was unbearable: the trident was still lodged there.

With a choked cry, he gripped the shaft and pulled. Flesh tore, blood ran hot down his thigh, and for an instant he thought he would black out. But he did not allow himself to fall. Not now. Gritting his teeth, he used the trident itself as a support, leaning on it like a staff, and rose on the blood-stained sand.

The crowd’s roar enveloped him.

“Uthuze! Ulixes!”

Blood soaking his leg, vision swimming, he raised the trident over his head. And in an act of defiance, of final hope—a challenge born from the memory of his land—he hurled it toward the stands, at the noble who watched with a masked smile.

The weapon flew straight as a sentence. It fell at the god’s feet.

“Now honor the decree, Poseidon!” he cried, voice ragged but steadier than ever. “Set me free!”

The god could not hide it. His face tightened with frustration, with contained rage. But there was no escape. The spoken oath, the mandate laid upon him, bound him as surely as it bound the mortal.

Biting back his pride for the first time, Poseidon inclined his head.  

“So be it.”

With a curt gesture, guards descended. They chained him as always, dragged him like any other prisoner. And so he was taken back to the damp, cold cells, where the crowd’s echo still throbbed in the stones.

Hours passed. Barely conscious, Odysseus tried to staunch the bleeding with old bandages, stiff and stained from other wretches’ use. Fever devoured him, darkness called, but he clung to hope like to an invisible cord.

Then the door creaked.  

Poseidon appeared, dressed as a mortal as ever. He carried a bowl of ointments and clean wrappings in his hands. He came slowly, as if there were no haste. Odysseus watched him warily, his heart beating with distrust. Perhaps it was another trick, another cruel game.

The god stopped a step away. His blue eyes locked on the hero’s weary gaze.  

“You will have your freedom,” he said at last, voice grave, solemn. “I never break my word. And you know it.”

Odysseus swallowed. The echo of those words mingled with pain and uncertainty. And even so, unable to resist any longer, he allowed those divine hands—the same that had humiliated him—to draw near his wounds.

Poseidon cleaned and dressed each wound with patience, stanched the bleeding, and bound the leg tight, making sure the mortal could stand once more.

The treatment felt almost unreal, but in his mind he understood at once: it was an invisible chain; the god treated him as his own, as if preparing him not only to depart, but to remember who had kept him alive.

He clothed him in clean tunics, laying them over his shoulders with a care that might have seemed tender, were it not for the weight of control in every gesture. When he finished, he bent close until his breath brushed the hero’s ear.

“I hope you never forget these years at my side,” he murmured, low and possessive.

A chill iced Odysseus’s back. And he knew: he would never forget. Not the chains, not the sand, not the shadow of that god who had marked him beyond the flesh.

He had no strength to react when Poseidon’s lips touched his one last time. Exhausted, barely able to stand, he exhaled a tired sigh and, in an act of resignation, accepted that kiss as the last thorn in his torment. A poisoned farewell, heavy with pain.

When he drew back, the god’s gaze fractured for an instant into sadness—a fleeting glint that vanished at once, replaced by the oceans’ fathomless cold.

“Get up,” he ordered.

Odysseus did. His legs trembled, the injured one barely obeyed, but he held himself upright and followed, limping out of the enclosure.

They laid him on a litter borne by slaves, and Poseidon strode behind like a haughty noble. Along the streets, the people hailed him with shouts and cheers. “Uthuze! Ulixes!” The name was not his, but for the first time in seven years, Odysseus allowed himself to feel the glory of victory. Freedom still felt like a mirage, but the crowd’s warmth wrapped him like a balm.

The procession left the city and took an unfamiliar road. Odysseus, alert, recognized nothing. Until the horizon opened before him: the sea.

His heart lurched. He shifted on the litter, desperate to climb down, but the god’s firm voice steadied him.  

“Do not despair.”

Poseidon spoke in the land’s foreign tongue and the slaves obeyed, lowering him with care. Then they bowed to the god and withdrew, leaving the two of them alone.

Odysseus hobbled toward the shore, reeling, while the god followed at an easy pace. Feeling sand beneath his feet, he fell to his knees. The scent of salt, the susurrus of waves, the immensity of blue… all of it struck him at once. Tears welled in his single eye, and for the first time in years he did not hold them back.

