Kin of Jörmungandr

The Ōmukade is quick, but I am quicker.

It moves silently, cleaving through the swarm of hovering bugs with vicious intent. If it thought it could catch me off guard twice, it has another thing coming.

I strike. My tail and body crush earth beneath me as I push off. Unlike the centipede, I am not quiet. The pounce shakes the earth. Dust flakes from the ceiling far above. A roar of force rips off my side as the air shatters under my strength, shrieking out my rage for me.

My jaw slams into the centipede’s underbelly. The large upper fang pair pierce the chitin easily, and I clamp down, the smaller, but no less sharp, teeth clench into the chitin. They don’t pierce all the way through like my fangs, but cut into enough of the armour to hold firm.

While I am faster, the centipede is larger than myself. Our momentum snaps to a halt in mid-air.

The centipede recoils. It pulls away, but my fangs are already deep within its body; the only way it escapes now is if it kills me. I immediately twist. My grip drags the Ōmukade into a spin, where I curl my body around it and squeeze. The constriction unfortunately doesn’t crush it, but the goal is to lock down as much of its body as I can for now. The less it can move, the easier it is for me.

A hundred legs strike out at my scales as the beast flails. With nothing of my body held back, the clawed limbs do little more than scratch my hard, interlocking scales. Of course, it isn’t the legs I’m concerned about.

I twist my body, paying close attention to where the head of the centipede is. It would have been better to bite the Ōmukade near the head, preferably on the back. That would have been optimal, but I didn’t want to throw away the chance while I had it. Not with the size advantage it has.

I do my best to keep those mandibles away from biting me. My tail tip wraps around its head and holds it away; the only part of my length not clenching to constrict and crush. The centipede jerks, making mighty efforts to break from my grip and snap its own fangs through my scales, but despite the massive weight difference, I am stronger.

As a snake, I’m all muscle, while the centipede has to lug around that heavy shell of an exoskeleton. I’ve got it in my grip. The fight is already over.

We finally crash to the ground. My head impacts first, squashed beneath mine and the Ōmukade’s combined weight. I’m dazed for a moment, but my fangs only slide deeper. The centipede takes advantage of the moment and slams its head down onto my back. All three pincer pairs cut through scale and clench into my spine. Unlike the earlier strike, my bone is denser, so it doesn’t shatter my vertebrae, but that doesn’t reduce the pain of those massive pincers.

Now on the ground, the centipede’s legs no longer flail around uselessly. They dig into the earth wherever they can and give the beast more control over the situation than I like. With grip and strength it couldn’t pull off before, it tugs at my back. The strain on my fangs intensifies, but its attempts to remove my teeth are pointless.

I tighten my grip, pulling its head closer to my back to stop its attempts to tear me from its belly. With all those fangs scraping along my spine, I don’t want it tugging so hard. My body flips again, doing its utmost to keep the centipede on its back, where it can’t dig its legs into the stone and compete.

Now that I am in control of the situation, limiting movements of the larger creature, I contract to my full capacity. Slowly but surely, my grip becomes tighter. I leverage against my loops of muscle to clamp down harder with each moment. The legs pinned beneath my scales are likely all crushed, but the centipede has plenty to spare. They never stop squirming. Never cease their attempts to save itself.

We both feel when its carapace cracks under my assault. The slight thrum vibrates through my chest, and I’m sure the pain hits the Ōmukade all at once. I hold tight, but the centipede finally seems to realise the danger it is in. As if it never even considered me a threat with my teeth deep in its gut.

In an instant, its struggles redouble in intensity. A desperation engulfs its being and a strength it didn’t show before enters its squirming efforts. The mandibles snap open and closed in a rapid flow, ripping into my back. I try to take advantage and pull its head away from me, but there is always one pair clamped down, so it doesn’t budge.

The rapid, snapping fangs dig through scale with each bite. It feels horrible and I’m sure it looks just as bad, but eventually the pincers dig deep enough that the Ōmukade is satisfied and they lock. Each pair wrap through my midsection, pushing past ribs and clamping down around my spine.

Its bite is agonising, but I direct the adrenaline to holding tight and crushing my opponent. We’re both clamping down on the other. Now we just need to wait and see who drops out first.

This is what I wanted. It may be a centipede, but it’s a true challenger. An opponent able to get my blood pumping and scales dirty. How long has it been since I’ve had a fight like this? Where I neither had to hold myself back, nor have victory delivered with ease? I can enjoy the struggle of combating another apex, where, while a challenge, isn’t impossible as with the Titan.

This is the fight I wanted… but I can’t enjoy it nearly as much as I want to. The prone, vulnerable form of Scia still laying on the ground behind me lingers in my mind. This isn’t a battle for supremacy, but one to protect. That this centipede would try to harm her… it fuels my anger more than it should.

