Joroboros
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[KoJ] Chapter 38: Relief
🕑 Added 2024-09-27 11:58:57 +0000 UTCWe fall for a long time.
The Titan’s tear holds back the earth to both sides, but does nothing to slow our fall, or push us to either side. Gravity continues to pull at my body, a constant battle against the cushioning of air to drag us into the deepest pits.
Cleaved cliffs show a perfect cross-section of the ground in the state it was before the Titan’s powerful blow split it. Expansive cave systems open up to us, teasing an opportunity to escape, but never quite close enough to reach. Rivers and lakes bubble at the edge of the cliffs, cupped by an invisible force that prevents their flow. I race past all, but what I want takes far longer to appear.
The bends and rifts are a welcome sight when they appear along the cliff walls. When they do, a hundred heartbeats have already passed. We have to wait two hundred more before they grow to a preferable density, and even then they remain out of my reach.
This tear through the land is new, but that makes it no more welcoming to the distortions that I could really use right now. My only other option to create them and pull us out of this endless fall is unconscious. Scia pushed her limits to give me an opportunity against that lynx, and I’d gone and failed.
My fangs couldn’t pierce it’s fur. My constriction couldn’t so much as compress it. I was overwhelmed in every sense by the pseudo-Titan. The pain still thrumming at my lower spine can attest to that.
Because of my wound, I won’t be returning to a more convenient size any time soon. Such an action will only spread the damage and make the gash that much worse.
I’ve no way to slow, but even if I were to fling myself into the caverns again, I cannot hope to swim through the bends. At best, floating amidst the flowing earth is the best I’ll be able to manage, but that is a problem for later. We need to survive this fall first.
I wriggle my body, trying to direct myself through the air and closer to the wall. There is… some success, but as heavy as my body is, gravity really wants me going down, not sidewards. Regardless, I hold at an angle and eventually close in on the cliff.
Upon contact, my body grinds against earth. I only last a moment before the impact throws me back out into the centre of the Titan’s tear. It was hardly the most pleasant experience, but it did slow my speed… speed that I’m now rapidly regaining.
This can work. If I can just cling to the wall and slow us enough to pull into one of the infrequent caverns, then we won’t have to worry about finding the end of this fall. I really don’t want to know how hard I’ll hit the ground with this much weight behind me.
Keeping up the momentum, I angle towards the other wall. As soon as I’m close, I drive my head into the gravel. My tail whips around and slams into the wall beneath my head painfully. I’d tried to favour my wound by not letting it touch the wall, but there’s not much I can do when my body swings around unintentionally.
I slide through the loose earth like it were water and quickly find myself teetering away. Pounding my body against the surface, I turn to the other wall, where I dive my head into the wall again. This time I’m much more careful of my wound and Scia who is still wound in a knot of my midsection.
This process repeats a few times until I’ve slowed to a far more manageable pace. I cannot bring myself to a full stop, as the earth never wants to sit still beneath my weight, but it allows some level of manoeuvrability.
Pouncing from the wall again, I breach the open cavern I aimed for. I would love to relish the safety of distortion dense space, but the bends large enough to handle my size are not nearly frequent enough to keep me above the churning ground.
I slam into the earth, and it immediately tries to swallow me whole. A hiss escapes my throat as the gravel digs into my open wound, but I push past the pain and slither until I’m floating. Even at full size, it’s difficult to fight against the flow. It wasn’t this hard up top. The earth ripples with the remnant echoes of the Titans’ battle above. Each step, each blow they share blasts through the stone, keeping it in the constant state of flux.
It is the presence of Titans that make the Other Side what it is. They prevent the land settling. Their impossible strength and size destroys all that they touch. I should be glad that I’ve already survived so long in such a place; it’s always been clear the place is inhospitable to life, but I couldn’t have ever imagined the giant beings were the cause.
The Titan’s existence was a rarity. A singularity that couldn’t possibly be matched. That’s what I’d thought after it destroyed my home, but having seen the battle between two and the bones of so many others, it is clear there are more. Much more than I’d originally thought.
I slither away from the tear, finding my body growing sluggish. Slamming my head into a wall at such speeds while still affected by that gaping wound has left me pained and exhausted. It is not the pleasant tiredness I would get after a good hunt, but a fatigue that claws at me with the sharpness of the lynx’s diamonds.