Poseidon remained by his side, motionless, expressionless. Until a mocking voice broke the moment:

“The indomitable Odysseus… crying like a child at the water’s edge. This is almost unreal.”

A playful laugh tangled with the wind, and Hermes, the messenger god, stood before him.

“Hello, old friend,” he said with a smirk, casting Poseidon an almost offended look. “You very nearly kept your word with a corpse, don’t you think?”

Poseidon snorted, disdainful.  

“I have done my part. Now you guide him.”

The sea god cast the mortal a final look. Something unreadable gleamed in his eyes, but he said nothing. He dissolved into the foam, sinking into the waves as if it all had been a bad dream.

Hermes stepped closer, clicked his tongue, took the collar that still ringed his neck, and let it fall into the water. The bronze vanished into the froth.  

“No more foreign names. Come, hero. Your land awaits.”

He led him to a simple boat, hardly more than a shell of wood—but enough. And together, at last, they left behind that land that had held him prisoner for seven years.

At last, the hero’s gaze found something he had forgotten long ago: conviction. The sea wind, the tears, the memory of sand and chains—all of it burned within him.  

And yet, at last, he was returning to Ithaca.

Chapter Text

That day, Poseidon took him to another of his endless banquets.  

Odysseus walked one step behind, carrying cups and plates, with no more voice than that of a servant. The gathered merchants and nobles stared at him brazenly, as one looks at a strange trophy.

—Uthuze… —some said, pointing at him with their fingers.  

—Ulixes —others finished, amid resounding laughter.

The god kept him at his side like someone exhibiting a piece. He placed a hand on his shoulder, turned his chin with two fingers to show the scar on his face and the hollow of the lost eye; then he made the bronze collar around his neck jingle with his knuckles, where it read, poorly engraved, VLIXES. The dry sound attracted a merchant with a greedy gaze.

The man approached, curious. Poseidon, without removing his hand from the Greek, received him with a slow smile. Odysseus clenched his jaw; he knew they were watching him like a fairground beast.  

The words that followed passed over him like foreign rain.

—Domine, quid prodest bellatorem sine pugna habere? Populus sanguinem vult; pretium sine cruore cadit —said the merchant.

Odysseus barely lowered his gaze, trying uselessly to grasp some meaning in that murmur. Nothing. Only harsh sounds, words that didn't belong to his language. However, he recognized the tone, the way they pointed at him, the manner in which the merchant's finger traced the scars on his chest without touching them: they were talking about him.

—Non ad pretium specto, sed ad ludum —replied Poseidon, sliding his fingers along his collarbone, showing with a gesture the muscle beneath the skin.

A shiver ran through his body. The god was displaying him like one shows the edge of a stolen weapon. Odysseus bit the inside of his cheek; he would have preferred to understand nothing, but his name emerged suddenly, like a knife in the midst of the noise.

—Animum Ulixis fractum spectaculum maximum est —he said, and with a slight tug on the collar, he tilted Odysseus's head so that the merchant could better appreciate the marks on his neck.

The humiliation burned like hot iron on his nape. He didn't understand that language, but he did understand that: Ulixes. His name, deformed, torn from him and exhibited as a trophy, while the merchant observed him with an unhealthy interest, calculating his value like someone weighing the price of a beast that still breathes.

—Vendesne eum, si pretium augeam?

—Non vendo. Hic manebit. Nomen quod fert meum est, silentium eius meum est, cicatrices eius meae sunt.

—Me delectat huius bellatoris voluntatem frangere, eum ad nutum meum ad omnia paratum habere. In sua patria contumax erat, scis?

The merchant narrowed his eyes, interested. He took a step closer, almost sniffing the contained desperation of the Greek. Poseidon raised Odysseus's arm so that the scars could be seen, one by one, like beads on a cruel rosary.

—Contumax? Nunc intellego cur tam diu in harena superesse potuerit: non est servus vulgaris.

—Non erat; nunc est. Ideo vivit —sentenced Poseidon, finally releasing him with a slight snap of the bronze.

