Kin of Jörmungandr

I find, as I fall, that my eyes fixate on the little bat on my snout. Not having distortions to hold myself is disquieting. More so without any form of ground beneath us. To avoid losing myself in a spiral of distress, I watch Scia.

She isn’t panicking, so I don’t either.

Her ears stand tall and stiff off her head that she holds tight between my nostrils. Her wings remain folded, but the little sole claws cling to the ridge between scales. Despite the air whipping against us, she doesn’t turn away; stuck in an unbreakable focus.

The bend snaps into existence and I stiffen my spine to flow through as straight as possible. My momentum reverses, and we rapidly regain the altitude we lost.

The lack of bends around us makes it difficult to see behind myself, but in the moment after I thread through the bend, I can see the rear half of my tail. Scia created a distortion that crossed essentially no distance through space, but I could not have asked for a better angle.

Because of Scia, we soar easily back over the ledge of the cliff-face, and slide into distortion-dense space. I relish the embrace for a few moments before I twist my tail to pat Scia. She leans into the praise unconstrained.

With careful movements, I bring us down to the mass of ranked stone that continues its strange balancing act on the edge of the cliff. I touch the stone, ready to leap back into the air should my ever-so-slight contact be the tipping point.

It remains steady. Or, as steady as the constant back and forth swaying motion can get. The island is not exactly still, but it is as stable a rock as I’ll find here on the Other Side.

I relax almost immediately. It’s been a while since my last rest. While I could hold it off for a long while, doing so isn’t wise. The rock is hard and jagged, which doesn’t make for an all that comfortable place to sleep, but I’ll take what I can while I can get it. Who knows when the next time will come?

Scia leaps off my head and lands both clawed feet around a sharp rock. She spreads her wings and holds her head high. I don’t know how, but I understand her almost intuitively this time.

Oh? So you want to stand guard? You’re not tired from those bends you made? I hiss slightly to accentuate my thoughts.

She snaps her wings to her side and twists her head with swivelling ears, as if searching for any predators that might suddenly appear. I guess that’s a yes. Well, she can do what she wants; she can always sleep on my back if need be. Though, I thought for sure she would be tired.

❖❖❖

When I wake, Scia is out cold. A snore breaks the constant rumbles of the earth, and I hiss in amusement. She was tired, wasn’t she? She tried her best, but couldn’t hold out against her need.

I stretch my spine and raise my head, careful not to disturb her as she leans into my side. My tail moves around to pick her up so we can be on our way, but it stops just before curling around the bat. It would be best to move as soon as we can, but I hesitate to disturb her rest.

I’m unsure why, but there’s something so peaceful about watching her sleep. Even surrounded by deadly grinding stone, I feel like I’ve returned to the comfort of my old resting rock as I observe the little bilbies of my domain.

I’ll never return to those times, but maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.

Unfortunately, I’m not given long to relax and watch Scia sleep.

From the corner of my eye, I notice a bend pop into existence. Such an occurrence wouldn’t usually raise any concerns, but it is positioned out over the distortionless chasm. I don’t react at first, but as more tear into reality, I realise we can’t wait any longer.

Slowly, with every attempt to let Scia keep sleeping, I wrap her in the tip of my tail and lift her from the rock. She lets out a rather loud snort for her size, but doesn’t wake. My tail twists to place her in her usual spot on my back. I stop myself before I put her down; without being awake to latch her claws to my scales, she’s likely to fall off if I need to jerk to the side. Instead, I leave her looped in the embrace of my tail.

The distortions appear far more rapidly now. With Scia held tight, I slither into the air. The cliffs no longer appear like cliffs. Wherever I can see, the immense mix of gravel, mud and earth slowly flows into the crevasse. It starts as a trickle, but rapidly accelerates until everything around seems to want to dive into the open space.

Beneath me, the island we’d been sleeping on finally tumbles over the edge. It falls far. I watch it until it’s out of sight, blocked by the growing intensity of the landslide crashing into the chasm. Distortions may be reappearing, but they do not reach the density of all other space fast enough to dampen the flow of earth.

Now free to crash through open air without restraint, the world roars as it rushes down into the depths. The streams grow strong enough that they crash into the opposite flow, which does nothing to improve the deafening howl.

A slight squirming in my tail announces Scia’s awakening. With her wings, she grabs the tip of my tail and wraps it around her ears; an attempt to hide from the sound. Amused, I turn to swim away from the crevasse.

