Joroboros
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[KoJ] Chapter 31: Bewilderment
🕑 Added 2024-09-06 04:20:02 +0000 UTCA Titan.
A Beyond-damned Titan is out there, and I can do nothing but cling to this shard in my coiled up ball around Scia. I cannot run. I cannot see. I cannot so much as move a muscle lest Scia become victim to the raging rapids of flowing stone.
The Titan’s roar washes over us with the full power of its presence. Unlike the last time which had only been a brief instant, this lasts for an eternity. It’s powerful quake of a cry freezes everything still. For a moment, not even the grinding stone impacts my scales.
But that moment doesn’t last.
As the roar reaches a crescendo, the rock, shard, and even the muscles in my own body begin to vibrate. It starts subtle, but soon my own body feels like it’s tearing itself apart from the inside. The stone outside my scales is no different; broken pieces of rock grind against themselves so fiercely, they become a powder that seeps into my wounds.
It feels like I’m being shredded from within, but no wounds appear. The same must be true for Scia; she shivers in pain, but nothing outwardly wrong is visible.
When the howl finally disappears — cut off without fanfare — Scia gasps a breath of air. The pressure gripping us so tightly made it impossible to tell the passing of time. Was it a single heartbeat she hadn’t breathed? A dozen? A hundred? If the roar never stopped, would she have suffocated?
It is frustrating that Scia is tight withing my grasp, and yet I still cannot protect her in times like this.
Horrible pounding strikes through the earth for the next while. Scia and I huddle in our small hole as the powdered earth whips against me in repetitive blows. Body freezing and muscle spasming roars resound as the Titan wails upon the earth. We only experience the secondary effects of this monster as it does… whatever it does, but that is enough to have us cowering.
In a moment of freedom from the ever-constricting presence, I let out a hiss of morbid amusement. There once was a time that I believed myself the top of the food chain. Nothing could be me unless I weakened myself with the speed reductive qualities of water or magma.
It seems, the more I expand out from what was my territory, the greater beasts there are. Have I been living in the weakest of areas my whole life, and somehow just never realised it, or are these Titans new? Should they really exist?
As easy as it would be to label the creatures as invaders and unnatural to protect the pride that seems dedicated to burying itself within my mind, doing so would be running from the truth. It doesn’t matter where they came from, or if I’ve just been oblivious to their existence up until now. What matters, is that they are here, and I learn to deal with them.
Even if that means hiding like like the prey I look down upon.
The quakes stop. I don’t dare think that is the end of them, but for an extended period, there is no pounding rock against my wounded scales. Nor is there any of those frightening roars.
I am right, though; the thumping quakes soon return. But they are not nearly as devastating. The powerful waves washing over us have a more rhythmic nature to them. Like footfalls.
They gradually disappear, and only the ever constant grinding of earth remains. The rock around us is nothing but dust now. The fine grains would have been preferable, had I not already had wounds exposed to the outer world. Each pulse through sand carries the particles under my scales and irritates me more.
Very carefully, I clench and wriggle, trying to move my wounds away from the opening while keeping Scia held tight within my coils. My efforts only drag the dust inside our indent, pressing in painfully to the broken scales now pressed against the hard crystal rock of the shard.
The physical pain is, oddly enough, far easier to deal with than the writhing emotions that have been slicing away at my mind to make themselves a place. Their pain isn’t real, and yet it is somehow worse.
Scia squeaks at me, thankfully unharmed after that whole experience. I return her gaze, but there’s nothing I can do while we’re stuck in here.
The sea of powdered stone continues to grind against itself, back to the lesser strength of before which does not pierce my scales. Our shard continues to sway in the ocean of gravel for a time. Eventually, I notice that the stone dust is coarser than it was directly after the Titan’s influence. Have we moved away from the Titan’s destruction? Or is the earth slamming against itself hard enough that it’s solidifying into larger chunks?
More time passes.
I’m watching Scia sleep when something different finally happens. The rock slows. We still sift through the earth, but the flowing stone no longer strikes out at my scales with immense fury. Now, it’s more of a soft touch. Like the currents of water. While the world around us moves sluggishly, I feel my scales brush against large boulders. Boulders that couldn’t have survived in the shredding earth we’ve been stranded.
I raise my head. The temptation to peek out beyond my tail is immense, the curiosity and hope that we might be somewhere safer overwhelms me, but I can’t risk it. We’ve been stuck so long that my spine almost aches with stiffness. I hold myself back, but not easily.
Soon, the earth grows still. It no longer grinds against itself in that terribly dangerous flow. Unfortunately, so too does our shard. The earth no longer pounds against me, but neither does our ride move.
I wait. The constant quaking of earth will return any moment now, just as it always does in the Other Side.
But it doesn’t.
It remains still.
