After Calypso receives word from Olympus that Odysseus is to be freed, she bids him farewell before he leaves her island, heartbroken that her love for him could never be reciprocated. Later, while Odysseus is adrift on a handmade raft, Hermes reappears and offers guidance on how to return home, also giving him Aeolus's wind bag. Odysseus evades the sea monster Charybdis before seeing the shores of Ithaca, where he encounters Poseidon again. Poseidon gives Odysseus the ultimatum of either choosing to drown or watching all of Ithaca be submerged by a tidal wave. Odysseus is dragged to the bottom of the ocean, but opens the wind bag one final time to fight back, striking Poseidon with the might of six hundred men as retribution for his six hundred dead comrades. Poseidon tells Odysseus that opening the wind bag and releasing the storm has destroyed his last chance of returning home. Enraged, Odysseus tortures the god by repeatedly stabbing him with his own trident until he relents and ends the storm.