The flowing rock overwhelms any distortion I might use to view it, so the chasm rapidly disappears from sight. Despite that, the earth churns with more agitation than normal, and the longer I wait around here, the more worrying it gets.

So that chasm was a temporary phenomenon? I’m not complaining about the full rest it provided, but it raises some questions. Some rather disastrous ones depending on their answers. What exactly stopped the rock from flowing into the empty air? How frequently do these appear? How are they created? And… what happens to all that is caught within it when it appears?

The last worries me the most; if it just appears and removes anything within from existence, that would be the worst case, but the other options aren’t much better. If it simply pushed the rock away from each other, then the ripples that would send through both space and earth would be devastating if I happened to be anywhere nearby.

There’s also the concern whether this is a natural occurrence on the Other Side. If this happens with any sort of frequency… well, it probably wouldn’t be the worst thing, considering it gives us a place to rest, but I never want to be anywhere near where one of these crevasses form.

An explosion of air washes over me, and a rift I just passed through is buried in stone. The cavern which contained the island of ranked stone is now gone. Collapsed. Not even the dense distortions able to hold back the strong flow.

We are fortunate to have left when we did.

The distortions toward the chasm may be gone, but that does not mean its influence is no longer felt. Even ignoring the unwavering roar deafening us, the flowing granite torrents toward the open space it is now free to fill. Liquid-like rock curves around our cavern as it passes us by, not disturbed by the bends and holes enough to be visible through the flowing walls.

It’s a bit like the appearance of the Crippling Depths when the waters touch the Wind Channels. That interaction can be damn dangerous. Water travelling that fast crushes anything in its way, and I’d rather not find out what a fluid rock will feel like should it hit with those same speeds.

Thankfully, no more collapses occur near us. They continue to move with the flow of rock that surrounds them and sometimes shards will breach through, consuming all open air, but nothing more dangerous than usual.

Scia squeaks in my tail, and lightly scratches at my scales. Apparently, she’s woken up enough that the noise doesn’t bother her. As I place her on my back, she flattens her ears to her head, pressing her wings down over them. I should clarify that thought: it still bothers her, she’s just given up on getting back to sleep.

Don’t look too down, Scia, we’ll be away from the constant screech soon enough. At least the louder version. The ever-present grind of earth isn’t something I can do anything about.

I’m feeling refreshed despite how threatening the collapse of the crevasse could have been. That rest couldn’t have come at a better time. I’d been starting to flag. Now, I’m good to last as long as is necessary to find a way back to more stable tunnels.

If any of my previous searches have taught me anything, it’s that I cannot have any expectations going into this. Trying to find a rift to somewhere you specifically want to go is difficult. Almost as if the world wishes to hold your desires away from you.

Considering the most recent stretch of my life, I wouldn’t disbelieve it. Whether the world itself, the Titan, or any other force I might have once thought impossible, there are many things that could be messing with my life. I cannot change it if they are, but I can certainly put in an effort to keep Scia and myself alive.

In the next… however long, we come across a few more of those chasms. Their appearance is not a comfort. Now I know they are common, which was something I’d hoped against. At least not all are perfectly vertical, so there’s not the same fear of falling forever if we get caught while crossing. We never linger, not wanting to get stuck in any collapse, but having already found multiple, it makes me worried about the possibility one will form around us.

Scia is becoming essential to traverse these crevasses. Her bend creating is getting better. The last few times, she didn’t even leave it to the last moment. It’s starting to become second nature, swimming through her distortions as they appear. Without her, I couldn’t pass the undistorted space.

Unfortunately, creating bends large enough for me to pass through puts a strain on the little bat. After half a dozen, she crashes into my scales and naps off the exhaustion.

… which brings us to the current problem. There is no life here. No animals, but more relevantly: no plants. Scia has nothing to eat.

Before we’d found ourselves on the Other Side, Scia made a mess of her berries while eating it on my back. Now, she licks at the old, dried juice that clings to my scales as if that will satisfy her hunger.

After having nearly lost her to the same problem not long ago, I find myself agitated. I’d assumed this search would be constrained only by how long I could hold myself awake, but I’d forgotten such a simple fact again.

Scia cannot last as long as I without food, so I either need to find a way back now, or get her something to eat… which doesn’t seem possible in this landscape. Not unless Scia suddenly gains a hunger for gravel…

Nope. She looks at the little offered pebbles for a moment before looking up at me, confused. She cannot eat rocks.