Kin of Jörmungandr

The earth may now be stable beneath me, but the tremors constantly rising into my ventral scales are anything but subtle. It is safer here — at least there’s no immediate dangers — but it is hardly the comforting grip of my tunnels.

At my full size, I feel like nothing alive could miss my presence, but taking on the smaller, less obvious would be a far greater mistake. Between the massive open space, and the lack of spatial bends, I am far too vulnerable to the creatures I’m unfamiliar. For all I know, there are more of those centipedes that can hide themselves in this ripple of space. As intense as it is here, I am oblivious to the effects it might have.

That’s really what my discomfort breaks down to; a lack of knowledge of creatures or other dangers that may linger here.

As I look around, I realise the claim of there being no spatial distortions around was hasty. There are some, but the bends only alter space slightly. The tilt is hardly noticeable. I only notice them because of the discrepancy my true-sight picks up. Those without would notice nothing wrong about the landscape; at most, a slight break or ripple in distant objects.

They may not be all that useful as they are, but the knowledge that they exist here is comforting. We are not so far from normal.

Scia pops into existence on top of my head, squeaks, then blinks back within my coils.

I stare at the spot she appeared, unsure what to make of her actions. Lifting a coil, I poke my head inside to watch her sweeping her wings over her eyes again. If it’s really that bad, then why did she come out again?

For a moment, I worry that her rather suicidal recklessness is showing its head again. If something hurts, why continue to do it? But she soon pulls away her wings to reveal her squinting eyes.

There is a very limited amount of the spatial ripple that reaches inside my coils through the entrance my head makes, but it isn’t so much to hurt her. Each eye winks rapidly, and soon she can keep her eyelids open wider. Is that all she needs? To adjust to the warmth? If that’s the case, I can help her rather easily.

Keeping her out of the worst of it, I creep open the gap between my body and filter more ripple through. It seems to work rather well, as her eyes stay wide despite the slowly increasing intensity. Thankfully, we should be able to continue onward, given enough time to adjust.

While I wait, I return my attention to the landscape around. I’ve never seen anything like it. The earth slopes upward rather consistently to my left, disrupted only by the odd formations of rock and the shards that poke out of the gravel like pillars. Massive, thick pillars. Really, it’s incredible to see so many of the crystalline stone masses that flowed through the caverns below together, and unmoving at that.

Before, they had seemed an unstoppable part of nature; something that flowed with the earth, unaffected by it. Now, they are tall towers hanging over the semi-stable earth. Even at my full size, I couldn’t stretch as tall as they rise; and I’m sure most of their mass still hides beneath the ground.

Eventually, Scia adjusts enough to climb out over my scales on her own. She does so slowly, and my far greater size makes it rather difficult for her to find anywhere to grip.

My tail comes around to wrap around her body, and she raises her wings not only to let me, but as a demand to be carried. I lift her to my snout, and as soon as she’s nestled herself between my scales, she blankets her wings over her head. She holds them in just the right spot for ears to poke out above, free to move around, while blocking her eyes from the sky above.

I twist out of my coils, slithering up the slope. As large as I am, the bottom third of my girth sinks into the earth, but I have enough grip to move without difficulty.

The ever-so-slight spatial bends are more common further up the slope, so it’s the obvious best place to move. I want to reach the warped tunnels again, and the only way to do that is with my distortions. Well, there is also the option to dig downward, where we came from, but I’d very much rather not be stuck in that storm of shifting earth if I ever have the option.

I slither around the base of a shard that curves out of the gravel and soil, arches over itself and ends in a sharp point far overhead. A dozen others — each of growing thickness — extend to the edge of my vision. Those with sharp tips each point the same way, while the few with flat or porous ends rise straight into the air.

My gaze only lingers for a moment before I pass beyond the line of them. The land appears particularly solid ahead. Not by much, but the large boulders poking from the earth have to say something about its stability. I’ll take the area that can hold those heavy boulders over the churning soil behind me.

On the opposite side of where I swam out, lies a lake of fluid earth. It isn’t all that widespread; not even as long as my full length. But where it isn’t all that far-reaching, it makes up for it in the ferocity the gravel churns. The lake bubbles and explodes. Shrapnel rains down in its proximity. Waves of rock lap at the edges of the lake, powered forth from the constantly flowing earth far below.

The lake is hardly stagnant, but it does stay to a slow crawl across the surface. A few others pop up across the landscape on occasion, and just as many peter to nothing, becoming indistinguishable from the surrounding gravel.

As I watch, the section of unstable ground twists and bubbles with greater intensity for a moment, before a boulder rises to the surface, held aloft despite its weight, and slides to the side. The large stone formation joins a pile of other half-submerged boulders of varying sizes.

