Kin of Jörmungandr

Scia blinks from my head and appears by the only section of skull with a thick coating of moss. Her teeth latch on to the strands before she presses her wings and legs against the wall and tugs, attempting to pull her meal free.

She fails.

Scia tugs and tugs, but the grass doesn’t want to let go of the hard bone it grows from. I slide up beside her, ready to swipe my tail against the wall to tear some off, but she chirps at me. She spits out the moss to wave a wing at my tail that I raise over her head. Her eyes stare into mine with a slight pout lining her muzzle.

Well, if she wants so desperately to do it herself, why should I stop her?

So I settle in to watch Scia fight with the plant that refuses to let go of its roots. She squeaks and grunts, but her tiny body simply cannot get enough leverage.

It’s amusing, but after a while of struggle, I raise my tail again to offer to shave the moss for her. She takes one look at me and twists her head, determined to accomplish it herself.

Determination that lasts only a little longer. Soon, she gives up. Her head bowed, she lets go of the grass and blinks back to me. For a moment, she refuses to make eye contact, but her head slowly tilts until she’s pleading with me.

I hiss out a laugh, and she immediately flicks her head away in a deep pout.

As requested, I scrape my tail along the wall, dropping all the moss into a pile before us. In moments, Scia is digging into her feast, having apparently forgiven me for laughing at her.

While she enjoys herself with the tough grass, I slither to the front of the jaw. In a few places, the bone lifts from the earth, revealing the base of fangs far thicker than I am. With the ground swallowing them, I can’t see their entirety, but the shape reminds me of the first shard we’d seen. The sharp edge and porous curved section are identical.

Though, the one floating through the lower caverns had almost seemed larger. Too large to fit in the jaw of a beast like this. Is that just an effect of perspective?

Along the other bone surfaces, there is a very thin layer of moss motes. Unlike the grass that Scia chews through, none of this has grown. When I raise my eyes to the ceiling, I see why the moss is shorter in most places.

Large claw marks cut through the grass growing from the ceiling. There’s not much left, but the clear scratches where the plant has been ripped from the bone leave little to the imagination. Some creature — some large creature — scratched away the moss for itself.

The bone itself is unmarred, but it is the regrowth on other walls of the shard even more concerning; whatever clawed at the inside of this skull has been coming here often. And recently.

I twist back to Scia, intending to grab her and leave, but she’s no longer gorging herself. Instead, she stands on legs and wings with her head raised high and ears twitching. She hears something, and whatever it is, it’s coming from the opening at the back of the skull.

In an instant, Scia appears on my head again and flaps her wings at me, squeaking out an almost imperceptible chirp. I don’t know how I know, but I understand what she wants.

My body is shrinking and I’m slithering into the gap between fang and jaw before I even hear the first crunch of gravel. I don’t know what is coming, but the weight of its footfalls thrum through the earth. It starts off subtle, but as I get smaller, the shaking feels so much more intense. I can only imagine it is because of the Titan’s corpse that the earth isn’t collapsing beneath us. Whatever this is, it is big. Bigger than myself.

I try to shove my head through the gap between teeth before I’m suitably small enough, and as I should have expected, the Titan bones don’t budge.

The footsteps grow louder, and I desperately press down on my size, forcing it to shrink faster. I don’t want to meet a being that considers the Other Side its home. After everything I’ve learnt, there’s no possibility I could survive.

I do not want to face a Titan.

Finally, my body is tiny enough to squeeze past the fang’s root and find myself back out in the open, but not before I hear a loud thump that makes me freeze.

I twist back, but nothing strikes at me. Slowly, I slither up to a slight bend that should allow me to see over the curve of gravel and through a gap in the skull, but keep myself obscured. My continually smaller size only helps to keep me hidden.

The beast is large, but not quite the mountainous size of the Titans. It is at least four times longer than my full size and barely fits within the skull. Despite this not being a Titan, it is far beyond my capability to fend off.

It is feline, with glistening crystal strands of fur that shift over one another with a barely perceptible sibilant whisper. It steps rear-first into the skull and drags some bloodied corpse in through the tight opening.

Of course, the dead hunt holds multiple dozen times my weight. The pulped mass — ripped open with such ferocity that its species is indistinguishable — is dragged to the far corner of the shard cavern before the giant — not-Titan — digs in.

What is this being? I ask the Beyond.

…

Right, it’s gone. Out of habit, I had asked, but I guess I’ve lost the convenience of having things named for me.