The churning of moving earth still reaches my ears, but it is subdued. distant. I thought I would be happy to not be constantly deafened, but the quiet is unnerving. Why is everything still? We’ve not passed through a rend, so I’m certain we’re on the Other Side; it shouldn’t be safe. It shouldn’t be motionless. But it is.
Scia chirps, and I realise I’ve been focused on the feeling through my scales long enough for her to wake. I take one look at her and make up my mind.
My tail coils around the little bat until she’s completely hidden and protected. She squeaks in surprise as she finds herself gripped too tight to move, but after a moment of fussing she settles down.
I take a breath, settling myself, and pull back my size only enough for the slightest sliver of an opening to appear. Besides a few loose rock, the earth doesn’t come crashing in.
With the assurance that I’m not about to kill us both, I unwind further and get a look outside. It’s just as I felt: a large boulder surrounded by small pebbles and dust. All still. There’s nothing more than the rock — no spatial distortions nor the space to see further — but the sight urges me on.
I push out from the hole in the porous side of the shard and wriggle myself through the earth. Wasting no time, I grow myself to a far larger scale. There are no distortions for me to use, so I won’t make the same mistake as last time. Especially in the Other Side.
With rock all around me, it almost feels like swimming. The rock shatters as I brush past it, but it flows around my body like a fluid with every slither.
I move away from the tug of gravity. The sound of the constant grinding churn rises from below, so I do everything I can to move away from it.
The curl of my tail slows me down somewhat, but to keep Scia safe, it’s not something I can avoid. Only one way would be easier to carry her, and I’d rather avoid that method.
The earth slides out of my way almost too easily considering it’s been the source of recent troubles. My body twists the way it would in water, dragging me through the already loose sediment. Distant, powerful quakes shake through the rock and pound through my body. Strong enough to feel, but not so bad that gravel kicks up like the sea below.
I am completely blind. Nothing but the rock directly before me is visible. In a way, this should be worse than the small hole I’d been hiding within; at least in there I had some space, limited as it were. But no, I find being able to act supersedes any fear or frustration of my lack of sight.
Despite being in likely far more danger out here, it feels so much better not to cower away where only prey would. I can take on the dangers of the Other Side head first and come out on top.
I immediately clamp down on my pride. The emotion has been one of the pervasive of those that attempt to sneak their way into my mind. And, unfortunately, it seems to be the most dangerous. The ideas pride wants me to follow are horrifyingly dangerous considering where we are. Take on the Other Side? When there are Titans around? Absolutely not.
But I still swim up.
Each body-length I climb, the lighter the weight bearing down on me from above. I’m getting close. I know it. And finally, after wading through the earth for so long, I breach.
The first thing I notice, is the complete lack of any walls or ceiling anywhere in sight. Even at the furthest regions I can see, there is nothing. Only the vast cavern floor that expands far in each direction. In some places, the unstable ground churns like it does so far below, but those lakes are rare. Mostly, the ground is solid, if unstable.
That intense ripple in space I saw back in the large cavern with the million bugs is back. Not only is it back, it’s a hundred times more intense than anything the bugs could have created. I still have no idea what I’m looking at, but as the ripples bear down on my body, I feel a slight heat from them. A heat that I couldn’t feel from the bugs. It doesn’t hurt. Rather, it’s quite pleasant. The ripple reminds me slightly of the energy flowing from my old resting spot.
I try to follow the origin of the ripples, but a sting builds up deep within my eyes the longer I focus. I hold my glare, trying to understand the odd effect, but no matter how long that dull ache continues to burn the back of my eyes, nothing comes from it.
My gaze returns to the environment around me. The massive cavern might very well be the abyss again, but at least gravity holds me away from the depths this time. While there are the occasional shards, ridges and dunes of rock scattered in rather unique formations, the cavern is, on average, flatter than many of those in the my warped tunnels.
A barely noticeable tap against my tail and a muffled chirp reminds me that I have another to worry about. I bring my tail around, and open it so Scia can land on the top of my head. As soon as she’s free, she squeaks and shields her eyes. She buries herself into the wedge between scales that she’s tiny enough to fit into now that I’m at full size.
What is wrong? Is the ripple from above really that strong? Sure it stung a little if you looked directly at it… what am I doing? Have I forgotten how vulnerable she is?
I quickly bring my tail around and cover her, blocking the ripples from touching her. For ripples in the spatial fabric, they get interrupted surprisingly easily from the slightest object in its path.
Scia blinks rapidly, and it’s obvious the slight ripple that still manages to reach her after reflecting off other surfaces is enough to affect her. I coil around her once again, giving her time to recover.
I don’t know where we are, but hopefully it’s safer than below.
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This is the extent of my backlog, so I'll have to slow down my upload rate here and on RR. I'll be trying to hit 4 chaps a week, but I'm not sure how well I'll do. Patreon will fall a little behind the 15 chaps I promise, but after the initial run on rising stars, i should be able to get back on top of everything.