There is nowhere to sleep. If I were to allow myself to be swallowed by the earth in my exhaustion, Scia will be vulnerable. I will not be in any better position. The only option I have is to push through. I am not so feeble as to be unable to hold back a bit of tiredness for the sake of our safety.
Slithering forward, I focus on nothing but keeping us afloat and moving. Blood seeps into the earth behind me, but I ignore it. My wound will heal eventually; I just need to push on until then.
Not wanting to experience another fall, I stick to the lower half of the caverns. It makes traversing between caverns difficult — what with the distortions large enough to carry me not being all that common along the lower ground — but I’m already aching. I need to move slow and steady. Anything else would tire me out more than I am, and hurt Scia.
So I slither from cavern to cavern. After some point, it all blends together and I’ve lost track of how far I’ve gone. I wouldn’t be able to find the Titan’s tear even if I wanted. Not only does the maze of distortions not show it, but these caverns are constantly changing. Coves appear and disappear all the time; the bends either no longer able to support them, or being the very reason they collapse.
I move forward.
A muffled chirp reaches my ears, and I keep moving forward. The chirp comes again, louder and more insistent. My slithering continues. My head not turning from the next wide hole I intend to pass through. If I let my concentration waver, then I won’t be able to fight off slumber.
Another chirp reaches me. This time it comes from in front of me.
Oh? A little bat’s riding my snout. Scia’s awake. I’m happy she’s looking active and healthy.
Ah, that’s right. If she’s not inside my coil, I can straighten out. The crack of my spine as it finally releases from its bunched form feels nice. Maybe now it won’t be so exhausting to keep myself afloat.
I can’t stop moving. If I do, the blood-loss and tiredness will catch up with me and I’ll be unable to stay on top of all this gravel.
Scia chirps again, and when I look down to see her nestled in the tiny wedge between scales, I find concern scrawled all over her body. Her eyes travel to where my wound should be as if she could see through the hill of scales that stands before her.
There’s no need to worry little one. I’ve pushed through worse… I think. It would have been a long time ago, but I’m sure I’ve been badly hurt before and came out alright. If not before my memories started to become solid, then certainly because of accidents where rifts collapsed early.
If only I could find another of that floating rock we slept on last time. We could take another ride in one of those shards — the Titan bones — but the last thing I want to risk is another trip to the Titan’s cavern. We were gifted with a way down last time, but I can’t imagine that is likely to repeat.
I’m already determined to fight back my sleep until I find a path back to the warped tunnels, but I can hardly expect such an unlikely scenario to happen. So when one appears — albeit not a perfect destination — I’m stunned still for a few good moments.
Through a dozen bends and holes, a section of ground drains away. It swirls downward like a whirlpool, gravel sucking through a rend to somewhere far away.
I change course immediately. My sudden regaining of focus seems to surprise Scia, who squeaks and clings to my scales as we move. It is not so easy to find my way to the rend; I can see it through the bends and holes, but trying to find a path with the incredible infrequency of the larger distortions is difficult.
By the time I reach the rent, the cavern has entered a strange equilibrium. The earth continues to flow out through the distortion with a strong enough flow that is seemingly able to hold the cavern open indefinitely.
And, true to my sight, the rend does lead away from the Other Side. That’s where the benefits end. Unfortunately, the spatial distortion leads directly into the abyss. There is no land anywhere in sight. What’s even worse, is that should I want to take the risk and leap into the abyss where I know a Titan is likely hiding — which I very much do not — it is far too small for me. At the very least, I would need to shrink to a quarter of my width to squeeze through.
This is the first route away from the Other Side we’ve found since we landed here, and it is to a place even less desirable.
All is not horrible though. While I cannot pass through, and have no intent to, the existence of the rent itself is encouraging. If there’s one, there’s surely more as long as wee keep looking.
Actually, now that I look closely, I might be able to take advantage of the way the rend interacts with the grinding earth itself.
Rock funnels down into the distortion, before siphoned out into the empty air of the abyss. But the earth, gravel and sediment doesn’t only fall into the rend; it rises as well. The compressed earth here seems to want to flow into it, creating a section of churning gravel that seems to only ever head toward the single point.
The distortion is too small for me, so it will not interact with me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use the effect it has on the environment.
So, I slide up to the rend and coil around it. With all the rock pushing at my sides and up into my ventral scales in their flow toward the distortion, it gives me a perfect place to float.
Finally, I can rest.
