Kin of Jörmungandr

Dust stilled. The waves of earth halted in mid motion. Even boulders soaring through the air hung as if terrified to be the only thing moving. The world itself appeared stuck; frozen in time.

I’d seen it before, but never to this scale. Never did the existence of momentum and gravity disappear with the application of presence.

But the Titan’s pressure is something else.

Air doesn’t move. Sound doesn’t travel. And yet the crashing roar of a Titan shears through all.

Deep, burning heat spreads through my core. Each fibre of my being feels it; the power it wields, the disaster it brings, the sheer, undiluted terror of its existence settles through my body. I feel like I’m being torn apart. My body cramps in on itself, an unbelievable pressure pressing down on me; as if the air itself has taken to attacking the snake until it is squeezed out of existence. Simultaneously, the burning, tearing, cracking of my muscles and spine threatens to rip me apart.

I cannot move. Not even my eyes can slide beneath their transparent scales. I can still see, and think, which is about all I can hope for.

The lynx is right before me. Similarly frozen, the feline has lost all fury and sense of victory it had not a moment before. It’s eyes ever so slowly edge to my right, where its pupils dilate and undiluted terror fills them.

The Titan’s roar feels more like a force of nature than a sound. It is burning and harrowing, not something I can hear, but rather something that is felt. The howl is a fiery cyclone tearing through my insides.

It doesn’t seem to end. The aches it delivers to every part of my body mount on top of themselves, quickly overcoming the pain of my impaled tail. The roar bellows on and on, for an apparent eternity that I twitch in shock when it suddenly stops.

I don’t have time to prepare myself. The storm hits again. Far stronger and far hotter than before. The diamond that spikes through me shows some resilience against the gust, but that is not a resilience my body shares. Wind slams into my side. The force, impossible to oppose, rips me from the diamond stalagmite, slicing through my side. My wound is suddenly so much worse.

Tossed through the air, I find — with some satisfaction — that the lynx is no better position; the torrent of incinerating winds drag the feline along the earth. It scraps away at growing crystal formations in an attempt to keep itself grounded, but the gust is too strong and carries it away. The beast is soon gone from sight.

I flail as I tumble through the air, eventually curling into a ball to protect Scia and the length of my tail that I’m rapidly losing the strength to move.

The heat is intense. It scrapes at my scales like magma, yet with the sharpness of the wind channels. Through the ever-present rumble as the world shrieks against the assault, heavy crashing thumps still persevere… only now they are louder, and more frequent.

All wind cuts off. The brief respite only lasts a moment before it slams down just as hard from above. With no control over my body, we slam into the earth. Through the pain, I do my best to keep Scia safe from the blow, cushioning her within my coils.

I should dig myself beneath the earth. I should slither away. There’s so many things that I should do, but the moment any proper plan of action crosses my mind, the titan finally steps within my sight.

It’s a leg. A single chitinous leg crashes into the earth, piercing incredible depths, and yet I cannot see more than a leg. The rest of its body stands out of sight not to the side, but above. The Titan is so tall I cannot even see the bottom of its torso.

Another leg drags along the earth, tossing up mountains of stone as it tears through with unimaginable force. Its first leg drags along beside it.

The beast does not destroy space, nor hide away where it is difficult to be seen. No, long-legged existence towers above all, not hiding what it is.

The bare tip of a snout comes into my sight. Teeth larger than my full length — larger than the lynx — peek out from the immense maw. Despite the horrifying size of what I see, the teeth are that of a herbivore; flat and unintimidating. But the way the muzzle snarls with the ripples of burning air and storms tear up the earth with each breath leaves this beast no less terrifying.

The tip of its head falls back out of sight as the legs stop tearing up the earth. It only takes a moment to realise that the hard slender legs don’t match what I would expect of that furred snout.

There are two Titans here.

A bladed limb slices down through the space at the edge of my vision, where the had been an instant before. The movement of the sickle-arm is far too quick considering the sheer distance it cuts through. In an instant, from no effect I could identify, a crevasse tears itself through the landscape. Spanning the entire length at the edge of my sight, the sea of earth holds itself open, as if commanded by the Titan.

It is only a moment later that the wind hits me. Once more, I’m tossed through the air, the shriek of wind passing us by deafens all other sounds, but even that is overwhelmed by the next titanic roar as the physical wave of power washes through me, once again crushing us to the earth.