Between the diamond sharp ears on its head and the crystalline hairs that hang from its jaw in two points like a pair of extra fangs give it a similar enough appearance to a lynx. It obviously is anything but — what with its towering height and slightly transparent fur that shines with barely repressed energy — but until the Beyond returns, Lynx is good enough.

Scia presses into my scales, hiding away from the beast as her ears stand stiff and upright. I know exactly how she feels. My body presses low to the gravel, keeping just out of sight from those without true-sight. Up here, where there are no distortions, I doubt any creatures can perceive the slight bend, but the beast’s presence makes me feel trapped, regardless. If it looks my way, could it spot me? It’s unlikely to, but I know nothing about this pseudo-Titan.

Unlike the Titans, I am not too small to bother with. I may not be as filling as the ball of flesh it now tears into, but I am still reasonable prey to it.

I hate that.

I suppress the hiss of defiance that pride attempts to push through my throat. This will not become a repeat of the encounter with the Titan. I will do what I need to keep Scia and myself alive.

The Titans are not an entirely unique existence. This is proof of that. I’d been holding onto the slight hope that the Titans were simply a realm of their own, and it was impossible for any predators to be between me and them… but this lynx is proof that I have simply not known enough of the world.

I’d expected that to be the case after what I’ve experienced, but it is still hard to accept.

While the massive lynx is distracted, I slowly slither back. When the pseudo-Titan’s head whips up, I freeze. The beast raises its bloodied mouth from its feast and sniffs at the air, long whiskers twitching innocuously.

Did it hear me? I thought I’d been perfectly silent. Can it smell us? I know it can’t see us here; if it could, it would have noticed us immediately.

The head of the beast swivels until it lands on the wall of moss Scia and I just trimmed. A deep snarl thunders from the lynx, quaking through my spine. In an instant, it sprints out of the rear of the skull, diamond-like teeth bared all the while.

As it speeds out of the shard, I notice a slight change with the earth beneath where its feet land. The disorderly, unstable ground seems to form together, as if rising to meet the enormous paws of the lynx.

Is it chasing our scent? I shouldn’t give off much of one myself, but Scia is different. All mammals reek, after all. We can be thankful that it follows our tracks the wrong way, but we cannot rely on it staying that way. If the beast has any intelligence at all, it will discover us sooner rather than later.

We need to leave. Now.

I twist and slither up the slope, keeping the rocky ridgeline between myself and where the feline ran off to. For a moment, I consider returning to my full size; the last thing I want is to be caught by that predator and not have my full strength available. But I have to discard the thought. It is as wide as I am long. Considering our body differences, the lynx is likely to be near a hundred times my weight. Even at full size, I don’t stand a chance. Especially lacking my distortions.

At least with a more subdued size, I can remain harder to spot. Would the lynx even bother chasing us down if it knew how small we were? I know I avoid prey that won’t fill me up.

So, small I stay.

But… the lynx did seem rather enraged when it had spotted the remains of the moss. I tore off the last of it from the wall. Did it eat that grass too? Did we steal the last of its meal?

Hopefully not. I know firsthand the fury of having your prey stolen from your jaws. And I have not been particularly kind to the creatures that did so.

My small size slides along the surface without disturbing it at all. That is great for now — it means there’s little to reveal my presence — but the moment I get caught in any collapse, I won’t be able to fight back. The flow of earth will take me wherever it wishes, and I’ll lack the size and strength to swim from the current.

So, while I feel like I’m on more stable ground than I’ve been in some time, my concerns are no less than they were before. If I’m sucked underground, will I be able to find Scia again? If such an event occurs, I don’t believe I’ll be in too much danger; I simply need to worry about how far the churning gravel decides to take me before I can grow.

Scia stands tall on my back, ears swivelling, but having gone back to covering her eyes with her wings. She watches our rear as I dart across the earth, following the guidance of distortions. I’m hoping to find something, some place to hide before the lynx turns and chases us. As fast as it had moved before, there’s no chance of outpacing it. We can only hope it doesn’t find us soon.

Worst-case scenario, I’ll throw us beneath the surface. If I can instigate the collapse of the earth, then that is our best option. Even if such an action is horrifyingly dangerous.

After a stressful length of time, I find somewhere that is perfect. Ahead, the earth opens up into a massive array of cracks and gorges. The stone that forms the rock between each fissure seems more solid and together than much of the other landscape around, but the gorges themselves are a sea of fluid gravel.

Ideally, we would prefer to travel over the solid stone.

Scia squeaks in panic. I turn around to find the lynx rising over the ridge at the edge of my sight.

But it looks like we’ll have to settle for the gorges themselves.