Rodents and sluts, the whole lot of you — you humans. But that’s my kind of game. Tell me, mortal, whore, who set you up to this? Who helped you evade my judgement?

It was Poseidon. Of course. Rude and arrogant, it was not pleasurable in any sense of the word to hear the words of a crude god in her head. Someone with lesser control over themselves might have lashed out against the use of words meant to belittle, words like ‘whore’ and ‘slut,’ but Emma was a woman. She had heard those words before and by people who were irate over their inability to use her body to their own gratification. Professors, bosses, womanizers. Men.

And now, the lord of the sea.

The thought brought a smile to Emma — even the god of the oceans was among the list of menfolk who seemed cheated by her sexual nobility. An accomplishment, if nothing else.

“Sorry. I was lost in thought. Care to repeat yourself, mate?” Emma asked the lord of the sea.

Emma waited and listened for a response. But she heard only background chatter. As though someone was using a microphone but hadn’t turned it off as they turned head and spoke with a nearby person, using only their hand to cover the microphone instead of switching it off; therefore, Emma heard words being spoken, but not anything like an address to her. She couldn’t help but wonder how mortal-divine connections worked.

But it was, ultimately, none of her business. Emma focused on working the controls for the sub. Wildly pressing buttons resulted in precious little, but wildly pressing other buttons seemed to off-set those mistakes from the first push. Emma knew it was all luck — she had no freaking clue what she was doing, after all — but she thought about how she had made some progress. Maybe.

She was at least in the ocean proper. The palace was behind her, and the sub had not yet exploded. So that was a good thing.

But then he thought was interrupted by a bad thing — Poseidon. Great.

“It was Zeus? Tell me, mortal. Little woman. And I will forgive your transgressions, here; maybe even let you live,” the lord of the sea men said.

“Nope! Not him, someone else. Keep guessing, though,” Emma replied distractedly.

But this response only angered the god. Emma knew it would, which was exactly her plan. Anger up Poseidon, get him all scratchy, and leap out of his jurisdiction. It wasn’t exactly a smart plan, truth be told, but it was the only plan she had — and besides, what could the lord of the sea do when she was the one who had his precious experimental submarine? Sure, Emma knew not what made it experimental, but one didn’t need a vast knowledge of feminist politics to understand that it was precious to her enemy, and therefore valuable to her. Basic strategy, really.

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Logical or not, Emma got her response from the ocean god, “Then you’ve sealed your death. Enjoy, now, was krakens from the deep devour your flesh!”

But nothing happened.

Emma had been unnerved at first — for maybe a minute. But once several minutes passed and no krakens showed up, she suspected something was off.

“Hahaha — feel good, mortal? Do you feel the weight of your sins as my beasties tear the flesh and muscle from your bone, plopping off veins and organs, effortlessly? Too traumatized to speak, clearly,” the god said to Emma’s confusion.

Emma could have been an idiot. In fact, considering the ordeal she had gone through and was still going through, her responses in this place were far from her normal retinue of expressions; truthfully, she would rarely, if ever, speak to a man, let alone a god, how she had lately over the course of the last few hours. But the combinations of sleep deprivation, stress, and hunger drove her to use words she never would have dared uttered before now. She might be a feminist, after all, but she was not a man-hater. As such, she wondered if she should speak the truth now, make up for some of her imprudence, and say to Poseidon that no krakens were devouring her skin? He seemed to really enjoy the idea of punishing her and so it seemed cruel to lead him on with something he clearly had a lot of desire invested. But then again, if he continued to believe she was being brutally killed, that would buy her — the real her, that was in the sub, and not the imaginary one in his head — some time to master the strange vehicle and get back home. Oh, decisions. Morality.

Emma decided to keep the delusions going — in fact, she even yelped and cursed him, pretending to be hurt.

“Hmmmmmm…” Poseidon hummed. “You are not really dead, are you?”

Emma remained sputtering out gasps of pain which she really hammed up. Together with gasps, she thought she sold the performance well. Whenever she needed to pull a lever or hit a button, she would scream wildly to cover the noise, not that she knew if the god of the sea could hear her press buttons, but better safe than sorry. Alas, all of her prime acting was for naught, and the lord caught on.

“Then where ARE YOU?!” he exclaimed.

Somewhere in the background of the cosmic static, Emma heard something like crashing waves and the roars of beasts. But none of that concerned her — she was, in fact, beginning to get the hang of the submarine; the more she used the device, in fact, the more how it functioned rubbed off on her. It was like the instruction manual was experience itself, which was a wild concept.

“Still? Where, what?!” the lord of the ocean again exclaimed.

But it was no business to Emma.

Pushing the lever which she thought of as the steering wheel forward, Emma was fast approaching land.

“Keep trying, hun,” Emma spoke softly, “keep on grunting.”