With no time to recover, I can only watch in a mixture of awe and unmitigated horror as the Titans spear through the sky overhead. A massive bull-like creature with boiling storms threading from the long hairs into a weave of rippling clouds and smoke behind it charges with the slender titan curled over its head. The chitinous Titan appears closest to a phasmid, but with a midsection resembling a rainforest of thick trunks growing from larger trunks.

I cannot see all of the beings. They take up all of my view in each direction. The sight I’ve always considered able to see so far into the distance — even without the help of holes — seems worthless. It is not even enough to comprehend the full size of their bodies.

The bull’s mountainous hooves crash through the earth to my side, sending a wave of earth slamming over me.

For a moment, I consider just letting the churning ground take us. Anywhere we sink is likely better then here; exposed to the life-threatening forces expelled by the Titan’s very existences. We won’t be able to react to anything that comes our way, but that now seems an arrogant thing to have assumed. Even able to see them coming, I couldn’t do anything. They were too quick, too large, and most importantly, they shift the land around me, so I can’t react at all.

But … that crevasse. The titan tore a wide chasm in the earth, and it stayed open. I’ve seen that before, down below, where the ground would somehow stay clear of the crevasse despite how much it should want to flow down into the endless trench.

I can use that. If we can get to the crevasse, that’s our best option to return to the lower caverns. We can leave this territory of the Titans, and return to safety.

With the plan in mind — though questionable at best — I pull us through to the surface. It is a struggle; my tail aches like I’ve lost it, and the constant pressure waves slamming into me make this far more difficult than it should be.

When I poke my head out, the Titans are gone from sight. They may not be visible, but their presence is still obvious in the flow of earth and the thunderous storms brewing overhead.

I slither toward where I saw the Titan slice open the earth. With my lower half both limp and dedicated to protecting Scia, traversing the surface is anything but easy. Waves work against me, and the tremors threaten to swallow me. If that wasn’t bad enough, I’m leaving behind a trail of blood. A lot of blood.

A few of my lower ribs have been severed and the wound cuts into my spine. I should be fine for a while yet, but I really need to do something about the blood-loss.

Burning winds whip at my scales, threatening to lift me through the air once more. There’s nothing I can do to stop it; if the gusts pick up, I will be at their whims. Every so often a boulder crashes somewhere near, filling the air with ever more dust and gravel. Each slither is a gruelling challenge. A battle against the forces of a Titan’s body.

The two are no longer nearby, gone far beyond sight, and yet they devastate the land so effortlessly. Their mere passage leaves mountains rising and falling, sections of earth slit open like fatal wounds, and the air in chaos.

Titans are the enemy of the world.

The Beyond’s words were true. This is the true nature of the Other Side. Not only is it the Titans’ graveyard, they are simply the only beasts that can remain even in death. No, this is the death of everything. The Titans have killed these caverns. This is a world the Titans have already killed, and soon enough, my warped tunnels will meet the same fate.

The quakes have already started. I felt them before we found ourselves here. The tremors breaking through the warped caverns were beyond anything that should have threatened them, too farspread to be anything beyond a quake of the Other Side.

A Titan was destroying my home.

It is clear now that I’ve found the source of this world’s devastation, that it is an effort of the Titans to destroy the warped tunnels. Again, they take my home from me.

The spaceless Titan that destroyed my territory truly was threatening me. The Fracture , as the being called it, is nothing other than it’s own fault. No wonder I’ve never seen them before; They’ve remained here on the Other Side for so long. But now, they are coming into our world to destroy it as they did theirs.

I stop. My body lingers at the edge of the cliff down into the crevasse, held from falling by some strange effect of the Titan’s long, sharp blade-arms. The fall is endless. I cannot see where it ends. Considering my wound, I cannot return to a smaller size — unless I wish it to spread worse than it is — but it’s not like Scia is in a state to create a bend for me regardless.

My only option is to fall and hope for luck. At least it is a way back down into the caverns with distortions. Down there, we’ll have a much better chance for survival.

I turn to glance over glance over this horrorscape that will one day be all that remains of my warped tunnels. This is what my world is to become? I want to refute it, but who can oppose a Titan?

Back the way I came, my blood has already seeped below the constantly renewing surface. Waves of earth rise and fall, but when those near me drop to their lowest point, I spot something in the distance. It is brief, but I could never miss it. The crystalline fur of the lynx. The lesser Titan is still on my tail?!

Why is it still after me? Is the interference of the Titan not enough to scare it off?

This is no time to waste questioning its intent. I turn and leap into the endless crevasse. Whatever awaits below will be far better than here.