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[KoJ] Chapter 33: Astonished
🕑 Added 2024-09-11 06:40:41 +0000 UTCThe massive shards rising to the abyss no longer seem so inconsequential. Their once irregular placement through the landscape are now obvious. There is no randomness. Each pillar curves in the familiar form of a ribcage.
I’ve seen plenty of remains in my long life, so I’m confident they are the bones of a quadrupedal mammal. They may be similar in a general sense, but the sheer scale difference between the animals I’ve seen and whatever these remains must have come from are impossible to comprehend. I can’t see where the bones end, and never has the distance of my sight been insufficient.
It’s truly obscene, menacing, inconceivable. None of the words taught by the beyond seem appropriate.
The unbelievable size this creature must have been puts even the largest caverns beyond the Labyrinthine Passages to shame. Not a leg would fit within the space; not to mention any of the tighter tunnels I’ve called home.
Back when the phantom Titan took my home from me, it had been impossible to get an actual picture of it’s size. The way it hid away in a spaceless void made it impossible. All I knew, was it was immense. Only now do I see the extent of that.
Strangely, while I can pick out which shards should be the Titan’s ribs, there are others that don’t appear to be natural. Loose bones scattered both within and outside the ribcage of the impossible beast’s corpse.
Are they dislodged bones from the same Titan that fell here? Or… are they the remains of others?
This Titan isn’t the sole one is it? These bones are too varied. Too dissimilar to the structure of the ribs to possibly be the same. And there are far too many flowing through the churning earth below to have come from one.
The Other Side is the graveyard of the Titans.
This is the place Titans come to die. If I hadn’t already wanted to leave, this solidifies that desperation. No wonder we heard the deathly roar earlier; this ocean of gravel and powdered earth is theirs to roam.
But… what can kill a Titan?
The very concept of those beings finding their ends seems unnatural. What could be beyond creatures larger than any cavern?
Nothing.
I refuse to accept that their is any being greater than the Titans. Nothing could topple those so unreasonably far above myself in the hierarchy of predators.
Their deaths came from themselves. Only Titans can kill Titans. It only makes sense. Creatures denoted the enemies of the world are irrevocably linked to death. Their simple movement is enough to destroy caverns that have stood for generations, and kill all unfortunate to be below them. Of course beings linked to the destruction and death of the world would kill each other.
I hiss to expel my frustration. This is no time to pull back because of a simple discovery. Even if that simple discovery is disastrous.
A little squeak does a much better job of redirecting my thoughts.
The sound from Scia is like a mix between a whistle and a huff of air. My eyes focus on her, and I find her breathing out with her mouth open. She continues her odd noise for a few moments until she realises I’m watching her.
Scia turns to me and tilts her head, as if I’m the one doing something strange.
I don’t know why, but the slightest of hunches has me hissing again.
Scia sticks out her tongue and huffs a breathy whistle again.
Hmm… still not absolutely certain. I hiss.
Scia hisses back; her best imitation sounds nothing like mine, but it is now clear she’s repeating me.
I hiss again.
When she does the same, I can’t help the involuntary sound that escapes my lips. Scia imitates that too, jumping up and down with excitement. She easily picks up on my amusement.
I breathe out a huff — the sound quickly mimicked — and refocus myself on the path ahead. There’s no use wasting energy worrying about the corpses of Titans. I already knew this place was dangerous. This changes nothing.
The widening pit slows to a crawl. It doesn’t come near, but its existence still a cause for concern. The are of slope I’d considered the most stable had been anything but. A reminder of the fragility of my surroundings. I cannot trust that anything here will hold my weight, but I also refuse to allow myself to take a smaller size without the safety of my bends.
As long as Scia blinks away in time, I can swim through the fluid stone without problem. It will be annoying to have the ground collapse under me again, but there’s plenty worse that can happen.
I push forward, heading up toward the ridgeline above. With each slither, I feel the earth shifting below, ready to collapse at a moment’s notice. Any creature I’m familiar with could do nothing against the stone currents. My thoughts filter through all the prey of my past, and consider how they might survive the drowning gravel. How often does one get lost over her, on the Other Side? Could any survive for an extended time?
Not even considering the problem of food, is there any species that would not be overwhelmed by the moving rock? The only ones I can think could last more than a few moments are those with some capability of self-propulsion or are large enough to overcome the current.
Scia and her kin have both wings and their space bending capabilities, so of all creatures, they might be the best suited. A single mistake would be their end, but they could keep away from the gravel longer than any other. The larger beasts like Ōmukade or Nareau could use their size but with all their weight distributed onto the sharp points of their legs, I don’t believe traversing the surface of this cavern as they had that of the other is feasible. Their legs would sink, or instigate the collapse of the earth below.