The phrases continued to fall upon him. Odysseus swallowed. He tried to hold the tray steadily, but his fingers trembled. He didn't understand, he couldn't understand, and at the same time, he knew everything: his body appraised without being asked for a word, his silence offered as merchandise.

That constant murmur, deforming his name, was the only thing he could comprehend; a repeated echo that embedded itself in his ears, wearing him down from the inside. Everything else was distant sounds, broken fragments of a strange language, accompanied by laughter that pierced him without mercy. Amid the spilled wine, the greasy meats, and the dry orders, the night finally unraveled, slow and relentless, until it sank into a silence as heavy as his humiliation.

Upon returning, the hero felt empty. Lost. Amid so many foreign voices, the form of his own name began to fade as if it were a borrowed word forgotten when not used. Not a reproach, not an order, not a whisper: all day, Poseidon had addressed him in alien tongues. And, though he hated to admit it, the only thing holding together the last fragments of himself were those few Greek syllables that occasionally escaped from his master's mouth. They weren't kind words, they weren't promises; they were orders, reproaches… but by pronouncing them, the god returned something that the rest of the world stole from him: a thread to his home, an echo of Ithaca, a fragment of himself that still existed.

They arrived at the residence, that cage disguised as a palace where he had already spent almost four years. The god spoke in his foreign language to one of the servants, who listened attentively before making a deep bow. Then he turned to Odysseus and led him to the bath chamber.

The hero knew what it meant. It was a familiar routine, one of many humiliations: Poseidon had made it a custom to force him to bathe him, to clean the god's skin as if he were nothing more than an ordinary slave.

But that night was different.  

The god submerged himself in the tub without giving him orders. There was no gesture, no word. Only the sound of the water surrounding his body. Poseidon closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh, a sigh of relief so human that for an instant it seemed the mortal disguise ceased to be one.

Odysseus waited, confused. He expected the order, the dry command that always came. The silence stretched until it became a piercing tension; the sound of the water seemed to amplify every second.

Poseidon looked at him for just an instant, the kind of look that didn't need to raise the voice to command.  

—Ulixes… —he murmured calmly, extending a finger toward the sponge resting at his side.

The foreign name tore through him like a blade. There was no room for objections, not that he could make them, but the alien sound was unbearable.

Odysseus swallowed, approaching with a rigidity that betrayed him. His hands trembled as he took the sponge. He began to rub, fulfilling the gesture as on so many other nights, but each stroke of the water over Poseidon's skin made the question resonate in him that he no longer dared to formulate: how much more could his soul endure before losing itself completely? How much more of himself did he have to sell for a sound of his own to pronounce it again?

The burning rose to his eyes, he held back the tears, bit his tongue until it bled. He wanted to resist. He wanted to be silent. But the silence was a prison that emptied him second by second.

And then, the sponge stopped in his hands. The air broke in his chest. The words spilled out on their own, with the fragility of a prayer he knew was unworthy:

—Speak to me in my language… —he said, with a broken voice—. Please… just once more.

The echo of the room returned his plea, multiplying it. There was no whip, no blow, but Odysseus felt the weight of the humiliation as if he had been thrown to his knees on the ground. He had begged not for freedom, not for justice, but for a syllable. For a memory. For crumbs.

A smile formed on the god's face, sharp like a fang tasting the blood of a wound. Poseidon turned calmly, trapping Odysseus's wrist between his wet fingers.  

—I didn't know you had learned to beg… —he said, savoring the word as if it belonged to him. Without giving him time to react, he continued with the same cruel serenity:  

—You did it better than last time. You deserve a reward.

He released his wrist and pointed to the empty space at his side, where the warm water still lapped at his naked skin.  

—Come. And I will grant you the honor of hearing your beloved name from my lips.

The air thickened in Odysseus's lungs. His name. The real one. The one he hadn't heard from anyone but himself, repeated in nocturnal whispers to not erase it completely. The idea pierced his mind with a stinging pain: after five years, just one action was enough, and Poseidon would return it to him.

Shame mixed with melancholy, and in that burning mixture, his hands moved without hesitation. He tugged at the tunic clumsily, almost desperately, until he left his body naked, exposed under the god's voracious gaze. Poseidon contemplated him as if devouring his obedience as much as his flesh.

