In Pursuit of Kronos' Scythe (Completed)

X - The Scythe That Keeps Missing - Part I

Princess Tharalea

The portal going to Kronos' realm was actually through Charybdis' belly.

"You'll just have to slip underneath it when it inhales. Let me take care of the rest of it." Poseidon took out a rectangular tablet the size of a book.

The Symphony stood beside Poseidon, who was holding his trident, bearing an anticipated grin. He looked like a boy who was waiting for the circus to commemorate. The quest seekers waited, but Charybdis, like a spread of mud, remained motionless. It looked as good as dead. During Aegaeum and Cymopoleia's battle, Charybdis seemed to breathe every minute. But they had stared at it for a good five minutes now, and it wasn't moving. Not even breathing a snore.

Koby poked a broken coral at it but still, the pile of muddy thing remained stationary.

"How long have we been staring?" Poseidon asked Piotr. He didn't look up. His attention was all on pressing his fingers on the tablet which kept yammering names like some locations.

"Nine minutes, sir. Nine and a half to be exact." 

Poseidon didn't respond to Piotr's answer; he was only beaming. Gripping his trident, he knocked on the seabed thrice. The seabed trembled at the rhythms and suddenly a shadow towered over them. Charybdis rose before them, raising its limbs like a mud monster stretching its muscles after a long sleep. Hundreds of beady eyes twinkled from thin slits.

"Now!" The God of Sea barked, tapping something onto the tablet concurrently.

The Symphony bolted blindly towards Charybdis' stomach. They had only stopped when they knocked onto something which they assumed were Charybdis' thighs.

The gigantic mud pie drew an extremely long inhalation, drawing the quest seekers to stick onto its belly. Then, with a strong strength, it exhaled. The quest seekers were shot up to the sky. From the corner of her eyes, Tharalea saw Poseidon hit a button on the tablet, and before she could confirm whether the tablet was a device that communicated the destination to Charybdis, she fell into something squishy. She wriggled and was pulled deeper downwards.

"Don't move, everyone!" An old man in a yellow janitor uniform scrambled to them with a stick, a mop, and a pail. "That's a swamp!"

Tharalea hiccupped and breathed in the liquid. It tasted like... She couldn't describe it as she would never at her sober state put something that awful into her mouth.

The old man helped them out of the swamp with trained agility. It wasn't until Tharalea had wiped the black gooey thing out of her eyes that she knew who she was staring at. She exhaled a gasp. Kronos' grey hair had turned white completely. It looked like an avalanche of snow that it hurt their eyes to even glance at him. His uniform would even make the washer frown and would probably need five cups of deodorants to cleanse the stench.

"What's that you're wearing?" Cytherea asked.

"I'm doing some summer cleaning." The titan scowled at them. "You definitely took your own sweet time, huh?"

"So, your portal is a swamp. You can be more creative and think of something more sanitizing." Cytherea stomped her feet with such strength that it might've crushed Kronos' pride.

For a moment, Kronos glared at Cytherea with such animosity that Tharalea believed he could burst the whiner into dust to add to his realm's decoration. But then he hung his head low to his chest, like a student who had been scolded by his teacher for not doing his homework. With a frustrated scream, Cytherea took out a flask and poured all the contents onto her face.

The water is precious and she's wasting it on her face. Tharalea frowned at Cytherea and harrumphed mentally, but her curiosity was aroused as she found no buildings in Kronos' realm, except rings of red mountains and thickets of alpine trees. "Your place looks barren."