At any time in the past, I would compare their shortcomings to my capabilities to reiterate my superiority… but there is no point any longer. I cannot reach the heights of the Titans, so why does it matter that I am greater than the lesser beasts? In the eyes of the only beings that matter, I am the same as all I consider lesser.
Though, using that same line of thought, Scia and I are identical. She doesn’t need to be strong to be who she is. It isn’t her ability to create bends that I’ve grown attached to, so maybe it isn’t necessary to place such requirement of superiority on myself.
I may no longer be the strongest creature around, but should I allow that to mean I’m anything lesser than what I’ve been for all my life? Those creatures that have always been below me are still the same as they’ve always been. I have not suddenly become a bug because of the existence of Titans.
And I shouldn’t act like it.
This is the Other Side. The Graveyard of the Titans. It is terrifying, but I won’t allow myself to be controlled by the fear as the lesser creatures do. Scia holds no strength of her own, and she’s been braver than I have ever since I met her. I need to take her actions and learn from them. Adapt them.
What I’d first thought was foolishness may be anything but. She’d been courageous and latched herself to me when she should have feared and hid. If she had, it was entirely possible she wouldn’t have lived to her next sleep. Only because she ignored her fear and the instinct of her kind did she live.
This place… it makes me want to hide away to avoid any possible encounter with the Titans we heard. Not only that, the loss of the Beyond’s voice unnerves me. It has been such a long time since I’ve been without it that the presence of only my own thoughts in my mind seems strange.
But this is all something I have to push past. I cannot be some cowardly prey hiding from the apex of the region. I need to be better than that. What I must do, is follow Scia’s lead and take the only option I have, regardless of risk.
Settling my resolve, I breach the ridgeline. I was hoping to find the wall of this cavern. But no, the slope continues at a regular incline without any ceiling or rapid incline breaking up the landscape.
More shards — Titan bones — rise from the earth ahead. They seem to be a series of vertebrae and the joint of some limb. The way they curve out of sight to the right makes me think this is from the same Titan as the ribcage down the slope. The dead creature lay curled on the slope, with its head somewhere out of sight.
It is, oddly enough, up the hill where the distortions are most dense. I don’t think there’s any actual relation, as the bends extend to the left beyond where the dead Titan lies, but it does mean the head is in my path.
It takes a while — the earth collapsing below you tends to cause delays — but I eventually reach it. The skull appears like a strange mix of a cervidae and canid. Only the upper half of the skull sits above the surface, but the jaw is shaped like the beasts that tear flesh. From the top, rear section of the skull rises massive shard pillars that curl into the air. They rise so high they leave my sight, but soon return above the snout of the skull in razor points.
The horns are far larger then the head, but even the skull itself is not insignificant. Near ten times longer than myself, it is hard to imagine this head once belonged on a living being. My full size could barely constitute a snake for a creature like this.
Out of curiosity — an emotion I’ve been much more welcoming to recently — I approach the skull. There is an opening near where the neck would have been that allows us to enter the interior. I slither inside and find the earth feels far more stable here than anywhere else out over the shifting earth. The jawbone hidden below us must help with stability.
Though I won’t make any assumptions again. Not after my last guess was proven wrong almost immediately after I made it.
The skull blocks that spatial ripple bearing down on us from above. With something above my head again, I find muscles that have remained tense ever since we arrived in this massive cavern finally relax. Knowing there is a ceiling above, even if it is the remains of a Titan, is calming. What’s even better, is that the moss grows from the shard around us. Scia will be able to eat again.
There is plenty of space to move around, and without the energy heating us from above, Scia can finally lower her wings and look around.
This seems like a perfect place to hide away from the dangers of the Other Side. Well, it would be perfect, but I’ve already decided that settling in such a place would be the wrong option. I need to return to the warped tunnels, and from there, we will escape.
After what happened along the amber barrier, the tunnels are no longer safe. They are collapsing, and whether they’ll become like the Other Side is still to be seen, but I cannot rely on it remaining safe for long. I’d originally tried to find a path to go against my spite, but our problem is no longer so simple. There is no denying it; my tunnels will collapse — if they haven’t already — and we must find our way out.
Hiding in this skull will provide short term safety, but in the end, it will place us in a worse position than simply putting ourselves forward early. How Scia knew to do that back when we met, I don’t know.
As I look around the hollow inside of the skull, I find that the moss isn’t as dense as the insides of other shards. In places, it is torn off; like the walls were clawed at. Hopefully, that’s nothing but an oddity in the way it grows out in this ceilingless cavern.
Best not linger.