Odysseus averted his gaze, trying to preserve a remnant of himself, and submerged into the water. The contact pierced him like a tempered bite, burning in every wound, drawing an involuntary sigh from him. He wanted to keep distance, but the tub was too narrow to allow him to escape.

Poseidon's hands rose soon, enveloping his wounded face. The humid heat of his palms contrasted with the coldness of the hero's cheeks.  

—Well done, Odysseus —he pronounced calmly.

The name fell like a blow to his chest. His heart raced, sweat beaded on his forehead. A fleeting instant in which he didn't know whether to cry or let himself die: his identity had been returned to him… but as alms, in exchange for obedience.

—Odysseus… —he whispered, barely audible, as if by pronouncing it he wanted to protect the last thing that belonged to him. A broken echo, sealed in his own mouth, to not forget who he was under the shadow of the god.

The smile returned to Poseidon's lips, cruel, while his thumb descended to the scar that crossed the cheek and the empty eye of the mortal. The burning erupted immediately, a stab that pierced the left side of his face, as if that darkness reopened at the god's touch; he didn't remove his hand; on the contrary, he let it slide slowly over the scars that drew his body like a map of defeats. He traced each line calmly, as if they were marks that also belonged to him. Then he took the sponge resting at his side and, with deliberate slowness, dipped it in the water before passing it over the hero's torso. The foam mixed with old wounds, with hardened skin, with the vulnerability that Odysseus tried to hide.

—Now finish what you started —murmured the god, drawing him closer with a gesture that left no doubt.

Odysseus swallowed hard. The need invaded him little by little, like a sweet poison. Years without anyone, years without a contact that wasn't punishment or torture, had opened an abyss inside him more painful than he was willing to admit. Feeling a caress that didn't hurt, a touch that wasn't a whip or iron… it was a strange relief, cruel in its sweetness.

He took the sponge again and leaned slowly, as if fearing to break that fragile invisible line that kept him whole. His hands trembled, soaping clumsily the shoulders and chest of Poseidon. The silence weighed, barely broken by the moving water.

But the god had other plans. His body leaned, invading the space, reducing every inch of distance until cornering him. The wet fingers sank into Odysseus's dark curls, moistening them with a contact so intimate it became unbearable. They descended slowly to his nape.

And without warning, Poseidon pushed him toward himself, breaking what little distance remained. The god's lips sealed his in a brusque, definitive gesture that admitted no resistance.

Poseidon tasted his lips boldly, biting the broken dryness of the hero's mouth. Odysseus tried to resist, turning his face slightly, but the god insisted, devouring any space with cruel calm. The contact was rough, almost painful, and yet it hid a venomous sweetness that tore more than iron.

When their mouths finally separated, Poseidon didn't loosen the grip on his nape; on the contrary, he tightened it firmly, sending a clear message.  

—Your duty is to please me.

The god brought his face close to his, so near that Odysseus could feel the wet brush of his breath.  

—I expect you to comply, Ulixes…

The name pierced his head like a familiar dagger. It hurt, but what hurt more was the emptiness left where Odysseus had resonated before.

His weathered hands moved quickly under the water, brushing the smoothness of the god's thighs. And then the plea burst forth, torn, as if it had been stored for too long:

—No… don't call me that… —he said with a dry throat—. Call me Odysseus… even if just once… master, I beg you.

His fingers caressed the skin as if underscoring his request, not as a challenge, but as the confession of a broken man.

Poseidon looked at him for a long time, letting the silence weigh like a sentence. He delighted in that open crack, in that plea that turned the hero into a spectacle of humiliation. And in the end, with a smile that chilled more than the water, he pronounced:  

—I will, yes… but only when I decide. You'll have to earn it, and please me properly.

The hero was thrown off. He was so accustomed to the god simply taking him without warning, without prior touch, with the crudeness of one imposing his strength; so used to every plea of his being rejected or punished, that this accepted request tasted like a strange novelty. And that relief, stinging and sweet, disarmed him.