Getting angry in a fight isn’t uncommon, even before receiving the emotions of sapience, but this rage is different. Invasive. How dare this Ōmukade threaten what is mine. This loathing I feel is overwhelming. Almost comparable to what I feel for the Titan that took everything from me.

I don’t want to lose Scia. She somehow managed to make me care enough that returning to being alone seems like the less preferable outcome. This centipede is in the way of that, and while I love a good fight, that has taken second place to Scia’s safety.

With a mighty yank, the Ōmukade pulls at my spine. The pain is unbearable, but even if I had wanted to tear out my fangs, they are too deep to pull out with any sort of ease.

I clench ever tighter, rewarded by a series of cracks and the buckling of chitin beneath my scales. The centipede stops pulling, and for a moment I believe that it has given up, but that is too hopeful. It yanks again. Each time it pulls, it can only do so for a short time before it has to stop and begin again.

What will win: its short, intense bursts of power; or my constant, overbearing strength?

It tugs once more, but it isn’t my spine that fails. The centipede pulls my back, which takes my head along with it. In a shower of bug blood, my fangs tear free, taking a not insignificant chunk of its underbelly chitin with plenty of gooey flesh.

My fangs ache, but now that they’re free, there’s only one thing to do. I twist, and in one smooth motion, clamp my jaw around the spot I would have liked initially; right in the back of its head. Long teeth pierce deep.

I’m contorting my body rather extremely to hold this position, but it’s worth grabbing a hold above its fangs. While instincts scream at me to tear off the beast biting into my back, I know that will result in the same outcome as what the centipede just inflicted itself. Instead, I hold the head still. It struggles for all its worth — the immense mass it throws around isn’t something that can be brushed aside — but my neck is far stronger than my tail. Its jerking motions no longer tug at my spine.

Another crack echoes through the vast cavern. A shriek quickly overwhelms all other sounds. The Ōmukade strikes each of its legs into whatever it can; my scales, the earth, even through the swathes of flying bugs. Its fangs let go of my back, and before it can change its mind, I tear its head away from me and slam it face first into the earth where those large pincers can no longer injure me.

It is desperate to survive now. The centipede disregards any attempt to kill as its priorities switch to escaping, but my tight grip prevents it doing much more than squirming.

The single clawed legs scratch up my scales, but never pierce through. Only those that find the wound in my back have any success latching on. I ignore them; they are preferable to having the Ōmukade’s fangs tearing through me. Most of its other limbs tear through the soil, churning rock as if it were water. In some places it digs deeper, striking through ranked stone with ease.

The giant’s movements are unguided. The limbs struggle, desperate for anything to remove its long chitinous body from the grasp of the stronger predator. Unfocused as they are, each swipe through the swarm surrounding us does something that I can’t understand.

Whenever I move, the million bugs emitting those strange ripples into space flee from me. They stay away. Not only from me, but through the cavern, they keep some distance from any of the creatures hiding from the battle between two apexes. All besides this Ōmukade.

The thick swarms do not keep their distance from the centipede. Whenever its legs swipe through the cloud of bugs, they barely react. It’s like they don’t even notice the giant’s presence. Each time the beast desperately slashes its legs into the swarm, that ripple of space floods through the centipede’s body, giving me an incredibly strange view into its insides.

No blood, no organs, no nothing that should be there. Instead, it gives the beast an appearance of non-existence and transparency despite it obviously being right here in my grasp.

It’s an odd ability, but not one that will help it escape me.

A section of the chitin along its lower back collapses, the soft flesh beneath pulps in an instant. The Ōmukade screeches in agony. It tries to strike its mandibles at me again, but my grip is firm. Each pincer digs through the earth, not finding their intended mark.

With some of its exoskeleton shattered, the cracks are quick to spread. In no time, my constriction breaks through more and more of the centipede. I don’t let up on my strength even slightly until the Ōmukade stops shrieking its pain to the world.

Slowly, I slide my fangs out of the chitin. My competitor is not yet dead, but it no longer has the strength to fight. While keeping the beast wrapped enough that it can’t suddenly try anything unwise should it get another burst of energy, I raise my head high. A mighty, deep hiss echoes through the cavern. A call of victory. An expression to claim my superiority. I am still at the top, regardless of the existence of Titans.

My gaze falls down to the twitching centipede beneath me and despite having only eaten a dozen sleeps ago, a ravenous hunger overwhelms me. I really shouldn’t make the attempt with a creature more than double my weight, but the victory against a proper challenger has me salivating. Doesn’t help that it smells so good.

I shouldn’t try, but there’s no resisting. This will be the biggest feast I’ve had.