Sol's Shine and the Kingdom of Water

Chapter 5 Valley Of Blue Scales

It took a little while for Brook to convince the atheras of that little village to lend him a map so that they wouldn't have to be escorted to the capital but in the end, they got what they needed. They couldn't afford to get too friendly with any of the locals since any one of them could potentially be with Inti's group and with a Star Demon who could read minds, that wasn't something they were willing to risk. If they learned anything from Apollo, they would all know that things aren't as nice as they would seem. It wasn't as if they had trust issues but the stakes were too high to put someone else in danger because of what they were up to.

They all got up really early in the morning to make this decision and the entire group headed off into unknown territory. No one else had ever been to the Kingdom of Water before aside from Brook but even then, Brook's family left this kingdom when he was too young to remember it so it might as well be new to him as well. Since Brook had a niche for maps and navigation, he was eager to hold the map and lead everyone else to where they would be headed.

If they had no clue on where to find Inti they might as well get help from a higher power so they all easily agreed to meet up with the queen and king. Of course Brook knew with a long walk like this one, he was going to hear a few complaints. "My feet are aching." "Yeah, maybe we should stop for a rest." It wasn't surprising for Brook to hear that Ron and Don were the first to complain. "It's only been five hours, you'll be fine." Krissy told them off a little harshly although after seeing her own ship go up in flames, Brook wouldn't blame her for being uptight.

"You two should've known that we would be doing this nearly all day. You got your warning." Lilac told them. "If we still had the ship then we would have made the excuse to stay behind and watch over it while you all did this instead." Don admitted. "That's the problem with you two. You're almost always slacking and trying to find the easy way out. You two are still part of my crew so act like it. This is why I'm always hard on you all because you actually don't understand." Krissy completely went off on them and needless to say, Brook didn't hear another word of complaint from those two after that.

Sol was walking right next to Brook and he couldn't help but notice that Sol was very focused on his compass. "What's up? You don't need to stare at the compass for that long you know. Or did you forget how it works again?" Brook said to him. "It's not that, I mean, maybe it is. The needle is just going haywire. Do you know what this means?" Sol showed Brook what he was so focused on and he took a look. "My guess is that we're in an area with a stupid amount of minerals underground that are acting as a super strong magnet to affect your compass's polarity." The way Brook put things seemed to have just confused Sol more.

That was when Ella felt the need to make things more 'clear' for him. "Big magnet! Many magnets! Make compass broken!" Ella tried to make herself sound as dumb as possible to mess with Sol. "Why are you like this?" Sol asked her. Before Ella could respond, they all heard a scream running towards them from the side of the path they walked on.

An athera approached them with a distressed look on his face. "Thank Khenari, I finally found some people. You need to help me!" "Help you with what exactly...?" William asked him slowly because he didn't know what to do about this athera suddenly appearing before them. "It's my friend! He's in danger!" He pleaded with them as well as tried to gesture them all to follow like he didn't have enough time to explain himself.

That's when everyone heard a loud rattling roar throughout the dry forest. It was loud enough to shake the trees and startle everyone. As skeptical as they were about this athera approaching them, the loud roar they heard was definitely no joke and they could only wonder what sort of creature was able to make such an ear screeching sound. They all took a risk to go astray from the path just to figure out what was going on and follow the one who came to them for help.