His hands moved with an intrigue he himself didn't understand, ascending to the god's hip, approaching with measured slowness, like one fearing to break a spell. Then they descended, until taking the divine manhood between his fingers. A grunt of satisfaction rose from Poseidon's throat, deep, vibrant.

The movement began rhythmic, up and down, firm but contained, while the hero's body drew closer and closer. Odysseus, defeated by that wounded curiosity, tasted the god's salt with his lips: first on the collarbone, then on the damp skin of the neck, leaving a trail of insecure kisses. His weathered hands kept the rhythm, drawing an involuntary sigh from that powerful chest.

—Odysseus… —pronounced the god, and that single word, spoken in his true language, pierced him like a dart of light in the darkness.

But Poseidon gave him no time to think. Without warning, he grabbed him brutally by the hips, captured his lips with insatiable ferocity, and, lifting him almost as if he weighed nothing, pinned him against the wet wall of the tub.

Odysseus gasped, choked between the kiss and the force, when he felt the god rubbing anxiously against his dry entrance. Desperation stole his breath, and he barely managed to part his interrupted lips to let out a plea that had no time to finish:

—Master… please…

Gods do not listen to objections.

A broken groan escaped his throat when the intrusion tore him without preparation. The burning was immediate, a flame that rose up his spine and clouded his vision. His breathing became erratic, trembling, every inch invading him to the depths. The thrusts came without compassion, relentless, like waves that grant no respite.

The pain was the only thing he knew, the only thing he expected, and he tried to repeat it to himself: it was what he had already endured a thousand times. And yet, that cruel mix between agony and pleasure dragged him again to the edge of a line he never wanted to cross.

His moans, at first rough with pain, broke until transforming into more ambiguous, more dangerous sounds. His hands clung to the god's body, his trembling legs closed around his torso, as if he couldn't pull away even if he wanted to.

And then, the thrust drew a muffled scream from him: the god's member struck fully against his prostate, drawing an involuntary spasm that made him arch. He bit his lip so hard that blood mixed with the warm water, trying to stifle what he was feeling, trying not to give the god that victory.

But the water splashed around, the sound of the thrusts surrounded him, and the line between humiliation and pleasure became unbearably diffuse.

Odysseus didn't even remember when the god had been so deep inside him. That sensation, always overwhelming and disconcerting, was no longer entirely foreign: his body had learned to accept it, to surrender to the inevitable. The heat filled him in a climax that drew a loud, uncontrollable moan from his throat, pushing him to the edge of the limit.

His head went blank. He barely noticed the moment when Poseidon withdrew from inside him. He only heard his dry voice, like a blow that returned him to reality:

—Finish cleaning yourself.

And then, silence. The god left him there, alone, with the clouded water and the weight of shame.  

He knew it would always be like this. He knew he would never fully get used to it. And yet, the wound that hurt the most wasn't the one in his body: it was the memory of what was lost. He missed the contact that didn't hurt, the warmth born of love. He missed his wife, his bed, his lands… everything that had been taken from him.

Hours later, while serving the banquet to Poseidon, he heard him speak with the same naturalness with which he ordered wine or bread. The god, smiling, fixed his eyes on him with sharp cruelty:

—The servants are curious, you know? Your moans attract too much attention.

He took him by the face, forcing him to lift his gaze toward him. The grip was firm, implacable, and the words fell like cold poison:  

—What do you say, Ulixes? Should I sell you so others discover how a Greek moans?

Terror ran through his body like lightning. Odysseus, unable to hold the gaze, shook his head frantically, the tremor of his head betraying a fear he couldn't even put into words.

The god let out a harsh, cruel laugh, delighting in the tremor reflected on the hero's face. He had enjoyed that fear more than any banquet. He released him from his grip with disdain, as if there was nothing left to take from him, nothing that could entertain him a second longer.

With a lazy gesture, he reclined back in his seat, letting the tension dissolve in a gesture of absolute indifference.  

—Bring me more wine —he ordered, with a dry voice, as if the threat had never existed.

Odysseus lowered his head, without uttering a word. His hands, still trembling, obeyed in silence. The weight of that laughter still vibrated in

his ears, reminding him that in those lands he was nothing more than a toy in the hands of a capricious god.