CHAPTER EIGHT! alternatively titled: charybdis and scylla
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THE ENGINE ROARED, THE IRON PLATING RATTLING AS THE SHIP BEGAN TO PICK UP SPEED.
I felt anxiety welling in me, the whole thing was making me nervous and sick. I leant over the railing of the ship, throwing up into the ocean.
"Oh, Di," Percy murmured, coming over and holding back my braids from falling into my face, his other hand rubbing circles into my back.
He knows that I have anxiety, I was diagnosed at the same time as I was with ADHD. I get lots of fun things like panic attacks and anxiety sickness, but Percy has been a lot of help. His presence is the calm in the middle of the storm that is my life.
"Clarisse," Percy said, "Charybdis sucks up the sea. Isn't that the story?"
"And spits it back out again, yeah."
"What about Scylla?"
"She lives in a cave, up on those cliffs. If we get too close, her snaky heads will come down and start plucking sailors off the ship."
"Choose Scylla then," He said. "Everybody goes below deck and we chug right past."
"No!" Clarisse insisted. "If Scylla doesn't get her easy meat, she might pick up the whole ship. Besides, she's too high to make a good target. My cannons can't shoot straight up. Charybdis just sits there at the center of her whirlwind. We're going to steam straight toward her, train our guns on her, and blow her to Tartarus!"
I pulled myself up and shakily wiped my face, Percy put something in my hand. It was a mint, i shoved it in my mouth and moved to stand with him.
The engine hummed. The boilers were heating up so much I could feel the deck growing warm beneath my feet. The smokestacks billowed. The red Ares flag whipped in the wind.
As we got closer to the monsters, the sound of Charybdis got louder and louder—a horrible wet roar like the galaxy's biggest toilet being flushed. Every time Charybdis inhaled, the ship shuddered and lurched forward. Every time she exhaled, we rose in the water and were buffeted by ten-foot waves.
It made me so sick, but i was determined to hold onto my stomach this time.
Undead sailors calmly went about their business on the spar deck. I guess they'd fought a losing cause before, so this didn't bother them. Or maybe they didn't care about getting destroyed because they were already deceased. Neither thought made me feel any better.
Annabeth's knuckles were turning white against the rail, "You still have your thermos full of wind?"
Percy nodded, I scoffed, "With that whirlpool? It's way too dangerous, its like adding gasoline to a fire."
"What about controlling the water?" She asked, looking directly at Percy, "You're Poseidon's son. You've done it before."
He closed his eyes for a few moments, before he shrugged miserably, "I-I can't"
