Coral Colossus

September 2025

Born in the black depths of the ocean, where salty currents roil against the molten earth, roared to life the horrifying monstrosity Charybdis. Although divine herself, the daughter of Poseidon and Gaia, all the gods feared Charybdis. They foresaw that her hunger could grow so great, that her maw could gape so wide, that in time she would gulp down the world. In fear of Charybdis’ voracious power, the gods sculpted a new monster to combat her; a calamitous creature clothed in coral, carrying a mountainous rocky shell upon its back. Smelling this new deific meat, Charybdis crawled from her hadal abyss snapping and ravenous. The two behemoths crashed together, the waves of their clashing rolling across the land. Charybdis bit hard onto the coral colossus, but her mouth-flesh tore into bloody shreds against its calcareous shell. The coral colossus exhausted Charybdis, and pinned her to the ocean floor off the coast of Sicily in the Strait of Messina. It held her fast for a day, then a month, then a year, then ten years. Only then did the gods declare themselves saved from their own creation. Each day she lies trapped beneath the coral colossus, Charybdis inhales water deep into her gullet and then screams her rage out into the sea. Her wrath spins up to the surface causing ruinous whirlpools, sinking the ships who would dare sail free over her eternal prison.