Having witnessed the rise of the more solid piece of rock, I return my gaze over the surroundings. If the larger formations are carried up to this cavern by the unstable earth, then it explains why there is so much more around. The large ridges near the edge of my vision could not possibly form with the small pieces of gravel.

No wonder there are so many shards up here. It seems strange that such masses of heavy crystalline stone would not be most affected by gravity, but it might be their size itself that holds them here.

Is it the increased number of solid rocks that make this place stable, or is that stability the reason such boulders can exist?

Well, it hardly matters. This place may be more stable, but it is not hospitable to life. Even if the roar of the Titan hadn’t been terrifyingly close, we cannot stay. Scia will not be able to sustain herself here.

I slither up the hill, where the ridge sits with more frequent — yet still subtle — bends. The few massive boulders protruding from the earth announce its obviously greater stability.

Scia continues to hold her wings over her eyes. Every so often, she peeks out through, but immediately squeaks and covers herself again. At first, it looked like she was adapting to it, but she has hit the limit of what she can adjust to.

And yet she still tries to look.

I just shake my head and continue up the growing slope. While the bends I can see are growing in quantity, they have nowhere near the impact of those I’m used to. These bends barely change the direction of space. I have no idea how they could be useful.

Forget a rift back home; it’s unlikely any distortions up here will take me further than the holes Scia can make. It may seem safer here, but we will have to return to the churning earth below to find a way back. Though, any way back that isn’t the way we came up would be preferable.

The gravel at my sides tumbles down into the deep trench my body carves from the earth. At first, it’s not strange; the gravel equalises once in the groove and holds back the rest of the earth from sliding down. But that doesn’t last.

The flick of Scia’s ears brings my attention to the powdered stone around us. It starts small; a trickle of gravel sliding down from ahead of my wake. The gravel crumbling before I even touch it. That slow trickle quickly ramps up. The negligible amount of tumbling earth knocks up that which was stagnant, which then does the same to more ground.

A sudden ripple effect has the entire hill flowing down around us like a wave. When barely a moment ago, the ground held my weight with ease, it now collapses out below us.

I flick my head upward, tossing my little passenger skyward as I lose all grip and fall down a rapidly growing hole in what I’d thought was a stable section of land.

Gravel flows down all around me, scraping at my scales and trying to drag me beneath the surface again. With undulating motions, I keep from being buried. The crumbling dunes grow wider, pulling the larger stones into a tumble down the hill. A boulder slams into my back and shatters into a dozen pieces.

The impact hurts, and the momentum is enough to drag me under, but it doesn’t leave me injured. I snap myself through the earth. The blow powderises the gravel beneath me, but it carries me back above the surface again.

Just in time for another boulder to hit me in the face.

The next time I surface, I’m ready. My tail whips around and shatters the next two boulders. Unfortunately, spinning myself in such turbulence drops me back below the mass of sinking earth. Not ideal, but I wasn’t about to allow some rocks to get the better of me a third time.

A hole appears beneath me, and I slide through it with little time to react. I quickly find myself in the air. A chirp from above. Before I can praise Scia for her effort, I realise the distortion didn’t travel all that far, and I immediately fall back into the pit.

For a moment, I don’t resist, unsure whether I should compliment her, or hiss at the ineffective attempt. I shake off the thought, determined to deal with the current issue first.

The moment without struggle makes me think, rather than desperately fighting off the power of the land. With my thoughts gathered, and a better plan, I slither sideways. It does, unfortunately, carry me down through the earth quite a way, but eventually the churning earth slows enough that I can swim my way to the surface again.

As soon as I breach, Scia is already blinking around my head, clinging to me at one moment, then waving a wing as if chiding me the next.

I’m not the one that can die so easily.

Ignoring her, I slide the rest of my body from the gravel. A thousand little rocks clatter off my scales and pile around me.

I’m at the top half of the slope that the pit ate away at. Below, it still degrades the earth, but it approaches slowly. Not so fast I need to move immediately.

The pit spreads across a few of the shards that poke through the earth, but regardless of how much ground the pit swallows, the shards remain still and unmoving.

It’s a curious sight. I spread my gaze over the other few dozen shards in a line to the edge of my sight as Scia finally gives up on telling me off and slumps between my scales. From this slight vantage point, the shards appear to align more orderly than I’d assumed.

I stare for a long moment, until I realise what I’m looking at, and when I do, I startle. Scia chirps her indignation, but I cannot tear my eyes from the massive shards that poke through the earth and expand to the furthest reaches of my sight. They are no type of stone or crystal. The pattern they form, from this perspective, is undeniable.

The shards, dozens of massive crystallised stone, form the skeleton of a beast. Something a thousand times larger than myself.

A Titan.

We rode in the bones of a dead Titan.